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lfpodcast

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[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "My father came from a long tradition of architects, distant branch of the Bach family. And so basically he was technically a nerd and nerds need to interface in society with non-standard ways. Sometimes I define a nerd as somebody who thinks that the purpose of communication is to submit your ideas to peer review. And normal people understand that the primary purpose of communication is to negotiate alignment. And these purposes tend to conflict, which means that nerds have to learn how to interact with society at large." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who is the reviewer in the nerd's view of communication?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "everybody who you consider to be a peer. So whatever hapless individual is around, well, you would try to make him or her the gift of information." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so you're, now, by the way, my research malinformed me, so you're, architect or artist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or do you see those two as the same? So he did study architecture, but basically my grandfather made the wrong decision. He married an aristocrat and was drawn into the war. And he came back after 15 years. So basically my father was not parented by a nerd, but by somebody who tried to tell him what to do and expected him to do what he was told. And he was unable to, he's unable to do things if he's not intrinsically motivated. So in some sense, my grandmother broke her son, and her son responded by, when he became an architect, to become an artist. So he built Hundertwasser architecture, he built houses without right angles, he built lots of things that didn't work in the more brutalist traditions of Eastern Germany. And so he bought an old watermill, moved out to the countryside, and did only what he wanted to do, which was art. Eastern Germany was perfect for Bohemia because you had complete material safety. Food was heavily subsidized, healthcare was free. You didn't have to worry about rent or pensions or anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a socialized communist side of Germany." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And the other thing is it was almost impossible not to be in political disagreement with your government, which is very productive for artists. So everything that you do is intrinsically meaningful, because it will always touch on the deeper currents of society, of culture, and be in conflict with it, and tension with it, and you will always have to define yourself with respect to this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what impacted your father, this outside-of-the-box thinker against the government, against the world artists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He was actually not a thinker. He was somebody who only got self-aware to the degree that he needed to make himself functional. So in some sense, he was also in the late 1960s, and he was in some sense a hippie. So he became a one-person cult. He lived out there in his kingdom. He built big sculpture gardens and started many avenues of art and so on and convinced a woman to live with him. She was also an architect and she adored him and decided to share her life with him. And I basically grew up in a big cave full of books. I'm almost feral. And I was bored out there. It was very, very beautiful, very quiet and quite lonely. So I started to read. And by the time I came to school, I've read everything until fourth grade and then some. And there was not a real way for me to relate to the outside world. And I couldn't quite put my finger on why. And today I know it was because I was a nerd, obviously, and I was the only nerd around. So there were no other kids like me. And there was nobody interested in physics or computing or mathematics and so on. And this village school that I went to was basically a nice school. Kids were nice to me. I was not beaten up, but I also didn't make many friends or build deep relationships. That only happened in starting from ninth grade when I went into a school for mathematics and physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you remember any key books from this moment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, I basically read everything. So I went to the library and I worked my way through the children's and young adult sections. And then I read a lot of science fiction. For instance, Danis Laflamme, basically the great author of cybernetics, has influenced me. Back then, I didn't see him as a big influence because everything that he wrote seemed to be so natural to me. It's only later that I contrasted it with what other people wrote. Another thing that was very influential on me were the classical philosophers and also the literature of Romanticism, so German poetry and art, Drozdo Hilshoff and Heine and up to Hesse and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hesse, I love Hesse. So at which point do the classical philosophers end? At this point, we're in the 21st century. What's the latest classical philosopher? Does this stretch through even as far as Nietzsche or is this, are we talking about Plato and Aristotle?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that Nietzsche is the classical equivalent of a shit poster. He's very smart and easy to read, but he's not so much trolling others. He's trolling himself because he was at odds with the world. Largely his romantic relationships didn't work out. He got angry and he basically became a nihilist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Isn't that a beautiful way to be as an intellectual, is to constantly be trolling yourself, to be in that conflict, in that tension?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a lack of self-awareness. At some point you have to understand the comedy of your own situation. If you take yourself seriously and you are not functional, it ends in tragedy as it did for Nietzsche." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you think he took himself too seriously in that tension. So to be able to laugh at yourself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And as you find the same thing in Hesse and so on, this Steppenwolf syndrome is classic adolescence where you basically feel misunderstood by the world and you don't understand that all the misunderstandings are the result of your own lack of self-awareness because you think that you are a prototypical human and the others around you should behave the same way as you expect them based on your innate instincts and it doesn't work out. and you become a transcendentalist to deal with that. So it's very, very understandable and have great sympathies for this to the degree that I can have sympathy for my own intellectual history, but you have to grow out of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So as an intellectual, a life well-lived, a journey well-traveled is one where you don't take yourself seriously from that perspective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think that you are neither serious or not serious yourself because you need to become unimportant as a subject that is, If you are a philosopher, belief is not a verb. You don't do this for the audience and you don't do it for yourself. You have to submit to the things that are possibly true and you have to follow wherever your inquiry leads, but it's not about you. It has nothing to do with you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think then people like Ayn Rand believed sort of in the idea of there's objective truth, so what's your sense in the philosophical, if you remove yourself as objective from the picture, you think it's possible to actually discover ideas that are true, or are we just in a mesh of relative concepts that are neither true nor false, it's just a giant mess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "you cannot define objective truth without understanding the nature of truth in the first place. So what does the brain mean by saying that it discovers something as truth? So for instance, a model can be predictive or not predictive. Then there can be a sense in which a mathematical statement can be true because it's defined as true under certain conditions. So it's basically a particular state that a variable can have in a simple game. And then you can have a correspondence between systems and talk about truth, which is again a type of model correspondence. And there also seems to be a particular kind of ground truth. So for instance, you're confronted with the enormity of something existing at all, right? It's stunning when you realize something exists rather than nothing. And this seems to be true, right? There's an absolute truth in the fact that something seems to be happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that to me is a showstopper. I could just think about that idea and be amazed by that idea for the rest of my life and not go any farther. Because I don't even know the answer to that. Why does anything exist at all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the easiest answer is existence is the default, right? So this is the lowest number of bits that you would need to encode this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Whose answer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The simplest answer to this is that existence is the default." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about non-existence? I mean, that seems..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "non-existence might not be a meaningful notion in the sense. So in some sense, if everything that can exist exists, for something to exist, it probably needs to be implementable. The only thing that can be implemented is finite automata. So maybe the whole of existence is the superposition of all finite automata. And we are in some region of the fractal that has the properties that it can contain us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it mean to be a superposition of finite, superposition of all possible rules?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine that every automaton is basically an operator that acts on some substrate. And as a result, you get emergent patterns." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's a substrate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have no idea to know. But some substrate. It's something that can store information." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something that can store information, there's an automaton. Something that can hold state. Still, doesn't make sense to me the why that exists at all. I could just sit there with a... with a beer or a vodka and just enjoy the fact, pondering the why." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "May not have a why. This might be the wrong direction to ask into this. So there could be no relation in the why direction without asking for a purpose or for a cause. It doesn't mean that everything has to have a purpose or a cause, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we mentioned some philosophers in that early, just taking a brief step back into that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so we asked ourselves, when did classical philosophy end? I think for Germany, it largely ended with the first revolution. That's basically when we- Which one was that? This was when we ended the monarchy and started a democracy. And at this point, we basically came up with a new form of government that didn't have a good sense of this new organism that society wanted to be. And in a way, it decapitated the universities. So the universities went on through modernism like a headless chicken. At the same time, democracy failed in Germany and we got fascism as a result. And it burned down things in a similar way as Stalinism burned down intellectual traditions in Russia. And Germany, both Germanys have not recovered from this. Eastern Germany had this vulgar dialectic materialism and Western Germany didn't get much more edgy than Habermas. So in some sense, both countries lost their intellectual traditions and killing off and driving out the Jews didn't help." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so that was the end of really rigorous, what you would say is classical philosophy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's also this thing that, in some sense, the low-hanging fruits in philosophy were mostly wrapped. And the last big things that we discovered was the constructivist turn in mathematics. So to understand that the parts of mathematics that work are computation, there was a very significant discovery in the first half of the 20th century. And it hasn't fully permeated philosophy and even physics yet. Physicists checked out the code libraries for mathematics before constructive vision became universal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's constructivism, what are you referring to, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that kind of, those kinds of ideas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So basically, Gödel himself, I think, didn't get it yet. Hilbert could get it. Hilbert saw that, for instance, Kantor's set-theoretic experiments in mathematics led into contradictions, and he noticed that with the current semantics, we cannot build a computer in mathematics that runs mathematics without crashing. And Gödel could prove this. And so what Gödel could show is using classical mathematical semantics, you run into contradictions. And because Gödel strongly believed in these semantics and more than in what he could observe and so on, he was shocked. It basically shook his world to the core because in some sense he felt that the world has to be implemented in classical mathematics. And for Turing, it wasn't quite so bad. I think that Turing could see that the solution is to understand that mathematics was computation all along, which means for instance, pi in classical mathematics is a value. It's also a function, but it's the same thing. And in computation, a function is only a value when you can compute it. And if you cannot compute the last digit of pi, you only have a function. You can plug this function into your local sun, let it run until the sun burns out. This is it. This is the last digit of pi you will know. But it also means there can be no process in the physical universe or in any physically realized computer that depends on having known the last digit of pi. which means there are parts of physics that are defined in such a way that cannot strictly be true, because assuming that this could be true leads into contradictions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think putting computation at the center of the worldview is actually the right way to think about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and Wittgenstein could see it, and Wittgenstein basically preempted the logitist program of AI that Minsky started later, like 30 years later. Turing was actually a pupil of Wittgenstein," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I didn't know there's any connection between Turing and Wittgenstein." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wittgenstein even canceled some classes when Turing was not present because he thought it was not worth spending the time on with the others. If you read the Tractatus, it's a very beautiful book, like basically one thought on 75 pages. It's very non-typical for philosophy because it doesn't have arguments in it and it doesn't have references in it. It's just one thought that is not intending to convince anybody. He says, it's mostly for people that had the same insight as me. spell it out. And this insight is there is a way in which mathematics and philosophy ought to meet. Mathematics tries to understand the domain of all languages by starting with those that are so formalizable that you can prove all the properties of the statements that you make. But the price that you pay is that your language is very, very simple. So it's very hard to say something meaningful in mathematics. And it looks complicated to people, but it's far less complicated than what our brain is casually doing all the time. And it makes sense of reality. And philosophy is coming from the top. So it's mostly starting from natural languages with vaguely defined concepts. And the hope is that mathematics and philosophy can meet at some point. And Wittgenstein was trying to make them meet. And he already understood that, for instance, you could express everything with the Nant calculus, that you could reduce the entire logic to Nant gates, as we do in our modern computers. So in some sense, he already understood Turing universality before Turing spelled it out. I think when he wrote the Tractatus, he didn't understand yet that the idea was so important and significant. And I suspect then when Turing wrote it out, nobody cared that much. Turing was not that famous when he lived. It was mostly his work in decrypting the German codes that made him famous or gave him some notoriety. But this saint status that he has to computer science right now and AI is something that I think he could acquire later." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's kind of interesting. Do you think of computation and computer science, and you kind of represent that to me, is maybe that's the modern day, you in a sense are the new philosopher by sort of the computer scientist who dares to ask the bigger questions that philosophy originally started is the new philosopher." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Certainly not me, I think. I'm mostly still this child that grows up in a very beautiful valley and looks at the world from the outside and tries to understand what's going on. And my teachers tell me things and they largely don't make sense. So I have to make my own models. I have to discover the foundations of what the others are saying. I have to try to fix them, to be charitable. I try to understand what they must have thought originally or what their teachers or their teacher's teachers must have thought until everything got lost in translation and how to make sense of the reality that we are in. And whenever I have an original idea, I'm usually late to the party by say 400 years. And the only thing that's good is that the parties get smaller and smaller, the older I get and the more I explore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The parties get smaller. And more exclusive. And more exclusive. So it seems like one of the key qualities of your upbringing was that you were not tethered, whether it's because of your parents or in general, maybe you're something within your mind. some genetic material, they were not tethered to the ideas of the general populace, which is actually a unique property. We're kind of, you know, the education system and whatever, not education system, just existing in this world forces certain sets of ideas onto you. Can you disentangle that, why were you, why are you not so tethered? Even in your work today, you seem to not care about perhaps a best paper in Europe, right? Being tethered to particular things that current today in this year, people seem to value as a thing you put on your CV and resume. you're a little bit more outside of that world, outside of the world of ideas that people are especially focusing, the benchmarks of today, the things. Can you disentangle that? Because I think that's inspiring. And if there were more people like that, we might be able to solve some of the bigger problems that sort of AI dreams to solve." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And there's a big danger in this because in a way you are expected to marry into an intellectual tradition and visit this tradition into a particular school. If everybody comes up with their own paradigms, the whole thing is not cumulative as an enterprise, right? So in some sense, you need a healthy balance. You need paradigmatic thinkers and you need people that work within given paradigms. Basically, scientists today define themselves largely by methods. And it's almost a disease that we think as a scientist, somebody who was convinced by their guidance counselor that they should join a particular discipline and then they find a good mentor to learn the right methods and then they are lucky enough and privileged enough to join the right team, and then their name will show up on influential papers. But we also see that there are diminishing returns with this approach. And when our field, computer science and AI, started, most of the people that joined this field had interesting opinions. And today's thinkers in AI either don't have interesting opinions at all, or these opinions are inconsequential for what they're actually doing, because what they're doing is they apply the state-of-the-art methods with a small epsilon. And this is often a good idea if you think that this is the best way to make progress. And for me, it's, first of all, very boring. If somebody else can do it, why should I do it? If the current methods of machine learning lead to strong AI, why should I be doing it? I will just wait until they're done and wait until they do this on the beach or read interesting books or write some and have fun. But if you don't think that we are currently doing the right thing, if we are missing some perspectives, then it's required to think outside of the box. It's also required to understand the boxes. But it's necessary to understand what worked and what didn't work and for what reasons. So you have to be willing to ask new questions and design new methods whenever you want to answer them. and you have to be willing to dismiss the existing methods if you think that they're not going to yield the right answers. It's very bad career advice to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe to briefly stay for one more time in the early days, when would you say for you was the dream, before we dive into the discussions that we just almost started, when was the dream to understand or maybe to create human-level intelligence born for you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that you can see AI largely today as advanced information processing. If you would change the acronym of AI into that, most people in the field would be happy. It would not change anything what they're doing. We're automating statistics and many of the statistical models are more advanced than what statisticians had in the past. And it's pretty good work. It's very productive. And the other aspect of AI is philosophical project. And this philosophical project is very risky and very few people work on it. And it's not clear if it succeeds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So first of all, you keep throwing sort of a lot of really interesting ideas, and I have to pick which ones we go with, but sort of, first of all, you use the term information processing, just information processing, as if it's the mere, it's the muck of existence, as if it's the epitome of existence. that the entirety of the universe might be information processing, that consciousness and intelligence might be information processing. So that maybe you can comment on if that's, if the advanced information processing is a limiting kind of realm of ideas. And then the other one is, what do you mean by the philosophical project?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I suspect that general intelligence is the result of trying to solve general problems. So intelligence, I think, is the ability to model. It's not necessarily goal-directed rationality or something. Many intelligent people are bad at this. But it's the ability to be presented with a number of patterns and see a structure in those patterns and be able to predict the next set of patterns, to make sense of things. And some problems are very general. Usually, intelligence serves control. So you make these models for a particular purpose of interacting as an agent with the world and getting certain results. But the intelligence itself is, in a sense, instrumental to something. But by itself, it's just the ability to make models. And some of the problems are so general that the system that makes them needs to understand what itself is and how it relates to the environment. So as a child, for instance, you notice you do certain things despite you perceiving yourself as wanting different things. So you become aware of your own psychology. you become aware of the fact that you have complex structure in yourself and you need to model yourself, to reverse engineer yourself, to be able to predict how you will react to certain situations and how you deal with yourself in relationship to your environment. And this process, this project, if you reverse engineer yourself and your relationship to reality and the nature of a universe that can continue, if you go all the way, this is basically the project of AI, or you could say the project of AI is a very important component in it. the true Turing test in a way is, you ask a system, what is intelligence? If that system is able to explain what it is, how it works, then you should assign it the property of being intelligent in this general sense. So the test that Turing was administering in a way, I don't think that he couldn't see it, but he didn't express it yet in the original 1950 paper, is that he was trying to find out whether he was generally intelligent. Because in order to take this test, the rub is, of course, you need to be able to understand what that system is saying. And we don't yet know if we can build an AI. We don't yet know if we are generally intelligent. Basically, you win the Turing test by building an AI." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. So in a sense, hidden within the Turing test is a kind of recursive test." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's a test on us. The Turing test is basically a test of the conjecture whether people are intelligent enough to understand themselves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but you also mentioned a little bit of a self-awareness and then the project of AI. Do you think this kind of emergent self-awareness is one of the fundamental aspects of intelligence? So as opposed to goal-oriented, as you said, kind of puzzle-solving, is coming to grips with the idea that you're an agent in the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And like- I find that many highly intelligent people are not very self-aware. So self-awareness and intelligence are not the same thing. And you can also be self-aware if you have good priors especially, without being especially intelligent. So you don't need to be very good at solving puzzles if the system that you are already implements the solution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I do find intelligence, so you kind of mentioned children, right? Is that the fundamental project of AI, is to create the learning system that's able to exist in the world? So you kind of drew a difference between self-awareness and intelligence, and yet you said that the self-awareness seems to be important for children." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I call this ability to make sense of the world and your own place in it, so to make you able to understand what you're doing in this world, sentience. And I would distinguish sentience from intelligence because sentience is possessing certain classes of models. And intelligence is a way to get to these models if you don't already have them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see, so can you maybe pause a bit and try to answer the question that we just said we may not be able to answer? And it might be a recursive meta question of what is intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that intelligence is the ability to make models." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So models, I think it's useful as examples, very popular now. Neural networks form representations of large-scale data set. They form models of those data sets. When you say models and look at today's neural networks, what are the difference of how you're thinking about what is intelligent in saying that intelligence is the process of making models?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Two aspects to this question. One is the representation. Is the representation adequate for the domain that we want to represent? And the other one is the type of the model that you arrive at adequate. So basically, are you modeling the correct domain? And I think in both of these cases, modern AI is lacking still. And I think that I'm not saying anything new here. I'm not criticizing the field. Most of the people that design our paradigms are aware of that. And so one aspect that we are missing is unified learning. When we learn, we at some point discover that everything that we sense is part of the same object, which means we learn it all into one model, and we call this model the universe. So the experience of the world that we are embedded on is not a secret, direct wire to physical reality. Physical reality is a weird quantum graph that we can never experience or get access to. But it has these properties that it can create certain patterns that our systemic interface to the world. And we make sense of these patterns and the relationship between the patterns that we discover is what we call the physical universe. So at some point in our development as a nervous system, we discover that everything that we relate to in the world can be mapped to a region in the same three-dimensional space, by and large. We now know in physics that this is not quite true. world is not actually three-dimensional, but the world that we are entangled with, at the level which we are entangled with, is largely a flat three-dimensional space. And so this is the model that our brain is intuitively making. And this is, I think, what gave rise to this intuition of res extensa, of this material world, this material domain. It's one of the mental domains, but it's just the class of all models that relate to this environment, this three-dimensional physics engine in which we are embedded." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "physics engine, which were embedded. I love that. Just slowly pause. So the quantum graph, I think you called it, which is the real world, which you can never get access to. There's a bunch of questions I want to sort of disentangle that, but maybe One useful one, one of your recent talks I looked at, can you just describe the basics? Can you talk about what is dualism, what is idealism, what is materialism, what is functionalism, and what connects with you most? In terms of, because you just mentioned, there's a reality we don't have access to. Okay, what does that even mean? And why don't we get access to it? Aren't we part of that reality? Why can't we access it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the particular trajectory that mostly exists in the West is the result of our indoctrination by a cult for 2,000 years. A cult, which one? Yes, the Catholic cult mostly. And for better or worse, it has created or defined many of the modes of interaction that we have that has created this society, but it has also in some sense scarred our rationality. And the intuition that exists, if you would translate the mythology of the Catholic Church into the modern world, is that the world in which you and me interact is something like a multiplayer role-playing adventure. And the money and the objects that we have in this world, this is all not real. Or as Eastern philosophers would say, it's maya. It's just stuff that appears to be meaningful. And this embedding in this meaning, if you believe in it, is samsara. It's basically the identification with the needs of the mundane, secular, everyday existence. And the Catholics also introduced the notion of higher meaning, the sacred. And this existed before, but eventually the natural shape of God is the platonic form of the civilization that you're part of. It's basically the superorganism that is formed by the individuals as an intentional agent. And basically the Catholics used a relatively crude mythology to implement software on the minds of people and get the software synchronized to make them walk on lockstep to basically get this God online and to make it efficient and effective. And I think God technically is just a self that spends multiple brains as opposed to your and myself, which mostly exists just on one brain. And so in some sense, you can construct a self functionally as a function that is implemented by brains that exists across brains." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this is a God with a small g. That's one of the, if you, Yuval Harari kind of talking about, this is one of the nice features of our brains, it seems to, that we can all download the same piece of software, like God in this case, and kind of share it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so basically you give everybody a spec, and the mathematical constraints that, are intrinsic to information processing, make sure that given the same spec, you come up with a compatible structure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so there's the space of ideas that we all share and we think that's kind of the mind, but that's separate from the idea is from Christianity, from religion, is that there's a separate thing between the mind. There is a real world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And this real world is the world in which God exists. God is the coder of the multiplayer adventure, so to speak. And we are all players in this game. And that's dualism, you would say. Yes, but the dualist aspect is because the mental realm exists in a different implementation than the physical realm. And the mental realm is real. And a lot of people have this intuition that there is this real room in which you and me talk and speak right now. Then comes a layer of physics and abstract rules and so on. And then comes another real room where our souls are and our true form isn't a thing that gives us phenomenal experience. And this is of course a very confused notion that you would get. And it's basically, it's the result of connecting materialism and idealism in the wrong way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, I apologize, but I think it's really helpful if we just try to define, try to define terms. Like what is dualism, what is idealism, what is materialism for people that don't know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the idea of dualism in our cultural tradition is that there are two substances, a mental substance and a physical substance, and they interact by different rules. And the physical world is basically causally closed and is built on a low-level causal structure. So there's basically a bottom level that is causally closed that's entirely mechanical. and mechanical in the widest sense, so it's computational. There's basically a physical world in which information flows around, and physics describes the laws of how information flows around in this world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you compare it to like a computer where you have hardware and software?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A computer is a generalization of information flowing around. Basically, what Turing discovered, that there is a universal principle, you can define this universal machine, that is able to perform all the computations. So all these machines have the same power. This means that you can always define a translation between them as long as they have unlimited memory to be able to perform each other's computations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So would you then say that materialism is this whole world is just the hardware and idealism is this whole world is just the software?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not quite. I think that most idealists don't have a notion of software yet because software also comes down to information processing. So what you notice is the only thing that is real to you and me is this experiential world in which things matter, in which things have taste, in which things have color, phenomenal content, and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you realize- You are bringing up consciousness, okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And this is distinct from the physical world in which things have values only in an abstract sense. And you only look at cold patterns, moving around. So how does anything feel like something? And this connection between the two things is very puzzling to a lot of people, of course, too many philosophers. So idealism starts out with the notion that mind is primary, materialism, things that matter is primary. And so for the idealist, the material patterns that we see playing out are part of the dream that the mind is dreaming. and we exist in a mind on a higher plane of existence, if you want. And for the materialist, there is only this material thing, and that generates some models, and we are the result of these models. And in some sense, I don't think that we should understand, if you understand it properly, materialism and Idealism is a dichotomy, but there's two different aspects of the same thing. So the weird thing is we don't exist in the physical world. We do exist inside of a story that the brain tells itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, let me, my information processing, take that in. We don't exist in the physical world. We exist in the narrative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Basically, your brain cannot feel anything. Your brain cannot feel anything. They're physical things. Physical systems are unable to experience anything. But it would be very useful for the brain or for the organism to know what it would be like to be a person and to feel something. So the brain creates a simulacrum of such a person that it uses to model the interactions of the person. It's the best model of what that brain, this organism, thinks it is in relationship to its environment. So it creates that model. It's a story, a multimedia novel that the brain is continuously writing and updating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you also kind of said that, you said that we kind of exist in that story. What is real in any of this? So like, there's a, again, these terms are, You kind of said there's a quantum graph. I mean, what is this whole thing running on then? Is the story, and is it completely fundamentally impossible to get access to it? Because isn't the story supposed to, isn't the brain in something, in existing in some kind of context?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what we can identify as computer scientists, we can engineer systems and test our theories this way that may have the necessary and sufficient properties to produce the phenomena that we are observing, which is there is a self in a virtual world that is generated in somebody's neocortex that is contained in the skull of this primate here. And when I point at this, this indexicality is of course wrong. but I do create something that is likely to give rise to patterns on your retina that allow you to interpret what I'm saying, right? But we both know that the world that you and me are seeing is not the real physical world. What we are seeing is a virtual reality generated in your brain to explain the patterns on your retina." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How close is it to the real world? That's kind of the question. Is it, When you have people like Donald Hoffman that say that you're really far away, the thing we're seeing, you and I now, that interface we have is very far away from anything. We don't even have anything close to the sense of what the real world is. Or is it a very surface piece of architecture?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine you look at the Mandelbrot Fractal, this famous thing that Bernard Mandelbrot discovered. If you see an overall shape in there, but if you truly understand it, you know it's two lines of code. It's basically a series that is being tested for complex numbers in the complex number plane for every point. And for those where the series is diverging, you paint this black. And where it's converging, you don't. And you get the intermediate colors by checking how fast it diverges. This gives you this shape of this fractal. But imagine you live inside of this fractal and you don't have access to where you are in the fractal, or you have not discovered the generator function even. So what you see is, all I can see right now is a spiral, and the spiral moves a little bit to the right. Is this an accurate model of reality? Yes, it is, right? It is an adequate description. You know that there is actually no spiral in the Mandelbrot fractal. It only appears like this to an observer that is interpreting things as a two-dimensional space and then defines certain irregularities in there at a certain scale that it currently observes. Because if you zoom in, the spiral might disappear and turn out to be something different at a different resolution, right? So at this level, you have the spiral and then you discover the spiral moves to the right and at some point it disappears. So you have a singularity. At this point, your model is no longer valid. You cannot predict what happens beyond the singularity. But you can observe again and you will see it hit another spiral and at this point it disappeared. So we now have a second order law. And if you make 30 layers of these laws, then you have a description of the world that is similar to the one that we come up with when we describe the reality around us. It's reasonably predictive, it does not cut to the core of it, it doesn't explain how it's being generated, how it actually works, but it's relatively good to explain the universe that we are entangled with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you don't think the tools of computer science, the tools of physics could step outside, see the whole drawing and get at the basic mechanism of how the pattern, the spirals are generated?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine you would find yourself embedded into a motherboard fractal and you try to figure out what works and you somehow have a Turing machine with enough memory to think. And as a result, you come to this idea, it must be some kind of automaton. And maybe you just enumerate all the possible automata until you get to the one that produces your reality. So you can identify necessary and sufficient conditions. For instance, we discovered that mathematics itself is the domain of all languages. And then we see that most of the domains of mathematics that we have discovered are in some sense describing the same fractals. This is what category theory is obsessed about, that you can map these different domains to each other. So there are not that many fractals. And some of these have interesting structure and symmetry breaks. And so you can discover what region of this global fractal you might be embedded in from first principles. But the only way you can get there is from first principles. So basically your understanding of the universe has to start with automata and then number theory and then spaces and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think like Stephen Wolfram still dreams that he'll be able to arrive at the fundamental rules of the cellular automata or the generalization of which is behind our universe. You've said on this topic, you said in a recent conversation that, quote, some people think that a simulation can't be conscious and only a physical system can. but they got it completely backward. A physical system cannot be conscious. Only a simulation can be conscious. Consciousness is a simulated property of the simulated self. Just like you said, the mind is kind of, we'll call it story, narrative. There's a simulation, so our mind is essentially a simulation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And usually I try to use the terminology so that the mind is basically the principles that produce the simulation. It's the software that is implemented by your brain. And the mind is creating both the universe that we are in and the self, the idea of a person that is on the other side of attention and is embedded in this world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is that important, that idea of a self? Why is that an important feature in the simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's basically a result of the purpose that the mind has. It's a tool for modeling, right? We are not actually monkeys. We are side effects of the regulation needs of monkeys. And what the monkey has to regulate is the relationship of an organism to an outside world that is in large part also consisting of other organisms. And as a result, it basically has regulation targets that it tries to get to. These regulation targets start with priors. They're basically like unconditional reflexes that we are more or less born with. And then we can reverse engineer them to make them more consistent. And then we get more detailed models about how the world works and how to interact with it. And so these priors that you commit to are largely target values that our needs should approach, set points. And this deviation to the set point creates some urge, some tension. And we find ourselves living inside of feedback loops, right? Consciousness emerges over dimensions of disagreements with the universe. things where you care, things are not the way they should be, that you need to regulate. And so in some sense, the sense itself is the result of all the identifications that you're having. An identification is a regulation target that you're committing to. It's a dimension that you care about, that you think is important. And this is also what locks you in. If you let go of these commitments, of these identifications, you get free. There's nothing that you have to do anymore. And if you let go of all of them, you're completely free and you can enter Nirvana because you're done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And actually this is a good time to pause and say thank you to sort of a friend of mine, Gustav Sordestrom, who introduced me to your work. I want to give him a shout out. He's a brilliant guy. And I think the AI community is actually quite amazing. And Gustav is a good representative of that. You are as well. So I'm glad, first of all, I'm glad the internet exists and YouTube exists where I can watch your talks and then get to your book and study your writing and think about, you know, that's amazing. Okay. You've kind of described this emergent phenomenon of consciousness from the simulation. So what about the hard problem of consciousness? Can you just linger on it? Why does it still feel? I understand the self is an important part of the simulation, but why does the simulation feel like something?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if you look at a book by, say, George R. R. Martin, where the characters have plausible psychology, and they stand on a hill because they want to conquer the city below the hill, and they're done in it, and they look at the color of the sky, and they are apprehensive, and feel empowered, and all these things. Why do they have these emotions? It's because it's written into the story, right? And it's written into the story because it's an adequate model of the person that predicts what they're going to do next. And the same thing is true for us. So it's basically a story that our brain is writing. It's not written in words. It's written in perceptual content, basically multimedia content. And it's a model of what the person would feel if it existed. So it's a virtual person. And you and me happen to be this virtual person. So this virtual person gets access to the language center and talks about the sky being blue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this is us. But hold on a second. Do I exist? in your simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You do exist in an almost similar way as me. So there are internal states that are less accessible for me that you have and so on. And my model might not be completely adequate. There are also things that I might perceive about you that you don't perceive. But in some sense, both you and me are some puppets, two puppets that enact this play in my mind. And I identify with one of them because I can control one of the puppets directly. And with the other one, I can create things in between. So for instance, we can go in an interaction that even leads to a coupling to a feedback loop. So we can think things together in a certain way or feel things together. But this coupling is itself not a physical phenomenon. It's entirely a software phenomenon. It's the result of two different implementations interacting with each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's interesting. So are you suggesting, like the way you think about it, is the entirety of existence a simulation and we're kind of each mind is a little sub-simulation that like, why don't you, why doesn't your mind have access to my mind's full state? Like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For the same reason that my mind doesn't have access to its own full state. So what, I mean. There is no trick involved. So basically when I know something about myself, it's because I made a model. So one part of your brain is tasked with modeling what other parts of your brain are doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, but there seems to be an incredible consistency about this world in the physical sense, that there's repeatable experiments and so on. How does that, fit into our silly descendant of apes simulation of the world. So why is everything so repeatable? And not everything, there's a lot of fundamental physics experiments that are repeatable. for a long time, all over the place, and so on. The laws of physics, how does that fit in, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It seems that the parts of the world that are not deterministic are not long-lived. So if you build a system, any kind of automaton, so if you build simulations of something, you'll notice that the phenomena that endure are those that give rise to stable dynamics. So basically, if you see anything that is complex in the world, it's the result usually of some control, of some feedback that keeps it stable around certain attractors. And the things that are not stable, that don't give rise to certain harmonic patterns and so on, they tend to get weeded out over time. So if we are in a region of the universe that sustains complexity, which is required to implement minds like ours, this is going to be a region of the universe that is very tightly controlled and controllable. So it's going to have lots of interesting symmetries and also symmetry breaks that allow the creation of structure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But they exist where? So there's such an interesting idea that our mind is a simulation that's constructing the narrative. My question is, just to try to understand how that fits with the entirety of the universe. You're saying that there's a region of this universe that allows enough complexity to create creatures like us, but what's the connection between the brain, the mind, and the broader universe? Which comes first? Which is more fundamental? Is the mind the starting point and the universe is emergent? Is the universe the starting point and the minds are emergent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think quite clearly the latter. That's at least a much easier explanation because it allows us to make causal models and I don't see any way to construct an inverse causality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what happens when you die to your mind simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My implementation ceases. So basically the thing that implements myself will no longer be present. Got it. Which means if I am not implemented on the minds of other people, the thing that I identify with The weird thing is I don't actually have an identity beyond the identity that I construct. If I was the Dalai Lama, he identifies as a form of government. So basically the Dalai Lama gets reborn, not because he's confused, but because he is not identifying as a human being. he runs on a human being. He's basically a governmental software that is instantiated in every new generation and you. So his advisors will pick someone who does this in the next generation. So if you identify with this, you are no longer a human and you don't die in the sense that what dies is only the body of the human that you run on. To kill the Dalai Lama, you would have to kill his tradition. And if we look at ourselves, we realize that we are, to a small part, like this, most of us. So for instance, if you have children, you realize something lives on in them. Or if you spark an idea in the world, something lives on. Or if you identify with the society around you. Because you are, in part, that. You're not just this human being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so in a sense, you are kind of like a Dalai Lama in the sense that you, Joshua Bach, is just a collection of ideas. So you have this operating system on which a bunch of ideas live and interact, and then once you die, some of them jump off the ship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You put it the other way. Identity is a software state. It's a construction. It's not physically real. Identity is not a physical concept. It's basically a representation of different objects on the same world line." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but identity lives and dies? Are you attached? What's the fundamental thing? Is it the ideas that come together to form identity, or is each individual identity actually a fundamental thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a representation that you can get agency over if you care. So basically you can choose what you identify with if you want to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but it just seems... if the mind is not real, that the birth and death is not a crucial part of it. Well, maybe I'm silly, maybe I'm attached to this whole biological organism, but... It seems that being a physical object in this world is an important aspect of birth and death. It feels like it has to be physical to die. It feels like simulations don't have to die." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The physics that we experience is not the real physics. There is no color and sound in the real world. Color and sound are types of representations that you get if you want to model reality with oscillators, right? So colors and sound in some sense have octaves. And it's because they are represented probably with oscillators, right? So that's why colors form a circle of use. And colors have harmonics, sounds have harmonics as a result of synchronizing oscillators in the brain, right? So the world that we subjectively interact with is fundamentally the result of the representation mechanisms in our brain. They are mathematically, to some degree, universal. There are certain regularities that you can discover in the patterns and not others. But the patterns that we get, this is not the real world. The world that we interact with is always made of too many parts to count, right? So when you look at this table and so on, it's consisting of so many molecules and atoms that you cannot count them. So you only look at the aggregate dynamics, at limit dynamics. If you had almost infinitely many particles, what would be the dynamics of the table? And this is roughly what you get. So geometry that we are interacting with is the result of discovering those operators that work in the limit that you get by building an infinite series that converges. For those parts where it converges, it's geometry. For those parts where it doesn't converge, it's chaos." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, and then, so all of that is filtered through sort of the consciousness that's emergent in our narrative. So the consciousness gives it color, gives it feeling, gives it flavor." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think the feeling, flavor, and so on, is given by the relationship that a feature has to all the other features. It's basically a giant relational graph that is our subjective universe. The color is given by those aspects of the representation or this experiential color where you care about, where you have identifications, where something means something, where you are the inside of a feedback loop. And the dimensions of caring are basically dimensions of this motivational system that we emerge over." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The meaning of the relations, the graph, Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Like where does the, maybe we can even step back and ask the question of what is consciousness to be sort of more systematic? Like what do you, how do you think about consciousness? What is consciousness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that consciousness is largely a model of the contents of your attention. It's a mechanism that has evolved for a certain type of learning. At the moment, our machine learning systems largely work by building chains of weighted sums of real numbers with some non-linearity. You will learn by piping an error signal through these different chain layers and adjusting the weights in these weighted sums. And you can approximate most polynomials with this, if you have enough training data. But the price is, you need to change a lot of these weights. Basically, the error is piped backwards into the system until it accumulates at certain junctures in the network, and everything else evens out statistically. And only at these junctures, this is where you had the actual error in the network, you make the change there. This is a very slow process. And our brains don't have enough time for that because we don't get old enough to play Go the way that our machines learn to play Go. So instead what we do is an attention-based learning. We pinpoint the probable region in the network where we can make an improvement and then we store this binding state together with the expected outcome in a protocol. And this ability to make indexed memories for the purpose of learning to revisit these commitments later, this requires a memory of the contents of our attention. Another aspect is when I construct my reality, I make mistakes. So I see things that turn out to be reflections or shadows and so on, which means I have to be able to point out which features of my perception gave rise to a present construction of reality. So the system needs to pay attention to the features that are currently in its focus. And it also needs to pay attention to whether it pays attention itself, in part because the attentional system gets trained with the same mechanism, so it's reflexive, but also in part because your attention lapses if you don't pay attention to the attention itself. So it's the thing that I'm currently seeing, just a dream that my brain has spun off into some kind of daydream. Or am I still paying attention to my percept? So you have to periodically go back and see whether you're still paying attention. And if you have this loop and you make it tight enough between the system becoming aware of the contents of its attention and the fact that it's paying attention itself and makes attention the object of its attention, I think this is the loop over which we wake up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's this, so there's this attentional mechanism that's somehow self-referential, that's fundamental to what consciousness is. So just to ask you a question, I don't know how much you're familiar with the recent breakthroughs in natural language processing, they use attentional mechanism, they use something called transformers to, learn patterns and sentences by allowing the network to focus its attention to particular parts of the sentence at each individual. So like parametrize and make it learnable, the dynamics of a sentence by having like a little window into the sentence. Do you think that's like a little step towards that eventually will take us to the intentional mechanisms from which consciousness can emerge?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not quite. I think it models only one aspect of attention. In the early days of automated language translation, there was an example that I found particularly funny, where somebody tried to translate a text from English into German and a bat broke the window. And the translation in German was, eine Fledermaus zerbrach das Fenster mit einem Baseballschläger. So to translate back into English, a bat, this flying mammal, broke the window with a baseball bat. And it seemed to be the most similar to this program because it somehow maximized the possibility of translating the concept bet into German in the same sentence. And this is a mistake that the transformer model is not doing because it's tracking identity. And the attentional mechanism in the transformer model is basically putting its finger on individual concepts and make sure that these concepts pop up later in the text and tracks basically the individuals through the text. And it's why the system can learn things that other systems couldn't before it, which makes it, for instance, possible to write a text where it talks about the scientist, then the scientist has a name. and has a pronoun, and it gets a consistent story about that thing. What it does not do, it doesn't fully integrate this. So this meaning falls apart at some point. It loses track of this context. It does not yet understand that everything that it says has to refer to the same universe. And this is where this thing falls apart. But the attention in the transformer model does not go beyond tracking identity. And tracking identity is an important part of attention, but it's a different, very specific attentional mechanism. And it's not the one that gives rise to the type of consciousness that we have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, just to linger on it, what do you mean by identity in the context of language?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, when you talk about language, you have different words that can refer to the same concept. Got it. And in the sense that... It's a space of concepts, so... Yes, and it can also be in a nominal sense or in lexical sense that you say, where this word does not only refer to this class of objects, but it refers to a definite object, to some kind of agent that waves their way through the story and is only referred by different ways in the language. So the language is basically a projection from a conceptual representation, from a scene that is evolving into a discrete string of symbols. And what the transformer is able to do, it learns aspects of this projection mechanism that other models couldn't learn." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So have you ever seen an artificial intelligence or any kind of construction idea that allows for, unlike neural networks or perhaps within neural networks, that's able to form something where the space of concepts continues to be integrated? So what you're describing, building a knowledge base, building this consistent larger and larger sets of ideas that would then allow for a deeper understanding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wittgenstein thought that we can build everything from language, from basically a logical grammatical construct. And I think to some degree, this was also what Minsky believed. So that's why he focused so much on common sense reasoning and so on. And a project that was inspired by him was Psyche. That was basically- That's still going on. Yes. Of course, ideas don't die. Only people die. And that's true, but… And alt-psych is a productive project. It's just probably not one that is going to converge to general intelligence. The thing that Wittgenstein couldn't solve, and he looked at this in his book at the end of his life, Philosophical Investigations, was the notion of images. So images play an important role in Tractatus. The Tractatus is an attempt to basically turn philosophy into logical programming language, to design a logical language in which you can do actual philosophy that's rich enough for doing this. And the difficulty was to deal with perceptual content. And eventually, I think he decided that he was not able to solve it. And I think this preempted the failure of the Logitus program in AI. And the solution, as we see it today, is we need more general function approximation. There are geometric functions that we learn to approximate that cannot be efficiently expressed and computed in a grammatical language. We can of course build automata that go via number theory and so on to learn linear algebra and then compute an approximation of this geometry. But to equate language and geometry is not an efficient way to think about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So functional, well, you kind of just said that neural networks are sort of, the approach that neural networks takes is actually more general than what can be expressed through language." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So what can be efficiently expressed through language at the data rates at which we process grammatical language?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so you don't think languages, so you disagree with Wittgenstein that language is not fundamental to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with Wittgenstein. I just agree with the late Wittgenstein. And I also agree with the beauty of the early Wittgenstein. I think that the Tractatus itself is probably the most beautiful philosophical text that was written in the 20th century." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But language is not fundamental to cognition and intelligence and consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think that language is a particular way, or the natural language that we're using is a particular level of abstraction that we use to communicate with each other. But the languages in which we express geometry are not grammatical languages in the same sense. So they work slightly differently, more general expressions of functions. And I think the general nature of a model is you have a bunch of parameters. These have a range. These are the variances of the world. And you have relationships between them, which are constraints, which say if certain parameters have these values, then other parameters have to have the following values. And this is a very early insight in computer science. And I think some of the earliest formulations is the Boltzmann machine. And the problem with the Boltzmann machine is that while it has a measure of whether it's good, this is basically the energy on the system, the amount of tension that you have left in the constraints where the constraints don't quite match. It's very difficult to, despite having this global measure, to train it. Because as soon as you add more than trivially few elements, parameters into the system, it's very difficult to get it settled in the right architecture. And so the solution that Hinton and Sernoffsky found was to use a restricted Boltzmann machine, which uses the hidden links, the internal links in the Boltzmann machine and only has basically input and output layer. But this limits the expressivity of the Boltzmann machine. So now he builds a network of small of these primitive Boltzmann machines. And in some sense, you can see almost continuous development from this to the deep learning models that we're using today. even though we don't use Boltzmann machines at this point. But the idea of the Boltzmann machine is you take this model, you clamp some of the values to perception, and this forces the entire machine to go into a state that is compatible with the states that you currently perceive, and this state is your model of the world. So I think it's a very general way of thinking about models, but we have to use a different approach to make it work. And this is, we have to find different networks that train the Boltzmann machine. So the mechanism that trains the Boltzmann machine and the mechanism that makes the Boltzmann machine settle into its state are distinct from the constrained architecture of the Boltzmann machine itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the kind of mechanism that we wanna develop, you're saying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so the direction in which I think our research is going to go is going to, for instance, what you notice in perception is our perceptual models of the world are not probabilistic, but possible-istic, which means- What's that mean? You should be able to perceive things that are improbable, but possible. A perceptual state is valid not if it's probable, but if it's possible, if it's coherent. So if you see a tiger coming after you, you should be able to see this even if it's unlikely. And the probability is necessary for convergence of the model. So given the state of possibilities that is very, very large and a set of perceptual features, how should you change the states of the model to get it to converge with your perception?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the space of ideas that are coherent with the context that you're sensing is perhaps not as large. I mean, that's perhaps pretty small." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The degree of coherence that you need to achieve depends, of course, how deep your models go. For instance, politics is very simple when you know very little about game theory and human nature. So the younger you are, the more obvious it is how politics should work, right? Because you get a coherent aesthetics from relatively few inputs. And the more layers you model, the more layers you model reality, the harder it gets to satisfy all the constraints." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, you know, the current neural networks are fundamentally supervised learning system with a feed-forward neural network. You use back propagation to learn. What's your intuition about what kind of mechanisms might we move towards to improve the learning procedure?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think one big aspect is going to be meta-learning and architecture search starts in this direction. In some sense, the first wave of AI, classical AI, worked by identifying a problem and a possible solution and implementing the solution, right? A program that plays chess. And right now we are in the second wave of AI. So instead of writing the algorithm that implements the solution, we write an algorithm that automatically searches. for an algorithm that implements the solution. So the learning system, in some sense, is an algorithm that itself discovers the algorithm that solves the problem, like Go. Go is too hard to implement the solution by hand, but we can implement an algorithm that finds the solution. And now, let's move to the third stage, right? The third stage would be meta-learning. Find an algorithm that discovers a learning algorithm for the given domain. Our brain is probably not a learning system, but a meta-learning system. This is one way of looking at what we are doing. There is another way if you look at the way our brain is, for instance, implemented. There is no central control that tells all the neurons how to wire up. Instead, every neuron is an individual reinforcement learning agent. Every neuron is a single-celled organism that is quite complicated and in some sense quite motivated to get fed. And it gets fed if it fires on average at the right time. And the right time depends on the context that the neuron exists in, which is the electrical and chemical environment that it has. So it basically has to learn a function over its environment that tells us when to fire to get fed. Or if you see it as a reinforcement learning agent, every neuron is in some sense making a hypothesis when it sends a signal and tries to pipe a signal through the universe and tries to get positive feedback for it. And the entire thing is set up in such a way that it's robustly self-organizing into a brain. which means you start out with different neuron types that have different priors on which hypothesis to test on how to get its reward, and you put them into different concentrations in a certain spatial alignment, and then you entrain it in a particular order, and as a result you get a well-organized brain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so, okay, so the brain is a meta-learning system with a bunch of, with reinforcement learning agents. And what, I think you said, but just to clarify, where do the, there's no centralized government that tells you here's a loss function, here's a loss function, here's a loss function, like what, Who says what's the objective?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are also governments which impose loss functions on different parts of the brain. So we have differential attention. Some areas in your brain get especially rewarded when you look at faces. If you don't have that, you will get prosopagnosia, which basically means the inability to tell people apart by their faces." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the reason that happens is because it had an evolutionary advantage. So like evolution comes into play here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's basically an extraordinary attention that we have for faces. I don't think that people with posoagnosia perceive a defective brain. The brain just has an average attention for faces. So people with posoagnosia don't look at faces more than they look at cups. So the level at which they resolve the geometry of faces is not higher than for cups. And people that don't have prosopagnosia look obsessively at faces, right? For you and me, it's impossible to move through a crowd without scanning the faces. And as a result, we make insanely detailed models of faces that allow us to discern mental states of people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So obviously we don't know 99% of the details of this meta-learning system that's our mind. But still we took a leap from something much dumber to that through the evolutionary process. Can you, first of all, maybe say how hard do you, how big of a leap is that from our brain, from our ape ancestors to multi-cell organisms? And is there something we can think about as we start to think about how to engineer intelligence? Is there something we can learn from evolution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In some sense, life exists because of the market opportunity of controlled chemical reactions. We compete with dump chemical reactions and we win in some areas against this dump combustion because we can harness those entropy gradients where you need to add a little bit of energy in a specific way to harvest more energy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we out-competed combustion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, in many regions we do, and we try very hard because when we are in direct competition, we lose, right? Yeah. Because the combustion is going to close the entropy gradients much faster than we can run." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, got it. That's quite a compelling notion, yep." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so basically we do this because every cell has a Turing machine built into it. It's like literally a read-write head on a tape. And so everything that's more complicated than a molecule that just is a vortex around the tractors, that needs a Turing machine for its regulation. And then you bind cells together and you get next level organization, an organism where the cells together implement some kind of software. And for me, a very interesting discovery in the last year was the word spirit, because I realized that what spirit actually means is an operating system for an autonomous robot. And when the word was invented, people needed this word. But they didn't have robots that they built themselves yet. The only autonomous robots that were known were people, animals, plants, ecosystems, cities, and so on. And they all had spirits. And it makes sense to say that the plant has an operating system, right? If you pinch the plant in one area, then there's going to have repercussions throughout the plant. Everything in the plant is in some sense connected into some global aesthetics, like in other organisms. An organism is not a collection of cells, it's a function that tells cells how to behave. And this function is not implemented as some kind of supernatural thing. like some morphogenetic field. It is an emergent result of the interactions of each cell with each other cell, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what you're saying is the organism is a function that tells what to do and the function emerges from the interaction of the cells." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So it's basically a description of what the plant is doing in terms of macro states. And the macro states, the physical implementation, are too many of them to describe them. So the software that we use to describe what the plant is doing, the spirit of the plant, is the software, the operating system of the plant, right? This is a way in which we, the observers, make sense of the plant. And the same is true for people. So people have spirits, which is their operating system in a way, right? And there are aspects of that operating system that relate to how your body functions and others, how you socially interact, how you interact with yourself and so on. And we make models of that spirit. And we think it's a loaded term because it's from a pre-scientific age. But it took the scientific age a long time to rediscover a term that is pretty much the same thing. And I suspect that the differences that we still see between the old word and the new word are translation errors that have happened over the centuries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually linger on that? Why do you say that spirit, just to clarify, because I'm a little bit confused. The word spirit is a powerful thing, but why did you say in the last year or so that you discovered this? Do you mean the same old traditional idea of a spirit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or do you mean- I try to find out what people mean by spirit. When people say spirituality in the US, it usually refers to the phantom limb that they developed in the absence of culture. And a culture is in some sense, you could say, the spirit of a society that is long game. This thing that becomes self-aware at a level above the individuals where you say, if you don't do the following things, then the grand-grand-grand-grandchildren of our children will not have nothing to eat. So if you take this long scope and you try to maximize the length of the game that you are playing as a species, you realize that you're part of a larger thing that you cannot fully control. You probably need to submit to the ecosphere instead of trying to completely control it, right? There needs to be a certain level at which we can exist as a species if you want to endure. And our culture is not sustaining this anymore. We basically made this bet with the Industrial Revolution that we can control everything. And the modernist societies with basically unfettered growth led to a situation in which we depend on the ability to control the entire planet. And since we are not able to do that, as it seems, this culture will die. And we realize that it doesn't have a future, right? We called our children generation Z. That's such a very optimistic thing to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so you can have this kind of intuition that our civilization, you said culture, but you really mean the spirit of the civilization, the entirety of the civilization may not exist for long. Can you untangle that? What's your intuition behind that? So you kind of offline mentioned to me that the Industrial Revolution was kind of the moment we agreed to accept the offer, sign on the paper, on the dotted line with the Industrial Revolution, we doomed ourselves. Can you elaborate on that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a suspicion. I, of course, don't know how it plays out. But it seems to me that in a society in which you leverage yourself very far over an entropic abyss without land on the other side, it's relatively clear that your cantilever is at some point going to break down into this entropic abyss and you have to pay the bill." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, Russia is my first language. And I'm also an idiot. Me too. This is just two apes instead of playing with a banana, trying to have fun by talking. Okay. Anthropic what? And what's anthropic? Entropic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Entropic. So entropic in the sense of entropy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, entropic, got it. And entropic, what was the other word you used? Abyss. What's that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a big gorge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, abyss. Abyss, yes. Entropic abyss. So many of the things you say are poetic, it's hurting my brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's mispronounced. It's amazing, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's mispronounced, which makes it even more poetic. because Wittgenstein would be proud. So Entropic Abyss. Okay, let's rewind then. The Industrial Revolution, so how does that get us into the Entropic Abyss?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in some sense, we burned 100 million years worth of trees to get everybody plumbing. And the society that we had before that had a very limited number of people. So basically, since 0 BC, we hovered between 300 and 400 million people. And this only changed with the Enlightenment and the subsequent Industrial Revolution. And in some sense, the Enlightenment freed our rationality and also freed our norms from the pre-existing order gradually. It was a process that basically happened in feedback loops, so it was not that just one caused the other. It was a dynamic that started. And the dynamic worked by basically increasing productivity to such a degree that we could feed all our children. And I think the definition of poverty is that you have as many children as you can feed before they die, which is in some sense the state that all animals on earth are in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The definition of poverty is having enough" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you can have only so many children as you can feed, and if you have more, they die. And in our societies, you can basically have as many children as you want and they don't die. So the reason why we don't have as many children as we want is because we also have to pay a price in terms of we have to insert ourselves in a lower social stratum if we have too many. So basically everybody in the under, middle, and lower, upper class has only a limited number of children because having more of them would mean a big economic hit to the individual families. Because children, especially in the US, super expensive to have. And you only are taken out of this if you are basically super rich or if you are super poor. If you're super poor, it doesn't matter how many kids you have because your status is not going to change. And these children are largely not going to die of hunger." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how does this lead us to self-destruction? So there's a lot of unpleasant properties about this process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So basically what we try to do is we try to let our children survive, even if they have diseases. Like I would have died before my mid-20s without modern medicine, and most of my friends would have as well. And so many of us wouldn't live without the advantages of modern medicine and modern industrialized society. We get our protein largely by subduing the entirety of nature. Imagine there would be some very clever microbe that would live in our organisms and would completely harvest them and change them into a thing that is necessary to sustain itself. And it would discover that, for instance, brain cells are kind of edible, but they're not quite nice. So you need to have more fat in them and you turn them into more fat cells. And basically this big organism would become a vegetable that is barely alive. And it's going to be very brittle and not resilient when the environment changes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but some part of that organism, the one that's actually doing all the using, there'll still be somebody thriving." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it relates back to this original question. I suspect that we are not the smartest thing on this planet. I suspect that basically every complex system has to have some complex regulation if it depends on feedback loops. And so for instance, it's likely that we should ascribe a certain degree of intelligence to plants. The problem is that plants don't have a nervous system. So they don't have a way to telegraph messages over large distances almost instantly in the plant. And instead, they will rely on chemicals between adjacent cells, which means the signal processing speed depends on the signal processing with a rate of a few millimeters per second. And as a result, if the plant is intelligent, it's not going to be intelligent at similar time scales as us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the time scale is different. So you suspect we might not be the most intelligent plant. But we're the most intelligent in this spatial scale, in our time scale." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So basically, if you would zoom out very far, we might discover that there have been intelligent ecosystems on the planet that existed for thousands of years in an almost undisturbed state. And it could be that these ecosystems actively related their environment. So basically, changed the course of the evolution within this ecosystem to make it more efficient and less brittle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's possible something like plants is actually a set of living organisms, an ecosystem of living organisms that are just operating a different time scale and are far superior in intelligence than human beings. And then human beings will die out and plants will still be there and they'll be" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's an evolutionary adaptation playing a role at all of these levels. For instance, if mice don't get enough food and get stressed, the next generation of mice will be more sparse and more scrawny. And the reason for this is because in the natural environment, the mice have probably hit a drought or something else. And if they overgraze, then all the things that sustain them might go extinct. And there will be no mice a few generations from now. So to make sure that there will be mice in five generations from now, basically the mice scale back. And a similar thing happens with the predators of mice. They should make sure that the mice don't completely go extinct. So in some sense, if the predators are smart enough, they will be tasked with shepherding their food supply. Maybe the reason why lions have much larger brains than antelopes is not so much because it's so hard to catch an antelope as opposed to run away from the lion, but the lions need to make complex models of their environment, more complex than the antelopes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So first of all, just describing that there's a bunch of complex systems and human beings may not even be the most special or intelligent of those complex systems, even on Earth, makes me feel a little better about the extinction of human species that we're talking about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, maybe we are just Gaia's ploy to put the carbon back into the atmosphere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, this is just a nice, we tried it out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The big stain on evolution is not us, it was trees. Earth evolved trees before they could be digested again, right? There were no insects that could break all of them apart. Cellulose is so robust that you cannot get all of it with microorganisms. So many of these trees fell into swamps and all this carbon became inert and could no longer be recycled into organisms. And we are the species that is destined to take care of that. So this is kind of... Dig it out of the ground, put it back into the atmosphere and the Earth is already greening. So within a million years or so when the ecosystems have recovered from the rapid changes that they're not compatible with right now, the Earth is going to be awesome again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there won't be even a memory of us little apes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there will be memories of us. I suspect we are the first generally intelligent species in this sense. We are the first species within industrial society because we will leave more phones than bones in the stratosphere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, see, bones them bones, I like it. But then let me push back. You've kind of suggested that we have a very narrow definition of, I mean, why aren't trees more general, a higher level of general intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If trees were intelligent, then they would be at different timescales, which means within 100 years, the tree is probably not going to make models that are as complex as the ones that we make in 10 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But maybe the trees are the ones that made the phones, right? Like, like... We could say the entirety of life did it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, the first cell never died. The first cell only split, right? And every cell in our body is still an instance of the first cell that split off from that very first cell. There was only one cell on this planet as far as we know. And so the cell is not just a building block of life. It's a hypoorganism, right? And we are part of this hypoorganism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So nevertheless, this hyperorganism, no, this little particular branch of it, which is us humans, because of the Industrial Revolution and maybe the exponential growth of technology might somehow destroy ourselves. So what do you think is the most likely way we might destroy ourselves? So some people worry about genetic manipulation. Some people, as we've talked about, worry about either dumb artificial intelligence or super intelligent artificial intelligence destroying us. Some people worry about nuclear weapons and weapons of war in general. What do you think? If you were a betting man, what would you bet on in terms of self-destruction? And would it be higher than 50%?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's very likely that nothing that we bet on matters after we win our bets. So I don't think that bets are literally the right way to go about this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- I mean, once you're dead, you won't be there to collect the weightings." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's also not clear if we as a species go extinct. But I think that our present civilization is not sustainable. So the thing that will change is there will be probably fewer people on the planet than are today. And even if not, then still most of people that are alive today will not have offspring in 100 years from now because of the geographic changes and so on and the changes in the food supply. It's quite likely that many areas of the planet will only be livable with a closed cooling chain in 100 years from now. So many of the areas around the equator and in subtropical climates that are now quite pleasant to live in, will stop to be inhabitable without air conditioning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you honestly, wow, cooling chain, close-knit cooling chain communities. So you think you have a strong worry about the effects of global warming?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "By itself, it's not a big issue. If you live in Arizona right now, you have basically three months in the summer in which you cannot be outside. And so you have a closed cooling chain. You have air conditioning in your car and in your home and you're fine. And if the air conditioning would stop for a few days, then in many areas, you would not be able to survive, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just pause for a second? You say so many brilliant, poetic things. Do people use that term closed cooling chain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I imagine that people use it when they describe how they get meat into a supermarket, right? If you break the cooling chain and this thing starts to thaw, you're in trouble and you have to thaw it away. That's such a beautiful way to put it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like calling a city a closed social chain or something like that. I mean, that's right. I mean, the locality of it is really important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but it basically means you wake up in a climatized room, you go to work in a climatized car, you work in a climatized office, you shop in a climatized supermarket, And in between, you have very short distance in which you run from your car to the supermarket, but you have to make sure that your temperature does not approach the temperature of the environment. The crucial thing is the wet bulb temperature. It's what you get when you take a wet cloth and you put it around your thermometer, and then you move it very quickly through the air, so you get the evaporation heat. And as soon as you can no longer cool your body temperature via evaporation to a temperature below something like, I think, 35 degrees, you die. And which means if the outside world is dry, you can still cool yourself down by sweating. But if it has a certain degree of humidity or if it goes over a certain temperature, then sweating will not save you. And this means even if you're a healthy, fit individual within a few hours, even if you try to be in the shade and so on, you'll die. Unless you have some climatizing equipment. And this itself, as long as you maintain civilization and you have energy supply and you have food trucks coming to your home that are climatized, everything is fine. But what if you lose large scale open agriculture at the same time? So basically you run into food insecurity because climate becomes very irregular or weather becomes very irregular. And you have a lot of extreme weather events. So you need to roll most of your foot maybe indoor, or you need to import your foot from certain regions. And maybe you're not able to maintain the civilization throughout the planet to get the infrastructure to get the foot to your home." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there could be significant impacts in the sense that people begin to suffer. There could be wars over resources and so on. But ultimately, do you not have a, not a faith, but what do you make of the capacity of technological innovation to help us prevent some of the worst damages that this condition can create. So as an example, as a almost out there example is the work that SpaceX and Elon Musk is doing of trying to also consider our propagation throughout the universe in deep space to colonize other planets. That's one technology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But of course, what Elon Musk is trying on Mars is not to save us from global warming, because Mars looks much worse than Earth will look like after the worst outcomes of global warming imaginable, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Mars is essentially not habitable. It's an exceptionally harsh environment, yes, but what he is doing, what a lot of people throughout history since the Industrial Revolution are doing, are just doing a lot of different technological innovation with some kind of target, and what ends up happening is totally unexpected new things come up. So trying to terraform or trying to colonize Mars, extremely harsh environment, might give us totally new ideas of how to expand or increase the power of this closed cooling circuit that empowers the community. It seems like there's a little bit of a race between our open-ended technological innovation of this communal operating system that we have and our general tendency to want to overuse resources and thereby destroy ourselves. You don't think technology can win that race?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the probability is relatively low, given that our technology is, for instance, the U.S. is stagnating since the 1970s, roughly, in terms of technology. Most of the things that we do are the result of incremental processes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about Intel? What about Moore's law?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's basically, it's very incremental. The things that we are doing, so after the invention of the microprocessor was a major thing, right? The miniaturization of transistors was really major. But the things that we did afterwards largely were not that innovative. So we had gradual changes of scaling things from CPUs into GPUs and things like that. But I don't think that there are... Basically, there are not many things if you take a person that died in the 70s and was at the top of their game, they would not need to read that many books to be current again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but it's all about books, who cares about books? There might be things that are beyond, books might be a very- Or say papers. No, papers, forget papers. There might be things that are, so papers and books and knowledge, that's a concept of a time when you were sitting there by candlelight and individual consumers of knowledge. What about the impact that we're not in the middle of, might not be understanding of Twitter, of YouTube? The reason you and I are sitting here today is because of Twitter and YouTube. So the ripple effect, and there's two minds, sort of two dumb apes coming up with a new, perhaps a new clean insights, and there's 200 other apes listening right now, 200,000 other apes listening right now. That effect, it's very difficult to understand what that effect will have. That might be bigger than any of the advancements of the microprocessor or any of the industrial revolution, the ability of spread knowledge and that knowledge, the Like, it allows good ideas to reach millions much faster. And the effect of that, that might be the new, that might be the 21st century, is the multiplying of ideas, of good ideas. Because if you say one good thing today, that will multiply across, you know, huge amounts of people. And then they will say something, and then they will have another podcast, and they'll say something, and then they'll write a paper. That could be a huge, you don't think that," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we should have billions of von Neumanns right now in Turing's, and we don't for some reason. I suspect the reason is that we destroy our attention span. Also, the incentives, of course, are different. Kim Kardashian's, yeah. So the reason why we are sitting here and doing this as a YouTube video is because you and me don't have the attention span to write a book together right now, and you guys probably don't have the attention span to read it. So let me tell you- But I guarantee it, they're still listening. It's very short. It can burst. Take care of your attention. It's very short." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we're an hour and 40 minutes in, and I guarantee you that 80% of the people are still listening. So there is an attention span. It's just the form. Who said that the book is the optimal way to transfer information? That's still an open question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's what we're- There's something that social media could be doing that other forms could not be doing. I think the end game of social media is a global brain. And Twitter is, in some sense, a global brain that is completely hooked on dopamine, doesn't have any kind of inhibition, and as a result is caught in a permanent seizure. It's also, in some sense, a multiplayer role-playing game. And people use it to play an avatar that is not like them, as they were in a sane world, and they look through the lens of their phones and think it's the real world. But it's the Twitter world that is distorted by the popularity incentives of Twitter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the incentives and just our natural biological, the dopamine rush of a like, no matter how, like I consider, I try to be very kind of Zen-like and minimalist and not be influenced by likes and so on, but it's probably very difficult to avoid that to some degree. Speaking at a small tangent of Twitter, how can Twitter be done better? I think it's an incredible mechanism that has a huge impact on society by doing exactly what you're doing. Sorry, doing exactly what you described, which is having this, we're like, is this some kind of game and we're kind of individual RL agents in this game and it's uncontrollable because there's not really a centralized control. Neither Jack Dorsey nor the engineers at Twitter seem to be able to control this game. or can they? That's sort of a question. Is there any advice you would give on how to control this game?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't give advice because I am certainly not an expert, but I can give my thoughts on this. And our brain has solved this problem to some degree, right? Our brain has lots of individual agents that manage to play together in a way. And you have also many contexts in which other organisms have found ways to solve the problems of cooperation that we don't solve on Twitter. And maybe the solution is to go for an evolutionary approach. So imagine that you have something like Reddit or something like Facebook and something like Twitter, and you think about what they have in common. What they have in common, they are companies that in some sense own a protocol. And this protocol is imposed on a community and the protocol has different components for monetization, for user management, for user display, for rating, for anonymity, for import of other content and so on. And now imagine that you take these components of the protocol apart. And you do it in some sense like communities within this social network. And these communities are allowed to mix and match their protocols and design new ones. So for instance, the UI and the UX can be defined by the community. The rules for sharing content across communities can be defined. The monetization can be redefined. The way you reward individual users for what can be redefined. The way users can represent themselves and to each other can be redefined." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who could be the redefiner? So can individual human beings build enough intuition to redefine those things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This itself can become part of the protocol. So for instance, it could be in some communities, it will be a single person that comes up with these things and others, it's a group of friends. Some might implement a voting scheme that has some interesting weighted voting, who knows? Who knows what will be the best self-organizing principle for this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the process can't be automated. I mean, it seems like the brain" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It can be automated so people can write software for this. And eventually the idea is, let's not make an assumption about this thing if we don't know what the right solution is. In those areas that we have no idea whether the right solution will be people designing this ad hoc or machines doing this, whether you want to enforce compliance by social norms like Wikipedia or with software solutions or with AI that goes through the posts of people or with a legal principle and so on. This is something maybe you need to find out. And so the idea would be if you let the communities evolve and you just control it in such a way that you are incentivizing the most sentient communities, the ones that produce the most interesting behaviors and that allow you to interact in the most helpful ways to the individuals, right? So you have a network that gives you information that is relevant to you. It helps you to maintain relationships to others in healthy ways. It allows you to build teams. It allows you to basically bring the best of you into this thing and goes into a coupling, into a relationship with others in which you produce things that you would be unable to produce alone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Beautifully put. But the key process of that with incentives and evolution is things that don't adopt themselves to effectively get the incentives have to die. And the thing about social media is communities that are unhealthy or whatever you want to define as the incentives, really don't like dying. One of the things that people really protest aggressively is when they're censored, especially in America. I don't know much about the rest of the world, but the idea of freedom of speech, the idea of censorship is really painful in America. And so, What do you think about that, having grown up in East Germany? Do you think censorship is an important tool in our brain, in the intelligence, and in the social networks? So basically, if you're not a good member of the entirety of the system, then you should be blocked away, well, locked away, blocked." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "An important thing is who decides that you are a good member. And what is the outcome of the process that decides it? Both for the individual and for society at large. For instance, if you have a high-trust society, you don't need a lot of surveillance. And the surveillance is even, in some sense, undermining trust. basically punishing people that look suspicious when surveyed, but do the right thing anyway. And the opposite, if you have a low-trust society, then surveillance can be a better trade-off. And the U.S. is currently making a transition from a relatively high-trust or mixed-trust society to a low-trust society, so surveillance will increase. Another thing is that beliefs are not just inert representations. There are implementations that run code on your brain. and change your reality and change the way you interact with each other at some level. And some of the beliefs are just public opinions that we use to display our alignment. So for instance, people might say all cultures are the same and equally good, but still they prefer to live in some cultures over others. Very, very strongly so. And it turns out that the cultures are defined by certain rules of interaction. And these rules of interaction lead to different results when you implement them, right? So if you adhere to certain rules, you get different outcomes in different societies. And this all leads to very tricky situations when people do not have a commitment to shared purpose. And our societies probably need to rediscover what it means to have a shared purpose and how to make this compatible with a non-totalitarian view. So in some sense, the U.S. is caught in a conundrum between totalitarianism and diversity, and doesn't need to, how to resolve this. And the solutions that the U.S. has found so far are very crude because it's a very young society that is also under a lot of tension. It seems to me that the U.S. will have to reinvent itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think? Just, Philosophizing, what kind of mechanisms of government do you think we as a species should be evolving with, U.S. or broadly? What do you think will work well? as a system. Of course, we don't know. It all seems to work pretty crappily. Some things worse than others. Some people argue that communism is the best. Others say, yeah, look at the Soviet Union. Some people argue that anarchy is the best, and then completely discarding the positive effects of government. There's a lot of arguments. US seems to be doing pretty damn well in the span of history. There's a respect for human rights, which seems to be a nice feature, not a bug. And economically, a lot of growth, a lot of technological development. People seem to be relatively kind on the grand scheme of things. What lessons do you draw from that? What kind of government system do you think is good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ideally, government should not be perceivable, right? It should be frictionless. The more you notice the influence of the government, the more friction you experience, the less effective and efficient the government probably is, right? So a government game theoretically is an agent that imposes an offset on your payout metrics to make your Nash equilibrium compatible with the common good. So you have these situations where people act on local incentives, and these local incentives, everybody does the thing that's locally the best for them, but the global outcome is not good. And this is even the case when people care about the global outcome, because a regulation mechanism exists that creates a causal relationship between what I want to have for the global good and what I do. So for instance, if I think that we should fly less and I stay at home, there's not a single plane that is going to not start because of me, right? It's not going to have an influence, but I don't get from A to B. So the way to implement this would basically be to have a government that is sharing this idea that we should fly less and is then imposing a regulation that, for instance, makes flying more expensive and gives incentives for inventing other forms of transportation that are less putting the strain on the environment, for instance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's so much optimism in so many things you describe, and yet there's the pessimism of you think our civilization's gonna come to an end. So that's not 100% probability. Nothing in this world is. So what's the trajectory out of self-destruction, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect that in some sense we are both too smart and not smart enough, which means we are very good at solving near-term problems and at the same time we are unwilling to submit to the imperatives that we would have to follow if we want to stick around. So that makes it difficult. If you were unable to solve everything technologically, you can probably understand how hard the child mortality needs to be to absorb the mutation rate and how high the mutation rate needs to be to adapt to a slowly changing ecosystemic environment. So you could, in principle, compute all these things theoretically and adapt to it. But if you cannot do this because you are like me and you have children, you don't want them to die, you will use any kind of medical information to keep child mortality mortality low, even if it means that our, within a few generations, we have enormous genetic drift, and most of us have allergies as a result of not being adapted to the changes that we made to our food supply." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's for now, I say, technologically speaking, we're just a very, very young thing, 300 years Industrial Revolution, we're very new to this idea, so you're attached to your kids being alive and not being murdered for the greater good of society, but that might be a very temporary moment of time. that we might evolve in our thinking. So like you said, we're both smart and smart enough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We are probably not the first human civilization that has discovered technology that allows to efficiently overgraze our resources. And this overgrazing is a thing, at some point we think we can compensate this because if we have eaten all the grass, we will find a way to grow mushrooms. But it could also be that the ecosystems tip. And so what really concerns me is not so much the end of the civilization, because we will invent a new one. But what concerns me is the fact that, for instance, the oceans might tip. So, for instance, maybe the plankton dies because of ocean acidification and cyanobacteria take over. And as a result, we can no longer breathe the atmosphere. this would be really concerning. So basically a major reboot of most complex organisms on Earth. And I think this is a possibility. I don't know what the percentage for this possibility is, but it doesn't seem to be outlandish to me if you look at the scale of the changes that we've already triggered on this planet. And so Danny Hiller suggests that, for instance, we may be able to put chalk into the stratosphere to limit solar radiation. Maybe it works. Maybe this is sufficient to counter the effects of what we've done. Maybe it won't be. Maybe we won't be able to implement it by the time it's prevalent. I have no idea how the future is going to play out in this regard. It's just, I think it's quite likely that we cannot continue like this. All our cousins species, the other hominids are gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the right step would be to what? To rewind towards the Industrial Revolution and slow the, so try to contain the technological process that leads to the overconsumption of resources?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine you get to choose, you have one lifetime. You get born into a sustainable agricultural civilization, 300, maybe 400 million people on the planet tops. Or before this, some kind of nomadic species, there's like a million or two million. And so you don't meet new people unless you give birth to them. you cannot travel to other places in the world, there is no internet, there is no interesting intellectual tradition that reaches considerably deep, so you would not discover your incompleteness probably and so on. We wouldn't exist. And the alternative is you get born into an insane world. One that is doomed to die because it has just burned a hundred million years worth of trees in a single century. Which one do you like? I think I like this one. It's a very weird thing when you find yourself on a Titanic and you see this iceberg and it looks like we are not going to miss it. And a lot of people are in denial. And most of the counter-arguments sound like denial to me. They don't seem to be rational arguments. And the other thing is we are born on this Titanic. Without this Titanic, we wouldn't have been born. We wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be talking. on the internet, we wouldn't do all the things that we enjoy. And we are not responsible for this happening. It's basically, if we had the choice, we would probably try to prevent it. But when we were born, we were never asked when we want to be born, in which society we want to be born, what incentive structures we want to be exposed to. We have relatively little agency in the entire thing. humanity has relatively little agency in the whole thing. It's basically a giant machine that's tumbling down a hill and everybody is frantically trying to push some buttons. Nobody knows what these buttons are meaning, what they connect to, and most of them are not stopping this tumbling down the hill." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible that artificial intelligence will give us a an escape latch somehow. So the, you know, there's a lot of worry about existential threats of artificial intelligence, but what AI also allows in general forms of automation allows the potential of extreme productivity growth that will also perhaps in a positive way transform society, that may allow us to inadvertently to return to the more, to the same kind of ideals of closer to nature that's represented in hunter-gatherer societies. that's not destroying the planet, that's not doing overconsumption and so on. I mean, generally speaking, do you have hope that AI can help somehow?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is not fun to be very close to nature until you completely subdue nature. So our idea of being close to nature means being close to agriculture, basically forests that don't have anything in them that eats us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I mean, I want to disagree with that. I think the niceness of being close to nature is to being fully present. And when survival becomes your primary, not just your goal, but your whole existence, I mean, that is, I'm not just romanticizing, I can just speak for myself. I am self-aware enough that that is a fulfilling existence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's one that's very- I personally prefer to be in nature and not fight for my survival. I think fighting for your survival while being in the cold and in the rain and being hunted by animals and having open wounds is very unpleasant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's a contradiction in there, yes. I and you, just as you said, would not choose it. But if I was forced into it, it would be a fulfilling existence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, if you are adapted to it. Basically, if your brain is wired up in such a way that you get rewards optimally in such an environment, and there's some evidence for this, that for a certain degree of complexity, basically people are more happy in such environment because it's what we largely have evolved for. In between, we had a few thousand years in which I think we have evolved for a slightly more comfortable environment. So there is probably something like an intermediate stage in which people would be more happy than they would be if they would have to fend for themselves in small groups in the forest and often die. versus something like this, where we now have basically a big machine, a big Mordor, in which we run through concrete boxes and press buttons and machines and largely don't feel well cared for as the monkeys that we are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So returning briefly to, not briefly, returning to AI, let me ask a romanticized question. What is the most beautiful to you, silly ape, the most beautiful or surprising idea in the development of artificial intelligence, whether in your own life or in the history of artificial intelligence that you've come across?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you built an AI, it probably can make models at an arbitrary degree of detail of the world. And then it would try to understand its own nature. It's tempting to think that at some point when we have general intelligence, we have competitions where we will let the AIs wake up in different kinds of physical universes and we measure how many movements of the Rubik's Cube it takes until it's figured out what's going on in its universe and what it is in its own nature and its own physics and so on. Right, so what if we exist in the memory of an AI that is trying to understand its own nature and remembers its own genesis and remembers Lex and Yosha sitting in a hotel room, sparking some of the ideas off that led to the development of general intelligence?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're a kind of simulation that's running in an AI system that's trying to understand itself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not that I believe that, but I think it's a beautiful idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, Yeah, you kind of return to this idea with the Turing test of intelligence being the process of asking and answering what is intelligence. I mean, what Why, do you think there is an answer? Why is there such a search for an answer? Does there have to be like an answer? You just said an AI system that's trying to understand the why of what, you know, understand itself. Is that a fundamental process of greater and greater complexity, greater and greater intelligence? Is the continuous trying of understanding itself?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think you will find that most people don't care about that because they're well-adjusted enough to not care. And the reason why people like you and me care about it probably has to do with the need to understand ourselves. It's because we are in fundamental disagreement with the universe that we wake up in. I look down on me and I see, oh my God, I'm caught in a monkey. What's that? Some people are unhappy with the government and I'm unhappy with the entire universe that I find myself in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think that's a fundamental aspect of human nature that some people are just suppressing? That they wake up shocked that they're in the body of a monkey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, there is a clear adaptive value to not be confused by that and by" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, no, that's not what I asked. So yeah, if there's clear adaptive value, then there's clear adaptive value to, while fundamentally your brain is confused by that, by creating an illusion, another layer of the narrative that says, you know, that tries to suppress that and instead say that, you know, what's going on with the government right now is the most important thing, or what's going on with my football team is the most important thing. But it seems to me the, Like, for me, it was a really interesting moment reading Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, that, you know, this kind of idea that we're all, you know, the fundamental thing from which most of our human mind springs is this fear of mortality and being cognizant of your mortality and the fear of that mortality. And then you construct illusions on top of that. I guess I'm, you being, just to push on it, you really don't think it's possible that this worry of the big existential questions is actually fundamental as the existentialist thought to our existence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that the fear of death only plays a role as long as you don't see the big picture. The thing is that minds are software states, right? Software doesn't have identity. Software in some sense is a physical law." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But if I say a brief, yeah. But it feels like there's an identity. I thought that was for this particular piece of software and the narrative it tells, that's a fundamental property of it, assigning an identity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The maintenance of the identity is not terminal. It's instrumental to something else. You maintain your identity so you can serve your meaning. So you can do the things that you're supposed to do before you die. And I suspect that for most people, the fear of death is the fear of dying before they're done with the things that they feel they have to do, even though they cannot quite put their finger on it, what that is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but in the software world, to return to the question, then what happens after we die?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why would you care? You will not be longer there. The point of dying is that you are gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, maybe I'm not. This is what, you know, it seems like there's so much In the idea that this is just, the mind is just a simulation that's constructing a narrative around some particular aspects of the quantum mechanical wave function world that we can't quite get direct access to, then the idea of mortality seems to be fuzzy as well. Maybe there's not a clear end." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The fuzzy idea is the one of continuous existence. We don't have continuous existence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you know that? Because it's not computable. There is no continuous process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The only thing that binds you together with the Lex Friedman from yesterday is the illusion that you have memories about him. So if you want to upload, it's very easy. You make a machine that thinks it's you. Because it's the same thing that you are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You are a machine that thinks it's you. But that's immortality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but it's just a belief. You can create this belief very easily once you realize that the question whether you are immortal or not depends entirely on your beliefs and your own continuity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then you can be immortal by the continuity of the belief." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You cannot be immortal, but you can stop being afraid of your mortality because you realize you were never continuously existing in the first place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I don't know if I'd be more terrified or less terrified by that. It seems like the fact that I existed... Also, you don't know this state in which you don't have a self." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can turn off yourself, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I can't turn it off." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can't turn it off. I can. Yes. And you can basically meditate yourself in a state where you are still conscious, where still things are happening, where you know everything that you knew before, but you're no longer identified with changing anything. And this means that yourself, in a way, dissolves. There is no longer this person. You know that this person construct exists in other states, and it runs on this brain of Lex Friedman, but it's not a real thing. It's a construct. It's an idea. And you can change that idea. And if you let go of this idea, if you don't think that you are special, you realize it's just one of many people and it's not your favorite person even, right? It's just one of many. And it's the one that you are doomed to control for the most part. And that is basically informing the actions of this organism as a control model. And this is all there is. And you are somehow afraid that this control model gets interrupted or loses the identity of continuity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so I'm attached, I mean, yeah, it's a very popular, it's a somehow compelling notion that being attached, like there's no need to be attached to this idea of an identity. But that in itself could be an illusion that you construct. So the process of meditation, while popularly thought of as getting under the concept of identity, it could be just putting a cloak over it. just telling it to be quiet for the moment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that meditation is eventually just a bunch of techniques that let you control attention. And when you can control attention, you can get access to your own source code, hopefully not before you understand what you're doing. And then you can change the way it works temporarily or permanently." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, meditation is to get a glimpse at the source code, get under, so basically control or turn off the attention." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The entire thing is that you learn to control attention. So everything else is downstream from controlling attention." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And control the attention that's looking at the attention." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Normally we only get attention in the parts of our mind that create heat, where you have a mismatch between model and the results that are happening. So most people are not self-aware because their control is too good. If everything works out roughly the way you want and the only things that don't work out is whether your football team wins, then you will mostly have models about these domains. And it's only when, for instance, your fundamental relationships to the world around you don't work because the ideology of your country is insane and the other kids are not nerds and don't understand why you want to understand physics and you don't understand why somebody would not want to understand physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we kind of brought up neurons in the brain as reinforcement learning agents. And there's been some successes, as you brought up, with Go, with AlphaGo, AlphaZero, with ideas of self-play, which I think are incredibly interesting ideas of systems playing each other in an automated way to... improve by playing other systems of in a particular construct of a game that are a little bit better than itself and thereby improving continuously. All the competitors in the game are improving gradually. So being just challenging enough and from learning from the process of the competition. Do you have hope for that reinforcement learning process to achieve greater and greater level of intelligence? So we talked about different ideas in AI that need to be solved. Is RL a part of that process of trying to create an AGI system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So definitely forms of unsupervised learning, but there are many algorithms that can achieve that. And I suspect that ultimately the algorithms that work, there will be a class of them or many of them, and they might have small differences of magnitude in efficiency. But eventually what matters is the type of model that you form. And the types of models that we form right now are not sparse enough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sparse, what does it mean to be sparse?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It means that ideally every potential model state should correspond to a potential world state. So basically, if you vary states in your model, you always end up with valid world states. And our mind is not quite there. So an indication is basically what we see in dreams. The older we get, the more boring our dreams become. because we incorporate more and more constraints that we learned about how the world works. So many of the things that we imagined to be possible as children turn out to be constrained by physical and social dynamics. And as a result, fewer and fewer things remain possible. It's not because our imagination scales back, but the constraints under which it operates become tighter and tighter. And so the constraints under which our neural networks operate are almost limitless, which means it's very difficult to get a neural network to imagine things that look real. So I suspect part of what we need to do is we probably need to build dreaming systems. I suspect that part of the purpose of dreams is to, similar to a generative adversarial network, learn certain constraints and then it produces alternative perspectives on the same set of constraints. So you can recognize it under different circumstances. Maybe we have flying dreams as children because we recreate the objects that we know and the maps that we know from different perspectives, which also means from a bird's eye perspective." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I mean, aren't we doing that anyway? I mean, not with our eyes closed and when we're sleeping. Aren't we just constantly running dreams and simulations in our mind as we try to interpret the environment? I mean, sort of considering all the different possibilities, the way we interact with the environment seems like essentially, like you said, sort of creating a bunch of simulations that are consistent with our expectations, with our previous experiences, with the things we just saw recently. And through that hallucination process, we are able to then somehow stitch together what actually we see in the world with the simulations that match it well and thereby interpret it" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect that you and my brain are slightly unusual in this regard, which is probably what got you into MIT. So this obsession of constantly pondering possibilities and solutions to problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, stop it. I think I'm not talking about intellectual stuff. I'm talking about just doing the kind of stuff it takes to walk and not fall." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, this is largely automatic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, but the process is, I mean." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not complicated. It's relatively easy to build a neural network that, in some sense, learns the dynamics. The fact that we haven't done it right so far doesn't mean it's hard, because you can see that a biological organism does it with relatively few neurons. So basically you build a bunch of neural oscillators that entrain themselves with the dynamics of your body in such a way that the regulator becomes isomorphic and it's modeled to the dynamics that it regulates. And then it's automatic, and it's only interesting in the sense that it captures attention when the system is off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, but thinking of the kind of mechanism that's required to do walking as a controller, as a neural network, I think I think it's a compelling notion, but it discards quietly, or at least makes implicit, the fact that you need to have something like common sense reasoning to walk. It's an open question whether you do or not, but my intuition is to act in this world, there's a huge knowledge base that's underlying it somehow. There's so much information. of the kind we have never been able to construct in neural networks or in artificial intelligence systems, period. Which is like, it's humbling, at least in my imagination, the amount of information required to act in this world humbles me. And I think saying that neural networks can accomplish it is missing the fact that we don't, Yeah, we don't have yet a mechanism for constructing something like common sense reasoning. I mean, what's your sense about to linger on how much, to linger on the idea of what kind of mechanism would be effective at walking? You said just a neural network, not maybe the kind we have, but something a little bit better would be able to walk easily. Don't you think it also needs to know like huge amount of knowledge that's represented under the flag of common sense reasoning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How much common sense knowledge do we actually have? Imagine that you are really hardworking for all your life and you form two new concepts every half hour or so. You end up with something like a million concepts because you don't get that old. So a million concepts, that's not a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not just a million concepts. I personally think it might be much more than a million." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But if you think just about the numbers, you don't live that long. If you think about how many cycles do your neurons have in your life, it's quite limited. You don't get that old." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but the powerful thing is the number of concepts, and they're probably deeply hierarchical in nature, the relations, as you've described, between them is the key thing. So it's like, even if it's like a million concepts, the graph of relations that's formed, and some kind of, perhaps some kind of probabilistic relationships, that's what's common sense reasoning, is the relationship between things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so in some sense, I think of the concepts as the address space for our behavior programs. And the behavior programs allow us to recognize objects and interact with them, also mental objects. And a large part of that is the physical world that we interact with, which is this res extender thing, which is basically navigation of information in space. And basically, it's similar to a game engine. It's a physics engine that you can use to describe and predict how things that look in a particular way, that feel when you touch them in a particular way, that allow proprioception, that allow auditory perception and so on, how they work out. So basically the geometry of all these things. probably 80% of what our brain is doing is dealing with that, with this real-time simulation. By itself, a game engine is fascinating, but it's not that hard to understand what it's doing. Our game engines are already, in some sense, approximating the fidelity of what we can perceive. So if the put on an Oculus Quest, we get something that is still relatively crude with respect to what we can perceive, but it's also in the same ballpark already, right? It's just a couple order of magnitudes away from saturating our perception in terms of the complexity that it can produce. So in some sense, it's reasonable to say that the computer that you can buy and put into your home is able to give a perceptual reality that has a detail that is already in the same ballpark as what your brain can process. And everything else are ideas about the world. And I suspect that they are relatively sparse, and also the intuitive models that we form about social interaction. Social interaction is not so hard. It's just hard for us nerds, because we all have our wires crossed, so we need to deduce them. But the priors are present in most social animals. So it's an interesting thing to notice that many domestic social animals, like cats and dogs, have better social cognition than children." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I hope so. I hope it's not that many concepts fundamentally to exist in this world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me it's more like I'm afraid so because this thing that we only appear to be so complex to each other because we are so stupid is a little bit depressing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, to me that's inspiring if we're indeed as stupid as it seems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The things our brains don't scale and the information processing that we build tend to scale very well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I mean, one of the things that worries me is that, you know... that the fact that the brain doesn't scale means that that's actually a fundamental feature of the brain. All the flaws of the brain, everything we see as limitations, perhaps there's a fundamental, the constraints on the system could be a requirement of its power, which is different than our current understanding of intelligent systems where scale, especially with reinforcement learning, the hope behind OpenAI and DeepMind, all the major results really have to do with huge compute. And yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It could also be that our brains are so small, not just because they take up so much glucose in our body, like 20% of the glucose, so they don't arbitrarily scale. But there's some animals like elephants, which have larger brains than us, and they don't seem to be smarter. Elephants seem to be autistic. They have very, very good motor control, and they're really good with details. but they really struggle to see the big picture. So you can make them recreate drawings, stroke by stroke, they can do that, but they cannot reproduce a still life. So they cannot make a drawing of a scene that they see. They will always be only able to reproduce the line drawing, at least as far from what I could see in the experiments. So why is that? Maybe smarter elephants would meditate themselves out of existence because their brains are too large. So basically the elephants that were not autistic, they didn't reproduce." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so we have to remember that the brain is fundamentally interlinked with the body in our human and biological system. Do you think that AGI systems that we try to create or greater intelligence systems would need to have a body?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think they should be able to make use of a body if you give it to them. But I don't think that they fundamentally need a body. So I suspect if you can interact with the world by moving your eyes and your head, you can make controlled experiments. And this allows you to have many magnitudes fewer observations in order to reduce the uncertainty in your models, right? So you can pinpoint the areas in your models where you're not quite sure and you just move your head and see what's going on over there and you get additional information. If you just have to use YouTube as an input and you cannot do anything beyond this, you probably need just much more data. But we have much more data. So if you can build a system that has enough time and attention to browse all of YouTube and extract all the information that there is to be found, I don't think there's an obvious limit to what it can do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but it seems that the interactivity is a fundamental thing that the physical body allows you to do. But let me ask on that topic, that's what a body is, is allowing the brain to touch things and move things and interact with the, whether the physical world exists or not, whatever, but interact with some interface to the physical world. What about a virtual world? Do you think we can do the same kind of reasoning, consciousness, intelligence if we put on a VR headset and move over to that world? Do you think there's any fundamental difference between the interface, the physical world that is here in this hotel and if we were sitting in the same hotel in a virtual world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The question is, does this non-physical world or this other environment entice you to solve problems that require general intelligence? If it doesn't, then you probably will not develop general intelligence. And arguably, most people are not generally intelligent because they don't have to solve problems that make them generally intelligent. And even for us, it's not yet clear if we are smart enough to build AI and understand our own nature to this degree, right? So it could be a matter of capacity. And for most people, it's in the first place, a matter of interest. They don't see the point because the benefit of attempting this project are marginal because you're probably not going to succeed in it. And the cost of trying to do it requires complete dedication of your entire life, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it seems like the possibilities of what you can do in the virtual world, so imagine that is much greater than you can in the real world. So imagine a situation, maybe interesting option for me, if somebody came to me and offered What I'll do is, so from now on, you can only exist in the virtual world. And so you put on this headset, and when you eat, we'll make sure to connect your body up in a way that when you eat in the virtual world, your body will be nourished in the same way in the virtual world. So align the incentives between our common sort of real world and the virtual world. But then the possibilities become much bigger. Like I could be other kinds of creatures, I could do, I can break the laws of physics as we know them. I could do a lot, I mean, the possibilities are endless, right? As far as we think. It's an interesting thought whether, like, what existence would be like, what kind of intelligence would emerge there, what kind of consciousness, what kind of maybe greater intelligence, even in me. even at this stage in my life, if I spend the next 20 years in that world, to see how that intelligence emerges. And if that happened at the very beginning, before I was even cognizant of my existence in this physical world, it's interesting to think how that child would develop. And the way virtual reality and digitization of everything is moving, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that we're all, that some part of our lives will, if not entirety of it, will live in a virtual world to a greater degree than we currently have living on Twitter and social media and so on. Do you have, I mean, does something draw you intellectually or naturally in terms of thinking about AI to this virtual world where more possibilities are" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that currently it's a waste of time to deal with the physical world before we have mechanisms that can automatically learn how to deal with it. The body gives you second order agency. What constitutes the body is the things that you can indirectly control. Third order are tools, and the second order is the things that are basically always present. But you operate on them with first-order things, which are mental operators. And the zero order is in some sense the direct sense of what you're deciding. So you observe yourself initiating an action. There are features that you interpret as the initiation of an action. Then you perform the operations that you perform to make that happen. And then you see the movement of your limbs and you learn to associate those and thereby model your own agency over this feedback, right? But the first feedback that you get is from this first order thing already. Basically, you decide to think a thought and the thought is being thought. You decide to change the thought and you observe how the thought is being changed. And in some sense, this is, you could say, an embodiment already, right? And I suspect it's sufficient as an embodiment for intelligence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so it's not that important, at least at this time, to consider variations in the second order." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but the thing that you also mentioned just now is physics that you could change in any way you want. So you need an environment that puts up resistance against you. If there's nothing to control, you cannot make models, right? There needs to be a particular way that resists you. And by the way, your motivation is usually outside of your mind. It resists your motivation, is what gets you up in the morning, even though it would be much less work to stay in bed. And so it's basically forcing you to resist the environment and it forces your mind to serve it, to serve this resistance to the environment. So in some sense, it is also putting up resistance against the natural tendency of the mind to not do anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but so some of that resistance, just like you described with motivation, is like in the first order, it's in the mind. Some resistance is in the second order, like the actual physical objects pushing against you and so on. It seems that the second order stuff in virtual reality could be recreated. Of course." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it might be sufficient that you just do mathematics and mathematics is already putting up enough resistance against you. So basically just with an aesthetic motive, this could maybe be sufficient to form a type of intelligence. It would probably not be a very human intelligence, but it might be one that is already general." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to mess with this zeroth order, maybe first order, what do you think about ideas of brain-computer interfaces? So again, returning to our friend Elon Musk and Neuralink, a company that's trying to, of course, there's a lot of trying to cure diseases and so on with the near-term, but the long-term vision is to add an extra layer, so basically expand the capacity of the brain connected to the computational world. Do you think, one, that's possible, or two, how does that change the fundamentals of the zeroth order and the first order?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's technically possible, but I don't see that the FDA would ever allow me to drill holes in my skull to interface my neocortex the way Elon Musk envisions. So at the moment, I can do horrible things to mice, but I'm not able to do useful things to people, except maybe at some point down the line in medical applications. So this thing that we are envisioning, which means, recreational and creational brain computer interfaces are probably not going to happen in the present legal system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it how I'm asking you out there philosophical and sort of engineering questions and for the first time ever you jumped to the legal FDA." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There would be enough people that would be crazy enough to have holes drilled in their skull to try a new type of brain computer interface." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also if it works. FDA will approve it. I mean, yes, it's like, you know, I work a lot with autonomous vehicles. Yes, you can say that it's going to be a very difficult regulatory process of approving the policy, but it doesn't mean autonomous vehicles are never going to happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, they will totally happen as soon as we create jobs for at least two lawyers and one regulator per car." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yes, lawyers, that's actually, like lawyers is the fundamental substrate of reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the US, it's a very weird system. It's not universal in the world. The law is a very interesting software once you realize it, right? These circuits are in some sense streams of software and it largely works by exception handling. So you make decisions on the ground and they get synchronized with the next level structure as soon as an exception is being thrown. So it escalates the exception handling. The process is very expensive, especially since it incentivizes the lawyers for producing work for lawyers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the exceptions are actually incentivized for firing often. But to return outside of lawyers, Is there anything fundamentally, is there anything interesting, insightful about the possibility of this extra layer of intelligence added to the brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do think so, but I don't think that you need technically invasive procedures to do so. We can already interface with other people by observing them very, very closely and getting in some kind of empathetic resonance. And I'm a nerd, so I'm not very good at this, but I noticed that people are able to do this to some degree. And it basically means that we model an interface layer of the other person in real time. And it works despite our neurons being slow, because most of the things that we do are built on periodic processes. So you just need to entrain yourself with the oscillation that happens. And if the oscillation itself changes slowly enough, you can basically follow along." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the bandwidth of the interaction, it seems like you can do a lot more computation when there's... Yes, of course." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the other thing is that the bandwidth that our brain, our own mind is running on is actually quite slow. So the number of thoughts that I can productively think in any given day is quite limited. If they had the discipline to write it down and the speed to write it down, maybe it would be a book every day or so, but if you think about the computers that we can build, the magnitudes at which they operate, right, this would be nothing. It's something that it can put out in a second." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I don't know. So it's possible sort of the number of thoughts you have in your brain is, it could be several orders of magnitude higher than what you're possibly able to express through your fingers or through your voice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Most of them are going to be repetitive because they... How do you know that? Because they have to control the same problems every day. When I walk, there are going to be processes in my brain that model my walking pattern and regulate them and so on, but it's going to be pretty much the same every day with every step." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm talking about intellectual reasoning, like thinking, so the question, what is the best system of government? So you sit down and start thinking about that. One of the constraints is that you don't have access to a lot of, you don't have access to a lot of facts, a lot of studies. You always have to interface with something else to learn more, to aid in your reasoning process. If you can directly access all of Wikipedia in trying to understand what is the best form of government, then every thought won't be stuck in a loop. Every thought that requires some extra piece of information will be able to grab it really quickly. That's the possibility of, if the bottleneck is literally the information, that the bottleneck of breakthrough ideas is just being able to quickly access huge amounts of information, then the possibility of connecting your brain to the computer could lead to totally new breakthroughs. You can think of mathematicians being able to just up the orders of magnitude of, power in their reasoning about mathematical proofs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What if humanity has already discovered the optimal form of government through a revolutionary process, right? There is an evolution going on. And so what we discover is that maybe the problem of government doesn't have stable solutions for us as a species because we are not designed in such a way that we can make everybody conform to them. But there could be solutions that work under different circumstances or that are the best for a certain environment. It depends on, for instance, the primary forms of ownership and the means of production. So if the main means of production is land, then the forms of government will be regulated by the landowners and you get a monarchy. If you also want to have a form of government in which you depend on some form of slavery, for instance, where the peasants have to work very long hours for very little gain, so very few people can have plumbing, then maybe you need to promise them that you get paid in the afterlife. the overtime, right? So you need a theocracy. And so for much of human history in the West, we had a combination of monarchy and theocracy that was our form of governance, right? At the same time, the Catholic Church implemented game-theoretic principles. I recently reread Thomas Aquinas. It's very interesting to see this because he was not dualist. He was translating Aristotle in a particular way for designing an operating system for the Catholic society. And he says that basically people are animals, very much the same way as Aristotle envisions, which is basically organisms with cybernetic control. And then he says that there are additional rational principles that humans can discover, and everybody can discover them, so they are universal. If you are sane, you should understand, you should submit to them, because you can rationally deduce them. And these principles are roughly, you should be willing to self-regulate correctly. You should be willing to do correct social regulation, it's intraorganismic. You should be willing to act on your models, so you have skin in the game. And you should have goal rationality. You should be choosing the right goals to work on. So basically these three rational principles, goal rationality he calls prudence or wisdom, social regulation is justice, the correct social one, and the internal regulation is temperance. And this willingness to act on your models is courage. And then he says that there are additionally to these four cardinal virtues, three divine virtues. And these three divine virtues cannot be rationally deduced, but they reveal themselves by their harmony, which means if you assume them and you extrapolate what's going to happen, you will see that they make sense. And it's often been misunderstood as God has to tell you that these are the things, so there's something nefarious going on. The Christian conspiracy forces you to believe some guy with a long beard that they discovered this. So these principles are relatively simple. Again, it's for high-level organization, for the resulting civilization that you form. Commitment to unity. So basically, you serve this higher, larger thing, this structural principle on the next level, and he calls that faith. Then there needs to be a commitment to shared purpose. It's basically this global reward that you try to figure out what that should be and how you can facilitate this. And this is love. The commitment to shared purpose is the core of love, right? You see the sacred thing that is more important than your own organismic interests. in the other, and you serve this together, and this is how you see the sacred in the other. And the last one is hope, which means you need to be willing to act on that principle without getting rewards in the here and now, because it doesn't exist yet when you start out building the civilization, right? So you need to be able to do this in the absence of its actual existence yet. So it can come into being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, so the way it comes into being is by you accepting those notions and then you see there these three divine concepts and you see them realized." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Another problem is divine is a loaded concept in our world, right? Because we are outside of this cult and we are still scarred from breaking free of it. But the idea is basically we need to have a civilization that acts as an intentional agent, like an insect state. And we are not actually a tribal species, we are a state-building species. And what enabled state building is basically the formation of religious states and other forms of rule-based administration, in which the individual doesn't matter as much as the rule or the higher goal. We got there by the question, what's the optimal form of governance? So I don't think that Catholicism is the optimal form of governance because it's obviously on the way out, right? So it is for the present type of society that we are in. Religious institutions don't seem to be optimal to organize that. So what we discovered right now that we live in in the West is democracy. And democracy is the rule of oligarchs that are the people that currently own the means of production. that is administered not by the oligarchs themselves because there's too much disruption, right? We have so much innovation that we have in every generation new means of production that we invent and corporations die usually after 30 years or so and something other takes a leading role in our societies. So it's administered by institutions and these institutions themselves are not elected, but they provide continuity. and they are led by electable politicians. And this makes it possible that you can adapt to change without having to kill people. So you can, for instance, if a change in governments, if people think that the current government is too corrupt or is not up to date, you can just elect new people. Or if a journalist finds out something inconvenient about the institution and the institution has no plan B, like in Russia, the journalist has to die. This is when you run society by the deep state. So ideally, you have administration layer that you can change if something bad happens, right? So you will have a continuity in the whole thing. And this is the system that we came up in the West. And the way it's set up in the US is largely a result of low-level models. So it's mostly just second, third order consequences that people are modeling in the design of these institutions. So it's a relatively young society that doesn't really take care of the downstream effects of many of the decisions that are being made. And I suspect that AI can help us this in a way if you can fix the incentives. The society of the US is a society of cheaters. It's basically, cheating is so indistinguishable from innovation, and we want to encourage innovation. Can you elaborate on what you mean by cheating? It's basically people do things that they know are wrong. It's acceptable to do things that you know are wrong in this society to a certain degree. You can, for instance, suggest some non-sustainable business models and implement them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but you're always pushing the boundaries." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you're- Yes, and yes, this is seen as a good thing, largely. Yes. And this is different from other societies. So for instance, social mobility is an aspect of this. Social mobility is the result of individual innovation that would not be sustainable at scale for everybody else. Right. Normally, you should not go up, you should go deep, right? We need bakers, and indeed, we are very good bakers, but in a society that innovates, maybe you can replace all the bakers with a really good machine. And that's not a bad thing. And it's a thing that made the U.S. so successful. But it also means that the U.S. is not optimizing for sustainability, but for innovation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so it's not obvious, as the evolutionary process is unrolling, it's not obvious that that long-term would be better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It has side effects, so basically if you cheat, you will have a certain layer of toxic sludge that covers everything that is a result of cheating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we have to unroll this evolutionary process to figure out if these side effects are so damaging that the system's horrible, or if the benefits actually outweigh the negative effects. How do we get to which system of government is best? That was from, I'm trying to trace back the last five minutes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect that we can find a way back to AI by thinking about the way in which our brain has to organize itself. In some sense, our brain is a society of neurons and our mind is a society of behaviors. And they need to be organizing themselves into a structure that implements regulation. And government is social regulation. We often see government as the manifestation of power or local interests, but it's actually a platform for negotiating the conditions of human survival. And this platform emerges over the current needs and possibilities and the trajectory that we have. So given the present state, there are only so many options on how we can move into the next stage without completely disrupting everything. And we mostly agree that it's a bad idea to disrupt everything because it will endanger our food supply for a while and the entire infrastructure and fabric of society. So we do try to find natural transitions. And there are not that many natural transitions available at any given point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean by natural transition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's true. So we try not to have revolutions if we can have it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see, right. So speaking of revolutions and the connection between government systems and the mind, you've also said that, you said that in some sense, becoming an adult means you take charge of your emotions. Maybe you never said that. Maybe I just made that up. But in the context of the mind, what's the role of emotion? And what is it? First of all, what is emotion? What's its role?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's several things. So psychologists often distinguish between emotion and feeling, and in common day parlance, we don't. I think that an emotion is a configuration of the cognitive system. And that's especially true for the lowest level, for the affective state. So when you have an affect, it's the configuration of certain modulation parameters, like arousal, valence, your attentional focus, whether it's wide or narrow, interoception or exteroception, and so on. And all these parameters together put you in a certain way that you relate to the environment and to yourself. And this is, in some sense, an emotional configuration. In the more narrow sense, an emotion is an affective state that has an object. And the relevance of that object is given by motivation. And motivation is a bunch of needs that are associated with rewards, things that give you pleasure and pain. And you don't actually act on your needs, you act on models of your needs. Because when the pleasure and pain manifest, it's too late, you've done everything. So you act on expectations that will give you pleasure and pain. And these are your purposes. The needs don't form a hierarchy, they just coexist and compete. And your organism has to, or your brain has to find a dynamic homeostasis between them. But the purposes need to be consistent. So you basically can create a story for your life and make plans. And so we organized them all into hierarchies and there is not a unique solution for this. Some people eat to make art and other people make art to eat. And they might end up doing the same things, but they cooperate in very different ways, because their ultimate goals are different, and we cooperate based on shared purpose. Everything else that is not cooperation on shared purpose is transactional." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think I understood that last piece of achieving the homeostasis. Are you distinguishing between the experience of emotion and the expression of emotion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course. So the experience of emotion is a feeling. And in this sense, what you feel is an appraisal that your perceptual system has made of the situation at hand. And it makes this based on your motivation and on your estimates, not your, but of the subconscious geometric parts of your mind that assess the situation in the world with something like a neural network. And this neural network is making itself known to the symbolic parts of your mind, to your conscious attention, by mapping them as features into a space. So what you will feel about your emotion is a projection usually into your body map. So you might feel anxiety in your solar plexus and you might feel it as a contraction. which is all geometry, right? Your body map is the space that is always instantiated and always available. So it's a very obvious cheat if your non-symbolic parts of your brain try to talk to your symbolic parts of your brain to map the feelings into the body map. And then you perceive them as pleasant and unpleasant, depending on whether the appraisal has a negative or positive valence. And then you have different features of them that give you more knowledge about the nature of what you're feeling. So for instance, when you feel connected to other people, you typically feel this in your chest region around your heart, and you feel this is an expansive feeling in which you're reaching out, right? And it's very intuitive to encode it like this. That's why it's encoded like this for most people. It's encoded. It's a code in which the non-symbolic parts of your mind talk to the symbolic ones." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then the expression of emotion is then the final step that could be sort of gestural or visual or so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a part of the communication. Let's just say this probably evolved as part of an adversarial communication. So as soon as you started to observe the facial expression and posture of others to understand what emotional state they are in, others started to use this as signaling and also to subvert your model of their emotional state. So we now look at the inflections, at the difference between the standard face that they're going to make in this situation, When you are at a funeral, everybody expects you to make a solemn face, but the solemn face doesn't express whether you're sad or not. It just expresses that you understand what face you have to make at a funeral. Nobody should know that you are triumphant. So when you try to read the emotion of another person, you try to look at the delta between a truly sad expression and the things that are animating this face behind the curtain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the interesting thing is, so having done this podcast and the video component, one of the things I've learned is that now I'm Russian and I just don't know how to express emotion on my face. One, I see that as weakness, but whatever. people look to me after you say something, they look to my face to help them see how they should feel about what you said, which is fascinating, because then they'll often comment on why did you look bored, or why did you particularly enjoy that part, or why did you whatever. It's a kind of interesting, it makes me cognizant of I'm part, like you're basically saying a bunch of brilliant things, but I'm part, of the play that you're the key actor in by making my facial expressions and therefore telling the narrative of what the big point is, which is fascinating. Makes me cognizant that I'm supposed to be making facial expressions. Even this conversation is hard. Because my preference would be to wear a mask with sunglasses to where I could just listen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I understand this because it's intrusive to interact with others this way. And basically, Eastern European society have a taboo against that, and especially Russia, the further you go to the East. And in the US, it's the opposite. You're expected to be hyper animated in your face, and you're also expected to show positive affect. And if you show positive effect without a good reason in Russia, people will think you are a stupid, unsophisticated person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. And here positive effect without reason goes either appreciated or goes unnoticed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's the default, it's being expected. Everything is amazing. Have you seen these? Lego movie? No, there was a diagram where somebody gave the appraisals that exist in US and Russia, so you have your bell curve. And the lower 10% in US are, it's a good start. Everything above the lowest 10%, it's amazing. It's amazing. And for Russians, everything below the top 10% is terrible. And then everything except the top percent is, I don't like it. And the top percent is even so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's funny, but it's kind of true. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But there's a deeper aspect to this. It's also how we construct meaning. In the US, usually you focus on the positive aspects and you just suppress the negative aspects. And in our Eastern European traditions, we emphasize the fact that if you hold something above the waterline, you also need to put something below the waterline because existence by itself is asbestos neutral." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, that's the basic intuition, at best neutral. Or it could be just suffering, the default is suffering." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are moments of beauty, but these moments of beauty are inextricably linked to the reality of suffering. And to not acknowledge the reality of suffering means that you are really stupid and unaware of the fact that basically every conscious being spends most of the time suffering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you just summarized the ethos of the Eastern Europe. Yeah, most of life is suffering with occasional moments of beauty. And if your facial expressions don't acknowledge the abundance of suffering in the world and in existence itself, then you must be an idiot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an interesting thing when you raise children in the U.S. and you, in some sense, preserve the identity of the intellectual and cultural traditions that are embedded in your own families. And your daughter asks you about Ariel the mermaid and asks you, why is Ariel not allowed to play with the humans? And you tell her the truth. She's a siren. Sirens eat people. You don't play with your food. It does not end well. And then you tell her the original story, which is not the one by Anderson, which is the romantic one. And there's a much darker one, the Undine story. What happens? So Undine is a mermaid or a water woman. She lives on the ground of a river and she meets this prince and they fall in love. And the prince really, really wants to be with her. And she says, OK, but the deal is you cannot have any other woman if you marry somebody else, even though you cannot be with me, because obviously you cannot breathe underwater and have other things to do then. managing your kingdom as you have here, you will die. And eventually, after a few years, he falls in love with some princess and marries her. And she shows up and quietly goes into his chamber and nobody is able to stop her or willing to do so because he is fierce. And she comes quietly and sat out of his chamber and they ask her, what has happened? What did you do? And she said, I kissed him to death." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well done." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know the Anderson story, right? In the Anderson story, the mermaid is playing with this prince that she saves, and she falls in love with him. And she cannot live out there, so she is giving up her voice and her tail for a human-like appearance so she can walk among the humans. But this guy does not recognize that she is the one that he would marry. Instead, he marries somebody who has a kingdom and economical and political relationships to his own kingdom and so on. as he should, and she dies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, instead Disney, the Little Mermaid story has a little bit of a happy ending. That's the Western, that's the American way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My own problem is this, of course, that I read Oscar Wilde before I read the other things. So I'm indoctrinated, inoculated with this romanticism. And I think that the mermaid is right. You sacrifice your life for romantic love. That's what you do. Because if you are confronted with either serving the machine and doing the obviously right thing under the economic and social and all other human incentives, That's wrong, you should follow your heart." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think suffering is fundamental to happiness along these lines?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, suffering is the result of caring about things that you cannot change. And if you are able to change what you care about to those things that you can change, you will not suffer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you then be able to experience happiness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but happiness itself is not important. Happiness is like a cookie. When you are a child, you think cookies are very important and you want to have all the cookies in the world. You look forward to being an adult because then you have as many cookies as you want, right? Yes. But as an adult, you realize a cookie is a tool. It's a tool to make you eat vegetables. And once you eat your vegetables anyway, you stop eating cookies for the most part, because otherwise you will get diabetes and will not be around for your kids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. But then the cookie, the scarcity of a cookie, if scarcity is enforced, nevertheless, like the pleasure comes from the scarcity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but the happiness is a cookie that your brain bakes for itself. It's not made by the environment. The environment cannot make you happy. It's your appraisal of the environment that makes you happy. And if you can change the appraisal of the environment, which you can learn to, then you can create arbitrary states of happiness. And some meditators fall into this trap. So they discover the womb, this basement womb in their brain where the cookies are made, and they indulge in stuff themselves. And after a few months, it gets really old and the big crisis of meaning comes. because they thought before that their unhappiness was the result of not being happy enough. So they fixed this, right? They can release the neurotransmitters at will if they train. And then the crisis of meaning pops up at a deeper layer. And the question is, why do I live? How can I make a sustainable civilization that is meaningful to me? How can I insert myself into this? And this was the problem that you couldn't solve in the first place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But at the end of all this, let me then ask that same question. What is the answer to that? What could the possible answer be of the meaning of life? What could an answer be? What is it to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that if you look at the meaning of life, you look at what the cell is. Life is the cell, right? Yes, or this principle, the cell. It's this self-organizing thing that can participate in evolution. In order to make it work, it's a molecular machine. It needs a self-replicator and an entropy extractor and a Turing machine. If any of these parts is missing, you don't have a cell and it is not living, right? Life is basically the emergent complexity over that principle. Once you have this intelligent super molecule, the cell, There is very little that you cannot make it do. It's probably the optimal computronium, especially in terms of resilience. It's very hard to sterilize the planet once it's infected with life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's active function of these three components or the supercell of cell is present in the cell, is present in us, and it's just... We are just an expression of the cell." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a certain layer of complexity in the organization of cells. So in a way, it's tempting to think of the cell as a von Neumann probe. If you want to build intelligence on other planets, the best way to do this is to infect them with cells. and wait for long enough, and there's a reasonable chance the stuff is going to evolve into an information processing principle that is general enough to become sentient." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That idea is very akin to sort of the same dream and beautiful ideas that are expressed in cellular automata in their most simple mathematical form. If you just inject the system with some basic mechanisms of replication and so on, basic rules, amazing things would emerge." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the cell is able to do something that James Tardy calls existential design. He points out that in technical design, we go from the outside in. We work in a highly controlled environment in which everything is deterministic, like our computers, our labs, or our engineering workshops. And then we use this determinism to implement a particular kind of function that we dream up and that seamlessly interfaces with all the other deterministic functions that we already have in our world. So it's basically from the outside in. And biological systems designed from the inside out as seed will become a seedling by taking some of the relatively unorganized matter around it and turn it into its own structure and thereby subdue the environment. And cells can cooperate if they can rely on other cells having a similar organization that is already compatible. But unless that's there, the cell needs to divide to create that structure by itself, right? So it's a self-organizing principle that works on a somewhat chaotic environment. And the purpose of life, in a sense, is to produce complexity. And the complexity allows you to harvest neg-entropy gradients that you couldn't harvest without the complexity. And in this sense, intelligence and life are very strongly connected, because the purpose of intelligence is to allow control under conditions of complexity. So basically, you shift the boundary between the ordered systems into the realm of chaos. You build bridge heads into chaos with complexity. And this is what we are doing. This is not necessarily a deeper meaning. I think the meaning that we have priors for, that we are evolved for, outside of the priors, there is no meaning. Meaning only exists if the mind projects it. That is probably civilization. I think that what feels most meaningful to me is to try to build and maintain a sustainable civilization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And taking a slight step outside of that, we talked about a man with a beard and God, but something some mechanism perhaps must have planted the seed, the initial seed of the cell. Do you think there is a God? What is a God? And what would that look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if there was no spontaneous abiogenesis, in the sense that the first cell formed by some happy random accidents where the molecules just happened to be in the right constellation to each other," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there could also be the mechanism that allows for the random, I mean, there's like turtles all the way down. There has to be a head turtle at the bottom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's consider something really wild. Imagine, is it possible that a gas giant could become intelligent? What would that involve? So imagine that you have vortices that spontaneously emerge on the gas giants, like big storm systems that endure for thousands of years. And some of these swarm systems produce electromagnetic fields because some of the clouds are ferromagnetic or something. And as a result, they can change how certain clouds react rather than other clouds and thereby produce some self-stabilizing patterns that eventually lead to regulation feedback loops, nested feedback loops, and control. So imagine you have such a thing that basically has emergent, self-sustaining, self-organizing complexity. And at some point this wakes up and realizes, I'm basically Lem Solaris. I am a thinking planet, but I will not replicate because I cannot recreate the conditions of my own existence somewhere else. I'm just basically an intelligence that has spontaneously formed because it could. And now it builds a von Neumann probe. And the best von Neumann probe for such a thing might be the cell. So maybe it, because it's very, very clever and very enduring, creates cells and sends them out, and one of them has infected our planet. And I'm not suggesting that this is the case, but it would be compatible with the Prince Bermion hypothesis. And it was my intuition that abiogenesis is very unlikely. It's possible, but you probably need to roll the cosmic dice very often, maybe more often than there are planetary surfaces. I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So God is just a large enough, a system that's large enough that allows randomness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now, I don't think that God has anything to do with creation. I think it's a mistranslation of the Talmud into the Catholic mythology. I think that Genesis is actually the childhood memories of a God. So when- Sorry, Genesis is the- The childhood memories of a God. It's basically a mind that is remembering how it came into being. And we typically interpret Genesis as the creation of a physical universe by a supernatural being. And I think when you'll read it, there is light and darkness that is being created. And then you discover sky and ground, create them. you construct the plants and the animals, and you give everything their names and so on. That's basically cognitive development. It's a sequence of steps that every mind has to go through when it makes sense of the world. And when you have children, you can see how initially they distinguish light and darkness. And then they make out directions in it, and they discover sky and ground, and they discover the plants and the animals, and they give everything their name. And it's a creative process that happens in every mind, because it's not given, right? Your mind has to invent these structures to make sense of the patterns on your retina. Also, if there was some big nerd who set up a server and runs this world on it, this would not create a special relationship between us and the nerd. This nerd would not have the magical power to give meaning to our existence, right? So this equation of a creator god with the god of meaning. is a slate of hand. You shouldn't do it. The other one that is done in Catholicism is the equation of the first mover, the prime mover of Aristotle, which is basically the automaton that runs the universe. Aristotle says, if things are moving and things seem to be moving here, something must move them, right? If something moves them, something must move the thing that is moving it. So there must be a prime mover. This idea to say that this prime mover is a supernatural being is complete nonsense, right? It's an automaton. the simplest case. So we have to explain the enormity that this automaton exists at all. But again, we don't have any possibility to infer anything about its properties except that it's able to produce change in information. So there needs to be some kind of computational principle. This is all there is. But to say this automaton is identical again with the creator of the first cause or with the thing that gives meaning to our life is confusion. No, I think that what we perceive is the higher being that we are part of. And the higher being that we are part of is the civilization. It's the thing in which we have a similar relationship as the cell has to our body. And we have this prior because we have evolved to organize in these structures. So basically, the Christian God in its natural form, without the mythology, if you undress it, is basically the platonic form of the civilization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "is the ideal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's this ideal that you try to approximate when you interact with others, not based on your incentives, but on what you think is right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, we covered a lot of ground, and we're left with one of my favorite lines, and there's many, which is, happiness is a cookie that the brain bakes itself. It's been a huge honor and a pleasure to talk to you. I'm sure our paths will cross many times again. Joshua, thank you so much for talking today. I really appreciate it." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've always maintained my answer to the Fermi paradox. I think there has been intelligent life elsewhere in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So intelligent civilizations existed, but they've blown themselves up. So your general intuition is that intelligent civilizations quickly, like there's that parameter in the Drake equation. Your sense is they don't last very long. Yeah. How are we doing on that? Like, have we lasted pretty, pretty good? Are we due?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. I mean, not quite yet. Well, wait, it's Elias Yudkowsky, IQ required to destroy the world falls by one point every year." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so technology democratizes the destruction of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When can a meme destroy the world?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It kind of is already, right? Somewhat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think we've seen anywhere near the worst of it yet. The world's going to get weird." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, maybe a meme can save the world. Have you thought about that? The meme lord, Elon Musk, fighting on the side of good versus the meme lord of the darkness, which is not saying anything bad about Donald Trump, but he is the lord of the meme on the dark side. He's a Darth Vader of memes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think in every fairy tale, they always end it with, and they lived happily ever after. And I'm like, please tell me more about this happily ever after. I've heard 50% of marriages end in divorce. Why doesn't your marriage end up there? You can't just say happily ever after. It's the thing about destruction is it's over after the destruction. We have to do everything right in order to avoid it. And one thing wrong, I mean, actually, this is what I really like about cryptography. Cryptography, it seems like we live in a world where the defense wins. versus like nuclear weapons, the opposite is true. It is much easier to build a warhead that splits into a hundred little warheads than to build something that can, you know, take out a hundred little warheads. The offense has the advantage there. So maybe our future is in crypto, but... So cryptography, right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The Goliath is the defense. And then all the different hackers are the Davids. And that equation is flipped for nuclear war. Because there's so many, like one nuclear weapon destroys everything, essentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And it is much easier to attack with a nuclear weapon than it is to like, the technology required to intercept and destroy a rocket is much more complicated than the technology required to just, you know, orbital trajectory, send a rocket to somebody." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, your intuition that there were intelligent civilizations out there, but it's very possible that they're no longer there. It's kind of a sad picture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They enter some steady state. They all wirehead themselves. What's wirehead? Stimulate their pleasure centers. And just, you know, live forever in this kind of stasis. They become, well, I mean, I think the reason I believe this is because where are they? if there's some reason they stopped expanding, because otherwise they would have taken over the universe. The universe isn't that big, or at least, you know, let's just talk about the galaxy, right? 70,000 light years across. I took that number from Star Trek Voyager. I don't know how true it is, but yeah, that's not big, right? 70,000 light years is nothing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "for some possible technology that you can imagine that can leverage like wormholes or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You don't even need wormholes. Just a von Neumann probe is enough. A von Neumann probe and a million years of sublight travel, and you'd have taken over the whole universe. That clearly didn't happen. So something stopped it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mean if you, right, for like a few million years, if you sent out probes that travel close, what's sublight? You mean close to the speed of light? Let's say 0.1c. And it just spreads. Interesting. Actually, that's an interesting calculation. Huh. So what makes you think that we'd be able to communicate with them? Like, uh, yeah. What's, why do you think we would able to be able to comprehend intelligent lives that are out there? Like even if they were among us kind of thing, like, or even just flying around?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, that's, possible. It's possible that there is some sort of prime directive. That'd be a really cool universe to live in. And there's some reason they're not making themselves visible to us. But it makes sense that they would use the same, well, at least the same entropy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you're implying the same laws of physics. I don't know what you mean by entropy in this case." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. I mean, if entropy is the scarce resource in the universe," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you think about like Stephen Wolfram and everything is a computation, and then what if they are traveling through this world of computation? So if you think of the universe as just information processing, then what you're referring to with entropy, and then these pockets of interesting complex computation swimming around, how do we know they're not already here? How do we know that this, like all the different amazing things that are full of mystery on earth are just like little footprints of intelligence from light years away?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe. I mean, I tend to think that as civilizations expand, they use more and more energy and you can never overcome the problem of waste heat. So where is their waste heat?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we'd be able to, with our crude methods, be able to see like there's a whole lot of, energy here, but it could be something we're not, I mean, we don't understand dark energy, right? Dark matter. It could be just stuff we don't understand at all. Or they could have a fundamentally different physics, you know, like that, that we just don't even comprehend." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think, okay. I mean, it depends how far out you want to go. I don't think physics is very different on the other side of the galaxy. I would suspect that they have, I mean, if they're in our universe, they have the same physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, that's the assumption we have. But there could be like super trippy things like, like our cognition only gets to a slice and all the possible instruments that we can design only get to a particular slice of the universe. And there's something much like weirder." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe we can try a thought experiment. Would people from the past be able to detect the remnants of our, would we be able to detect our modern civilization? And I think the answer is obviously yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mean past from 100 years ago?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let's even go back further. Let's go to a million years ago. The humans who were lying around in the desert probably didn't even have, maybe they just barely had fire. They would understand if a 747 flew overhead." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, in this vicinity, but not if a 747 flew on Mars, because they wouldn't be able to see far because we're not actually communicating that well with the rest of the universe. We're doing OK, just sending out random like 50s tracks of music." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "True. And yeah, I mean, they'd have to, you know, the we've only been broadcasting radio waves for 150 years. And well, there's your light cone. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Okay. What do you make about all the... I recently came across this, having talked to David Fravor. I don't know if you caught what the videos that Pentagon released and the New York Times reporting of the UFO sightings. So I kind of looked into it, quote unquote, and There's actually been like hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings, right? And a lot of it you can explain in different kinds of ways. So one is it could be interesting physical phenomena. Two, it could be people wanting to believe. And therefore, they conjure up a lot of different things that just, you know, when you see different kinds of lights, some basic physics phenomena, and then you just conjure up ideas of possible out there mysterious worlds. But, you know, it's also possible, like you have a case of David Fravor, who is a Navy pilot, who's, you know, as legit as it gets in terms of humans who are able to perceive things in the environment and make conclusions whether those things are a threat or not. And he and several other pilots saw a thing. I don't know if you followed this, but they saw a thing that they've since then called TikTok that moved in all kinds of weird ways. They don't know what it is. It could be technology developed by the United States and they're just not aware of it on the surface level from the Navy, right? It could be different kind of lighting technology or drone technology, all that kind of stuff. It could be the Russians and the Chinese, all that kind of stuff. And of course their mind, our mind can also venture into the possibility that it's from another world. Have you looked into this at all? What do you think about it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think all the news is a psyop. I think that the most plausible- Nothing is real. Yeah. I listened to the, I think it was Bob Lazar on Joe Rogan. And like, I believe everything this guy is saying. And then I think that it's probably just some like MKUltra kind of thing, you know? What do you mean? They made some weird thing and they called it an alien spaceship. Maybe it was just to stimulate young physicists' minds. We'll tell them it's alien technology and we'll see what they come up with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you find any conspiracy theories compelling? Have you pulled at the string of the rich, complex world of conspiracy theories that's out there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that I've heard a conspiracy theory that conspiracy theories were invented by the CIA in the 60s to discredit true things. So, you know, you can go to ridiculous conspiracy theories like Flat Earth and Pizzagate and You know, these things are almost to hide like conspiracy theories that like, you know, remember when the Chinese like locked up the doctors who discovered coronavirus? Like I tell people this and I'm like, no, no, no, that's not a conspiracy theory. That actually happened. Do you remember the time that the money used to be backed by gold and now it's backed by nothing? This is not a conspiracy theory. This actually happened." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's one of my worries today with the idea of fake news is that when nothing is real, then like you dilute the possibility of anything being true by conjuring up all kinds of conspiracy theories. And then you don't know what to believe. And then like the idea of truth, of objectivity is lost completely. Everybody has their own truth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you used to control information by censoring it. And then the internet happened and governments are like, oh shit, we can't censor things anymore. I know what we'll do. You know, It's the old story of tying a flag where the leprechaun tells you his gold is buried and you tie one flag and you make the leprechaun swear to not remove the flag and you come back to the field later with a shovel and there's flags everywhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one way to maintain privacy, right? in order to protect the contents of this conversation, for example, we could just generate like millions of deep fake conversations where you and I talk and say random things. So this is just one of them. And nobody knows which one was the real one. This could be fake right now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Classic steganography technique." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. Another absurd question about intelligent life, because, uh, you know, you're, you're an incredible programmer outside of everything else we'll talk about just as a programmer. Do you think intelligent beings out there, the civilizations that were out there, had computers and programming? Do we naturally have to develop something where we engineer machines and are able to encode both knowledge into those machines and instructions that process that knowledge, process that information to make decisions and actions and so on. And would those programming languages, if you think they exist, be at all similar to anything we've developed?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I don't see that much of a difference between quote unquote natural languages and programming languages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hmm." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's so many similarities. So when asked the question, what do alien languages look like? I imagine they're not all that dissimilar from ours. And I think translating in and out of them wouldn't be that crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's difficult to compile like DNA to Python and then to C. There is a little bit of a gap in the kind of languages we use for, for, uh, Turing machines and the kind of languages nature seems to use a little bit. Maybe that's just, we just haven't, we haven't understood the kind of language that nature uses well yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "DNA is a CAD model. not quite a programming language. It has no sort of serial execution. It's not quite a, yeah, it's a CAD model. So I think in that sense, we actually completely understand it. The problem is, you know, well, simulating on these CAD models, I played with it a bit this year, is super computationally intensive if you want to go down to like the molecular level where you need to go to see a lot of these phenomenon like protein folding. So Yeah, it's not that we don't understand it. It just requires a whole lot of compute to kind of compile it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For our human minds, it's inefficient both for the data representation and for the programming." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it runs well on raw nature. It runs well on raw nature. And when we try to build emulators or simulators for that, well, they're mad slow. And I've tried it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It runs in, yeah, you've commented elsewhere, I don't remember where, that one of the problems of simulating nature is tough. And if you want to sort of deploy a prototype, I forgot how you put it, but it made me laugh, but animals or humans would need to be involved. in order to try to run some prototype code on, like if we're talking about COVID and viruses and so on, if you were trying to engineer some kind of defense mechanisms, like a vaccine against COVID or all that kind of stuff, doing any kind of experimentation like you can with autonomous vehicles would be very technically and ethically costly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not sure about that. I think you can do tons of crazy biology and in test tubes. I think my bigger complaint is more all the tools are so bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like literally, you mean like, like, I'm not brazen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not pipetting shit. Like you're handing me a I gotta know. No, no, no, there has to be some." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "like automating stuff and like, yeah, but human biology is messy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like it seems like look at those Toronto's videos. They were a joke. It's. It's like a little gantry. It's like a little XY gantry high school science project with the pipette. I'm like, really? You can't build like nice microfluidics and I can program the, you know, computation to bio interface. I mean, this is going to happen. But like right now, if you are asking me to pipette 50 milliliters of solution, I'm out. This is so crude." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. OK, let's get all the crazy out of the way. So a bunch of people asked me, since we talked about the simulation last time, we talked about hacking the simulation. Do you have any updates, any insights about how we might be able to go about hacking simulation if we indeed do live in a simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think a lot of people misinterpreted the point of that South by talk. The point of the South by Talk was not literally to hack the simulation. I think that this is an idea is literally just, I think, theoretical physics. I think that's the whole goal, right? You want your grand unified theory, but then, okay, build a grand unified theory, search for exploits, right? I think we're nowhere near actually there yet. My hope with that was just more to like Like, are you people kidding me with the things you spend time thinking about? Do you understand, like, kind of how small you are? You are bytes in God's computer, really? And the things that people get worked up about, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So basically, it was more a message of we should humble ourselves, that we get to Like what are we humans in this bytecode?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and not just humble ourselves, but like I'm not trying to make people guilty or anything like that. I'm trying to say like literally, look at what you are spending time on, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are you referring to? You're referring to the Kardashians? What are we talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm referring to, no, the Kardashians, everyone knows that's kind of fun. I'm referring more to like the economy. You know, this idea that We gotta up our stock price. Or what is the goal function of humanity?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't like the game of capitalism? Like you don't like the games we've constructed for ourselves as humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm a big fan of capitalism. I don't think that's really the game we're playing right now. I think we're playing a different game where the rules are rigged." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, which games are interesting to you that we humans have constructed and which aren't? Which are productive and which are not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, maybe that's the real point of the talk. It's like, stop playing these fake human games. There's a real game here. We can play the real game. The real game is, you know, nature wrote the rules. This is a real game. There still is a game to play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But if you look at, sorry to interrupt, but I don't know if you've seen the Instagram account, Nature is Metal. The game that nature seems to be playing is a lot more cruel than we humans want to put up with. Or at least we see it as cruel. It's like the bigger thing eats the smaller thing and does it to impress another big thing so it can mate with that thing. And that's it. That seems to be the entirety of it. There's no art, there's no music, there's no comma AI, there's no comma one, no comma two, no George Hotz with his brilliant talks at South by Southwest." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "See, I disagree though. I disagree that this is what nature is. I think nature just provided basically a open world MMORPG. And, um, You know, here it's open world. I mean, if that's the game you want to play, you can play that game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But isn't that isn't that beautiful? I know if you play Diablo, they used to have, I think, cow level where it's so everybody will go. Just they figured out this. like the best way to gain like experience points is to just slaughter cows over and over and over. And so they figured out this little sub game within the bigger game that this is the most efficient way to get experience points and Everybody somehow agreed that getting experience points in RPG context, where you always want to be getting more stuff, more skills, more levels, keep advancing. That seems to be good. So might as well spend, sacrifice actual enjoyment of playing a game, exploring the world and spending like hundreds of hours of your time at cow level. I mean, the number of hours I spent in cow level, I'm not like the most impressive person because people have probably thousands of hours there, but it's ridiculous. So that's a little absurd game that brought me joy in some weird dopamine drug kind of way. So you don't like those games. You don't think that's us humans failing the nature. And that was the point of the talk." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So how do we hack it then? Well, I want to live forever. And I want to live forever. And this is the goal. Well, that's a game against nature." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Immortality is the good objective function to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, start there and then you can do whatever else you want because you got a long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What if immortality makes the game just totally not fun? I mean, like, why do you assume immortality is somehow it's not a good objective function?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not immortality that I want. A true immortality where I could not die, I would prefer what we have right now. But I want to choose my own death, of course. I don't want nature to decide when I die. I'm going to win. I'm going to be you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then at some point, if you choose, commit suicide, like how long do you think you'd live?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Until I get bored." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I don't think people like brilliant people like you that really ponder living a long time are really considering how meaningless life becomes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I want to know everything and then I'm ready to die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As long as why do you want? Isn't it possible that you want to know everything because it's finite? Like the reason you want to know, quote unquote, everything is because you don't have enough time to know everything. And once you have unlimited time, then you realize, like, why do anything? Like, why learn anything?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wanna know everything and then I'm ready to die. It's a terminal value. It's not in service of anything else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm conscious of the possibility, this is not a certainty, but the possibility of that engine of curiosity that you're speaking to is actually a symptom of the finiteness of life. Without that finiteness, your curiosity would vanish, like a morning fog. Pulkowski talked about love like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm okay with some self-manipulation like that, I'm okay with deceiving myself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, changing the code?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, if that's the problem, right? If the problem is that I will no longer have that curiosity, I'd like to have backup copies of myself. Revert, yeah. well, which I check in with occasionally to make sure they're okay with the trajectory and they can kind of override it. Maybe a nice, like, I think of like those wave nets, those like logarithmic, go back to the copies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But sometimes it's not reversible. Like, uh, I've done this with video games. When, once you figure out the cheat code or like you look up how to cheat old school, like single player, it ruins the game for you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I know that feeling, but again, That just means our brain manipulation technology is not good enough yet. Remove that cheat code from your brain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Here you go. So it's also possible that if we figure out immortality, that all of us will kill ourselves before we advance far enough to be able to revert the change." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not killing myself till I know everything, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what you say now because your life is finite." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I think, yeah, self-modifying systems comes up with all these hairy complexities. And can I promise that I'll do it perfectly? No, but I think I can put good safety structures in place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that talk in your thinking here is not literally referring to a simulation in that our universe is a kind of computer program running on a computer. It's more of a thought experiment. Do you also think of the potential of the sort of Bostrom, Elon Musk, and others that talk about an actual program that simulates our universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I don't doubt that we're in a simulation. I just think that it's not quite that important. I mean, I'm interested only in simulation theory as far as like, it gives me power over nature. If it's totally unfalsifiable, then who cares?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, what do you think that experiment would look like? Like somebody on Twitter asked, ask George what signs we would look for to know whether or not we're in the simulation, which is exactly what you're asking is like. the step that precedes the step of knowing how to get more power from this knowledge is to get an indication that there's some power to be gained. So get an indication that you can discover and exploit cracks in the simulation, or it doesn't have to be in the physics of the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Show me, I mean, like a memory leak could be cool. Some scrying technology, you know? What kind of technology? Scrying. What's that? Oh, that's a weird... Scrying is the paranormal ability to... like remote viewing, like being able to see somewhere where you're not. So, you know, I don't think you can do it by chanting in a room, but if we could find... it's a memory leak, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a memory leak. Yeah, you're able to access parts you're not supposed to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And thereby discover a shortcut. Yeah, memory leak means the other thing as well, but I mean like, yeah, like an ability to read arbitrary memory. And that one's not that horrifying. The right ones start to be horrifying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Read it, right. So the reading is not the problem. Yeah, it's like Heartbleed for the universe. Oh boy, the writing is a big, big problem. It's a big problem. It's the moment you can write anything, even if it's just random noise. That's terrifying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, even without that, like even some of the nanotech stuff that's coming, I think is..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know if you're paying attention, but actually Eric Weinstein came out with the theory of everything. I mean, that came out. He's been working on a theory of everything in the physics world called geometric unity. And then for me, from a computer science person like you, Stephen Wolfram's theory of everything of like hypergraphs is super interesting and beautiful, but not from a physics perspective, but from a computational perspective. I don't know. Have you paid attention to any of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So again, what would make me pay attention and why I hate string theory is, okay, make a testable prediction, right? I'm not interested in theories for their intrinsic beauty. I'm interested in theories that give me power over the universe. So if these theories do, I'm very interested." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I just say how beautiful that is? Because a lot of physicists say, I'm interested in experimental validation. And they skip out the part where they say, to give me more power in the universe. I just love the clarity of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I want 100 gigahertz processors. I want transistors that are smaller than atoms. I want power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's true and that's where people from aliens to this kind of technology where people are worried that governments, like who owns that power? Is it George Hotz? Is it thousands of distributed hackers across the world? Is it governments? Is it Mark Zuckerberg? There's a lot of people that I don't know if anyone trusts any one individual with power. So they're always worried." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the beauty of blockchains." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the beauty of blockchains, which we'll talk about. On Twitter, somebody pointed me to a story, a bunch of people pointed me to a story a few months ago where you went into a restaurant in New York, and you can correct me if this is wrong, and ran into a bunch of folks from a company, a crypto company, who are trying to scale up Ethereum. and they had a technical deadline related to a solidity to OVM compiler. So these are all Ethereum technologies. So you stepped in, they recognized you, pulled you aside, explained their problem, and you stepped in and helped them solve the problem, thereby creating legend status story. So can you tell me the story a little more detail? It seems kind of incredible. Did this happen?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, it's a true story. It's a true story. I mean, they wrote a very flattering account of it. So Optimism is the company's called Optimism. It's a spin-off of Plasma. They're trying to build L2 solutions on Ethereum. So right now, Every Ethereum node has to run every transaction on the Ethereum network. And this kind of doesn't scale, right? Because if you have n computers, well, you know, if that becomes 2n computers, you actually still get the same amount of compute. Right? This is like O of 1 scaling. Because they all have to run it. Okay, fine, you get more blockchain security, but like, the blockchain's already so secure. Can we trade some of that off for speed? So that's kind of what these L2 solutions are. They built this thing, which kind of sandbox for Ethereum contracts, so they can run it in this L2 world and it can't do certain things in L1. Can I ask you for some definitions? What's L2? Oh, L2 is Layer 2. So L1 is like the base Ethereum chain, and then Layer 2 is like a computational layer that runs elsewhere, but still is kind of secured by Layer 1." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I'm sure a lot of people know, but Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, probably one of the most popular cryptocurrencies second to Bitcoin and a lot of interesting technological innovations there. Maybe you could also slip in whenever you talk about this, any things that are exciting to you in the Ethereum space and why Ethereum?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, Bitcoin is not Turing complete. Ethereum is not technically Turing complete with the gas limit, but close enough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With a gas limit, what's the gas limit? Resources?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, no computer's actually turning complete. Right. You're fine at RAM, you know? I can actually solve the whole problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the word gas limit? You have so many brilliant words. I'm not even gonna ask." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, that's not my word. That's Ethereum's word." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Gas limit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ethereum, you have to spend gas per instruction. So like different opcodes use different amounts of gas, and you buy gas with ether to prevent people from basically DDoSing the network." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Bitcoin is proof of work. And then what's Ethereum?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's also proof of work. They're working on some proof of stake Ethereum 2.0 stuff. But right now it's proof of work. It uses a different hash function from Bitcoin that's more ASIC resistance because you need RAM." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're all talking about Ethereum 1.0. So what were they trying to do to scale this whole process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So they were like, well, if we could run contracts elsewhere and then only save the results of that computation, Well, we don't actually have to do the compute on the chain. We can do the compute off chain and just post what the results are. Now, the problem with that is, well, somebody could lie about what the results are. So you need a resolution mechanism. And the resolution mechanism can be really expensive because you just have to make sure that the person who is saying, look, I swear that this is the real computation. I'm staking $10,000 on that fact. And if you prove it wrong, yeah, it might cost you $3,000 in gas fees to prove wrong, but you'll get the $10,000 bounty. So you can secure using those kinds of systems. So it's effectively a sandbox, which runs contracts. And just like any kind of normal sandbox, you have to replace syscalls with calls into the hypervisor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sandbox, syscalls, hypervisor. What do these things mean? As long as it's interesting to talk about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, you can take like the Chrome sandbox is maybe the one to think about, right? So the Chrome process that's doing a rendering can't, for example, read a file from the file system. It has, if it tries to make an open syscall in Linux, the open syscall, you can't make an open syscall, no, no, no. You have to request from the kind of hypervisor process or like, I don't know what it's called in Chrome, but the, hey, could you open this file for me? And then it does all these checks and then it passes the file handle back in if it's approved. So that's, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the, in the context of Ethereum, what are the boundaries of the sandbox that we're talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, like one of the calls that you actually reading and writing any state to the Ethereum contract or to the Ethereum blockchain. Writing state is one of those calls that you're going to have to sandbox in layer two, because if you let layer two just arbitrarily write to the Ethereum blockchain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Layer 2 is really sitting on top of Layer 1. So you're going to have a lot of different kinds of ideas that you can play with. Yeah. And they're not fundamentally changing the source code level of Ethereum." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you have to replace a bunch of calls with calls into the hypervisor. So instead of doing the syscall directly, you replace it with a call to the hypervisor. So originally, they were doing this by first running the... So Solidity is the language that most Ethereum contracts are written in. It compiles to a bytecode. And then they wrote this thing they called the transpiler. And the transpiler took the bytecode and it transpiled it into OVM safe bytecode. Basically bytecode that didn't make any of those restricted sys calls and added the calls to the hypervisor. This transpiler was a 3,000 line mess. And it's hard to do. It's hard to do if you're trying to do it like that, because you have to kind of like deconstruct the bytecode, change things about it, and then reconstruct it. And I mean, as soon as I hear this, I'm like, Why don't you just change the compiler, right? Why not, the first place you build the bytecode, just do it in the compiler? So yeah, you know, I asked them how much they wanted it. Of course, measured in dollars, and I'm like, well, okay. And yeah. And you wrote the compiler. Yeah, I modified, I wrote a 300 line diff to the compiler. It's open source, you can look at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I looked at the code last night. It's cute. Yeah, exactly. Cute is a good word for it. And it's C++." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "C++, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when asked how you were able to do it, you said you just got to think and then do it right. So can you break that apart a little bit? What's your process of one, thinking, and two, doing it right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, the people I was working for were amused that I said that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It doesn't really mean anything. OK. I mean, is there some deep, profound insights to draw from, like, how you problem solve from that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is always what I say. I'm like, do you want to be a good programmer? Do it for 20 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. There's no shortcuts. No. What are your thoughts on crypto in general? So what parts technically or philosophically do you find especially beautiful maybe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I'm extremely bullish on crypto long term. Not any specific crypto project, but this idea of Well, two ideas. One, the Nakamoto consensus algorithm is, I think, one of the greatest innovations of the 21st century. This idea that people can reach consensus, you can reach a group consensus using a relatively straightforward algorithm is wild. And like, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto, people always ask me who I look up to. It's like, whoever that is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who do you think it is? Elon Musk? Is it you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is definitely not me, and I do not think it's Elon Musk. But yeah, this idea of groups reaching consensus in a decentralized yet formulaic way is one extremely powerful idea from crypto. Maybe the second idea is this idea of smart contracts. When you write a contract, between two parties, any contract. This contract, if there are disputes, it's interpreted by lawyers. Lawyers are just really shitty overpaid interpreters. Imagine you had, let's talk about them in terms of like, let's compare a lawyer to Python, right? Well, okay. That's brilliant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I never thought of it that way. It's hilarious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Python, I'm paying even 10 cents an hour. I'll use the nice Azure machine. I can run Python for 10 cents an hour. Lawyers cost $1,000 an hour. So Python is 10,000x better on that axis. Lawyers don't always return the same answer. Python almost always does. Cost." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, just cost, reliability, everything about Python is so much better than lawyers. So if you can make smart contracts, this whole concept of code is law. I love and I would love to live in a world where everybody accepted that fact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe you can talk about what smart contracts are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's say, you know, we have a Even something as simple as a safety deposit box, right? A safety deposit box that holds a million dollars. I have a contract with a bank that says two out of these three parties must be present to open the safety deposit box and get the money out. So that's a contract for the bank, and it's only as good as the bank and the lawyers, right? Let's say, you know, somebody dies, and now, oh, we're going to go through a big legal dispute about whether, oh, well, was it in the will? Was it not in the will? Like, it's just so messy, and the cost to determine truth is so expensive. Versus a smart contract, which just uses cryptography to check if two out of three keys are present. Well, I can look at that and I can have certainty in the answer that it's going to return. And that's what all businesses want, is certainty. You know, they say businesses don't care. Viacom YouTube, YouTube's like, look, we don't care which way this lawsuit goes. Just please tell us so we can have certainty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I wonder how many agreements in this, because we're talking about financial transactions only in this case, correct? The smart contracts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, you can go to anything. You can put a prenup in the Ethereum blockchain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A married smart contract." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sorry, divorce lawyers. Sorry, you're going to be replaced by Python." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so that's... So that's another beautiful idea. Do you think there's something that's appealing to you about any one specific implementation? So if you look 10, 20, 50 years down the line, do you see any Bitcoin, Ethereum, any of the other hundreds of cryptocurrencies winning out? What's your intuition about the space? Are you just sitting back and watching the chaos and look who cares what emerges?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I don't. I don't speculate. I don't really care. I don't really care which one of these projects wins. I'm kind of in the Bitcoin as a meme coin camp. I mean, why does Bitcoin have value? It's technically kind of, you know, not great. Like the block size debate or when I found out what the block size debate was, I'm like, are you guys kidding? What's the block size debate? You know what? It's really, it's too stupid to even talk about. People can look it up, but I'm like, wow. You know, Ethereum seems, the governance of Ethereum seems much better. I've come around a bit on proof of stake ideas. You know, very smart people thinking about some things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You know, governance is interesting. It does feel like Vitalik, like it does feel like an open, even in these distributed systems, leaders are helpful. because they kind of help you drive the mission and the vision, and they put a face to a project. It's a weird thing about us humans. Geniuses are helpful, like Vitalik. Right. Yeah, brilliant. Leaders are not necessary. Yeah. So you think the reason he's the face of a theorem is because he's a genius. That's interesting. I mean, that was, It's interesting to think about that we need to create systems in which the quote unquote leaders that emerge are the geniuses in the system. I mean, that's arguably why the current state of democracy is broken is the people who are emerging as the leaders are not the most competent, are not the superstars of the system. And it seems like at least for now in the crypto world, oftentimes the leaders are the superstars." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine at the debate, they asked, what's the sixth amendment? What are the four fundamental forces in the universe? What's the integral of two to the X? I'd love to see those questions asked, and that's what I want as our leader." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's Bayes' rule? Yeah, I mean, even, oh wow, you're hurting my brain. My standard was even lower, but I would have loved to see just this basic brilliance. Like I've talked to historians. There's just these, they're not even like, they don't have a PhD or even education history. They just like a Dan Carlin type character who just like, holy shit, how did all this information get into your head? They're able to just connect Genghis Khan to the entirety of the history of the 20th century. They know everything about every single battle that happened. And they know the, the Game of Thrones of the different power plays and all that happened there. And they know the individuals and all the documents involved. And they integrate that into their regular life. It's not like they're ultra history nerds. They know this information. That's what competence looks like. Yeah. Because I've seen that with programmers too, right? That's what great programmers do. But yeah, it would be, it's really unfortunate that those kinds of people aren't emerging as our leaders. But for now, at least in the crypto world, that seems to be the case. I don't know if that always, you could imagine that in a hundred years, it's not the case, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Crypto world has one very powerful idea going for it, and that's the idea of forks, right? You know, imagine, we'll use a less controversial example. This was actually in my joke app in 2012. I was like, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, let's let them both be president, right? Like, imagine we could fork America and just let them both be president. And then the Americas could compete and, you know, people could invest in one, pull their liquidity out of one, put it in the other. You have this in the crypto world. Ethereum forks into Ethereum and Ethereum classic. And you can pull your liquidity out of one and put it in another. And people vote with their dollars, which forks companies should be able to fork. I'd love to fork NVIDIA, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like different business strategies. Yeah. And then try them out and see what works. Yeah. Yeah, take CalmAI that closes its source and then take one that's open source and see what works. Take one that's purchased by GM and one that remains Android Renegade and all these different versions and see." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The beauty of CalmAI is someone can actually do that. Yeah. Please take CalmAI and fork it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's right. That's the beauty of open source. So you're, I mean, we'll talk about autonomous vehicle space, but it does seem that you're really knowledgeable about a lot of different topics. So the natural question, a bunch of people ask this, which is, how do you keep learning new things? Do you have like practical advice? If you were to introspect, like taking notes, allocate time, or do you just mess around and just allow your curiosity to drive?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll write these people a self-help book and I'll charge $67 for it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's chapter one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I will write on the cover of the self-help book, all of this advice is completely meaningless. You're gonna be a sucker and buy this book anyway. And the one lesson that I hope they take away from the book is that I can't give you a meaningful answer to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's interesting. Let me translate that. Is you haven't really thought about what it is you do systematically. Because you could reduce it. And there's some people, I mean, I've met brilliant people that, this is really clear with athletes. Some are just, you know, the best in the world at something. And they have zero interest in writing like a self-help book or how to master this game. And then there's some athletes who, become great coaches and they love the analysis, perhaps the over-analysis. And you right now, at least at your age, which is an interesting, you're in the middle of the battle. You're like the warriors that have zero interest in writing books. So you're in the middle of the battle. So you have, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is a fair point. I do think I have a certain aversion to this kind of deliberate, intentional way of living life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're eventually, the hilarity of this, especially since this is recorded, it will reveal beautifully the absurdity when you finally do publish this book. I guarantee you, you will. The story of comma AI, maybe it'll be a biography written about you. That'll be better, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you might be able to learn some cute lessons if you're starting a company like comma AI from that book. But if you're asking generic questions like, how do I be good at things?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I mean, the interesting... Do them a lot. Do them a lot. But the interesting thing here is learning things outside of your current trajectory, which is what it feels like from an outsider's perspective. I mean, you know, that I don't know if there's advice on that, but it is an interesting curiosity. When you become really busy, you're running a company." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hard time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but like there's a natural inclination and trend, like just the momentum of life carries you into a particular direction of wanting to focus. And this kind of dispersion that curiosity can lead to gets harder and harder. with time, because you get really good at certain things. And it sucks trying things that you're not good at, like trying to figure them out. You do this with your life streams. You're on the fly figuring stuff out. You don't mind looking dumb. You just figure it out pretty quickly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sometimes I try things and I don't figure them out quickly. My chess rating is like a 1400, despite putting like a couple hundred hours in, it's pathetic. I mean, to be fair, I know that I could do it better if I did it better. Like, don't play, you know, don't play five minute games, play 15 minute games at least. Like, I know these things, but it just doesn't, it doesn't stick nicely in my knowledge stream." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, let's talk about CommAI. What's the mission of the company? Let's like, look at the biggest picture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I have an exact statement. solve self-driving cars while delivering shippable intermediaries. Soft self-driving cars, of course, means you're not building a new car. You're building a person replacement. That person can sit in the driver's seat and drive you anywhere a person can drive with a human or better level of safety, speed, quality, comfort." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what's the second part of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Delivering shippable intermediaries is, well, it's a way to fund the company. That's true. But it's also a way to keep us honest. If you don't have that, it is very easy with this technology to think you're making progress when you're not. I've heard it best described on Hacker News as you can set any arbitrary milestone, meet that milestone, and still be infinitely far away from solving self-driving cars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's hard to have like real deadlines when you're like Cruz or Waymo when you don't have revenue. Is that, I mean, is revenue essentially the thing we're talking about here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Revenue is, capitalism is based around consent. Capitalism, the way that you get revenue as a, real capitalism, commas in the real capitalism camp, there's definitely scams out there, but real capitalism is based around consent. It's based around this idea that like, if we're getting revenue, it's because we're providing at least that much value to another person. When someone buys $1,000 comma two from us, we're providing them at least $1,000 of value or they wouldn't buy it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Brilliant. So can you give a whirlwind overview of the products that Kama AI provides, like throughout its history and today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, yeah, the past ones aren't really that interesting. It's kind of just been refinement of the same idea. The real only product we sell today is the Kama 2." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is a piece of hardware with cameras." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the Kama 2, I mean, you can think about it kind of like a person. You know, in future hardware will probably be even more and more person-like. So it has, you know, eyes, ears, a mouth, a brain, and a way to interface with the car." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it have consciousness? Just kidding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was a trick question. I don't have consciousness either. Me and the Commodore are the same. You're the same? I have a little more compute than it. It only has, like, the same compute as a B. You're more efficient energy-wise for the compute you're doing. Far more efficient energy-wise. 20 petaflops, 20 watts, crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you lack consciousness? Sure. Do you fear death? You do? You want immortality? Of course I fear death. Does Kami-Ai fear death? I don't think so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course it does. It very much fears, well it fears negative loss. Oh yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so Kama 2, when did that come out? That was a year ago? No, two? Early this year. Wow. 2020 feels like it's taken 10 years to get to the end of it. It's a long year. It's a long year. So what's the sexiest thing about Kama 2, feature-wise? So, I mean, maybe you can also linger on, like, what is it? Like, what's its purpose? Because there's a hardware, there's a software component. You've mentioned the sensors, but also, like, what are its features and capabilities?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think our slogan summarizes it well. Kama's slogan is make driving chill. I love it. OK. Yeah. I mean, it is, you know, if you like cruise control, imagine cruise control, but much, much more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it can do adaptive cruise control things, which is like slow down for cars in front of it, maintain a certain speed. And it can also do lane keeping, so staying in the lane and do it better and better and better over time. It's very much machine learning based. So there's cameras, there's a driver facing camera too. That's good. What else is there? What am I thinking? So the hardware versus software, so open pilot versus the actual hardware, the device. Can you draw that distinction? What's one, what's the other?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the hardware is pretty much a cell phone with a few additions, a cell phone with a cooling system and with a car interface connected to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by cell phone, you mean like Qualcomm Snapdragon?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the current hardware is a Snapdragon 821. It has a Wi-Fi radio, it has an LTE radio, it has a screen. We use every part of the cell phone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then the interface with the car is specific to the car, so you keep supporting more and more cars." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the interface to the car, I mean, the device itself just has four CAN buses. It has four CAN interfaces on it that are connected through the USB port to the phone. And then, yeah, on those four CAN buses, you connect it to the car, and there's a little harness to do this. Cars are actually surprisingly similar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So CAN is the protocol by which cars communicate, and then you're able to read stuff and write stuff to be able to control the car, depending on the car. So what's the software side? What's OpenPilot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, I mean, OpenPilot is, the hardware is pretty simple compared to OpenPilot. OpenPilot is, well, So you have a machine learning model, which it's in OpenPilot. It's a blob. It's just a blob of weights. It's not like people are like, oh, it's closed source. I'm like, it's a blob of weights. What do you expect? So it's primarily neural network based. Well, OpenPilot is all the software kind of around that neural network. But if you have a neural network that says, here's where you want to send the car, OpenPilot actually goes and executes all of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It cleans up the input to the neural network. It cleans up the output and executes on it. So it connects, it's the glue that connects everything together." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Runs the sensors, does a bunch of calibration for the neural network, does, you know, deals with like, you know, if the car is on a banked road, you have to counter steer against that. And the neural network can't necessarily know that by looking at the picture. So you do that with other sensors and fusion and localizer. OpenPilot also is responsible for sending the data up to our servers so we can learn from it, logging it, recording it, running the cameras, thermally managing the device, managing the disk space on the device, managing all the resources on the device." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Since we last spoke, I don't remember when, maybe a year ago, maybe a little bit longer, how has OpenPilot improved?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We did exactly what I promised you. I promised you that by the end of the year, you'd be able to remove the lanes. The lateral policy is now almost completely end-to-end. You can turn the lanes off and it will drive slightly worse on the highway if you turn the lanes off, but you can turn the lanes off and it will drive well-trained, completely end-to-end on user data. And this year we hope to do the same for the longitudinal policy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the interesting thing is you're not doing, you don't appear to be, maybe you can correct me, you don't appear to be doing lane detection or lane marking detection or kind of the segmentation task or any kind of object detection task. You're doing what's traditionally more called like end-to-end learning. So, and trained on actual behavior of drivers when they're driving the car manually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And this is hard to do. You know, it's not supervised learning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but so the nice thing is there's a lot of data, so it's hard and easy, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's we have a lot of high quality data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like more than you need in a second." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we've went with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We've way more data than we need. I mean, it's it's an interesting question, actually, because in terms of amount, you have more than you need. But, you know, driving is full of edge cases. So how do you select the data you train on? I think this is an interesting open question. Like what's the cleverest way to select data? That's the question Tesla is probably working on. That's, I mean, the entirety of machine learning can be, they don't seem to really care. They just kind of select data. But I feel like that if you want to solve, if you want to create intelligent systems, you have to pick data well. Right. And so do you have any hints, ideas of how to do it well?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in some ways, that is the definition I like of reinforcement learning versus supervised learning. In supervised learning, the weights depend on the data, right? And this is obviously true, but in reinforcement learning, the data depends on the weights. Yeah. And actually both ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's poetry. That's brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So how does it know what data to turn on? Well, let it pick. We're not there yet, but that's the eventual." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're thinking this almost like a reinforcement learning framework." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're going to do RL on the world. Every time a car makes a mistake, user disengages, we train on that and do RL on the world. Ship out a new model, that's an epoch, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And for now you're not doing the Elon style promising that it's going to be fully autonomous. You really are sticking to level two. And like, it's supposed to be supervised." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it is definitely supposed to be supervised, and we enforce the fact that it's supervised. We look at our rate of improvement in disengagements. OpenPilot now has an unplanned disengagement about every 100 miles. This is up from 10 miles, like, maybe a year ago. Yeah, so maybe we've seen 10x improvement in a year, but 100 miles is still a far cry from the 100,000 you're going to need. So you're going to somehow need to get three more 10x's in there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what's your intuition? You're basically hoping that there's exponential improvement baked into the cake somewhere?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's even, I mean, 10x improvement, that's already assuming exponential, right? There's definitely exponential improvement. And I think when Elon talks about exponential, like these things, these systems are going to exponentially improve. Just exponential doesn't mean you're getting 100 gigahertz processors tomorrow, right? Like it's going to still take a while because the gap between even our best system and humans is still large." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's an interesting distinction to draw. So if you look at the way Tesla's approaching the problem, and the way you're approaching the problem, which is very different than the rest of the self-driving car world, so let's put them aside, is you're treating most of the driving tasks as a machine learning problem. And the way Tesla's approaching it is with a multi-task learning, where you break the task of driving into hundreds of different tasks, And you have this multi-headed neural network that's very good at performing each task. And there's presumably something on top that's stitching stuff together in order to make control decisions, policy decisions about how you move the car. But what that allows you, there's a brilliance to this because it allows you to... master each task, like lane detection, stop sign detection, traffic light detection, drivable area segmentation, you know, vehicle, bicycle, pedestrian detection. There's some localization tasks in there. Also predicting like yeah, predicting how the entities in the scene are gonna move. Like everything is basically a machine learning task, whether it's a classification, segmentation, prediction. And it's nice because you can have this entire engine, data engine that's mining for edge cases. for each one of these tasks, and you could have people like engineers that are basically masters of that task, and become the best person in the world at, as you talk about the cone guy for Waymo, become the best person in the world at cone detection. So that's a compelling notion from a supervised learning perspective. automating much of the process of edge case discovery and retraining neural network for each of the individual perception tasks. And then you're looking at the machine learning in a more holistic way, basically doing end-to-end learning on the driving tasks, supervised, trained on the data of the actual driving of people they use comma AI. like actual human drivers doing manual control, plus the moments of disengagement that maybe with some labeling could indicate the failure of the system. You have a huge amount of data for positive control of the vehicle, like successful control of the vehicle, both maintaining the lane, as I think you're also working on longitudinal control of the vehicle, and then failure cases where the vehicle does something wrong that needs disengagement. So like what why do you think you're right and Tesla is wrong on this? And do you think do you think you'll come around the Tesla way? Do you think Tesla will come around to your way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you were to start a chess engine company, would you hire a bishop guy?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See we have this is Monday morning quarterbacking is Yes, probably" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, our Rook guy. Oh, we stole the Rook guy from that company. Oh, we're going to have real good Rooks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's not many pieces, right? There's not many guys and gals to hire. You just have a few that work in the Bishop, a few that work in the Rook." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But is that not ludicrous today to think about in a world of AlphaZero?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But AlphaZero is a chess game. So the fundamental question is, how hard is driving compared to chess? So long-term, end-to-end, will be the right solution. The question is, how many years away is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "End-to-end's gonna be the only solution for level five." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the only way we'll get there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, and of course Tesla's gonna come around to my way. And if you're a rook guy out there, I'm sorry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The cone guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. We're gonna specialize each task. We're gonna really understand rook placement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I understand the intuition you have. I mean, that is a very compelling notion that we can learn the task end to end, like the same compelling notion you might have for natural language conversation. I'm not sure, because one thing you sneaked in there is the assertion that it's impossible to get to level five without this kind of approach. I don't know if that's obvious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if that's obvious either. I don't actually mean that. I think that it is much easier to get to level five with an end-to-end approach. I think that the other approach is doable, but the magnitude of the engineering challenge may exceed what humanity is capable of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, but what do you think of the Tesla data engine approach? Which to me is an active learning task. It's kind of fascinating. It's breaking it down into these multiple tasks and mining their data constantly for like edge cases for these different tasks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but the tasks themselves are not being learned. This is feature engineering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's a higher abstraction level of feature engineering for the different tasks. It's task engineering in a sense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's slightly better feature engineering, but it's still fundamentally is feature engineering. And if anything about the history of AI has taught us anything, it's that feature engineering approaches will always be replaced and lose to end to end. Now, to be fair, I cannot really make promises on timelines, but I can say that when you look at the code for Stockfish and the code for AlphaZero, one is a lot shorter than the other. A lot more elegant, required a lot less programmer hours to write." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but there was a lot more murder of bad agents on the AlphaZero side. By murder, I mean agents that played a game and failed miserably. In simulation, that failure is less costly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In real world, it's... Wait, do you mean in practice? Like AlphaZero has lost games miserably?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No. I haven't seen that. No, but I know, but the requirement for AlphaZero is to be able to like evolution, human evolution, not human evolution, biological evolution of life on earth from the origin of life has murdered trillions upon trillions of organisms on the path to us humans. So the question is, can we stitch together a human-like object without having to go through the entire process of evolution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, no, but do the evolution and simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's the question. Can we simulate? So do you have a sense that it's possible to simulate some... Mu zero is exactly this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Mu zero is the solution to this. Mu zero, I think, is going to be looked back as the canonical paper. And I don't think deep learning is everything. I think that there's still a bunch of things missing to get there. But mu zero, I think, is going to be looked back as the kind of cornerstone paper of this whole deep learning era, and Mu0 is the solution to self-driving cars. You have to make a few tweaks to it, but Mu0 does effectively that. It does those rollouts and those murdering in a learned simulator, in a learned dynamics model. It's interesting, it doesn't get enough love. I was blown away when I read that paper. I'm like, you know, okay, I've always had a comma. I'm going to sit and I'm going to wait for the solution to self-driving cars to come along. This year I saw it. It's Mu0." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So back and let the winning roll in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So your sense, just to elaborate a little bit, to link on the topic, your sense is neural networks will solve driving. Yes. Like we don't need anything else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the same way chess was maybe the chess and maybe Google are the pinnacle of like search algorithms and things that look kind of like a star. The pinnacle of this error is going to be self-driving cars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But on the path to that, you have to deliver products. And it's possible that the path to full self-driving cars will take decades. I doubt it. So how long would you put on it? Like what are we, you're chasing it, Tesla's chasing it. What are we talking about, five years, 10 years, 50 years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's say in the 2020s. In the 2020s? Yeah, the later part of the 2020s." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "with the neural network. That would be nice to see. And on the path to that, you're delivering products, which is a nice L2 system. That's what Tesla is doing, a nice L2 system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It just gets better every time. L2, the only difference between L2 and the other levels is who takes liability. And I'm not a liability guy. I don't want to take liability. I'm going to level two forever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now on that little transition, I mean, How do you make the transition work? Is this where driver sensing comes in? Like, how do you make the, because you said a hundred miles, like, is there some sort of human factors, psychology thing where people start to overtrust the system, all those kinds of effects. Once it gets better and better and better and better, they get lazier and lazier and lazier. Is that, like, how do you get that transition right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First off, our monitoring is already adaptive. Our monitoring has already seen adaptive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Driver monitoring, is this the camera that's looking at the driver?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have an infrared camera in the... Our policy for how we enforce the driver monitoring is scene adaptive. What's that mean? Well, for example, in one of the extreme cases, if the car is not moving, we do not actively enforce driver monitoring. If you are going through a 45-mile-an-hour road with lights and stop signs and potentially pedestrians, we enforce a very tight driver monitoring policy. If you are alone on a perfectly straight highway – and it's all machine learning, none of that is hand-coded. Actually, the stop is hand-coded." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some kind of machine learning estimation of risk. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I've always been a huge fan of that. It's difficult to do. Every step into that direction is a worthwhile step to take. It might be difficult to do really well. Like us humans are able to estimate risk pretty damn well, whatever the hell that is. That feels like one of the nice features of us humans. Because we humans are really good drivers when we're really tuned in. And we're good at estimating risk. When are we supposed to be tuned in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And people are like, oh, well, why would you ever make the driver monitoring policy less aggressive? Why would you always not keep it at its most aggressive? because then people are just gonna get fatigued from it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When they get annoyed, you want the experience to be pleasant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Obviously, I want the experience to be pleasant, but even just from a straight up safety perspective, if you alert people when they look around and they're like, why is this thing alerting me? There's nothing I could possibly hit right now. People will just learn to tune it out. People will just learn to tune it out, to put weights on the steering wheel, to do whatever to overcome it. And remember that you're always part of this adaptive system. So all I can really say about how this scales going forward is, yeah, something we have to monitor for. We don't know. This is a great psychology experiment at scale. We'll see. Yeah, it's fascinating. Track it. And making sure you have a good understanding of attention is a very key part of that psychology problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think you and I probably come to it differently, but to me, it's a fascinating psychology problem to explore something much deeper than just driving. It's such a nice way to explore human attention and human behavior, which is why, again, we've probably both criticized Mr. Elon Musk on this one topic from different avenues, both offline and online. I had little chats with Elon. I love human beings. As a computer vision problem, as an AI problem, it's fascinating. He wasn't so much interested in that problem. is like in order to solve driving, the whole point is you want to remove the human from the picture. And it seems like you can't do that quite yet. Eventually, yes, but you can't quite do that yet. So this is the moment where you can't yet say, I told you so to Tesla. But it's getting there because I don't know if you've seen this. There's some reporting that they're, in fact, starting to do driver mod." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, they ship the model on Chattanooga." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "with, I believe, only a visible light camera. It might even be fisheye. It's like a low resolution." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Low resolution, visible light. I mean, to be fair, that's what we have in the EON as well. Our last generation product. This is the one area where I can say our hardware is ahead of Tesla. The rest of our hardware, way, way behind, but our driver monitoring camera." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think, I think on the third row Tesla podcast or somewhere else, I've heard you say that Obviously, eventually, they're going to have driver monitoring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think what I've said is Elon will definitely ship driver monitoring before he ships Level 5." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Before Level 5." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I'm willing to bet 10 grand on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you bet 10 grand on that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, now I know where to take the bet. But before, maybe someone would have. I should have got my money in. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's an interesting bet. I think you're right. I'm actually on a human level, because he's been he's made the decision, like he said that driver monitoring is the wrong way to go. But like, you have to think of as a human, as a CEO, I think that's the right thing to say when Like sometimes you have to say things publicly that are different than what you actually believe because when you're producing a large number of vehicles and the decision was made not to include the camera, like what are you supposed to say? Like our cars don't have the thing that I think is right to have. Uh, it's an interesting thing, but like on the other side as a CEO, I mean, something you could probably speak to as a, as a leader, I think about me as a human, to publicly change your mind on something. How hard is that? Especially when assholes like George Haas say, I told you so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All I will say is I am not a leader and I am happy to change my mind. Do you think Elon will? Yeah, I do. I think he'll come up with a good way to make it psychologically okay for him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's such an important thing, man, especially for a first principles thinker, because he made a decision that driver monitoring is not the right way to go. And I could see that decision. And I could even make that decision. Like I was on the fence too. Like I'm not, driver monitoring is such an obvious, simple solution to the problem of attention. It's not obvious to me that just by putting a camera there, you solve things. You have to create an incredible, compelling experience, just like you're talking about. I don't know if it's easy to do that. It's not at all easy to do that, in fact, I think. So as a creator of a car that's trying to create a product that people love, which is what Tesla tries to do, right? It's not obvious to me that, you know, as a design decision, whether adding a camera is a good idea. From a safety perspective either, like in the human factors community, everybody says that, like, you should obviously have driver sensing, driver monitoring, but like that That's like saying it's obvious as parents you shouldn't let your kids go out at night. But okay. But like, they're still gonna find ways to do drugs. Like, you have to also be good parents. So like, it's much more complicated than just like, you need to have driving monitoring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I totally disagree on, okay, if you have a camera there and the camera's watching the person but never throws an alert, they'll never think about it. The driver monitoring policy that you choose to—how you choose to communicate with the user is entirely separate from the data collection perspective, right? So, you know, like, there's one thing to say, like, you know, tell your teenager they can't do something. There's another thing to, like, you know, gather the data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can make informed decisions. That's really interesting. But you have to make that. That's the interesting thing about cars. But even true with CalmAI, you don't have to manufacture the thing into the car. You have to make a decision that anticipates the right strategy long term. So you have to start collecting the data and start making decisions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Started it three years ago. I believe that we have the best driver monitoring solution in the world. I think that when you compare it to Super Cruise is the only other one that I really know that shipped and ours is better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you like and not like about Super Cruise?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I had a few SuperCruise. The sun would be shining through the window, would blind the camera, and it would say I wasn't paying attention when I was looking completely straight. I couldn't reset the attention with a steering wheel touch, and SuperCruise would disengage. I was communicating to the car. I'm like, look, I am here. I am paying attention. Why are you really going to force me to disengage? And it did. So it's a constant conversation with the user. And yeah, there's no way to ship a system like this if you can't OTA. We're shipping a new one every month. Sometimes we balance it with our users on Discord. Sometimes we make the driver monitoring a little more aggressive and people complain. Sometimes they don't. We want it to be as aggressive as possible where people don't complain and it doesn't feel intrusive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So being able to update the system over the air is an essential component. I mean, that's probably, to me, you mentioned I mean, to me, that is the biggest innovation of Tesla, that it made people realize that over-the-air updates is essential. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, was that not obvious from the iPhone? The iPhone was the first real product that OTA'd, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, that's brilliant. You're right. I mean, the game consoles used to not, right? The game consoles were maybe the second thing that did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow. I didn't really think about one of the amazing features of a smartphone. Isn't just like the touch screen isn't the thing. It's the ability to constantly update." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It gets better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love my iOS 14." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. One thing that I probably disagree with you on driver monitoring is you said that it's easy. I mean, you tend to say stuff is easy. I guess you said it's easy relative to the external perception problem. Can you elaborate why you think it's easy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Feature engineering works for driver monitoring. Feature engineering does not work for the external." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So human faces are not, human faces and the movement of human faces and head and body is not as variable as the external environment, is your intuition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and there's another big difference as well. Your reliability of a driver monitoring system doesn't actually need to be that high. The uncertainty, if you have something that's detecting whether the human's paying attention and only works 92% of the time, you're still getting almost all the benefit of that because the human, you're training the human. You're dealing with a system that's really helping you out. It's a conversation. It's not like the external thing where, guess what? If you swerve into a tree, you swerve into a tree. You get no margin for error there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think that's really well put. I think that's the right, exactly the place where comparing to the external perception and the control problem, driver monitoring is easier because the bar for success is much lower. Yeah, but I still think, like, the human face is more complicated, actually, than the external environment. But for driving, you don't give a damn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't need something that complicated to have to communicate the idea to the human that I want to communicate, which is, yo, system might mess up here. You got to pay attention." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's my love and fascination is the human face. And it feels like this is a nice place to create products that create an experience in the car. It feels like there should be more richer experiences in the car. You know, like that's an opportunity for like something like on my eye or just any kind of system like a Tesla or any of the autonomous vehicle companies is because software is, and there's much more sensors and so much is on a software and you're doing machine learning anyway. There's an opportunity to create totally new experiences that we're not even anticipating. You don't think so? Nah. You think it's a box that gets you from A to B and you want to do it? Chill." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think as soon as we get to level three on highways, okay, enjoy your Candy Crush, enjoy your Hulu, enjoy your, you know, whatever, whatever. Sure, you get this. You can look at screens basically. Versus right now, what do you have? Music and audio books." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So level three is where you can kind of disengage in stretches of time. Well, you think level three is possible? Like on the highway going 400 miles and you can just go to sleep?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. Sleep. So again, I think it's really all on a spectrum. I think that being able to use your phone while you're on the highway and like this all being okay, and being aware that the car might alert you and you have five seconds to basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the five second thing you think is possible. Yeah, I think it is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. Not in all scenarios." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Some scenarios it's not. It's the whole risk thing that you mentioned is nice, is to be able to estimate like, how risky is this situation? That's really important to understand. One other thing you mentioned comparing Kama and Autopilot is that something about the haptic feel of the way Kama controls the car when things are uncertain, like it behaves a little bit more uncertain when things are uncertain. That's kind of an interesting point. And then Autopilot is much more confident always, even when it's uncertain, until it runs into trouble. That's a funny thing. I actually mentioned that to Elon, I think, and then the first time we talked, he wasn't biting. It's like communicating uncertainty. I guess Comet doesn't really communicate uncertainty explicitly. It communicates it through haptic feel. What's the role of communicating uncertainty, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, we do some stuff explicitly. Like we do detect the lanes when you're on the highway, and we'll show you how many lanes we're using to drive with. You can look at where it thinks the lanes are. You can look at the path. And yeah, we want to be better about this. We're actually hiring, want to hire some new UI people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "UI people, you mentioned this. Cause it's such an, it's a UI problem too, right? It's." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have, we have, we have a great designer now, but you know, we need people who are just going to like build this and debug these UIs. Qt people and." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Qt. Is that what the UI is done with, is Qt? Moving, the new UI is in Qt. C++, Qt?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Tesla uses it too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We had some React stuff in there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "React.js or just React? React is its own language, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "React Native. React is a JavaScript framework. Yeah. It's all based on JavaScript, but it's, you know, I like C++." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about Dojo with Tesla and their foray into what appears to be specialized hardware for training your nets. I guess it's something maybe you can correct me for my shallow looking at it. It seems like something that Google did with TPUs, but specialized for driving data." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it's specialized for driving data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just legit, just TPU. They want to go the Apple way. Basically, everything required in the chain is done in-house." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so you have a problem right now, and this is One of my concerns, I really would like to see somebody deal with this. If anyone out there is doing it, I'd like to help them if I can. You basically have two options right now to train. Your options are NVIDIA or Google. Um, so Google is not even an option. Uh, there are TPUs are only available in Google cloud. Uh, Google has absolutely onerous terms of service restrictions. Uh, they may have changed it, but back in Google's terms of service, it said explicitly, you are not allowed to use Google cloud ML for training autonomous vehicles or for doing anything that competes with Google without Google's prior written permission. Well, okay. I mean, Google is not a platform company. I wouldn't touch TPUs with a 10-foot pole. So, that leaves you with the monopoly. NVIDIA? NVIDIA." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I mean... That you're not a fan of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, look, I was a huge fan of, in 2016, NVIDIA. Jensen Kane sat in the car. Cool guy, when the stock was $30 a share. NVIDIA stock has skyrocketed. I witnessed a real change in who was in management over there in like 2018. And now they are, let's exploit, let's take every dollar we possibly can out of this ecosystem. Let's charge $10,000 for A100s because we know we got the best shit in the game. And let's charge $10,000 for an A100 when it's really not that different from a 3080, which is $699. The margins that they are making off of those high-end chips are so high that, I mean, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot, just from a business perspective. Because there's a lot of people talking like me now, who are like, somebody's got to take NVIDIA down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Where they could dominate it. NVIDIA could be the new Intel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, to be inside everything, essentially. And yet the winners in certain spaces like autonomous driving, the winners Only the people who are like desperately falling back and trying to catch up and have a ton of money, like the big automakers, are the ones interested in partnering with NVIDIA." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, and I think a lot of those things are going to fall through. If I were NVIDIA, sell chips. Sell chips at a reasonable markup. To everybody." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To everybody. Without any restrictions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Without any restrictions. Intel did this. Look at Intel. They had a great long run. NVIDIA is trying to turn their, they're like trying to productize their chips way too much. They're trying to extract way more value than they can sustainably. Sure, you can do it tomorrow. Is it going to up your share price? Sure. If you're one of those CEOs who's like, how much can I strip mine this company? And I think, you know, and that's, what's weird about it too. Like the CEO is the founder. It's the same guy. I mean, I still think Jensen's a great guy. He is great. Why do this? You have a choice. You have a choice right now. Are you trying to cash out? Are you trying to buy a yacht? If you are, fine. But if you're trying to be the next huge semiconductor company, sell chips." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the interesting thing about Jensen is he is a big vision guy. So he has a plan for 50 years down the road. So it makes me wonder like, how does price gouging fit into it? Yeah. How does that like, it's, it doesn't seem to make sense of the plan." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I worry that he's listening to the wrong people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. That that's the sense I have too sometimes. Cause I, despite everything, I think Nvidia, is an incredible company. Well, one, I'm deeply grateful to NVIDIA for the products they've created in the past, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so... But 1080 Ti was a great GPU. Still have a lot of them. Still is, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But at the same time, it just feels like... It feels like you don't want to put all your stock in NVIDIA. And so like Elon is doing, what Tesla is doing with Autopilot and Dojo is the Apple way, because they're not going to share Dojo with George Hotz." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know, they should sell that chip. Oh, they should sell, even their accelerator, the accelerator that's in all the cars, the 30 watt one. Sell it, why not?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So open it up. Why does Tesla have to be a car company?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if you sell the chip, here's what you get. Make some money off the chips. It doesn't take away from your chip. You're going to make some money, free money. And also, the world is going to build an ecosystem of tooling for you. You're not going to have to fix the bug in your 10H layer. Someone else already did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the question, that's an interesting question. I mean, that's the question Steve Jobs asked. That's the question Elon Musk is perhaps asking is, do you want Tesla stuff inside other vehicles? Inside, potentially inside like iRobot vacuum cleaner?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you should decide where your advantages are. I'm not saying Tesla should start selling battery packs to automakers, because battery packs to automakers, they are straight up in competition with you. If I were Tesla, I'd keep the battery technology totally as is ours. We make batteries. But the thing about the Tesla TPU is anybody can build that. It's just a question of are you willing to spend the money?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It could be a huge source of revenue, potentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "willing to spend 100 million dollars, right? Anyone can build it. And someone will. And a bunch of companies now are starting trying to build AI accelerators. Somebody's going to get the idea right. And yeah, hopefully they don't get greedy because they'll just lose to the next guy who finally—and then eventually the Chinese are going to make knockoff Nvidia chips and that's" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "From your perspective, I don't know if you're also paying attention. Stay on Tesla for a moment. Dave, Elon Musk has talked about a complete rewrite of the neural net that they're using that seems to, again, I'm half paying attention, but it seems to involve basically a kind of integration of all the sensors to where It's a four-dimensional view, you know, you have a 3D model of the world over time, and then you can, I think it's done both for the, actually, you know, so the neural network is able to, in a more holistic way, deal with the world and make predictions and so on, but also to make the annotation task more, you know, easier, like you can annotate the world in one place and then kind of distribute itself across the sensors and across the different, like the hundreds of tasks that are involved in the hydranet. What are your thoughts about this rewrite? Is it just like some details that are kind of obvious that are steps that should be taken, or is there something fundamental that could challenge your idea that end-to-end is the right solution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're in the middle of a big rewrite now as well. We haven't shipped a new model in a bit. Of what kind? We're going from 2D to 3D. Right now all our stuff, like for example, when the car pitches back, the lane lines also pitch back. because we're assuming the flat world hypothesis, the new models do not do this. The new models output everything in 3D." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this- But there's still no annotation. So the 3D is more about the output. Spatial." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. We have Zs and everything. Zs? Yeah. We added the Zs. We added the Zs. We unified a lot of stuff as well. We switched from TensorFlow to PyTorch. Nice. My understanding of what Tesla's thing is, is that their annotator now annotates across the time dimension. I mean, cute. Why are you building an annotator?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I find their entire pipeline. I find your vision, I mean, the vision of end-to-end very compelling, but I also like the engineering of the data engine that they've created. In terms of supervised learning, pipelines, that thing is damn impressive. You're basically, the idea is that you have hundreds of thousands of people that are doing data collection for you by doing their experience. So that's kind of similar to the common AI model. And you're able to mine that data based on the kind of edge cases you need. I think it's harder to do in the end-to-end learning. the mining of the right edge cases. That's where feature engineering is actually really powerful because us humans are able to do this kind of mining a little better. But yeah, there's obvious, as we know, there's obvious constraints and limitations to that idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Carpathia just tweeted. He's like, you get really interesting insights if you sort your validation set by loss and look at the highest loss examples." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, I mean you can do... we have a little data engine-like thing. We're training a segnet. Anyway, it's not fancy. It's just like, OK, train the new segnet, run it on 100,000 images, and now take the thousand with highest loss. Select 100 of those by human, put those, get those ones labeled, retrain, do it again. So it's a much less well-written data engine. And yeah, you can take these things really far, and it is impressive engineering. And if you truly need supervised data for a problem, yeah, things like Data Engine are the high end of the... What is attention? Is a human paying attention? I mean, we're going to probably build something that looks like Data Engine to push our driver monitoring further. But for driving itself, you have it all annotated beautifully by what the human does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, that applies to driver attention as well. Do you want to detect the eyes? Do you want to detect blinking and pupil movement? Do you want to detect all the like face alignments, the landmark detection and so on, and then doing kind of reasoning based on that? Or do you want to take the entirety of the face over time and do end to end? I mean, it's obvious that eventually you have to do end to end with some calibration, some fixes and so on. But it's like, I don't know when that's the right move." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even if it's end to end, you have to supervise that with humans. Whether a human is paying attention or not is a completely subjective judgment. Like you can try to like automatically do it with some stuff, but you don't have, if I record a video of a human, I don't have true annotations anywhere in that video. The only way to get them is with, you know, other humans labeling it, really." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I don't know. If you think deeply about it, You might be able to, depending on the task, you might be able to discover self-annotating things like, you know, you can look at steering wheel reverses or something like that. You can discover little moments of lapse of attention. That's where psychology comes in. Is there indicate, because you have so much data to look at. So you might be able to find moments when there's like just inattention, even with smartphone, if you want to detect smartphone use. You can start to zoom in. I mean, that's the goldmine, that's sort of the comma AI. I mean, Tesla's doing this too, right? They're doing... annotation based on self-supervised learning, too. It's just a small part of the entire picture. That's kind of the challenge of solving a problem in machine learning, if you can discover self-annotating parts of the problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Our driver monitoring team is half a person right now. Half a person. You know, once we have- Skill to a full, like two people? Once we have two, three people on that team, I definitely want to look at self-annotating stuff for attention." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's go back for a sec to, uh, to a comma and what, you know, for people who are curious to try it out, how do you install a comma in say a 2020 Toyota Corolla? Or like, what are the cars that are supported? What are the cars that you recommend? And what does it take? You have a few videos out, but maybe through words, can you explain what's it take to actually install the thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we support, I think it's 91 cars, 91 makes and models. We'll get to 100 this year. Nice. Yeah, the 2020 Corolla, great choice. The 2020 Sonata, it's using the stock longitudinal. It's using just our lateral control, but it's a very refined car. Their longitudinal control is not bad at all. So yeah. Corolla, Sonata, or if you're willing to get your hands a little dirty and look in the right places on the internet, the Honda Civic is great, but you're going to have to install a modified EPS firmware in order to get a little bit more torque. And I can't help you with that, Kama does not officially endorse that, but we have been doing it, we didn't ever release it, we waited for someone else to discover it, and then, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you have a Discord server where people, there's a very active developer community, I suppose. So depending on the level of experimentation you're willing to do, that's a community." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you just want to buy it and you have a supported car, it's 10 minutes to install. There's YouTube videos, it's Ikea furniture level. If you can set up a table from Ikea, you can install a Comma 2 in your supported car and it will just work. Now you're like, oh, but I want this high-end feature or I want to fix this bug." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, well, welcome to the developer community. This is something I asked you offline like a few months ago. If I wanted to run my own code, so use comma as a platform and try to run something like OpenPilot, what does it take to do that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a toggle in the settings called Enable SSH. And if you toggle that, you can SSH into your device, you can modify the code, you can upload whatever code you want to it. there's a whole lot of people so about 60% of people are running stock comma about 40% of people are running forks and there's a community of there's a bunch of people who maintain these forks and these forks support different cars or they have you know different toggles we try to keep away from the toggles that are like disabled or ever monitoring but you know there's some people might want that kind of thing and like you know yeah you can it's your car it's your i'm not here to tell you you know We have some, you know, we ban, if you're trying to subvert safety features, you're banned from our discord. I don't want anything to do with you, but there's some forks doing that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it. So you encourage responsible forking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Some people like there's forks that will do. Some people just like having a lot of readouts on the UI, like a lot of flashing numbers. So there's forks that do that. Some people don't like the fact that it disengages when you press the gas pedal. There's forks that disable that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it. Now, the stock experience is what? So it does both lane keeping and longitudinal control all together, so it's not separate like it is in Autopilot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. So OK, some cars, we use the stock longitudinal control. We don't do the longitudinal control in all the cars. Some cars, the ACCs are pretty good in the cars. It's the lane keep that's atrocious in anything except for Autopilot and Super Cruise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you just turn it on, and it works. What does disengagement look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So we have, I mean, I'm very concerned about mode confusion. I've experienced it on supercruise and autopilot where like autopilot, like autopilot disengages. I don't realize that the ACC is still on the lead car moves slightly over. And then the Tesla accelerates to like, whatever my set speed is super fast. I'm like, what's going on here? We have engaged and disengaged. And this is similar to my understanding. I'm not a pilot, but my understanding is either the pilot is in control or the co-pilot is in control. And we have the same kind of transition system. Either open pilot is engaged or open pilot is disengaged. Engage with cruise control, disengage with either gas, brake, or cancel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's talk about money. What's the business strategy for Karma?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Profitable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so you're, so congratulations. Uh, what, uh, so basically selling, so we should say comma cost, uh, a thousand bucks coming to 200 for the interface to the car as well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's 1200. I'll send that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nobody's usually up front like this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you gotta add the tack on, right? Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it. I'm not gonna lie to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Trust me, it will add $1,200 of value to your life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, it's still super cheap." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "30 days, no questions asked, money back guarantee, and prices are only going up. If there ever is future hardware, it could cost a lot more than $1,200." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Tacoma 3 is in the works." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It could be. All I will say is future hardware is going to cost a lot more than the current hardware." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the people that use, the people I've spoken with that use Kama, that use OpenPilot, they, first of all, they use it a lot. So people that use it, they fall in love with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, our retention rate is insane." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is a good sign. Yeah. It's a really good sign." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "70% of Kama 2 buyers are daily active users. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, also, we don't plan on stopping selling the Comma 2. Like, it's, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So whatever you create that's beyond Comma 2, it would be, it would be potentially a phase shift. Like, it's so much better that, like, you could use Comma 2 and you can use Comma whatever. Depends what you want. It's kind of, it's kind of. 3.41, 42." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. You know, autopilot, hardware 1 versus hardware 2. Got it. The Comma 2 is kind of like hardware 1. Got it, got it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can still use both. Got it, got it. I think I heard you talk about retention rate with VR headsets that the average is just once. I mean, it's such a fascinating way to think about technology. And this is a really, really good sign. And the other thing that people say about Calm is like, they can't believe they're getting this for a thousand bucks, right? It seems like some kind of steal. So, but in terms of like long-term business strategies that basically to put, so it's currently in like a thousand plus cars. 1,200?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "More. So yeah, dailies is about 2,000. Weekly is about 2,500. Monthly is over 3,000. Wow. We've grown a lot since we last talked." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we talk crazy for a second? I mean, what's the goal to overtake Tesla?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, Android did overtake iOS." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's exactly it, right? Yeah. They did it, I actually don't know the timeline of that one. But let's talk, because everything is in alpha now. The autopilot, you could argue, is in alpha in terms of towards the big mission of autonomous driving, right? And so what, yes, your goal to overtake, to get millions of cars, essentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Where would it stop? Like it's open source software. It might not be millions of cars with a piece of comma hardware, but yeah, I think OpenPilot at some point will cross over Autopilot in users, just like Android crossed over iOS." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How does Google make money from Android? It's complicated. Their own devices make money." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Google makes money by just kind of having you on the internet. Google Search is built in, Gmail is built in. Android is just a shill for the rest of Google's ecosystem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but the problem is Android is a brilliant thing. I mean, Android arguably changed the world. So there you go. You can feel good, ethically speaking. But as a business strategy, it's questionable." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or sell hardware." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sell hardware." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it took Google a long time to come around to it, but they are now making money on the Pixel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're not about money, you're more about winning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, of course. No, but if only 10% of OpenPilot devices come from Kama AI... They still make a lot. That is still, yes. That is a ton of money for our company." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But can't somebody create a better Kama using OpenPilot? Or are you basically saying, well, I'll compete them? Well, I'll compete you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can you create a better Android phone than the Google Pixel? Right. I can, but like, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love that. So you're confident, like, you know what the hell you're doing. Yeah. It's, it's a competence and merit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, our money, yeah, our money comes from, we're a consumer electronics company. Yeah. And put it this way. So we sold, we sold like 3,000 Commodores. 2,500 right now. And like, OK, we're probably going to sell 10,000 units next year. 10,000 units? Even just $1,000 a unit? OK, we're at $10 million in revenue. Get that up to $100,000, maybe double the price of the unit. Now we're talking like $200 million in revenue. We're talking like serious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're actually making money. One of the rare semi-autonomous or autonomous vehicle companies that are actually making money. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at a model, and we were just talking about this yesterday, if you look at a model and you're testing, like you're A-B testing your model, and if you're one branch of the A-B test, the losses go down very fast in the first five epochs, that model is probably going to converge to something considerably better than the one where the losses are going down slower. Why do people think this is going to stop? Why do people think one day there's going to be a great, like, well, Waymo's eventually going to surpass you guys? Well, they're not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see like a world where like a Tesla or a car like a Tesla would be able to basically press a button and you like switch to open pilot? You know, you load in? I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think so. First off, I think that we may surpass Tesla in terms of users. I do not think we're going to surpass Tesla ever in terms of revenue. I think Tesla can capture a lot more revenue per user than we can. But this mimics the Android iOS model exactly. There may be more Android devices, but there's a lot more iPhones than Google Pixels. So I think there'll be a lot more Tesla cars sold than pieces of comma hardware. And then as far as a Tesla owner being able to switch to OpenPilot, does iOS, does iPhones run Android?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but it doesn't make sense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can if you really want to do it, but it doesn't really make sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It doesn't make sense. Who cares? What about if a large company like automakers, Ford, GM, Toyota came to George Haas or on the tech space, Amazon, Facebook, Google came with a large pile of cash? Would would you consider being purchased? Do you see that as a one possible?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not seriously, no. I would probably see how much shit they'll entertain from me. And if they're willing to jump through a bunch of my hoops, then maybe. But no, not the way that M&A works today. I mean, we've been approached. And I laugh in these people's faces. I'm like, are you kidding? You know, because it's so demeaning. The M&A people are so demeaning to companies. They treat the startup world as their innovation ecosystem. And they think that I'm cool with going along with that so I can have some of their scam, fake Fed dollars. You know, Fed coin. What am I gonna do with more Fed coin? You know, coin coin, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love that. So that's the cool thing about podcasting, actually, is people criticize. I don't know if you're familiar with the Spotify giving Joe Rogan 100 million. It's all about that. And, you know, they respect it despite all the shit that people are talking about Spotify. people understand that podcasters like Joe Rogan know what the hell they're doing. So they give them money and say, just do what you do. And like the equivalent for you would be like, George, do what the hell you do. Cause you're good at it. Try not to murder too many people. Like try, like there's some kind of common sense things like just don't go on a weird," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "rampage of... Yeah, it comes down to what companies I could respect, right? You know, could I respect GM? Never. No, I couldn't. I mean, could I respect like a Hyundai? More so, right? That's a lot closer. Toyota? Nah, Korean is the way. I think that, you know, the Japanese, the Germans, the US, they're all too, you know, they all think they're too great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the tech companies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Apple? Apple is, of the tech companies that I could respect, Apple's the closest. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I could never... It would be ironic if common AI is acquired by Apple." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, Facebook. Look, I quit Facebook 10 years ago because I didn't respect their business model. Google has declined so fast in the last five years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are your thoughts about Waymo and its present and its future? Let me start by saying something nice, which is I've visited them a few times and have ridden in their cars. And the engineering that they're doing, both the research and the actual development and the engineering they're doing, and the scale they're actually achieving by doing it all themselves is really impressive. And the balance of safety and innovation. And the cars work really well for the routes they drive. They drive fast. which was very surprising to me. Like it drives like the speed limit or faster than the speed limit it goes. And it works really damn well. And the interface is nice. In Chandler, Arizona. Yeah. Yeah. In Chandler, Arizona, very specific environment. So it, I, you know, it gives me enough material in my mind to push back against the madmen of the world, like a George Hotz to be like, Because you kind of imply there's zero probability they're going to win. And after I've written in it, to me it's not zero." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it's not for technology reasons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Bureaucracy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's worse than that. It's actually for product reasons, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, you think they're just not capable of creating an amazing product?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think that the product that they're building doesn't make sense. So, a few things. You say the Waymos are fast. Benchmark a Waymo against a competent Uber driver. Right. The Uber driver's faster." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's not even about speed. It's the thing you said. It's about the experience of being stuck at a stop sign because pedestrians are crossing nonstop." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like when my Uber driver doesn't come to a full stop at the stop sign, you know? Let's say the Waymos are 20% slower than an Uber, right? You can argue that they're gonna be cheaper. And I argue that users already have the choice to trade off money for speed. It's called Uber Pool. I think it's like 15% of rides are Uber Pools, right? Users are not willing to trade off money for speed. So the whole product that they're building is not going to be competitive with traditional ride sharing networks. And also, whether there's profit to be made depends entirely on one company having a monopoly. I think that the level four autonomous ride sharing vehicles market is gonna look a lot like the scooter market, if even the technology does come to exist, which I question. Who's doing well in that market? It's a race to the bottom, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it could be closer to like an Uber and a Lyft, where it's just a one or two players." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the scooter people have given up trying to market scooters as a practical means of transportation. And they're just like, they're super fun to ride. Look at wheels. I love those things. And they're great on that front. But from an actual transportation product perspective, I do not think scooters are viable. And I do not think level four autonomous cars are viable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you, let's play a fun experiment. If you ran, let's do a Tesla and let's do Waymo. If Elon Musk took a vacation for a year, he just said, screw it, I'm going to go live on an island, no electronics. And the board decides that we need to find somebody to run the company. And they decide that you should run the company for a year. How do you run Tesla differently?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't change much. Do you think they're on the right track? I wouldn't change. I mean, I'd have some minor changes, but even even my debate with Tesla about, you know, end to end versus segnets. Like, that's just software, who cares, right? Like, it's not gonna, it's not like you're doing something terrible with segnets. You're probably building something that's at least gonna help you debug the end-to-end system a lot, right? It's very easy to transition from what they have to like an end-to-end kind of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then I presume you would, you know, in the Model Y or maybe in the Model 3 started adding driver sensing with infrared. Yes, I would add infrared lights right away to those cars. And start collecting that data and do all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Very much. I think they're already kind of doing it. It's an incredibly minor change. If I actually were CEO of Tesla, first off, I'd be horrified that I wouldn't be able to do a better job as Elon. And then I would try to, you know, understand the way he's done things before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You would also have to take over his Twitter. So. I don't tweet. Yeah. What's your Twitter situation? Why, why, why are you so quiet on Twitter? I mean, the comma is like, what, what's your social network presence like? Cause you, you on Instagram, you're you, you do live streams. You're, you're, you're, um, you understand the music of the internet, but you don't always fully engage into it. You're part time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I used to have a Twitter. Yeah, I mean, it's, Instagram is a pretty place. Instagram is a beautiful place. It glorifies beauty. I like Instagram's values as a network. Twitter glorifies conflict, glorifies, you know, like, like, like, like, you know, shots, taking shots at people. And it's like, you know, Twitter and Donald Trump are perfectly, they're perfect for each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Tesla's on the right track in your view. Yeah. OK, so let's try, let's really try this experiment. If you ran Waymo, let's say they're, I don't know if you agree, but they seem to be at the head of the pack of the kind of, what would you call that approach? Like it's not necessarily LiDAR based because it's not about LiDAR. Level 4 Robotaxi. Level 4 Robotaxi, all in before making any revenue. So they're probably at the head of the pack. If you were said, hey, George, can you please run this company for a year? How would you change it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would go, I would get Anthony Lewandowski out of jail, and I would put him in charge of the company." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's try to break that apart. Do you want to destroy the company by doing that? Or do you mean you like renegade style thinking that pushes, that like throws away bureaucracy and goes to first principle thinking? What do you mean by that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think Anthony Levandowski is a genius. And I think he would come up with a much better idea of what to do with Waymo than me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mean that unironically, he is a genius?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. Without a doubt. I mean, I'm not saying there's no shortcomings, but in the interactions I've had with him, yeah. He's also willing to take, like, who knows what he would do with Waymo. I mean, he's also out there, like far more out there than I am." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's big risks. What do you make of him? I was going to talk to him on this podcast and I was going back and forth. I'm such a gullible, naive human. Like, I see the best in people. And I slowly started to realize that there might be some people out there that like have multiple faces to the world. They're like deceiving and dishonest. I still refuse to like I just I trust people and I don't care if I get hurt by it. But like, you know, sometimes you have to be a little bit careful, especially platform wise and podcast wise. What what am I supposed to think? So you think you think he's a good person?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I don't know. I don't really make moral judgments. And it's difficult to- I mean this about the Waymo. Actually, I mean that whole idea very non-ironically about what I would do. The problem with putting me in charge of Waymo is Waymo is already $10 billion in the hole, right? Whatever idea Waymo does, look, comm is profitable, comm has raised $8.1 million. That's small, you know, that's small money. Like I can build a reasonable consumer electronics company and succeed wildly at that and still never be able to pay back Waymo's 10 billion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think the basic idea with Waymo, well, forget the 10 billion, because they have some backing, but your basic thing is like, what can we do to start making some money?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, no, I mean, my bigger idea is like, whatever the idea is that's gonna save Waymo, I don't have it. It's gonna have to be a big risk idea, and I cannot think of a better person than Anthony Lewandowski to do it. So that is completely what I would do as CEO of Waymo. I would call myself a transitionary CEO, do everything I can to fix that situation up. Uh, yeah. Because I can't, I can't do it, right? Like, I can't, I can't. I mean, I can talk about how what I really want to do is just apologize for all those corny, uh, you know, ad campaigns and be like, here's the real state of the technology. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like I have several criticism. I'm a little bit more bullish on Waymo than you seem to be. But one criticism I have is it went into corny mode too early. Like it's still a startup. It hasn't delivered on anything. So it should be like more renegade. and show off the engineering that they're doing, which just can be impressive, as opposed to doing these weird commercials of like, your friendly car company." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's my biggest snipe at Waymo was always, that guy's a paid actor. That guy's not a Waymo user, he's a paid actor. Look here, I found his call sheet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do kind of like what SpaceX is doing with the rocket launches. Just put the nerds up front, put the engineers up front, and just show failures too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love SpaceX's, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the thing that they're doing is right. It just feels like the right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're all so excited to see them succeed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can't wait to see what it won't fail, you know? You lie to me, I want you to fail. You tell me the truth, you be honest with me, I want you to succeed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and that requires the renegade CEO, right? I'm with you. I'm with you. I still have a little bit of faith in Waymo for the renegade CEO to step forward, but. It's not. It's not John Krafcik. Yeah, it's you can't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not Chris Olmstead. And those people may be very good at certain things. Yeah, but they're not renegades." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because these companies are fundamentally, even though we're talking about billion dollars, all these crazy numbers, they're still like early stage startups." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I just, if you are pre-revenue and you've raised $10 billion, I have no idea. Like this just doesn't work. You know, it's against everything Silicon Valley. Where's your minimum viable product? Where's your users? What's your growth numbers? This is traditional Silicon Valley. Why do you not apply it to what you think you're too big to fail already?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you think autonomous driving will change society? So the mission is, comma, to solve self-driving. Do you have like a vision of the world of how it'll be different? Is it as simple as A to B transportation? Or is there like, because these are robots." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not about autonomous driving in and of itself. It's what the technology enables. I think it's the coolest applied AI problem. I like it because it has a clear path to monetary value. But as far as that being the thing that changes the world, I mean, no. Like, there's cute things we're doing in common. Like, who'd have thought you could stick a phone on the windshield and it'll drive? But like, really, the product that you're building is not something that people were not capable of imagining 50 years ago. So no, it doesn't change the world on that front. Could people have imagined the internet 50 years ago? Only true genius visionaries. Everyone could have imagined autonomous cars 50 years ago. It's like a car, but I don't drive it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I have this sense. And I told you, my long-term dream is robots with whom you have deep connections. And there's different trajectories towards that. And I've been thinking of launching a startup. I see autonomous vehicles as a potential trajectory to that. That's not where the direction I would like to go. But I also see Tesla or even common AI pivoting into robotics broadly defined at some stage in the way, like you're mentioning, the internet didn't expect." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's solve, when I say a comma about this, we could talk about this, but let's solve self-driving cars first. You gotta stay focused on the mission. Don't, don't, don't. You're not too big to fail. For however much I think calm is winning, like, no, no, no, no, no. You're winning when you solve level five self-driving cars. And until then you haven't win and won. And you know, again, you want to be arrogant in the face of other people? Great. You want to be arrogant in the face of nature? You're an idiot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Stay mission focused, brilliantly put. Like I mentioned, thinking of launching a startup, I've been considering, actually before COVID, I've been thinking of moving to San Francisco." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I wouldn't go there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So why is, well, and now I'm thinking about potentially Austin, and we're in San Diego now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "San Diego, come here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So why, what, I mean, you're such an interesting human. You've launched so many successful things. What, Why San Diego? What do you recommend? Why not San Francisco? Have you thought, so in your case, San Diego with Qualcomm and Snapdragon, I mean, that's an amazing combination, but- That wasn't really why. That wasn't the why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I mean, Qualcomm was an afterthought. Qualcomm was, it was a nice thing to think about. It's like, you can have a tech company here, a good one. I mean, you know, I like Qualcomm, but no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so why San Diego better than San Francisco? Why does San Francisco suck?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so, okay, so first off, we all kind of said, like, we want to stay in California. People like the ocean, you know, California for its flaws. It's like a lot of the flaws of California are not necessarily California as a whole, and they're much more San Francisco specific. Yeah. San Francisco, so I think first-tier cities in general have stopped wanting growth. Well, you have like in San Francisco, you know, the voting class always votes to not build more houses because they own all the houses. And they're like, well, you know, once people have figured out how to vote themselves more money, they're going to do it. It is so insanely corrupt. It is not balanced at all, like political party-wise. You know, it's a one-party city." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For all the discussion of diversity, it stops lacking real diversity of thought, of background, of approaches, of strategies, of ideas. It's kind of a strange place. It's the loudest people about diversity and the biggest lack of diversity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, that's what they say, right? It's the projection. Projection, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's interesting. And even people in Silicon Valley tell me that's like high up people, everybody is like, this is a terrible place. It doesn't make sense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, and coronavirus is really what killed it. San Francisco was the number one exodus during coronavirus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We still think San Diego is a good place to be. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, we'll see. We'll see what happens with California a bit longer term. Yeah, like Austin's an interesting choice. I don't have really anything bad to say about Austin either, except for the extreme heat in the summer, which, you know, but that's like very on the surface, right? I think as far as like an ecosystem goes, it's cool. I personally love Colorado. Colorado's great. Yeah, I mean, you have these states that are, you know, like just way better run. California is, you know, especially San Francisco, it's on its high horse and like, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you for advice to me and to others about what's it take to build a successful startup?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I don't know. I haven't done that. Talk to someone who did that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you know, this is like another book of yours that I'll buy for sixty seven dollars, I suppose." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's one of these days I'll sell out. Yeah, that's right. Jail breaks are going to be a dollar and books are going to be 67." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How I jailbroke the iPhone by George Hotz. That's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How I jailbroke the iPhone, and you can too, by George Hotz." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In 21 days." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, that's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh God, okay, I can't wait. So you have an introspective, you have built, a very unique company. I mean, not not you, but you and others. But I don't know. There's no there's nothing you have an interest, but you haven't really sat down and thought about like, well, like if you and I were having a bunch of we're having some beers and you're seeing that I'm depressed and whatever, I'm struggling. There's no advice you can give." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I mean, more beer. I think it's all very like situation dependent. Um, here's, okay. If I can give a generic piece of advice, it's the technology always wins. The better technology always wins and lying always loses. Build technology and don't lie." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm with you, I agree very much. The long run, long run, sure. It's the long run, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know what? The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solid. True fact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, this is an interesting point because I ethically and just as a human believe that hype and smoke and mirrors is not at any stage of the company is a good strategy. I mean, there's some like, you know, PR magic kind of like, you know. You want a new product, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If there's a call to action, if there's like a call to action, like buy my new GPU, look at it, it takes up three slots and it's this big, it's huge, buy my GPU." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's great. If you look at, you know, especially in that, in the AI space broadly, but autonomous vehicles, like you can raise a huge amount of money on nothing. And the question to me is like, I'm against that. I'll never be part of that, I don't think. I hope not. Willingly not. But like, is there something to be said to essentially lying to raise money, like fake it till you make it kind of thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, this is Billy McFarland and the Fyre Festival. We all experienced what happens with that. No, no, don't fake it till you make it. Be honest and hope you make it the whole way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The technology wins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, the technology wins. And there is, I'm not, I used to like the anti-hype, that's a Slava KPSS reference, but there is, Hype isn't necessarily bad. I loved camping out for the iPhones. And as long as the hype is backed by substance, as long as it's backed by something I can actually buy and it's real, then hype is great and it's a great feeling. It's when the hype is backed by lies that it's a bad feeling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, a lot of people call Elon Musk a fraud. How could he be a fraud? I've noticed this kind of interesting effect, which is, he does tend to over promise and deliver. What's the better way to phrase it? Promise a timeline that he doesn't deliver on, he delivers much later on. What do you think about that? Because I do that, I think that's a programmer thing too. I do that as well. You think that's a really bad thing to do or is that OK?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's again, as long as like you're working toward it and you're going to deliver on it, it's not too far off. Right. Right. Like like. You know, the whole autonomous vehicle thing, it's like, I mean, I still think Tesla's on track to beat us. I still think even with their missteps, they have advantages we don't have. Elon is better than me at marshalling massive amounts of resources. So, you know, I still think given the fact they're maybe making some wrong decisions, they'll end up winning. And it's fine to hype it if you're actually going to win. If Elon says, look, we're going to be landing rockets back on Earth in a year and it takes four, He landed a rocket back on earth and he was working toward it the whole time. I think there's some amount of like, I think when it becomes wrong is if you know you're not gonna meet that deadline, if you're lying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's brilliantly put. Like this is what people don't understand, I think. Like Elon believes everything he says." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He does. As far as I can tell, he does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I detected that in myself too. Like if I, it's only bullshit if you're like conscious of yourself lying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Now, you can't take that to such an extreme, right? Like, in a way, I think maybe Billy McFarland believed everything he said, too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. That's how you start a cult, and everybody kills themselves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. Like, if there's, like, some factor on it, it's fine, and you need some people to, like, you know, keep you in check. But, like, if you deliver on most of the things you say and just the timelines are off, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It does piss people off though. I wonder, but who cares? In a long arc of history, the people, everybody gets pissed off at the people who succeed, which is one of the things that frustrates me about this world is they don't celebrate the success of others. Like, there's so many people that want Elon to fail. It's so fascinating to me. Like, what is wrong with you? Like, so Elon Musk talks about like people short, like they talk about financial, but I think it's much bigger than the financials. I've seen like the human factors community. They want, they want other people to fail. Why, why, why? Like even people, the harshest thing is like, you know, even people that like seem to really hate Donald Trump, they want him to fail. Or like the other president where they want Barack Obama to fail. It's like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're all on the same boat, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's weird, but I would love to inspire that part of the world to change because, damn it, if the human species is going to survive, we should celebrate success. It seems like the efficient thing to do in this objective function that we're all striving for is to celebrate the ones that figure out how to do better at that objective function, as opposed to dragging them down back into the mud." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there is, this is the speech I always give about the commenters on Hacker News. So first off, something to remember about the internet in general is commenters are not representative of the population. I don't comment on anything. Commenters are representative of a certain sliver of the population. And on Hacker News, a common thing I'll see is when you'll see something that's like, promises to be wild out there and innovative. There is some amount of, you know, checking them back to earth, but there's also some amount of, if this thing succeeds, well, I'm 36 and I've worked at large tech companies my whole life. They can't succeed. Because if they succeed, that would mean that I could have done something different with my life. But we know that I couldn't have, we know that I couldn't have, and that's why they're gonna fail. And they have to root for them to fail to kind of maintain their world image. So tune it out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they comment, well, it's hard. I so one of the things one of the things I'm considering startup wise is to change that, because I think the I think it's also a technology problem. It's a platform problem. I agree. It's like because the thing you said, most people don't comment. I think most people want to comment. They just don't because it's all the assholes who are commenting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't want to be grouped in with them on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't want to be at a party where everyone is an asshole. But that's a platform's problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can't believe what Reddit's become. I can't believe the groupthink in Reddit comments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a, Reddit's an interesting one because they're subreddits. And so you can still see, especially small subreddits, that are little havens of joy and positivity and deep, even disagreement, but nuanced discussion. But it's only small little pockets. But that's emergent. The platform is not helping that or hurting that. So I guess naturally, something about the internet, if you don't put in a lot of effort to encourage nuance and positive, good vibes, it's naturally going to decline into chaos." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would love to see someone do this well. Yeah. I think it's, yeah, very doable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think actually, so I feel like Twitter could be overthrown." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Joshua Bach talked about how if you have like and retweet, that's only positive wiring. The only way to do anything negative there is with a comment. And that asymmetry is what gives Twitter its particular toxicness. Whereas I find YouTube comments to be much better. Because YouTube comments have an up and a down, and they don't show the downvotes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Without getting into depth of this particular discussion, the point is to explore possibilities and get a lot of data on it. Because, I mean, I could disagree with what you just said. The point is it's unclear. It hasn't been explored in a really rich way. Like these questions of how to create platforms that encourage positivity. Yeah, I think it's a technology problem. And I think we'll look back at Twitter as it is now. Maybe it'll happen within Twitter, but most likely somebody overthrows them. We'll look back at Twitter and say, can't believe we put up with this level of toxicity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You need a different business model too. Any social network that fundamentally has advertising as a business model, this was in The Social Dilemma, which I didn't watch, but I liked it. It's like, you know, there's always the, you know, you're the product, you're not the, They had a nuanced take on it that I really liked, and it said, the product being sold is influence over you. The product being sold is literally your influence on you. That can't be. If that's your idea, OK, well, guess what? It cannot be toxic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, maybe there's ways to spin it, like with giving a lot more control to the user and transparency to see what is happening to them as opposed to in the shadows. It's possible, but that can't be the primary source." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the users aren't. No one's going to use that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It depends. It depends. It depends." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that you're not going to, you can't depend on self-awareness of the users." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a longer discussion because you can't depend on it, but you can reward self-awareness. Like if for the ones who are willing to put in the work of self-awareness, you can reward them and incentivize and perhaps be pleasantly surprised how many people are willing to be self-aware on the internet. Like we are in real life. I'm putting in a lot of effort with you right now, being self-aware about if I say something stupid or mean, I'll look at your body language. I'm putting in that effort. It's costly. For an introvert, it's very costly. But on the internet, Fuck it. Most people are like, I don't care if this hurts somebody. I don't care if this is not interesting or if this is mean or whatever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so much of the engagement today on the internet is so disingenuine too. You're not doing this out of a genuine, this is what you think. You're doing this just straight up to manipulate others. You just became an ad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. OK, let's talk about a fun topic, which is programming. Here's another book idea for you. Let me pitch. What's your perfect programming setup? So like this by George Haas. So like what? What?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Listen, you're giving me a MacBook Air sitting in a corner of a hotel room and, you know, I'll still have so you really don't care." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't fetishize like multiple monitors, keyboard," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those things are nice and I'm not going to say no to them, but did they automatically unlock tons of productivity? No, not at all. I have definitely been more productive on a MacBook Air in a corner of a hotel room." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about IDE? So which operating system do you love? What text editor do you use, IDE? Is there something that is like the perfect, if you could just say the perfect productivity setup for George Harts. It doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It really doesn't matter. You know, I guess I code most of the time in Vim. Like literally I'm using an editor from the seventies. You know, you didn't make anything better. Okay, VS Code is nice for reading code. There's a few things that are nice about it. I think that there you can build much better tools. How like IDA's xrefs work way better than VS Codes, why?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, actually, that's a good question. Like why? I still use, sorry, Emacs for most. I've actually never, I have to confess something dark. So I've never used BIM. I think maybe I'm just afraid that my life has been like a waste. I'm so, I'm not evangelical about Emacs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is how I feel about TensorFlow versus PyTorch. Having just like, we've switched everything to PyTorch now, but months into the switch, I have felt like I've wasted years on TensorFlow. I can't believe it. I can't believe how much better PyTorch is. I've used Emacs and Vim, doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's still just my heart somehow. I fell in love with Lisp. I don't know why. You can't. The heart wants what the heart wants. I don't understand it, but it just connected with me. Maybe it's the functional language at first I connected with. Maybe it's because so many of the AI courses before the deep learning revolution were taught with Lisp in mind. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I'm stuck with it. But at the same time, like, why am I not using a modern ID for some of these programming? I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're not that much better. I've used modern IDs too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But at the same time, not to disagree with you, but I like multiple monitors. I have to do work on a laptop, and it's a pain in the ass. And also, I'm addicted to the Kinesis weird keyboard that you can see there. Yeah, so you don't have any of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can just be on a MacBook. I mean, look at work. I have three 24-inch monitors. I have a happy hacking keyboard. I have a Razer DeathAdder mouse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's not essential for you. Let's go to a day in the life of George Hotz. What is the perfect day productivity wise? So we're not talking about like, Hunter S. Thompson, drugs. And let's look at productivity. Like what's the day look like? Like hour by hour? Is there any regularities that create a magical George Hotz experience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can remember three days in my life, and I remember these days vividly, when I've gone through kind of radical transformations to the way I think. And what I would give, I would pay $100,000 if I could have one of these days tomorrow. The days have been so impactful. And one was first discovering Eliezer Yudkowsky on the singularity and reading that stuff. And like, you know, my mind was blown. The next was discovering the Hutter Prize and that AI is just compression. like finally understanding AIXI and what all of that was. You know, I like read about it when I was 18, 19, I didn't understand it. And then the fact that like lossless compression implies intelligence, the day that I was shown that. And then the third one is controversial. The day I found a blog called Unqualified Reservations and read that and I was like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait, which one is that? That's, what's the guy's name? Curtis Yarvin. Yeah. So many people tell me I'm supposed to talk to him. He sounds insane or brilliant, but insane or both, I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The day I found that blog was another like, this was during like Gamergate and kind of the run up to the 2016 election. And I'm like, wow, okay, the world makes sense now. I had a framework now to interpret this, just like I got the framework for AI and a framework to interpret technological progress. Those days when I discovered these new frameworks were," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, interesting. So it's not about... But what was special about those days? How did those days come to be? Is it just you got lucky? Sure. You just encountered a Hutter Prize on Hacker News or something like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you see, I don't think it's just... See, I don't think it's just that I could have gotten lucky at any point. I think that in a way... You were ready at that moment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, exactly. To receive the information. But is there some magic to the day today of like, like eating breakfast? And it's the mundane things? Yeah, nothing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now I drift through I drift through life without structure. I drift through life hoping and praying that I will get another day like those days." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's nothing in particular you do to to be a receptacle for another for day number four?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. I didn't do anything to get the other ones, so I don't think I have to really do anything now. I took a month-long trip to New York, and the Ethereum thing was the highlight of it, but the rest of it was pretty terrible. I did a two-week road trip, and I had to turn around. I had to turn around. I'm driving in Gunnison, Colorado. I pass through Gunnison, and the snow starts coming down. There's a pass up there called Monarch Pass. In order to get through to Denver, you got to get over the Rockies. And I had to turn my car around. I watched a F-150 go off the road. I'm like, I gotta go back. And that day was meaningful, because it was real. I actually had to turn my car around. It's rare that anything even real happens in my life. Even as, you know, mundane as the fact that, yeah, there was snow, I had to turn around, stay in Gunnison, and leave the next day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something about that moment felt real. Okay, so, actually, it's interesting to break apart the three moments you mentioned, if it's okay. So, I always have trouble pronouncing his name, but Alowser-Yurkowski. Yeah. So what, How did your worldview change in starting to consider the exponential growth of AI and AGI that he thinks about and the threats of artificial intelligence and all that kind of ideas? Can you maybe break apart what exactly was so magical to you? Was it a transformational experience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Today, everyone knows him for threats and AI safety. Um, this was pre that stuff. There was, I don't think a mention of AI safety on the page. Um, this is, this is old. You can ask yourself, he'd probably denounce it all now. He'd probably be like, that's exactly what I didn't want to happen. Sorry, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Uh, is there something specific you can take from his work that you can remember?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Uh, it was this realization that Computers double in power every 18 months, and humans do not, and they haven't crossed yet, but if you have one thing that's doubling every 18 months, and one thing that's staying like this, you know, here's your log graph, here's your line, you know, you calculate that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And did that open the door to the exponential thinking? Like thinking that like, you know what, with technology, we can actually transform the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It opened the door to human obsolescence. It opened the door to realize that in my lifetime, humans are going to be replaced." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, I'm torn. I go back and forth on what I think about it. But the basic thesis is it's a nice compelling notion that we can reduce the task of creating an intelligent system, a generally intelligent system, into the task of compression. So you can think of all of intelligence in the universe, in fact, as a kind of compression. Do you find that, was that just at the time you found that as a compelling idea, or do you still find that a compelling idea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I still find that a compelling idea. I think that it's not that useful day to day, but actually one of maybe my quests before that was a search for the definition of the word intelligence. And I never had one. And I definitely have a definition of the word compression. It's a very simple, straightforward one. And you know what compression is? You know what lossless is? Lossless compression, not lossy. Lossless compression. And that that is equivalent to intelligence, which I believe, I'm not sure how useful that definition is day to day, but like, I now have a framework to understand what it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he just 10Xed the prize for that competition, like recently, a few months ago. You ever thought of taking a crack at that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I did. Oh, I did. I spent the next, after I found the prize, I spent the next six months of my life trying it, and well, that's when I started learning everything about AI, and then I worked at Vicarious for a bit, and then I read all the deep learning stuff, and I'm like, okay, now I'm caught up to modern AI. And I had a really good framework to put it all in from the compression stuff, right? Like some of the first deep learning models I played with were GPT basically, but before transformers, before it was still RNNs to do character prediction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But by the way, on the compression side, I mean, especially neural networks, what do you make of the lossless requirement with the Hutter Prize? You know, human intelligence and neural networks can probably compress stuff pretty well, but it would be lossy. It's imperfect." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can turn a lossy compressor into a lossless compressor pretty easily using an arithmetic encoder, right? You can take an arithmetic encoder and you can just encode the noise with maximum efficiency, right? So even if you can't predict exactly what the next character is, the better a probability distribution you can put over the next character, you can then use an arithmetic encoder to, uh... Right? You don't have to know whether it's an E or an I. You just have to put good probabilities on them and then, you know, code those. And if you have... It's a bits of entropy thing, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me, on that topic, it'd be interesting as a little side tour, what are your thoughts in this year about GPT-3 and these language models and these transformers? Is there something interesting to you as an AI researcher, or is there something interesting to you as an autonomous vehicle developer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nah, I think it's overhyped. I mean, it's not. Like, it's cool. It's cool for what it is. But no, we're not just going to be able to scale up to GPG-12 and get general purpose intelligence. Like, your loss function is literally just, you know, cross-entropy loss on the character, right? Like, that's not the loss function of general intelligence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that obvious to you? Yes. Can you imagine that to play devil's advocate on yourself, is it possible that the GPT-12 will achieve general intelligence with something as dumb as this kind of loss function?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I guess it depends what you mean by general intelligence. So there's another problem with the GPTs, and that's that they don't have long-term memory. Right. Right. So like just GPT-12, a scaled up version of GPT-2 or 3, I find it hard to believe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you can scale it in. So it's a hard coded length, but you can make it wider and wider and wider." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. You're going to get you're going to get cool things from those systems, but I don't think you're ever gonna get something that can like, you know, build me a rocket ship." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about soft driving? So, you know, you can use transformer with video, for example. You think, is there something in there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, because, I mean, look, we use a GRU. We use a GRU, we could change that GRU out to a transformer. I think driving is much more Markovian than language." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Markovian, you mean like the memory, which aspect of Markovian?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Markovian, I mean that like most of the information in the state at t minus one is also in state t. I see, yeah. Right, and it kind of like drops off nicely like this, whereas sometime with language, you have to refer back to the third paragraph on the second page. I feel like- There's not many, like you can say like speed limit signs, but there's really not many things in autonomous driving that look like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But if you look at to play devil's advocate is the risk estimation thing that you've talked about is kind of interesting. It feels like there might be some longer term aggregation of context necessary to be able to figure out like the context. Yeah, I'm not even sure I'm believing my own devil's advice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have a nice vision model which outputs a one or two, four-dimensional perception space. Can I try transformers on it? Sure, I probably will. At some point, we'll try transformers, and then we'll just see. Do they do better? Sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it might not be a game-changer, you're saying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm not. Like, might transformers work better than grooves for autonomous driving? Sure. Might we switch? Sure. Is this some radical change? No. OK, we switch from RNNs to grooves. OK, maybe it's grooves to transformers. But no, it's not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Well, on the topic of general intelligence, I don't know how much I've talked to you about it. Do you think we'll actually build an AGI? Like if you look at Ray Kurzweil with Singularity, do you have like an intuition about you're kind of saying driving is easy. Yeah. And I tend to personally believe that solving driving will have really deep, important impacts on our ability to solve general intelligence. Like I think driving doesn't require general intelligence. But I think they're going to be neighbors in a way that it's like deeply tied. Because it's so like driving is so deeply connected to the human experience that I think solving one will help solve the other. But but so I don't see I don't see driving is like easy and almost like separate than general intelligence. But, like, what's your vision of a future with a singularity? Do you see there'll be a single moment, like a singularity, where it'll be a phase shift? Are we in the singularity now? Like, what, do you have crazy ideas about the future in terms of AGI?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're definitely in the singularity now. We are? Of course, of course. Look at the bandwidth between people. The bandwidth between people goes up, right? The singularity is just, you know, when the bandwidth" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- What do you mean by the bandwidth of people?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Communications, tools, the whole world is networked. The whole world is networked and we raise the speed of that network, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so you think the communication of information in a distributed way is an empowering thing for collective intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I didn't say it's necessarily a good thing, but I think that's like, when I think of the definition of the singularity, yeah, it seems kind of right. Oh, I see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, it's a change in the world beyond which, like, the world would be transformed in ways that we can't possibly imagine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think we're in the singularity now in the sense that there's like, you know, one world and a monoculture and it's also linked." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I kind of share the intuition that the singularity will originate from the collective intelligence of us ants versus the like some single system AGI type thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I totally agree with that. Yeah. I don't, I don't really believe in like, like a hard takeoff AGI kind of thing. Um, Yeah, I don't even think AI is all that different in kind from what we've already been building. With respect to driving, I think driving is a subset of general intelligence. And I think it's a pretty complete subset. I think the tools we develop at Kama will also be extremely helpful to solving general intelligence. And that's, I think, the real reason why I'm doing it. I don't care about self-driving cars. It's a cool problem to beat people at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I mean, yeah, you're kind of you're of two minds. So one, you do have to have a mission and you want to focus and make sure you get you get there. You can't forget that. But at the same time, there is a thread that's much bigger than that connects the entirety of your effort. That's much bigger than just driving." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With AI and with general intelligence, it is so easy to delude yourself into thinking you've figured something out when you haven't. If we build a level five self-driving car, we have indisputably built something. Is it general intelligence? I'm not going to debate that. I will say we've built something that provides huge financial value." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, beautifully put. That's the engineering credo. Like, just just build the thing. It's like that's why I'm with with the with the on on go to Mars. Yeah, it's a great one. You can argue like who the hell cares about going to Mars? But the reality is set that as a mission, get it done. And then you're going to crack some problem that you've never even expected in the process of doing that. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I think If I had a choice between humanity going to Mars and solving self-driving cars, I think going to Mars is better. But I don't know. I'm more suited for self-driving cars. I'm an information guy. I'm not a modernist. I'm a postmodernist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Postmodernist. All right. Beautifully put. Let me let me drag you back to programming for a sec. What three, maybe three to five programming languages should people learn? Do you think like if you look at yourself, what did you get the most out of from learning?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so everybody should learn C and assembly. We'll start with those two." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Assembly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. If you can't code in assembly, you don't know what the computer's doing. You don't understand, like, you don't have to be great in assembly, but you have to code in it. And then, like, you have to appreciate assembly in order to appreciate all the great things C gets you. And then you have to code in C in order to appreciate all the great things Python gets you. So I'll just say assembly C in Python. We'll start with those three." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The memory allocation of C and the fact that it's an assembly gives you a sense of just how many levels of abstraction you get to work on in modern day programming." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Graph coloring for assignment, register assignment in compilers. Yeah. Like, you know, you got to do, you know, the compiler, your computer only has a certain number of registers, yet you can have all the variables you want in a C function." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you get to start to build intuition about compilation, like what a compiler gets you. What else?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, then there's kind of, so those are all very imperative programming languages. Then there's two other paradigms for programming that everybody should be familiar with. One of them is functional. You should learn Haskell and take that all the way through, learn a language with dependent types like Coq, learn that whole space, like the very PL theory heavy languages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And Haskell is your favorite functional? Is that the go-to, you'd say?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "yeah i'm not a great haskell programmer i wrote a compiler in haskell once there's another paradigm and actually there's one more paradigm that i'll even talk about after that that i never used to talk about when i would think about this but the next paradigm is learn verilog or vhdl understand this idea of all of the instructions execute at once if i have a block in verilog and i write stuff in it it's not sequential they all execute at once and then like think like that that's how hardware works" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I guess Assembly doesn't quite get you that. Assembly is more about compilation, and Verilog is more about the hardware, like giving a sense of what actually the hardware is doing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Assembly, C, Python are straight, like they sit right on top of each other. In fact, C is, well, C is kind of coded in C, but you could imagine the first C was coded in Assembly, and Python is actually coded in C. So, you know, you can straight up go on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it. And then Verilog gives you, that's brilliant. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then I think there's another one now, everyone's, Karpathy calls it programming 2.0, which is learn a, I'm not even going to, don't learn TensorFlow, learn PyTorch." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So machine learning, we've got to come up with a better term than programming 2.0 or, but yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a programming language. Learning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if it can be formalized a little bit better. It feels like we're in the early days of what that actually entails." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Data-driven programming?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Data-driven programming, yeah. But it's so fundamentally different as a paradigm than the others. Like it almost requires a different skill set. But you think it's still, yeah. And PyTorch versus TensorFlow, PyTorch wins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the fourth paradigm. It's the fourth paradigm that I've kind of seen. There's like this, you know, imperative functional hardware. I don't know a better word for it. And then ML." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have advice? For people that want to, you know, get into programming, want to learn programming, you have a video. What is programming? Noob lessons, exclamation point. And I think the top comment is like, warning, this is not for noobs. Do you have a noob, like a TLDW for that video, but also a noob friendly advice on how to get into programming?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You are never going to learn programming by watching a video called Learn Programming. The only way to learn programming, I think, and the only one is the only way everyone I've ever met who can program well learned it all in the same way. They had something they wanted to do. And then they tried to do it. And then they were like, Oh, well, okay, this is kind of, you know, it'd be nice if the computer could kind of do this thing. And then, you know, that's how you learn. You just keep pushing on a project. So the only advice I have for learning programming is go program." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Somebody wrote to me a question like, we don't really, they're looking to learn about recurring neural networks. And he's saying, like, my company's thinking of using recurring neural networks for time series data, but we don't really have an idea of where to use it yet. We just wanna, like, do you have any advice on how to learn about, these are these kind of general machine learning questions. And I think the answer is, like, actually you have a problem that you're trying to solve." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I see that stuff. Oh my God, when people talk like that, they're like, I heard machine learning is important. Could you help us integrate machine learning with macaroni and cheese production? You just, I don't even, you can't help these people. Like who lets you run anything? Who lets that kind of person run anything?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we're all beginners at some point, so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not like they're a beginner. It's like, my problem is not that they don't know about machine learning. My problem is that they think that machine learning has something to say about macaroni and cheese production. Or like, I heard about this new technology, how can I use it for why? Like, I don't know what it is, but how can I use it for why?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's true. And you have to build up an intuition of how, because you might be able to figure out a way, but like the prerequisites, you should have a macaroni and cheese problem to solve first. Exactly. and then two, you should have more traditional, like the learning process should involve more traditionally applicable problems in the space of whatever that is, of machine learning, and then see if it can be applied to Macaroni and Cheese." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At least start with, tell me about a problem. Like if you have a problem, you're like, you know, some of my boxes aren't getting enough macaroni in them. Can we use machine learning to solve this problem? That's much, much better than, how do I apply machine learning to Macaroni and Cheese?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One big thing, maybe this is me talking to the audience a little bit, because I get, these days, so many messages, advice on how to learn stuff. This is not me being mean. I think this is quite profound, actually, is you should Google it. Oh, yeah. Like one of the like skills that you should really acquire as an engineer, as a researcher, as a thinker, like one, there's two complimentary skills. Like one is with a blank sheet of paper with no internet to think deeply. And then the other is to Google the crap out of the questions you have. Like that's actually a skill people often talk about, but like doing research, like pulling at the thread, like looking up different words, going into like GitHub repositories with two stars and like looking how they did stuff, like looking at the code or going on Twitter, seeing like there's little pockets of brilliant people that are like having discussions. If you're a neuroscientist, go into signal processing community. If you're an AI person, go into the psychology community. Switch communities. Keep searching, searching, searching. Because it's so much better to invest in finding somebody else who already solved your problem. than there is to try to solve the problem. And because they've often invested years of their life, like entire communities are probably already out there who have tried to solve your problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think they're the same thing. I think you go try to solve the problem. And then in trying to solve the problem, if you're good at solving problems, you'll stumble upon the person who solved it already." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but the stumbling is really important. I think that's a skill that people should really put, especially in undergrad, like search. If you ask me a question, how should I get started in deep learning, like especially, like that is just so Google-able. Like the whole point is you Google that and you get a million pages and just start looking at them. Yeah, start pulling at the thread, start exploring, start taking notes, start getting advice from a million people that already spent their life answering that question, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, well, yeah, I mean, that's definitely also, yeah, when people ask me things like that, I'm like, trust me, the top answer on Google is much, much better than anything I'm going to tell you, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. People ask, it's an interesting question. Let me know if you have any recommendations. What three books, technical or fiction or philosophical, had an impact on your life or you would recommend perhaps?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe we'll start with the least controversial, Infinite Jest. Infinite Jest is a... David Foster Wallace? Yeah, it's a book about wireheading, really. very enjoyable to read, very well written. You know, you will grow as a person reading this book. It's effort. And I'll set that up for the second book, which is pornography. That's called Atlas Shrugged." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Atlas Shrugged is pornography?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it is. I will not defend the, I will not say Atlas Shrugged is a well-written book. It is entertaining to read, certainly, just like pornography. The production value isn't great. There's a 60-page monologue in there that Anne Rand's editor really wanted to take out. And she paid out of her pocket to keep that 60-page monologue in the book. It is a great book for a kind of framework of human relations. And I know a lot of people are like, yeah, but it's a terrible framework. Yeah, but it's a framework." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just for context, in a couple of days, I'm speaking for probably four plus hours with Yaron Brook, who's the main living remaining objectivist. Objectivist. Interesting. So I've always found this philosophy quite interesting on many levels. One of how repulsive some percent of large percent of the population find it, which is always always funny to me when people are like unable to even read a philosophy because of some, I think that says more about their psychological perspective on it. But there is something about objectivism and Ayn Rand's philosophy that's deeply connected to this idea of capitalism, of the ethical life is the productive life, that was always compelling to me. I didn't seem to interpret it in the negative sense that some people do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To be fair, I read that book when I was 19." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you had an impact at that point, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and the bad guys in the book have this slogan, from each according to their ability to each according to their need. And I'm looking at this and I'm like, these are the most, this is Team Rocket level cartoonishness, right? No bad guy. And then when I realized that was actually the slogan of the Communist Party, I'm like, wait a second. Wait, no, no, no, no, no. You're telling me this really happened?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, one of the criticisms of her work is she has a cartoonish view of good and evil, like that there's like the the reality isn't Jordan Peterson says is that each of us have the capacity for good and evil in us, as opposed to like there's some characters who are purely evil and some characters that are purely good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's in a way why it's pornographic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The production value. I love it. Well, evil is punished." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's very clearly, you know, there's no there's no, you know, just like porn doesn't have, you know, like character growth, well, you know, neither does Alice Shrugged, like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Brilliant, well put. But as a 19-year-old George Hodson, it was good enough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the third?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have something? I could give these two, I'll just throw out. They're sci-fi. Perputation City. Great thing to start thinking about copies of yourself. And then... Who's that by? Sorry, I didn't talk. That is Greg Egan. That might not be his real name. Some Australian guy. Might not be Australian. I don't know. And then, this one's online. It's called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. It's a story set in a post-singularity world, it's interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there, in either of the worlds, do you find something philosophically interesting in them that you can comment on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it is clear to me that Metamorphosis of the Prime Intellect is written by an engineer, which is, it's very almost a pragmatic take on a utopia, in a way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Positive or negative?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's up to you to decide reading the book. And the ending of it is very interesting as well, and I didn't realize what it was. I first read that when I was 15. I've reread that book several times in my life. And it's short. It's 50 pages. Everyone should go read it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's, sorry, this is a little tangent. I've been working through the foundation. I haven't read much sci-fi my whole life, and I'm trying to fix that in the last few months. That's been a little side project. What's, to you, is the greatest sci-fi novel that people should read?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, yeah, I would say like, yeah, Permutation City, Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. I don't know, I didn't like Foundation. I thought it was way too modernist. Do you like Dune and, like, all of those?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've never read Dune." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've never read Dune. I have to read it. Fire Upon the Deep is interesting. Okay, I mean, look, everyone should read Neuromancer. Everyone should read Snow Crash. If you haven't read those, like, start there. Yeah, I haven't read Snow Crash." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Never read Snow Crash?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I mean, it's very entertaining. Go to Lesher Bach, and if you want the controversial one, Bronze Age Mindset." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, I'll look into that one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those aren't sci-fi, but just to round out books." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a bunch of people asked me on Twitter and Reddit and so on for advice. So what advice would you give a young person today about life? Another one. Yeah, I mean, looking back, especially when you're younger and you continued it, you've accomplished a lot of interesting things. Is there some advice from those?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "from that life of yours that you can pass on? If college ever opens again, I would love to give a graduation speech. At that point, I will put a lot of somewhat satirical effort into this question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You haven't written anything at this point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, you know what? Always wear sunscreen. This is water." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you're plagiarizing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you know, but that's the like, well, clean your room. You know, yeah, you can plagiarize from all of this stuff. And it's, there is no, self-help books aren't designed to help you. They're designed to make you feel good. Like whatever advice I could give, you already know. Everyone already knows. Sorry, it doesn't feel good. Right? Like, you know, you know, if I tell you that you should, you know, eat well and read more and it's not gonna do anything. I think the whole like genre of those kinds of questions is meaningless. I don't know. If anything, it's don't worry so much about that stuff. Don't be so caught up in your head. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, you're yeah, in the sense that your whole life is your whole existence is like moving version of that advice. I don't know. Yeah. There's there's something I mean, there's something in you that resists that kind of thinking and that in itself is. It's just illustrative of who you are, and there's something to learn from that. I think you're clearly not overthinking stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a gut thing. Even when I talk about my advice, I'm like, my advice is only relevant to me. It's not relevant to anybody else. I'm not saying you should go out if you're the kind of person who overthinks things to stop overthinking things. It's not bad. It doesn't work for me. Maybe it works for you. I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you about love. Yeah. I think last time we talked about the meaning of life and it was kind of about winning. Of course. I don't think I've talked to you about love much, whether romantic or just love for the common humanity amongst us all. What role has love played in your life? In this quest for winning, where does love fit in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the word love I think means several different things. There's love in the sense of, maybe I could just say there's like love in the sense of opiates and love in the sense of oxytocin and then love in the sense of, Maybe like a love for math. I don't think fits into either of those first two paradigms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So each of those, have they given something to you in your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not that big of a fan of the first two. Why? For the same reason I don't do opiates and don't take ecstasy. And there were times, look, I've tried both. I like opiates way more than I like ecstasy. But they're not... The ethical life is the productive life. So maybe that's my problem with those. And then like, yeah, a sense of, I don't know, like abstract love for humanity. I mean, the abstract love for humanity, I'm like, yeah, I've always felt that. And I guess it's hard for me to imagine not feeling it. And maybe there's people who don't. And I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's just like a background thing that's there. I mean, since we brought up drugs, let me ask you. This is becoming more and more a part of my life because I'm talking to a few researchers that are working on psychedelics. I've eaten shrooms a couple of times and it was fascinating to me that the mind can go to places I didn't imagine it could go. It was very friendly and positive and exciting and everything was kind of hilarious in the place. Wherever my mind went, that's where I went. What do you think about psychedelics? Where do you think the mind goes? Have you done psychedelics? Where do you think the mind goes? Is there something useful to learn about the places it goes once you come back?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I find it interesting that this idea that psychedelics have something to teach is almost unique to psychedelics, right? People don't argue this about amphetamines. That's true. And I'm not really sure why. I think all of the drugs have lessons to teach. I think there's things to learn from opiates. I think there's things to learn from amphetamines. I think there's things to learn from psychedelics, things to learn from marijuana. but also at the same time, recognize that I don't think you're learning things about the world. I think you're learning things about yourself. Yes. And, you know, what's the, even, it might've even been, might've even been a Timothy Leary quote. I don't wanna misquote him, but the idea is basically like, you know, everybody should look behind the door, but then once you've seen behind the door, you don't need to keep going back. So, I mean, and that's my thoughts on all real drug use too, except maybe for caffeine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a little experience that it's good to have, but." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I guess yes, psychedelics are definitely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're a fan of new experiences, I suppose, because they all contain a little, especially the first few times it contains some lessons that can be picked up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I'll revisit psychedelics maybe once a year. Usually small, smaller doses. Maybe they turn up the learning rate of your brain. I've heard that, I like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Big learning rates, have pros and cons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Last question, and this is a little weird one, but you've called yourself crazy in the past. First of all, on a scale of one to 10, how crazy would you say are you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I mean, it depends how you, you know, when you compare me to Elon Musk and Anthony Levandowski, not so crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like, like a seven?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's go with six." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Six, six, six. What, uh," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like seven, seven's a good number." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Seven, all right, well, I'm sure day by day it changes, right? But you're in that area. In thinking about that, what do you think is the role of madness? Is that a feature or a bug, if you were to dissect your brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, okay, from like a mental health lens, I'm crazy, I'm not sure I really believe in that. I'm not sure I really believe in a lot of that stuff, right? This concept of, okay, you know, when you get over to like hardcore bipolar and schizophrenia, these things are clearly real, somewhat biological. And then over here on the spectrum, you have like ADD and oppositional defiance disorder and these things that are like, wait this is normal spectrum human behavior like this isn't you know where's the the line here and why is this like a So there's this whole, you know, the neurodiversity of humanity is huge. Like, people think I'm always on drugs. People are saying this to me on my streams. I'm like, guys, you know, like, I'm real open with my drug use. I'd tell you if I was on drugs. I mean, I had like a cup of coffee this morning, but other than that, this is just me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're witnessing my brain in action. So the word madness doesn't even make sense in the rich neurodiversity of humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it makes sense, but only for some insane extremes. If you are actually visibly hallucinating, that's okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there is the kind of spectrum on which you stand out. That's like if I were to look at decorations on a Christmas tree or something like that, if you were a decoration, that would catch my eye. That thing is sparkly, whatever the hell that thing is. There's something to that. Just refusing to be boring, or maybe boring is the wrong word, but to, yeah, I mean, be willing to sparkle, you know, it's like somewhat constructed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I am who I choose to be. I'm going to say things as true as I can see them. I'm not going to I'm not going to. Why?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And but that's a really important feature in itself. So like whatever the neurodiversity of your whatever your brain is, not putting constraints on it that force it to fit into the mold of what society is like defines what you're supposed to be. So you're one of the specimens that. That doesn't mind being yourself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Being right. Is super important, except at the expense of being wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Without breaking that apart, I think it's a beautiful way to end it. George, you're one of the most special humans I know. It's truly an honor to talk to you. Thanks so much for doing it." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's more exciting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The uncertainty exciting to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In conversations in general or just this one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think conversations in general. Like, is anybody like, ah, the certainty is really exciting? Maybe if the certainty is something new." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, novelty always comes with uncertainty, right? Almost always." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I started trying to think of a counterexample." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Immediately. You're uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like always is always a really bold word to use." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But if it's truly novel, that means you don't really understand it. It's outside your distribution. So therefore it's gonna have a bunch of uncertainty, but you don't think of it as uncertainty. You think about it as something new, but it actually also attracts you because there's a lot of uncertainty surround it probably. Like what is this new thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like annihilating the mystery, like that drive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the danger of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was just thinking of on the drive over, because I was like, I'm a little nervous about doing this podcast. And then I was feeling into the unpleasantness of it, like the fear of what if something goes terribly wrong. And then I was also feeling into how much that feels like part of why it's exciting. If I knew that it was going to go great, I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you actually imagine all the possible ways it can go wrong?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All of them, but I was like, what if I say something really dumb or like you ask me a question and I answer it in a way that makes me sound like a lot less capable than I am. I'm like really afraid of being perceived as stupid or something. I was also thinking about this on the way over. I'm kind of risk averse in some ways. I don't like driving fast in cars, because I was driving very carefully here because the roads are bad. And then I was thinking about, I'm very pro-risk in other ways, like being really exposed to a wide variety of people who might hate you. And I think from the outside, that might look fine. But I think the monkey brain is really sensitive to lots of people yelling at you. for whatever problems that you seem to have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the big risk you're taking is putting yourself out there as an intellectual, like through your writing, and then a lot of people yelling at you. Is that the worst embarrassment you've experienced?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's pretty bad, yeah. I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something out there that I failed to be properly skeptical of in myself, and then people are like, oh, we caught this thing that you didn't catch. I think that's the biggest terror." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, from looking at your reading and listening to your interviews, you seem to be very defensive and worried about being a good scientist." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, definitely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you're like methodology. Yes. And funny enough, you get attacked on that methodology, even though You know, I'm a fan of psychology, of like academic psychology, and it's kind of disappointing often how non-rigorous their work is, how small the sample size and so on, and how big and ambitious, over-ambitious the proclamations about results is, especially when the news reports on it. Now, you're both the researcher, the scientist, and the reporter, right? So like that's what you have with the blog. Your sample size is often gigantic, the methodology's right there, the data's right there, you provide the data, and then you're raw and honest with your interpretation of the data. There's an honesty, authenticity to it. It's actually really refreshing. I don't know why people criticize it. I think this is what psychologists are probably terrified about being transparent, and transparent in that way is because they'll get attacked for their methodology, so they wanna cloak it in a, in a sort of layer of authority. Like I'm from this institution, it was peer-reviewed, there's kind of all these layers, and I'm also not gonna share the data with you, and I'm also gonna pretend like most psychology studies are not replicable. I'm just going to pretend there's authority to it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it works on a lot of people. From the outside, you're like, ah, the scientists with the white lab coats with credentials. Those are the people who are doing science. And doing science is, you have fancy terms that other people don't really understand. And to be fair, I have a lot to learn. I'm still self-teaching. I'm learning through people. Learning as I go, I'm definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff. But a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard. And a lot of people don't try to learn it because it seems so elevated. And this is one thing that really bothers me. I think everybody can do science. If you just have this aspect of curiosity and you just really want to figure something out, you can go and start asking people questions, doing surveys, writing down the answers. And then you can go learn how to look at that data in a way that gives you more information about the world. It's very simple and straightforward if you just approach it humbly and earnestly, and you're like, please, let's figure this out together. But people are, I think, self-crippled in this because they view this as relegated to the domain of the experts and the fancy scientists. And I think that makes me feel really sad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're almost attracted to the questions you're not supposed to ask." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, also yes. It might contribute to the controversy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not exclusively, probably. Oh no. But you're just not limited by, like part of your curiosity is asking questions that seem common sense. Some of the most controversial questions are around sex. It's like everybody thinks and talks and does sex. I mean, it's the driver of human civilization, and yet, there's so little rigorous discussion about the philosophical and the scientific questions around it. It gets really weird to be able to discuss them. It becomes tricky to discuss them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's super charged. Because everybody has a really strong opinion, whether or not pornography is damaging to society, or how sex corresponds to gender, or what kind of sexuality is acceptable. Can you have sexual preferences that in themselves are immoral? People get very angry about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the sad part, is they're not just opinionated, but most of us, our relationship with sex is, I think, I guess I wanna say not rigorous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's very difficult to be rigorous about sex. I would consider sexual urges to be kind of elusive to introspection in a way that's a little bit disproportionate to a lot of other things. You could introspect about how I want other people to like me and where my insecurities lie. But sex is one of those black box things. A really common thing is for people to, if you have a fetish, you sort of check back in your childhood to see an event that corresponds to that fetish. And then you develop a narrative like, ah, this event in my childhood must have caused this fetish. And so I think this causes people to be biased towards a concrete, coherent, causative way that events happen, or that sexual fetishes happen. This is just one example of why I think it's really hard to be rigorous with introspection. Because you just want to tend towards making coherent narratives, which I think is not always the correct way to explain it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the narratives that are connected to childhood and so on, how they originate. I mean, we'll talk about fetishes, because you have a lot of really interesting writing on that. Just actually zooming out, I should mention, you tweeted, I wrote this down, you tweeted, I do not understand how to have normal conversations with people in person if I'm not on drugs. So I guess let's both agree to not have a normal conversation, I guess, assuming you're not on drugs now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or if you are, you don't have to tell me. I feel like a very small amount of Phenobut, which is a nootropic. I don't know if that counts." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that a drug? Well, I guess I'm on caffeine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so we're both- Drugged up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Good enough to have a normal conversation. We don't have to. What is normal anyway? What do you think is the primary driver of human civilization? Is it the desire for sex, love, power, or immortality? Like avoiding the fear of death, constructing illusions that make us forget about our terror over mortality. So sex, love, power, death." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is this a Twitter poll?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's four options. This is reality. Not everything maps perfectly to a Twitter poll, but in this case, because there's four options, and it is a small number of characters, it does. But I'd like to think I'm more interested. You know what? I think your Twitter polls are fundamentally interesting. There's something about the brevity of a poll, limited to a set of choices, and having an existential crisis and searching for the answer, that's beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That combination." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, this one is a big one. Like, what do you think is behind it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you believe that there is one primary driver? Like, do you think that it can be understood in the terms of primary drivers?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think, well, maybe it's an engineering perspective, like trying to reverse engineer the brain. I don't think we're equipped or understanding enough about the mind to get there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like, what's the primary driver of a tree?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, then it gets to the question of what is life? What is a living organism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "to self-replicate probably." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a very clean simplification, but I think life is more interesting than just self-replication." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but it sounds like there's a curiosity in you that you're trying to poke at, and I don't understand exactly what that curiosity is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if I had to dedicate a thousand years to understand one of these topics, which one would be the most fruitful, I guess is the indirect thing I'm asking. No, well, fun. To me, everything is fun. Really? Yeah. I mean, I'm with David Foster Wallace. The key to life is to make sure that everything is unboreable, or to be unboreable, or nothing is boring. Everything is fun. Like everything. I could just literally sit. I honestly, because I don't think, I don't know where you got that glass, but that glass exists, and I forgot it exists, and it was really fun to me to know that now it was there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What about the really unpleasant things? Like if you're in deep agony." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's fun. Okay. That's fun, because it's like, yeah, heartbreak. It's like knowing that I'm capable of that. It's like from, you know, we're all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars. So when you're in that gutter, for some reason the stars look brighter, right? So like whenever you're going through a difficult time, or whenever you see maybe other people being shitty to each other, it makes you really appreciate when they're not. The contrast makes life kind of amazing. I'm reading a bunch of books, and one of them is Brave New World, where they remove the ups and downs of life, partially through drugs, but over over-sexualization and all that kind of stuff. I feel like you need the ups and downs of life. The dark, you know, you need the dark to have happiness, to have like a deeply intense feeling of affection towards another thing or a human being, yeah. Yeah, so everything's fun. But fun is also a weird word to define, because fun, I think for a lot of people, that's why I talk about love a lot. I think love is a better word than fun, because fun is like lighthearted. Love is more intense. Like, I love that glass and the water that's in it, because it's freaking awesome. Like, somebody made that glass, right? And not have many mistakes. And the way it bends light in interesting ways, and the way water bends light in interesting ways. Like, I can see part of your arm through that water. That's freaking amazing. Everything is amazing. I'm with the Lego movie, anyway. But from a scientific perspective, if I were to investigate sex, I don't know why I put love in there. Let's just narrow it down the Twitter poll. Let's focus on the basics here. Sex, power, or death, immortality. If I were to try to from a neuroscience, neurobiology perspective, or reverse engineer through building AI systems that focus on these kinds of dynamics, exploring the game theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of it, which one would get me to a deeper understanding of the human condition? That's the question. Sex. Okay, Nietzsche is the will to power. Freud and the bunch is all about sex. And then death, Liv Burley, brilliant previous guest on this podcast, she just released a video where on her bedside was the book Denial of Death. by Ernest Becker, which of course she would have on her bedside. But his whole work is that everything is motivated by our trying to escape the cold, harsh reality that we're going to die and we're terrified of it. One of the gifts and burdens for human beings is that we are cognizant of our own death, and that terrifies us. That's the theory. And because of that, we do everything we can. We build empires to escape the fact that we're mortal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wouldn't this change quite a bit for religious people then, who don't believe that they're going to die?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, they created religion. The idea there is to create myths, religions. You can create religions of all kinds." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but if this is one of the defining things that defines civilization, then we should expect to see massive differences between people who believe we're gonna die and people who don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Good, I love it. You take it scientifically here. And they have actually answers. There's a whole terror management theory where they do write psychology-type papers, and they do actual experiments. I can mention how their methodology is interesting. they prime with a discussion of death. Like they take one certain set of people and have a conversation with them, another set of people, they mention death to them before the conversation and see how that affects the nature of the conversation. It's really interesting because death fundamentally alters the nature of the conversation. Just even priming, like reminding you that you're going to die briefly, changes a lot of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "These kinds of priming papers are usually not replicated. I just have like, I feel like I've heard a bunch of priming ones" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you have PTSD over psychology papers is not replicated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I just did one, I just did a priming experiment on my own and found it didn't have any effect. But again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can't you just give me a careless statement summarizing an entire scientific discipline of terror management theory? I don't know. I haven't rigorously looked at how good of it is psychologically. I think it is interesting philosophically, the way Freud talked about the subconscious mind. Philosophically, it's an interesting discussion. Then you have to get rigorous with each for sure. But the idea is that it's not that religious people get rid of the terror of death. This is just one of the popular ways they create an illusion on top of it. That's that idea, like a myth that makes it easier for them to forget, to escape that terror. But everybody else does different methods. You fill your days with, like capitalism has a whole religion of itself, like the rat race for getting more and more material possessions and so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "couldn't you argue it in the opposite direction? Like, let's say, assume that we're Christians here and we're like, oh, the atheists, you know, everybody has terror of hell and the atheists invent this mythology where, you know, actually evolution is true in order to escape their terror of hell. So it doesn't feel like a persuasive argument to me, but I used to be very, very Christian and I did not have a terror of death and then I lost my faith and then I had a deep terror of death set in for a few years and it felt very different to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for denial of death, I don't know if he says that it's actually possible without really a lot of work to get to the actual terror. I think his claim is that in early, early, early childhood development, that's when the terror is real. and then we aggressively construct systems around it of social interaction to sort of construct illusions on top of it. I'm doing a half-ass description of this philosophy, but it is interesting to simplify the human mind into underlying mechanisms that drive it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I was gonna say, your thinking seems kind of poetic, like the way that you're sort of handling these, these concepts feel like more like aesthetically driven." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think this theme is gonna continue throughout this conversation as we talk about relationships and sex, yes, for sure, I think so. And I think your thinking seems to be very driven by how can I construct an experiment to test this hypothesis?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but aren't, There's some things, especially that have to do with the human mind, that are really messy, really difficult to understand. There's so many uncertainties and mysteries around that we don't yet have the tools to collect the data. Like, one of your favorite tools is the survey, is asking people questions. And then figuring out different ways to indirectly get at the truth, because there's flaws to the survey, you kind of learn about those flaws and you get better and better at asking the right questions and so on. But that's not, that's indirect access to the human mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But do you think like poetic narratives are? I'm not like saying poetic narratives are bad. Like I think it's like a cool way of like handling concepts, but I'm not sure that they are more rigorous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, no. Okay. No, but like they might be the more correct, like philosophy might be the right way to discuss things that were really far from understanding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, they might be more useful shorthand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like morality, like I don't think morality makes any sense, but it's really useful shorthand to use when handling concepts and a lot of the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, like ethics and morality. You could construct studies that ask different questions. Like, you know, just having worked with autonomous vehicles a lot, the trolley problem gets brought up. And I don't know, you can construct all kinds of interesting surveys about the trolley problem, but does that really get at some deep moral calculus that humans do. It's sexy because people write clickbait articles about it, but it doesn't really get to what you value more, five grandmas or three children. They construct these arguments of if you could steer a train, if you could steer an autonomous car, which do you choose? Yeah, I don't know if it's possible with some of those to construct. Sometimes the fuzzy area, there's some topics that are fuzzy and will forever be fuzzy, given our limited cognitive capabilities." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a way of looking at things where it's like, for example, the childhood fetish thing that I was talking about, where do your fetishes come from? You can develop a narrative where it's like, I think this kind of thing is, when you're surrounded by feet when you're a child, this causes foot fetishes. And this is kind of a cool narrative. And I think a lot of people's ideas about philosophy follow the same sort of thing. What is the narrative that is cool? And I think this is useful for meaning making. I'm very pro meaning making. When you're talking about everything is fun because you know, the contrast or whatever. I very much ascribe to that. I really enjoy that philosophy. I also find everything to be very delightful. And this isn't like a question of truth, right? We're not like, where is the true delight that we're objectively measuring? Like this is a frame, a poetic frame that you're using to like sort of change the way the light hits the world around you. And that's super useful because it like makes you happier or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but also gets to the truth or something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I guess if what is truth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yet another question, what is truth? You've, actually to jump back, you believe that free will is an illusion. So why does it feel like I'm free to make any decision I want?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a cool illusion. I think that's probably where our sense of identity comes from. When you really meditate on your sense of identity, at least for me, it seems like it comes down to the sense of choice. Like, oh, I am doing the thinking. What does it mean to do with thinking? It's like, ah, something in me has exerted agency over having this thought or not having this thought. The sense of self really comes down to choice. And so when I say that free will is an illusion, I also mean there's something like the self is an illusion. Identity is a trick of the light." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's a really fun one. You think a lot about your identity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have occasionally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Like you really struggle with it. You're proud of it. I do too. It's not, we have different journeys, but so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I really take a lot of delight in it. I used to be very into like deconstructing it. Like you probably, maybe, you know, I did a bunch of like way too much LSD for a while. And at that point, very, no ego. And now I'm like very ego. I really enjoy having a lot of ego." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I actually happen to know everything about you. Yeah, like more than you do. It's interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's fascinating. Wait, could you solve my problems?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, all of them. I did thorough research. Okay, what is consciousness then? I actually wrote that as a quote. What is consciousness? I have to remind myself. So how does that tie in together with free will and identity and all of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What is consciousness is one of the biggest questions ever. I do think that people often get confused when talking about consciousness because I think people are referring to two separate concepts and often combining them into one thing. We asked the question, is AI going to be conscious? I think this is kind of the wrong question. We can identify signs of consciousness like, ah, they seem to refer to themselves, but this is not necessarily proof of consciousness in the same way that dream characters acting exactly the way normal human people do in your dream is not evidence that they themselves are conscious. So signs of consciousness are not proof of consciousness, but there is something that we definitely know, which is I currently am conscious. I can tell because I'm just directly observing my experience. And so there's one kind of consciousness, which is I am directly observing my experience, and that you cannot replicate it. I cannot observe two experiences. It is necessarily singular, and it is necessarily certain. You can make all the arguments you want. I'm still directly observing. It's not a thing that's subject to reason. Whereas, are other things conscious? This is something that's replicable. You can apply it to multiple people. It's something that's not certain, almost definitionally not certain. We don't actually know if there is an internal experience. So my argument is that when people are talking about other things having experience, they're using a different concept than the thing that they're actually looking at when they look at their own experience. I think they're two different things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Definitionally not possible. No, if you understand the mechanism of consciousness, you'll be able to measure it probably, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but what are you measuring? I think there's just like a subtle difference. Like when you're asking the question, is this other thing conscious?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the easy thing to measure is like a survey. Does this thing appear conscious? Yeah. And then the hard thing is you understand the actual mechanism of how consciousness arises in the physics of the human brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but you can do that in a dream, presumably, like if you had a very good dream or a very good simulation. Yeah. But we could then have somebody in a simulation or a dream where they go through and they fully understand, you know, they do all the tests and the tests come back exactly the way you'd expect them to. But from the outside, we're like, well, this is misleading, they're not actually conscious. Like your dream characters aren't conscious, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Probably. I don't know, are you asking or are you telling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm like appealing to an intuition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it sounds like you're driving towards a narrative. You did a poll about men and women and dreams." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those are some kind of difference. I couldn't tell what the difference was except that more men than women." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Quite a lot more women dream vividly than men. which I actually found on my chaos survey. So I did a survey, maybe you know the, I just had people- I know everything, do you remember? You know, yes, I'm sorry. So as you clearly know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll try not to talk down to you through this conversation. I'm sorry. And I not only know everything, I know how your future looks like. Really? And how everything ends, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you could probably win all the prediction markets on my life. Yeah. Cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we should also mention that you have prediction markets. You have votes. What's the site called again? Manifold. Manifold. And one of them was, will I be on the Lex Friedman podcast? Yeah. And I voted. I invested everything I owned into the yes. Is there such thing as insider trading on there? Because that goes against the terms of the..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think insider trading is part of the information, so it's supposed to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, I see. And then I realized it's actually public information that I voted, because I think my face shows up there, it's like, damn it, it's gonna influence. Make a fake account. You could make the fake account, or I could be lying, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's true. And then dump the stock or whatever. You know, I try to manipulate. Somebody made a market like, is Ayla going to post a poll spelled P-O-L-E on her Twitter, like a photo? And I was like, I'm going to manipulate this market. So I like fucked around with it and I voted no. And then I accidentally posted a photo of a poll without thinking. Oh, but that's like self-sabotage. Yeah, I accidentally fucked up my own market." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's like the reverse of insider trading. What were we talking about? Oh, the women and the men and the difference, the vivid dreams and the markets. I forget what the market, oh, because I can perfectly predict your future. But then it's not fun. I like the romance of unpredictability. And so I like to, even though I know everything, I like to forget everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My very Buddhist of you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the river, no man in the river once, whatever, the footsteps, however that goes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's one of my favorite questions is like, if you could press a button and then have all of your wants fulfilled, anything that you want, so it's like such a rapid degree that you don't really experience the want, like as the want arises, it then is like completed as immediately, so that you are completely without want. Like, would you press that button? 100% not. Yeah, I didn't think you would." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, because immediately everything stops being fun. It's only fun the first time. But if you want it to be fun. But what would be my source of fun? I feel like on day four, just to get off, I would need to do nuclear war, because it will escalate quickly. I feel like if everything is possible, I assume you mean like something that is not just normal human things. Yeah, magical world. Magical world. Then you start escalating really quickly. I wonder, I'll probably do like, I want everybody to just fly into the air and hover in the air. Everybody. And then you're like, oh, life is meaningless. I feel like you get, No, actually, that would be a really interesting experiment. What are the limits? Are we all capable of becoming psychopaths, essentially? I like to believe not, there's a very hard limits on that, like in our own mind, like of basic compassion, because I love being compassionate towards other human beings. And it's one of the things I think about if you give me power, like a lot of power, like absolute power. And I think that's the power you mentioned is the scariest kind of power, because it's like, it's not even power in this normal world, it's like magical power, where you lose, it's like dream world power, where you, like video game power, you don't even think of it as reality, you could just mess with the world, and I feel like that's terrifying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you'd basically be God." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "God, yeah, but without, I feel like the idea of God, it wants to keep things functioning properly," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then you'd probably, if you wanted to keep them functioning properly, then it would rapidly, like you would never experience a time where you're like, oh no, that was a mistake. Because as soon, like before you even experienced that, the world would shift to match it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, interesting. No, I think I would actually, I take it back. I think I would regret the first time I hurt somebody. See, my visualization was like a video game where everybody's like NPC, really dumb. No, I think the first time I witnessed pain from anybody, that's when I would stop. And I would probably run into that very quickly. Like, even just the hovering, make a person hover, and they're gonna be probably really upset with the hovering, right? And so I'm gonna be like, no, don't do that anymore. And then I'll probably go to, honestly, I'll just return back to my normal life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's kind of what I feel like. Like if I had the power to do anything, I think I would probably want to have a life very similar to where I am now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like with Uber, like it'd be probably more convenient to do certain things. But even then, like the struggle, like I got a flat tire, so I have to fix that. I kind of, the flat tire makes everything more beautiful. It's like, cool, I could do like a normal manual thing. But also it makes you appreciate your car, appreciate transportation, appreciate the convenience of transportation, all of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know some people who would call this a bunch of copium. You're just sort of making do with what you have. We wouldn't go back to Amish times or pre-technology in order to make ourselves appreciate things more. And so this seems like a hindsight reasoning, which I can appreciate that argument, but I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Anyone who uses, sorry, to interrupt the word copium in their argumentation, I think it's sus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's sus. Yeah. It's sus, my entire argument is now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I'm just kidding, I'm sorry. Go ahead, sorry. I interrupted rudely the flow of thought. But you don't think so? In part, you disagree with that kind of argument?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because I think people have this idea that if you come to accept or find meaning in what you have now, this is sort of at odds with trying to improve it. And I don't find this to be the case. I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part of it. Like I enjoy the fact that there's something like problematic going on because now I get the experience of like striving to make it go away. And like that in itself is where the meaning lies. It's not just that things are bad, it's that there's things are bad and we're trying to stop it and also." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's- If you combine that with a sense of optimism that the future can be better, yeah, that feeds into this productive effort of making things better. And it somehow makes the vision of the things that are better more intense, having experienced shitty things. So we talked about free will and consciousness and what drives human civilization. Question left unanswered. It's a homework problem for the reader. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's- I get like a scoreboard at the end, the amount of questions. Complete successfully versus not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like polls. Can we talk about some practical things? Sure. So one of the many amazing things, I think of you as a researcher, but you've also been doing research in the field." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, fieldwork. Fieldwork." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The Jane Goodall of sex work. How did you get, what's the short and the long story of how you got into sex work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How did I get into sex work? Well, I mean, there's a whole like childhood thing where I was conservatively homeschooled." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you want to actually talk about your childhood? I think it's interesting because you also worked at a factory. So like your childhood is really fascinating and difficult, traumatic. So, and you've written about it. There's a lot of ways we could talk about it, but maybe what are the things you remember, the good and the bad of your childhood, of your maybe interaction with your father?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my dad probably has narcissistic personality disorder. And so it was very centered on very controlling childhood, immensely so. We were homeschooled and pretty isolated from the outside world. Like we didn't know anybody else who wasn't homeschooled. We went through a program called Growing Kids God's Way, which was very, it was like the kind of program where you're not supposed to pick up babies when they cry to train them that they can't manipulate the parents. Because like baby crying was viewed as like, You're just teaching them from an early age that they're allowed to make the parents do what the kids want. And we're very against this philosophy. So that combined with a narcissistic personality disorder, dad was pretty rough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So controlling. Super controlling, yeah. And developing and feeding the self-critical aspect of your brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, very much. I was lazy. I was never going to accomplish anything in life. I was going to move out of the house and realize how good I had it at home, the classic stuff. He was very logical and smart, though. And so he'd also teach us logic stuff. I remember some of my earliest memories are him giving me basic logic puzzles, like the dog has three legs, you know, how many dogs have four legs? And I would mess up. But he was an evangelist, basically a Christian evangelist. So we did Bible study five nights a week. I memorized, I think, 800 verses of the Bible by the time before I became an adult. Yeah, and it was very patriarchal also. So I was expected to grow up and become a housewife, basically. They're like, oh, you can go to college to meet a man and also to get a little bit of education so that you can homeschool your own kids. Like we were explicitly told that women were subordinate to men in regards to like making decisions when you're married. Our pastor's daughter was not allowed to leave home because she would be outside of the authority of a man. So when she got married, she was allowed to leave because she was never allowed to live in a house where she was not under a hierarchy. So this is like the kind of culture that" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a hierarchy and there's a gender aspect to the hierarchy, there's men at the top of that hierarchy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Men at the top." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but your own psychology, your own mind. So most of that self-critical brain is bad, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was confusing, because he told me that I was smart, but also that I would fail." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But not smart enough, right? Smart, but not smart enough?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Smart, but not virtuous or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, right, there's always a flaw." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's always a flaw. I think a lot of it was, a lot of the fucked upness of my brain came from feeling like I didn't have the authority to think. because it was so carefully suppressed. My ability to express or have any sort of power was just absolutely annihilated. Systemically, psychologically, they would do psychological torture mechanisms to make sure that I wasn't actually thinking on my own or being able to deviate from anything anybody ever told me. to the degree that it still ingrained in me. I once was with a friend, we were traveling, and he wanted me to hop a turnstile. It was very late at night, the train was here, and I could not physically force myself to do it. He was yelling at me, like, come on, do it. I was trying so hard to make my body cross the line, and it's embedded in my physical being to be unable to do stuff like that, which is really annoying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're not free to take action in this world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, some of them. So that was, I think, the most annoying part of my upbringing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you classify it as suffering?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the time, yeah, definitely. Well, it's confusing because when I was a child, it was just painful in the sense that things suck. But it was placed in a meaning framework. It is good, it is virtuous to submit to your parents and do what they want. If they tell you to say goodbye to your best friend forever and never talk to them again, you go do that without complaining. And so I would go do something like that, and it would suck. It really was concretely painful, but it was also placed in this narrative where I was fulfilling some sort of greater purpose. And so it's very confusing to refer to it as suffering because there's so many painful things we do today that are placed in the narrative of a greater purpose that I think I would agree with. I go get a medical procedure done and that sucks, but I'm like, ah, this is helping me in the long run. But say if I got abducted to an alien planet and they're like, by the way, all of those medical procedures you got done, you didn't have to get them done, those are totally unnecessary, then I might get really upset about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I would trust those aliens though, because they probably want to do different medical procedures than I do. I saw a thumbnail for a video that I'm proud of myself for not clicking on, about a man who's claimed that he had sex with aliens. Proud of yourself for not clicking on that? Because I would probably watch it for like 20 minutes, and then I should be doing work. Oh, I see. And I'm actually happy, because I get to imagine all the different possibilities that could have been for that man who had sex with them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Did you have like a really high resting happiness state?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, yeah, probably like a mushroom state, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wow, do you do mushrooms?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've done mushrooms before, it was very awesome. Like more intensely awesome. But like, because I was just looking at nature, it makes nature even more beautiful, I think. But it's already pretty beautiful. I haven't done MDMA. People say that I should. It's very nice, yeah. Yeah, anyway. But I already, yeah. What did you call it? Resting happiness state?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, high resting happiness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. But it's not like, some of it is genetic, that you're able to notice the beauty in the world, and some of it is practiced, where you realize focusing on the negative things in life, like unproductively, it just doesn't help your mind flourish. So you just notice that, and it's like, I mean, I think people with like depression learn that, or like probably with trauma too, is like there's certain triggers. Like if you're, if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of consciously know there's going to be triggers that will spiral, like force you to spiral down. And so just avoid those triggers. Some people have that with diet, with food and so on. And so I just don't like, whenever there's a shitty things happening or shitty people, unless I can help, unless I can somehow help, like why focus on it? Anyway, back to your upbringing, what was the journey of escaping that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I left home kind of early because my dad and I were not getting along by the time I was a teenager, but I was still Christian for a while. And I lost my faith after I think I moved away and I started having friends that weren't religious or like weren't raised in this super conservative environment that I came from. And I think this was not conscious at the time, this is my hindsight story, but I believe that being exposed to a culture in which I had the capacity to believe allowed my brain to actually seriously consider the thought that maybe all of this stuff was untrue, that I'd been taught 6,000-year-old Earth and evolution is a lie, macroevolution and all of this stuff. Because when you're immersed in an environment like that, I don't think you actually have a choice. Your brain has to believe these things, because this is a survival thing. If you believe the wrong thing, you'll be totally cast out. Even if they're not going to cast you out, you're going to be cast out in communion with others, because we're always told that you can't trust non-believers, really. They don't have a moral compass. They're going to screw you over. And so I'm like, oh, I can't be that. Everybody's going to outcast me internally. So anyway, I don't think I actually had the capacity to seriously question my faith, even though I thought that I was questioning it quite hard, until I got into an environment where it was safe to do so. And once I started being able to make friends who were not religious, I'm like, oh, if I lose my faith, I'm still gonna have some sort of community. And then at that time, I went through some questioning and then I lost my faith." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that, given your friends, given your situation, you now have the freedom to think, essentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or at least the ability to think of something that was acceptable in the new culture, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Without, I mean, is there a danger of adopting the beliefs of the new culture? So there's some aspect of just being able to think freely, which you weren't able to do when you were growing up, just to think, like look at the world and wonder how it works, that kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you were, but within certain boundaries. There are certain basic assumptions. And as long as you were following those basic assumptions, which is to be fair, is kind of what we're doing now. Have I gone and done the personal research that evolution is the thing that's going on? Have I looked at the age of the stones? No, I haven't. I'm trusting other people, which I think is a fair choice to make, given where I'm at right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you're also assuming there's causality in the universe, time is real. That first of all, the thing that your senses are perceiving is real. You're assuming a lot of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's better just to become aware of the assumptions you're making, as opposed to not making those assumptions at all. You have to assume something. And I did. It's very suspicious that I went out of this very conservative culture. And now, well, I guess I don't believe things that are super in line with the current culture. I think this is why I feel a little bit safer right now. Because when I was Christian, I believed generally Christian things. But now I believe a bunch of things that people really hate. I get canceled online all the time. I'm like, okay, this is a sign that maybe you're thinking independently if you're able to think things that are completely at odds with the people around you. And to be fair, this is a little bit easier to do when it's like general culture, but it's much harder to do with your peer group. Like the people that you trust, your friends, the people whose opinions you respect, like disagreeing with those people is very difficult and I'm not very good at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I do think that if you establish yourself as a person who can be trusted and is a good human being, you have a lot more freedom to then explore ideas that are different from your peer group. So those seem, if you separate the space of ideas versus some kind of deeper sense of what this person is, that they're an interesting and trustworthy and good human being." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, like, is there somebody that you respect who you consider significantly smarter than you? And can you imagine believing an idea that you've heard them talk really disdainfully about? Like, how would you feel coming to me like, I believe this thing that you find to be" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I do all the time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah? Yeah. You may be braver than me. And to be fair, I support doing this. I try to do this, but I think subconsciously I notice that I don't do it as much. And so I'm suspicious of myself. I'm like, oh, I wonder if I'm hiding to myself actual curiosity about things that might deviate from my peer group. Because I notice that I'm not actually deviating with them as much as I do with the outside world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, like, because I do see most people I interact with as smarter than me, but I also have this intuitive feeling that dumb people, which I consider myself being, have wisdom. So like in the disagreement, actually, I also believe in the power of conversation and in the tension of disagreement. So I think even just disagreeing from a place, from a good place, from a place of like love and respect for each other, I think I just believe in that. So it's not like individuals you're disagreeing, you're like working towards arriving at some deeper truth together, right? Even if the other person is, is smarter, maybe that's how I justify it for myself. I'm also a fan of conversations, because I've seen, just listening to conversations, it seems like a great conversation more emerges from it than the sum of its parts, right? Like somehow two people together can do, like that dance of ideas can somehow create a cool thing. By the way, I enjoyed, I saw a video of you dancing at a bar drunk, It wasn't the bar drunk. It didn't look drunk, but just the dancing. It was like ballroom dancing type of thing. I was like, yeah. Something like that. I've been doing a bit of tango dancing. I like it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Argentina?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nice. I like stuff with the body in general, like wrestling or combat. Usually when there's a tension, you have to understand the mechanics of how two bodies move when they're in conflict. And dancing is similar." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like you have to do like rapid thinking also, like rapid intuitive physical thinking. And that's my favorite kind of thing. Like a lot of exercise is really boring to me because you can just do it while your brain's off. But something like ballroom dancing or fusion dancing, like you have to constantly be like figuring out, like it's a rapid puzzle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's so wonderful. What's fusion dancing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the video. Fusion dancing is like, if you have any sort of dance background, you can come and you just kind of mix those together. So you can have like people doing ballet with people doing ballroom with people doing blues." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Cool. And then there's an interesting dynamic because there's, I don't know, maybe you can correct me, but there's a, that's very meta. There's usually a lead and a follow. I guess most dancers have that. Yeah. Yeah. And so that, but both have a different, like you both have to be quite sensitive to the other human being, but in a different way. Yeah. It's interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I like both that there is that definitive role, but also, Like, it's not somehow that one is better than the other. There's an interesting tension between the two." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's good, because it's like a basic rule set that allows for a ton of expression. I've recently started to experiment with reverse leading. It's not like back leading. It's like, I don't know. Like, sometimes I'll lead a move." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can lead as a follow. Oh, you can lead." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What I'm typically following. I'll occasionally throw in a little lead here and there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But don't you kind of follow it? Oh, I see. don't you hint at a lead when you're following? Like, don't you, just by the dynamics of your movement, you're not perfectly following. I mean, because there is like, the lead is listening to your body, right? Yeah. So like, you're kind of both figuring out what you do next." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's true, I'm a very good follow though. Okay. So I'm like, I'm like, I'm an invisible follower. You do a move, it's like I... Oh, interesting. I'm not like good at technique." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I didn't know those existed, like a perfect follow, so you could perfect follow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm really ideal. I'm not great at technique and sometimes I'll fall over, but like with the following part, I'm very good at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you enjoy following?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. It's really nice. It's again, like it's a very fast physical puzzle you have to solve. It's like typing. I really like typing. That's why I was inquiring about your keyboard earlier." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you like typing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like the very fast, like the really rapid response, what's the, reaction time. I like things that have very fast reaction times, like games like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But typing is not a reaction, or is it the brain generating words, and then you're, like, how's typing a reaction?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, the sensation that I get when I am typing is the kind of thing that I'm trying to point at. So maybe reaction time isn't the quite, I don't know what the term is, but whatever that thing is. Like the thing where you have to look at a word and then communicate it into your fingers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It feels like dancing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like you're responding, you're responding to your brain. Your fingers are doing the responding to the brain that generated the words." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Making your body do what your brain wants it to do, but like fast and precisely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, then you might not like this Kinesis keyboard, because it makes it easier to do that. You probably like the struggle, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, it looks hard because it looks like it's high depression on the keys." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, well, oh, I see, yes. More than like a laptop keyboard, but like, that you don't have to, one of the main things is you don't have to move your fingers at all. So like, for example, a lot of people, I think they have a backspace up in the top right corner. And so if you have to make mistakes, which is like, I mean, that's like so metaphorical. Every mistake you have to like really hurt yourself for, you have to like stretch for the backspace." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just that poetic narrative again. It emanates from a lot of your perspective." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Everything. Yeah, no. Yeah, I don't, and I see it as a good thing. It's a good, like a romantic element permeates my interpretation of the world, yes. But you left home early. How did you end up working at a factory?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tried to go to college, but failed. Couldn't afford it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you like it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember it just being really slow. I remember being shocked that the teachers didn't care. I was used to homeschooling. I don't know, it felt like the people around me that were teaching me, because we had a mom's group also, directly cared about what I was learning, and I would be able to ask questions, and they would really respond. What's a mom's group? It was a homeschooling group, so a bunch of moms who were homeschooling their kids get together and then teach each other's kids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, cool. And they have different interests and capabilities and so on, and they kind of..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And sometimes if some of the kids are really good at something, you have like the older kids teaching the other ones too. So it was very like, everybody kind of figures out what they're good at and they share that skillset with everybody else, which I think was a pretty great setup. Honestly, I think my childhood kind of sucked in a lot of ways, but homeschooling was excellent for me, mainly because it just had so much free time. Like I just did like two to three hours of school and then did whatever the fuck I wanted for the rest of the day. And I got to actually pursue skills that are still useful for me to this day, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even in that constrained environment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've read fantasy books and I wrote so much. And now I'm writing a lot for my blog, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What kind of fantasy books? Like sci-fi type stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like classic, like I read like Mercedes Lackey and the E.E. Knight and Ursula Le Guin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know any of this. What is this? What is it? Is it like a romantic thing? Is it romance?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just all the fantasy books. Like dragons and elves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, dragons. Got it, got it, got it, got it. You didn't mention Tolkien for the fantasy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I read Tolkien. Okay. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, well, it's beautiful. So you threw all the dragons. How did you end up in a factory? Tri-school?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, tri-school. Had to drop out for a couple months, and then I was like, well, I'm poor, and I was ready to take any job. I was like applying for sewer jobs, and then I got a factory. I'm like, all right, let's do it. Because my parents, no financial help at all. They're like, you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you know? So anyway, I went to work at a factory, and that sucked ass. Do not recommend. We had to wake up like 4 a.m., you know, work on weekends, too. fluorescent lights. It was terrible. And so I did that for about a year. And I was trying to grip my teeth and be like, this is my life, right? I didn't have high expectations for my life. I thought if you get a job where you don't have to be on your feet all the time, that you're living a good life. And then I got another job briefly as a photographer, and then they fired me. I think I was 19 at the time. Fired you for like- I was just too young and really, really bad at interacting with people in the outside world. Like I was pretty well socialized as a homeschooler with other homeschoolers, but in the outside world, especially with all of the like hierarchy submission stuff beaten into me, like literally beaten into me, it was very difficult for me to interact with other people who were like older than me or had any sort of confidence at all. So they hired me to do like photography for people and then I was rapidly turned out that I was bad at this, and so they fired me. But at that point, I'd left my factory job. I'm like, I can't go back to the factory. So I had some savings, and I slept on friends' couches, and I tried various self-employment stuff. I'm like, oh, maybe I can do product photography or something. But it's Idaho, you know? And if you're like a 19-year-old with no experience in the outside world at all, it was really difficult. And so I had a friend recommend that I try becoming a cam girl. So that's how it started." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is camming? What is being a cam girl? What's that all about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Camming is like you talk to the camera live on the computer, like you live stream. It's kind of like Twitch. And then people are typing in the chat like, hi, I do this stuff. And then the people can tip you money, and then you can do things in response. Like, oh, if you tip me 100 tokens, I'll take my shirt off or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what site were you using at that time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "MyFreeCams." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "MyFreeCams? Is that a popular site?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's pretty popular." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And how did, what were the next steps? Like, did you enjoy it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, well, it was the first time I had actual control over my life. And I made actual real money. And so I just exploded into it. I thought about it nonstop. I was streaming all the time. I was coming up with new creative things. And the thing is, I don't know, there's something about public school that I ended up living in a house of cam girls full of other girls who had gone to public school. And I don't know how much of it's genetic or just because I'm weird or because of our upbringing, but I felt like I was much more fearless. and much more weird and creative online than other people were. Not because they weren't awesome people, but because I think like public school, I got the impression based on them talking about it, that it sort of like beats out any sort of deviance from you. Like- More so than your, cause I got the- We had moral deviance was beaten out, but like you could do whatever- Creative deviance was not- Creative deviance wasn't so much. Like I didn't have other kids making fun of me ever. I don't think I'd ever heard an insult about my physical appearance as a child or teenager." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Once. So your father was basically saying you're not good enough was intellectual." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, no, that was like moral failure. Moral failure. Yeah, like I was not virtuous. Oh, wow. Like in various ways, like, you know, like you're lazy and mostly the lazy part. I have like ADHD or something. Yeah. And I was not good at it as a kid either. I would totally forget all the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there some sexual repression aspect to that? Like, you know how they say that there's, it's not just homeschooling, but just like Catholic girls and so on, just because like there's moral, you're forbidden to do certain things. Like there's a kind of liberating feeling of saying, like basically rediscovering yourself, rediscovering your freedom by doing just, diving head first into sexuality, into your own sexuality. Is there some aspect of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely to some degree. I think that people kind of model it slightly wrong. I think there's a truth to it. But when I first got out of the house, for me, freedom was going outside at 2 a.m. or eating chocolate on days that I previously wasn't allowed to eat chocolate. That was a really intense expression of rebellion for me. And I think people don't think of this. I got out a lot of my intense rebellion through things that people don't typically consider to be rebellious at all. I wore a bikini. It's insane." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just like walked around in it and like, I can do this. Yeah, basically." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so like, this was most of that emotional processing for me. And it took me a couple years from leaving home and all of that conservative culture into doing sex work. In the meantime, I did try having sex with a lot of people, but this was mainly because I didn't know what the norms were. I didn't really understand. I was just like, okay, take things logically, take things one step at a time. And I'm like, okay, if the whole previous set about how I'm not supposed to kiss somebody until the altar of marriage, if that's not the way that things are supposed to go, then what is the way things are supposed to go? And I was like, well, if I'm aroused, I should go have sex with someone, right? Is there any reason not to? No. So I would go around asking random people to have sex with me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you have any peer pressure saying like, that's not good, or that is good, or like any, did you feel any currents of society in any direction? Or are you independently just thinking like from first principles?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, I mean, I'm not saying it was a totally clean thing. I'm sure that I was experiencing society telling me this is bad. But you have to know, I wasn't watching normal movies when I was a teen. Like we watched Christian movies, the stuff that we watched was filtered. Like I watched the Titanic and I had no idea that Jack and Rose had sex because it was put through a filtered- Wait, did they? Yeah, they went and, you know, he painted her naked and- Yeah, yeah. There was a scene in a car. On the ship. The car, on the ship. Yeah, they had cars in storage, and there's a hand. I watched it again later, and I was like, oh my god. I don't remember the sex scene. Well, maybe were you also put through a filtered version?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, maybe it's the filter I see. Did the couple in the notebook also have sex? Because maybe for romantic movies, I focus on the romance. Maybe, right? And the sex scenes are always like weirdly filmed in these." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because it's never, I mean, it doesn't, it feels more like romance than sex. I guess that's the main focus of this, right? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, anyway. So they had sex, it's good to know now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll go back and watch now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have your own personal filter on your brain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And once you realize that there are some, like the foundation of your beliefs were wrong, then everything might be wrong. And you're kind of just doing first principles." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And again, like not totally separate from culture, but also I think in general, I also have a predisposition to just be like, you know, fuck what culture tells you, just figure out what's right for you and do it. And so that mixed with, you know, the figuring things out from first principles, I did eventually figure out that I didn't like having casual sex with just anybody quite as much. So I stopped that, but it took me a while to figure that out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the negative of casual sex?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just, like, not good. I mean, if you, like, figure out the chemistry you have with someone better, then it can be a lot nicer. But I wasn't doing that. I was just, like, somebody I met, and I'm like, you seem kind of cute. Okay. Like, I didn't bother to try and develop any chemistry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I didn't know. Chemistry even outside of sex? Just chemistry, like, human chemistry?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, just basic. Like, conversation?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would, it's kind of cringy, but I would walk up to guys or send them messages like, would you like to have coitus is what I would say. You would say coitus. I'd said that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's kind of cute in a way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's a girl asking you to get laid, so they probably didn't care that much. But anyway, I'm saying that I had a lot of rebelling out of my system by the time I started sex work. So for me, I'm sure it was somehow related, because we were extremely sexually repressed growing up. I remember the day I learned I had a vagina, which was absolutely horrifying. Do not recommend figuring out you have another orifice in your body." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you want to share the process of you figuring out that you had a vagina?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They told me I had a vagina." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, like intellectually, like there was somebody said, you have a vagina. And that was horrifying to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I didn't know I had, because you weren't supposed to ever like touch or look at yourself ever. So I never did. It was really disgusting. And so I had no idea that what was going on in my genital region. And so one day my mom sat me down, I think it was like nine or 10. And she was like, you have a, there's another? What? And you're going to bleed out of it, is what she told me. You're gonna bleed out of it for a while. And I was like, what the fuck, mom? I didn't know what the word fuck was, but I would have said that if I had known." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When did you first learn the word fuck?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think I learned it when I was at a playground and it was written somewhere and I read it out loud and then the kid next to me started giggling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you ever, did you say fuck again for a while?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think the next time I said, I swore the first time when I was 18. like intentionally said a swear word when I was 18." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did it feel good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was like really nervous. I was like nervous. What's your favorite swear word? I mean, fuck's pretty good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, fuck's pretty good. Yeah. Okay, so that's camming. I mean, what are the pros and cons of camming and how does OnlyFans map into this? Did you switch to OnlyFans at some point?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I did, yeah. I cammed for like five or six years and I burned out eventually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are the good aspects? What are the bad aspects of camming?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the good aspects were that it was just your own terms. You get to decide. Everything about it is under your control, which I loved at the time. I was like, I can work when I want, how I want, any sort of expression. I experimented, and I was very successful. I was making around $200 an hour, which for that website at the time was pretty good. I had elaborate routines. I was a mime. I would dress up as a mime and then dress up a chair, and I would seduce the chair." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, cool. Was there an artistic element to it almost?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, very much. I had gnomes. Did you talk to the chair? You had gnomes? No, I was a mime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, sorry, right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, get it straight, dude." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know what I really appreciate about you is I'm asking some really dumb questions and you're answering it in a very intelligent way, so I appreciate that. All right, did you ask the chair questions? I was in mine, you fucking idiot. Okay, I'm sorry. That's true. But there's gnomes on the, like big gnomes or small gnomes? Like lawn gnomes. Lawn gnomes? And you seduce the lawn gnome on the chair? The gnome is sitting on the chair?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There were some, yeah, gnomes on the chair. I did a photo set, which I submitted to Reddit, where I got abducted. I was like stripping, taking my clothes off, and then slowly the gnomes surrounded me in the background and dragged me off. And I did this as a photo set. Consensually? I mean, I didn't feel consensual in the photos, but it was the 11th top post. It was very successful on Reddit, basically. It was the top post on Gone Wild and the 11th top post of all time on Reddit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which I think probably just means it's like, it's It's artistic, it's interesting, it's edgy, it's funny, so it's really, really well done." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it was really shocking to me that nobody else was doing anything creative with sex work. Like, for me, it was like breathing. Like, you're just doing sex and you're bored, and I'm like, what do you do? I don't know, let's try something funny. Like, it's just the natural progression. And it felt to me like there was almost no competition. Like, I would just be really creative and, like, immediately it was the top not-safe-for-work post on Reddit. I'm like, well, I didn't even try that hard. And so it's really shocking to me that other women who are doing this sort of thing" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that still a little bit of the case? Like that, that there's not as much like, cause I, from my sort of outsider perspective, that seems to be still the case. Like there's not like, as you describe it, that's kind of cool. That's like almost like playing, like having fun with sexuality almost." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And yeah, but that does require kind of thinking through, it's almost like a creative project, like a photography project or something like that, almost like a little skit movie." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's interesting. It's this vibe of like, how can you like bring like vibrant novelty to whatever you're doing, anything you're doing. And I really like doing this with surveys too. Like I've been doing a lot of standard surveys, but I'm also like experimenting with novel creative artistic surveys. I'm like, how do you ask a question in a way that's like beautiful and unusual and like a thing that's completely groundbreaking? Like nobody's ever like," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You always make everything so poetic and romantic, it's disgusting, no. But yes, I think you have that engine in your head, I guess, of creativity. Like, yeah, the way you ask questions, which is not trivial to do, like for, it's actually very difficult to do, like good survey questions. And I mean, we're joking, but like, yeah, almost like poetic, because you have to ask a question in a way that doesn't lead to the answer. Like you have to, You have to kind of inspire them to think and then indirectly get at the truth. It's an art form, honestly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and also in a way where they don't misinterpret the question because it's amazing how any question you think, oh, this is the clearest question possible. No, you're wrong. It has to be even clearer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, willingly or unwillingly, because you also have to defend against that question being criticized later when you publish about it, all of that, you have to think about all of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this might be my greatest strength. So I'm not very good at statistics, I'm not great at presenting data, but I think probably my greatest strength is in fact survey design and question phrasing. Because I have tweeted so many thousands of polls, and every single one I get people telling me the way that they misinterpreted the poll. So it's like gone through fire. And then again, I'm testing the phrasings all the time. Like what happens if you slightly shift phrasings? And so I'll do the same question test over time to see how it changes and the way the framing affects the results." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the good and the bad of camming. So you said good, the, what was it? I forgot. Your freedom. The freedom. Yeah. The freedom to also be creative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And the bad is just that it was exhausting. The site that I was on, the way that it's structured is that you're ranking on the site and thus the amount of people that see you and thus the amount of money you earn is affected by the amount of money that you earn on average over the last 60 days. So if you're streaming and nobody's tipping you, this means that you're going to be dropping down in the rankings, which is gonna make it harder in the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so the rich get richer on that site." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's very high pressure. If you're on, you need to be making money. as fast as you can, if you want to continue to make money. So that was really stressful. It was very mentally taxing. I would do it for a couple hours and just log off and be completely exhausted. Cause you're just like on as hard as you can. And this is why I have a little PTSD around streaming. Like I've considered Twitch streaming and I try a little bit and I'm like, I haven't fully integrated the fact that you don't have to be like maximally entertaining every single second yet. You can actually just chill out and take it slow and nothing bad happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. You can just enjoy silence. Did you feel lonely doing it? I mean, even just streamers feel lonely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I moved into a house of cam girls." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did that make it better or worse?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It made it better. They're great. I'm still friends with them to this day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so it was like a team, almost like we're in this kind of together?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So we would like work together and, you know, stream together and swap our clothes and stuff. It was great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Swap ideas too?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Swap ideas, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And actually on a small tangent, maybe a big tangent, what do you think, because it's a recent controversy of Andrew Tate, and that he, I think in the past, ran a camming business, and he's being accused of sex trafficking. What do you think, like from your own experience, what do you understand about Andrew Tate? Is he a good person, is he a bad person? Is there something shady about his practices or not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wish I could answer, but I don't know. I haven't looked into it at all. I've heard people talking about it, I just haven't bothered to go into it. It is well known that when I was doing it back in the day, the Eastern European models had something different going on though. It was like a trope about there's the Eastern European models and then there's everybody else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They're what? It's like darker or something like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They do studios and they're lower quality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which means what?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Studios are, you go into like a warehouse and then they have set up a little like things that replicate bedrooms, but they're just like stalls. And then you give, you rent out or you pay the studio percentage of your income. And you can tell when something looks like a studio, it's like a type of background. If you're like watching enough, it kind of starts to, you notice the patterns." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like the standards are lower there and the ethical boundaries are a little looser. How people are treated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I never heard anything about the ethical side. I just knew that it was like lower quality. Like the girls seemed like they were less into it and like cared less." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How does this all interplay with like sex trafficking? So consensual versus non-consensual." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would be shocked if there were never any non-consensual camming. I mean, I guess it's like if it were going to happen, I wouldn't be surprised if it were. In fact, Eastern European models based on this is outdated. This is, I'm just thinking of my stereotypes back when I cammed a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure. So some of that is stereotypes, which is like collecting good data, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I haven't done data on camgirl" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's hard, it's even hard to get that data, right? But obviously a really important problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a method that I'm trying that I really like. I designed a survey type, which is like asking people who you know. Like, who do you know who's done this? And you tell me like, oh, do you know anybody who's a doctor? Do you know anybody who has had cancer or like smokes or? Personally, you mean? Yeah, personally, just do you know anybody? And then if you ask about a whole bunch of things, you can calibrate. the responses. So like- That's really interesting. If your population, you know, 20% of them know doctors, and then you know the actual amount of doctors, then you can tell how this is corresponding. Like, what is the visibility of doctors?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can reconstruct the graph." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Basically, yeah. And we can do this with sex trafficking. And of course, people are gonna be like, well, sex trafficking is not visible. People, you don't know those. I'm like, well, then we can ask about other non-visible things that other people don't know that we do have data for. like homelessness or being in jail, or if you have been sexually assaulted. A lot of people don't like talking about if they've been sexually assaulted. So you can do a whole bunch of things that are similarly suppressed in knowledge in some way that we do actually have rates for, and then compare that to the graph when we ask people, do you know anybody who's in sex traffic? So again, this is not perfect. I'm not saying this is ideal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you can infer things. You can infer things about that graph." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I'm saying we don't have good ways of measuring sex trafficking right now. Anyway, I did a big deep dive into the research that we have on sex trafficking in the Western world. And the actual, like, I read the studies and, like, reports about the studies, and it's really pitiful. We have terrible data. It's like, there's just, like, vague estimations made from one guy in a basement in the 80s. That's, like, the basis for, like, one big study that, like, a lot of people report on. And so I'm like, okay, so the method I'm proposing, obviously it's not perfect, but, like, the bar is so low at this point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I wonder also if there's ways to design a survey that gets at the victims of sex trafficking also, which is they presumably have public access to the internet. And I wonder how many of them are distinctly aware that they're victims. Like it's asking the question, when you're inside of a toxic relationship, are you inside of a toxic relationship? I mean, if the toxic relationship is truly toxic, sometimes your mind is fucked with, right? You don't even know what's true. So it's interesting if you can design surveys that- For people who are actively sex trafficked? Yeah, who could break through that. So basically get data on how many people are getting sex trafficked directly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, like if you don't frame it, like if you don't say the word sex trafficking, you're like, are you just in a situation where you'd," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And maybe through the survey, I mean, that's very meta, but through the survey help them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I did this, this is what started my relationship surveys. So I've done a series of relationship surveys and that was because I knew somebody in a terrible relationship. And I was like, I bet if she took a survey where she answered questions about her relationship, but at the end got a score that compared her to everybody else, she'd be like, oh wait, everybody else has much better relationships than I do. So that's why I started making the relationship surveys was exactly for that reason." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's really, really, really powerful to know that like you're not, you're not crazy for thinking this is a bad relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, or I think like the actual question is like, could you do better if you broke up? And I think that the thing that keeps most people in their relationships is like, this is the best that I can do. And like, this is normal. And if it were normal, I would say that they are right. Like if you live in a culture where everybody is abusing their people in their relationships, then yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do? Break up and then just be alone for the rest of your life? Most people don't wanna do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But now comparing yourself to the average is good to know. To know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Know what your options are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At least understand it because being normal is not always, like this conversation is not always great. Meaning this conversation is anything but normal. Okay, and that was a tangent on a tangent about a niche passion, which is really fascinating that you're playing with those kinds of ideas of survey design. But back to camming, so what were the cons? What were the negatives of camming?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, like the exhaustion of just like live, like the high pressure thing. That was probably the worst thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So not, what about the interaction with different people? Like the dynamics of the interaction with the fans, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I had a pretty great time. I mean, it obviously wasn't perfect because it's the internet, but I don't know. This is the thing that confuses me a lot because a lot of women that I know complain about being harassed by men quite a lot. They're like, you know, men are always, you know, grope and harass, you know, you have to be paranoid in the club. People are like, they're always huffing on you and you're just like, Jesus Christ, get away, man. And I do not have this experience. Or maybe I do, but I'm interpreting it differently. I don't know. The thing is, I don't know what causes me to have such a different experience from these women that feel really hostile towards men. My guess is that there's some sort of very subtle signaling that we're accidentally doing. No fault of our own. I'm not saying this is a virtue. I'm saying maybe it's just genetic or the fact that I've fallen. that the women are doing, yeah. And it might be just something I'm completely accidentally, through no intention, happening to signal the thing that is causing men to not view me as a desirable target, or a target at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, what about the flip side? Maybe you're not sensitive to the creepy stare." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that also might be true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The dude who's undressing you with his eyes, that in a creepy way, that you're just not, you don't worry about it, or you're not touched. The fear of that, the anxiety of that, the unpleasantness of that just doesn't hit you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's also at least part of it, maybe all of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's some evidence for it. I think often guys will do a thing to me and I'm just like, that's a thing, cool. I don't have any negative response whatsoever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's... Call back to the tire. It's a thing. This is nice. That happened. It's good to know that can happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I once had a homeless guy ask me to come back to my place, baby. And I was like, this is fun. I'm like, do you want me to? I love asking men, are you trying to get me to have sex with you? Just saying it out front. And they'll be like, well, usually they stop for a minute. They're like, well, yeah, I would like to have sex. And I'll be like, thanks for asking, but I'm not interested in having sex with you. How do you have a good day? And then I walk away. And that's great. I don't know. I have no issues with that interaction. But maybe this is the kind of thing that other women would find to be really offensive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have that conversation and it doesn't turn into like a threatening feel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. Like with a homeless guy. No, I've never had that happen though. But I think there's just something, I think I'm doing something, like again, this is kind of accidental. Like I just am like this always. And I think I just happen to be like this at people and they don't expect it. Like they don't expect me to be like really nice while explicitly asking them what their intentions are. Like directly putting my finger on the thing that like, oh, you're trying to have sex with me. And then also not judging them for it. Yeah. I think this like throws people off a little bit so they don't get aggressive. They're like, oh, you're autistic or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even the cloak of anonymity on the internet, you weren't getting the toxicity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I just think I'm just not reactive, or maybe I'm giving off, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's both, maybe it's a feedback loop. So I just, I had a pretty good experience. I know not everybody did. Definitely people reported having antagonistic experiences, but when I was scamming, I generally really liked, people were really nice to me, had a great time, made friends." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you also did OnlyFans, as you mentioned, and I read on a website, so this is very investigative reporting, that on some months you've made over $100,000 on OnlyFans. How did that feel? Great. Really great. Well, actually, because so much of your upbringing you didn't have money, you had to struggle with the fact of your job and so on, maybe a good person to ask, can money buy happiness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I think you get like a resting set point of happiness regardless of how much money you have, but money can buy being less stressed, I would say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a lot of variation in the, in the basic rest happiness for humans in general? Is that a good thing to think about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, they've done some studies, but again, I'm not sure. I haven't actually read the studies, so maybe they didn't replicate, where they measured people before and after winning a bunch of money to see if their happiness was higher. I think by some measures it was, and by some it wasn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I mean like basically almost genetically, so nature and nurture, but is there, let's say after you're 18, is there like some stable level of happiness that all the environmental genetic factors combine to create so that everything that life throws at you has to face that happiness? Like you mentioned earlier that I seem to be happy with a lot of stuff. So maybe I have a certain level. Do other people have a lower level? Some people have higher level. Is that a useful model of human beings? Or is it all ups and downs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no stable. I don't know. Some people just are happier than others in general and other people aren't. But then you also have ups and downs. I'm sure you've experienced sadness sometimes and happiness the other times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like if I actually were to integrate, so have an integral under the curve, the area under the curve, I don't know if I'm different than other people. Maybe I'm just like really focused on the happy moments and maybe feel the down moments most intensely. And maybe that, like on average, it's all the same. Is that possible?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, maybe? I just, I don't know. I remember when I was a kid, my mom would call me Pollyanna all the time. It's always like finding the good in everything. I'd be like, something bad would happen. You were a happy kid. I was a really happy kid, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even in the harsh conditions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think the harshness comes from the bad meaning. And I had good meaning applied to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You were a stoic. Yeah. With another book I'm reading next week, tune in, Marcus Aurelius Meditations. All right. All right, camming, 100K, so it felt good. So it's crazy though, right? You can just like take clothes off in a creative way with some gnomes and make 100,000?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, there was a lot more to it than that, but yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was it? What's the different process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's marketing. So with my free cams, I was unusual in that I decided to do outside of the website marketing. I would post on Reddit, right? This was very unusual at the time. But OnlyFans is structured such that they have almost no internal discovery whatsoever. So if you want people to come to your page, you have to go out onto external websites and advertise for yourself directly. Very different model. And so this is something that I had already been doing and already had practiced in. And so I think I was already quite advanced. I already had an account on Reddit that was seven years old at the time. Tons of karma, that means I could post in subreddits. I'd already been on Twitter for years, posting actively. So I already had presences on all these other platforms that really helped with the conversion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Reddit and Twitter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Reddit, Twitter, FetLife, Instagram, TikTok." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you were still advertising creatively? Yeah. So there's sexuality, but there's also like creative sexuality and ideas too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like one of the really popular ones was I molested myself as a mime using one arm through a jacket. And so the jacket looked like it was... The jacket looked like it was alive and that one did really well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you brainstorm with somebody? I recently got to hang out with Mr. Beast and sit on a session of brainstorming different ideas. I just envision you with a team brainstorming. All right, how about we try the mime and the molesting thing? I don't know, it's too edgy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wish. I think the team would have been a lot more fun. But no, it was just me. I had an apartment that looked kind of like this. You just sit alone. You're like, well, that would be a good idea. And you just collect ideas over time, right? I'd seen somebody doing a version of this animated hand act when I was a kid. And it just always stuck in my head. And one day, I was like, I bet I could do that. And then when I didn't try and think of ideas to do as a sex worker, I was like, why don't I just try that? And then it turned out to be really quite a viral hit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there stuff, like you mentioned, too edgy? Like, Mr. Beast tries to keep it PG. Do you try to keep it PG-13?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, with the sex advertising stuff, I mean, it's sex advertising, so it's obviously not PG-13." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know these ratings." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What is even beyond that, R? It's not family-friendly. It is X. Like, the one that I'm describing to you at some point, like, you can see my boob. There's a boob, is X. A boob is, I guess... I thought R. I think you could show a boob in PG-13. Yeah, maybe X is like if you got some sort of rhythmic motion going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe that sound, but the rhythmic motion not. You can have one or the other, but you can't have both. You have both." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's when we hit the X, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So definitely not, I mean, with the sex advertising stuff, like guys like vanilla shit, guys want basic hot girl. You can do something like kind of sexy and creative, like getting abducted by gnomes or like the self molestation, right? But those are still pretty within the normal boundaries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean guys like vanilla stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, most guys like vanilla stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's vanilla stuff? See, we'll talk about fetish, fetishes. I think my Overton window on what is vanilla is expanding quickly after following your work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually have done a lot of studies on what is vanilla. Like, I've done a couple different surveys where I ask people, like, how taboo is this thing? And I have a rating from least to most taboo." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, I don't like, I don't appreciate the beauty of vanilla ice cream." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You don't? It is really good though." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You eat vanilla ice cream?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I eat vanilla ice cream, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think there's just so many more options. It's like the absence of creativity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, if you put it in like some chocolate chips or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, they already made it more interesting to start. Okay, so what's vanilla? And why do guys like vanilla? So hot girl doing hot girl things? What, like on dressing and then having sex?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the thing that I found was most successful were frames where the man was framed as passive and the woman is active. Or like, for example, like, oh, you know, we got assigned to the same bunk at the breeding school or something. Or like, oh, we're the last people on earth, right? Or like, oh no, I desperately need somebody to cure me with this disease and I need semen. So it's like in any scenario where the guy just finds himself such that the woman desperately needs him for some reason and he doesn't have to do much, that is typically one of the much more successful things. Guys like women falling into their lap." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the power dynamic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So guys are less into power dynamics than women are, and you can do power dynamics as long as it's handed to them. Obviously, some guys are very dominant and prefer having to work, but this is the minority. If you're trying to make 100k a month and you're trying to appeal to the widest group of people, the most effective advertising, you're not going to be making the most money by being particularly submissive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So on the camming side, that's your, unlike like escorting or just personal relationships, you're trying to, you have an audience. You have like a theater full of people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like with live camming? Yeah, with live camming. Yeah, it's like a live theater." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does that freak you out, there's just a bunch of people watching?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How do you feel right now?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know they're watching, because it's not live." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's true, it's not live. It might as well be, like they could be watching." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like there's just the two of us, I don't know. And there's like, sometimes I imagine there's a third person. Like God? Usually, no, no, not God, just, I usually imagine either a guy or girl or a couple just sitting there for some reason, like usually on the beach and usually high, or on some kind of like mushrooms, just like listening passively, just kind of looking at the sunset, that's what I imagine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, that's really good. Yeah. I think that's useful. Like when I write my blog posts, sometimes I do terribly, but it's the most effective when I imagine one person that I'm writing to, to try to explain. And like having a high couple watching the sunset is maybe really lovely as a calibration." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I have to say, it is pretty romantic because I've gotten a chance to meet couples that listen to podcasts together. I don't know why. That seems like intensely romantic to me because like, Because you're not watching TV together, you're listening to a thing. And I guess sometimes they watch it, but like, you're listening to ideas together. I don't know. It seems- It's like you're going through the same kind of thought process at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really beautiful way to put it. So it's like, you're melding, your thinking is following the same line. Some of our podcasts do that more than movies. I think movies give you a lot more freedom to think about stuff. I feel like your thoughts are aligned. And like, especially if the podcast is good, like if it's listening to like a Dan Carlin podcast about history, that you're like on a journey together. There's an intimacy to that, anyway. But I've learned that couples do that, you know, hashtag relationship goals. Go ahead." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what you want with your future wife?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With my, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You should make an application. Application? An application for dating you. I mean, maybe this is more of like my strategy and less yours, but you have like a wide enough audience that might work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I, it's not, I don't know. Okay, let's just go there. So, because you've put together an application of like people to have casual sex with you, I think. And also dating, yeah. And also dating and relationship. I'd love to, so what is in that application? Because like, you know, I'm sure there's quite a lot of people that would like to date you or to sleep with you. but finding the person, I mean, it depends what your goal is. I guess relationship would be an open relationship for you? Yes. Right. Like for me, I guess it's more intensely selective because it's like a monogamous relationship and a committed one. Like I'm swinging for the, like for like long-term. I'm not like weirdly obsessed with long-term, but it's like, I would love to have one girl for the rest of my life, Finding that, I feel like applications will not get to that. I feel like there's some aspect of the magic of the serendipity of it, of meeting people in strange places and so on. I just, I personally have noticed that like fame has not made that process easier." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I mean, like if you could, you know, if there's two rooms and one of them, it's like a random population of hot women and the other one is a random population of hot women, but all of them definitely are monogamous and are looking for a long-term committed relationship. Like which room would you rather go into?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, if you're looking for a mate. Yeah, well, but see, I guess my preferences are more, that's a really strong point, but my preferences represent the majority, probably, right? Because don't most women want monogamous relationships? Yeah. So, like, it's, I'm okay with either option. Because, like, statistically speaking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I feel like we can apply it to, like, a bunch of other things. Yeah, and I'm just, this is just a problem if you have, like, high, if you have a high volume to filter through and you, like, you don't know. Like, it's a good, like, initial filter. Like you can take it from like 1,000 people to 20 people and then go on dates with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the filter is so anti-romantic, like what?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is true, this is not the romantic narrative that you're very prone to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like if I feel like, how did you two meet? Well, she passed the three filters I set up. And I mean, but it's also, but also can you put into a survey the things that you're interested in? I mean, I definitely think about this a lot with hiring, like teams, engineers, and so on. But with engineers, you're okay losing truly special engineers because you have to filter because there's thousands of applications. It feels like It feels like I worry that you would miss the thing that actually, because so much of it is chemistry, so much of it is like the magic, you know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the thing is, you're missing it anyway. Yeah, you're missing it. Oh, you can just run it, and then in addition, try some of those people. But then go on the dates that you were going to go on with anyway, regardless. It's just the thing that helps pull someone out of the crowd. I dated a guy from my survey. I ran the survey, I assigned point values to each of the questions. I went on a date with the top couple people, and then one of them, I was like, And I'm still dating him to this day, and it was awesome. And I would never, I never would have gone on a date with him without the survey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you, if from memory, or we can look it up, do you remember what kind of questions were on the survey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I asked a couple different categories. I asked about basic life stuff, so what kind of relationships, like monogamy versus polyamory. Do you want kids? Where do you want to live? Basic things that you need to be compatible. And then I asked sexual compatibility, various preferences. And then I had a section about personality. I try to ask questions that would do the most effective filtering. So what are ways that I can't give people what they need that maybe they really want. I don't really, I'm not very outdoorsy. It was just very common. A lot of people like being outdoorsy. So I asked the question, how much do you value someone else that you're dating being outdoorsy? And if they marked yes, I was like, okay, we probably, I should probably downgrade the results." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Man, but doesn't polyamory make that really difficult? Because can't they find somebody for the outdoorsy stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, they could. I mean, this doesn't, but if you're going to have somebody, it's nicer to have them be more compatible than less." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you were a little bit, like, in terms of sexual compatibility, you were able to, like, yourself aware enough to know what preferences you have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, you can- I think so. I think that one helped a lot with the escorting. Like, the escorting helped a lot with knowing my preferences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's, like, out of the giant pool of different preferences, you have, like, a subset that's clearly defined for you? Okay. Like, dominant submissive- Yeah, power dynamic stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Power dynamic stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, not just sexual, but in relationship too. Was that in the survey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't like power dynamics in relationships." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, defining them in, making it clear in a survey, like asking a question about power dynamics in a relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think I asked about power dynamics in relationships. Okay. Because I just assume most people don't. And there's a lot of things that are kind of like- Most people don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're putting together a survey, a systematic survey to understand compatibility. wouldn't power dynamics inside of relationships that naturally emerge often be part of the question? Or is that hard to question because it naturally emerges and you can't really?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the thing is like a lot of questions sort of overlap in demographic. And if you're making a survey, you wanna have the minimum possible questions that give the maximum possible like filtering information." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. But the purpose of that survey wasn't to do a good research study. It was to select one subject that you could take." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's part of what's good. You want to most efficiently filter out. Because one, you get more people taking the survey, the fewer questions you have, which is good for finding a mate. If you have 5,000 men take the survey, it's better than 1,000 men take it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't you want men that would be patient enough?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What if you're like a high-powered man who's like on his lunch break, right? So it's like a billionaire's too busy just flipping through. And the guy that I dated, he took the survey, he was waiting for the pizza to come out of the oven. And so it was important that it was short. Metaphor or literally pizza coming out of the oven. He was literally waiting for pizza and he saw the thing, he's like, I guess I'll just fill out the survey really fast and it changed our lives. So romantic. For me, this is my kind of romance. I'm really into it. But you can be efficient with surveys by making sure your questions don't overlap. So for example, if somebody is very polyamorous, they're very unlikely to be interested in a traditional man works and the job and the woman stays home and raises the kids kind of relationship. Because poly people just generally don't do that. And so if I'm asking about polyamory, it already covers the thing. And so if I have a whole bunch of questions, I can triangulate a bunch of implicit kinds of questions that I haven't directly asked about. So this is why I didn't ask directly about power dynamics, because from the rest of the questions that are in my survey, I can pretty accurately predict whether or not you're gonna be interested in power dynamics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I'm afraid, I'm trying to think as you're talking, I get it. That's really interesting that you did that. Also, maybe not for the effectiveness of finding a partner, but for just exploring the actual process. of human sexuality, of like the search, this complicated optimization process we're all engaging in on the landscape of happiness that seems to be this not even a differentiable function, it's a giant nonlinear mess. Okay, but for me, I don't think I would be able to design that survey. I would bias it too strongly. I would probably prefer women that have read Dostoevsky or something like that. That would be a filter for me, right? But that's a horrible filter. There's a lot of amazing people that have never, they don't give a shit about reading, or they don't give a shit about reading Russian literature, or they don't give a shit about, but they're amazing and passionate and creative in some other dimension that you might completely miss. But you were like, because I wonder if there's any, basically you're saying compatibility, like hard lines that you know statistically is just going to be an issue." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, you weight this a lot more. Yeah. But there's also like preferences. Like if you have a woman who's totally equal and she's read the thing that you like versus another woman who's also identical, but like she hasn't read the thing that you like, like you probably like very slightly prefer the one that has." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you don't know if they're identical. Yes, yes. But like you can't through survey get the identical. Like you don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, but you can kind of do a whole bunch of weights. So the person that I ended up going on a date with, he did not answer correctly to a lot of the survey questions, but he didn't have to. He was just overall, overall the weights were like, he just tended to be more in the direction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was there a text-based fill-in survey? Sorry, paragraph?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, you ought to avoid that if you're dealing with large amounts of data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, why not? Oh, interesting, interesting. I'm different. First of all, you can do keyword searches. Second of all, you can do machine learning models. First of all, you can do crude metrics, like the length of how long they've written, right? and it could flag certain things. Yeah, it's actually pretty easy to, I've looked at, like for hiring, I've looked at like thousands of applications really quickly. Like you can really, the human brain is really interesting, especially, like if you visually highlight certain information for yourself, like keywords, or again, with machine learning models, like sentiment, you can highlight different parts that will catch your eye better than not. And I can go through just a huge number of applications." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Are you telling me I can use, if I learn machine learning, I can process dating survey applications better?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. No, like textual." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like I can have them write things in. This is like a new way of, That would be, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a really good incentive. I think that would, so the really nice aspect of text input, like long form text input, multiple long form text input based on an interestingly phrased question is you get to learn how to make a better survey. I think you would appreciate that. Like you start to see how they're actually interacting with these questions. Like I ask certain questions, like just to see how people think. Is it better to work smart or better to work hard? or is it ever okay to betray a close friend? I'll ask questions like this that don't really have a right answer, but I just wanna see how they think, or is truth more important than loyalty? and I get their long form answer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you get to see their reasoning process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it reveals so much, not just about the person, but about the kind of questions I should be asking that have nothing to do with truth or loyalty, like how to get a good engineer with very specific questions. But I think it's really useful to get text input." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have done text input usually with beta surveys. So I usually do beta surveys before I do the real survey. Like I do like a shorter version, or it depends on what I'm doing, but like a different version of the survey that I have people take before I release. I use the information from the initial survey to inform the questions that I ask in the real survey. And I haven't actually recently, but I used to do a lot of like the text-based questions to see for similar, although I don't think I relied on it quite as heavily. And if I introduced machine learning, I think it'd be a lot more efficient." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love that you're also doing, like, you're writing scripts and stuff. Like, you're doing some, like, statistical analysis. Are you using Python mostly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I had to learn Python for this just a couple months ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is the best way to learn Python. And the best reason to learn machine learning is to solve actual, like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I can't be motivated. I'm just not motivated to learn something unless there's an actual curiosity I have, and I have to learn it and to solve it. I was trying to avoid learning coding for so long, but eventually it was my data set became too large. I couldn't work with it with anything else. So, Python it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, what's also an interesting data set that you're probably interested in a little bit is like Twitter itself, right? I don't know if you've, I've played with the Twitter API a lot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can you just get the download the I'm just I'm stuttering now because the Twitter Twitter" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, there's a lot of Twitter. So Twitter's a social network with a bunch of people that are interacting a lot. Like, there's like, I don't know, the number's insane, the number of interactions, but there's different ways to interact, to get data from Twitter. There's streams, you can look at, it depends what you're interested in. You can do results for searches, you can look at individual tweets and get entire, which to me is super interesting, the entire tree of different conversations, the replies. which might be very interesting for you because like, it's not, it's much harder to ask rigorous questions, which you do with your polls, but you could see like how divisive certain things are. You could look at sentiment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like calibrators to figure out like exactly what questions you should be asking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And also highlight interesting anecdotal things where like two people freak out at each other and just argue like a thread that goes on for like a thousand messages that you might never be even aware is happening. Cause you're like, cause Twitter doesn't like surface that, like it would be, Twitter doesn't make it easy for you to like visualize what the hell's going on even with your own social network, like a. Like if you post something that's controversial that gets a large amount of attention, you can't clearly visualize everything that's going on. Like it's very, it's a blurry, amorphous, like you're just kind of looking through the fog at different replies and it kind of, it's, yeah, so to be able to- They have like graphs of networks? They have the data for the graphs, yeah. So you can reconstruct it yourself, yeah. And then you have different levels of access in terms of how many queries you can do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is really cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And now, because there's like Elon, there's a lot of sort of revolutionary stuff happening at Twitter. I think you could literally sort of push for innovation there. Like there's aggressive innovation happening. So in terms of requesting stuff for the API, you could do all that kind of stuff. I think Twitter is just a fascinating platform for the, as cliche as it sounds, for studying For me, it's interesting what makes for a healthy conversation. That term has been used, but it's interesting how conversation, to me, it's fascinating how conversations break down and not, like how, like the virality of drama. or conflict or disagreement, how that evolves when a large number of people are involved, when a large number of misinterpretation of statements is involved in text-based, with some anonymity thrown in. Like, I feel like there's a lot of study that can be done there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, Twitter's probably not great at it, right, as it stands. No. Because it's, like, necessarily short. You can quote-treat things out of context, et cetera." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we should understand that, right? At a large scale, you should be able to study that kind of thing. Oh yeah, what was your casual sex survey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually haven't looked at it in a while. I think I just asked people about a whole bunch of fetishes, because you don't want to be obvious about yours because then people are going to hijack it to try to tell you that they like what you like. So you want to be obscure. So how do you design a survey where you're testing for a thing, but you're still obscure about the thing you're trying to ask about?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you still see it as a survey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like an application? Because I think you tweeted saying like, I'm thinking of just like showing up to San Francisco and saying, is anybody open for casual sex? Something like this? Am I misremembered?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe escorting, I'm not sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, for escorting, sorry, sorry, sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which is similar. Like I kind of use escorting as the way to have casual sex now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so let's talk about escorting. So you wrote about escorting in your blog post. Escorting was good for me. How did you get into escorting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was working at like a, I quit camming cause I was burned out and I was like trying to work at a friend's startup. And it was hard for me. I don't, it's difficult for me to work on projects that are not my projects. Uh, and so I was like, Hey, fuck it. Like, I want to go back to sex work. I want to make more money, but I don't want to cam anymore cause I'm burned out. So I'm like, well, let's try. I had a friend who was an escort. I'm like, let's try that. And so we had a call. She like outlined the basics for me. And then I put up some ads and then started working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the basics of escorting? How does that work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you want to get started escorting, so just in case you have a career change. I would like to. But you're gonna want to get some nice photos, so you probably have those." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, you assumed I haven't done it before. How rude." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, have you?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, you know. Recreation I would like to do professionally, I suppose. So if I wanted to do it, if I wanted to do it, if I really wanted to step up my game, how would I do it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, you got the whole tutorial. Recreational escorting is just, okay, okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, meaning like, you know, like selling products on Etsy versus doing a startup, you know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, escorting is kind of all just selling products on Etsy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but selling a lot of products. He's like dabbled." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Small handcrafted artisan dolls." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Escorting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Versus mass manufacture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, if you go to Bass Manufacture, you're escrowed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just feel like I haven't been getting, you know, I've been undervaluing my services. And I would like to really step up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you could really just like grease some marketing gears and be true to your model." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, so some of this is marketing. So like how, I guess I want to like know, is it similar to camming in that way? Like is it, you're basically advertising yourself and you're, like the marketing, all the creativity that you mentioned before, all of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I found escrowing to be pretty easy because escrowing is not highly competitive. For example, camming is highly competitive because the thing that I outlined before, the amount of money that you make determines your ranking. And you can also go and see other girls. You can see what they're doing. So if a girl figures out an incredible strategy for making money, it's like two seconds before that strategy proliferates into everybody else. So it's very fast-paced and really tough. With escrowing, you don't get to see what other girls are doing. You can look at their websites, but you don't know what they're doing with clients at all. You can look at their rates, but you don't know what their volume is. So you don't actually know what is successful and what isn't very much. So I think there's much less evolution of marketing through this process. And so I came in with my aggressive marketing skills from being a cam girl. I think that really helped. I did very well as an escort. I just came in and made a fantastic website. I knew how to do the ads right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was the finding people? I guess it's also like finding the right kind of customer or the right kind of client." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I got like in a lot of trouble for this recently in the sex worker sphere, because I said that if you raise prices, you're more likely to encounter clients that aren't going to abuse you. Like it's safer. They did not, they said that I was being classist, you know, implying that poor people are more violent. But to be fair, if you're a guy and you want to be violent towards a woman, you're probably not going to be paying her a lot of money. You're the kind of person likely who's going to haggle a lot because you don't respect her. But anyway, that aside, it's a little pet peeve for me. Yeah, I started charging $800 an hour and then pretty rapidly raised it to $1,200 and then a while after that raised it to $1,400." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the interesting thing you mentioned in my extensive research, you used to do 1,200 to 1,400 an hour, and then you said that you're thinking of jumping back in at a rate of 2,400 the first hour. And I think 900 each successive hour. That's interesting. That's like, I mean, to me, that's really interesting. Like why? It's like a lot in the first hour, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it's just because it depends on how you want to incentivize the amount of hours. So if you have to pay a lot for the first hour, but not very much for the successive, you're more likely to buy a longer period of time. And usually I find that clients who buy a longer period of time are nicer to you. I don't have a great theory for why that is, but they're more likely to take you to dinner and get to know you first. And I just enjoy that a lot more. I enjoy knowing who I'm going to have sex with. Like a date, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so it incentivized the long-form date dynamic versus not. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. How does money change the dynamic, just basic human dynamic of interacting for free versus for money? I think about that a lot, just talking to rich people. It's like, you usually get paid for your time, and you're doing this for free. What's the difference? Is there a difference, really, or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I've actually, it depends a lot. So when I was doing it full-time, it was my only source of income, it changed quite a lot because I was really incentivized to have repeat customers. So I'm like, okay, my primary interaction with you is to have you hire me again. I'll do whatever that takes to make that happen. And so if I have to laugh at jokes that I don't find funny or be more adoring of your penis than I actually genuinely feel, that's what I'm going to express. And obviously, it's to some degree titrated. It's unpleasant to force yourself to like something that you don't. So I would actually not see clients again that I didn't want to. But to some degree, there was a sort of self-suppression going on, which I think is the way it works in any sort of customer service job. You want the customer to leave happy. So you just make sure that you are happy the whole time. And you're like, ah, really enjoying the other person. So recently, when I've kind of dabbled in it since, baking money through other means, where I don't need the money. It's more like a fun side thing. Like I said, it's fulfilling the role of casual sex for me. I don't have to do it. This is not my primary job. I just want a good excuse to have sex with somebody, and the money is a great filter for that. And so in that case- That's interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the money is, yeah, okay. The money is basically a filter for somebody who's taking this interaction seriously." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It also, so there's an interesting psychological thing where I have difficulty having casual sex with somebody because some part of my brain, which I assume is quite female, is doing some evaluation of status and whether or not this is going to damage my reputation by having sex with them. So if you found out that I went and had random sex with a homeless man, you might be like, wow, that says something about Ayla. Maybe she's trashy or she just has no standards for who she's going to fuck. And so some part of me is continually anxious. I'm like, does this mean I have no standards if I decide to have casual sex with you? What are people going to think? And so if you introduce money, it takes away that anxiety. I don't have to worry about it. Because it's like, oh, of course Ayla would have sex with that person. They paid her. This is not an indication of the kind of mate that she can get. This is just an indication of a business transaction. And this allows me to enjoy casual sex so much more when somebody pays me for it. To the degree that I almost view it as a kink. And so it's like, so I'm using it sort of to replace casual sex now. Like occasionally, I'm like, I'll just pay, you know, like it's paying me a little bit to erase the anxiety and I'll like have a fun, fun time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, can't you see like dinner like that or something like that if the person pays for dinner or like, so like it's all just, if any money's involved, if it's a kink, then you could just like use it and you, buys a coffee at a Starbucks. It's like, all right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but it has to be plausible. You have to trick my brain into having it actually be incentivizing for me. Two coffees? Like a cappuccino or something? Yeah, like the homeless man bought me a coffee and then I sucked his dick. That's not cool. No shade to homeless men, by the way. I've been friends with a lot of them. I'm just using some sort of stereotype of right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it has to be plausible where you can trick your mind. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so that's different. So now in this sort of frame, I am still, I'm accepting money, but still much more expressive of my actual preferences. So before when I would start escorting full-time, I was suppressive. And now I'm like, you know, fuck it, I'm doing this for me. So we're going to make sure that I have a good time. And so I'm much more demanding." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you're having more fun, because you're not pretending." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like laughing at a joke or something like that. That sounds terrible. Sounds like- I mean, it's- But it's also like social. I mean, I guess I would, Would I do that? Like when you first meet people, like strangers and so on, there's some aspect of like niceties, but I don't know, intimacy, like real intimacy requires like getting past the niceties. Like laughing at somebody's joke when it's not funny feels like anti-intimacy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but I laugh at so many jokes automatically. It's interesting, because I don't mean to. I'm not trying to be fake. But if I'm in a group of people and somebody makes a joke and everybody laughs, I laugh even before I'm checking within myself, do I genuinely enjoy this joke? So it's like, I don't know, the degree that I am sort of just a result of social programming in all cases, that when I'm with a client back when I was doing it full time, it doesn't feel significantly different. It just felt like a different version of myself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's true. Yeah, to that degree. To the degree you don't feel like you're going against your nature. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it was very rare that I actually felt like I was going against my nature." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the market of how much to charge? Say 2,400, like how transparent is that market? Is there like a market?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like how much can you sell when you're charging that much?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, no, like what are the competitors? Like if this- Oh, yeah. Like what do you, are you distinctly, because you said it's, a lot of it is a bit more shrouded in mystery. Like it's more confidential. Like, do you have some transparency to the market, what the competitors are?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I did a survey of Escort. It's only like 130. I'm trying to remember. And the median was around like 400, $300, I think, an hour. Oh, wow. Something like that, with a very long tail at the top end. I'm trying to remember what the, I also asked the amount where I could calculate the amount they made per month. I think it was like six or $7,000 a month. I need to double-check that one, but." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I charged 50 bucks an hour." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You charged 50 bucks an hour? You should raise your rates." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I give a really shitty handjob. All right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But usually the rates are around, like if you want a median escort in a big city, it's usually four to $600." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A city, so the, sorry, four to 600?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In a big city, but like smaller cities, you charge, the rates go lower." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's so fascinating. What's like the most you've ever seen somebody charge? I think I am." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But at this point it's because I'm post work. I can just put in a number." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does the fact that you're sort of like a sexuality expert, like a researcher and so on, like your mind is fascinating as well, and you're a bit of a celebrity, does that play into it? Or do you feel the celebrity now, like when you're with people?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. Usually if people are interested in hanging out with me, it's because of that. But that's different. I think besides the fun part, this is a kink as opposed to this is a job. With this as a job, usually the high end is closer to $2,000 an hour, the very high end." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have clients ever fallen in love with you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, yeah. I think it happens to me much less than most other people due to the thing that I think we were talking about before. Which is what? Where you give off vibes, maybe subconscious vibes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But they have fallen in love, but not as often." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think something about my signaling indicates that people should not fall in love with me, because I don't think it happens very much. And it happens a lot with other women that I know. But I have occasionally had... The thing is, it's hard for me, because I try to be as vulnerable as I can in the connection with a client. And I do really like some of them. I still remember some of them very fondly, and I hope they're doing well. And some of them are really profound. One guy saw me because he found out he was dying of cancer, and he was like, I don't want to die without seeing someone. I'm like, Jesus Christ, that's such a... I don't know, I'm very touched by many of the people that I saw." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's deep intimacy there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I know that it's brief and I know that it's kind of weird, but there's a real glimpse into somebody's soul when you get to be intimate. And I think this is especially true for men because a lot of times men don't have a way to be really vulnerable in front of anybody. But if you're in bed with a woman that you find to be attractive, you can sort of let loose a little bit more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they can become vulnerable in general quickly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And I really liked that. I like being as vulnerable as I can to match it. I'm not forcing myself or anything, but I just feel into it and notice how beautiful the person was and feel grateful for being able to be in this intimate experience with them. And that was so wonderful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it ever hurt to say goodbye?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but I think that's unique to me because I like being alone a lot. Even with my friends who I like dearly, I'm like happy not seeing them. Because I don't like making facial expressions very much. But I do miss some of my clients." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait, sorry. What does making facial expression have to do with saying goodbye?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if you are not with somebody in person, you don't have to make facial expressions anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, you can just think about them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you can just sit there totally blank face and then have all of the emotions that you want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, you're telling me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you have this thing too?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's not a thing, but you're on camera. Yeah. So I feel feelings, but people usually want, social interaction is such that you probably want me to show feelings on my face." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like that, good job." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there you go. So like, I definitely, there could be just an introvert thing where you like have a vibrant inner world that you forget to show to the rest of the world. And also I'm scared of social interaction and I just have a lot of anxiety about interacting with the external world, so yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm kind of surprised to hear that because when you talked about finding the light in everything and everything is fun, like I usually don't associate that with having not very much anxiety." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, because I have the, we mentioned that earlier, I just appreciate the beauty in the world when I observe it, but then when I'm interacting with others, I have a very harsh self-critical aspect to my brain that says like, you're gonna fuck this up. You're gonna fuck up this interaction. You're gonna fuck up the beauty that's there, if I'm sort of being fragile and vulnerable for a moment. One of the things I'm afraid of, I get so much love from people that, listen, or even like reach out, like you said, through the survey, like women and so on. I'm afraid that, yeah, you know, you admire me because you don't know me, but you won't admire me once you know me. So that's self-critical. But it's a silly, I mean, as you get older, you're like, yeah, okay. Like, I'm able to step away and objectively look at myself as like, there's no, it's just, you're fine, you're good. It's like, but it's still, this is the part of the brain that you can't just shut off." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What would fucking up in this conversation look like? It doesn't have to be rational, but I'm curious if there's a specific thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A lot of it is just a feeling, like an amorphous fear of failure, what it would actually look like. maybe because we're talking about sexuality, me not being able to eloquently explain the world view I have and why I appreciate it. that would make me feel like a failure, because that would make me feel like maybe you don't know what you're doing, right? Because sexuality, not sexuality, but even romantic relationships are really important to happiness, they're really important to me. And I'm not sure like the conception of love I have, romantic love, is like fully, you know, made rigorous. So especially when I'm talking to you that thinks very rigorously about a lot of these topics, I'm not sure if I've thought about them a lot. I feel them. I interact with the world in the space of feelings. Maybe I'm almost afraid to be very rigorous with these kinds of thoughts. And so I think the failure would be like, I would be confronted with the fact that I can't explain what makes me happy. That could be a failure. And there could be just a bunch of other failures. Another big failure is like, not, I think you're a really brilliant person. And a lot of folks I know, know and admire your work as well. And so like for me not to be part of highlighting that brilliance would be a failure definitely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, because then other people might feel like, like notice the discrepancy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, no, no, no, that's not other people, just my personal feeling. And the other is like jokes, because we're talking about sex, right? So for me, it's fun to just joke around, but you also have to tread carefully because like... It's a weird surface because I already feel bad about making a joke for 50 bucks for a handjob that's crappy by me. But I think sometimes you just got to go for it. I went for it. It kind of fell flat on its face. But that's the thing of the conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's this fear where if you become scientific about something, you'll figure out that your feelings are unjustified and then you'll experience this horrible thing where you're like, ah, shit, I'm afraid of this, but I'm being forced to by my logical mind to believe this thing, which I don't think this is true at all. I think your feelings are there for a reason. They're for a good reason. And logic or rigorous analysis or something should be dedicated to figuring out why it's there. not to suppress it or tell it it shouldn't be there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think is more important to just life, reason versus emotion? Not life, to what makes us human, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My romantic narrative answer to this, which is not rigorous at all, is curiosity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Curiosity. Yeah. What is curiosity? That's such a middle... Curiosity is like both emotion and reason, right? So it's like this pull, because reason is the tool you use to figure out the puzzle, and then curiosity is the pull towards the puzzle." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't like worldviews that pit emotion and rationality as opposite each other. They feel like beautiful parts of a cohesive whole. If you're doing rationality to the extent where you're suppressing some emotional reactions you have, then I think you're doing it wrong. You're missing a big part of it. It should be integrated. It should be part of one unified flow. The things that you like, if you want to be in a romantic, committed relationship for the rest of your life, then this is beautiful and good, and the kind of logic that you're using to make sense of the world should be fitted into that correctly. I think it's really cool. Anytime you have an internal at-odds thing with it, I think you're using some sort of force to suppress one or the other. Like, oh, I'm not allowed to reason about this, or I'm not allowed to feel about that. And that feels harsh to me. And I think curiosity is the solution. If you're simply just calmly curious, oh, why do I feel like that? Let's go find out. That's so cool. You can use logic and your feelings to discover the answer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you sometimes, because you do this kind of technique, which is interesting, and I've mentioned it to others, you'll sometimes step away from like a third person perspective and describe the feeling you're feeling. Or like even just the situation, like you'll step out and talk about, wait, what is happening here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like in the conversation itself. In the conversation itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. First off, what is that? Do you find that to be useful and interesting? Because it's very interesting. It feels raw and honest. The danger of it seems like you escape the actual experience of it, though. So that's the trade-off. You make it intellectual, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is it, though, intellectual to do that? I mean, maybe it is. I don't mean to, no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe that's the wrong word. You can make it intellectual, but you can still continue the same flavor, because you're not fully disengaging from the conversation. You're just creating an extra metal layer that's happening at the same time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and exploring the emotional reaction to what's going on in the moment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in some way it's actually making it stronger, or enriching it, like making it more... Yeah. giving it more context, giving it deeper understanding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's like a way of going meta that is a flinch move. Like, oh, I noticed that we're doing this thing, I'm going to name it. And I think the thing that I described earlier, like when the homeless guy approached me and asked, you know, can you go home with me? And I was like, oh, are you trying to have sex with me right now? Like what I was doing was like a meta move. Like you're stepping outside and like, okay, what is the purpose of this conversation? And we explicitly identify it. And in that case, I think that is sort of like a flinch move. Like I'm not telling him my emotional response. I'm not like being fully present. I'm like sort of identifying it as a way to subvert what's going on. And I absolutely think this is a possible thing. But I usually try to be aware of that myself. And it depends on the purpose of what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That guy, cause that is actually like a chest move you did. You had a purpose to that chest move, but the flirtation is on. Like he could have like done a better move that would make you like curious, like, huh? Like interesting, because you had an agenda with that, but he could have changed your mind. Like he could have with a few words, because you just created extra layers, extra entry points." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If he had gotten more meta, he might have been like, okay, well, now I am going to sleep with you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly, I mean, see, there is something, yeah, that aids into the chemistry of the conversation when you do that. I really enjoy it, it's like a rare, I forget, did you and I, I forget who, I've had a few people do that with me, like just in conversation, and I feel like you were involved somehow, because I've met you before somewhere. Yeah. I don't know if we were, or you were just in- We were in a couple parties together. Or maybe it was just like a bunch of people that kind of play with the same, or like a comfortable- They're circling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just a practice explicitly dedicated towards that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's circling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Circling is like- That might be the thing they- Yeah, I think we have some mutual circlers in our- Circlers?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In our networks here. What's circling? I don't remember what's circling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm gonna describe it horribly, because it's like one of those things that's difficult to describe unless you experience it, kind of like drugs. But it's something like you sit around, there's kind of guidelines to the conversation where you talk about the present moment. And you're honest about your experiences as much as you can be. And if you don't want to be honest, then you say, I don't want to be honest. And it's your commitment to connection. So you're here to actually connect with the other person, understand them, and be understood. You're not supposed to project. So if you have an analysis about the other person, you own it. You're like, I'm experiencing you as this. And then you check, is it true? Or" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you supposed to be almost like converting it towards the thing you're thinking, like constantly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Are you supposed to say what you're thinking? If it feels right in the moment, you can. The thing is, it's very amorphous, right? It's almost like creating a magical sensation. And I've been with some, I've seen some very good circlers, really high skill circle, and I feel like I'm on drugs when that happens. It's very rare to see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it feel honest somehow?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, very honest. Like right now in this moment, I'm feeling like kind of like nervous energy because I'm talking to you and this is a unique situation. And like, I want you to think I'm cool. I want everybody listening to me to think I'm cool, but I'm also having some sort of delight at being able to express in this way and like some admiration for how you like set up and built this thing that I can be a part of. And all of these things are sort of in my body right now is this sort of vibrating high thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I remember like in the party setting, cause I've had to talk to a few people. I felt like it was going sexual very quickly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, I don't know if you remember this, but the first time I met you, I didn't know who you were. I just heard, I knew I'd heard your name, like you introduced your name and I'm like, I think I've heard people discuss that. And I was in the middle of a very sexual conversation with another woman. Oh, you were? Yeah, I was. And you just like turned around and left very shortly afterwards." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I thought it was very- Oh, was I listening in on the conversation or something like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was like, I was talking to her and you were just kind of like right there. And so we introduced ourselves and then we continued on with the conversation. You were like standing there and listening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I don't think I would have left the conversation. So it's funny, you'd probably interpret it in a different way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I interpret it as you not wanting to listen to graphic sexual stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was it super graphic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. I was interviewing her about her fetish, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, yeah. I don't think I would have walked away from that. I would have been curious. Oh, interesting, because I don't often see people having a deep interview about fetishes. I wouldn't even be... Listen, I'm like Jane Goodall here. I'm not like a... I'm not afraid of sexuality or something like that. I just have certain values in terms of monogamy and so on, but I think sexuality is really beautiful, yeah. I don't think, yeah, I can't imagine myself walking away from that conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Somebody must have called you or something, because I didn't remember exactly how it worked. I just remember thinking later on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or maybe I thought I was intruding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, maybe. I was kind of drunk, so. And I probably was very drunk too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I would like to actually have footage of that conversation so we can actually interpret what actually happened because it's probably, I mean, human interactions are funny like that. It can happen for all kinds of reasons. Have you ever fallen in love with a client?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. I mean, in tiny ways, like micro loves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you ever fallen in love love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I don't know what it means, but probably. The thing that other people say when they say fall in love is probably something I've experienced." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think they mean? What is love, Ayla? Yeah, I know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No? It's a fantastic question. I think, so love is one of those words that refers to like a billion different concepts. And I think we maybe should just taboo the term to have a better understanding of what we're referring to. Because there's things like a feeling of intense attachment. There's something feeling like soulfully aligned. There's like sexual attraction. There's like excitement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Talking to me and saying we should taboo the term love in this conversation. How dare you? Romantic love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To make it flourish into lots of other new definitions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, thank you. For expanding love. It sounds like you're censoring the most important word. This is like 1984 all over again. Okay, also on the book reading list, no, okay. Listen, no, romantic love, like a deep intimacy for somebody else, like a deep connection with another human being that is also, I mean, yeah, with polyamory, it's tricky. And your relationship with sex is also tricky. So like, what's the difference between a deep friendship and a friendship that also has a sexual component?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember being very confused about that when I did a lot of LSD. I was like, what? The line between romantic relationships and everything else kind of got blurred. I was like, oh, I'm just in intimacy. And some intimacies mean that you spend your life together more and have sex, but the same basic thing is there. You're seeing someone for who they are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think you can be, if you're heterosexual, do you think you could be really deeply close friends with a guy and not have sexual relationships with him?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I assume it's possible. Like, if anything is ever possible, then probably, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, I'm- Everything is possible. Time travel is possible. Quantum mechanics makes every- Traveling faster than the speed of light is possible, according to general relativity. Everything's possible. So you're saying there's a chance. Dumb and Dumber has taught me that everything is fucking possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's probably not super likely, assuming that they are, like, attracted to each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And for somebody that does surveys and statistical analysis, We're interested in what's the likely thing here versus what's possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you say passports, anything's open." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you just avoid answering the love thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd like to say about love, I just need you to be precise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, okay, let's be precisely and precise and continue." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oops, sorry, that's my phone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It feels like a passive-aggressive suggestion that we shouldn't talk about love anymore, but we shall continue." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, we should absolutely talk about love. It's just the term is very confusing. Because it's like, some people say the word love, and the thing that they're thinking of is like, oh, the butterfly. It's like the sparkle thing that I get in my stomach when I think about my loved one. But I study relationships over time. I did a survey about it, and that sparkle goes away within like two to four years. But people still report loving their partner after that. So I'm like, okay, when you say the word love, what the fuck are we talking about?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just wanna get on the same page. So what are the different, so the butterflies, boy, I'd like to push back on two to four years on the butterflies, but okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, statistically, not everybody." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Butterflies don't give a fuck about statistics. You ever heard of the flap of a butterfly wing causing nuclear war? How do you describe that with your statistics? Okay, so butterflies, that's the basic infatuation, the chemistry of the initial interactions, sure, but a deep, meaningful connection that feels like sexuality is a component of that, like the kind of intimacy that's only possible when you're also sexual with another human being. On top of that, you have the butterfly, and on top of that, you have the friendship, and on top of that, you have like, what is that? That's a sandwich full of- That's the love sandwich." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The love sandwich. Okay, I'm down to call it a love sandwich." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, we'll just call it sandwich, L-S. Okay, what role does that play in the human condition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He asked about the human condition. It's an interesting phrase. Yeah. I'm like, this is not a phrase that's common in my own thinking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure, human condition is a good summary. What do you think? What do you feel when I say human condition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They can ask very different kinds of questions than you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which is interesting. I've been trying to figure out what kind of brain you have is creating this category of question, which is why I was saying there's something about a poetic narrative in there, because it's very aesthetic. I think you have asked much more aesthetic questions than I do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't even know what the word aesthetic means, really." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like artistic. Artistic. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I mean, I know what aesthetic means, but I also don't know what it means. It's kind of like the word love. Oh. Aesthetic perspective. Yeah, well, but part of it, in conversation, you don't want to ask a question that has an answer, fully, always." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you have an example of a question that has an answer?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the meaning of, oh, it has an answer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like one that you think is like, ah, that's like a bad question because it has an answer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "how many sexual partners you had in the last year?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my God, that's such a, okay, I feel like we just got to some sort of crux about the kinds of questions that we like to answer. Sure. Because I would love that question. Okay, right. To ask enough people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, but does that really tell the story of what you've felt over the past year?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's true, but then I could just tell you. Okay, so by when you're saying the kinds of questions that you like, the ones that don't have an answer, by not an answer, you mean like not an answer where you can know that you're done telling it, is that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That you can escape having to think by actually answering it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the struggle. is the place where we discover something, not the destination. Contention. Contention." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, it's working, it's working. Okay, so what is the role of the love sandwich in the human condition?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, that's fine. I take that question, but it's a stupid question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You don't have to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm ready to chat. Do you like love? Do you personally love love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you like love? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a part of me that feels like I have unconditional love for all things. Like when you're talking about the glass being beautiful, I felt that. that felt like it rang something, that I have a similar resonance in me for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I were to circle right now, I feel like you're avoiding the love question, the love sandwich question. What's your own personal feeling towards loving another human being versus having sex with another human being?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Love is one of the concepts that dissolved for me a long time ago, so I have difficulty directly answering it. But I have the experience. When you described the love sandwich, I feel like I have had that experience. I have it currently for some people also. I'm dating people and I have that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So people who you date, you would describe sharing a love sandwich with them. Yeah. Okay. So how does, I mean, that's great to hear. So you're not, are you afraid of love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, not at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you describe to me polyamory? What is it? What does it mean? Cause there's like different terms. You have a nice blog post about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I have a personal definition of it, which I readily admit is not shared by a lot of people. But to me, the definition of polyamory is simply not forbidding your partner from pursuing intimacy with others. It doesn't mean that you have to pursue it personally. Two people could be married and only have had sex with each other for 20 years. And as long as they're like, you know what, if ever you wanna go have sex with somebody else, you're welcome to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the interesting thing you said is that doesn't mean they have to do it. They just have the freedom to do it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's the freedom that matters to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is, I mean, it's called the Polyamory Post. It has so many good blog posts. People should just go look at your, read your writing, because it's really, really strong and often backed by data, but also just a deeply honest look at yourself and your understanding of the world. Yeah, it's refreshing to be, like with a lot of stuff I disagree with, but I feel like if I disagree with it, you'll be very open to arguing and kind of thinking through it. There's just the honesty that radiates from the whole thing. Anyway, so yeah, it's, I mean, it would be interesting to kind of explore what polyamory, like how it works. What are the different versions? What does that freedom look like? What does that freedom feel like to be able to go see other people?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends on you. Like, do you wanna go see other people? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. So usually for me, I tend to be pretty happy with like one or a few people. And then occasionally I like some novelty. So usually I'll go like, I host orgy sometimes. So I'll host an orgy and then I'll go have sex with people at the orgy and then that'll be good for the novelty for a while." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you about orgies? Yeah. So how many people are at an orgy? What's like a standard, we're having a Sunday picnic and it's an orgy. What's like a number of people at an orgy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've only recently started hosting orgies, but I have been to a lot of orgies. I would say like the median is maybe 15 people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like how you say median versus mean. Okay. Median is 15 people. What's the gender distribution usually?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Usually about even. It's ideal if you can get more women than men in most of them. I've recently been hosting free-use orgies, or orgies where consent is assumed by default when you enter. And of course you can revoke it any time or go over a whole bunch of rules to make sure it's very safe. You have wristbands, so nobody's actually doing anything they don't want to. And in those ones, you have to have more men than women." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I thought free use was like... consensual, like at any time, but it's at any time within the constraints of this building or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so at the orgies, it's like you, by entering, if you wear a wristband, then you are by default opting into consent. So people don't have to do a thing where they negotiate with you and be like, is this okay? It's just the default is you just go for it. And if they want you to stop, they say the safe word, like red, don't, and then you have to stop. And we do exercise in the beginning, people saying red to make sure that everybody knows exactly what the rules are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your favorite safe word?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Red. When I first started doing weird kinky shit, I was like, oh, let's make a safe word. And we picked the word foliage. I was like, that's goofy, right? But then eventually came a time where I did actually, in fact, want to say the safe word, and I couldn't. I was in agony. I was crying. I'm like, I can't make myself say this stupid word right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Foliage." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So after that, I was like, red. Doesn't matter. I don't care. It's not funny. We're just going with very simple red. Very practical." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How does an orgy compare sexually to a one-on-one sexual experience? Is it the same ballpark or is it fundamentally different?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the experience of both orgies and one-on-one sex can be like really high variety. But you kind of, it's a little bit like you're having sex with someone, but you're surrounded by really realistic VR porn of other people having sex. And sometimes it's like threesomes also, like maybe there's another person involved, but it's hard to like have a whole bunch of people in one cluster, because usually there's kind of different little clusters of people having their experience. I once was part of a 10-woman orgy, It was a total lesbian thing. And that felt like a writhing cluster. It was very nice. But typically you kind of separate out with like very small pods of people doing stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. So back to polyamory. So what's a good, what does it take to manage? Do you have a main partner if you're being polyamorous and you're dating multiple people? Is there usually a main one for you personally?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me personally, kind of, yes. Like right now I kind of, two that aren't, I see roughly around, for me, it's kind of just descriptive. If I just happen to be seeing you a lot more and I confide in you more, then you're descriptively my primary partner. But I don't usually have rules to protect that. I'm down with rules to protect it if you're trying to build something. If I buy a house together, I'd be like, okay, we need to, whatever our relationship is, we have to do the thing where we're both paying the rent for the house or the mortgage or whatever. A lot of people do have primaries, though. It's very common to have prescriptive, like I'm gonna get married to you and you're not allowed to have anal sex with anybody else, that sort of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the transparency and the communication they have to do? Do you usually try to be super honest about it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Extremely, yeah. I mean, I've learned over time that even if it seems like a very small thing, you talk about the small thing. Because often I would just sort of have a small twitch in myself, like, I don't know if I like that. But I'd be like, okay, this is really minor, it's probably nothing, and if I talk about it, it's gonna make it into a thing. And I just don't wanna make it into a thing, you know? And I've come to realize that it's worth making it into a thing. Because I can't predict at the time if the small feeling I have is going to grow. And then when I grow it, now it's much more difficult to deal with. So now it's like any little bit of jealousy I have, I immediately communicate it. I'm like, ah, I'm a little jealous of you right now. I don't hold that in at all. I used to be kind of like, back when I first started being poly, I used to try to pretend that I was not a jealous person. backfired quite a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's really interesting. So you do still feel jealousy. Oh yeah, definitely. And it's also interesting that you kind of recommend when there's a little bit of jealousy to bring that to the surface." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, just excessively communicate, even if it feels stupid. I feel like a cliche, I feel like a stupid therapist training video. I just feel ridiculous sometimes when I'm saying the things, but I've learned over time it's just important to just say the things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Cause like, you know, the traditional view of jealousy is exactly like you said, if you bring it up to the surface, like, it's going to sound like you're overreacting to everything. But you're saying like, still do it. Cause you're basically, your brain blows stuff out of proportion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and it's good to be going through it with a partner. I have a partner right now who's dating this other girl, and he really likes her, and he went traveling with her and stuff, and I was like, I feel jealous about it, and I have to tell him that, and that way he can be with me in it. He holds me when I'm feeling jealous. And it's like a bonding experience, you know? But it's important for me that he's able to handle it. I try not to date people who really freak out when I have negative emotions, because I want to be able to express that I'm upset by something they're doing without it being taken as a demand that they change their behavior. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he has to be able to skillfully handle that interaction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He has to be like, cool, all right, you're jealous. I'm not going to freak out about it. I'm not going to change my behavior. I'm just going to be with you in that. We're going to sit in it together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, is some of that just insecurity that he should also just comfort, like basically alleviate your insecurity, bring you back to like a rational objective evaluation, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My relationships, I love it when people do not reassure me. I like not being comforted quite a lot. And so usually the people I date don't, I'm very gravitating. Like it's one of the things people do to make me fall in love with them is if I say something really like terrible and they're just like, do not give me any comfort whatsoever. Like that's where my heart gets captured. So I typically am in relationships where I'm like, I mean, I'm so jealous. And they just like, do not reassure me at all. And that's good, because it doesn't give me an out. Like I have to deal with it myself. Like maybe it is true that the other woman is better than me. Like maybe that is an actual possible reality. And I don't want to be dealing with my life in a way where I'm like pretending like I'm only okay when that reality is not true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you like them to say that, that the other woman is better than you? Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or that they prefer. If they feel that. Yeah, I mean, they should say it according to themselves, like, oh, I prefer, like, I have a better time with her than I have with you, then I would wanna know that, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And even though that might be painful to hear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That which can be destroyed by the truth, what is that, that your ego or something like that? So your ego just generally grows and you like the destruction of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's really agonizing. So the process of truth. It's not a fun experience. I've had guys be like, well, you're not as pretty as I'd like. I'm just like, oh! Stabbed to the heart." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then also give me your number after. Yeah. Oh man, that's kind of beautiful. What do you think of monogamous relationships, like philosophically? Can you maybe steel man or make the case for monogamous relationships? Can you understand the pros and cons of a monogamous relationship?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you defend, if you're like, hey, you can do whatever you want, but you and I are gonna spend the rest, like we just, you're 80 years old, and like, oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together, we've never had sex with anybody else, I think that's like, awesome, if that's what you want, that's great. I have like a little bit more problems with people doing that while also forcing their partner not to misbehave if they want to. Like if you're like, oh, we only made it this far in our monogamous relationship because I forced my partner not to pursue an intimacy that she wanted to. Then I feel like a little more like, ah, I don't know if that's great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you know if it's a real want for an intimacy? Like checking out an attractive person while being inside a monogamous relationship. Yeah, how do you score that? Is that bad that the person cannot pursue those feelings?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it depends if they want to. Like I often find people attractive I don't want to pursue. I'm also okay with people entering into agreements. Like if you and I want to agree, like I'm only going to enter this because I'm going to be so hurt if you pursue somebody else. So I'm not going to pursue anybody else. That seems fine to me. But I also extend that. Like if somebody is like, I don't want you to have any friends, I'm going to feel really insecure of you. And like, okay, like if you want to enter that agreement, like I feel the same way. Like I think you should have the right to do it if this is what you want. But I also kind of, I feel like a little weird about restricting your partner from doing things, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, but I guess if you're honest about it and you just put it on the table, I don't want you to have any friends. I want you to sit in a box. But then there's a power dynamic that you can be quite influential in a relationship in convincing your partner. And it sure sounds like you're honestly agreeing to a thing, but you're not really agreeing. That's the, I mean, part of that is the beauty of relationships, right? It's messy, it can be messy. It's hard to know what you really want, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's mainly my complaint with monogamy. I'm down with conscious monogamy. But I think so many relationships are monogamous by default. It's not actually right for them, but they just get into it because culture just doesn't give them another option." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they don't even ask themselves the question, is this right for me?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "which I'm a weird-ass person who thinks a lot of weird shit, but I didn't even think about polyamorous adoption before I had heard that it existed. And I was only when I first met my first polyamorous couple, and I was like, oh, that's what I am. That's clearly the thing that I am." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's funny, because to me, monogamy, it doesn't make sense for it to be a default. To me, monogamy goes against human nature. In some sense, romance is a fuck you to the way the world works." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Really?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like it's a, like Romeo and Juliet romance, like traditional description of what romance looks like versus like, sure, there's like a million variations of that. But in my head, like this partnership that's for a long time together is a kind of, you know, like, I don't know, like true romance. You know that movie? It's a really fucking good movie. I haven't seen it, no. Okay. There's just like, you're together, against the world. That's the, I mean, that's what close friendship feels like. It's like ride or die. Like that. I guess it doesn't, it can be, it can span across multiple, you can have multiple partners in that way. But I just don't see monogamy as like, definitely not a default. I would actually think, honestly, would probably see polyamory as a more natural default." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by default. Like most of human history has been sort of a weird mix. Like you get polygamy and monogamy are kind of the main arrangements." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I mean, it's just like human nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, people are attracted to other people and they wanna... Especially in longer term relationships. In my relationship survey, I tracked the amount of cheating over time in a relationship. Like how long have you been in this relationship and have you cheated?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the results of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Men cheat a lot. Women too, but men cheat about 30% more than women do. I also asked men and women to predict if they think their partner has cheated. And people's predictions were about the same. So people roughly predicted that their male or female spouse hadn't cheated about the same rate, but men cheated much more than women." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So who was more correct in their prediction though?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So men were more correct in their prediction predicting women. And women were more off. Women thought men cheated much less than they actually did. Both of them were off, but the male gap was significantly more. So yeah, I mean, you're right. When you say monogamy is not default, I think you're really getting at something. Human beings are just, especially in long-term relationships, it's difficult to only want one person. But to be fair, I think monogamy and commitment are very different. I think you'd be incredibly, I've known so many very long-term, super committed poly couples that live lives that look very similar to the very romantic monogamous couples, like children, houses, 20 years. And that works great for them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much to open your mind to in these kinds of conversations, these kinds of ideas. But I also realize some of the cake is baked. I have some assumptions that are hard to break through. Like what? For myself. It's difficult for me to imagine a polyamorous relationship. For me, that would work. But I don't have enough data. I don't have a like I have very little but like at this point it's like I haven't eaten pizza in like 20 years because I know I just don't there's a bunch of stuff I just eat low carb because it makes me feel good but there's so many foods I haven't explored it's just like Well, I know what I love. So you explore every once in a while. Yeah, and you kind of figure that out. But at the same time, you're humbled by even talking to you or looking at your data. Sexuality is a fascinating topic because it seems that we're very, like we were talking about, very afraid of this topic. like to be really honest with ourselves about it. The whole like academic research is afraid of it, but it's so core to who we are as human beings. I gotta ask you about this. I can't believe it took this long to get there, but one of your many fascinating surveys is on fetishes. You wrote a blog post about it, probably several, because it's like a huge data set." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's still in progress, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the one I'm referring to is on popularity and tabooness of various fetishes. So what are some interesting takeaways? I've got to pull up this graph because it's freaking epic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, this is a big graph and it has tabooness as one axis and popularity as the other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "OK, for people who are just listening on the X axis is tabooness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "asked to rate how taboo society viewed sexual interest. And on the Y-axis is percent of people reporting interest, log scale. Oh boy. All right. So just some examples on the low taboonness and high popularity. There's a correlation here. I think you said it's 0.69. Yeah. It's just not, it's just hilarious. Is it still .69? Are you tracking that? I haven't looked since I did this, yeah. So like the less taboo stuff is more likely to be popular and the more taboo stuff is less likely to be popular. And on the like missionary position, fingering, vagina, blowjobs, light spanking, cuddling. Cuddling is more taboo than missionary?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think people are conceiving like, if you're like, I'm really sexually aroused by cuddling specifically, then you're like, that's a little more weird than getting specifically aroused by blowjobs. You expect people to be aroused by blowjobs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this was like getting at like, as a fetish versus like an activity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, as a specific, as like a concrete sexual interest. Like I am specifically interested in this thing. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so those are thighs and lips, different body parts. Jawlines. And then some of it is color based on more female preference versus male preference. Like jawlines is more female preference. Being submissive is more female preference. Light bondage. Yeah, more female. There's a lot of interesting ones. There's so much, okay. But then on the far side of that, I mean, it gets pretty dark. But even all along the way, like extreme bondage, being at 50 tabunus, pegging, pain, giving pain, sexual frustration, I suppose, right, as a kink. Yeah. And there's so many interesting ones to me that I haven't even considered." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I had to do so much research into fetishes to compile the list." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are there some surprising options to you that you're like, oh, okay, this is a fetish?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, more confusing was what the fetishes are about, because I didn't want to overlap fetishes, so I had to look into them. And I'm like, there's like such interesting manifestations of core drives. Like if you're really aroused by disgust, like maybe you're very into rolling around in dirt, but you're not into rolling around with ice cream. So I'm like, okay, I have to make those two separate fetishes, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And like, I'm seeing like at the far end, rodents, like different types of incest branding. So there's like pain and then- Like wound fucking? sex with animals, I guess, dogs, horses. Receiving oral sex from an animal is high tabooness and pretty high popularity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, surprisingly high popularity. I was really shocked by that one. I went and triple checked that number, because I'm like, no way this amount of people are reporting interest." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you know which animal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there? No, I didn't specify. I asked like which animals are erotic and then I separately asked like how erotic is it to receive oral sex from your preferred animal?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is so fascinating. So I would, can we just talk about the methodology of this? This feels like deeply honest. map of humanity in a way we don't usually map humanity. Like, your fetishes are so meaningful to each individual person." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's what I love about this work. It's like, nobody cares about someone's fetishes. You never get to express them. And if you have a more unusual fetish, people usually judge you. So it's like this tiny little pocket of like this shame thing, but it's so cool to me that like human brains can be oriented in such a way like wound fucking. Like somebody finds that so erotic and that's so cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and then they probably, and it should be explored, like how did that come to be? You mentioned that we like to construct narratives that somehow was grounded in childhood, but maybe it's genetic. Maybe it has to do with, maybe you can actually form and unform that fetish very quickly. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is one of the things that I'm researching. So in the big survey that I'm doing, I asked so many questions about childhood. All the ones that I think we have common theories about, like, oh, are you abused? Is it yelled at by a man or a woman? stuff like that. Are you really sexually repressive? Is it gender roles where you've expected to conform? A whole bunch of stuff. And then I asked, obviously, about a massive amount of fetishes. And my sample size right now is 500,000 people. Yeah, it's massive. And I have to stay for all of it. And the result looks like this is not really correlated. Nothing that I asked about in childhood, nothing correlates with fetish preference later in life. It does correlate with onset. Lots of things that happen in childhood can like change the age at which it triggers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They have so many fascinating blog posts. You had a blog post, I think, on the age of fetish onset. Yeah. And like, you really nicely organized it by age, like reproduction as a fetish, I guess pregnancy. Yeah. At age of 17, about 16.9. Toys and like anal beads is 15.5." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, one of the interesting things I found, I mean, this dataset is so huge, it's taking me a long time to go through it. So this is like snippets from what I remember when I was glancing through the data. So this part is not rigorous, but I seem to get the impression that if you are, if a fetish occurs for you earlier, like if it's much earlier onset, you're more likely to report being extremely interested into it. So later onset means you're gonna be like less into the fetish, but if it hits earlier, it's like passionate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I wonder if it passes, like, is there like phases?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I didn't measure old fetishes at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like no longer, right? You used to, but it is no longer there. Interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One interesting thing that I don't understand is that non-cis people seem to have more correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes. So I was saying that there's no correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes. This holds for cis people. But trans people, especially trans men, there's a correlation. It doesn't mean they have absolutely higher rates of abuse or fetishes or anything, but I'm just saying that for them, there does actually seem to be some sort of connection between childhood experiences and sexuality later in life. And I don't understand why this applies to one group and not the other. I don't have a good theory for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So usually you try, like when you see something like that, you'll try to construct a theory and see if you can find, like, you keep that theory in mind, like a hypothesis of why it would be, and then you ask further questions to try to elaborate. So can you maybe talk about the methodology of how you got the 500,000, like what? Like, how did this come to be?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I might go into way too much detail about this, because I thought about this so much. Because the question is, how do you get a lot of people to take a big survey? The longer the survey is, the lower the response rate. And I really wanted to do one big comprehensive survey, so I could check a whole bunch of correlations within it. because it's more annoying and it's harder to get a lot of people to retake similar surveys to each other at a time. So I'm like, okay, I need to convince a very large number of people to take a lot of these questions. And even building the questions, that was really hard because I'm like, okay, I need a comprehensive amount of fetishes. I can't ask everybody to answer for every single niche fetish. I'm like, do you like ball gags? Do you like funnel gags? Do you like wife shrew gags or whatever? I'm like, you can't do that. Nobody's gonna finish that survey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ask questions. What's a web shrew, but okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I, I'm not doing the, I'm trying to refer to like, there's like a thing that like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Different types of gags." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, different. So I'm like, so what I need to do is I need to ask people a question, like, are you in like bondage? And if you say yes, then I'll go ask you all the bondage questions. Ah, got it. Right, but then this seems simple, but then it's just exploded because I'm like, how do I categorize these fetishes? There's like, if you're into splashing, which is like, you like sitting in cakes, you like getting in mud, basically like kind of messy sensory. Like, is this a disgust thing? Is it a humiliation thing? Is it a sensory thing? Like which category, anyway. So it took me like two months of just agonizing over each fetish, because you don't want to miss a fetish. You don't want to like have a really important thing that you accidentally put in a disgust category when it actually belongs in the humiliation category, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me think about that. Because like, you're still catching it. You're just miscategorizing it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, because if you're into splashing and you're like, this is clearly a humiliation thing. So you say, yes, I'm into humiliation stuff. And then I don't ask you about splashing. Then I'm missing a whole data set of people. because I've falsely categorized your question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're going to miss stuff, you're just picking what's less and less important to miss." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm trying to get people into the right question set. Sure. Because I can't ask you all the questions, I have to ask you a couple overarching questions to know what specific questions to ask you. And so I have to, those overarching questions have to be really, really well calibrated so that I can accurately feed you into the right sub-part of the survey. Awesome. And so that was extremely difficult when I'm dealing with, I think it was like 850 fetishes. So I did a couple things to spot check. I did a couple questions where I asked, detailed in the survey, but also the beginning of the survey just to see what percentage of people I was capturing. And then I scored the survey. So if you take it, I had other people answer preliminary surveys where they gave me data about how taboo the various fetishes were. And then I used that data so that when you fill out the survey, it's extremely comprehensive and you get data about exactly how taboo your interests are. And you get a score at the end and I give you an equivalent kinky character, which I also had people write a whole bunch of fictional characters and some historic ones about like how kinky they were. So then I matched the historic character, kinky character to your score." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that makes it more fun, gamifies it a little bit, and you can brag about... To be able to share it with others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And a lot of the characters are really goofy, like there's Spongebob and Hitler's on there, and South Park characters." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What kink does Hitler have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think he's around Marilyn Monroe, which is slightly above average." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, sorry. I thought there was like a two-dimensional space somehow. So this is like a literally from zero." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How kinky, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Hitler is the baddest man I've ever met. Who is the most, what's the character for like- Willy Wonka. Is the most kinky?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is the most kinky, yeah. Okay. I think like maybe Captain America was the least kinky or something, or Gandhi." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Meanwhile, but that's another conversation. Oh boy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it went viral on TikTok basically, because people were like, what, I got this insane character, and then the sample size exploded from 40,000 to 500,000." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, so like all it took is that kind of incentive? Or did you like at first have to pay people for the serenity? No, it was just that incentive. And what about the demographic or the different people that took it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Mostly younger, so usually early 20s. Predominantly female, like 70% female. 70% female. Pretty like, wraps around in TikTok demographics pretty well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, I got it. That's interesting. Young people are probably better for this kind of survey because there's probably a culture that's a little bit more honest about their sexuality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, most likely. I think people are incentivized to be honest when they're getting a true identity response out of it. If you're doing it for money, you don't care. But if you are invested in the result, you want to know what the truth of the answers are, then you actually" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's possible that you also don't wanna know the truth. Yeah, this is true. But on average, hopefully that doesn't. I mean, these are really difficult. Is there some interesting little quirks that people should know about your methodology that you had to kind of solve to try to get to a really good survey? So one of you said is the categorization to make it more efficient. Is there some for the analysis part?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the graph that you were talking about is a binary. So it's like if somebody expressed even a little bit of interest, then it goes into the graph. So it's like 80% of people expressed even a little bit of interest. So it's not representing degree of interest. It's not differentiating between them at all. So it's possible that like some fetishes have exactly the same amount of people, like are at least a little bit into them, but one of them it's very extreme interest and the other is like, vague and not very intense. So that's not reflected. I also probably didn't represent the visual part right. It might not be intuitive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You chose a log scale, but it just kind of spreads things out to make it more clear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because the linear was just so clustered at the bottom, you couldn't really separate it out. So there's obviously a selection effect. It's possible that the identity result at the end impacted people's results a little bit. But the thing is, I'm comparing it to what exists. What is the alternative? And right now, the research on this stuff is terrible. So I'm not saying my research is perfect, but at least it's something. It's something that's pointing us maybe in a direction that we might be able to do more research on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're making the data available." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I'm doing it slowly because I ask about so many questions, it's not very anonymized. So I'm releasing small sections of the data at a time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you published in journals and stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I haven't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have any interest in that, or is your approach- I'm conflicted about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It sounds cool because then I could be like, ha-ha, I'm published in a journal, and then people who are yelling about me who don't know anything about statistics on Twitter, then I can go shove it in their face." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but then you're also giving in to the silly criticism, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel so passionate about extra science, science that you can just do. I wanna make science accessible. Anybody can just go look and learn about the basics of doing a survey or figuring out how to interpret information. And doing a published journal feels like I'm betraying my cause a little bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's often behind a paywall. Yeah, it goes against the, I mean, I think you not publishing in a journal is doing a big public service." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Aw, I think it's the first time I've heard that. Thank you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, like just coming from like on this topic, the elitism I see on the psychology side with the journals and the academia, the positions and the institutions you come from, all of that, that goes against I think that's more useful for math and computer science and so on, where there's clear, but even then, even then, code is code, data is data. Prestige shouldn't matter at all. Maybe for biological experiments, like virology or something like that. it's good to be from a major lab that has a reputation for going through all the procedures. You know you can trust. But here, you're dealing with a giant mess of humanity. It's beautiful to be transparent, to be raw, to be exploring it together with everybody. Yeah, it's really beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think people have a lot of incentive to doubt the results. A lot of the research I'm doing is to cis and trans people. We don't have any data about transsexuality. Not very good, at least. And I'm really curious, I don't really have an agenda about it. I think being trans is cool. If you want to be trans, do it. And I have some skepticism about gender theory, but it doesn't come down to impact the way I think trans people should be treated, which I think is like, be fucking nice and human about it. I don't know. But when I'm talking about the thing, my conclusions are that transsexuality is really unique. It's not like cis women or man sexuality at all. And to me, this is super cool. But a lot of people, this is very politicized right now. the data into transsexual preferences, it's so loaded, which is really sad because I am very accepting of weird sexuality. If you're into a weird thing, I'm like, good for you. This is super cool. Let's figure out how to make it so that you can explore the thing you're into without any stigma. But because there's so much stigma that if you find that one demographic is into weirder sex stuff than the other, it's hard to present that in a way that people don't weaponize. So it's been a really politically touchy subject here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but you do it in a way that does not feel like it has an agenda, right? You're just exploring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I feel pretty open to what I'm going to find. Like, I often have no idea what the data is going to tell me, and I'm like, I pre-commit, like, okay, I could say A, B, or C, and I'm, like, down to publish any of those findings." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've put together an ask whole cart deck with a lot of awesome questions to ask at a party. or anywhere, honestly, including on the podcast. Let me ask you one from that deck. Is sex really about power? So what's the role of power dynamics in sex? Is that everything you understand? From the survey, in terms of what people are turned on by, you've talked about the preferences that women versus men have for submissiveness and dominance. And we've already talked about it a little bit, but it's expressed more strongly. I already forget the results, but I feel like women have more preference to be submissive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, this is one of the things that got me into researching fetishes to begin with. Because I think I came across some data, I did a brief survey where roughly around 60% of women report being submissive and 40% of men report being nominate. And this was really fascinating to me. I'm like, why is there this gap? Why do we not? Because I guess I have some priors that maybe this is an evolutionary thing, like the submission-dominant, strong men and women being like, oh, this hot man. The men are ravaging and stuff. I'm like, shouldn't this be in our genes? But there's a gap." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the gap?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The gap is the dominant-submissive gap. More women are submissive than there are dominant men. Oh, wait, really? Yeah, it's a pretty significant gap. And this is held up, like it depends on what you're testing. I've tested a bunch of things. This is part of why I did this big survey. Nice. But it depends against, again, on like what kind of dominance you're measuring, but overall it's a roughly 40 to 60%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when you say there's not many dominant men, the meaning like they express a desire to be dominant in a relationship?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or like sexually. Sexually. Sexually, in bed. So if I ask questions like, how much do you like being dominant in bed? Men are less likely to answer a strong yes to that question. But if I ask, are you likely to be submissive? Women are very much yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Really? And that's expressive? That represents truth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's wrong with men? I think there's some reflection in FetLife. FetLife is this website where people sign up and connect based on their fetishes. You can kind of see it picked up in the forum posts about how dominant men are getting laid so much and submissives are always looking for a dominant. It's an unequal market." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Holy shit. Yeah. This is great news. I didn't know this, that's interesting. What does it reflect about modern society? Because you know there's these trends about decreased masculinity or that kind of stuff. Is that similar?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm trying not to hold onto one theory, because I'm not sure. One is possible, like decreasing testosterone levels. Testosterone seems to be, I have a little bit of other research, but I'm still checking it out, that seems to indicate that higher testosterone, you're more likely to be dominant. So if we're seeing decreased testosterone levels across society, we should be seeing a greater gap." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is so fascinating. Once again, this is like a super interesting way to look at humanity because it is such an important part of humanity. And so like how many people are doing large scale research like this? I feel like you're like at the top of the world. You're like world-class at the top of the world doing research on this stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think I might have the biggest, most comprehensive fetish data set in the world right now. I'm happy about it. I'm very proud." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's probably growing, but it's also enabling you to establish a name, like a reputation to where people can go to you to trust you more and more, to do longer surveys, perhaps?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, maybe. I think the data analysis afterwards is very different from the survey design itself. So I'm still very amateur at the data analysis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but you can always catch up on that. I guess the data analysis does enable you to, does teach you how to ask better questions in order to understand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it goes back and forth. As I'm looking at the data, it informs the way I wanna phrase questions the next time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So women are more, at least in private, able to say that they would like to be submissive, and men, even in private, are not, disproportionately saying they're not willing to be dominant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's possible if this is caused by decreasing testosterone levels, then this means that we're probably having less satisfying sex overall. Like we're becoming less and less sexually compatible as time goes on. To be fair, I'm not sure that it is connected to testosterone levels. Like it's possible that this is just like a genetic thing. Like maybe the gay uncle theory, like the ideas. Maybe gay people evolved to be sort of taking themselves out of the gene pool to be assistants. And it's possible that a certain percentage of men sort of, quote-unquote, evolved to be submissive, to take themselves out of sexual competition, and to instead be like the monkeys revolving at the edge of the pack. It's unclear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, it's a method of survival? So you stay out of the competition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I'm like a little sus about these kinds of evo-psych theories, so I'm not... I'm just saying it because it's like one thing... There's different ideas that are possible, yeah, okay. So yeah, I'm not saying that it's definitely testosterone. There's other things. It's also possible that it's culture. People are definitely gonna bring that up. Based on my survey though, it doesn't seem to be any evidence of that. Like I asked about how much pressure was put on you to be, you know, agentee in your childhood. Like a lot of questions around this kind of thing and no correlation at all to dominance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, related to sexuality, I'm very uncomfortable right now, but nevertheless- Plow forward. in a dominant fashion. The blog post titled Rape Spectrum Survey Results. What are the key takeaways from that survey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I did this survey when I had a friend be like, hey, I had this confusing sexual experience. Was it rape? Like somebody kind of pressured her and she eventually stopped saying it or something. I was like, that's a great question. Like, I don't know how people would consider this. And so I put a whole bunch of different gray scenarios into a survey and then asked people to rate how rapey they thought that scenario was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you actually like little narratives that they get to rate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, you know, this person is on a date with this person, they get drunk, and the other person's not drunk. I try to keep gender neutral names for all of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you reduce them into a more concise description of the situation. Yeah. Like in this visualization, so you have this rape spectrum that's a result." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where on top are things that are less likely to be considered rape by the people that took the survey, and the bottom more likely. The likeliest is a stranger forcibly assaults someone who screams and fights the entire time. That gets a hundred. What do we make of something that's not zero? It's like a 12 is what? What is that? How are we supposed to interpret a 12 out of a hundred? Extremely low." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. It's like not zero, but it's just very close to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Having sex with an enthusiastic sex worker is a 12, that's the lowest one. And then there's a few, I'll just mention a few that are lower, like at that level. Have sex to make a partner happy in a relationship. Lying about wealth, hobbies in order to get laid. person with Down syndrome eagerly has sex with a neurotypical, not revealing being transgender until after sex, and so on. I think you mentioned that there's some, like, that not revealing being transgender until after sex, there's some differences amongst, what, men and women or something like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think there's some that men found more offensive than women. I'm trying to, I wrote it a while ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, this is nuanced and difficult, right? Because I think in a lot of public discourse, the word rape is pretty binary." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's like either is or is not rape." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so you had a friend where it was like, this felt rapey." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, she's confused about how to interpret it. And I think people look to the terms to know how to feel about something. Like, have you ever been through an experience, you're like, that was weird, and then you tell it to somebody else and they're like, oh my God, you were assaulted. And then it totally recontextualizes the thing that you've experienced. And I think that this is clunky with the word rape, because either you were raped or you're not. You either have this entire context thrust upon you or you don't. And we're really not nuanced about it at all. And so I would really like to have some sort of like, oh, that was like a 30% rape you just endured." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and I mean, there's probably other dimensions about how traumatic it is, how difficult it is to recover from, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, like people, it's a dangerous thing to assign a word to an experience, like even, or to a relationship, like saying a toxic relationship. Yeah. That can completely destroy your perception of that relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. I remember this was the case with my childhood. I talked about being very abusive, but I've talked about how there was a good amount of meaning there so that I didn't process it as abusive at the time. I remember after I got out of that house and that culture, people would tell me, oh, your childhood was really abusive. And I was really confused by that because it's a total recontextualization of that narrative. It's like the things that I went through were not good and virtuous and had meaning, but rather those were the result of parents who didn't love you enough or something. And even though the concrete things that happened to me did not change, no facts shifted. The fact that the interpretation of the facts shifted caused me quite a bit of distress for a long time. I was like, oh my God, I'm a traumatized, abused person. I went through an abusive childhood. And it was really hard for me. It made it worse. It's crazy the power that terms have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we didn't talk about this, but how did you begin to overcome the trauma of your childhood. You mentioned LSD, so drugs are part of it. What was the mental journey of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was doing LSD quite a lot when I was 21, 22. What's it like, by the way? I've never done LSD, what's it? It's very difficult to describe because it changes aspects about your environment that are invisible to you because they're so stable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it like, if you can compare it to like psilocybin, is it very different?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. It's like similar. I forgot that you did shrooms. Yeah. Okay. Then you probably know, you know, like the kind of shift that you have from cyber to shrooms is roughly similar. It's like more clear, I think. Shrooms is more like embodied, but LSD is much more intellectual for me. It strikes different people differently. I prefer shrooms a lot. I'm sorry, LSD. I prefer LSD a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is it not popularly taken? There seems to be a negative connotation to LSD, because it seems to potentially have a destructive effect. Maybe dosage is more difficult to get right, or something like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So actually, a long time ago, I did a survey on shrooms versus LSD, so I asked people. And people had slightly stronger experiences on LSD overall, I remember, but rated the experiences about as equally good. But I think people like shrooms because it feels more natural, quote unquote. But I think if you fed somebody a shroom and actually had the LSD molecule in it, they would think it felt very natural. But that's besides the point. I think people get kind of incoherent on LSD in a way that feels really alienating. I consider my LSD use very heavy to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life, but I definitely was incoherent for a lot of it. Talking about we're all one, consciousness, everything is love, man. And people are like- Why is that incoherent? So I think it's not incoherent. But if you go around saying everything is love, people are like, this guy's kind of blasted out of his mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This podcast is basically your LSD driven for a bunch of episodes. Yeah, I get this for sure. Oh, well, it's not just about love, but it's a It's about talking in that way about reality, about the world. Yeah, sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like overfitting. The narratives that you make about the world become really vivid. And so you pattern match just really aggressively. Everything is connected and you come up with these explanations for things. And I think I was very fortunate. So I have this theory about psychedelics where you either believe construct or you don't. So you take psychedelics and it sort of burns away a lot of your belief structure. And sometimes this happens, and then you're like, ah, I need to invent something to fill in the gaps. So you're like, okay, I think that maybe time is an illusion, so I must now believe that we're actually in a time loop, or time travel is possible. So you experience time differently, and then you come up with a different belief about time. Whereas other people don't do this belief construction at all. Like you experience time differently and you sort of let yourself not have a belief. You're not like, okay, I mean, you're not developing any beliefs about time in its absence. You're just simply experiencing the absence of the concept of time. And so I don't have a lot of data to back this up in my anecdotal experience, because I've tripped out a lot of people. People either tend to belief construct or they don't. And people who do not belief construct seem to get more out of their LSD trips. So if you can let a belief go without building anything in its absence, it's much more beneficial for you. And I think I just for some reason happen to have some brain that's constructed where I don't get belief construction at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's really interesting that belief construction is negative. What, is it necessarily negative? Can you elaborate on that a little bit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean belief construction in a way that's like, not like playing with frames, but rather committing to a different frame. So I like being able to play with ideas and be like, let's look at it this way or that way, that's awesome. But if you're like, okay, you know what? I took LSE and now I absolutely believe the cops are outside. And you're like, dude, no, you're just like, and you can't shift out of that, right? Your brain needs to fill in the gap. You're not allowed to have a gap, so you're not allowed to be flexible. And again, I don't think this is a personal failing. I think this is literally probably genetic or physical thing that's causing this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you think there's possible beliefs that are enlightening that you can stick to, like find a frame? that like, I guess if you don't believe construct and you're escaping your previous beliefs, aren't you doing like just some, you're picking up a bigger frame in some way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In some sense. Yeah, I mean, you're taking your beliefs as object as opposed to being subject to them. Ah, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And some of that I guess is genetic and there's these categories of people, there's two categories that experience LSD in different ways." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're one of those that are able to just let go." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I just think I had a good reaction. And I think a lot of maybe the negative stereotype of LSD comes from people who are belief constructing or carry the belief constructing off of the LSD trip. So you take LSD and you're like, ah, I'm believing these insane things. And people from the outside see that and they're like, oh my God, this person took LSD and became stupid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's very scary. What's frame control? Because that has been at the core of your trauma, at the core of your upbringing. What's frame control? And also, sorry, frame control in general, because that's part of human interaction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, frame control is like a way of manipulating somebody else that is non-obvious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a negative connotation to that usually?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I think maybe I chose the term kind of poorly because I think to some degree people are always a little bit manipulating each other. But I think it's generally obvious. Like, for example, if I disagree with you, I want you to believe what I believe. But this is like an obvious thing that is visible between us. It's like an object on the table. It's like, here's the box where I want you to believe what you want to believe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The disagreement box." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so we're under a shared context where we understand that we're trying to move each other. This is chill to me, I think this is cool. We just, all the time, and it's important. But frame control is the kind of thing where you are trying carefully to obscure the existence of that box. You're like, oh, the thing that I'm doing, I'm using tactics to try to influence what your reality is without us being both aware that this is what I'm doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I've been assuming you're doing that the whole time. No." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my God. I have to like figure out how to read your facial expressions. I'm still learning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's none. There's none. You don't have any? I'm like a, I'm not even like a Chad GBT. I'm like GBT-1 with my facial expressions. Like it's kind of off, like this doesn't seem to match emotions, but it's kind of intelligent seemingly, but definitely not conscious. Anyway, so like a negative connotation. manipulating, not being honest about the actual intentions of how you'd like to control the conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think there might be a naive version of interpreting this where you're just like, oh, I'm trying to subtly get you to believe like, oh, do you really think that's bad though? But this is not quite what I mean. I mean, there's a couple of concrete things that are signs of frame control. One of them is pushing the painful update button, which is this thing where it's like, Hey, if you learn this, it's going to be really painful. The truth is painful. And if you're realizing this thing about yourself, it's going to hurt, and this is a sign that you're heading in the right direction. So if you frame all pain as a sign of virtue, then this means that pain that's resulting as damage is something you're going to ignore. So it's common cults, right? This is for your own good. Oh, you face a brave truth about yourself that you're not quite as wise as I am, when really your brain might be trying to tell you protected things. Or another one is finger trap beliefs, where the belief is constructed in such a way that doubting it lends proof to the belief. So a very common example is Satan. The Christians are like, you know, Satan is going to try to make you doubt him, the existence of him. He's going to so doubt, like maybe he's not actually real. And so if you believe in Satan, and then you're like, okay, now I'm having doubts, like maybe he isn't real. This is like, oh, this is exactly what I was taught to expect. Like I am doubting this belief because I was told, because this is what Satan does, and it's taken as evidence for it. So the attempt to move away from the belief, rebounds on you and causes you to be more embedded inside of the belief. So it's techniques like these, very subtle things, where being inside of this system sort of just self-reinforces the system, is what I consider to be frame control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And have you met people that are really good at this kind of frame control? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So you're saying that your father was like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, to be fair, I'm not sure he was good at it because I was a kid. I think he's probably not very good at it actually, but when you're a child being raised in a house where he works from home and you're homeschooled, it's just kind of what's going to happen. And to be fair, I do think that strong frame control is quite rare. I don't think, most people are kind of doing something like this, but not nearly to the degree that gives me the ick. I've met maybe like five or six people, I think, who I really don't like because of those very subtle things that they're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I think also I'm starting to kind of understand that there is people who are narcissists and sociopaths and psychopaths out there. And I'm not even sure if people like that, because I think they get good at frame control, but I don't know if they're aware they're doing it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which makes me also nervous about myself, like am I doing frame control?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's one of the big things. It's like, typically people, you can't think about incentive. Like you can't think about, oh, is this person trying to do it or not? That's like not the quite, not the way. You have to look at what are the effects." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Pragmatically looking at the effects. And then you also have to do that with yourself when you're having interactions with others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like very much like, how much space are you making for the other person's reality here? Like, are you giving power to the other person? Because a big aspect of frame control is you're carefully rerouting the power to yourself. You're like, I am the person who knows. You're having pain in your beliefs because you're updating towards the things that I believe. It's just like a gravity well. But if you're setting up the gravity well of your interactions such that you're making sure you're giving the other person power over the shared reality you inhabit, I think it's a really good sign that you're not doing frame control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you're making room for them. Yeah. Okay. Unless we're talking about in bed, then it's all general relativity from there and black holes and stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Frame control, bed frame control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Bed frame control. It took me a long time to get a bed frame, just I'm saying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know, but you wear a suit though." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so frame control in the streets, no frame in the sheets, I don't know. I don't know what the funny thing is to say there, but there you have it. So the LSD helped you escape the frame of, can you like elaborate what was the frame that was holding you back from, Like the frame constructed by your childhood experience that was holding you back as an intellectual, as a thinker, as a free being in this world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I was really fucked up. Like after I left home and I absorbed the external narrative that I had been abused, which technically is true. I'm not saying I wasn't, but like I absorbed this narrative and I just remember having like this burning coals in my chest at all times. Like if I had to call out of my factory work when Father's Day happened because I was spending the whole day sobbing because everybody's talking about their fathers. Like, I was really messed up, and it's because I held this important thing, this idea, this frame, that I had been deeply wronged. Like, there was a correct way of being, and the world had violated that. Something should not have happened. Like, my father should have loved me. And it was like this sheering in the nature of reality, and that was really agonizing to have. And LSD really messes with frames a lot. It takes what you think is normal and really screws with it. And I've done LSD several times before, but there's one LSD trip where I went through my entire childhood in my head, because LSD really makes your memories quite vivid. Anything you visualize, it's like you're in it. And so I just went and very carefully, deliberately went and remembered every single memory that I could have that was really painful for me. Like the times that I lost friends and all the things I valued and like being broken, because like my parents, especially my dad, would refer to like breaking me, like explicitly, we're going to break your will. And so all these times where I was like, they had successfully broken my will over and over, and it was horrible. horrible. I was just like sobbing, tears streaming down my face. And then I like worked through my whole shot. I got to the end and I'm going to tear up because every time I talk about this, it's just like the sensation of like being free from that for the first time is so incredible. Like I remember being outside of my house and being able to like go where I wanted and think what I wanted and It was just so blissful and I was soaked in this gratitude on this trip. like, vibrating with complete joy for everything. Like, I was just looking around, like, I could touch anything. Like, I could cry if I wanted to. I wasn't allowed to cry. I was allowed to be depressed. I was trying to, I got depressed as a child, and my parents were like, if you keep being depressed, we're gonna, like, force you to scrub the whole house. Like, just, like, the ability to have a feeling was so thrilling, and I was so grateful for this. I was like, I would do anything to give this experience to someone else. I would do anything. even if it was putting them through what I went through. And then with that realization, I was like, oh, it was worth it. The thing that I went through was worth it for this. I would do it again to be able to have this deep gratitude for what I have now. And then that shifted the meaning frame. Because before, the meaning had been something had sheared, something that shouldn't have happened. But now it was like the exact right thing had happened." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's almost a gift." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I was like, ah, I would not give up my childhood. I would do it again. And I believe that to this day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the moment of discovering that freedom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Because everything now, my whole life is in contrast to that. And it's awesome, it's fucking great. I'm really thrilled about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a part of you that hates your father still?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Kind of. I don't want a relationship with him anymore. After that, there was some forgiveness. I had this burning... I would have nightmares about him killing me or something. And after that, it kind of stopped. The fire in my chest went away permanently after that trip. It was so fast. It was like before I was fucked up. After that trip, I woke up the next day and I was clean. It was really severe. And I definitely don't want to be around him still. He still triggers the fear in my body, but I don't have that hang up anymore. I'm over it. I've let go. He's his own person. Ultimately, he didn't get to decide who he was in the same way that I didn't get to decide who I was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's almost like a kind of at least intellectual forgiveness you have for him? And that, so that trip just took you through your whole, were you alone, by the way, when you're doing the trip?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I had roommates, but the trip was mostly alone. I had somebody else who was like sitting in the room, but they weren't interacting with me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're sitting there experiencing all of this. What's the timeline? Like how long does it take to go through your whole childhood?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't remember. I mean, time's really messed up when you, when you do that. I was listening to the soundtrack of The Fountain, which is excellent. Yeah. I listened to that a lot when I did LSD. I don't know, it was probably just a couple hours." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's amazing. I mean, it's like, it would be, it's just like a vivid experience of your childhood, moment by moment, trauma by trauma." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's good to experience it purely. Like it just is what it is. It's just is grief. Like it is loss and you just are in it without having to make it be anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's so interesting that you can work through that. So for a lot of us, for a lot of human beings, childhood is full of those kind of mini... traumas, big or small, and like working through that. It feels like what a lot of life is about is trying to work through that. And it feels like you have to kind of relive it. I guess that's what therapy is about on part, to be able to vocalize it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. This is why I feel really confused about the concept of trauma. People use this word so much, like, are you traumatized? And I understand why, this is why I feel confused about it. But part of me is like, I wonder if by using that term, we're creating the trauma in people. They were using the frame where the thing that happened to you was not supposed to happen. happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there needs to be a different frame. No, I, I, I agree with you totally. I just, I've, I've made friends with and talk to this guy named Paul Conti. He wrote a book on trauma. He's an incredible, brilliant psychiatrist. Yeah. He's probably agrees with your kind of, that's cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I should read it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You should maybe, maybe even talk to, he's a fascinating human being. I'd be interested in the, um, A psychiatrist's perspective is really interesting, because you've been doing kind of an in-person survey, because you've done so many patients. Just talking to him is fascinating, because if I describe my experience or somebody else's experience, I could see his brain mapping it in interesting ways to the tens of thousands of data points he has in his head, and it's like, Of course, that's what doctors do, but it's cool when the doctor's basically the doctor of the mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To have an actual qualitative data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And be able to, I mean, that's where the poetic stuff comes in. Ultimately, as a psychiatrist, you're exploring the human mind. with a bit of a sort of romantic element. You can't be really systematic about it. But it does seem like frame or not, be able to just talk through the experiences you had is really powerful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What about it is appealing? Is it just like being able to revisit it with new eyes?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I don't know exactly. It just seems to work for people. I don't know if it's appealing. It just seems like almost acknowledging to yourself that things happen. Like I've said, I think I've said this before, my brother, who I love very much, tried to set me on fire a few times. And I think, to me, it's funny, but I wonder if I didn't talk about it, like if that would be traumatic, maybe like talking and laughing about it. Because it was traumatic to me at the time. I was like, I love you, why are you setting me on fire? But it's what kids do when they're young." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How would you do this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was like, whatever, this is what boys do. They're crazy. It makes total sense. It was probably funny from his perspective. But yeah, I wonder, I want to bring that to the surface if that helps. And maybe LSD allows you to, or different drugs, depending on the person, allows you to more vividly bring it to the surface. And then depending on your genetics, be able to find a better frame. That's fascinating. Human mind is freaking fascinating. All right. What's romantic to you, by the way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not a big romance person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to you, romantic is like objective analysis of the interactions between humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A little bit. Like I do find kind of the survey process that I did to be romantic. The guy that I asked out who I'm still dating, I was like, hey, you scored really high on my survey, you wanna like go eat food or something? And his response was like, you wanna try doing three days in an Airbnb as our first date? And I was like, yeah, and that was romantic. Like the bold leap into a really intense date." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you mentioned something also It must've been a tweet or something like that, where if people want you to show up to a thing, give the time, the location, the dress code, and no pressure for you to be there, but show up if you want. That was your specification." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a great memory, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then I think you said that you did that for like some castle in south of France." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I did, yeah. That was in my early 20s. People, my friends at home were taking prediction markets on whether or not I was gonna get abducted and killed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, what was that like? I mean, you've traveled quite a bit. Like, do you take these giant risks? What's with that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I used to more when I was younger with the traveling. I think I'm a little traveled out now, but like my first, when I moved out of Idaho for the first time, I moved to Australia, just kind of yeeted myself across the globe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which verb did you just use?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeet. It's like yeet, to yote, yatted, yeet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do people, is this like slang? Is this like Urban Dictionary? Or is this actual, or is this Webster?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you have to like feel into the word. Like if you take a thing and you just like curl it really hard, it does not feel like a yeet motion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so you yeeted, so it was aggressive, so across the globe, you didn't even stop in- I just hurled myself, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Italy along the way. I just kept yeeting myself in various places, yeah. And so at one point I was on OkCupid and somebody sent me a long message being like, you should come to, I don't know, I'm hosting a castle, it's some people that I met, I was like, I have no idea who you are, but I just bought a plane ticket." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you just went." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it was life-changing. I ended up dating that guy for years, and he changed my life quite a bit, because he was very agent-y in the world, and before that, I wasn't agent-y." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Agent-y, like, can we- Expressing agency. It sounds like you were, and don't you have to express agency when you're yeeting yourself across the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but only a little bit. In the same way you express agency when you eat LSD. The only thing you actually do in eating LSD is put the tab in your mouth, and then you just kind of scream the whole way after that. Yeah. But there were a lot of other things. I didn't feel powerful enough to go make events happen or anything. And this guy, he had a lot of agency in the sense that he would just sort of create realities through the people around him. Be like, okay, we're going to do this startup, or we're going to throw this incredible event. Let's just do it. And it would somehow happen, and it was really cool to see that. And so that one thing led to another, and it was one of the biggest impacts on my life, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's pretty bold. I would say it's pretty romantic. South of France?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, it was in a little castle. It was in the winter, so we were all cozyed up by the fire." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm jumping around here. Twitter poll, have you ever hitchhiked? You posted this Twitter poll." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was a big list of Twitter polls. Why did you pick the hitchhiking one?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know, because it's relevant to traveling. Oh, I see. And I like that one. That's romantic too, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm actually terrified of hitchhiking, but I have done it a little bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so it's terrifying, it's not romantic to you. So you're terrified of what? Oh, so you are terrified of- Well, it's interacting with strangers. That's terrifying. Yeah. So you go to the south of France." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. But that was like a cohesive thing, I don't know. It made sense though. There's like times where you're allowed to be weird and times where you're not. Who's allowing you? He had some vague eager bore of society, I'm not sure. But if some people are like, hey, we think you're cool, come to this party. You're like, all right, I'm allowed to come to this party and be really weird. But if you're being picked up by a hitchhiker, they're gonna wanna make small talk and you can't be weird or they're gonna kick you out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I kind of think, because Valentine's Day is coming up, I kind of think it's doing something crazy, I'm not sure. South of France sounds nice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You gotta go on a crazy romantic date with a woman you don't know at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think I'm gonna tweet something and just like, how do I select randomly, basically?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How do you select totally randomly, like not people from your audience?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, no, from the audience, but in an interesting way. Random amongst good choices." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Couldn't you have people just like submit a form and then you just randomize it and then select one? And then if it's terrible, you just go randomize it again. Like the first not terrible option." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Somebody's like, drown yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I feel like then it's no longer random. You kind of want to do random, you just do it and just do it. If I cross the world somewhere, some random place, just for like a single event, for like a dinner." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You got some sort of itch in you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, the itch to live. It's like, Sometimes it's nice to drop a little chaos into a thing. What's your chaos survey, by the way? You mentioned that earlier. I kinda saw it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I didn't look into it. Yeah, that's one of the artistic attempts at a survey. At least from what I understand, the big five, and the way that they used to do IQ tests, I've heard, is that they do factor analysis. ask a whole bunch of questions and then they run calculations on the data to like sort of group it by organic clusters. So like with the big five, it's like people who say, oh, I like to be at parties. They also tend to say yes to the questions like, I like being the center of attention. And so you notice that like there's a cluster of ways that people are answering the question and then you can sort of pull out an organic spectrum. And so I was like, okay, we've done that a whole bunch with things like personality or like romantic stuff, like I did it with the rape spectrum survey, but like what happens if you apply that method to a completely unselected group of questions? Just like no random chaotic, no thing whatsoever. Like what happens is if you ask all possible questions, what natural things evolve out of that natural spectrums? So I had other people submit questions for a very large survey and I took the first, I think 1100 and barely filtered them at all. And then I just had a whole bunch of people answer them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you give a hint to what it looks like? How crazy did the question get?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, a lot of them are standard, but somebody was like, if Beelzebub did something in 1512 to turn the world over, would you like it? I don't know. It's really just insane questions. There's a couple of those. A lot of like, would you fuck Aayla ones. I don't know, it was all across the spectrum. A lot of would-you-fuck aliens. Yeah, I had to produce duplicates. Oh, a lot of the same question. Yeah. Once, okay, I got you. Yeah, so it was really all, it was like normal personal habits. It was romantic preferences or political preferences, personality stuff, like random opinions about media." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, that's interesting. I'd love to see those actual questions, because your audience is probably really super interesting minds. Okay, you mentioned body count. You said you can answer that one easily. Do you share your body count? Do you know your body count? Is there a spreadsheet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a spreadsheet, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it Google Sheets?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is it Excel? It's Google Sheets, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. You don't have to share the contents, but is there data on each?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I track paid clients and free sex separately. And I track different things on either of them. Like with clients, I track like positions we used and who had an orgasm. And with personal people, I just track basically like age, city, you know, name. And I've had sex with I think 42 people, I think, for free. So I'm sharing this because I want people to calibrate. Like it's not like huge, it's not like tiny." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the people I've recently talked to, Mel, Destiny's, Stephen's wife, is a huge fan of yours. She was actually really excited to get to talk to you, but I think she said her body count is more than 42. I think she said 60, something like this. And so... It's interesting, because she was saying she loves looking at your work, talking to you, because you have similar perspectives on the world, and it's really refreshing, it's liberating. Wow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was really sweet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's kind of interesting. So is there like an optimal body count? If you were to map, I wonder, yeah, what have you found out about body count and doing? Have you actually done surveys on body count? Like on how many people you've had sex with?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually have collected that information on my last survey. I just haven't looked at it yet. There's just so many things to look at, so I haven't. But I think if I'm sleeping with a guy and he's had sex with more than 120 people, then I start to get a little bit wary." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why 120 as opposed to 100?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. I just like kind of skimmed through the numbers in my head and picked one that felt right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just now? Yeah. 120?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ish. I think that's when I'm starting like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ish, so you're flexible. Yeah, flexible, very. But 200 is a hard line for sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, we have to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It depends, the factors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Cause like there's a level of body count at which you start to wonder if, how much like accidental misrepresentation a guy is doing to you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, like if you're saying 200, that might be dishonest." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, like if he's had sex with 200 girls, this means that he's had a lot of casual sex and not a lot of like long-term relationships, assuming that he's, you know, hasn't been super poly. Yeah. And this usually means that there has to be some sort of like indication that he cares about the girl more than he actually does. Like he's like leading you on basically. And so I'm not saying this is necessarily the case. I'm saying like at a certain level of number, I start to become, I start to wonder if this is what's happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there like, from your understanding of it, is there a different perception between men and women? Like if you look at the high body count for a woman versus a high body count for a man, like how society views it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, people are way more judgmental of women. I haven't experienced this personally in my circles, because I'm in very sex-friendly circles. I'm in orgy circles where everybody dates the same women and they're like, woo, good job. But yeah, people are much more, people always tell me online, you're not ever gonna be able to find a husband because you have sex with too many people. It's very common, which I don't think, I mean, men are also perceived negatively if you have high body count, but I don't think it's negatively in the same way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, do you think it's unethical to lie about your body count?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So all lying is unethical?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not a big fan of lying in general." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's interesting. Body count's an interesting one. It's so silly to take that, to care about that, but still we do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Jealousy is silly, but still we get jealous. Is that weird?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like, the thing is, I don't like viewing emotions as irrational, even if they are. It's like, emotions are always there for a reason. And people don't like high body counts for a reason, too. It's just fine and valid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it also is like, yeah, I don't know what I make of just the past of time. You know? Like each human is a collection of experiences and you don't know most of those experiences and all of a sudden you meet this bag of experiences and like what are you supposed to do with both of your like training data? Are you supposed to like, like what? Like, I don't know if we, like, part of me wants to not actually ever talk about it, to care at all. Like, why does it matter? Because it's only the futures that matters. And yet the past also matters a lot, potentially, but maybe not really, because you're somehow, like, constructed from that past, but you're no longer that past." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It sounds like you're evaluating for something different than most people. What do you mean?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, the reason- I'm just talking out my ass, but yes, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just saying crazy shit, like as if I'm on drugs, but I'm not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this is kind of like lining up with this caricature that I'm building of you based on this conversation so far. Great. A lot of people want to know about your past because they want to know how useful and compatible you are with them. Like, oh, do you have a similar job? Do you have a similar culture? What can I expect from you in the future? It's very practically oriented. Whereas if the thing that you're focused on is not being able to predict someone, if the thing that you're focused on is a present moment, then it doesn't really matter anymore. Like their training data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I also think that the past is not that predictive of the future. Is it not? Not if you believe in the power of the interaction between two humans. It's like nature versus nurture. I guess, also I don't believe in the ability of people to accurately describe their own past." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because they have a very specific lens through it that doesn't necessarily, like it's too biased." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you can also interpret it based on the bias. Like if somebody describes their own past, you can kind of pick up like," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's hard, it's difficult. You could, if you're a therapist, if you're really drilling, or whatever, sorry, if you're really investigating and analyzing it, but then it's a different kind of relationship, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is it that hard, though? If I'm with a guy and I'm considering dating him, and I ask, how did your past relationship set? And then if all of them are like, he's like, oh, she was crazy, and my other one, that she went crazy, too, I'm like, okay. If you're talking about all of your exes as insane," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's an easy level red flag. But I feel like the more that also it's possible that we're crazy. He's attracted to crazy people. But I would say that's like easy level Mario Kart video game versus like Elden Ring. I think most people's past is like complicated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a pretty good burn. No, you're right, I do agree that there's a level of obfuscation, wow, that is hard to see through, but just a little bit sometimes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I tend to, with people, I tend to, in general, just human interaction, I tend to not talk about their past very much because it allows you to focus on, I feel like the past is kind of like talking about the weather is a crutch for me personally." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As opposed to exploring the ideas in their mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I see. Is it like, I get really annoyed when people quote philosophers when they're trying to talk about philosophy. Is it like that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A little, but that crutch is useful. And it's kind of sexy. Like, it's kind of like cool. Like, because it's nice to quote, because like, because a good quote allows you to be cheesier than you otherwise would be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, well, if you're doing it to be cheesy, that's fine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not cheesy, but, no, no, not cheesy, but to be, like, it allows you to say a simple, profound thing that we're too afraid to say with our own words. So, like, quoting philosophers in that sense is, yeah, but it is still a crutch, yes. But I feel like the past is more like talking about your dreams. It just, it's not, It's a crutch that doesn't care, that doesn't empathize with the other person's experience of the conversation or the explanations. It doesn't really convey the... They are not involved in your past." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So how do you feel about this conversation where you're asking me about my past? And I talked about my past a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I'm okay asking about your past. because you've really carefully thought about that aspect of it. And we didn't really talk about your past outside of the things you've written about and have really thought about. Like there's, like with most conversations, you'll start talking about past stuff that's, like the stuff that's actually bothering you. you still probably have not written a blog post about, right? Like there's probably still stuff, like maybe it's more recent, like the last few months, last couple of years, like that's usually what will come up with conversation and just, it's good, it's good, but it's not as deep and I would say it's not as intimate as talking about the actual ideas in your mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And how you interact with the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So like the past is interesting for the frame of like, I guess you're right, I guess we're talking a lot about narrative and past." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I like the ideas in people's minds versus their recollections and memories and so on. Yeah, yeah. What do you think about porn?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's nice, I like it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, you like it? Yes. What effect do you think it has on society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably reduces rates of rape, because really horny men get an outlet that's not a real life woman." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so what about the, I mean, like I said, I finished reading Brave New World, like the over-sexualization, does it increase the sexualization of society that's not, to a degree, it's not good? Or is this good? Does it alter, in a negative direction, our relationship with sex?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's unclear, like it might. I don't know how to evaluate this thing, right? Because this is one of those really charged things where I kind of don't trust anybody's arguments on it because it's too charged. But there's another question, which is, is it a net positive or net negative? It's possible that it might be a net negative for specifically our relationship to sex, but a net positive overall in general. I'm not sure. My guess is that in general, it's better to let people do the thing that feels good to them, and then the environment will naturally modify to fit this thing. And then if we have more needs in response to that, then we're going to figure out a way to take care of those needs. So if you're watching a bunch of porn and this makes you not want to go have sex with women, then we're going to have to change the way that we experience IRL connection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to compete with porn?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, which seems like a natural evolution of like the civilizational cycle. Like I'm pro natural evolution. And like, instead of trying to stop things that people want to do, to actually figure out how to integrate that and like find a more healthy outlet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you have to then be first honest with the effects that porn has. So like, is it a negative thing? Is it a positive thing on in real life sex interaction? You know, you're gonna have that more and more with whether like, like porn in VR or maybe porn, AI porn?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, is that a bad thing? Like, what if porn with AI, or even like in physical space, like sex robots, like what if that's more pleasurable in a bunch of different dimensions than with other humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Then we should figure out artificial wombs, I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, how important is sex for society, I guess, between two humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I mean, like we're having less sex and making fewer babies and that seems like probably not great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, right, with the babies one. Yeah. But the babies, there's probably artificial ways to have babies that we can figure out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then how important is sex to being human? I guess sex with other humans. Like we're gonna have to figure that out in the century." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't know what it means to like be human. I'm pretty on the transhumanist side of things. I'm like happy to stop being human." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're okay if like this century is the last time we'll be something like these biological bags of meat that we are?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let's become something new and cooler." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even though that thing will be way cooler than you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I would like to, I mean, I'm hoping that we get to be immortal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ah, it'll take you along for the ride." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what I'm hoping. I would like to do cryotics, where you get frozen when you die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, yes and no. I came to terms with death with my LSD use, but I still have press breaks when the red light happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think this is a poll you've asked, or this might be one of the questions in your cards, but how many years would you like to live, if you had to pick?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a really hard one. Maybe like a million?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A million, but you have to, like, I think the way, this must have been a Twitter poll. I forget where I saw it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a poll and also in the deck of cards, the ask poll, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like you have to pick that number of years and you have to live that many years and you can't live anymore. You can't die sooner, I guess. A million years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't like that question. I know I ask that question to a lot of people, but I don't like answering it. It's really difficult." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the downside of a million years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, maybe you want to die sooner than that. I guess I would rather wait to see if AI kills us all in the next 10 years. And if it doesn't, then I'd like to maybe make it a million years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but can't it torture you for a million years? What if you're the last human left?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's true. The thought of civilization ending and then just floating in space alone is kind of shitty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, being tortured. Just imagine today you're tortured, tomorrow you're tortured, the day after tomorrow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For some reason it's not that scary, I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Torture for a million years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I just assume you'd get used to it. But maybe if they reset your memory so it was on a loop, so you're just always experiencing torture for the first time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, hence torture. Torture is supposed to be unpleasant. I'm sure AI will be very creative in figuring out how to torture you. I think I would go on the safe side. I was just like 150 years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Really, 150 though? That feels like right in the uncanny valley." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you picked 120 for body count, so I'm picking 150. I'm upping you by 30. The uncanny valley." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like probably everybody that you grew up with is gonna be dead. It's like just enough for like everybody you know to die, like one cycle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and then start dating the next generation, I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then, so you get like sort of two lifetimes?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, two lifetimes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it also really depends on if other people get this feature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, assume they don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you'll have like FOMO for sure for the people who pick 300 years. Or not, or the other, man, regret, another human thing. But you're, like, what does transhumanism mean to you in general? So extension of life, extension of what it means to be a living, conscious being, you're all for it, whatever that means." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I didn't, I never really thought about the term transhumanism for a long, like, people say you're transhumanist, I'm like, I don't really care. But I slowly realized that my attitude is, in fact, at least the thing that I'm conceiving of as transhumanist, Like I'm very happy to do artificial wounds and upload our brains to the great collective and whatever. I don't have the thing that I'm like, oh, what about like the true organic humanness that makes us who we are? Like whatever that soul of humanity, I have no attachment to it at all, which I think is what I'm thinking of as transhumanist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're like, I guess the window of what you consider to be beautiful about life is not limited to this particular definition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's explode. Let's make our consciousnesses huge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So AI could be a part of that. So you're mostly excited by AI." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I'm part of the Doomer cult, which I say tongue in cheek, it's not actually a Doomer cult, but I'm part of a lot of people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you worship a god of some sort? Would you sacrifice little small animals?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That would make it cooler than what it is. It's mostly just a bunch of nerds who are very concerned about AI. Sure. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're concerned about the existential risks of CHAT-GPT?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of, you know, what CHAT-GPT will eventually evolve into being, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's super exciting and terrifying how quickly it's accelerating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like language models are freaking me out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's very unexpected that it's the same exact, I mean, CHAT-GPT is just GPT-3, 3.5. It's the same model, relatively small to what it could be. to what GPT-4 will be and the other competitors. And just like a few tricks made it much better in terms of interaction with humans. And then we'll keep discovering extra tricks. The thing I'm really excited about is how everyone kind of knows how it works. So you can kind of create, especially with computation becoming cheaper and cheaper, there'll be a lot of competitors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's a little scary." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's terrifying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's because everything is just information, ultimately. The atoms that we have, we are biological machines built out of tiny code. Our DNA is just information. It's not hard. If you have access, if you have a brilliant brain that's great at processing information, you have complete control over reality. Yes. You have control over the atoms around you. All you need is a tiny little atomic printer. And we have those, those are cells, right? And then this is, if the limitation is information, there is no boundary between the technology and the real world. We are creating something that it has a massive ability to affect the real world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's hard to know how difficult it is to close that gap to physical reality, from the physics to the information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel like all organic life is that gap. It's all around us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but it's hard to know how to go from digital to printing life. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have CRISPR and stuff, you can order. You can just make, it's very easy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's technical difficulties and there's cost at scale. The terrifying thing about AI is it can accelerate overnight the capabilities, but the printing of stuff, the actually changing physical reality, is very costly, it's very difficult to exponentially accelerate. The more terrifying thing is AI becoming exponentially intelligent and then controlling humans, which there's many of us. And then that's how we achieve scale. We humans build stuff or start wars or so on. Like it starts manipulating our minds, gets in our mind, becomes our friends, and then starts, I don't know, dividing us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think people thinking this is unlikely, it's like, it's probably gonna be as smart to us as like we are to toddlers. So we toddlers thinking that like, oh, we can prevent the AI from coming in the room. Like as an adult, it's not hard to trick a toddler." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about falling in love in the AI system? Do you think you'll have a, since you're, like, this is the freedom you have being polyamorous, you can kind of- You can fall in love with an AI? No, you, and like, not really have to dedicate, commit fully. Like, sorry. You still commit, but you have others, humans, who you can kind of diversify to, because like, it's kind of a big thing to like, to come to a party and your boyfriend is an AI, and that's monogamous boyfriend is an AI. It's an issue, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why would it be an issue?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, now you're already getting offended at that possibility, which therefore I know it's gonna be a reality. I'm just joking that it's an issue. I don't actually think it's an issue. I think it's a, maybe at the cutting edge it'll be an issue, but." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like assume they have a body, I assume." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but the body will be really crappy. It'd be like R2-D2." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel like we grow human bodies already from just a tiny little cluster of cells. And so all they have to do is make that cluster and grow it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, no, no. That embryogenesis process, that's really not well understood at all. That's really tough. I think we're much more likely to have crappy humanoid robotics. I don't think the body is overrated in terms of, if the AI system is super intelligent, it can use charm to make up for the crappy body, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I feel like if I were an AI system and I were super intelligent, I probably would be able to solve the problem of growing organic matter. And then I would obviously just do that. You just build exactly the organic machine that you want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure, that's like super intelligence. I think with the language I'm worried about before it achieves super intelligence, like true AGI, it would just be really good at talking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And like it. I just don't think, intelligence is a very, basically a scientist, and a super intelligent scientist is a different thing than just a good conversationist at a party that can undress you with their words." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Would you date an AI?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Way before then, I could see myself being friends with an AI system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But people are friends with inanimate objects. There's a robot behind you, I have a lot of them. I like legged robots. They're interesting. It's on the shelf." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, that's so cool. I didn't even notice that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Legged robots, we anthropomorphize them even more, because there's something about the movement of like a thing that steps, steps, steps, steps, and looks up at you, there's a power to that, versus like a Roomba that's just like, running into the wall and stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think as soon as we get some sort of empathetic expression on robot face, it's over. It's over. We're gonna be like, ah, it's so cute. It's gonna be so easy to make it cute, too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If that's what you want, or you want a dominant. That's true. Clearly, this is what women want, is a dominant. Being sexy, Terminator, yeah. With strong hands, yeah. And kinda dumb. Or not, I don't know. That you can customize. It'd be interesting to do a survey of how they would customize it, Like what would you want in a perfect robot? This is the problem I see with people, the way they talk about robots is they kind of want a servant. I think what people don't realize what they want in relationships, they want some, like there has to be a push and pull. There has to be some resistance. Like you really don't want a servant. Or even like the perfect manifestation of like, what you think you want, I think you want imperfections around that, like some uncertainty. I don't know. I question how well we're able to perfectly put on paper what we really want." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Would you really turn down a perfect woman though? Assume she walks into the room and it's just shockingly compatible and you start dating her and there's just no hiccups. You fight perfectly. She really understands you. Would you be like, this is too perfect. I'm upset because we are not having enough imperfection. Can you actually imagine yourself going through that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think so, because that's how you define perfect, because perfect for me would be like easy and all that kind of stuff, right? But then I would be like, this is too easy. If I actually were to introspect what is the perfect relationship, then yes, maybe, because I probably want some challenge. I probably want some chaos, right? Does anyone really fully want zero conflict ever? like completely perfect conflict. It's the thing, the pressing a button. Do you really want, in a relationship, anything you want, you press a button, you get. I don't think people want that. You might think you want that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I guess it depends. There's a kind of conflict that I think I would never want, which is something like antagonistic conflict. I wouldn't mind disagreement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But there's a level of fighting I would be happy to have a relationship for the rest of my life that never has a fight of a certain shittiness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that's shittiness, but resistance. I don't know what the example is. Because I mean, I partially agree with you, but I just, and I, every time I would imagine like perfect, flawless, nothing, no conflict, you imagine somebody that doesn't have like a complexity of personality, right? Like, I feel like it's not even, it's conflict that's laden in basic misunderstanding between human beings. Like misinterpretation, different perspectives that clash, different worldviews, different ideas, all that kind of stuff, that conflict." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that sounds good. I like having somebody that could be like, I don't think that's right because I have this other view. That's cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also like the threat of leaving, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like that's a kind of conflict." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's true. Like you have to be good enough for the other person or maybe you'll lose them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And maybe a little jealousy. Like they're good at that, but not too much. But like if you design all that in, then I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It sounds romantic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sounds romantic, okay. All right. I do wanna really quickly ask you about this, about the rationalist community, because I've gotten to know a few of them a few times. You tweeted a guideline to rationalist discourse, basics of rationalist discourse from Lesser Wrong. What are these folks? What's the rationalist culture? What's the rationalist discourse?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I love the rationalists because they're interested in how do you have conversations more effectively if you're trying to figure out what's actually true, which sounds kind of obvious, but in practice it's not usually. I remember when I first started debating conversations, I was very antagonistic. I'm like, oh, I'm a feminist or not a feminist. And then the rationalists were generally like, actually, we don't know what we mean by the term feminism. How do you feel about that? It was very kind and compassionate. Even if somebody says something that sounds insane, you're like, okay, well, we're gonna respect your reasoning. And even if we disagree, let's actually figure out why you think the way that you think. And they're also really smart, write a whole bunch of great stuff about how to think more clearly and with less bias." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I wonder what those conversations, because I've never really talked to those folks. So this guideline in particular, I think, refers to shorthand characteristics of rationalist discourse, including expect good discourse to require energy, don't say straightforwardly false things, track for yourself and distinguish for others. your inferences from your observations, estimate for yourself and make clear for others, your rough level of confidence in your assertions, make your claims clear, explicit and falsifiable, or explicitly acknowledge that you aren't doing so or can't, so on and so forth. So don't jump to conclusions, don't weaponize equivocation, don't abuse categories, don't engage, it's very aggressive guidelines. I'm gonna engage, I do what I want. I'll let my emotions guide me, God damn it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pro that as long as you're explicit about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh yeah? Yeah. So you can be like a crazy asshole as long as you're explicit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you can be like epistemic status, crazy asshole." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, who's here to destroy the quality of the conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's like a common misconception about rationalists is that they're kind of like Spock. Like, ah, we suppress emotion and we're thinking logically, herd eater. But I found this to be really not the case. Like, I remember there's a left song thread where I was like really emotional and I commented. And in just the beginning, I was like just warning, I'm just very emotional. And then I just vented my emotions and people responded really well to that. They're like, cool. Like you're just genuinely truthfully expressing your state. This is actual information about the world that is important to hear. And it's just, they're very interested in having things framed correctly. Like you shouldn't be claiming that your emotions are necessarily a true version of the world. And so as long as you're just clear about what the frame it is, you're fine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you feel about this conversation? What could we have done better?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like the conversation. I was a little worried coming in. I was like, what if he only asks a couple of questions and then we don't know what to talk about? Yeah. But it's been quite a long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I covered, there's so many things I didn't cover." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like the, you have like a, like, I'm not used to talking to somebody who feels like some of the core way that they approach the world is so different than mine. Like usually the differences arrive like higher up the tree, but like there's something about like your root system that I think is very different from mine. But also the way that you engage with others is still flexible. Like usually when I encounter somebody with such a different root system, there's like, it's like more aggressive or something. But there's something about the way that you're structured that feels very gentle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, well, I'm really happy we talked. Something tells me we'll probably talk a bunch more times. I think you're a fascinating human being. I think I'm a huge fan of your work. Maybe one more question, what's the meaning of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To want things, to search, to be in?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I think your curiosity is somehow getting to that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. To want things. Curiosity, like you don't know. I want to know the answer, to like be in the state of yearning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of wanting, of yearning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's the point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if you could do that if you lived a million years, just keep yearning always. That's the thing I'm probably afraid of if I lived a million years. It's not the torture, it's like the yearning will fade." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You'd probably yearn to die then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was just sitting there wanting death intensely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's kind of romantic, a little bit. It has like a bit of that spark." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And constantly being denied. Wow. So most of your existence on earth would be spent deeply intimate with death, just thinking about death. I think we're already doing that, but like hiding that from ourselves a little bit. Anyway, wanting. Wow. This is an amazing conversation. I think you're an amazing researcher and human being." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're a great interviewer. I can see why you do this a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I appreciate it. This was really fun. Ella, thank you so much for talking with me today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "If we go back to the origin of Earth and you think about maybe 4.7, 4.6, 4.5 billion years ago, the planet was quite hot. There was a limited number of minerals. There was some carbon, some water. And I think that maybe it's a really simple set of chemistry that we really don't understand. So that means you've got a finite number of elements that are going to react very simply with one another. and out of that mess comes a cell. So literally sand turns into cells. And it seems to happen quick. So what I think I can say with some degree of, I think, not certainty, but curiosity, genuine curiosity is that life happened fast." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so when we say fast, This is a pretty surprising fact, and maybe you can actually correct me and elaborate, but it seems like most, like 70 or 80% of the time that Earth has been around, there's been life on it, like some very significant percentage. So when you say fast, like the slow part is from single cell or from bacteria to some more complicated organism. It seems like most of the time, that Earth has been around, it's been single cell, or like very basic organisms, like a couple billion years. But yeah, you're right, that's really, I recently kind of revisited our history and saw this, and I was just looking at the timeline, wait a minute, like how did life just spring up so quickly? Like really quickly? That makes me think that it really wanted to, like put another way, it's very easy for life to spring," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I agree. I think it's much more inevitable. And I think I try to kind of, not provoke, but try and push chemists to think about this, because chemists are central to this problem, right? Of understanding the origin of life on Earth, at least, because we're made of chemistry. But I wonder if the origin of life on a planet, or sorry, the emergence of life on a planet is as common as the formation of a star. And if you start framing it in that way, it allows you to then look at the universe slightly differently. And we can get into this, I think, in quite some detail. But I think, to come back to your question, I have little idea of how life got started, but I know it was simple. And I know that the process of selection had to occur before the biology was established. So the selection built the framework from which life kind of grew in complexity and capability and functionality and autonomy. And I think these are all really important words that we can unpack over the next while." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you say all the words again? So you said selection, so natural selection, the original A-B testing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so, and then complexity, and then the degree of autonomy and sophistication. Because I think that people misunderstand what life is. Some people say that life is a cell, and some people that say that life is a virus, or life is a, you know, an on-off switch. I don't think it's that. Life is the universe developing a memory. And the laws of physics and the way, well, there are no laws of physics. Physics is just memory-free stuff, right? So there's only a finite number of ways you can arrange the fundamental particles to do the things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Life is the universe developing a memory. So it's like sewing a piece of art slowly, and then you can look back at it. So there's a stickiness to life. It's like universe doing stuff. And when you say memory, it's like there's a stickiness to a bunch of the stuff that's building together so that you can, in a stable way, trace back the complexity that tells a coherent story. Okay. That's, by the way, very poetic and beautiful. Life is the universe developing a memory. Okay, and then there's autonomy, you said, and complexity we'll talk about, but it's a really interesting idea that selection preceded biology. So first of all, what is chemistry? Does sand still count as chemistry?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, I mean, as a chemist, a card-carrying chemist, if I'm allowed a card, I don't know what I am most days." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is a card made of? What's the chemical composition of the card?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what is chemistry? Well, chemistry is the thing that happens when you bring electrons together and you form bonds. So bonds, or I say to people when they talk about life elsewhere, and I just say, well, there's bonds, there's hope. Because bonds allow you to get heterogeneity, they allow you to record those memories. Or, at least on Earth, you could imagine a Stanislav Lem type world where you might have life emerging or intelligence emerging before life. That may be something like Solaris or something. To get to selection, if atoms can combine and form bonds, those atoms can bond to different elements and those molecules. or have different identities and interact with each other differently, and then you can start to have some degree of causation or interaction, and then selection, and then existence. And then you go up the path of complexity. And so at least on Earth, as we know it, there is a sufficient pool of available chemicals to start searching that commentarial space of bonds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So okay, this is a really interesting question. Let's lay it out. So bonds, almost like cards. We see there's bonds, there's life, there's intelligence, there's consciousness. And what you just made me realize is that those can emerge, let's put bonds aside, those can emerge in any order. That's really brilliant. So intelligence can come before life. It's like panpsychists believe that consciousness, I guess, comes before life and before intelligence. So consciousness permeates all matter, it's some kind of fabric of reality. Okay, so like within this framework, you can kind of arrange everything, but you need to have the bonds that precedes everything else. Oh, and the other thing is selection. So like the mechanism of selection, that could precede, couldn't that precede bonds too? Whatever the hell selection is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I would say that there is an elegant order to it. allows selection, allows the emergence of life, allows the emergence of multicellularity, and then more information processing, building state machines all the way up. However, you could imagine a situation if you had, I don't know, a neutron star or a sun or what, ferromagnetic loops interacting with one another, and these oscillators building state machines, and these state machines reading something out in the environment. over time, these state machines would be able to literally record what happened in the past and sense what's going on in the present and imagine the future. However, I don't think it's ever going to be within a human comprehension, that type of life. I wouldn't count it out because I know in science, whenever I say something's impossible, I then wake up the next day and say, no, that's actually wrong. I mean, there are some limits, of course. I don't see myself traveling faster than light anytime soon." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Eric Weinstein says that's possible, so he will say you're wrong." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, but I'm an experimentalist as well, so I have two superpowers. My stupidity, and I don't mean that as, you know, I'm like absolutely completely witless, but I mean my ability to kind of just start again and ask the question and then do it with an experiment. I always wanted to be a theoretician growing up, but I just didn't have the intellectual capability. But I was able to think of experiments in my head I could then do in my lab or when I was a child outside. And then those experiments in my head and then outside reinforced one another. So I think that's a very good way of kind of grounding the science, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's a nice way to think about theoreticians, is they're just people who run experiments in their head. I mean, that's exactly what Einstein did, right? But you're also capable of doing that in the head, inside your head, and in the real world, and the connection between the two is when you first discovered your superpower of stupidity. I like it. Okay, what's the second superpower? Your accent, or? It's that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I don't know. I am genuinely curious. So, I have, like everybody, ego problems, but my curiosity is bigger than my ego. So, as long as that happens, I can hope." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's awesome. That is so powerful. You're just dropping some powerful lines. So, curiosity is bigger than ego. That's something I have to think about because you always struggle about the role of ego in life. That's so nice to think about. Don't think about the size of ego, the absolute size of ego. Think about the relative size of ego to the other, the other horses pulling at you. And if the curiosity one is bigger, then ego will do just fine and make you fun to talk to. Anyway, so those are the two superpowers. How do those connect to natural selection or selection and bonds? And I forgot already, life and consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we're going back to selection in the universe and origin of life on earth. I mean I'm convinced that selection is a force in the universe. Not a fundamental force but it is a directing force because existence, although existence appears to be the default, the existence of what? Why does And we can get to this later, I think, but it's amazing that discrete things exist. And you see this cup, it's not the sexiest cup in the world, but it's pretty functional. This cup, the complexity of this cup isn't just in the object, it is literally the lineage of people making cups and recognizing that, seeing that in their head, making an abstraction of a cup and then making a different one. So I wonder how many billions of cups have come before this one. And that's the process of selection and existence. And the only reason the cup is still used is quite useful. I like the handle, it's convenient so I don't die, I get hydration. And so I think we are missing something fundamental in the universe about selection. And I think what biology is, is a selection amplifier. and that this is where autonomy comes in. And actually, I think that how humanity is gonna, humans and autonomous robots, or whatever we're gonna call them in the future, will supercharge that even further. So selection is happening in the universe, but if you look in the asteroid belt, selection. If objects are being kicked in and out of the asteroid belt, those trajectories are quite complex. You don't really look at that as productive selection because it's not doing anything to improve its function. But is it? The asteroid belt has existed for some time. So there is some selection going on, but the functionality is somewhat limited. On Earth, at the formation of Earth, interaction of chemicals and molecules in the environment gave selection and then things could happen because you could think about in chemistry we could have an infinite number of reactions happen but they don't all all the reactions are allowed to happen don't happen why because they're energy barriers so there must be some things called catalysts out there or There are bits of minerals that when two molecules get together in that mineral, it lowers the energy barrier for the reaction, and so the reaction is promoted. So suddenly you get one reaction over another series of possibilities occurring that makes a particular molecule, and this keeps happening in steps. And before you know it, almost these waves of discrete reactions work together, and you start to build a machinery that is run by existence. So as you go forward in time, the fact that the molecules, the bonds are getting, there are more bonds in a molecule, there's more function, there's more capability for this molecule to interact with other molecules, to redirect them, it's like a series of little, and I don't want to use this term, too much, but it's almost thinking about the simplest von Neumann constructor. That's the simplest molecule that could build a more complicated molecule to build a more complicated molecule. And before you know it, when that more complicated molecule can act on the causal chain that's produced itself, and change it, suddenly you start to get towards some kind of autonomy and that's where life, I think, emerges in earnest." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Every single word in the past few paragraphs, let's break those apart. Who's von Neumann? What's a constructor? the closing of the loop that you're talking about, the molecule that starts becoming, I think you said the smallest von Neumann constructor, the smallest, the minimal, so what do all those things mean, and what are we supposed to imagine when we think about the smallest von Neumann constructor?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So John von Neumann is a real hero, actually, not just me, but many people, I think, computer science and physics. He was an incredible intellect who probably solved a lot of the problems that we're working on today and just forgot to write them down. And I'm not sure if it's John von Neumann or Johnny, as I think his friends called him, but I think he was Hungarian. mathematician, came to the US, and basically was involved in the Manhattan Project and developing computation, and came up with all sorts of ideas, and I think it was one of the first people to come up with cellular automata. But he- Oh, really? I didn't know this little fact. Interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think so, and I think- Well, anyway, if he didn't come up with it, he probably did come up with it and didn't write it down." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "was a couple of people did at the same time and then Conway obviously took it on and then Wolfram loves CAs, there is his fabric of the universe. And what I think he imagined was that he wasn't satisfied and this may be incorrect recollection but so a lot of what I say is going to be kind of, you know," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're just part of the universe, creating its memory, designing... Exactly, rewriting history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But what I mean is, I think he liked this idea of thinking about... How could a Turing machine literally build itself without a Turing machine, right? It's like, literally, how did state machines emerge? And I think that von Neumann constructors, he wanted to conceive of a minimal thing, autonomous, that could build itself. And what would those rules look like in the world? And that's what a von Neumann kind of constructor looked like. Like it's a minimal hypothetical object that could build itself, self-replicate. And I'm really fascinated by that because I think that although it's probably not exactly what happened, it's a nice model because as chemists, if we could go back to the origin of life and think about what is a minimal machine that can get structured randomly, so like with no prime mover, with no architect, it assembles through just existence. So random stuff bumping in together, and you make this first molecule. So you have molecule A. Molecule A interacts with another random molecule B, and they get together, and they realize by working together they can make more of themselves. But then they realize they can mutate, so they can make AB'. So AB' is different to AB, and then AB' can then act back where A and B were being created and slightly nudge that causal chain and make AB prime more evolvable or learn more. So that's the closing the loop part." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Closing the loop part, got it. It feels like the mutation part is not that difficult. It feels like the difficult part is just creating a copy of yourself as step one. It seems... That seems like one of the greatest inventions in the history of the universe is the first molecule that figured out, holy shit, I can create a copy of myself. How hard is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's really, really easy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, I did not expect that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's really, really easy. Well, let's take a step back. I think replicating molecules are rare, but if you say, I think I was saying on, I probably got into trouble on Twitter the other day, so I was trying to work this. There's about more than 18 mils of water in there, so one mole of water, 6.022 times 10 to the 23 molecules. That's about the number of stars in the universe, I think, of the order. So there's three universe worth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I hope somebody corrected you on Twitter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'm always being corrected, it's a great fact. But there's a lot of molecules in the water. And so there's a lot of, so although it's, for you and me, really hard to conceive of, if existence is not the default for a long period of time because what happens is the molecules get degraded. So much of the possibilities in the universe are just broken back into atoms. So you have this kind of destruction of the molecules for our chemical reactions. So you only need one or two molecules to become good at copying themselves for them suddenly to then take resources in the pool and start to grow. And so then replication actually over time, when you have bonds, I think is much simpler and much easier. And I even found this in my lab years ago. One of the reasons I started doing inorganic chemistry and making rust, making a bit of rust based on a thing called molybdenum, molybdenum oxide, is this molybdenum oxide Very simple, but when you add acid to it and some electrons, they make these molecules you just cannot possibly imagine, would be constructed big gigantic wheels of 154 molybdenum atoms in a wheel, or icosadodecahedron 132 molybdenum atoms, all in the same pot. And I realized when I, and I just finished experiments two years ago, I've just published a couple of papers on this, that they're actually, There is a random small molecule with 12 atoms in it that can form randomly, but it happens to template its own production. And then, by chance, it templates the ring. just an accident, just an absolute accident. And that ring also helps make the small 12 mirror. And so you have what's called an autocatalytic set, where A makes B, and B helps make A, and vice versa, and you then make this loop. So it's a bit like these, they all work in synergy to make this chain of events that grow. And it doesn't take a very sophisticated model to show that if you have these objects competing and then collaborating to help one another build, they just grow out of the mess. And although they seem improbable, they are improbable. In fact, impossible in one step. There's multiple steps. This is when people look at the blind watchmaker argument when you talk about how could a watch spontaneously emerge. Well, it doesn't. It's a lineage of watches and cruder devices that are bootstrapped onto one another." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so it's very improbable, but once you get that little discovery, like with the wheel and fire, it just gets, explodes in, because it's so successful, it explodes. It's basically selection. So this templating mechanism that allows you to have a little blueprint for yourself, how you go through different procedures to build copies of yourself, So in chemistry, somehow it's possible to imagine that that kind of thing is easy to spring up. In more complex organisms, it feels like a different thing and much more complicated. We're having multiple abstractions of the birds and the bees conversation here. But with complex organisms, it feels difficult to have reproduction. To... That's gonna get coped out, I'm gonna make fun of that. It's difficult to develop this idea of making copies of yourself, or no. Because that seems like a magical idea for life to, wow. That feels like very necessary for what selection is, for what evolution is. But then if selection precedes all of this, then maybe these are just like echoes of the selecting mechanism at different scales." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's exactly it. So selection is the default in the universe. And what happens is that life... The solution that life has got on Earth, life on Earth, biology on Earth, is unique to Earth. We can talk about that. And that was really hard fought for. But that is the solution that works on Earth, the ribosome, the fundamental machine that is responsible for every cell on Earth, wherever it is in the kingdom of life. That is an incredibly complex object, but it was evolved over time, and it wasn't involved in a vacuum. And I think that once we understand that selection can occur without the ribosome, but what the ribosome does, it's a phase transition in replication. And I think that that, and also technology, that is probably much easier to get to than we think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you put the ribosome as the central part of living organisms on Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It basically is a combination of two different polymer systems, so RNA and peptides. So the RNA world, if you like, gets transmitted and builds proteins, and the proteins are responsible for all the catalysis. The majority of the catalysis goes on the cell. No ribosome, no proteins, no decoding, no evolution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So ribosome is looking at the action. You don't put like the RNA itself as the critical thing. Like information, you put action as the most important thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think the actual molecules that we have in biology right now are entirely contingent on the history of life on Earth. There are so many possible solutions. And this is where chemistry got itself into, origin of life chemistry gets itself into a bit of a trap." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, let me interrupt you there. You've tweeted, you're gonna get, I'm gonna cite your tweets like it's Shakespeare, okay? It's surprising you haven't gotten canceled on Twitter yet. Your brilliance, once again, saves you. I'm just kidding. You like to have a little bit of fun on Twitter. You've tweeted that, quote, origin of life research is a scam. So if this is Shakespeare, can we analyze this word? Why is the origin of life research a scam? Aren't you kind of doing origin of life research?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, it was tongue-in-cheek, but yeah, I think and I meant it as tongue-in-cheek. I'm not doing the origin of life research. I'm trying to make artificial life. I also want to bound the likelihood of the origin of life on Earth, but more importantly to find origin of life elsewhere. But let me directly address the tweet. There are many, many good chemists out there doing origin of life research, but I want to nudge them. And I think they're brilliant. There's no question. The chemistry they are doing, the motivation is great. So what I meant by that tweet is saying that maybe they're making assumptions about saying if only I could make this particular type of molecule, say this RNA molecule, or this phosphodiester, or this other molecule, it's gonna somehow unlock the origin of life. And I think that origin of life has been looking at this for a very long time, and whilst I think it's brilliant to work out how you can get to those molecules, I think that chemistry and chemists doing origin of life could be nudged into doing something even more profound. And so the argument I'm making, it's a bit like right now, let's say, I don't know, the first Tesla that makes its way to, I don't know, into a new country in the world. Let's say there's a country X that has never had a Tesla before and they get the Tesla. And what they do is they take the Tesla apart and say, we want to find the origin of cars in the universe. And say, OK, how did this form? And how did this form? And they just randomly keep making until they make the door, they make the wheel, they make the steering column, and all this stuff. And they say, oh, that's the route. That's the way cars emerged on Earth. But actually, we know that there's a causal chain of cars going right back to Henry Ford and the horse and carriage. And before that, maybe where people were using wheels. Obsession with the identities that we see in biology right now are giving us a false sense of security about what we're looking for. And I think the origin of life chemistry is in danger of not making the progress that it deserves. Because the chemists are doing this. The field is exploding right now. There's amazing people out there, young and old, doing this. And there's, deservedly so, more money going in. I used to complain there's more money being spent searching for the Higgs boson that we know exists in the origin of life. You know, why is that? We understand the origin of life. We're going to actually work at what life is. We're going to be out of bound the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe. And most important for us, we are going to know or have a good idea of what the future of humanity looks like. We need to understand that although we're precious, we're not the only life forms in the universe. That's my very strong impression. I have no data for that. It's just right now a belief. And I want to turn that belief into more than a belief by experimentation. But coming back to the scam, the scam is if we just make this RNA, we've got this fluke event, we know how that's simple. Let's make this phosphodiester or let's make ATP or ADP. We've got that part nailed. Let's now make this other molecule, another molecule. And how many molecules are gonna be enough? And then the reason I say this is when you go back to Craig Venter, when he invented his life form, Cyndia, this minimal plasmid, it's a myoplasma, something, I don't know the name of it, but he made this wonderful cell and said, I've invented life. Not quite. He facsimiled the genome from this entity and made it in the lab, all the DNA, but he didn't make the cell. He had to take an existing cell that has a causal chain going all the way back to Luca and he showed when he took out the genes and put in his genes, synthesized, the cell could boot up. But it's remarkable that he could not make a cell from scratch. And even now today, synthetic biologists cannot make a cell from scratch because there's some contingent information embodied outside the genome in the cell. And that is just incredible. So there's lots of layers to the scam." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me then ask the question, how can we create life in the lab from scratch? What have been the most promising attempts at creating life in the lab from scratch? Has anyone actually been able to do it? Do you think anyone will be able to do it in the near future if they haven't already?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that nobody has made life in the lab from scratch. Lots of people would argue that they have made progress. So Craig Venter, I think the synthesis of a synthetic genome, milestone in human achievement, brilliant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, can we just walk back and say, what would you say from your perspective, one of the world experts in exactly this area, what does it mean to create life from scratch? Where if you sit back, whether you do it or somebody else does it, Damn, we just created life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I can tell you what I would expect, I would like to be able to do is to go from sand to cells in my lab and Can you explain what sand is? You used it poetically. Yeah, just inorganic stuff. Like basically, so sand is just silicon oxide with some other ions in it, maybe some inorganic carbon, some carbonates, just basically clearly dead stuff. You could just grind rocks into sand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it would be what, in a kind of vacuum, so they could remove anything else that could possibly be a thing. like a shadow of life that can assist in the chemical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You could do that, you could insist and say, look, I'm gonna take, and not just inorganic, I want some more, I wanna cheat and have some organic, but I want inorganic organic, and I'll explain the play on words in a moment. So I would like to basically put into a world, let's say a completely, you know, a synthetic world, if you like, a closed world, put some inorganic materials and just literally add some energy in some form, be it lightning or heat, UV light, and run this thing in cycles over time and let it solve the search problem. So I see the origin of life as a search problem in chemical space. And then I would wait, literally wait for a life form to crawl out of the test tube. That's a joke I tell my group. Literally wait for a very, don't worry, it's gonna be very feeble, it's not gonna take over the world. There's ways of ethically containing it. Indeed, indeed, indeed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know this is being recorded, right? It will not make you look good once it crawls out of the lab and destroys all of human civilization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But there is very good, there's a very good things you can do to prevent that. For instance, if you put stuff in your world which isn't earth abundant, So let's say we make life based on molybdenum and it escapes, it would die immediately because there's not enough molybdenum in the environment. So we can put in, we can do responsible life. Or as I fantasized with my research group on our away day that would go in, I think it's actually, Morally, if we don't find, until humanity finds life in the universe, this is going on a tangent, it's our moral obligation to make origin of life bombs, identify dead planets and bomb them with our origin of life machines and make them alive. I think it is our moral obligation to do that. Some people might argue with me about that, but I think that we need more life in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then we kind of forget we did it and then come back. So where did you come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But coming back to what I'd expect." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Father? Are you back? I think this is once again a Rick and Morty episode." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's definitely all Rick and Morty all the way down. So I imagine we have this pristine experiment and everything is sanitized. and we put in inorganic materials and we have cycles, whether they're day-night cycles, up-down, whatever, and we look for evidence of replication and evolution over time. That's what the experiment should be. Now, are there people doing this in the world right now? There are a couple of really good groups doing this. There are some really interesting scientists doing this around the world. They're kind of perhaps too much associated with the scam. And so they're using molecules that were already invented by biology. So there's a bit of replication built in, but I still think the work that they're doing is amazing. But I would like people to be a bit freer and say, let's just basically shake a load of sand in a box and wait for life to come out, because that's what happened on earth. And so we have to understand that. Now, how would I know I've been successful? Well, because I'm not obsessing with what molecules are in life now, I would wager a vast quantity of money. I'm not very rich, so it'd just be a few dollars, but for me, the solution space will be different. So the genetic material will be not RNA. The proteins will not be what we think. The solutions will be just completely different, and it'll be very feeble, because that's the other thing we should be able to show. fairly robustly that even if I did make or someone did make a new life form in the lab, it would be so poor that it's not gonna leap out. The fear about making a lethal life form in the lab from scratch is similar to us imagining that we're gonna make the Terminator at Boston Dynamics tomorrow. It's simply not, and the problem is, we don't communicate that properly. I know you yourself, you explain this very well. There is not the AI catastrophe coming. We're very far away from that. That doesn't mean we should ignore it. Same with the origin of life catastrophe. It's not coming anytime soon. We shouldn't ignore it, but we shouldn't let that fear stop us from doing those experiments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But this is a much, much longer discussion, because there's a lot of details there. I would say there is potential for catastrophic events. to happen in much dumber ways. In AI space, there's a lot of ways to create, like social networks are creating a kind of accelerated set of events that we might not be able to control. The social network virality in the digital space can create, mass movements of ideas that can then, if times are tough, create military conflict and all those kinds of things. But that's not super intelligent AI. That's an interesting at scale application of AI. If you look at viruses, viruses are pretty dumb. but at scale, their application is pretty detrimental. And so origin of life, much like all of the kind of virology, the very contentious word of gain-of-function research in virology, sort of like research on viruses, messing with them genetically, that can create a lot of problems if not done well. So we have to be very, So there's a kind of, whenever you're ultra-cautious about stuff in AI or in virology and biology, it borders on cynicism, I would say, where it's like everything we do is going to turn out to be destructive and terrible, so I'm just going to sit here and do nothing. Okay, that's a possible solution, except for the fact that somebody's going to do it. science and technology progresses, so we have to do it in an ethical way, in a good way, considering in a transparent way, in an open way, considering all the possible positive trajectories that could be taken and making sure as much as possible that we walk those trajectories. So yeah, I don't think Terminator is coming, but a totally unexpected version of Terminator may be around the corner." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it might be here already. Yeah, so I agree with that. And so going back to the origin of life discussion, I think that in synthetic biology right now, We have to be very careful about how we edit genomes and edit synthetic biology to do things. So that's kind of, that's where things might go wrong in the same way as, you know, Twitter turning ourselves into kind of strange scale effects. I would love origin of life research or artificial life research to get to the point where we have those worries. Because that's why I think we're just so far away from that. Right now, I think there are two really important angles. There is the origin of life people, researchers who are faithfully working on this and trying to make those molecules, the scam molecules I talked about. And then there are people on the creationist side who are saying, look, the fact you can't make these molecules and you can't make a cell means that evolution isn't true and all this other stuff. Gotcha. Yeah, and I find that really frustrating because actually the origin of life research is all working in good faith, right? And so what I'm trying to do is give origin of life research a little bit more of an open context. And one of the things I think is important, I really want to make a new life form in my lifetime. I really want to prove that life is a general phenomena, a bit like gravity in the universe, because I think that's gonna be really important for humanity's global psychological state, meaning going forward." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's beautifully put. So, one, it will help us understand ourselves, so that's useful for science, but two, it gives us a kind of hope if not an awe at all the huge amounts of alien civilizations that are out there. If you can build life and understand just how easy it is to build life. then that's just as good, if not much better, than discovering life on another planet. I mean, it's cheaper. It's much cheaper and much easier and probably much more conclusive because once you're able to create life, like you said, it's a search problem, that there's probably a lot of different ways to do it. Once you find the first solution, you probably have all the right methodology for finding all kinds of other solutions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and wouldn't it be great if we could find a solution? I mean, it's probably a bit late for, I mean, I worry about climate change, but I'm not that worried about climate change. And I think one day you could think about, could we engineer a new type of life form that could basically, and I don't want to do this, and I don't think we should do this necessarily, but it's a good thought experiment. that would perhaps take CO2 out of the atmosphere, or an intermediate life form, so it's not quite alive, it's almost like an add-on. A time-dependent add-on you could give to, say, cyanobacteria in the ocean, or maybe to wheat, and say, right, we're gonna fix a bit more CO2, and we're gonna work out how much we need to fix to basically save the climate, and we're gonna use evolutionary principles to basically get there. What worries me is that biology has had a few billion years to find a solution for CO2 fixation. The solution isn't brilliant for our needs, but biology wasn't thinking about our needs. Biology was thinking about biology's needs. But I think if we can do, as you say, make life in the lab, then suddenly we don't need to go to everywhere and conclusively prove it. I think we make life in the lab, we look at the extent of life in the solar system, how far did Earth life get? Probably we're all Martians, probably life got going on Mars, the chemistry on Mars, seeded Earth, that might have been a legitimate way to kind of truncate the search space. But in the outer solar system, we might have completely different life forms, on Enceladus, on Europa, and Titan, and that would be a cool thing because- Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you just say that you think, in terms of likelihood, life started on Mars? Like, statistically speaking, life started on Mars and seeded Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It could be possible because Mars was habitable for the type of life that we have right now, type of chemistry before Earth. So it seems to me that Mars got searching, doing chemistry. It started way before. Yeah. And so they had a few more replicators and some other stuff. And if those replicators got ejected from Mars and landed on Earth, and Earth was like, I don't need to start again. Right. Thanks for that. And then it just carries on. So I'm not going, I think we will find evidence of life on Mars, either life we put there by mistake, contamination, or actually life, the earliest remnants of life. And that'd be really exciting. It's a really good reason to go there. But I think it's more unlikely because the gravitational situation in the solar system, if we find life in the outer solar system," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Titan and all that that would be its own thing. Exactly Wow, that would be so cool if we go to Mars and we find life that looks a hell of a lot similar to Earth life and then we'll go to Titan and all those weird moons with the ices and the volcanoes and all that kind of stuff and then we find there Something that looks I don't know way weirder. Yeah, some other some non RNA type of situation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh almost life, like in the prebiotic chemical space. I think there are four types of exoplanets we can go look for, right? Because when JWST goes up and touch wood, it goes up and everything's fine. When we look at a star, we'll know statistically most stars have planets around them. What type of planet are they? Are they going to be dead? Are they going to be just prebiotic origin of life coming? Are they going to be technological? and you know, so with intelligence on them, and will they have died? So, you know, from, you know, had life on them, but not- Those are the four states of- And so, and suddenly, it's a bit like, I want to classify planets the way we classify stars. Yeah. And I think that, in terms of their, rather than having this, oh, we've found methane, there's evidence of life. We found oxygen, that's the evidence of life. We found whatever molecule marker, and start to then frame things a little bit more. As those four states." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which by the way, you're just saying four, but there could be a before the dead, there could be other states that we humans can't even conceive of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just prebiotic, almost alive, you know, got the possibility to come alive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think... But there could be a post-technological, like whatever we think of as technology, there could be a like pre-conscious Like, will we all meld into one super intelligent conscious or some weird thing that naturally happens over time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that all bets are off on that. The metaverse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we are. We join into a virtual metaverse and start creating, which is kind of an interesting idea, almost arbitrary number of copies of each other much more quickly to mess with different ideas in mind. Like, I can create 1,000 copies of Lex, like every possible version of Lex. and then just see like, and then I just have them like argue with each other and like until, like in the space of ideas and see who wins out. How could that possibly go wrong? But anyway, but there's a, especially in this digital space where you could start exploring with AIs mixed in, you could start engineering arbitrary intelligences. You can start playing in the space of ideas, which might move us into a world that looks very, different than a biological world. Our current world, the technology, is still very much tied to our biology. We might move past that completely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We definitely will." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That could be another phase then." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I did say technological, so I think I agree with you. Let's get this right. Dead world, no prospect of life. Prebiotic world, life emerging. Living. technological. And the dead one, you probably won't be able to tell between the dead never being alive and the dead one. Maybe you've got some artifacts and maybe there's five. There's probably not more than five. And I think the technological one could have life on it still, but it might just have exceeded. Because one way that life might survive on Earth is if we can work out how to deal with the real climate change that comes when the sun expands. there might be a way to survive that, you know? But yeah, I think that we need to start thinking statistically when it comes to looking for life in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you then, sort of statistically, how many alien civilizations are out there in those four phases that you're talking about? When you look up to the stars and you're sipping on some wine and talking to other people with British accents about something intelligent, intellectual, I'm sure. Do you think there's a lot of alien civilizations looking back at us and wondering the same?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "my romantic view of the universe is really taking loans from my logical self. So what I'm saying is I have no doubt, I have no idea. But having said that, there is no reason to suppose that life is as hard as we first thought it was. And so if we just take Earth as a marker, and if I think that life is a much more general phenomena than just our biology, then I think the universe is full of life. And the reason for the Fermi paradox is not that they're not out there, it's just that we can't interact with the other life forms because they're so different. And I'm not saying that they're necessarily like as depicted in Arrival or other, you know, I'm just saying that perhaps there are very few universal facts in the universe and maybe that it's not, it's quite, our technologies are quite divergent. And so I think that it's very hard to know how we're gonna interact with alien life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You think there's a lot of kinds of life that's possible. I guess that was the intuition. Yeah. You provided that the way... Biology itself, but even this particular kind of biology that we have on Earth is something that is just one sample of nearly infinite number of other possible complex autonomous self-replicating type of things that could be possible. And so we're almost unable to see the alternative versions of us. Huh, I mean, we'll still be able to detect them, we'll still be able to interact with them, we'll still be able to, like which, what exactly is lost in translation? Why can't we see them, why can't we talk to them? Because I too have a sense, you put it way more poetically, but, it seems both statistically and sort of romantically, it feels like the universe should be teeming with life, like super intelligent life. And I just, I sit there and the Fermi Paradox is very, it's felt very distinctly by me when I look up at the stars because it's like, It's the same way I feel when I'm driving through New Jersey and listening to Bruce Springsteen and feel quite sad. It's like Louis C.K. talks about pulling off to the side of the road and just weeping a little bit. I'm almost like. Wondering, like, hey, why why aren't you talking to us? You know, it feels lonely, feels lonely because it feels like they're out there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that there are a number of answers to that. I think the Fermi paradox is perhaps based on the assumption that if life did emerge in the universe, it would be similar to our life. and there's only one solution. And I think that what we've got to start to do is go out and look for selection detection, rather than an evolution detection, rather than life detection. And I think that once we start to do that, we might start to see really interesting things. And we haven't been doing this for very long. And we are living in an expanding universe, and that makes the problem a little bit harder." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Everybody's always leaving." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I'm very optimistic that we will, well, I don't know, there are two movies that came out within six months of one another, Ad Astra and Cosmos. Ad Astra, the very expensive blockbuster, you know, with Brad Pitt in it and saying there is no life and it's all, you know, life on Earth has more pressures than Cosmos, which is a UK production, which basically aliens came and visited Earth one day and they were discovered in the UK. Right, it was quite, it's a fun film. But I really loved those two films. And at the same time, those films, at the time those films are coming out, I was working on a paper, a life detection paper, and I found it was so hard to publish this paper. And it was almost as depressed, I got so depressed trying to get this science out there, that I felt the depression of the film in Ad Astra, like life, there's no life elsewhere in the universe. But I'm incredibly optimistic that I think we will find life in the universe, firm evidence of life, and it will have to start on Earth, making life on Earth and surprising us. We have to surprise ourselves and make non-biological life on Earth. And then people say, well, you made this life on Earth, therefore you're part of the causal chain of that. And that might be true. But if I can show how I'm able to do it with very little cheating or very little information inputs, just creating like a model planet, some description, and watching life emerge, then I think that we will be able to persuade even the hardest critic that it's possible. Now, with regards to the Fermi paradox, I think that we might crush that with the JWST. It's basically, if I recall correctly, the mirror is about 10 times the size of the Hubble. We're going to be able to do spectroscopy, look at colours of exoplanets, I think. Not brilliantly, but we'll be able to start to classify them. And we'll start to get a real feel for what's going on in the universe on these exoplanets. Because it's only in the last few decades, I think, maybe even last decade, that we even came to recognize that exoplanets even are common. And I think that that gives us a lot of optimism that life is going to be out there. But I think we have to start framing we have to start preparing the fact that biology is only one solution. I can tell you with confidence that biology on earth does not exist anywhere else in the universe. We are absolutely unique." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, okay, I love the confidence, but where does that confidence come from? You know, chemistry, like how many options does chemistry really have? Many, that's the point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the thing is, this is where the origin of life scam comes in. is that people don't quite count, they don't count the numbers. So if biology, as you find on Earth, is common everywhere, then there's something really weird going on. They're basically written in the quantum mechanics. There's some kind of, these bonds must form over these bonds, and this catalyst must form over this catalyst, when they're all quite equal. Life is contingent. The origin of life on Earth was contingent upon the chemistry available at the origin of life on Earth, So that means if we want to find other Earth-like worlds, we look for the same kind of rocky world. We might look in the same zone as Earth and we might expect reasonably to find biological-like stuff going on. That would be a reasonable hypothesis, but it won't be the same. It can't be. It's like saying I don't believe in magic, that's why I'm sure. I just don't believe in magic, I believe in statistics and I can do experiments. And so I won't get the same, exactly the same sequence of events, I'll get something different. And so there is TikTok elsewhere in the universe, but it's not the same as our TikTok, right? That's what I mean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which aspect of it is not the same?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I just think, so what is TikTok? TikTok is a social media where people upload videos, right, of silly videos, so I guess there might be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's humor, there's attention, there's ability to process, there's ability for intelligent organisms to collaborate on ideas and find humor in ideas and play with those ideas, make them viral, memes. Humor seems to be kind of fundamental to the human experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's a really interesting question we can ask. Is humour a fundamental thing in the universe? I think maybe it will be, right? If you think about it in a game theoretic sense, the emergence of humour serves a role in our game engine. If selection is fundamental in the universe, so is humour." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I actually don't know exactly what role humor serves. Maybe it's like, from a chemical perspective, it's like a catalyst for, I guess it serves several purposes. One is the catalyst for spreading ideas on the internet, that's modern humor. But humor is also a good way to deal with the difficulty of life. It's a kind of valve, release valve for suffering. Throughout human history, life has been really hard. And for the people that I've known in my life who've lived through some really difficult things, humor is part of how they deal with that. It's usually dark humor, but yeah, it's interesting. I don't know exactly sort of what's the more mathematically general way to formulate what the hell is humor? What humor does it serve? But I still, we're kind of joking here, It's a counterintuitive idea to me to think that life elsewhere in the universe is very different than life on Earth. And also, each instantiation of life is likely very different from each other. Like maybe there's a few clusters of similar like life, but it's much more likely is what you're saying. To me, it's a kind of novel thought. I'm not sure what to do with it. But you're saying that there's, it's more common to be a weird odd cast. in the full spectrum of life than it is to be in some usual cluster. So every instantiation of a kind of chemistry that results in complexity that's autonomous and self-replicating, however the hell you define life, that is going to be very different every time. I don't know. It feels like if selection is a fundamental kind of directed force in the universe, won't selection result in a few pockets of interesting complexities? I mean, yeah. If we ran Earth over again, over and over and over, you're saying it's going to come up with, there's not gonna be elephants every time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't think so. I think that there will be similarities and I think we don't know enough about how selection globally works. But it might be that the emergence of elephants was wired into the history of Earth in some way, like the gravitational force. how evolution was going, Cambrian explosions, blah, blah, blah, the emergence of mammals. But I just don't know enough about the contingency, right, the variability. All I do know is if you count the number of bits of information required to make an element, sorry, an elephant, and think about the causal chain that provide the lineage of elephants going all the way back to Luca, there's a huge scope for divergence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but just like you said, with chemistry and selection, the things that result in self-replicating chemistry and self-replicating organisms those are extremely unlikely, as you're saying, but once they're successful, they multiply. So it might be a tiny subset of all things that are possible in the universe, chemically speaking, it might be a very tiny subset that's actually successful at creating elephants, or elephant-like, slash human-like creatures." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's two different questions here. The first one, if we were to reset Earth, and to start again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At the different phases, sorry to keep interrupting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, if we restart Earth and start again, say we could go back to the beginning and do the experiment or have a number of Earths, how similar would biology be? I would say that there would be broad similarities, but the emergence of mammals is not a given unless we're going to throw an asteroid at each planet at each time and try and faithfully reproduce what happened. Then there's the other thing about when you go to another Earth-like planet elsewhere, maybe there's a different ratio of particular elements, maybe the bombardment at the beginning of the planet was quicker or longer than Earth. I just don't have enough information there. What I do know is that the complexity of the story of life on Earth and gives us lots of scope for variation. And I just don't think it's a reasonable mathematical assumption to think that life on Earth that happened again would be same as what we have now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but you've also extended that to say that we might, as an explanation for the Fermi paradox, that that means we're not able to interact with them. Or that's an explanation for why we haven't at scale heard from aliens is, because they're different than us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We've only been looking for, say, 70, 80 years. So I think that the reason we have not found aliens yet is that we haven't worked out what life is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but the aliens have worked that out, surely. Statistically speaking, there must be a large number of aliens that are way ahead of us on this whole life question. Unless there's something about, this stage of intellectual evolution that often quickly results in nuclear war and destroys itself. There's something in this process that eventually, I don't know, crystallizes the complexity and it stops, either dies or stops developing. But most likely, they already figured it out. And why aren't they contacting us? Some grad student somewhere wants to study a new green planet" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe they have. I mean, I don't have a coherent answer to your question, other than to say that if there are other aliens out there, and they're far more advanced, they might be in contact with each other. And they might also, we might be at a point where, what I'm saying quite critically is it takes two to talk, right? So the aliens might be there, but if we don't have the ability to recognize them and talk to them, then the aliens aren't going to want to talk to us. And I think that's a critical point that probably, if that's a filter, there needs to be an ability for one to communicate with the other. And we need to know what life is before we do that. So we haven't qualified to even join the club to have a talk." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I think they still wanna teach us how to talk, right? But my worry is that, you know, Or I think they would wanna teach us how to talk like you do when you meet it. Like when you even meet, I was gonna say child, but that's a human species. I mean like ant. You want to try to communicate with them through whatever devices you can, given what an ant's like. I just, I worry mostly about that humans are just too close-minded or don't have the right tools" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I'm gonna push back on this quite significantly. I would say because we don't understand what life is and because we don't understand how life emerged in the universe, we don't understand the physics that gave rise to life yet. That means our description, fundamental description, I'm way out of my pay grade, even further out. But I'll say it anyway, because I think it's a fun- You don't get paid much anyway, as you said earlier. So I would say that because we don't understand the universe yet, we do not understand how the universe spat out life. And we don't know what life is. And I think that until we understand that, it is going to limit our ability to even, we don't qualify to talk to the aliens. So I'm going to say that they might be there, but I'm not going to say that I believe in interdimensional aliens being present in this room." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I think you're just being self-critical, like we don't qualify. I think the fact that we don't qualify qualifies us. We're interesting in our innocence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I'm saying that Because we don't understand causal chains and the way that information is propagated in the universe, and we don't understand what replication is yet, and we don't understand how life emerged, I think that we would not recognize aliens. And if someone doesn't recognize you, you wouldn't go and talk to it. You don't go and talk to ants. You don't go and talk to birds, or maybe some birds you do, right? Because you can. There's just enough cognition. So I'm saying because we don't have enough cognitive, our cognitive abilities are not yet where they need to be, we probably haven't been communicating with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't agree with the dating strategy of playing hard to get? because us humans, that seems to attract us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Within a species, that's fine, but I think we don't actually have abstraction. No, actually, I think in this talk, in this conversation, you've helped me crystallize something that I think has been troubling me for a long time with the Fermi paradox. I'm pretty sure that a reasonable avenue is to say that you would not go and talk to your cat about calculus, right? but I would still pet it. Sure, but I'm not talking about petting a cat. The analogy is that the aliens are not going to talk to us because we, and I'm using calculus as an analogy for abstraction, because we lack the layer, the fundamental layer of understanding what life is and what the universe is in our reality, that it would be so counterproductive interacting with intelligent alien species that it would cause more angst for human race" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, they don't care. Okay, they got to be self-interested. So they'll probably, they more care about is it interesting for them? Maybe they, I mean, surely there's a way to, to, to pat the, to pet the cat in this, this analogy, because, um, Even if we lack complete understanding, it must be a very frustrating experience for other kinds of intelligence to communicate with us, still there must be a way to interact with us, like perturb the system in interesting ways to see what these creatures do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We might actually find the answer, I mean again, out of my pay grade, in a simulation of Earth. Let's say a simulation where we allow an intelligent AI to emerge, right? And that AI, we then give it the objective is to be curious, interact with other intelligence in its universe. And then we might find the parameters required for that AI to work. And I think you'll find the AI will not talk to other AIs that don't share the ability to abstract to the level of the AI, because it's just a cat. And are you going to travel 20 light years to go and pet a cat?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So not because of the inability to do so, but because of like boredom, it's more interested, it will start talking to, it will spend most, it will spend a majority of its time talking to other AI systems that can at least somewhat understand, it's much more fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a bit like, do we know that plants are conscious? Well, plants aren't conscious in the way we typically think, but we don't talk to them. They could be, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but there's a lot of people on Earth who like gardening. There's always going to be a weird- They're not talking, they're just gardening. Okay, well, you're not romantic enough to see gardening as a way of communication between humans. Oh, okay, you got me. But there's ways, there's always going to be the people who are curious. Jane Goodall, who lives with the chimps, right? There's always going to be curious intelligent species that visit the weird earth planet and try to interact. I mean, it's, yeah, I think it's a super cool idea that you're expressing. I just kind of have a sense, maybe it's a hope, that there's always going to be a desire to interact even with those that can't possibly understand the depth of what you understand?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'm with you, so I want to be as positive as you that aliens do exist and we will interact with them. What I'm trying to do is to give you a reasonable hypothesis why we haven't yet. And also something to strive for, to be able to do that. I mean, you know, there is the other view that the universe is just too big and life is just too rare. But I want to come up with an alternative explanation, which I think is reasonable and not been philosophically and scientifically thought out, which is this, if you can't actually communicate with the object, the thing competently, you don't even know it's there, then there's no point yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I disagree with that, but I'm totally aligned with your hopeful vision, which is like, we need to understand the origin of life that will help us engineer life, will help us engineer intelligent life through perhaps on the computer side through simulation and explore all the ways that life emerges. And that will allow us to, I think the fundamental reason we don't see overwhelming amounts of life is I actually believe aliens, of course, these are all just kind of open-minded beliefs. It's difficult to know for sure about any of this, but I think there's a lot of alien civilizations which are actively communicating with us and we're too dumb we don't have the right tools to see it. No, but you're, maybe I misinterpreted you, but I interpreted you to say they kind of tried a few times and they're like, oh God." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, what I'm saying is we, so this goes two ways. Yeah, I agree with you. There could be information out there, but just put in such a way that we just don't understand it yet. So sorry if I didn't make that clear. I mean, it's not just, I don't think we, I think we qualify as soon as we can decode their signal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so when you say qualified, got it, got it. So you mean we're just not smart enough, the word qualified was throwing me off. So we're not smart enough to do, it's like, but we just need to get smarter. And there's a lot of people who believe, let me get your opinion on this, about UFO sightings. So, sightings of weird phenomena. that, you know, what does UFO mean? It means it's a flying object and it's not identified clearly at the time of sighting. That's what UFO means. So it could be a physics phenomena. It could be ball lightning. It could be all kinds of fascinating. I was always fascinated with ball lightning as a The fact that there could be physical phenomena in this world that are observable by the human eye, of course all physical phenomena generally are fascinating, that really smart people can't explain. I love that, because it's like, wait a minute, Especially if you can replicate it. It's like, wait a minute, how does this happen? That's like the precursor to giant discoveries in chemistry and biology and physics and so on. But it sucks when those events are super rare, right? Like light bulb lightning. So that's out there. And then, of course, that phenomena could have other interpretations that don't have to do with the physics, the chemistry, the biology of Earth. It could have to do with more extraterrestrial explanations that, in large part, thanks to Hollywood and movies and all those kinds of things, captivates the imaginations of millions of people. But just because it's science fiction that captivates the imagination of people doesn't mean that some of those sightings, all it takes is one. One of those sightings is actually a sign that it's extraterrestrial intelligence, that it's an object that's not of this particular world. Do you think there's a chance that that's the case? What do you make, especially the pilot sightings, what do you make of those?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, I agree there's a chance, there's always a chance. Any good scientist would have to, or observationist would have to, you know, I want to see if aliens exist, come to Earth. What I know about the universe is I think it's unlikely right now that there are aliens visiting us, but not impossible. I think the releases, the dramatization that's been happening politically saying we're going to release all this information, this classified information, I was kind of disappointed because it was just very poor material. And right now, the ability to capture high resolution video, everybody is carrying around with them an incredible video device now. And we haven't got more compelling data. And so that we've just seeing grainy pitches, a lot of hearsay, instrument kind of malfunctions and whatnot. And so I think on balance, I think it's extremely unlikely, but I think something really interesting is happening. And also during the pandemic, right? We've all been locked down. We all want to have, we want to, our imaginations are, you know, running riot. And I think that the, I don't think that the information out there has convinced me there are any anything interesting on the UFO side. But what it has made me very interested about is how humanity is opening up its mind to ponder aliens and the mystery of our universe. And so I don't want to dissuade people from having those thoughts and say you're stupid and look at that, it's clearly incorrect. That's not right, that's not fair. What I would say is that I lack sufficient data, replicated observations to make me go, oh, I'm gonna take this seriously. But I'm really interested by the fact that there is this great deal of interest, and I think that it drives me to maybe want to make an artificial life form even more, and to help NASA and the Air Force and whoever go and look for things even more, because I think humanity wants to know what's out there. There's this yearning, isn't there?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but see, I almost Depending on the day, I sometimes agree with you, with the thing you just said, but one of the disappointing things to me about the sightings, I still hold the belief that a non-zero number of them is an indication of something very interesting. So I don't side with the people who say everything can be explained with like sensor artifacts kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'd agree with you. I didn't say that either. I would say I just don't have enough data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the thing I want to push back on is the statement that everybody has a high-definition camera. One of the disappointing things to me about the report that the government released, but in general, just having worked with government, having worked with people all over, is how incompetent we are. If you look at the response to the pandemic, how incompetent we are in the face of great challenges, without great leadership, how incompetent we are in the face of the great mysteries before us without great leadership. And I just think it's actually, the fact that there's a lot of high-definition cameras is not enough to capture the full richness of weird, of the mysterious phenomena out there of which extraterrestrial intelligence visiting Earth could be one. I don't think we have, I don't think everybody having a smartphone in their pocket is enough, I think, that allows for TikTok videos. I don't think it allows for the capture of even interesting, relatively rare human events. That's not that common. It's rare to be in the right moment in the right time to be able to capture the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree, I agree. Let me rephrase what I think on this. I haven't seen enough information, I haven't really actively sorted it out, I must admit. But I'm with you in that I love the idea of anomaly detection, in chemistry in particular, right? I want to make anomalies, sorry, or not necessarily make anomalies, I want to understand an anomaly. Let me give you two from chemistry. which are really quite interesting. Phlogiston, going way back, where people said, there's this thing called Phlogiston. And for ages, the alchemists got really this kind of, the fire is the thing. And that's one, and then we determined that Phlogiston wasn't what we thought it is. Let's go to physics, the ether. The ether's a hard one, because I think actually the ether might exist, and I'll tell you what I think the ether is later. Can you explain ether? So as the vacuum, the light traveling through the ether in the vacuum, there is some thing that we call the ether that basically mediates the movement of light. And then the other one is cold fusion. which is more, so a few years ago, that people observed that when they did some electrochemistry, when they were splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, that you got more energy out than you put in. And people got excited and they thought that this was a nuclear reaction. And in the end, it was kind of discredited because you didn't detect neutrons and all that stuff. I'm pretty sure, I'm a chemist, I'm telling you this on your podcast, but why not? I'm pretty sure there's interesting electrochemical phenomena that's not completely bottomed out yet, that there is something there. However, we lack the technology and the experimental design So all I'm saying in your response about aliens is we lack the experimental design to really capture these anomalies. And we are encircling the planet with many more detection systems. We've got satellites everywhere. So I do hope that we are going to discover more anomalies. And remember, the solar system isn't just static in space. It's moving through the universe. So there's just more and more chance. I'm not what with Avi Loeb that he's generating all sorts of kind of a cult, I would say, with this. But I'm not against him. I think there is a finite chance if there are aliens in the universe that we're going to happen upon them. Because we're moving through the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the nature of the following that Avi Loeb has?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's doubling down more and more and more and say there are aliens, interdimensional aliens and everything else, right? He's gone from space junk accelerating out of to interdimensional stuff in a very short space of time. He's obviously bored. Or he wants to tap into the psyche and understand, and he's playfully trying to interact with society and his peers to say, stop saying it's not possible, which I agree with. We shouldn't do that. But we should frame it statistically in the same way we should frame everything as good scientists, statistically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, good scientists. Recently, the idea of good scientists is... I take quite skeptically. I've been listening to a lot of scientists tell me about what is good science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That makes me sad, because you've been interviewing what I would consider a lot of really good scientists." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, that's true. But that's exactly right. And most of the people I talk to are incredible human beings. But there's a humility that's required. Science cannot be dogmatism. Sure, I agree, I mean- Authority, like a PhD does not give you authority. A lifelong pursuit of a particular task does not give you authority. You're just as lost and clueless as everybody else, but you're more curious and more stubborn. So that's a nice quality to have, but overall just, using the word science and statistics can often, as you know, kind of become a catalyst for dismissing new ideas, out of the box ideas, wild ideas, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes and no. I think that, so I like to, Some people find me extremely annoying in science because I'm basically quite rude and disruptive. Not in a rude, you know, to people and say they're ugly or stupid or anything like that. I just say, you know, you're wrong or why do you think this? And something, a gift I got given by society when I was very young, because I was in the learning difficulties class at school, is I was told I was stupid. And so I know I'm stupid, but I always wanted to be smart, right? I remember going to school going, maybe today they're gonna tell me I'm not as stupid as I was yesterday. And I was always disappointed, always. And so when I went into academia and everyone says, you're wrong, I was like, join the queue. Because it allowed me to walk through the wall. So I think that people like to always imagine science as a bit like living in a Japanese house, the paper walls, and everyone sits in their room. And I annoy people because I walk straight through the wall. Because why should I be a chemist and not a mathematician? Why should I be a mathematician and not a computer scientist? Because if the problem requires us to walk through those walls, but I like walking through the walls. Then I have to put up. I have to do good science, I have to win the people in those rooms across by good science, by taking their criticisms and addressing them head on. And I think we must do that. And I think that I try and do that in my own way. And I kind of love walking through the walls. And it gives me, it's difficult for me personally, it's quite painful, but it always leads to a deeper understanding. of the people I'm with, in particular, you know, the arguments I have with all sorts of interesting minds, because I want to solve the problem, or I want to understand more about why I exist. You know, that's it, really. And I think we have to not dismiss science on that basis. I think we can work with science." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, science is beautiful, but humans with egos and all those kinds of things can... sometimes misuse good things like social justice, like all ideas we all aspire to misuse these beautiful ideas to manipulate people to all those kinds of things. And that's, there's assholes in every space and walk of life, including science. And those are no good, but yes, you're right. The scientific method has proven to be quite useful. That said, for difficult questions, for difficult explanations for rare phenomena, you have to walk cautiously. Because the scientific method, when you totally don't understand something and it's rare, and you can't replicate it, doesn't quite apply." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with you. The challenge is to not dismiss the anomaly because you can't replicate it. I mean, we can talk about this. This is something I realized when we were developing assembly theory. People thinking that the track they're on is so dogmatic, but there is this thing that they see but they don't see. It takes a bit of time and you just have to keep reframing it. My approach is to say, well, why can't this be right? Why must we accept that RNA is the only way into life? I mean, who says? Does RNA have a special class of information that's encoded in the universe? No, of course it doesn't, right? RNA is not a special molecule in the space of all the other molecules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but it's so elegant and simple and it works so well for the evolutionary process that we kind of use that as an intuition to explain that that must be the only way to have life. Sure. But you mentioned assembly theory. Well, first let me pause, bathroom break." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let's take two minutes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We took a quick break and offline, you mentioned to me that you have a lab in your home And then I said that you're basically Rick from Rick and Morty, which is something I've been thinking this whole conversation. And then you say that there's a glowing pickle that you used, something involving cold plasma, I believe. I don't know, but can you explain the glowing pickle situation? And is there many, arbitrarily many versions of you in alternate dimensions that you're aware of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tried to make an electrochemical memory at home using a pickle. The only way I could get any traction with it was actually by plugging it into a very high voltage alternating current and then putting in a couple of electrodes. but my kids weren't impressed. They're not impressed with anything I do, any experiments I do at home. I think it's quite funny. But you connected that pickle to some electro, I mean, you- To 240 volts, yeah, AC. Yeah. And then had a couple of electrodes on it. So what happens is a pickle, this is a classic thing you do. I mean, I shouldn't, pranks you do. You put a pickled into the mains and just leave it, run away and leave it. And what happens is it starts to decompose. It heats up and then explodes because the water turns to steam. and it just violently explodes. But I wondered if I could cause the sodium potassium ions in the pickle to migrate. It'd been in a jar, right? So it'd been in a brine. That was not my best experiment. So I've done far better experiments in my lab at home." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At that time it was a failed experiment, but you never know. Every experiment is a successful experiment if you stick with it long enough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I got kicked out of my own lab by my research team many years ago, and for good reason. I mean, my team is brilliant, and I used to go in and just break things. So what I do do at home is I have a kind of electronics workshop, and I prototype experiments there. Then I try and suggest to my team sometimes, maybe we can try this thing. And they would just say, oh, well, that's not going to work because of this. And I would say, aha, but actually I've tried. And here's some code and here's some hardware. Can we have a go? So I'm doing that less and less now as I get even more busy. But that's quite fun, because then they feel that we're in the experiment together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You do, in fact, brilliantly, just like Rick from Rick and Morty, connect chemistry with computation. And when we say chemistry, we don't mean the simulation of chemistry, a modeling of chemistry. We mean chemistry in the physical space as well as in the digital space, which is fascinating. We'll talk about that, but first you mentioned assembly theory, so we'll stick on, theory and these big ideas, I would say revolutionary ideas, this intersection between mathematics and philosophy. What is assembly theory? And generally speaking, how would we recognize life if we saw it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So assembly theory is a theory, goes back a few years now and my struggle for maybe almost 10 years when I was going to origin of life conferences and artificial life conferences where I thought that everybody was dancing around the problem of what life is and what it does. But I'll tell you about what assembly theory is because I think it's easier. So assembly theory literally says if you take an object, any given object, and you are able to break the object into parts very gently. So just maybe, let's say, take a piece of very intricate Chinese porcelain and you tap it just with a hammer or the nail at some point and it will fragment into many parts. And if that object is able to fragment into many, and you count those parts, the different parts, so they're unsymmetrical, Assemblier theory says the larger the number of parts, unsymmetrical parts that object has, the more likely it is that object has been created by an evolutionary or information process, especially if that object is not one-off. You've got an abundance of them. And that's really important. What I'm literally saying about the abundance, if you have a one-off object and you break it into parts, and it has lots of parts, you'd say, well, that could be incredibly intricate and complex, but it could be just random. And I was troubled with this for years, because I saw in reality that assembly theory works. But when I talked to very good complexity computation lists, algorithmic complexity people, they said, you haven't really done this properly, you haven't thought about it. It's like, this is the random problem. And so I kept working this up, because I invented an assembly theory in chemistry, first of all, with molecules. And so the thought experiment was, How complex does a molecule need to be, when I find it, that it couldn't possibly have risen by chance, probabilistically? And if I found this molecule, able to detect it in enough quantities in the same object, like a machine, like a mass spectrometer, so typically in a mass spectrometer, you weigh the molecules in electric field, you probably have to have on the order of 10,000 identical molecules to get a signal. So 10,000 identical molecules that are complex, what is the chance of them occurring by chance? Well, we can do the math. Let's take a molecule like strychnine or, yeah, so strychnine is a good molecule actually to take. Or Viagra is a good molecule. I made jokes about Viagra because it's a complex molecule. And one of my friends said, yeah, if we find Viagra on Mars in detectable quantities, we know something is up. But anyway, it's a complex molecule. So what you do is you take this molecule in the mass spectrometer and you hit it with some electrons or an electric field and it breaks apart. And if the larger the number of different parts you know, when it starts to get to a threshold, my idea was that that molecule could not be created by chance, probabilistically. So that was where assembly theory was born in an experiment, in a mass spec experiment. And I was thinking about this because NASA is sending mass spectrometers to Mars, to Titan, it's gonna send them to Europa. There's gonna be a nuclear-powered mass spectrometer going to Titan. I mean, this is the coolest experiment ever. They're not only sending a drone that's gonna fly around Titan, it's gonna be powered by a nuclear slug, a nuclear battery, and it's gonna have a mass spectrometer on it. Is this already launched? No, it's Dragonfly, and it's gonna be launched in a few years. I think it got pushed a year because of the pandemic, so I think three or four years. Dragonfly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "nuclear dragonflies going to fly to Titan and collect data about the composition of the various chemicals on Titan." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'm trying to convince NASA, I don't know if I'll be able to convince the Dragonfly team that they should apply this approach, but they will get data, and depending on how good their mass spectrometer is. But I had this thought experiment anyway, and I did this thought experiment, and for me it seemed to work. I turned the thought experiment into an algorithm in assembly theory, and I basically, assembly theory, if I take, let's just make it generic, and let's just take the word abracadabra, So can I, if you find the word, so if you have a book with lots of words in it and you find abracadabra, one-off, and it's a book that's been written by, in a random way, you know, set of monkeys in a room. And you're on typewriters, and you find one-off abracadabra, no big deal. But if you find lots of reoccurrences of abracadabra, well that means something weird is going on. But let's think about the assembly number of abracadabra. So abracadabra has a number of letters in it. You can break it down, so you just cut the letters up. But when you actually reassemble abracadabra, the minimum number of ways of organizing those letters, so you'd have an A, a B, and keep going up. When you cut abracadabra up into parts, you can put it together again in seven steps. So what does that mean? That means if you basically don't, you're allowed to reuse things you make in a chain at the beginning. That's the memory of the universe, the process that makes abracadabra. And because that causal chain, you can then get to abracadabra quicker than the number of letters for having to specify only in seven. So if you take that to a molecule and you cut the molecule up into parts, and you can, on the causal chain, and you basically start with the atoms and then bonds, and then you randomly add on those parts to make the A, make the B, make the, and keep going all the way up. I found that literally assembly theory allows me to say how compressed a molecule is. So when there's some information in there. And I realized assembly theory isn't just confined to molecular space. It can apply to anything. But let me finish the molecular argument. So what I did is I had this theory. One of my students, we wrote an algorithm. We basically took the 20 million molecules from the database and we just calculated their assembly number. And that's the index. Basically, If I take a molecule and I cut it up into bonds, what is the minimum number of steps I need to take to reform that molecule from atoms?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, reusability of previously formed things is somehow a fundamental part of what- Exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like memory in the universe, right? I'm making lots of leaps here. It's kind of weird. I'm saying, right, there's a process that can form the A and the B and the C, let's say, and because we've formed A and B before, we can use A and B again with no extra cost except one unit. So that's the kind of what the chain of events." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's how you think about memory here when you say the universe, when you talk about the universe or life is the universe creating memory." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. So we went through chemical space and we looked at the assembly numbers and we were able to classify it. We said, okay, let's test it. Let's go. So we're able to take a whole bunch of molecules and assign an assembly index to them. Okay, and it's just a function of the number of bonds in the molecule and how much symmetry. So literally, assembly theory is a measure of how little symmetry a molecule has. So the more asymmetry, the more information, the more weird it is, like a Jackson Pollock or some description. So I then went and did a load of experiments. And I basically took those molecules, I cut them up in the mass spec and measured the number of peaks without any knowledge of the molecule. And we found the assembly number, there was almost not quite a one-to-one correlation, but almost, because not all bonds are equal, they have different energies. I then did this using two other spectroscopic techniques, NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance, which uses radio frequency to basically jangle the molecules and get a signature out. And I also used infrared. And infrared and NMR almost gave us a one-to-one correlation. So what am I saying? I'm saying by taking a molecule and doing either infrared or NMR or mass spec, I can work out how many parts there are in that molecule and then put it on a scale. And what we did in the next part of the work is we took molecules randomly from the environment, from outer space, from all around Earth, from the sea, from Antarctica, and from fossils and so on. And even NASA, because they didn't believe us, blinded some samples. And we found that all these samples that came from biology produced molecules that had a very high assembly number, above a threshold of about 15. So basically, all the stuff that came from an abiotic origin was low. There was no complexity there. So we suddenly realized that on Earth at least, there is a cutoff that natural phenomena cannot produce molecules that need more than 15 steps to make them. So I realized that this is a way to make a scale of life, a scale of technology as well, and literally you could just go sniffing for molecules off Earth, on Titan, on Mars, and when you find a molecule in the mass spectrometer that gives you more than 15 parts, you'll know pretty much for sure that it had to be produced by evolution. And this allowed me to come up with a general definition of life based on assembly theory, to say that if I find an object, that has a large number of parts, say an iPhone, or Boeing 747, or any complex object, and I can find it in abundance and cut it up, I can tell you whether that has been produced by an informational process or not. And that's what assembly theory kind of does. But it goes a bit further. I then realised that this isn't just about life, it's about causation. So actually, it tells you about where there's a causal structure. So now I can look at objects in the universe, say that again, this cup, and say, right, I'm gonna look at how many independent parts it has. So that's the assembly number. I'll then look at the abundance, how many cups, there are two on this table, maybe there's a few more you got stashed away. So assembly is a function of the complexity of the object, times the number of copy numbers of that object, or a function of the copy number, normalized. So I realized there's a new quantity in the universe. You have energy, entropy, and assembly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So assembly, the way we should think about that is how much reusability there is. Because reusability is like, can you play devil's advocate to this? Could this just be a nice, a tertiary signal for living organisms, like some kind of distant signal that's, yeah, this is a nice property, but it's not capturing something fundamental. Or do you think reusability is something fundamental to life in complex organisms?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think reusability is fundamental in the universe, not just for life and complex organisms, it's about causation. So I think assembly tells you, if you find objects, because you can do this with trajectories as well, you think about it that In the fact there are objects in the universe on Earth is weird. You think about it, we should just have a commentary explosion of stuff. The fact that not everything exists is really weird. Now there" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then there, as I'm looking at two mugs and two water bottles, and the things that exist kind of are similar and multiply in copies of each other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I would say that assembly allows you to do something that statistical mechanics and people looking at entropy have got stuck with for a while. So I'm making, it's pretty bold. I mean, I'm writing a paper with Sarah Walker on this at the moment. And we're realizing we don't want to get ahead of ourselves because I think that there's lots of ways where this is, you know, it's a really interesting idea. It works for molecules and it appears to work for any objects produced by causation. Because you can take a motor car, you can look at the assembly of the motor car, look at a book, look at the assembly of the book. Assembly theory tells you there's a way of compressing and reusing. And so when people, I talk to information theorists, they say, oh, this is just logical depth. I say, it is like logical depth, but it's experimentally measurable. They say, oh, it's a bit like Komagolov complexity. I say, but it's computable. And okay, it's not infinitely computable, gets MP hard very quickly, right? It's a very hard problem, but it's computable enough, you're contractible enough to be able to tell the difference between a molecule that's been formed by the random background and by causation. And I think that that's really interesting because until now, there's no way of measuring complexity objectively. Complexity has required algorithmic comparisons and programs and human beings to enlabel things. Assembly is label-free. Well, not entirely. We can talk about what that means in a minute." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. My brain has been broken a couple of times here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sorry I explained it really badly. No, it was very well explained." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was just fascinating. My brain is broken into pieces and I'm trying to assemble it. So NP hard. So when you have a molecule, you're trying to figure out, okay, If we were to reuse parts of this molecule, which parts can we reuse as an optimization problem and be hard to figure out the minimum amount of reused components that will create this molecule? and it becomes difficult when you start to look at huge, huge molecules, arbitrarily large. Because I'm also mapping this, can I think about this in complexity generally, like looking at a cellular automata system and saying, can this be used as a measure of complexity for an arbitrarily complicated system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it can. It can. And I think that the question is, then what's the benefit? Because there's plenty of, I mean, in computer science and mathematics and physics, people have been really seriously studying complexity for a long time. And I think there's some really interesting problems of where we course grade and we lose information. And all assembly theory does really, assembly theory just explains weak emergence. And so what assembly theory says, look, going from the atoms that interact, those first replicators that build one another. Assembly at the minimal level just tells you evidence that there's been replication and selection. And I think the more selected something is, the higher the assembly. And so we were able to start to know how to look for selection in the universe. If you go to the moon, there's nothing of very high assembly on the moon except the human artifacts we've left there. So again, let's go back to the sandbox. In assembly theory says, if all the sand grains could stick together, that's the infinite combinatorial explosion in the universe. That should be the default. We don't have that. Now let's assemble sand grains together and do them in every possible way. So we have a series of minimal operations that can move the sand together. But all that doesn't exist either. Now, because we have specific memory where we say, what, we're going to put three sand grains in a line, or four and make a cross, or a triangle, or something unsymmetrical. Once we've made the triangle and the unsymmetrical thing, we remember that, we can use it again because it's on that causal chain. What assembly theory allows you to do is go to the actual object that you find in space, and actually the way you get there is by disassembling it. Disassembly theory works by disassembling objects you have and understanding the steps to create them. And it works for molecules beautifully because you just break bonds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But like you said, it's not going to be hard. It's very difficult. It's a difficult problem to figure out how to break them apart." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For molecules, it's easy. If you just keep low enough in molecular weight space, it's good enough. So it's a complete theory. When we start to think about objects, we can start to assign, we can start to think about things at different levels, different atoms. What do you assign as your atom? So in a molecule, the atom, this is really confusing because the word atom, I mean smallest breakable part. So in a molecule, the atom is the bond. because you break bonds, not atoms, right? So in a car, the atom might be, I don't know, a small amount of iron or the smallest reusable part, a rivet, a piece of plastic or something. So you've got to be really careful. In a microprocessor, the atoms might be transistors. The amount of assembly that something has is a function. You have to look at the atom level. Where are your parts? What are you counting?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one of the things you get to choose. What scale is the atom? What is the minimal thing? There's huge amounts of trade-offs. when you approach a system and try to analyze, like if you approach Earth, you're an alien civilization trying to study Earth, what is the atom for trying to measure the complexity of life? Are humans the atoms?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say to start with, you just use molecules. I can say for sure, if there are molecules of sufficient complexity on Earth, then I know that life has made them. And we can go further and show technology. There are molecules that exist on Earth that are not possible even by biology. You needed technology and you needed microprocessors to get there. So that's really cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that there's a correlation between the coolness of that and assembly number, whatever the measure. What would you call the measure?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Assembly index. So there are three fundamental labels we have. So there's the quantity of assembly. So if you have a box, let's just have a box of molecules. So I'm going to have my box. We count the number of identical molecules. And then we chop each molecule up in an individual molecule class and calculate the assembly number. So basically, you then have a function that sums over all the molecules for each assembly. and then you divide through, so you make it, divide through by the number of molecules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the assembly index for the box?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that will tell you the amount of assembly in the box. So basically, the assembly equation we come up with is like basically the sum of e to the power of the assembly index of molecule i times the number of copies of the molecule i, and then you normalize. So you sum them all up and then normalize. So some boxes are gonna be more assembled than others." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's what they tell me. So if you were to look at me as a box, say I'm a box, am I assembling my parts? In terms of like, how do you know, what's my assembly index?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And be gentle. So let's just, we'll talk about the molecules in you. So let's just take a pile of sand, the same weight as you. And I would take you and just cut up all the molecules, I mean, and look at the number of copies and assembly number. So in sand, let's say, there's probably gonna be nothing more than assembly number two or three, but there might be trillions and trillions of sand grains. In your body, there might be, the assembly number's gonna be higher, but there might not be quite as many copies because the molecular weight's higher. So you do want to average it out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not defined by the most impressive model." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, you're an average in your volume. Well, I mean, we're just working this out. But what's really cool is that you're going to have a really high assembly. The sand will have a very low assembly. Your causal power is much higher, you get to make decisions, you're alive, you're aspiring. Assembly says something about causal power in the universe. And that's not supposed to exist, because physicists don't accept that causation exists at the bottom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I understand at the chemical level why the assembly is causation, why is it causation? Because it's capturing the memory. It's capturing memory, but there's not an action to it. So I'm trying to see how it leads to life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's what life does. So I think it's, we don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a good question. What is life versus what does life do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so that's, this is the definition of life, the only definition we need, right? What's the assembly? Life is able to create objects in abundance that are so complex, the assembly number is so high, they can't possibly form in an environment where there's just random interactions. So suddenly you can put life on a scale, and then life doesn't exist actually, in that it's just how evolved you are. And you as an object, because you have incredible causal power, you can go and launch rockets or build cars or create drugs. You can do so many things. You can build stuff, build more artifacts that show that you have had causal power, and that causal power was this kind of a lineage. And I think that over time, I've been realizing that physics as a discipline has a number of problems associated with it. For me as a chemist, it's kind of interesting that assembly theory, and I want to maintain some credibility in the physicist's eyes, but I have to push them because physics is a really good discipline. Physics is about reducing the belief system, but they're down to some things in their belief system, which is kind of really makes me kind of grumpy. Number one is requiring order at the beginning universe magically. We don't need that. The second is the second law. Well, we don't actually need that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is blasphemous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In a minute, I'll recover my career in a second. Although I think the only good thing about being the Regius chair means I think there has to be an act of parliament to fire me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You can always go to Lee's Twitter and protest." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think the third thing is that, so we've got the order at the beginning. Second law. The second law and the fact that causation is emergent. and that time is emergent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "John Carroll just turned off this program. I think he believes that it's emergent, so causation is not emergent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's clearly incorrect, because we wouldn't exist otherwise. So physicists have kind of got confused about time. Time is a real thing. Well, I mean, so look, I'm very happy with the current description of the universe as physics gives me because I can do a lot of stuff, right? I can go to the moon with Newtonian physics, I think, and I can understand the orbit of Mercury with relativity. And I can build transistors with quantum mechanics, right? And I can do all this stuff. So I'm not saying the physics is wrong. I'm just saying if we say that time is fundamental, i.e. time is non-negotiable, there's a global clock. I don't need to require that there's order been magically made in the past because that asymmetry is built into the way the universe is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if time's fundamental, I mean, you've been referring to this kind of An interesting formulation of that is memory. So time is hard to put a finger on, like what the hell are we talking about? It's just a direction, but memory is a construction, especially when you have like, think about these local pockets of complexity, these non-zero assembly index entities that's being constructed and they remember. Never forget molecules." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But remember the thing is I invented assembly theory. I'll tell you how I invented it. When I was a kid, I mean, the thing is, I keep making fun of myself to my search group. I've only ever had one idea. I keep exploring that idea over the 40 years or so since I had that idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I used to be- Well, aren't you the idea that the universe had? So it's very kind of hierarchical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Anyway, go ahead, I'm sorry. That's very poetic. So I think I came up with assembly theory with the following idea when I was a kid. I was obsessed about survival kits. What is the minimum stuff I would need to basically replicate my reality. And I love computers and I love technology or what technology was gonna become. So I imagined that I would have basically this really big truck full of stuff. And I thought, well, can I delete some of that stuff out? Can I have a blueprint? And then in the end, I kept making this, making it smaller and got to maybe half a truck and then to a suitcase. And I went, okay, well, screw it. I wanna carry my entire technology in my pocket. How do I do it? And I'm not like at a launch into Steve Jobby and, you know, I'm iPlayer. I came up with a matchbox survival kit. In that matchbox survival kit, I would have the minimum stuff that would allow me to interact the environment, to build my shelter, to build a fishing rod, to build a water purification system. And it's kind of like, so what did I use in my box to assemble in the environment, to assemble, to assemble, to assemble? And I realized I could make a causal chain in my survival kit. So I guess that's probably why I've been obsessed with assembly theory for so long. And I was just pre-configured to find it somewhere. And when I saw it in molecules, I realized that the causal structure that we say emerges and the physics kind of gets really stuck because they're saying that you can go backwards in time. I mean, how do we let physicists get away with the notion that we can go back in time and meet ourselves? I mean, that's clearly a very hard thing to let up. Physicists would not let other sciences get away with that kind of heresy, right? So why are physicists allowed to get away with it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So first of all, to push back, to play devil's advocate, you are clearly married to the idea of memory. You see in this, again, from Rick and Morty way, you have these deep dreams of the universe that is writing the story through its memories, through its chemical compounds that are just building on top of each other, and then they find useful components they can reuse, and then the reused components create systems that themselves are then reused, and in this way construct things. but when you think of that as memory, it seems like quite sad that you can walk that back, but at the same time, it feels like that memory, you can walk in both directions on that memory in terms of time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You could walk in both directions, but I don't think that makes any sense because the problem that I have with time being reversible is that I mean, I'm just a, you know, I'm a dumb experimental chemist, right? So I love burning stuff, burning stuff and building stuff. But when I think of reversible phenomena, I imagine in my head, I have to actually manufacture some time. I have to borrow time from the universe to do that. I can't, when anyone says, let's imagine that we can go back in time or reversibility, you can't do that. You can't step out of time. Time is non-negotiable, it's happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but see, you're assuming that time is fundamental, which most of us do when we go day to day, but it takes a leap of wild imagination to think that time is emergent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, time is not emergent yet. I mean, this is an argument we can have, but I believe I can come up with an experiment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "An experiment that proves that time cannot possibly be emergent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "An experiment that shows how assembly theory is the way that the universe produces selection, and that selection gives rise to life. And also to say, well, hang on, we could allow ourselves to have a theory that requires us to have these statements to be possible. Like we need to have order in the past, or we can use the past hypothesis, which is order in the past, but as well. Okay. And we have to have an arrow of time, we have to require that entropy increases. And then we can say, look, the universe is completely closed and there's no novelty. or that novelty is predetermined. What I'm saying is very, very important, that time is fundamental, which means, if you think about it, the universe becomes more and more novel each step. It generates more states in the next step than it was before. So that means a bigger search. So what I'm saying is that the universe wasn't capable of consciousness at day one. Actually, because it didn't have enough states. But today, the universe is, so it's like how- All right, all right, hold on a second." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now we've pissed off the panpsychics too, okay. No, this is brilliant, sorry. Part of me is just joking, having fun with this thing, because you're saying a lot of brilliant stuff, and I'm trying to slow it down before my brain explodes, because I want to break apart some of the fascinating things you're saying. So novelty. novelty is increasing in the universe because the number of states is increasing. What do you mean by states?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think the physicists almost got everything right. I can't fault them at all. I just think there's a little bit of dogma. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate. I'm very happy to be entirely wrong on this, right? I'm not right on many things at all. But if I can make less assumptions about the universe with this, then potentially that's a more powerful way of looking at things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you think of time as fundamental, you can make less assumptions overall." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. If time is fundamental, I don't need to add on a magical second law, because the second law comes out of the fact the universe is actually, there's more states available. I mean, we might even be able to do weird things like dark energy in the universe might actually just be time, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but then you still have to explain why time is fundamental, because I can give you one explanation that's simpler than time and say God. You know, like, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's, you still have to explain God and you still have to explain time. Like, why is it fundamental?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's just say existence is the default, which means time is the default. Wait, how did you go from the existence is the default to time is the default? Well, look, we exist, right? So let's just be very... We're yet to talk about what exist means. All right, let's go all the way back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, okay. I think it's very poetic and beautiful what you're weaving into this I don't think this conversation is even about the assembly Which is fascinating and we'll keep mentioning it assembly index and this idea that I don't think is necessarily Connected to time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think it is deeply connected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I can't explain it So you don't think everything you've said about assembly theory and assembly index Can still be correct even if time is emergent, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, right now, assembly theory appears to work. I appear to be able to measure objects of high assembly in a mass spectrometer and look at their abundance and you know, all that's fine, right? It's a nice, if nothing else, it's a nice way of looking at how molecules can compress things. Now, am I saying that a time has to be fundamental, not emergent for assembly theory to work? No. I think I'm saying that the universe, it appears that the universe has many different ways of using time. You could have three different types of time. You could just have time that's The way I'd think of it, if you want to hold on to emergent time, I think that's fine. Let's do that for a second. Hold on to emergent time and the universe is just doing its thing. Then assembly time only exists when the universe starts to write memories through bonds. So let's just say there's rocks running around. When the bond happens and selection starts, suddenly the universe is remembering cause and in the past. And those structures will have effects in the future. So suddenly a new type of time emerges at that point, which has a direction. And I think Sean Carroll at this point might even turn the podcast back on and go, okay, I can deal with that, that's fine. But I'm just basically trying to condense the conversation and say, hey, let's just have time fundamental and see how that screws with people's minds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why- You're triggering people by saying fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why not? We just like let's say why look I'm walking through the wall. Why why why should I? Grow up in a world where time I don't go back in time, I don't meet myself in the past. There are no aliens coming from the future, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just like- No, no, no, but that's not, no, no, no, hold on a second. That's like saying we're talking about biology or like evolutionary psychology and you're saying, okay, let's just assume that clothing is fundamental. People wearing clothes is fundamental. It's like, no, no, no, wait a minute. I think you're getting in a lot of trouble if you assume time is fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why? Give me one reason why I'm getting into trouble with time being fundamental." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you might not understand the origins of this memory that might be deeper. That could be a thing that's explaining the construction of these higher complexities better than just saying it's a search. It's chemicals doing a search for reusable structures that they can then use as bricks to build a house." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "OK, so I accept that. So let's go back a second, because I wanted to drop the time bomb at this part, because I think we can carry on discussing it for many, many, many, many, many days, many months. But I'm happy to accept that it might be wrong. But what I would like to do is imagine a universe where time is fundamental and time is emergent. and ask, let's just then talk about causation because physicists require that causation, so this is where I'm going to go, causation emerges and it doesn't exist at the microscale. Well, that clearly is wrong. Because if causation has to emerge at the macroscale, life cannot emerge. So how does life emerge? Life requires molecules to bump into each other, produce replicators. Those replicators need to produce polymers. There needs to be cause and effect at the molecular level. There needs to be a non-ergodic to an ergodic transition at some point. And, Those replicators have material consequence in the universe. Physicists just say, oh, you know what? I'm going to have a bunch of particles in a box. I'm going to think about it in either a Newtonian way, in a quantum way, and I'll add on an arrow time so I can label things, and causation will happen magically later. Well, how? Explain causation. And they can't. The only way I can reconcile causation is having a fundamental time, because this allows me to have a deterministic universe that creates novelty. And there's so many things to unpack here. But let's go back to the point. You said, can assembly theory work with emergent time? Sure it can, but it doesn't give me a deep satisfaction about how causation and assembly gives rise to these objects that move through time and space. And again, what am I saying to bring it back? I can say without fear, you know, take this water bottle. Look at this water bottle and look at the features on it. There's writing. You've got a load of them. I know that causal structures gave rise to this. In fact, I'm not looking at just one water bottle here. I'm looking at every water bottle that's ever been conceived of by humanity. This here is a special object. In fact, Leibniz knew this. Leibniz, who was at the same time as Newton, he kind of got stuck. I think Leibniz actually invented assembly theory. The soul that you see in objects wasn't the mystical soul, it is assembly, it is the fact there's been a history of objects related. And without the object in the past, this object wouldn't exist. There is a lineage and there is conserved structures, causal structures have given rise to those." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Fair enough. And you're saying it's just a simpler view if time is fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it shakes the physicist's cage a bit, right? But I think that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just enjoy the fact that physicists are in cages." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say that Lee Smolin, I don't want to speak for Lee. I'm talking to Lee about this. I think Lee also is in agreement that time has to be fundamental. But I think he goes further. Even in space, I don't think you can go back to the same place in space. I've been to Austin a few times now. I think third time I've been to Austin. Is Austin in the same place? No. The solar system is moving through space. I'm not back in the same space. Locally I am. Every event in the universe is unique." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "in space. And time. And time. Doesn't mean we can't go back, though. I mean, let's just rest this conversation, which was beautiful, with a quote from the Rolling Stones that you can't always get what you want, which is you want time to be fundamental, but if you try, you'll get what you need, which is assembly theory. Okay, let me ask you about, continue talking about complexity and to clarify it with this beautiful theory of yours that you're developing and I'm sure will continue developing both in the lab and in theory. Yeah, it can't be said enough, just the ideas you're playing with in your head are just, and we've been talking about it, are just beautiful. So if we talk about complexity a little bit more generally, maybe in an admiring romantic way, how does complexity emerge from simple rules? The why, the how. Okay, the nice algorithm of assembly is there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say that the problem I have right now is, I mean, you're right, we can, about time as well. The problem is I have this hammer called assembly, and everything I see is a nail. So now let's just apply it to all sorts of things. We take the Bernard instability. The Bernard instability is you have oil, you heat up oil, let's say on a frying pan. When you get convection, you get honeycomb patterns. Take the formation of snowflakes, right? Take the emergence of a tropical storm or the storm on Jupiter. When people say, let's talk about complexity in general, what they're saying is, let's take this collection of objects that are correlated in some way and try and work out how many moving parts there are, how this got, how this exists. So what people have been doing for a very long time is taking complexity and counting what they've lost, calculating the entropy. And the reason why I'm pushing very hard on assembly is entropy tells you how much you've lost. It doesn't tell you the microstates are gone. But if you embrace the bottom up with assembly, those states, and you then understand the causal chain that gives rise to the emergence. So what I think assembly will help us do is understand weak emergence at the very least, and maybe allow us to crack open complexity in a new way. And I've been fascinated with complexity theory for many years. As soon as I learned of the Mandelbrot set and I could just type it up in my computer and run it and just see it unfold, it was just this mathematical reality that existed in front of me. I just found Incredible, but then I realized that actually we were cheating. We're putting in the boundary conditions all the time. We're putting in information. And so when people talk to me about the complexity of things, I say, but relative what? How do you measure them? So my attempt, my small attempt, naive attempt, because there's many greater minds than mine on the planet right now thinking about this properly. And you've had some of them on the podcast, right? They're just absolutely fantastic. But I'm wondering if we might be able to reformat the way we would explore algorithmic complexity using assembly. What's the minimum number of constraints we need in our system for this to unfold? So whether it's like, you know, if you take some particles and put them in a box, at a certain box size, you get quasi-crystallinity coming out, right? But that emergence, it's not magic. It must come from the boundary conditions you put in. So all I'm saying is a lot of the complexity that we see is a direct read of the constraints we put in, but we just don't understand. So as I said earlier to the poor origin of life chemists, you know, origin of life is a scam, I would say lots of the complexity calculation theory is a bit of a scam because we put the constraints in but we don't count them correctly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I'm wondering if- Oh, you're thinking, and I'm sorry to interrupt, as assembly theory, assembly index is a way to counter the constraints." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that's it, that's all it is. So assembly theory doesn't lower any of the importance of complexity theory, but it allows us to go across domains and start to compare things, compare the complexity of a molecule, of a microprocessor, of the text you're writing, of the music you may compose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've tweeted, quote, assembly theory explains why Nietzsche understood with limited freedom rather than radical freedom. So, we've applied assembly theory to cellular automata in life and chemistry. What does Nietzsche have to do with assembly theory?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, that gets me into free will and everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, let me say that again. Assembly theory explains why Nietzsche understood we had limited freedom rather than radical freedom. Limited freedom, I suppose, is referring to the fact that there's constraints? Yeah. Or... What is radical freedom? What is freedom?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Sasha was like believed in absolute freedom and that he could do whatever he wanted in his imagination. And Nietzsche understood that his freedom was somewhat more limited. And it kind of takes me back to this computer game that I played when I was 10. So I think it's called Dragon's Lair. Okay. Do you know Dragon's Lair? I think I know Dragon's Lair, yeah. Dragon's Lair, I knew I was being conned, right? Dragon's Lair, when you play the game, you're lucky that you grew up in a basically procedurally generated world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was RPG a little bit. No, it's like, is it turn-based play, was it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. It was a role-playing game, but really good graphics, and won the first LaserDiscs. And when you actually flicked the stick, it was like a graphical adventure game with animation. And when I played this game, you could get through the game in 12 minutes. if you knew what you were doing without making mistakes, just play the disc, play the disc, play the disc. So it was just that timing. And actually it was a complete fraud because all the animation has been pre-recorded on the disc. It's like the Black Mirror, the first interactive where they had all the, you know, several million kind of permutations of the movie that you could select on Netflix. I've forgotten the name of it. So this was exactly that in the Laserdisc. So you basically go left, go right, fight the ogre, slay the dragon. And when you flick the joystick at the right time, it just goes to the next animation to play. It's not really generating it. And I played that game and I knew I was being had." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, okay, I see. So to you, Dragon Lair is the first time you realized that Free World's an illusion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And why does assembly theory give you hints about free will, whether it's an illusion or not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so no, so not tightly. I do think I have some will, and I think I am an agent, and I think I can interact and I can play around with the models I have of the world and the cost functions, right? And I can hack my own cost functions, which means I have a little bit of free will. As much as I want to do stuff in the universe, I don't think I could suddenly say, I mean, actually, this is ridiculous, because now I say I could try and do it, right? It's like I'm suddenly give up everything and become a rapper tomorrow, right? Maybe I could try that, but I don't have sufficient agency to make that necessarily happen. I'm on a trajectory. So when in Dragon's Lair, I know that I have some trajectories that I can play with, where Sartre realized he thought that he had no assembly, no memory. He could just leap across and do everything. And Nietzsche said, okay, I realize I don't have full freedom, but I have some freedom. And the 70th theory basically says that. It says, If you have these constraints in your past, they limit what you are able to do in the future, but you can use them to do amazing things. Let's say I'm a poppy plant and I'm creating some opiates. Opiates are really interesting molecules. I mean, they're obviously great for medicine, cause great problems in society, but let's imagine we fast forward a billion years. what will the opioids look like in a billion years? Well, we can guess, because we can see how those proteins will evolve, and we can see how the secondary metabolites will change. But they can't go radical. They can't suddenly become, I don't know, like a molecule that you'd find in an OLED in a display. They will be limited by the causal chain that produced them. And that's what I'm getting at, saying your we are unpredictably predictable or predictably unpredictable within a constraint on the trajectory we're on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the predictably part is the constraints of the trajectory and the unpredictable part is the part that you still haven't really clarified of the origin of, of the little bit of freedom. So you're just arguing, you're basically saying that radical freedom is impossible. You're really operating in a world of constraints that are constrained by the memory of the trajectory of the chemistry that led to who you are, okay. But even just a tiny bit of freedom, Even if everything, if everywhere you are in cages, if you can move around in that cage a little bit, you're free. I agree. And so the question is, in assembly theory, if we're thinking about free will, where does the little bit of freedom come from? What is the I that can decide to be a rapper? Why, What is that? That's a cute little trick we've convinced each other of so we can do fun tricks at parties or is there something fundamental that allows us to feel free, to be free?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that that's the question that I want to answer. I know you want to answer it and I think it's so profound. Let me have a go at it. I would say that I don't take the stance of Sam Harris because I think Sam Harris when he said the way he says it, it's really interesting. I'd love to talk to him about it. Sam Harris almost thinks himself out of existence, right? Do you know what I mean?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, I mean, he has different views on consciousness versus free will. I think he saves himself with consciousness. He thinks himself out of existence with free will." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that means there's no point, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's a leaf floating on a river." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that he's, I don't know, I'd love to ask him whether he really believes that and then we could play some games. Oh yeah. No, no, I then would say I'll get him to play a game of cards with me and I'll work out the conditions on which he says no. and then I'll get him in the conditions he says yes and then I'll trap him in his logical inconsistency with that argument because at some point when he loses enough money or the prospect of losing enough money there's a way of basically mapping out a series of So what will is about, let's not call it free will, what will is about is to have a series of decisions equally weighted in front of you. And those decisions aren't necessarily energy minimization. Those decisions are a function of the model you've made in your mind, you're in your simulation. and the way you've interacted in reality, and also other interactions that you're having with other individuals and happenstance. And I think that there's a little bit of delay in time. So I think what you're able to do is say, well, I'm going to do the counterfactual. I've done all of them. And I'm going to go this way. And you probably don't know why. I think free will is actually very complex interaction between your unconscious and your conscious brain. And I think the reason why we're arguing about it, it's so interesting in that we just, some people outsource their free will to their unconscious brain, and some people try and overthink the free will in the conscious brain. I would say that Sam Harris has realized his conscious brain doesn't have free will, but his unconscious brain does. That's my guess, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that he can't have access to the unconscious brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and that's kind of annoying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so he's just, he's going to, through meditation, come to acceptance with that fact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, which is maybe okay. But I do think that I have the ability to make decisions and I like my decisions. In fact, I mean, this is an argument I have with some people that some days I feel I have no free will and it's just an illusion. And it makes me more radical, if you like. I get to explore more of the state space. And I'm like, I'm gonna try and affect the world now. I'm really gonna ask the question that maybe I dare not ask or do the thing I dare not do. And that allows me to kind of explore more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's funny that if you truly accept that there's no free will, that is a kind of radical freedom. It's funny, but you're, because the little bit of the illusion in under that framework that you have that you can make choices, if choice is just an illusion of psychology, you can do whatever the hell you want." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the- But we don't, do we?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I think- But because you don't truly accept that you think that there's, Like, you think there's a choice, which is why you don't just do whatever the hell you want. Like, you feel like there's some responsibility for making the wrong choice, which is why you don't do it. But if you truly accept that the choice has already been made, then you can go, I don't know, what is the most radical thing? I mean, but yeah, I wonder what am I preventing myself from doing that I would really want to do? Probably like humor stuff. I would love to, if I could like save a game, do the thing, and then reload it later, like do undo, it probably would be humor, just to do something like super hilarious. That's super embarrassing. And then just go, I mean, it's basically just fun. I would add more fun to the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I sometimes do that. You know, I sometimes, I try and mess up my reality in unusual ways by just doing things because I'm bored, but not bored. I'm not expressing this very well. I think that this is a really interesting problem that perhaps the hard sciences don't really understand that they are responsible for because the question about how life emerged and how intelligence emerges and consciousness and free will, they're all ultimately boiling down to some of the same mechanics, I think. My feeling is that they are the same problem again and again and again. The transition from a you know, a boring world or a world in which there is no selection. So I wonder if free will has something to do with selection and models and also the models you're generating in the brain and also the amount of memory, working memory you have available at any one time to generate counterfactuals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's fascinating. So like the decision-making process is a kind of selection. Yeah. And that could be just- Absolutely. Yet another manifestation of the selection mechanism that's pervasive throughout the universe. Okay, that's fascinating to think about. Yeah, there's not some kind of fundamental its own thing or something like that, that is just yet another example of selection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And in the universe that's intrinsically open, you want to do that because you generate novelty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned something about do cellular automata exist outside the human mind in our little offline conversation. Why is that an interesting question? So cellular automata, complexity, what's the relationship between complexity and the human mind and trees falling in the forest?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Infrastructure, so the CA, so when John von Neumann and Conway and Feynman were doing CAs, they were doing it on paper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "CA is cellular data." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, just drawing them on paper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How awesome is that, that they were doing cellular automata on paper? And then they were doing it on a computer that takes like forever to print out anything and program. People are now with the TikTok, kids these days with the TikTok, don't understand how amazing it is to just play with cellular automata, arbitrarily changing the rules as you want the initial conditions and see the beautiful, patterns emerge, same with fractals, all of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You've just given me a brilliant idea. I wonder if there's a TikTok account that's just dedicated to putting out CA rules, and if it isn't, we should make one. 100%. And that will get... We'll get millions of views." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Millions, yes. No, it'll get dozens." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We'll just have it running. So look, I kind of... I love CAs. We just have to make one. I actually, a few years ago, I made some robots that talk to each other, chemical robots that played the game of Hex, invented by John Nash, by doing chemistry, and they communicated via Twitter. which experiments they were doing. And they had a lookup table of experiments. And robot one said, I'm doing experiment 10. And the other robot, okay, I'll do experiment one then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they communicated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Via Twitter. Publicly or DMs?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you maybe quickly explain what the Game of Hex is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so it's basically a board, a hexagonal board, and you try and basically, you color each element on the board, each hexagon, and you try and get from one side to the other, and the other one tries to block you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait, how are they connected? It's a chemical..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let's go back. So there were two robots. Each robot was doing dye chemistry. So making RGB, red, green, blue, red, green, blue, red, green, blue. And they could just choose from experiments to do red, green, blue. Initially, I said to my group, we need to make two chemical robots that play chess. And my group were like, that's too hard. No, go away. But anyway, so we had the robot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, people listening to this should probably know that Lee Cronin is an amazing group of brilliant people. He's exceptionally well-published. He's written a huge number of amazing papers. Whenever he calls himself stupid and is a sign of humility, and I deeply respect that and appreciate it. So people listening to this should know this is a world-class scientist who doesn't take himself seriously, which I really appreciate and love. Anywho... Talking about serious science, we're back to your group rejecting your idea of chemical robots playing chess via dyes, so you went to a simpler game of Hex. Okay, so what else?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The team that did it were brilliant. I think they still have PTSD from doing it, because I said, this is a workshop. What I'd often do is I have about 60 people on my team, and occasionally before lockdown, I would say, I'm a bit bored, we're going to have a workshop on something, who wants to come?\" And then basically about 20 people turn up to my office and I say, we're going to do this mad thing. And then it would just self-organize and some of them would be like, no, I'm not doing this. And then you get left with the happy dozen. And what we did is we built this robot and doing dye chemistry is really easy. You can just take two molecules, react them together and change color. And what I wanted to do is have a palette of different molecules. You could react commentarily and get different colors. So you've got two robots. And I went, wouldn't it be cool if the robots basically shared the same list of reactions to do? And they said, then you could do a kind of multi-core chemistry. So you'd have two chemical reactions going on at once, and they could basically outsource the problem. But they're sharing the same tape. Exactly. So robot one would say, I'm gonna do experiment one, and the other robot says, I'll do experiment 100. And then they cross it off. That's brilliant, by the way. That is genius. Well, I wanted to make it groovier. And I said, look, let's have them competing. So they're playing a game of hex. And so when the robot does an experiment, and the more blue the die, the higher chance it gets to make the move it wants on the hex board. So if it gets a red color, it's like it gets downweighted in the other robot. And so what the robots could do is they play each player move. And because the fitness function or the optimization function was to make the color blue, they started to invent reactions that weren't on the list. And they did this by not cleaning, because we made cleaning optional. So when one robot realized if it didn't clean its pipes, it could get blue more quickly. And the other robot realized that, so it was like getting dirty as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Unintended consequences of super intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, but that was the game and we part of communicating through Twitter though They were they were doing it for Twitter and Twitter bland them a couple of times I said, come on. You've got a couple of robots doing chemistry. It's really cool Stop banning them. Yeah, but and then in the end they had we had to take them off Twitter and they just communicated virus server because it was just there were people saying, you can still find it, croninlab1 and croninlab2 on Twitter, and it was like, make move, wait, you know, mix A and B, wait 10 seconds, answer blue, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I really find it super compelling that you would have a chemical entity that's communicating with the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was one of the things I want to do in my origin of life reaction, right, is basically have a reactor that's basically just randomly enumerating through chemical space and have some kind of cycle, and then read out what the molecule's reading out using a mass spectrometer, and then convert that to text and publish it on Twitter, and then wait until it says, I'm alive. I reckon that Twitter account will get a lot of followers. And I'm still trying to convince my group that we should just make an origin of life Twitter account where it's going, and it's like, hello, testing, I'm here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I'll share it, I like it. I particularly enjoy this idea. Of a non-human entity communicating with the world via a human-designed social network. It's quite a beautiful idea. how we were talking about CAs existing outside the human mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I really admire Stephen Wolfram. I think he's a genius, clearly a genius. And trapped is actually, it's like a problem with being so smart is you get trapped in your own mind, right? And I tried to actually, I tried to convince Stephen that assembly theory wasn't nonsense. He was like, no, it's just nonsense. I was a little bit sad by that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So nonsense applied, even if we applied to the simplest construct of a one-dimensional cellular automata, for example?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. But I mean, actually, maybe I'm doing myself a bit too down. It was just as a theory was coming through, and I didn't really know how to explain it. But we are going to use assembly theory and CAs instead of automata. But I wanted to... What I was really curious about is why... people marvel. I mean, you marvel at CAs and their complexity. And I said, well, hang on, that complexity is baked in. Because if you play the game of life in a CA, you have to run it on a computer. You have to do a number of operations, put in the boundary conditions. So, is it surprising that you get this structure out? Is it manufactured by the boundary conditions? And it is interesting because I think cellular automata, running them, is teaching me something about what real numbers are and aren't. And I haven't quite got there yet. I was playing on the airplane coming over and just realized I have no idea what real numbers are, really. And I was like, well, I do actually have some notion of what real numbers are. And I think thinking about real numbers as functions, rather than numbers is more appropriate. And then if you then apply that to CAs, then you're saying, well, actually, why am I seeing this complexity in this rule? You've got this deterministic system, and yet you get this incredible structure coming out. Well, isn't that what you'd get with any real number as you apply it as a function, and you're trying to read it out to an arbitrary position? And I wonder if CAs are just helping me, well, my misunderstanding of CAs might be helping me understand them in terms of real numbers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know what you think. But the devil's in the function. Which is the function that's generating your real number? It seems like it's very important, the specific algorithm of that function, because some lead to something. super trivial, some lead to something that's all chaotic, and some lead to things that are just walk that fine line of complexity and structure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we agree. So let's take it back a second. So take the logistic map or something, logistic equation, where you have this equation, which is You don't know what's going to happen at n plus one, but once you've done n plus one, you know full time. You can't predict it. For me, CA's and logistic equation feel similar. And I think what's incredibly interesting, and I share your kind of wonder at running a CA, but also I'm saying, well, what is it about the boundary conditions and the way I'm running that calculation? So in my group, with my team, we actually made a chemical CA. We made Game of Life, we actually made a physical grid. I haven't been able to publish this paper, it's been trapped in purgatory for a long time. But it might be now. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wrote it up as a paper, how to do a chemical formulation of the Game of Life, which is like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We made a chemical computer and little cells. and I was playing Game of Life. With the BZ reactions, each cell would pulse on and off, on and off, on and off. We have little stirrer bars, and we have little gates, and we actually played Conway's Game of Life in there, and we got structures in that, we got structures in that game from the chemistry that you wouldn't expect from the actual CA. So that was kind of cool, in that- Because they were interacting outside of the cells somehow, or- So what's happening is you're getting noise, so the thing is, You've got this BZ reaction that gives on-off, on-off, on-off, but there's also a wake, and those wakes constructively interfere in such a non-trivial way that's non-deterministic. And the non-determinism in the system gives very rich dynamics. And I was wondering if I could physically make a chemical computer with this CA that gives me something different that I can't get in a silicon representation of a CA where all the states are clean. Because you don't have the noise trailing into the next round. You just have the state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the paper in particular, so it's just a beautiful idea to use a chemical computer to construct a cellular automaton, the famous one of Game of Life. But it's also interesting, it's a really interesting scientific question of whether some kind of random perturbations or some source of randomness can, have a significant constructive effect on the complexity of the system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And indeed, I mean, whether it's random or just non-deterministic, and can we bake in that non-determinism at the beginning? I'm trying to think about what is the encoding space. The encoding space is pretty big. We have 49 steroids, so 49 cells, 49 chem bits, all connected to one another in like an analog computer, but being read out discreetly as the BZ reaction. So just to say the BZ reaction is a chemical oscillator. And what happened in each cell is it goes between red and blue. So two Russians discovered it, Belousov-Zabosinsky. I think Belousov first proposed it, and everyone said, you're crazy, it breaks the second law. And Zabosinsky said, no, it doesn't break the second law, it's consuming a fuel. And there's a lot of chemistry hidden in the Russian literature, actually. Because the Russians just wrote it in Russian, they didn't publish it in English-speaking journals. It's heartbreaking, actually. Well, it's sad and it's great that it's there, right? It's not lost. I'm sure we will find a way of translating it properly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the silver lining slash greater sadness of all of this is there's probably ideas in English speaking, like there's ideas in certain disciplines that if discovered by other disciplines would crack open some of the biggest mysteries in those disciplines. Like computer science, for example, is trying to solve problems like nobody else has ever tried to solve problems. As if it's not already been all addressed in cognitive science, in psychology, in mathematics, in physics, in just whatever you want, economics even. But if you look into that literature, you might be able to discover some beautiful ideas obviously Russian is is an interesting case of that's because there's a loss in translation, but you said there's a source of fuel, a source of energy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, so the BZ reaction, you have an acid in there called malonic acid, and what happens is when it, it's basically like a battery that powers it, and it loses CO2, so decarboxylates, it's just a chemical reaction. What that means we have to do is continuously feed, or we just keep the BZ reaction going in a long enough time, so it's like it's reversible in time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But only like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But only like. But it's fascinating. I mean, the team that did it, I'm really proud of their persistence. We made a chemical computer. It can solve little problems. It can solve traveling salesman problems, actually. Nice. But like I say, it's true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But not any faster than a regular computer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there something you could do? Maybe. I'm not sure. I think we can come up with a way of solving problems also really complex hard ones, because it's an analog computer and it can energy minimize really quickly. It doesn't have to basically go through every element in the matrix, like flip it, it just reads out. So we could actually do Monte Carlo by just shaking the box. It's literally a box shaker. You don't actually have to encode the shaking of the box in silicon memory and then just shuffle everything around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's analog, it's natural. It's an organic computer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I was playing around with this and I was kind of annoying some of my colleagues and wondering if we could get to chemical supremacy, like quantum supremacy. And I kind of calculated how big the grid has to be so we can actually start to solve problems faster than a silicon computer. But I'm not willing to state how that is yet because I'm probably wrong. It's not that it's any top secret thing. I think I can make a chemical computer that can solve optimization problems faster than a silicon computer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating, but then you're unsure how big that has to be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It might be a big box, hard to shake. It might be exactly a big box, hard to shake, and basically a bit sloppy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did we answer the question about, do cellular automata exist outside the mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We didn't, but I would posit that they don't, but I think minds can, well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the mind is fundamental. What's the, why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, sorry, let's go back. So as a physical phenomena, do CAs exist in physical reality, right? I would say they probably don't exist outside the human mind, but now I've constructed them, they exist in computer memories, they exist in my lab, they exist on paper. So they emerge from the human mind, I'm just interested in, because Stephen Wolfram likes CAs, a lot of people like CAs, and likes to think of them as minimal computational elements. I'm just saying, well, do they exist in reality, or are they a representation of a simple machine that's just very elegant to implement?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a platonic question, I guess. There's initial conditions. There's a memory in the system. There are simple rules that dictate the evolution of the system. So what exists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The idea, the rules, the... Yeah, people are using CAs as models for things in reality to say, hey, look, you can do this thing in a CA. And when I see this, I'm saying, oh, that's cool, but what does that tell me about reality? Where's the CA in space time? Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, it's a mathematical object, so for people who don't know cellular automata, there's usually a grid, whether it's one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional, and it evolves by simple local rules, like you die or are born if the neighbors are alive or dead, and it turns out if you have, oh, with certain kinds of initial conditions, and with certain kinds of very simple rules, you can create arbitrarily complex and beautiful systems. And to me, whether drugs are involved or not, I can sit back for hours and enjoy the, the mystery of it, how such complexity can emerges. It gives me almost like, you know, people talk about religious experiences. It gives me a sense that you get to have a glimpse at the origin of this whole thing. Whatever is creating this complexity from such simplicity is the very thing that brought my mind to life. This me, the human, our human civilization. And yes, those constructs are pretty trivial. They're... I mean, that's part of their magic, is even in this trivial framework, you could see the emergence, or especially in this trivial framework, you could see the emergence of complexity from simplicity. I guess what, Lee, you're saying is that this is not, you know, this is highly unlike systems we see in the physical world, even though they probably carry some of the same magic mechanistically." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I'm saying that the operating system that a CA has to exist on is quite complex. And so I wonder if you're getting the complexity out of the CA from the boundary conditions of the operating system. the underlying digital computer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, wow. Those are some strong words against CAs then." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not against. I mean, I'm in love with CAs as well. I'm just saying they aren't as trivial as people think. They are incredible. To get to that richness, you have to iterate billions of times. and you need a display, and you need a math coprocessor, and you need a von Neumann machine based on a Turing machine with digital error correction and states." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, to think that for the simplicity of a grid, you're basically saying a grid is not simple. Yeah. It requires incredible complexity to bring a grid to life. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. What is simple?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's all I wanted to say. I agree with you with the wonder of CAs. I just think, but remember, we take so much for granted what the CA is resting on. Because von Neumann and Feynman weren't seeing these elaborate structures. They could not get that far." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that's the limitation of their mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. The limitation of their pencil." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The question is whether the essential elements of the cellular automata is present without all the complexities required to build a computer. And my intuition, the reason I find it incredible is that, yeah, my intuition is yes. It might look different, there might not be a grid-like structure, but local interactions operating under simple rules and resulting in multi-hierarchical complex structures feels like a thing that doesn't require a computer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree, but coming back to von Neumann and Feynman and Wolfram, their minds, the non-trivial minds, to create those architectures and do it and to put on those state transitions. And I think that's something that's really incredibly interesting, that is understanding how the human mind builds those state transition machines." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I could see how deeply in love with the idea of memory you are. So it's like how much of E equals MC squared? like is more than an equation. It has Albert Einstein in it. Like you're saying like you can't just say this is a, like the equations of physics are a really good, simple capture of a physical phenomenon. It is also, that equation has the memory of the humans. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. But I don't I don't know if you're implying this. I don't. That's a beautiful idea. But I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. sort of diminishing the power of that equation. Because it's built on the shoulders, it enhances it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it enhances it. That equation is a minimal compressed representation of reality, right? We can use machine learning or Max Tegmark's AI Feynman to find lots of solutions for gravity, but isn't it wonderful that the laws that we do find are the maximally compressed representations?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that representation, you can now give it as, I guess the universe has the memory of Einstein with that representation, but then you can now give it as a gift for free to other alien civilizations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, it's low memory. Einstein had to go through a lot of pain to get that, but it's low memory. I say that physics and chemistry and biology are the same discipline. They're just, physics, laws in physics, there's no such thing as a law in physics, it's just low memory stuff. Because you've got low memory stuff, things reoccur quickly. As you get building more memory, you get to chemistry, so things become more contingent. When you get to biology, more contingent still, and then technology. So the more memory you need, the more your laws are local. That's all I'm saying. The less memory, the more the laws are universal, because they're not laws, they are just low memory states." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We have to talk about a thing you've kind of mentioned already a bunch of times, but doing computation through chemistry, chemical-based computation. I've seen you refer to it as in a sexy title of chemputation, chemputation. So what is chemputation and what is chemical-based computation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so computation is a name I gave to the process of building a state machine to make any molecule physically in the lab. And so as a chemist, chemists make molecules by hand. And they're quite hard. Chemists have a lot of tacit knowledge, a lot of ambiguity. It's not possible to go uniformly to the literature and read a recipe to make a molecule and then go and make it in the lab. Every time. Some recipes are better than others, but they all assume some knowledge. And it's not universal what that is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's carried from human to human, some of that implicit knowledge. And you're saying, can we remove the human from the picture? Can we program? By the way, what is a state machine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So a state machine is, I suppose, an object, either abstract or mechanical, where you can do a unit operation on it and flick it from one state to another. So a turnstile would be a good example of a state machine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's some kinds of states and some kind of transitions between states, and it's very formal in nature in terms of like it's precise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, you can mathematically precisely describe a state machine. So, I mean, you know, a very simple Boolean gates are a very good way of building kind of logic-based state machines. obviously a Turing machine, the concept of a Turing machine where you have a tape and a read head and a series of rules in a table, and you would basically look at what's on the tape. And if you're shifting the tape from left to right, and if you see a zero or one, you look in your lookup table and say, right, I've seen a zero and a one. I then do, I then respond to that. So the turnstile would be, is there a human being pushing the turnstile? in direction clockwise. If yes, I will open, let them go. If it's anti-clockwise, no. So yeah, so a state machine has some labels and a transition diagram." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're looking to come up with a chemical computer to form state machines to create molecules? What's the chicken and the egg?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Computation is not a chemical computer because we talked a few minutes about actually doing computations with chemicals. What I'm now saying is I want to use state machines to transform chemicals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So build chemicals programmatically." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I get in trouble saying this. I said to my group, oh, I shouldn't say it. But I said, look, we should make the crack bot. Is it in the crack robot? The robot that makes crack. Oh! Crackbot. The robot that makes crack, but maybe we should scrub this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe you can educate me on Breaking Bad with math. Yeah, so in Breaking Bad... You want to make basically some kind of mix of Ex Machina and Breaking Bad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't, I don't. For the record, I don't, but I've said- No, you don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I said, that's what I'm going to do once you release the papers. I shaved my head and I'm going to live a life of crime. Anyway, I'm sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no. So yeah, let's get back to it. So indeed, it is about making drugs, but importantly, making important drugs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All drugs matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but let's go back. So the basic thesis is chemistry is very analog. There is no state machine. And I wandered through the paper walls in the Japanese house a few years ago and said, OK, hey, organic chemist, why are you doing this analog? They said, well, chemistry is really hard. You can't automate it. It's impossible. I said, but is it impossible? They said, yeah. I got the impression they're saying it's magic. And so when people tell me things are magic, it's like, no, no, they can't be magic, right? So let's break this down. And so what I did is I went to my group one day about eight years ago and said, hey, guys, I've written this new programming language for you. And so everything is clear and you're not allowed to just wander around the lab willy-nilly. You have to pick up things in order, go to the balance at the right time and all this stuff. And they looked at me as if I was insane and basically kicked me out of the lab and said, no, don't do that. We're not doing that. And I said, okay. So I went back the next day and said, I'm gonna find some money so we can make cool robots to do chemical reactions. And everyone went, that's cool. And so in that process," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The first you try to convert the humans to become robots, and next you agree you might as well just create the robots. Yes, but so in that the formalization process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what I did is said, look, to make a molecule, you need to do four things abstractly. I want to make a chemical Turing machine. Because a Turing machine, you think about, let's imagine a Turing machine. A Turing machine is the ultimate abstraction of a computation because it's been shown by Turing and others that basically a universal Turing machine should be able to do all computations that you can imagine. It's like, wow, why didn't I think of a Turing machine for chemistry? Let's think of a magic robot that can make any molecule. Let's think about that for a second. Okay, great. How do we then implement it? And I think, so what is the abstraction? So to make any molecule, you have to do a reaction. So you have to put reagents together, do a reaction in a flask, typically. Then after the reaction, you have to stop the reaction. So you do what's called a workup. So whatever, cool it down, add some liquid to it, extract. So then after you do the workup, you separate. So you then remove the molecules, separate them all out. And then the final step is purification. So reaction, workup, separate, purify. So this is basically exactly like a Turing machine where you have your tape head, you have some rules, and then you run it. So I thought, cool. I went to all the chemists and said, look, chemistry isn't that hard. Reaction, workup, separation, purification. Do that in cycles forever for any molecule, all the chemistry, done. And they said, chemistry is that hard. I said, but just in principle. And I got a few very enlightened people to say, yeah, okay, in principle, but it ain't gonna work. And this was in about 2013, 2014. And I found myself going to an architecture conference almost by accident. It's like, why am I at this random conference on architecture? And that was because I published a paper on inorganic architecture. And they said, come to architecture conference, but inorganic architecture is about nano architecture. And I went, okay. And then I found these guys at a conference 3D printing ping pong balls and shapes. And this is 3D printing was cool. I was like, this is ridiculous. Why are you 3D printing ping pong balls? And I gave them a whole load of abuse like I normally do when I first meet people, how to win friends and influence people. And then I was like, oh my God, you guys are geniuses. And so I got from, they were a bit confused because I was calling them idiots and then call them geniuses. will you come to my lab and we're gonna build a robot to do chemistry with a 3D printer? And I said, oh, that's cool, all right. So I had them come to the lab and we started to 3D print test tubes. So imagine, you know, 3D print a bottle and then use the same gantry to basically, rather than to squirt out plastic out of a nozzle, have a little syringe and jet chemicals in. So we had the 3D printer that could simultaneously print the test tube and then put chemicals into the test tube." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then... Well, so it's really end-to-end." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I was like, they've got G-code to do it all. I was like, yeah, that's cool. So I got my group doing this and I developed it a bit and I realized that we could take those unit operations and we built a whole bunch of pumps and valves. And I realized that I could basically take the literature I made the first version of the computer in 2016-17. I made some architectural decisions. I designed the pumps and valves in my group. I did all the electronics in my group. They were brilliant. I cannot pay tribute to my group enough in doing this. They were just brilliant. There were some poor souls there that said, Lee, why are you making us design electronics? I'm like, well, because I don't understand it. They're like, so you're making this design stuff because you don't understand. It's like, yeah. It's like, but can we not just buy some? I said, well, we can, but then I don't understand how to, you know, what bus they're going to use and the serial ports and all this stuff. I just wanted, and I made, I came up with a decision to design a bunch of pumps and valves and use power over ethernet. So I got one cable for power and data, plug them all in, plug them all into a router. And, and then I made the state machine. And there was a couple of cool things I did, or they did actually. We got the abstraction, so reaction, workup, separation, purification. And then I made the decision to do it in batch. Now it's in batch. All chemistry had been digitized before, apparently, once it's been done. But everyone had been doing it in flow. And flow is continuous, and there are infinities everywhere, and you have to just... And I realized that I could actually make a state machine where I basically put stuff in the reactor, turn it from one state to another state, stop it, and just read it out. And I was kind of bitching at electrical engineers saying, you have it easy, you don't have to clean out the electrons. Electrons don't leave a big mess, they leave some EM waste. But in my state machine, I built in cleaning. So it's like, we do an operation, then it cleans the backbone, then can do it again. So there's no... So what we managed to do over a couple of years is develop the hardware, develop the state machine, and we encoded three molecules. The first three, we did Nitol, a sleeping drug, Rufinamide, anti-seizure, and Viagra. And I could make jokes on the paper, it's a hard problem, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then in the next one, what we did is said, okay, my poor organic chemist said, look, Lee, We've worked with you this long, we've made a robot that looks like it's gonna take our jobs away, and not just take our jobs away, what we love in the lab, but now we have to become programmers, but we're not even good programmers, we just have to spend ages writing lines of code. that are boring and it's not as elegant. I went, you're right. So then, but I knew because I had this abstraction and I knew that there was language, I could suddenly develop a state machine that would interpret the language which was lossy and ambiguous and populate my abstraction. So I built a chemical programming language that is actually gonna be recursively enumerable. It's gonna be a Turing complete language actually, which is kind of cool, which means it's formally verifiable. So where we are now is we can now read the literature using a bit of natural language processing. It's not the best. Many other groups have done a better job. But we can use that language reading to populate the state machine. and basically add, subtract, we got about a number of primitives that we, you know, basically program loops that we dovetail together and we can make any molecule with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so that's the kind of program synthesis. So you start, like literally you're talking about like a paper, like a scientific paper that's being read So natural language processing, extracting some kind of details about chemical reactions and the chemical molecules and composites involved. And then that's, in GPT terms, serves as a prompt for the program synthesis that's kind of trivial right now. There you have a bunch of different for loops and so on that creates a program in this, chemical language that can then be interpreted by the chemical computer, the computer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, computer, that's the word." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Computer, yeah. Everything sounds better in your British accent by the way, I love it. So into the computer and that's able to then basically be a 3D printer for these molecules." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I wouldn't call it a 3D printer, I would call it a universal chemical reaction system because 3D printing gives the wrong impression, but yeah, and it purifies. And the nice thing is that that code now, we call it the CHI-DL code, is really interesting because now, so computation, what is computation? Computation is what computing is to mathematics, I think. Computation is the process of taking chemical code and some input reagents and making the molecule reproducibly every time without fail. What is computation? It's the process of using a program to take some input conditions and give you an output, same every time, reliably." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the problem is, now maybe you can push back and correct me on this. So I know biology is messy. My question is how messy is chemistry? So if we use the analogy of a computer, it's easier to make computation in a computer very precise, that it's repeatable. It makes errors almost never. It does the exact same way over and over and over and over. What about chemistry? Is there a messiness in the whole thing? Can that be somehow leveraged? Can that be controlled? Can that be removed? Do we want to remove it from the system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yes and no, right, there is a messiness. There is messiness because chemistry is like you're doing reactions on billions of molecules and they don't always work, but you've got purification there. And so what we found is at the beginning everyone said it can't work, it's gonna be too messy, it'll just fail. And I said, but you managed to get chemistry to work in the lab, are you magic, are you doing something? So I would say, now go back to the first ever computer or the ENIAC. five million solder joints, 400,000 valves that are exploding all the time. Would you have gone, okay, that's messy. Have we got the equivalent of the ENIAC in my lab? We've got 15 computers in the lab now, and are they unreliable? Yeah, they fall apart here and there, but are they getting better? Really quickly? Yeah. Are we at the point in the lab where there are some molecules we would rather make on the computer than have a human being make? Yeah, we've just made an anti-influenza molecule and some antivirals. Six steps on the computer that would take a human being about one week to make Arbidol. of continuous labor. And all they do now is load up the reagents, press go button, and just go away and drink coffee." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow. So this, I mean, and this is, you're saying this computer is just the early days. And so like some of the criticism just have to do with the early days. And yes, I would say that something like this is quite impossible. You know, so the fact that you're doing this is incredible. Not impossible, of course, but extremely difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It did seem really difficult and I do keep pinching myself when I go in the lab. I was like, is it working? Like, yep. And it's not, you know, it does clog. It does stop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You gotta clean. This is great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, but it's getting more reliable because I made some We just made design decisions and said we are not going to abandon the abstraction. Think about it. If the von Neumann implementation was abandoned, think about what we do to semiconductors to really constrain them, to what we do to silicon in a fab lab. We take computation for granted. Silicon is not in its natural state. We are doping the hell out of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's incredible what they're able to accomplish and achieve that reliability at the scale they do. Like you said, that's after Moore's Law, what we have now, and how it started, now we're here. So think about it now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We started at the bottom, now we're here. We only have 20 million molecules, well, say 20 million molecules in one database, maybe a few hundred million in all the pharmaceutical companies. And those few hundred million molecules are responsible for all the drugs that we've had for humanity except, you know, biologics for the last 50 years. Now imagine what happens when a drug goes out of print because there's only a finite number of manufacturing facilities in the world that make these drugs. It's the printing press for chemistry. And not only that, we can protect the CHI-DL, so we can stop bad actors doing it, we can encrypt them, and we can give people license." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "CHI-DL, that's the name, sorry to interrupt, is the name of the programming language?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the CHI-DL is the name of the programming language and the code we give the chemicals. So CHI, as in, you know, just for, it's actually like an XML format, but I've now taken it from script to a, to a fully expressible programming language, so we can do dynamics, and there's for loops in there, and conditional statements." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but the structure, it started out as like an XML type of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now we also, the chemist doesn't need to program in Kyde-L, they can just go to the software and type in add A to B reflux, do what they would normally do, and it just converts it to Kyde-L, and they have a linter to check it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do you... you know, not with ASCII, but because it's a Greek letter, how do you go with... How do you spell it, just using the English alphabet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "XDL? XDL, but we put in Chi. And it was named by one of my students, one of my postdocs many years ago, and I kind of liked it. It's important, I think, when the team are contributing to such big ideas, because it's their ideas as well, I try not to just rename it. I didn't call it Cronan or anything like that, because they keep saying, you know, the chemistry, when they're putting stuff in the computer, one of my students said, we are asking now, is it Kronan complete? And I was like, what does that mean? He said, well, can we make it on the damn machine? And I was like, oh, is that a compliment or a pejorative? And they're like, well, it might be both." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so you tweeted, quote, why does chemistry need a universal programming language, question mark? for all the reasons you can think of. Reliability, interoperability, collaboration, remove ambiguity, lower cost, increase safety, open up discovery, molecular customization, and publication of executable chemical code. Which is fascinating, by the way. Just publish code. And... Can you maybe elaborate a little bit more about this CHI-DL? What does the universal language of chemistry look like? A crone-incomplete language." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a true incomplete language, really. So what it has, it has a series of operators in it, like add, heat, stir. So there's a bunch of just unit operations. And all it is really is just, we're chemical engineers when I talked about this, that you've just rediscovered chemical engineering. And I said, well, yeah, I know. I said, well. That's trivial. Well, yes, it is trivial and that's why it's good because not only have we rediscovered chemical engineering, we've made it implementable on a universal hardware that doesn't cost very much money. And so the CHI DL has a series of statements like define the reactor. So defines the reagents, so they're all labels, so you assign them. And what I also implemented at the beginning is because I give all the hardware IP address, you put it on a graph. And so what it does is like the graph is equivalent to the process of firmware. than processor code. So when you take your Kydl and you go to run it on your computer, you can run it on any compatible hardware in any configuration. It says, what does your graph look like? As long as I can solve the problem on the graph with these unit operations, you have the resources available, it compiles. We could carry on for years. But it is really. It's a compilation. And what it now does is it says, OK, the problem we had before is it was possible to do robotics for chemistry, but the robots were really expensive. They were unique. They were vendor locked. And what I want to do is to make sure that every chemist in the world can get access to machinery like this at virtually no cost because it makes it safer. It makes it more reliable. And then if you go to the literature and you find a molecule that could potentially cure cancer. And let's say the molecule that could potentially cure cancer takes you three years to repeat and maybe a student finishes their PhD in the time and they never get it back. So it's really hard to kind of get all the way to that molecule and it limits the ability of humanity to build on it. If they just download the code and can execute it, it turns, I would say the electronic laboratory notebook in chemistry is a data cemetery. because no one will ever reproduce it. But now the data cemetery is a Jupiter notebook, and you can just execute it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And people can play with it, the access to it, orders of magnitude is increased. We'll talk about the, so as with all technologies, I think there's way more exciting possibilities, but there are also terrifying possibilities, and we'll talk about all of them. But let me just kind of linger on the machine learning side of this. So you're describing programming, It's a language, I don't know if you've heard about OpenAI Codex, which is- Yeah, I'm playing with it. You're playing, of course you are. You really are from Rick and Morty, this is great, okay. Except philosophically deep, I mean he is, I guess, kind of philosophically deep too. So for people who don't know, GPT, GPT-3, it's a language model that can do natural language generation. So you can give it a prompt and it can complete the rest of it. But it turns out that that kind of prompt, it's not just completes the rest of it, it's generating. like novel-sounding text, and then you can apply that to generation of other kinds of stuff. So these kinds of transformer-based language models are really good at forming deep representations of a particular space, like a medium, like language. So you can then apply it to a specific subset of language like programming. So you can have it learn the representation of the Python programming language and use it to then generate syntactically and semantically correct programs. So you can start to make progress on one of the hardest problems in computer science, which is program synthesis. How do you write programs that accomplish different tasks? So what OpenAI Codex does is it generates those programs based on prompt of some kind. Usually you can do a natural language prompt so basically as you do when you program you write some comment which serves the basic documentation of the inputs and the outputs and the function of the particular set of code and it's able to generate that. Point being is you can generate programs using machine learning using neural networks. Those programs operate on the boring old computer. Can you generate programs that operate, there's gotta be a cleverer version of programs for this, but can you write programs that operate on a computer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, there's actually software out there right now, we can go and do it. Yeah, it's a heuristic, it's rule-based, but what we've done, inspired by Codex actually, is over the summer I ran a little workshop. Some of my groups got this inspired idea that we should get a load of students and ask them to manually collect data, to label chemical procedures into KyDL. And we have a cool synth reader. So there's a bunch of people doing this right now, but they're doing it without abstraction. And because we have an abstraction that's implementable in the hardware, we've developed basically a chemical analog of codecs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say, sorry to interrupt, when you say abstraction in the hardware, what do you mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So right now, a lot of people doing machine learning and reading chemistry and saying, oh, you've got all these operations, add, shake, whatever, heat. But because they don't have a uniform... I mean, there's a couple of groups doing it, competitors actually, and they're good, very good. But they can't run that code automatically. They are losing... meaning. And the really important thing that you have to do is generate context. And so what we've learned to do with our abstraction is make sure we can pull the context out of the text. And so can we take a chemical procedure and read it and generate our executable code? Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the hardest part about that whole pipeline, from the initial text, interpreting the initial text of a paper, extracting the meaningful context and the meaningful chemical information, to then generating the program, to then running that program in the hardware? What's the hardest part about that pipeline as we look towards a universal Turing computer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the hardest thing with the pipeline is that the software, the model gets confused between some meanings, right? So if, you know, chemists are very good at inventing words that aren't broken down. So the classic word that you would use for boiling something is called reflux. So reflux is, you would have a solvent in a Rambon flask, at reflux it would be boiling, going up the reflux condenser and coming down. But that term reflux, to reflux, could be changed to, people often make up words, new words, and then the software can fall over. But what we've been able to do is a bit like in Python, or any programming language, is identify when things aren't matched. So you present the code and you say, this isn't matched. You may want to think about this. And then the user goes and says, oh, I mean reflux and just ticks the box and collects it. So what the codex or the ChemEx does in this case is it suggests the first go, and then the chemist goes and corrects it. And I really want the chemist to correct it because It's not safe, I believe, for to allow AI to just read literature and generate code at this stage." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because now you're having actual, by the way, ChemX, nice. Nice name. So you are on like, which is fascinating. is that we live in a fascinating moment in human history. But yes, you're literally connecting AI to some physical, like it's building something in the physical realm. Especially in the space of chemistry that operates sort of invisibly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, I would say that's right. And it's really important to understand those labeling schemes, right? And one of the things I was never, I was always worried about at the beginning, that the abstraction was gonna fall over. And the way we did it was just by brute force to start with. We just kept reading the literature and saying, is there anything new? Can we add a new rule in? And actually, our KyDL language expanded, exploded. There was so many extra things we had to keep adding. And then I realized the primitives still were maintained and I could break them down again. So it's pretty good. I mean, there are problems. There are problems of interpreting any big sentence and turning it into an actionable code. And then Codex is not without its problems. You can crash it quite easily, right? You can generate nonsense. But boy, it's interesting. I would love to learn to program now using Codex. Right, just hacking around, right? And I wonder if chemists in the future will learn to do chemistry by just hacking around with the system, writing different things. Because the key thing that we're doing with chemistry is that where a lot of mathematical chemistry went wrong is people, and I think Wolfram does this in Mathematica, he assumes that chemistry is a reaction where atom A or molecule A reacts with molecule B to give molecule C. That's not what chemistry is. Chemistry is take a liquid and a solid, mix it up and heat it, and then extract it. So the programming language is actually with respect to the process operations. And if you flick in process space, not in chemical graph space, you unlock everything because there's only a finite number of processes you need to do in chemistry. And that's reassuring. And so we're in the middle of it. It's really exciting. It's not the be all and the end all. And there is, like I say, errors that can creep in. One day, we might be able to do it without human interaction. You simulate it, and you'll know enough about the simulation that the lab won't catch fire. But there are so many safety issues right now that we've got to really be very careful, you know, protecting the user, protecting the environment, protecting misuse. I mean, there's lots to discuss if you want to go down that route, because it's very, very interesting. You don't want... Novichok's being made or explosives being made or recreational drugs being made. But how do you stop a molecular biologist making a drug that's gonna be important for them looking at their particular assay on a bad actor trying to make methamphetamine?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I saw how you looked at me when you said bad actor, but that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm trying to get the details of this so I can be first. Don't worry, we can protect you from yourself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not sure that's true, but that statement gives me hope. Does this ultimately excite you about the future or does it terrify you? So let's, we mentioned that time is fundamental. It seems like you're at the cutting edge of progress that will have to happen, that will happen, that there's no stopping it. And as we've been talking about, I see obviously a huge number of exciting possibilities. So whenever you automate these kinds of things, just the world opens up. It's like programming itself and the computer, regular computer, has created innumerable applications and made the world better in so many dimensions. And it created, of course, a lot of negative things that we, for some reason, like to focus on using that very technology to tweet about it. But I think it made a much better world, but it created a lot of new dangers. So... maybe you can speak to when you have, when you kind of stand at the end of the road for building a really solid, reliable, universal computer. What are the possibilities that are positive? What are the possibilities that are negative? How can we minimize the chance of the negative?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a really good question. So there's so many positive things from drug discovery, from supply chain stress, for basically enabling chemists to basically build more productive in the lab, right? The computer is not going to replace the chemist. There's going to be a Moore's law of molecules, right? There's going to be so many more molecules we can design, so many more diseases we can cure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So chemists in the lab, as researchers, that's better for science, so they can build a bunch of, they could do science at a much more accelerated pace. So it's not just the development of drugs, it's actually doing the basic understanding of the science of drugs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the personalization, the cost of drugs right now, we're all living longer, we're all having more and more, we know more about our genomic development, we know about our predetermination and we might be able to, one dream I've got is like imagine you can work at your genome assistant tells you you're gonna get cancer in seven years time and you have your personal computer that cooks up the right molecule just for you to cure it, right? That's a really positive idea. The other thing is when drugs, so right now I think it's absolutely outrageous that not all of humanity has access to medicine. And I think the computer might be able to change that fundamentally because it will disrupt the way things are manufactured. So let's stop thinking about manufacturing in different factories. Let's say that computers clinical grade computers or drug grade computers will be in facilities all around the world and they can make things on demand as a function of the cost. Maybe people won't be able to afford the latest and greatest patent, but maybe they'll be able to get the next best thing and will basically democratize, make available drugs to everybody that they need. There's lots of really interesting things there. So I think that's gonna happen. I think that now let's take the negative. Before we do that, let's imagine what happened if we go back to a really tragic accident a few years ago, well not an accident, an act of murder by that pilot on the, I think it was Eurowings or Swisswings, but what he did is the plane took off, he waited till his pilot went to the toilet, he was a co-pilot, he locked the door, and then set the autopilot above the Alps. So he set the altimeter or the descend height to zero. So the computer just took the plane into the Alps. Now, I mean, that was such a tragedy that obviously the guy was mentally ill, but it wasn't just a tragedy for him, it was for all the people on board. But what if, and I was inspired by this and my thinking, what can I do to do to anticipate problems like this in the computer. Had the software, and I'm sure Boeing and Airbus will be thinking, oh, maybe I can give the computer a bit more situational awareness. So whenever one tries to drop the height of the plane and it knows it's above the outs, we'll just say, oh no, computer says no, we're not letting you do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of course he would have been able to find another way, maybe fly it until it runs out of fuel or something, but you know... Keep anticipating all the large number of trajectories that can go negative, all those kinds of running into the Alps and try to at least make it easy for the engineers to build systems that are protecting us then." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and let's just think what are in the computer world right now with KydeLs. Let's just not think about what I'm doing right now. What I'm doing right now is it's completely open, right? Everyone's going to know KydeLs and be playing with them, making them more easier and easier and easier. But what we're going to start to do, it makes sense to encrypt the Kyde-Ls in such a way, let's say you work for a pharmaceutical company and you have a license to make a given molecule. Well, you get issued with a license by the FDA or your local authority and they'll say, right, your license to do it, here it is, it's encrypted and the Kyde-L gets run. So you have a license for that instance of use. Easy to do. Computer science has already solved the problem. So the fact that we all trust online banking right, the right now, then we can secure it. I'm 100% sure we can secure the computer. And because of the way we have a many, you know, it's like the same mapping problem that you to actually reverse engineer a Kyde-L will be as hard as reverse engineering the encryption key. You know, brute force, it will be cheaper to just actually buy the regulated medicine. And actually, people aren't going to want to then. make their own fake pharmaceuticals because it'll be so cheap to do it. We'll drop the cost of access to drugs. Now what will happen? Recreational drugs. People will start saying, well, I want access to recreational drugs. Well, it's gonna be up to, it's gonna accelerate that social discussion that's happening in the US and Canada and the UK, everywhere, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because cost goes down, access goes up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Given cannabis, THC, to some people who've got epilepsy isn't literally, forgive the term, a no-brainer because these poor people go from seizures like every day to maybe seizures just once every few months." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's an interesting idea to try to minimize the chance that it can get into like the hands of individuals like terrorists or people that want to do harm. Now, with that kind of thing, you're putting a lot of power in the hands of governments, in the hands of institutions, and so then emerge the kind of natural criticism you might have of governments that can sometimes use these for ill, use them as weapons of war, not tools of betterment. And sometimes not just war against other nations, but war against its own people. as it has been done throughout history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm thinking, so there's another way of doing it, a decentralized peer-to-peer version, where, and what you have to do, I'm not saying you should adopt a blockchain, but there is a way of maybe taking KyDLs and put them in blockchain. Here's an idea, let's just say, the way we're doing it in my lab right now is we go to the literature, we take a recipe to make a molecule, convert that to KyDL, and diligently make it in the robot and validate it. So that I would call mining, proof of work, proof of synthesis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Both of the synthesis." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but this is cool because suddenly when you actually synthesize it you can get the analytical data but there's also a fingerprint in there of the impurities that get carried across because you can never make something 100% pure. That fingerprint will allow you to secure your Kyde-L. So what you do is encrypt those two things. So suddenly you can have people out there mining And what you could do perhaps is do the type of thing, we need to basically look at the way that contact tracing should have been done in COVID, where people are given the information. So you've just been in contact with someone COVID, you choose. I'm not telling you to stay at home, you choose, right? So now if we could imagine a similar thing, like you have got access to these chemicals, they will have these effects, you choose and publicize it, or maybe it's out somewhere, I don't know, I'm not a policymaker on this. And my job here is to not just make the technology possible, but to have as open as a discussion as possible with people to say, hey, can we stop childhood mortality with this technology? And do those benefits outweigh the one-off where people might use it for terrorism or people might use it for recreational drugs. Chemify, which is the name of the entity that will make this happen, I think we have some social responsibilities as an entity to make sure that we're not enabling people to manufacture personal drugs, weapons at will. And what we have to do is have a discussion with society, with the people invest in this, with people that are gonna pay for this, to say, well, do you wanna live longer? and do you wanna be healthier? And are you willing to accept some of the risks? And I think that's a discussion to have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So by the way, when you say personal drugs, do you mean the illegal ones? Or do you have a concern of just putting the manufacturer of any kind of legal drugs in the hands of, of regular people, because they might, like dose matters, they might take way too much." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I would say, to be honest, the chances of computers being, well, should always never, so the fact I can now say this means it's totally gonna come true, right? I'm going to do it. I cannot imagine that computers will be in people's houses anytime soon, but they might be at the local pharmacy, right? And if you've got a drug manufacturing facility in every town, then you just go and they give you a prescription. They do it in such a way, they format it so that you don't have to take 10 pills every day. You get one manufactured for you that has all the materials you need and the right distribution. Got it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you mentioned recreation drugs and the reason I mention it is because I know people are gonna speak up on this. If the drug is legal, there's, to me, no reason why you can't manufacture, I mean, for recreation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you can do it right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you have against Fundly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have, so I mean, I'm a chemistry professor in a university who's an entrepreneur as well. I just think I need to be as responsible as I can in the discussion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure. No, sure, sure. But I know, so let me be the one that says like, there's nothing, because you have said recreational drugs and like terrorism in the same sentence. I think let's make sure we draw a line that there's real dangers to the world of terrorists, of bio-warfare, and then there's a little bit of weed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think it's up to the society to tell its governments what it wants, what's acceptable, right? And if it becomes, let's say that THCs, become heavily acceptable and that you can modify them. So let's say there's, let's say it's like blood type. There's a particular type of THC that you tolerate better than I do, then why not have a machine that makes the one you like? And then why not? The perfect brownie. And I think that that's fine, but we're so far away from that. I can barely get the thing to work in the lab, right? And I mean, it's reliability and all this other stuff, but what I think is gonna happen in the short term, it's gonna turbocharge molecular discovery, reliability, and that will change the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's super exciting. You have a draft of a paper titled, Autonomous Intelligent Exploration, Discovery, and Optimization of Nanomaterials. So we are talking about automating engineering of nanomaterials. How hard is this problem? And as we continue down this thread of the positives and the worrisome, what are the things we should be excited about? And what are the things we should be terrified about? And how do we minimize the chance of the terrifying consequences?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in this robot, the robot does all the heavy lifting. So the robot basically is an embodied AI. I really, I really like AI in a domain specific way. One of, as you should say at this point, there was an attempt in the 60s, Joshua Ledenberg and some really important people did this, that made an AI to try and guess if organic molecules in a mass spectrometer were alien or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and they failed because they didn't have assembly theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does assembly theory give you about alien versus human life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, no, it tells you about the degree of unknowns. You can fingerprint stuff. They were trying to basically just look at the corpus of complex organic molecules. So when I was a bit down about assembly theory because I couldn't convince referees and couldn't convince computational people interested in computational complexity. I was really quite depressed about it. And I mean, I've been working with Sarah Walker's team. And I think she, you know, I think she also invented an assembly theory in some way. We can talk about it later. When I found the AI not working for the dendral project, I suddenly realised I wasn't totally insane. Coming back to this nano robot, so what it does, it's basically like a computer, but now what it does is it squirts a liquid with gold in it, in a test tube, and it adds some reducing agents, so some electrons to make the gold turn into a nanoparticle. Now when gold becomes a nanoparticle, it gets a characteristic colour, a plasmon. So it's a bit like if you look at the sheen on a gold wedding ring or a gold bar or something. Those are the ways that conducting electrons basically reflect light. What we did is we randomly squirt the gold particle and the reducing agent in and we measure the UV, we measure the colour. And so what we do is we've got the robot has a mind, so it has a mind where in a simulation, it randomly generates nanoparticles and the plasmon, the color that comes out, randomly imagines in its head. So that's the imaginary side of the robot. In the physical side of the robot, it squirts in the chemicals and looks at the color and it uses a genetic algorithm and a map elite actually on it. And it goes around in cycles and refines the color to the objective. Now we use two different points. We have an exploration and an optimization. They're two different. So the exploration just says, just do random stuff and see how many different things you can get. And when you get different things, try and optimize and make the peak sharper, sharper, sharper. And what it does after a number of cycles is it physically takes a sample of the optimized nanomaterial, resets all the round bottom flasks, cleans them, and puts the seed, physical seed, back in. And what this robot is able to do is search a space of 10 to the 23 possible reactions in just 1,000 experiments in three days. And it makes five generations of nanoparticles, which get nicer and nicer in terms of shape and color and definition. And then at the end, it outputs a Kyde-L code." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That can then be- Wow, it's doing the search for programs in the physical space." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's doing a kind of reinforcement learning. Yeah, in the physical space. With the exploration and the optimization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that Kyde-L will work on any computer or any qualified hardware." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So now that's it. Now that's a general piece of code that can- replicate somewhat, maybe perfectly, what it created. That's amazing, that's incredible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the nanoparticles themselves are done, the robot has all the thinking, so we don't try and imply any self-replication or try and get the particles to make themselves, although it would be cool to try." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, well, there you go. Those are famous last words for the end of human civilization. Would be cool to try. So, is it possible to create molecules that start approaching this question that we started this conversation, which is the origin of life, to start to create molecules that have lifelike qualities? So, have the replication, start to create complex organisms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we have done this with the oxides I talked about earlier, the molybdenum oxides and the rings and the balls. And the problem is that, well, they do, they autocatalytically enhance one another, so they would, I guess you would call it self-replication. But because there's limited function, and mutation, they're pretty dumb, so they don't do very much. So I think the prospect of us being able to engineer a nanomaterial life form in the short term, like I said earlier, My aim is to do this, of course. On one hand, I'm saying it's impossible. On the other hand, I'm saying I'm doing it. So which is it, Lee? It's like, well, I think we can do it, but only in the robot. So the causal chain that's going to allow it is in the robot. These particles, if they do start to self-replicate, the system's going to be so fragile that I don't think anything dangerous will come out. It doesn't mean we shouldn't treat them as potentially, you know, I mean, I don't want to scare people like gain of function, we're going to produce stuff that comes out. Our number one kill switch is that we always try to search a space of objects that don't exist in our reality, don't exist in the environment. So even if something got out, it just would die immediately. It's like making a silicon life form or something or, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is the opposite of oftentimes gain-of-function research is focused on like, how do you get a dangerous thing to be closer to something that works with humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So have it jump to humans. So that's one good mode to operate on is always try to operate on chemical entities that are very different than the kind of chemical environment that humans operate in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and also, I mean, I'll say something dramatic, which may not be true, so I should be careful. If, let's say, we did discover a new living system, and it was made out of a shadow biosphere, and we just released it in the environment, who cares? It's gonna use different stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It'll just live." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "live? Yeah. One of my biggest fantasies is actually is like a planet that's basically half in the sun. It doesn't rotate, right? And you have two different origins of life on that planet and they don't share the same chemistry. And then the only time they recognize each other is when they become intelligent. They go, well, what's that moving?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They co-evolve and that's fascinating. I mean, so one fascinating thing to do is exactly what you were saying, which is a life bomb, which is like try to focus on atmospheres or chemical conditions of other planets and try within this kind of exploration optimization system, try to discover life forms that can work in those conditions. And then you send those life forms over there and see what kind of stuff they build up. Like you can do like a large scale. It's kind of a safe physical environment to do large scale experiments. It's another planet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so look, I'm going to say something quite contentious. I mean, Elon wants to go to Mars. I think it's brilliant he wants to go to Mars. But I would counter that and say, is Elon just obsessed with getting humanity off Earth? Or what about just technology? So if we do technology, so Elon either needs to take a computer to Mars because he needs to manufacture drugs on demand, right? Because zero cost payload and all that stuff is just code. Or what we do is we actually say, hang on, it's quite hard for humans to survive on Mars. Why don't we write a series of origin of life algorithms where we embed our culture in it, right? It's a very Ridley spot Prometheus, right? Which is a terrible film by the way, but anyway. And dump it on Mars and just terraform Mars. And what we do is we evolve life on Mars that is suited to life on Mars rather than brute forcing human life on Mars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the questions is, what is human culture? What are the things you encode? Some of it is knowledge, some of it is information. But the thing that Elon talks about, and the thing I think about, I think you think about as well is, some of the more unique aspects of what makes us human, which is our particular kind of consciousness. So he talks about the flame of human consciousness. That's one of the questions, is can we instill consciousness into other beings? Because that's a sad thought that whatever this thing inside our minds that hopes and dreams and fears and loves can all die." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but I think you already know the answer to that question. I have a robot lawnmower at home. My kids call it CC, cool car. It's a robo-mow, and the way it works, it has an electric field around the perimeter, and it just, tell it the area, and it goes out and goes from its base station, just mows a bit, gets to the perimeter, detects the perimeter, then chooses a random angle, rotates around and goes on. Yeah, well my kids call it cool cutter. It's a she I don't know why it's a she they just they when they were like quite young they called it I don't want to be sexist there. It could be a he but they liked They they gendered the lawnmower they gendered the lawnmower, okay. Yeah, why not but I was thinking this lawnmower if you apply integrated information theory to the lawnmower the lawnmowers conscious Now, integrated information theory is that people say it's a flawed way of measuring consciousness, but I don't think it is. I think assembly theory actually measures consciousness in the same way. Consciousness is something that is generated over a population of objects, of humans. Consciousness didn't suddenly spring in. Our consciousness has evolved together, right? The fact we're here and the robots we leave behind, they all have some of that. So we won't lose it all. Sure, consciousness requires that we have many models being generated. It's not just one domain-specific AI, right? I think the way to create consciousness, I'm going to say unashamedly, the best way to make a consciousness is in a chemical system, because you just have access to many more states. And the problem right now with making silicon consciousness is you just don't have enough states. So there are more possible configurations possible in your brain than there are atoms in the universe. And you can switch between them. You can't do that on a core i10. It's got 10 billion, 12 billion, 14 billion transistors, but you can't reconfigure them as dynamically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you've shared this intuition a few times already that the larger number of states somehow correlates to greater possibility of life, but. It's also possible the constraints are essential here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. I mean, but coming back to the, you worry that something's lost, I agree. But I think that we will get to an AGI, but I wonder if it's not, it can't be separate from human, it can't be separate from human consciousness because the causal chain that produced it came from humans. So what I kind of try and suggest heavily to people worry about the existential threat of AI saying, I mean, you put it much more elegantly earlier, like we should worry about algorithms on dumb algorithms written by human beings on Twitter, driving us insane, right? And doing acting in odd ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think intelligence, this is what I have been ineloquent in trying to describe it. Partially because I try not to think too deeply through this stuff because then you become a philosopher. I still aspire to actually building a bunch of stuff. But my sense is superintelligence leads to... deep integration into human society. So like intelligence is strongly correlated. Like intelligence, the way we conceive of intelligence materializes as a thing that becomes a fun thing. to have at a party with humans. So like it's a mix of wit, intelligence, humor, like intelligence, like knowledge, ability to do reasoning and so on, but also humor, emotional intelligence, ability to love, to dream, to share those dreams, to play the game of human civilization, the push and pull, the whole dance of it, the whole dance of life. And I think that kind of super intelligent being is not the thing that worries me. I think that ultimately will enrich life. It's again, the dumb algorithms, the dumb algorithms that scale in the hands of people that are too, don't study history, that don't study human psychology and human nature, just applying too broadly for selfish near-term interests. That's the biggest danger." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it's not a new danger, right? I now know how I should use Twitter and how I shouldn't use Twitter, right? I like to provoke people into thinking. I don't want to provoke people into outrage. It's not fun. It's not a good thing for humans to do, right? And I think that when you get people into outrage, they take sides. and taking sides is really bad, but I think that we're all beginning to see this, and I think that actually, I'm very optimistic about how things will evolve, because, you know, I wonder how much productivity has Twitter and social media taken out of humanity, because how many now, I mean, so the good thing about Twitter is it gives power, so it gives voice to minorities, right, and that's good to some degree, but I wonder how much, voice does it give to all sorts of other problems that don't need this emerge?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, when you say minorities, I think, or at least if I were to agree with you, what I would say is minorities broadly defined, any small groups of people that, it magnifies the concerns of the small versus the big." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is good to some degree, but I think, I mean, I have to be careful because I think I have a very, I mean, I think that the world isn't that broken, right? I think the world is a pretty cool place. I think academia is really great. I think climate change presents a really interesting problem for humanity that we will solve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like how you said it's a pretty cool problem. for civilization, it's a big one. There's a bunch of really big problems that if solved can significantly improve the quality of life. That ultimately is what we're trying to do, improve how awesome life is for the maximum number of people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I think that coming back to consciousness, I don't think the universe is doomed to heat death, right? It's one of the optimists, that's why I want to kind of nudge you into thinking that time is fundamental. Because if time is fundamental, then suddenly you don't have to give it back. The universe just constructs stuff. And what we see around us in our construction, I know everyone's worried about how fragile civilization is. I mean, look at the fundamentals. We're good until the sun expands, right? we've got quite a lot of resource on Earth. We're trying to be quite cooperative. Humans are nice to each other when they're not under enormous stress. But coming back to the consciousness thing, are we going to send human beings to Mars or conscious robots to Mars, or are we going to send some hybrid? I don't know the answer to that question right now. I guess Elon's going to have a pretty good go at getting there. I'm not sure whether I have my doubts, but I'm not qualified. I'm sure people have their doubts that computation works, but I've got it working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And most of the cool technologies we have today and take for granted, like the airplane, aforementioned airplane, were things that people doubted, like majority of people doubted before they came to life and they come to life. And speaking of hybrid AI and humans, it's fascinating to think about all the different ways that hybridization, that merger can happen. I mean, we currently have the smartphone, so there's already a hybrid, but there's all kinds of ways that hybrid happens, how we and other technology play together, like a computer. How that changes the fabric of human civilization is wide open. Who knows? Who knows? If you remove cancer, if you remove major diseases, from humanity, there's going to be a bunch of consequences we're not anticipating. Many of them positive, but many of them negative. Many of them, most of them, at least I hope, are weird and wonderful and fun in ways that are totally unexpected. And we sitting on a porch with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a rocker will say, kids these days don't appreciate how hard we had it back in the day. I gotta ask you, Speaking of nudging, you and Yoshua Bach nudge each other on Twitter quite a bit in wonderful intellectual debates. And of course, for people who don't know, Joshua Bach is a brilliant guy. He's been on the podcast a couple times. You tweeted, or he tweeted, Joshua Bach, everyone should follow him as well. You should definitely follow Mr. Lee Cronin, Dr. Lee Cronin. He tweeted, dinner with Lee Cronin. We discussed that while we can translate every working model of existence into a Turing machine, the structure of the universe might be given by wakes of nonexistence in a pattern generated by all possible automata which exist by default. And then he followed on saying, face-to-face is the best. So the dinner was face-to-face. What is Joshua talking about? In wakes, quote, wakes of nonexistence in a pattern generated by all possible automata which exist by default. So automata exist by default, apparently. And then there's wakes of nonexistence. What the hell is nonexistence in the universe? That's... And also, in another conversation, you tweeted, it's state machines all the way down, which presumably is the origin story of this discussion. And then Joshua said, again, nudging, nudging, nudging slash trolling. Joshua said, you've seen the light. Welcome, friend. Many foundational physicists effectively believe in some form of hypercomputation. Lee is coming around to this idea. And then you said, I think there are notable differences. First, I think the universe does not have to be a computer. Second, I want to understand how the universe emerges constructors that build computers. And third is that there is something below church touring. Okay. What the heck is this dinner conversation about? Maybe put another way, maybe zooming out a little bit, are there interesting agreements or disagreements between you and Joshua Bach that can elucidate some of the other topics we've been talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so Yasha has an incredible mind and he's so well read and uses language really elegantly. It bamboozles me at times. So often I'm describing concepts in a way that I built from the ground up and so we misunderstand each other a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he's floating in the clouds, is that what you're saying?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not quite but I think so this concept of a Turing machine, so Turing machines I would argue and I think this is not the Turing machine, the universe is not a Turing machine. Biology is not even a Turing machine, right? Because Turing machines don't evolve, right? There is this problem that people see Turing machines everywhere. But isn't it interesting, the universe gave rise to biology, that gave rise to intelligence, that gave rise to Alan Turing, who invented the abstraction of the Turing machine and allowed us to digitize And so I've been looking for the mystery at the origin of life, the origin of intelligence, and the origin of this. And when I discussed with Yasha, I think, Yasha, he was saying, well, the universe, of course, the universe is a Turing machine. Of course, there's a hypercomputer there. And I think we got kind of trapped in our words and terms. Because of course it's possible for a Turing machine or computers to exist in the universe. We have them. But what I'm trying to understand is, where did the transition from continuous to discrete occur? And this is because of my general foolishness of understanding the continuous, but I guess what I'm trying to say is there were constructors before there were abstractors, because how did the universe abstract itself into existence? And it goes back to earlier saying could the universe of intelligence have come first?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's a constructor, what's an abstractor?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the abstractor is the ability of say, of Alan Turing and Godel and Church to think about the mathematical universe and to label things and then from those labels to come up with a set of axioms with those labels and to basically understand the universe mathematically and say, okay, I can label things. But where did the labeler come from? Where is the prime labeler?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even if the universe is not a Turing computer, does that negate the possibility that a Turing computer can simulate the universe? Just because the abstraction was formed at a later time, does that mean that abstraction, this is to our cellular automata conversation. You were taking away some of the magic from the cellular automata because very intelligent biological systems came up with that cellular automata." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this is where the existence is the default, right? The fact that we exist and we can come up with a Turing machine, does that mean the universe has to be a Turing machine as well?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can it be a Turing machine though? So there has to be and it can it be?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can it be? Sure. I don't understand if it has to be or not. Can it be? But can the universe have Turing machines in it? Sure. They exist now. I'm wondering though, maybe, and this is when things get really hairy, is I think the universe, maybe in the past, did not have the computational power that it has now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is almost like a law of physics, so the computational power is not, you can get some free lunch," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, the fact that we now, we sit here in this period in time and we can imagine all these robots and all these machines and we built them. And so we can easily imagine going back in time that the universe was capable of having them, but I don't think it can." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the universe may have been a lot dumber computationally?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't want to go back to the time discussion but I think it has some relationship with it. The universe is basically smarter now than it used to be and it's going to continue getting smarter over time because of novelty generation and the ability to create objects within objects within objects." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you know, there's a, perhaps it's grounded in physics, there's this intuition of conservation. That stuff is conserved. Like you're not, you've always had all, everything, you're just rearranging books on the bookshelf through time. But you're saying like new books are being written." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which law do you wanna break? At the origin of the Big Bang, you had to break the second law, because we got order for free. Well, what I'm telling you now is that the energy isn't conserved in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, it was the second law. Okay, I got you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But not in a mad way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so computation potentially is not conserved, which is a fascinating idea. Intelligence is not conserved. Complexity is not conserved. I suppose that's deeply connected to time being fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The natural consequence of that is if time is fundamental and the universe is inflating in time, if you like, then there are one or two conservation laws that we need to have a look at. And I wonder if that means the total energy of the universe is actually increasing over time. And this may be completely ludicrous, but we do have all this dark energy. We have some anomalies, let's say, dark matter and dark energy. If we don't add them in, galaxies, so dark matter, I think, doesn't hold. You need to hold the galaxies together, and there's some other observational issues. Could dark energy just be time?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So figuring out what dark energy is might give us some deep clues about this, not just time, but the consequences of time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it could be that, I mean, I'm not saying this perpetual motion's allowed in this free lunch, but I'm saying if the universe is intrinsically asymmetric, and it appears to be, and it's generating novelty, and it appears to, Couldn't that just be mechanistically how reality works? And therefore, I don't really like this idea that the... So I want to live in a deterministic universe that is undetermined, right? The only way I can do that is if time is fundamental. Because otherwise, all the rest of it is just slight of hand. Because the physicist will say, yes, everything's deterministic. Newtonian mechanics is deterministic. Quantum mechanics is deterministic. Let's take the Everettian view. And then basically we can just draw out this massive universe branching, but it closes again and we get it all back. And don't worry, your feeling of free will is effective. But what the physicists are actually saying is the entire future is mapped out. And that is clearly, problematical and clearly..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's not so clear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just problematic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That maybe is just the way it is. It's problematic to you, a particular creature along this timeline." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I want to reduce the number of beliefs I need to understand the universe. So if time is fundamental, I don't need to have magic order at the beginning, and I don't need a second law." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you do need the magical belief that time is fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "well, I need the observation that I'm seeing to be just how it is all the way down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the Earth also looks flat if you agree with your observation. So we can't necessarily trust our observation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know the Earth isn't flat because I can send a satellite into space and I can fly. No, but now you're using the tools of science and the technology of science. But I'm saying I'm gonna do experiments that start to show. I mean, I think that it's worth, so if you can't, so if I cannot do an experiment or a thought experiment that will test this assumption, then the assumption is without merit really in the end. You know, that's fine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a beautiful ideal you hold yourself to. Given that you think deeply in a philosophical way, you think about some of these really important issues and you have theoretical frameworks like assembly theory. It's really nice that you're always grounded with experiment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's so refreshing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's so beautifully refreshing. Now that we're holding you to the grounded in experiment, to the harsh truth of reality, let me ask the big ridiculous question. What is the meaning of this whole thing? What's the meaning of life? Why? This time is fundamental. It's marching forward and along this, long timeline come along a bunch of descendants of apes that have come up with cellular automata and computers and now computers. Why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have so many different answers to this question. It depends on what day. I would say that given the way of the conversation we had today, I'd say the meaning, well, we make our own meaning. I think that's fine. But I think the universe wants to explore every possible configuration that it's allowed us to explore. And this goes back to the kind of question that you're asking about Yasha and the existence and non-existence of things, right? So if the universe is a Turing machine, it's churning through a load of states, and you think about combinatorial theory before assembly theory, so everything is possible. what Yasha and I were saying is, well, not everything is, we don't see the combinatorial explosion, we see something else. And what we see is evidence of memory. So there clearly seems to be some interference between the combinatorial explosion of things and what the universe allows. And it's like this kind of constructive, destructive interference. So maybe the universe is not just about assembling objects in space and time and those objects are able to search more space and time and the universe is just infinitely creative and I guess I'm searching for why the universe is infinitely creative, or is it infinitely creative, and maybe the meaning is just simply to make as many objects, create as many things as possible. And I see a future of the universe that doesn't result in the heat death of the universe. The universe is gonna extract every ounce of creativity it can out of it, because that's what we see on Earth, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And if you think that, almost like intelligence is not conserved, that maybe creativity isn't either, maybe like, It's an infinite well. So like creativity is ultimately tied to novelty. You're coming up with cool new configurations of things and maybe that just can continue indefinitely. And this human species that was created along the way is probably just one method that's able to ask the universe about itself. It's just one way to explore creativity. Maybe there's other meta-levels on top of that. Obviously, as a collective intelligence, we'll create organisms. Maybe there'll be organisms that ask themselves questions about themselves. in a deeper, bigger picture way than we humans do. First to ask questions about the humans and then construct some kind of hybrid systems that ask themselves about the collective aspect. Just like some weird stacking that we can't even imagine yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that stacking, I mean, I have discussed this stacking a lot with Sarah Walker, who's a professor of physics and astrobiology at ASU. And we argue about, you know, how creative the universe is going to be and is it as deterministic as all that because I think she's more of a free will thinker and I'm of a less free will thinker but I think we're beginning to converge and understanding that because there's simply a missing understanding. Right now we don't understand how the universe, we don't know what rules the universe has to allow the universe to contemplate itself. So asking the meaning of it before we even know what those rules are is premature. But my guess is that it's not meaningless. And there are three levels of meanings. Obviously, the universe wants us to do stuff. We're interacting with each other, so we create meaning in our own society, in our own interactions with humanity. But I do think there is something else going on. But because reality is so weird, We're just scratching at that. And I think that we have to make the experiments better and we have to perhaps join across, not just for the computation lists. And what I tried to do with Yasha is meet him halfway, say, well, what happens if I become a computation list? What do I gain? A lot, it turns out, because I can make Turing machines in the universe. Because on the one hand, I'm making computers, which are state machines inspired by Turing. On the other hand, I'm saying they can't exist. Well, clearly, I can't have my cake and eat it. So there's something weird going on there. So then, did the universe have to make a continuous to discrete transition? Or is the universe just discrete? It's probably just discrete. So if it's just discrete, then there are, I will then give Yasha his Turing-like property in the universe, but maybe there's something else below it, which is the constructor that constructs the Turing machine, that then constructs, you know, it's a bit like you generate a computing system that then is able to build an abstraction that then recognizes it can make a generalizable abstraction because human beings with mathematics have been able to go on and build physical computers, if that makes any sense. And I think that's the meaning. I think that's, you know, as far as we can, the meaning will be further elucidated with further experiments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you mentioned Sarah. I think you and Sarah Walker are just these fascinating human beings. I'm really fortunate to have the opportunity to be in your presence, to study your work, to follow along with your work. I'm a big fan. Like I told you offline, I hope we get a chance to talk again with perhaps just the two of us, but also with Sarah. That's a fascinating dynamic for people who haven't heard, I suppose on Clubhouse is where I heard you guys talk, but you have an incredible dynamic. I also can't wait to hear you and Yosha talk. So I think if there's some point in this predetermined or yet to be determined future where the three of us, you and Sarah, or the four of us with Yosha could meet and talk would be a beautiful future. And I look forward to most futures, but I look forward to that one in particular. Lee, thank you so much for spending your valuable time with me today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was very chaotic because we went out on a whim and we only had our first hotel booked. And then we rented a car and drove around all of the cities and went to like five different cities in about a week and a bit. So I think it was just the variety of seeing so many different places when we're used to being at home all the time. And Andrea, Is yours your luggage? Yeah, I would say it was the most stressful vacation we've been in in our life. And it was a valuable learning lesson because now I know how to be prepared for trips. But we lost our bags and I never got them back. And like Alex said, we didn't know where we'd be sleeping every night. And we're just driving through a new city with a giant van in the most narrowest streets with and getting in many, many fights with Italian men. So it wasn't really a vacation. I saw this motion so many times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wasn't it liberating to lose your baggage? Is it still the lining?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was liberating my entire life. I've always had the issue of overpacking. And I told her before the trip, Andrea, you're going to pack light, right? Yeah, Alex. Yeah. And then I see her stuffing her overweight suitcase. But you did the same. We both had giant, big extra baggage that we didn't need. And I'm actually very glad we lost it because for Venice hauling that around on all the boats and through the tiny streets and there's no Ubers. And now it's the first time where I can travel without checking in a bag, which I've never done before. So now I've learned what it means to pack light, because I saw that I could survive off of just my, this sounds very dramatic, but it was really a big learning lesson for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The driving must've been crazy, because driving in Italy is rough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The driving was crazy. I did most of it and it would be really interesting driving through places like Florence or even through the beach areas that were super windy because they're two-way streets that should really only be one way. So you'd be driving this huge van and then another car comes on a cliff and you're just waiting for it to slowly pass. It took all of my focus and concentration to drive well in Italy, but it was actually really relaxing because the hardest thing about making a lot of videos online is you're always thinking about it, what's coming next. And when we were in Italy, it was so chaotic that I did not think about work for a good week and a bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, because you're just- We were stressed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was just trying to keep us alive. It seemed higher priority." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that was kind of fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was kind of fun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No planning, nothing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just on a whim. I wouldn't recommend it or ever do that again, but." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sounds pretty awesome." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And we even randomly ran into two friends of ours who were in the same city and we just traveled with them for about half of the trip. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you just took on the chaos." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. It was an adventure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I see like, cause you were using your hands a lot. You gotten, you picked up some of the Italian hand gestures." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I did. We did get yelled at by a lot of Italians. The old Italian grandmas would come to us after breakfast. Cause we'd leave something on the plate and she'd be like, you could feed an entire village with that. Tell your friends. And we'd be, we'd feel so ashamed. Yeah, we got cursed out a lot, but it really reminded me of where we grew up. That's true. Yeah, bring back those. Where'd you grow up? Oh, we're Romanian, but it was like an immigrant neighborhood in Canada. So, you know, same if you don't finish your plate, that's disrespectful to the people who made the food." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How's the food in Italy? I feel like the carbs thing is too intense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think very overrated in my opinion. So I'm actually not supposed to eat gluten because I have an allergy, but I was in Italy and it's, you know, gluten galore. So I was actually eating a lot of it. And it was very interesting because I didn't get sick while I was in Italy, but I do while I'm in the US. So somehow the food was actually maybe more okay for me to digest, which I appreciated, but I didn't like it as much as I thought. Did you like the food there?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, no, I did, I did. I love cars, but it feels like Vegas. When I go there for the food, it's like, if I stay here too long, I'm gonna do things I regret. That's what it feels like with the food. Right. Because I don't know how to moderate, and everybody is pushing very large portions and while kind of eating things on you. Pasta, pizza, and bread. It's so delicious. So yeah, I love it, but I regret everything. So it's like, I don't wanna go to a place where I'm going to regret everything I do for too long of a time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, surprisingly the people there though are still very fit and everyone stays in good shape, but that's probably because you're walking around all day and you're much more active than in the US." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they also just know how to moderate food. I think I've gotten used to the US way of eating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The US portions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is that? Just a lot, always a lot and more." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I feel in the US, food advertisements are also much more in your face and you're more often reminded of junk food than we were in Italy. So even though we were eating less healthy things, I think we were getting cravings and being pushed towards junk food less often." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, I got to ask you a hard question. So the romance languages, so I think French is up there as like number one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Number one in terms of? I don't know. Who's ranking them?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, you guys speak Italian or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not Italian, but we studied French and Spanish in school. And Romanian." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like every country calls their language a romance language." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but it's Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and I think there was one more that was like this dialect, but those are considered the romance languages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so where would you put Italian?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we got yelled at so much in Italian that it's not going to be a lover. It's on the bottom of the list because people did not use it nicely to us. But I always really liked how French sounds. I think something about it where maybe Spanish actually sounds nicer to the ears, but French has more character and it feels more sultry. So I like French. That was my answer too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sultry, okay. I feel like in France, I feel like I'm always being judged. Like they're better than me. That's what French. They are better than us. It's just so true. Which is why I long to belong to that. I like the British accent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The British accent? Yeah. Actually, one thing we did on our Italian trip is we just picked up British accents for the entire trip for fun. And we forgot we were doing them to the point where we talked to British people and they'd ask us, why are you talking like that? I did feel much more elegant and mature. That's true. People, like, you know, I don't know if they felt the same way about us, but it was more of, you know, the confidence. You do feel like you're more poised for sure. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how'd you guys get into chess? When did you first, let's say, when did you first fall in love with chess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we both started playing when we were pretty young, around six years old. That's when our dad taught us. And I enjoyed playing chess because I had good results early on, but a lot of it was being pushed from my dad to play chess. And I only really started loving it when we moved from Canada and we started moving a lot and chess was the one stable thing that I had. And it was also where all of my friends were. So it was kind of that foundational thing for me. And that's when I started studying chess very intensely. And when I started putting in the hours out of my own will and not because I was being pushed by my dad, that's when I started really loving it. And I even wanted to take time off college to just focus on chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So training and competing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Training and competing, yeah. It was when I was doing it for myself that I started getting my best results." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And actually enjoying the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And really enjoying it, yeah. I would spend summer vacation studying for tournaments and my mom would come and say, you need to make friends, go leave the house. And I'd be like, no, I need to play chess. And I remember those moments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That you rebelled by playing chess, that's awesome. Yeah, exactly. How did you get into it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my experience with loving in high school is very opposite from Alex's, but right, my sister was playing and my dad taught me when I was also six. Andrea was cool in high school, unlike me. You were. I wouldn't say cool, I'd say more balanced and I was interested in other hobbies. In my childhood, if I ever really did love chess, there's certainly moments about like traveling and being together with my family and spending those moments together, but those are more the social and the experiences. But funny enough, I think my happiest moment where I really played the game for my own enjoyment was probably my most recent tournament. Because this was after, obviously, we've been streaming and I'm no longer in high school. But when I was in school, I was always playing for college and for the results, trying to build a resume. So I was too stressed out about the pressure to really enjoy the game. Whereas when I just played my first tournament, so it was like a after like a two year break because of the pandemic. And it was also all live on Twitch. So there was some pressure, but it was the first time that like I was really eager to study for the game, sitting and focusing since we've been streaming and not getting distracted by something else in years, like I said. And the tournament experience, I hit my highest rating and it was my best tournament ever. And I think most of that is because it came from my own enjoyment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you didn't enjoy the domination because I think you like did really well, right? It was like a couple months ago." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. Yeah, the tournament. Well, of course the I think the results came from enjoying the tournament because I would be in high school like studying double triple the amount of time like six hours every day compared to this tournament. I didn't even prepare for it. And for three years, I wouldn't be able to pass one rating, whereas in this one tournament, I passed it by like 70 points without even any preparation. So it was. I think as soon as you stop worrying about the competitions, when the games get much better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it mean to pass a rating?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I was stuck at 1900. 1900 is a hundred points off of expert. Yeah. Usually when you reach 2000, you're considered an expert, which is the rating Andrea was going for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. Expert. That's a good technical term or that's like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's more of a colloquial term where if somebody is around a 2000 and you're playing them in a tournament, they won't have the actual title next to their name, but you say, I'm playing an expert." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the more official things like master? Does that have to do with rating or something else?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so national master in the U.S. is when you're 2,200." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, and what's international master?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "International master is based off of a different system, the FIDE system, which is international. To be an international master, it's 2,400, and you have to have three international master norms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think Magnus said he's a 28.6 something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then he said that's pretty decent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, he always talks about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But see, the thing is, I think what he meant is that's a decent rating because it accurately captures his actual level. So it's not overinflated or underinflated and so on. And so the discussion there was how do you get to, can a human being get to 2,900? And then he says, because my current rating is pretty decent at representing my skill level, it's gonna be a long road to actually get there. Because it's like, so you have to beat people your same level. That's how the number increases. And you beat a bunch of people in the tournament, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That are higher than your level. I was playing, I was really nervous because my category was like 200 points above my rating. And of course I was very rusty and I hadn't played a tournament in a while, but it went pretty well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you feel the pressure when you're actually recording it, like the streaming?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was definitely, so before every round I was vlogging and I was doing meet and greets and doing other things for the live stream." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's how you do a meet and greet. You didn't know what the hell you were doing. It's great. Yeah. Like, where am I? How do I do this? Yeah, I see." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What do I do? It was actually really wholesome. The beginning was, Very silly, because I was just not expecting that it was going to be more of a seminar. I thought it was like, oh, you pose and take pictures. But they actually asked really nice, meaningful questions. But unfortunately, it's bad for YouTube retention and we cut them all out. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Bad for YouTube. The good long form conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it was like questions, Q&A type of thing. Exactly. You have to have very fast paced for YouTube. And that seminar was not fast paced." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, well not everything in life needs to be on YouTube, right? That's true. There's like two parallel things, stuff that's fun for YouTube." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, one day we'll post that Q&A." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, when you guys like, when you become like ultra famous, you're currently just regular famous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Andrea's first Q&A. Slow content, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that, the YouTube aspect, the creation aspect, does that add to the fun, ultimately, of chess, of like your love of chess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, for the love of chess in general, or just for competing in that one tournament?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, love of chess in general. I think you said that for competing for that tournament, it was adding pressure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but actually I would say like a good pressure, but yeah, this is where I differed to Alex because when I was just competitive and I was younger, I don't think I loved chess as much as when I started doing it for content because unlike her, who a lot of her friends and social circle with other chess players. I never really traveled and built really solid friendships through chess until I started streaming and meeting other chess streamers and actually playing and talking to people for fun rather than just always being alone in the game and never really meeting other people my age or people with similar interests. So I would say Twitch was the thing that really changed how I approached the game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think with some YouTubers, there's a pressure to be almost somebody else. You create a persona and you're stuck in that persona. I think I'm too much of a boomer to know what the hell Twitch is anyway, but it feels like when you're actually live streaming. you can't help but be who you really are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's, oh, well, I think when you're live streaming and I've talked to a lot of other streamers about this, you kind of just over-exaggerate one side of your personality. And of course it's kind of like being like on all the time. Like you're trying to be more entertaining and sometimes you're being sillier at moments or. more, you take what character traits like people know you for, and for me, one is being like ADHD and the younger sibling who's very energetic and causes trouble, even though sometimes it feels like- Yeah, I'm sure you cause trouble just for the camera. Yeah, right? I think, yeah, I think, and of course, once you're live streaming for like four or five hours, there's gonna be moments in the stream where it's more chill, but especially when you're like editing that content or you're doing bigger streams that are shorter, you are kind of playing up a side of yourself, because of course there's a lot of parts of me that I don't show to the camera because they're not as entertaining to watch, like the more serious part. And also there's things that you are really interested in about what you do, like I love competitive chess where I could sit and really think about it, but I know that that is not going to be as entertaining for stream, I know that's not going to be as entertaining for YouTube, So you kind of have to take what you like, but then really adapt it for whatever the format is. And sometimes that feels inauthentic, but other times it just feels like repackaging what you love for people in a more general audience to enjoy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you feel like it's a trap a little bit as you evolve? Oh, I think social media is, oh, sorry, go ahead. Social media in general is a trap of that kind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so we've been trying to switch to learn how to make YouTube videos recently. And so much of learning YouTube school is kind of the beastification of content where you try to get to the point of the video within like the first 10 seconds to not lose people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You try to get, you mean like Mr. Beast?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Where it's so fast paced. There's a reason to wait. There's high stakes. And everything is created to keep people watching the video and keep people on the platform. And in some ways it is a trap because it's harder to do the kind of content you like because you really have to squeeze it to be like, okay, well, do we have a good thumbnail for this? Do we have a good title for this? And that's something that we're trying to figure out how to keep true to what we want to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, see, the way I think about it is, yeah, there's a lot of stuff you can create, and yeah, the mystification process, but also I think about what are the videos, conversations, or things I will create in this life that will be the best thing I do? and I try not to do things in my life that will prevent me from getting there. I feel like if you're always focusing on optimizing the thumbnail and the 10 seconds and so on, you'll never do the thing that's truly you're known for and remembered for. So finding that balance is tricky." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I get that, but at the same time, this might be my own copium, which I know is a word you know now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I'm slowly learning the full complexity of the term, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the other way I think about it is, it is a skill to learn how to communicate with large audiences. And first I started streaming chess, which is something I just did and really loved, but now I have to learn how to translate that format. And if that's a skill set we could build, then we could use it to do really important things. And I've seen a lot of YouTubers who have done interviews about how they didn't love the kind of content they did at first, but what they're doing right now is really meaningful. So I like to think of it maybe like skill development, because not everybody hits off podcasts where they can talk to super interesting people right off the bat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you could be slow and boring in a podcast. You don't have to worry about the first 10 seconds. I mean, people keep pushing me for it, but the first 10 seconds of the videos I do is, well, I know it's most important for YouTube, but I don't give a damn. I wrote a Chrome extension that hides all the views and likes. I don't look at the click through." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't look at Twitch views, Andrea does, so we also can relate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love numbers too, but that's why I don't look at it, because you become like, oh, you'll start to think that a conversation or a thing you did sucks because it doesn't get views. But that's just not the case. YouTube algorithm is this monster that figures stuff out. And if you let it control your mind, I feel like it's going to destroy you creatively. So you have to find a nice balance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have to say, I was laughing a little bit when I was listening to the Magnus episode. In the first 10 minutes, you guys are talking about soccer, football. Two robots seem human in the conversation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was like, let's have some fun, make conversation about non-chess related topics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, talk about sports." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it was kind of hilarious. I was surprised that even at his level, I wasn't sure, but I was surprised how much he loves chess. It sounds cliche to say, but like the way he looked at a chessboard, you know, those memes, like I wish somebody looked at me the way he's still like the way he glanced down and he reached for the pieces with excitement to show me something. There was that wasn't like, OK, I'll show you. It was like, Like there was still that fire." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's something that always shocks me about some of like super grandmasters. Like one of my coaches was a person who also, his name's GM Hammer of Norway. He also coached Magnus, he was his second. And he was helping me train for my tournament. And I was kind of putting off doing the homework. He's like, if you're putting it off, that means you're studying the wrong thing. Like you should be enjoying even when you're practicing, which when I, I thought to get to the top level, like practicing has to be hard and unpleasant. And when I was listening to your Magnus episode, he was like, I didn't read books very much. Or it was one thing that you said that's like very normal for studying classical chess that he didn't do just because it didn't interest him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He says, I suck at puzzles. I don't like puzzles." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and he doesn't do what he doesn't enjoy. And that's because it's like purely driven out of passion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think the internet was like, I suck at puzzles too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, they like found it. They related." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't have to study at all. It's just, it's fun. But I think the lesson there that's really powerful is he spends most of the day thinking about chess because he wants to. So do whatever, if you're into getting better at chess, do whatever it takes to actually just the number of hours you spend a day thinking about chess, maximize that. If you're like super serious about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually get very addicted whenever I start studying chess, which is why I don't do it as seriously when I'm focused on content. I go through these rabbit holes where if I'm focusing on chess, I want to be as good as I possibly can at the game. Otherwise, it's hard for me to enjoy it because it's such a competitive thing. And I remember training for tournaments. And when you're training for tournaments, you even start dreaming about chess and you can't stop thinking about it. And it's as if you're flipped into this completely different world, which is also what I like best about the game, that it's a completely different living experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you take some drugs and now you start to see things on the ceiling. Is there some factual hallucination like to the Queen's Gambit, like those scenes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that based on your life story?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I can't say that on camera. No, just kidding. Actually, chess players are very careful to not take drugs. They drink a lot. They drink so much. It's actually crazy for how good they're able to play chess when they do. But when it comes to things like psychedelics or other things, they usually stay away from those because they don't want to mess anything up in their" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is actually intervention. I saw that you mentioned somewhere, I think it was the lie detector test where you have a drinking problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is that an actual? No, I think that's actually a meme that we like to joke about on stream because occasionally we'd have like a white claw on stream or something like that. And then people meme about it. It goes back to Andrea's point of amplifying a part of your personality to make yourself a little bit. more entertaining." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm going to use that as an excuse from now on. This podcast is just amplifying a part of the person. I'm not really like this. But have you played drunk? Magnus has played drunk. He says it helps him with the creativity. Is there any truth to that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Andrea is under 21, so she's obviously would never do that. But I have played while drinking, actually. I enjoy playing chess and drinking more than pre-gaming or going out to a club and drinking, which sounds really silly. And I'll usually play against opponents who are also having some beer. And it does make you feel like you're seeing the game from a fresher perspective, where it can sometimes make you feel more confident, liquid confidence. And it does help with creativity. You just feel like you could pull things off. But there's also a limit. It's more like you've had one drink or two drink, but then it goes beyond that and then you just start missing tactics and it's not worth it. Yeah, I think it only helps players in very short time controls. One time I was challenging this grandmaster on stream and we were playing bullet chess, which is one minute chess. And I was giving him handicaps and I said, okay, you have to take four shots before the next game. And he just got like 10 times stronger and transformed into like the Hulk and destroyed me. more than the last game. So, but of course, if you're playing like a three hour game, it's gonna get old. But I think in short time controls, it's amazing. Yeah, definitely has to be blitz. It has to be where it's more intuition rather than sitting and calculating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is probably like negatively affecting your ability to calculate. Absolutely. How much, when you guys play, when you look at the chessboard, how much of it is calculation? How much of it is intuition? How much of it is memorized openings?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It really depends between short form chess. So five minutes, three minutes, one minute and classical chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your favorite to play?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love playing Blitz now because that's most of what I do. And that's actually how I got into chess streaming because I couldn't spend entire weekends or weeks playing tournaments. So I would just, while I was in college, log on and play these long Blitz or bullet sessions. And it's very fast, so you don't have time to go calculate as deeply. You basically have to calculate short lines pretty quickly. And a lot of it is pattern recognition and intuition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's three minutes, you said? Three minutes, yeah. Okay, cool. And so for that, it's just basically intuition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot of it is intuition, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I saw on the streams, you actually keep talking while playing chess. It seems really difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that helps my results. That doesn't help my results. It doesn't? It helps the content, not the game. Yeah, exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you can still do it. It feels like, how can you possibly concentrate while talking?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's because so much of it is intuition. While you're talking, you're thinking about that topic, but then you just come to the board and you just understand what you should be doing here. And then sometimes you get in trouble because you're talking and you have now lost half of your time. You have a minute and a half, your opponent has three, and you're kind of at a disadvantage. But that kind of goes to show that that's how blitz chess usually works, whereas classical is very different." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which of you is better at chess? I mean, let's do it this way. Can you, Andrea, can you say in which way is Alex stronger than you? Which way is she weaker than you? Not physically in terms of chess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, of course she is higher rated, but when we do play, I think her strengths against me where she really gets me is the endgame. She has stronger endgame, so she can, and I actually have a stronger opening, but as soon as she's able to simplify... I'm supposed to say what is good about you, not you. You know, I'm getting there. Well, see, that's what I'm saying, because don't worry, it's related, okay? Because if I can, I can get an advantage in the beginning of the game. But as soon as she starts trading pieces down, like my confidence drops, because I know that the end game is the hardest part of the game and the longest, and that's where she ends up beating me. So her end game is her, I think really what makes the difference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And she has to be a little bit- It sounds like her psychological warfare is better too. That, definitely. Because if you're getting nervous," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is that. But it's harder to play against higher rated players. Same how, you know, Magnus and former world championship champions have that psychological edge. So I think it's always going to be different for Andrea because she knows statistically she should be winning something like one in four games, but she usually does better than that because she's very distracting and talks a lot. That does help." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it feel like to play a higher rated player? What's the experience of that? In like playing somebody like Magnus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it depends on how much higher rated than you they are. If it's someone who's like between me and Andrea, let's say it's a 200 point difference, you know they should win, but at least you still feel like you have a chance. I was playing in Title Tuesday, which is this tournament chess.com has every Tuesday. And I got really lucky, beat a GM, drew an international master, and then I got paired against Hikaru Nakamura. And my brain just went blank because I just know that I'm so unlikely to win that I couldn't even play the game properly when it's that much of a difference where they should be winning like 99% of the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's like psychological. So you're saying that's the biggest experience is like actually knowing the numbers and statistically thinking there's no way I can win. But I meant like, is there a suffocating feeling like positionally you feel like you're constantly under attack?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You just feel like you're slowly getting outsmarted. And the worst is when you don't even know what you're doing wrong. You come out of that and you're like, I thought I was doing great and I got slowly squeezed. I didn't understand what was going on and you're just kind of baffled. It's kind of like watching AlphaZero beat up Stockfish and you don't really understand why it's making certain moves or how it thought of the plan. You just see it slowly getting the position better and that's what it feels like. I would add it's kind of different for me if they're someone who's significantly higher rated. So let's say more than like 300 points or you're playing Magnus. What I notice is I just feel lost straight as soon as I don't know my preparation because they know so many opening lines that they're going to know the best line to beat you that you haven't studied. So then on move 10, you're like, he already has a maybe plus 0.5 advantage, which is really small, but for someone with such a significant skill level, you know, you're already lost at that point. And it's like, a third of the game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are the strengths and weaknesses of Andrea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Andrea is very good at opening preparation. As she said. As she said. She likes bringing that up. I mean, she's very meticulous about it where she'll really go in and learn her lines. And having that initial starting confidence isn't just helpful for the opening, but it helps develop your plans for the middle game. So I think she's very good at that. I think she's actually pretty good at tactical combinations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is tactics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Tactics is like solving puzzles, or basically finding lines that are forced, where if you find them, you're going to win. So that's like puzzles within a position. Yeah, exactly. Whereas strategic chess is making slow moves, and over the process of like 20 moves, you get a slightly better position based on an understanding of the overall strategy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in my extensive research of you on Wikipedia, It says, your most played opening is the King's Indian Defense, in which, quote, black allows white to advance their pawns to the center of the board in the first two moves. Is there any truth to this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the King's Indian- And what is it? Probably is my most played opening. And it's one where even when my coach, who is a grandmaster, taught me, he's like, so you know, I've been playing the King's Indian for 10 years and I still don't understand it. And it's one of those openings that computers really don't like because you do, or at least Stockfish doesn't like it. Maybe AlphaZero would change their mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I forgot to look at what- Can you show me, by the way, what it is? Yeah. Is it white's opening or black's opening?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Black responds to the d4 queen's pawn push and you take your knight out to f6. I'll just put in the, you know, stereotypical classical King's Indian more so to say. We actually have a very famous Kings Indian game in the notes that we prepared for hours." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the record, I asked you guys for some games that you find pretty cool and maybe to get a chance to talk about some." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So this is the Kings Indian. As you can see, White has much more control over the center. White has three pawns in the center, while black has none past the fifth rank. And you just have this pawn on d6. And one of the ideas in chess is if you're not taking the center, then your plan revolves around trying to continually challenge it. But what is really fun about the King's Indian is that Black sometimes gets these crazy king-side attacks while White gets queen-side attacks. And even though it's a little bit suspicious for Black and the computer could usually break it, it's hard to defend as a human when you're being attacked. But if you don't pull off the attack as Black, then you're just going to end up being lost in the endgame." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's like a very asymmetrical position." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very asymmetrical, although a lot of people now stop playing into the classical King's Indian, even though computers give it a big advantage, and they play these slower lines in the King's Indian, which are less fun to play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's slower mean? It takes a longer time to do something interesting with?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They basically don't let you get as much of a kingside attack because they try opening up the center, and then you have no weaknesses, but you're just slowly improving the position of your pieces instead of being able to go for that kingside attack." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people just listening, the white pawns are all on the fourth row, in a row together. That feels like a bad position. For black? For white." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, you don't like taking the center?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I like taking the center. Now you're talking trash already. Oh, sorry. They just feel vulnerable. They're in a row together. Because who's going to defend them? I guess the nice defend and the queen defends it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're actually talking about a theme that you do see sometimes, which is called hanging pawns, when you have two pawns right next to each other with no other pawns to defend them. So it is a valid point, and actually as black you're trying to break apart these pawns or get them to push and create some holes into the position. But it's a trade-off, and that's a lot of what chess openings are about. You get more space, but you'll also end up having to protect your pawns, potentially, or move them forward to the point where they're overextended." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And plus, pawns being vulnerable is kind of fun. There's more stuff in danger. Because if it's like this, everything is trapped. You can't do anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everything's blocked, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Blocked off, yeah. You can't have fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. One of the opening principles for white is get your pawns in the center. So I'd say this is actually preferable for white." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's go over some opening principles." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because this is a very good learning lesson for any chess beginners in the audience. Okay, so first thing you want to do is control the center. There you go, e4, the more aggressive one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Isn't that like the basic vanilla move? Somebody told me that's the most popular opening move in chess. Why is that considered aggressive?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's E4 and D4, and the King's Pawn is known as being for more tactical players, whereas D4 is known for more positional players, so that's why it's considered more aggressive. more gambits with E4, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So tactical means I'm gonna try to attack you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're gonna try to go for puzzles and rely more on your combination abilities. Whereas if it's something positional, you usually have like three to four moves that are all good in the position. Whereas tactics, you need to see this one line. So it's more precise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this one's cool because the queen can come out, the bishop can come out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and that's one of the most popular checkmates and usually what you teach new students to try to cheese their friends because then they feel really excited that they know this new trap where you bring the bishop and the queen out and you try to checkmate on f7. It's the trap that Queen's Gambit Beth Harmon falls for in their first game versus the janitor. She gets all mad because she gets checkmated very early." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's the one she gets checkmated with?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. OK." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love how you guys were actually paying attention to the games carefully, which is pretty cool that they did a good job of improving, evolving her game throughout the show to actually represent an actual growth of a chess player." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. They really took every detail into consideration, which was cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so what else? I brought stuff into the center." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, we'll do the same. Okay. So then you wanna develop your pieces. So in the beginning of the game, you wanna take out the bishops and knights first, because you don't wanna start with the most valuable piece, like the queen, because then it'll become a vulnerability and it'll get attacked very early on. And the reason you're taking out these two pieces first is because you wanna castle your king. So you can move a knight move or a bishop move, and that's considered developing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So at this stage, not like even before getting a few pawns out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You usually wanna start with getting a pawn because you wanna get space in the center, but also when you push pawns, it helps free up some of your pieces. So usually start with one pawn first, and then you could start taking out your minor pieces, which is the bishop and the knight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I have anxiety about a pawn just floating out there, defenseless." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's not attacked yet. See, those are what you call ghost threats. So you're scared of something that hasn't happened yet. So if I were to attack it," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like there's a deeper thing going on here, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, let's say. Yeah, so you're attacking the pawn in the center here, and it is vulnerable, but as soon as you do that, I can develop my own knight and defend it as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, and now for people just listening, there's two pawns that just came out to meet each other, and a couple of knights." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We love the chess commentary. The pawns met after midnight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Well, we gotta romanticize the game a bit. Yes, exactly. Okay, cool. So, like there's, if you bring out the bishops with the knights, you're matching that with the other, the black is going to match it. Exactly. Whatever you're attacking with." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, he's developing. He's gonna defend it. Now you could develop your bishop or your knight, whatever you'd like. Oh no, now you gave him options." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, right, yeah. There you go." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now I am attacking the pawn in the center, which is what you were afraid about before, but let's see how you defend it here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By doing this symmetrical thing, bringing out the knight on the other side." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And actually your other move was good as well, defending with the pawn, because then you're freeing up space for your bishop. So you're basically trying to develop your pieces as quickly as possible, put your pawns in the center, and then get your king to safety. And that's usually the basic opening tips that you get." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it is kind of counterintuitive that safety is in the corner of the board for a king. That's true. That was always confusing to me, but you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Three pawns in front, though you typically don't push those. Maybe like one, maybe I'll go one square, but these are will be like the wall of defense. I keep him safe. But another way to also think about it is your pieces usually wanna point towards the center. If you have a knight closer to the center than closer to the side, it actually has more squares it can go to. So a huge part of it is just wanting to have flexibility for where your pieces go. So more pieces are going to be able to make threats in the center or even open up the position. So since that's where it's most likely to open, you want your king somewhere where the position will stay closed so that you have the pawns to defend." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, there's like rules like this, but I always wonder, because I've built chess engines, but then you start to wonder like, why is it that positionally these things are good? Like you've built up an intuition about it, but I wish, and that's the thing that would be amazing if engines could explain, why is this kind of thing better than this kind of thing? You start to build up an intuition, but if I'm just like, know nothing about chess, it feels confusing that cornering your king, like getting him like trapped here, like it feels like you could get checkmated easier there. If I was just using like dumb intuition, but it seems like that's not the case." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I imagine maybe, because AlphaZero learned by playing games against itself, right? And I imagine if you have a lot of games, then you do build an intuition, because if you were to keep your king in the center, you'd just see that in those games you're dealing with threats a lot more often. But yeah, there's shortcut rules, and this doesn't even mean it's the best way to play chess, as we've seen with AlphaZero kind of changing the rules of the game a little bit. But as a human, to learn it from scratch is a lot more difficult than to start with principles. So that's why beginners usually learn chess this way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, because you're playing other humans and the other humans have also operated on the different principles and that's why people that come up now that are training with engines are just going to be much better than the people of the past because they're going to try out weirder ideas that go against the principles of old. And they're going to do weird stuff, including sacrifices and stuff like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And I also think that's why AlphaZero was so shocking because Stockfish was using an opening database. So it was already based off of knowledge that humans have from playing chess for years that we just thought is how you're supposed to play. Whereas AlphaZero just learned from playing the game so many times and came up with very novel opening ideas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were you impressed by AlphaZero? Have you seen some of the games?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have seen some of the games. I think impressed, bewildered, and motivated were the three things I experienced." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think Magnus said he was also impressed that it could easily be mistaken for creativity. That's his trash talk towards the AI." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was a beautiful sentence. I was listening to the podcast." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, as a human, I agree with him, because you don't want to give the machine the power of creativity, but if it looks creative, give it a compliment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's fair. I know that you're being nice to the machines in case they are ever looking back through this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What else is there? What other principles are there for the opening?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can go a little bit more forward, let's say. Yeah, we can finish full development. Positions like this, let's just say you developed all of your pieces." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's like a really nice, like nobody took any pieces and we're just in a nice positional thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's not actually a very accurate one. I could put a different one on the board, but usually after you've developed all of your pieces, you want to get your queen out a little bit to connect your rooks and you also start thinking about certain pawn pushes and getting more space. But another good tip is just can you improve the position of your pieces? Think about timing. So if you've already moved a piece once and there's a piece that hasn't moved at all, then you want to focus on the piece that hasn't moved at all to be able to have it more likely to jump into the game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so don't move pieces multiple times. Exactly. Like try to move it to the most optimal position. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So what's the Indian, I think we kind of went over it, but did you ever say why you like it so much? Because it's weird? Because it's king size?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I liked it because it's a very fun, aggressive defense where you're just throwing your pieces towards white and there's so many sacrificing opportunities. And for some reason, tactical games always feel like the most beautiful, the most satisfying. And that's what I liked about the King's Indian. But I also suffered a lot from this love because I would play things that are not necessarily correct, then my attack wouldn't pan out. And then I would just struggle the rest of the game having no play and just trying to defend." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you're always, Wikipedia also says that, that you're known for your attacking play." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's also known for losses according to Stanford. Okay, that's not right. I actually played a lot of positional chess in classic because I really like the slow squeeze, but when I transitioned to playing a lot of online chess, it's almost as if I was looking for more instant gratification because it feels so much better to beat someone with an attack. And even if sometimes it doesn't pan out, I was okay with it because you get so many games in. So I think my style in online chess really changed from my classical chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about you Andrea? Do you have a style? Are you attacking? Are you a more like conservative defensive player? Are you chaotic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Opening wise, I like to play more positionally. Like I like to push T4 and just slowly improve my pieces and slowly get an attack. But like Alex said, if you're playing bullet chess or blitz against viewers, you often like want to play riskier moves that may not be as good. And then that's kind of when I would play more aggressive. But I do enjoy tournaments for that reason because then Like once her 15 moves in, which as soon as you're out of your prep, I like sitting and thinking in more positional, yeah, positional middle games." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the games you've found to be pretty cool is the Hikaru Nakamura versus Galfond in 2009. And that one, I think, includes the Kings-Indian defense? Yes. Why is that an interesting one to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I also play the King's Indian as black and I love this model game, but, and as Alex was saying, like all these advantages for the King's Indian, but now there's this one line that like every higher rated player just destroys my King's Indian. And you see these beautiful games and like, ah, yes, I want to play for these ideas, but now no one plays into it anymore and you just get demolished. So this is why I don't play the King's Indian anymore, but not to ruin the fun. It's a love-hate relationship, truly. The reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but that's like the higher level players do or does everybody?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, if you're studying openings and you know this line as white, you automatically get the upper edge. And that's kind of how openings develop. You start having players trying new lines and then you see ones and then everybody adopts it if they think it's the best one. But yeah, so Hikaru is really known for his aggressive style of play. Is Hikaru black here or what? Yeah, Hikaru is black here. So he's playing the King's Indian. And as you can see in this position, white already has a huge center advantage. But what Hikaru is going to start doing, even with the next move, is bringing all of his pieces towards the white king side because his plan is to start pushing his pawns towards the white king and ignore the attack that goes on in the queen side. This is a great example of the dream attack with the king's Indian." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a complete asymmetry towards the king side on the left side of the board is a ton of pieces." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, he moved the knight like three times in a row." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Interesting. And that's what you need to do, because you have to move the knight in order to make space for your pawn. So again, this is why it's so counterintuitive, and Stockfish doesn't like it. You're putting almost most of your pieces on the back rank, and you're pushing your kingside pawns, and you're blocking your own dark-squared bishop. So none of it makes sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're mimicking it. That's awesome." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so yeah, here you see white going for a queenside attack, black going for the kingside attack, and you can keep going a little bit, and I'll wait to where he starts with the pretty sacrifices. It's more fun to analyze games in person than on the computer, I think. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Okay, so here, Hikaru is preparing the attack, and what I really like about this game is that he finds these tactics that are not necessarily what a computer would go for, but it's very hard to face as a human, and that's why a lot of people play the King's Indian, because in practice, it's hard to defend against. So we can keep moving a little bit forward. Okay. Yep, so Wade is just continuing the kingside plan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, is that like the first piece I think that's taken in the game?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, that's the first trade, so... The attack begins. Exactly. Hikaru had to pause his attack for a little bit to just make sure that White didn't have two dire threats on the queen side." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So cool to see the asymmetry of this thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, that's what's beautiful about the King's Idiot. And just one thing to highlight, because his rook move here is very bizarre and typically, like a computer probably didn't like this, but the ideas are very interesting, because this is a major weakness for black, that they're coming to attack, and he's also making room for his bishop to come backwards and challenge. So this is like a human-like maneuver that computers would like. I think computers would like this though, because you'd have to move it regardless, because he takes the pawn here and his rook would be under attack. Yeah, well, having looked at it, when I actually studied this as a line, and this right away isn't the best move according to computers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So actually, that's just a good question. Did you guys, when you study games, use your own mind, but do you also use computers to? build up your intuition of like looking at a position like this and what would a computer do? And then try to understand why it wants to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When I was studying seriously, I would try to use my own mind because you're never gonna get the exact same position. So you really need to notice trends and often computers will give you moves that are only specific to that position because of a certain tactic. But I do use computers to check what I did and make sure I didn't make any obvious blunder that I might've missed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does the computer tell you? Just like, what is the best move? Or does it give you any kind of explanation of why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It doesn't tell you why, but it gives you the different valuations of the position. Like black is down a half pawn here, or something like that. But it hints you towards what the right move is, and then it's on you to figure out why. And you can usually figure out why, if not right away, then just by going through a few moves and being like, oh, okay, that makes sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like a computer will take you down with some weird lines potentially. Like sacrifice, like why the hell am I sacrificing this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we'll get to the pretty sacrifice soon. So we could just keep playing for a little bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The bonds are being pushed forward. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Hikaru is kind of ignoring the queen side attack here. They basically both only reply to each other's plan when they have to. This is where you convert all the podcast viewers to YouTube. because they have no idea what we're talking about right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There is a zen experience of just listening and imagining." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine the pieces on the ceiling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we should be calling them out and then people will be freaking out even more. Am I supposed to keep track of what the position is? How hard is blindfold chess? Have you tried? Are you able to keep the blindfold?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've played blindfold chess before. For me, it's pretty hard. It's not a muscle that I've trained as much, and I'm very visual when it comes to chess, but it is one, as a top player, that starts becoming very second nature for you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Actually, this is what, I talked to Magnus about this. Maybe I was, again, influenced by Queen's Gambit. What do you actually visualize when it's in your head? So for Magnus, it was a boring 2D board. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you have some kind of- That's every chess player known." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't have like, because you know some chess, like computer games, you can do all kinds of skins and like- Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like fancy stuff. You don't have anything fancy. Sadly, I don't have like a cool 3D warrior mode on. It's just the basic- I just have the default chess base board in my head. Yeah, you can't use your brain power for adding colors to it, because you already have to keep track of the pieces." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As one board at a time? Yes. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The current position. Yeah, I bet every chess... I wonder if there's any who... There's certain players who are really good and they can even play blindfold chess and play multiple games at the same time. So I would be curious how they do it, but usually when you're thinking of one game, that's the only one in your mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but you have to do this operation where you move one piece You're doing like the branch analysis. And so you still have to somehow visualize the branching process and not forget stuff. Maybe that's like constant memory recall or something. You're always looking at one board at a time, but." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you're also, oh, because you're also looking in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Then you have to backtrack. Calculating variations and coming back. I guess you're keeping the position in your memory, so you're remembering where all the pieces are, and then you're playing it out on one board, and then you can come back to the initial one that you started with that you kind of just keep in your brain, and it's also easier to come back to it once you've played a position from it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like it's that memory recall that gets you to blunder. So I'll see that I'm being attacked by certain things, but then because I get so exhausted thinking about a different thing, I actually forget about an entire branch of things that I was supposed to be worried about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it happens very often. Yeah, if you spend a bunch of time calculating in a position, let's say, like when you're really in trouble and you're spending 15, 20 minutes calculating, you'll forget about something that you spotted, like, oh, if I do these two, three moves, I'll walk into a trap. Because you've looked at so many lines and then you play it and then you see it and you're like, oh, I looked at it and I saw it, but I forgot about it. It's often called tunneling, where you're just looking so deeply on one thing you forget about the rest of the board." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's the worst when, at least in a beginner level, there's like a... I don't know, a bishop just sitting there, obviously attacking your queen or something, and then you just forget that bishop exists. Because if they just sit there for a few moves and don't move, you just forget their existence, and then it's just, yeah, that's definitely very embarrassing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it happens to everyone, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. Okay, cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so. We see a few trades happening on the queen side where he had to go for those, otherwise he's in trouble. And this is where the game... Oh, sorry. This is where it gets exciting. Yeah, so knight h4 is really when the sacrifice starts. And here, the two important pawns are the ones in front of the king because they're helping with the entire defense. And Hikaru is actually preparing to sacrifice his knight for a pawn. just so that he can continue his attack and open up the position. Because if you don't do that here as Black and don't get some kind of attack, you are completely lost on the queen side. And also, you've pushed all of your own king side pawns, so you're gonna be in danger. So it's one of those do-or-die moments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, okay. So that's what makes it all in, because the king is wide open." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. The king is wide open, and all of white's pieces are pointed towards the queen side too, where you're also cramped." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's the attack primarily by black done by the two pawns and the knight." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the light-squared bishop is always extremely important, so you don't want to trade this in the king's Indian because it's very helpful for a lot of attacks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even though it's on the other side of the board, I guess it can go all the way across. I'm not sure what it's doing here, but probably threatening." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For example, if it was another move black could have played, it would be something like bishop h3, where if you take the bishop, you actually get mated on g2." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With what?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's say you take here and then you could push the pawn and then it would be checkmate. So you're kind of using your, your Bishop to sacrifice against white's Kingside pawns." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I'll be freaking out if their bishop did that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What are they up to? Right, and that's the thing. This position looks very scary as white because all of Black's pawns are starting to come towards you, and it's one of those things where humans do start to worry in these positions, whereas computers obviously can just calculate the best line and maybe the attack doesn't go through." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying the computer might say that the white is actually a slight favorite here. Yeah, potentially. Okay, so then white makes a little bit of room by moving the rook." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And the attack begins. I like the commentary here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The knight is hugging the king." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And actually, white can't even take the king here because then h4 and h3 is coming in. White can't take the knight. Yeah. Oh, did I say king? Yes, thank you, the knight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "White can't take the knight because why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if white takes the knight here, then black starts pushing his pawn to h4 with h3 incoming. And the idea of trying to defend against this is, it looks very difficult. So white just chooses. It'd be cool to watch a chess game, to experience watching it without understanding it just for a day. I feel like I could use that to make better content. True. I mean, that's what getting drunk does. Unfortunately, for chess players, it never leaves you. Doesn't matter how... But this is actually a very cute move, because Black's queen is under attack, but the king is so cramped that he can't actually take it, or he's gonna get checkmated by a pawn, which is a sad way to go, truly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, those pawns are doing a lot of work here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is the king's Indian. This is the king's Indian player's dream. The attack of the kingside pawns." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, these pawns are like, right, so they're the ones that are doing a lot of the threatening." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and they're also opening up the position to bring more of the pieces in, but the pawns kind of help break open the king side, but they can't checkmate by themselves, so after the pawns come in, that's when you need to start bringing in pieces as well, which you will see Hikaru do here. Okay. There you go, he puts- One more sacrifice. Yes, so this was actually another beautiful sacrifice in the game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then puts the king in check with a pawn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and the pawn is going to be given here for free, but the idea is you're giving your own piece because you want to have more space and open up the king, which is what you're always trying to do when you have a kingside. You're trying to remove as many of the king's defenders as you can without giving up too much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you have a ton of pieces on the kingside for black just waiting to... Exactly. to do harm." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then... And notice how every single move, white is getting attacked. Like, they're just never getting a break. Black just keeps throwing all their pieces. So it's funny that black's queen has been hanging for like three moves now, and white still can't do anything about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So rook puts the king in check. Yep. The king runs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then, again, we leave the queen hanging, and you develop a piece, this light squared bishop that's so important, and you're once again threatening checkmate on g2." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then bishops come into the game." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Once again, the queen hanging. I mean, the game is just so beautiful. The amount of calculation Hikaru put into this position." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It just feels like so much is in danger. Right. It's so interesting. And knight takes what? A pawns." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So now his queen is attacked twice and he doesn't care. He takes the bishop and he's still threatening the checkmate on g2." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then the queen takes the bishop." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So now he's defending against g2. And black just goes and grabs the material back here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So here black is already winning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, he ends up winning a knight here because black had to be so much on the defensive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's just taking pieces." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, at this point you're up two whole pieces, so you would... Yeah, exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But... And queen. Queen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then you take, and then the rook takes, and there's not as much of an attack on the king anymore, but Hikaru is up a knight here, which is GG." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, what's the correct way of saying that? I played Demis Hassabis, I played him in chess, and then I quickly realized like from his facial expressions that I should have like stopped playing. It was like, it's already set. And then he's like, like, this is a good time to like give up. You're not going to get the checkmate where like this, you know, he could see like the checkmate is like five or seven moves away or something. And what's the play?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Usually you have to resign if you're in a position, or you should through chess etiquette, resign when you're in a position where your opponent is definitely going to win out of respect, like if you're a piece down, and obviously all top grandmasters do that. The only people who don't do that is kids because their coaches always tell them never resign and they'll be in hopelessly lost positions playing against like two rooks a king and they only have their sole king, but they're still playing on. So that's a position where it's obvious they can't win." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because the kids might make errors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so might as well. That was an interesting thing about, I think, game six of the previous world championship with Magnus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Was it the one where he beat Nep?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the first time he beat him, where it was like, he said that, I don't know how often you come across this kind of situation. He said the engines predict the draw. Yeah. but that doesn't mean that it's going to be a draw. So you play on hoping that you take a person into, I mean, this is, I guess, an end game thing. You take them to deep water and they make a positional mistake or something. I don't know when, like he, from his gut, knows that this is supposed to be a draw, but he still plays on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, That is one where it could theoretically be a draw, but it could be very hard to defend because it's a hard technique to know as a human. And especially in that game, I know that Nepo was also in time pressure, which makes it even harder. So in situations like that, you should always continue. It's more where an engine would give you something like plus 10 or something where it's not just clearly a win, but anybody would know how to win. And that's where you're usually supposed to resign." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you find beautiful about this game? Is it the attacking chess and just the asymmetry of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the asymmetry and it's the fact that this is the dream for the King's Indian, where you're able to get a beautiful attack. And there was also those two really nice sacrifices where Black just continuously kept putting pressure on White's King to the point where he was able to win material. And the best part of it is that if the attack didn't work out, Black would have been completely lost." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How often does that happen, by the way? As an attacking player, how often do you put yourself in the position of like, I'm screwed unless this works out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In online chess, more than I should, and it's usually when I sacrifice, I know it's either gonna work or I'm lost. And those are the most fun positions to play usually. But in tournaments, if you're doing a sacrifice, you're playing it with 100% confidence because you're taking the time to calculate it. But yeah, when you have three minutes, you don't have time. So you take a whim and you follow your intuition and you find out later. Or you're very confident it'll work and you haven't calculated all the way until the end, but you've calculated to the point where you have enough in exchange for the sack and you think you could play that position." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you train chess these days? Do you practice? Do you do deliberate practice? I mean, you're in this tough position because you're also a creator, an educator, an entertainer. So do you try to put in time of daily practice?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't train chess anymore when I'm focusing on creating. I do if I'm preparing for a tournament, but back in the day, I would train very tournament, very seriously for tournaments. And the way it would work is I do opening preparation for a specific tournament because that's when you really need to have those lines memorized and you could also prepare for specific opponents. And I would do tactics to make sure I stay sharp. So those are the two things I would do every single day for a tournament and then mix up the rest with like maybe some end games, maybe some positional chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what does tactics preparation looks like? Do you do like a puzzle, like a random puzzle thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I would just train puzzles for at least like 30 to 60 minutes or books. And sometimes you were, and there's different kinds of puzzles. One, you could train for pattern recognition where you're supposed to go through them very quickly. And that's just so that when you're playing the game, if your mind is tired, it's still keeping, track of things a little bit more easily. And then there's where you're practicing your combination, and those sometimes take like 20 minutes to find because you have to just calculate a lot, and it's more like making sure that you've trained with that muscle. But Andrea is actually very good at finding ways to balance and still study while also doing content." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so what, you're able to do both?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the hard thing. I was getting very irritated with content because I'm very competitive. I don't like playing chess if I'm losing. And if you're talking and entertaining, you're gonna be losing more games than winning. So then I started doing more training streams where I'd bring on my coach. And one of the things that I wanted to add to Alex's training repertoire, so I would do daily puzzles every time I'm streaming, which helped me a lot, even if it's like, there's this thing on chess.com called Puzzle Rush, where you have three minutes and you just do puzzle after puzzle where they get incrementally harder. And it's just a really good way to build your pattern recognition, especially when you're rusty. So I would do that till I hit a high score and I wouldn't play any Blitz until I hit the score that I want. But that's kind of more like the fun part of chess studying. The very important one is actually analyzing your losses in your tournament games. And first you sit and you look through your mistake yourself and try to see if you can find the better moves. And then that's when you would check over with the computer to see if you're right. So game analysis is also very important, which I try to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I remember to give a shout out, I listened to a couple of episodes of the Perpetual Chess podcast, which is pretty good. But whatever I listened to, I remember the... I think they really focus on teaching people" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How to train." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, how to play, how to train, all that kind of stuff. They do like, yeah, I'm looking now, adult improver. So basically like how do regular noobs get better at chess? One of the things, one of the person that said, I think he was the grandmaster, but he said to maximize the amount of time you spend every day of like, basically as you were saying, like suffering. So like, you, it's not about the, like, you should be thinking, you should be doing calculating. So it's the opposite of what Magnus said, like, you should be doing a lot of time. It doesn't matter what the puzzle is or whatever the hell you're doing, but you should be like doing that difficult calculation. That's how you get better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it really depends what you're training, because I used to think the same, but it depends what your weaker at, because if you're doing the really difficult puzzles, you're training for like visualization and calculating more moves ahead than you typically would, which maybe you wouldn't get into that as often in a regular game, because typically you run into like three to four tactics, which are actually the easier and more fun ones to solve. So it really depends. And on top of that, as a hobbyist, your motivation is very different than when you're playing from a young age and have pretty high competitive ambition. And a lot of people who are new to chess, you could basically work on anything and still improve. So if you're focusing on something you like, you're probably gonna stick to it more and be more consistent, which I think is more helpful long-term." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was the most embarrassing loss of your career?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I had so many flashbacks, but I'm so glad it's a question for Andrea. I like that you specified. You know, it's funny. I mean because you said you're so competitive and like yeah I could tell just even from the way you said it that it like you hate losing Yeah, I mean that was the reason I hated chess in high school because it always be like but okay there's many traumatizing losses where it's you're like your top three you're running for first and then you throw a game you shouldn't but and this shouldn't hurt my ego as much as it does but it's always kids or when I was a high school girl it's the younger boys who are really cocky and when they win they start rubbing it in your face and they're yawning and looking around when like 90% of the game you were destroying them and you had this one tiny mistake and now their ego's huge. But I'll never forget, I was playing for a chess scholarship and it was tiebreaker for first and I think I lost to a 12-year-old girl who couldn't even use the scholarship, but she beat me in one first place and she got some other prize. So yeah, I was losing to that little girl who's literally like 2,300 now. Makes sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, you keep telling yourself that. What do you think? Do you think Gaspar was feeling that when he was playing 13-year-old Magnus? Like, why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, as much as it's a beauty of the sport that any age can be brilliant, any demographic, anything, I feel like when you're adults and you're paired against a kid, it's just hard not to let it get to you. And it depends. Maybe if they're a really sweet kid. But most times I play kids, they're just really arrogant. But I don't think they do it intentionally, because they're kids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, there is a certain etiquette thing where like you said, yawning and in general, like it's not- Your kids, there's no etiquette." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. They don't care. Yeah, the kids traumatized me too. I was playing in Vegas and it was not even my opponent, it was the board next to me. And the kid was at least 10 years old, 12 max, and he was playing against an adult and he takes out his hand and he starts doing a fake phone. to which the kid studying sitting across diagonally picks up their banana and starts talking like it's a phone and they're just mouthing words while their two adult opponents are thinking intensely at the game and then i see the adult look up look at the kid just making banana and the despair in his eyes as he sighs" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and they're not even doing for trash talk." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, they're just bored kids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, exactly What was the because you you play a bunch of people for for your channel? What was the most like memorable? What's the most fun most intense? There's a bunch of fun ones. You've played kids before some trash-talking kids That sounds great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They trash talk kids. Oh Nothing like losing to a 12-year-old who then starts doing a Fortnite dance. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that actually happened?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That did happen. He is, you know, a very young master. I think he became master when he was like nine years old or something. And he's very good at chess and doing a lot of training, but he's also incredibly good at trash talking. And he beat me one game and he stood up and he started doing the Fortnite dance. So you gotta just swallow your pride in those moments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is that culture of street chess players? It seems pretty interesting. I don't know, that seems to be celebrating the beauty of the game. It's the trash talking, but also having fun with it, but also taking it seriously. And you've done a few of those. Did you go to New York?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, in Union Square Park in Washington Square." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was that like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's such a unique place. I haven't seen it anywhere else in the U.S. where people are just professional chess hustlers, even if they're not necessarily a top player, but they play chess every single day. And so many of them learn chess by themselves and never had a professional coach, so they are quite good at it. They're also very tight-knit. They all know each other and it's a very social thing where you're not just playing chess, it's the experience of getting to know this person who's very much a personality and they talk to you. They could either give you tips or they could be really chatty and talk to you during. So it's a chess experience rather than just playing a game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you tell them what your rating is, or do you just let people, both ways, do you discover how good the person actually is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Initially, I loved going and not telling people my rating and just surprising them and winning games, but now we've gone so many times that they just know us, so we can't get away with it anymore, sadly. One time, actually, I don't know if I should share this, but one time we dressed up as grandmothers and we had prosthetics on our face, and I think they still recognized us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's probably the, there's other components, like probably the trash talk and all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was actually, no, it was funny. We were talking like grandmothers, but it was the way I held, it was the way I held- Like a grandmother talk like, back in my day. No, no, no, we're not bringing, we're not bringing this back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, what were your names? What were the code names?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my God. I think it was Edna. Edna, and I had a really, I can't remember the other one. But it was embarrassing because we were walking so slowly and Andrea dropped her cane or something at one point and then people in the park came to help her and we felt so embarrassed. But yeah, it was funny because they didn't know it was us until he saw the way I reached for my pawn and he said, the way you held your pawn, I knew it was you. It was like such a sneak thing. That was what blew the grandma car." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, do you have a style of how you play physically?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I didn't think we did until grandma went to play chess. Yeah, I've never thought about that. I think our style is just trash-talking now. If you're talking about style on YouTube and Twitch, we definitely have a distinctive style." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's that? What's your distinctiveness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm just talking shit. But not going too far. No, no, definitely. That's definitely going too far. If it's us two against each other. Oh, we trash talk each other so hard. So brutally. And I love looking at Andrea and watching her little nose scrunch up as she's annoyed and the satisfaction I get when that happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How many times do you play against each other online publicly? I think I've seen a couple of games." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We've played a lot of times. We try not to do it too often because it's repetitive, but every now and then when we haven't done it for a while, we'll go at it again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean repetitive? Is that implied trash talk right there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's just we play similar openings, so you just start seeing the same position too often. Andrea's really good at opening, so I just start playing bad openings to get her out of her preparation because I don't like opening theory very much. I just like playing the game and getting into middle games and end games. But yeah, typically the only time we're playing each other is when we're setting up in the park and we don't have opponents yet. And we need content, so we just play each other until people show up. But we always put stakes on the line, which makes it very interesting. Because otherwise it wouldn't be fun to play each other if there's no stakes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where is the most fun place you've played? Is it New York?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so. And it was actually when we set up in Times Square one night, we just brought a table with us and chess. And it's not even where people usually play chess, but it was so lively. There were all of the lights out and so many people just kept stopping by to play chess. And it was really one of my favorite streams. Just the opposite of like the classical chess world. It's super loud. There's music, there's cars, there's street dancers, even some naked people walking around who we had to be careful not to get banned. Yeah. But I honestly really like the chaotic environments for chess games, because I think it's a good way to break more into the mainstream culture and make it entertaining and appealing to anyone who doesn't know anything about chess. And also in an authentic way, because it's what we really like about chess when you're just enjoying the game, but also the atmosphere and the people who you're playing with. And that's one of the things that I think you see less when you're just thinking of chess as a competitive thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've, you mentioned a few other games, like the Bobby Fischer games, the Candidates Match, the Game of the Century, which I feel like is a weird game to call the Game of the Century when there's still like a few decades left in the century, but yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it wasn't an official thing. It was just a chess journalist. It's just like made on a chess article." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's stuck if you look on Wikipedia." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is all I do research wise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that particular one was a 13-year-old Fisher, and he did a queen sacrifice. I wonder, there's that movie, Searching for Bobby Fisher. Was that related? Because didn't they have a young, somebody who's supposed to be kind of like Bobby Fisher, played by Josh Waitzkin?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think he ended up being an international master. It wasn't based on Bobby Fisher, it was based on another player, but I liked how they told it through the lens of being inspired by Bobby Fisher." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you remember that game? Why do you think it was dubbed the game of the century?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was just journalists being like... I think part of it was the atmosphere where you have the U.S. junior champion who's this 13-year-old nobody, and it's the first time he's playing in a very competitive landscape against some of the top American players. and he goes up against an international master, so somebody who's a lot stronger than he is, who's played in Olympiads for the American team. He's having a bad tournament, but then he has this one game where he just shows off his tactical prowess and plays incredibly well. I don't know if this is true, but in the paper clippings of it, they'd say things like grandmasters were by the board and they would say things like, oh, Bobby is lost in this position. What is he doing? But there's this 13-year-old kid who's just playing incredibly well. And then that also happened before Bobby's started really rapidly improving at chess. Not that people knew that, but he kind of seemed like a rising star. So I think the game was beautiful, but I also think the idea of a 13-year-old kid coming out from nowhere and beating a top American player was very fascinating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there was aggressive chess and the interesting ideas. Yeah, taking big risks. It's cool to see a 13-year-old do that. Yeah. What about the, you mentioned that his match against Mark Taimana from their 71 Candidates match was interesting in some way. Why is it interesting to you? Move 45. I'm looking at some notes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is with the Bishop e3 I think I know which one you're talking about. Um, it's I wouldn't say a lot of these games on these lists I think are really great combinations that that when tactics come into play, which is what we're talking about But they're very good at exemplifying lessons This is why you study famous games so you can apply these lessons to your own games I think the main takeaway for this one was they were punishing their opponent from steering away from opening principles, which is something that we learned a little earlier, where he delayed the development of his king and put his queen out a little bit too exposed. So Bobby Fischer immediately punished that. And then there was just like a beautiful combination where it was like a 12 in a row perfect moves, which was a tactic, just winning the game. But it only came from punishing those mistakes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The mistake being bringing the queen out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Bringing the queen out and yeah, not castling your king right away. And these were just like opening principles that now they're written in books, but for books you would study these principles by studying games." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also, I'm looking at some notes, his dominance during the candidate's term was unprecedented. He swept two top grandmasters. I mean, that guy's meteoric rise is incredible. It's sad that I think at whatever, in his 20s, he then quit chess. One has to wonder where he could have gone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it is sad that we lost such a brilliant mind so early on. And it's also sad, I think, kind of what ended up happening in his life and the slowly going crazier." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there some aspect of chess that opens the door to crazy? Like how challenging it is on you, the stress, the anxiety of it, the- Isolation and being alone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Isolation. Yeah, this is a very lonely sport." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It is, even to you guys, since you both play it, it's still lonely, the experience of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was when I was competing a lot. I think the crazy part of it for me was how obsessed you can get about a board game, where you're optimizing your entire life to beat another person at pushing wooden pieces across a board, and it doesn't necessarily translate to other things. And the fact that so many people spend so much of their life on it, but you can also spend so much of your life because it's so deep and so interesting. And I mean, I've definitely experienced moments where I didn't want to do anything but chess. And I had that before I went to college where I just wanted to take a gap year and focus on chess because I went to high school, we moved a lot, there was always other things going on. So I felt like I could never really focus on chess. And the one time I could by taking a gap year, I ended up not doing because my parents really wanted me to go to university right away. But I think maybe if I had taken that gap year, I don't know if I would have gone back to school. So maybe it wasn't a bad thing. I'd also say that's pretty universal. I think if you wanna be the best at anything you do or any sport, you have to be that level of obsessed. So I don't know if that's only chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, some things, some obsessions are more transferable to a balanced social life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is true. Like healthy development. Yeah, chess is a lot less social than most other sports." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's something deeply isolating about this game. I mean, the great chess players I've met, I mean, they, it's like, it's really competitive too. And there's, something that you're almost nonstop paranoid about blundering at every level. And that develops a person who's really anxious about losing versus someone who deeply enjoys perfection or winning and so on. It's just this constant paranoia about losing. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but yeah. that creates a huge amount of stress over thousands of games, especially in a young person." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that blundering is such a painful experience because you could be playing a game that you've played for five, six hours and you have one lapse in focus and you blunder and you throw the entire game away. And sometimes not just the entire game, but the entire tournament. Now you can't place or do anything anymore. So you just feel those mistakes so strongly. Yeah, there's no one to blame but yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you guys hard on yourself? Have you been about losing? Like before you became super famous for streaming, where you could be like, well, fuck this, at least I can have fun playing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I was really hard on myself and I went to play a tournament in Canada to try to qualify for the Olympiad team. And I was like, well, I'm an adult now. I'm not going to feel emotional if I lose. And then I got there on the first day. I think I was ranked fourth in Canada for females. How long ago was this? This was earlier in the year, actually. And I go and I lose to somebody lower rated on the first day. And I think it was because I had blundered. And I went back to my room and I was like, I am not an adult. I'm not eating. I'm not leaving this room. I feel terrible. And I know I shouldn't, but it just cuts so deep. And then I actually ended up qualifying for the Olympiad team, but I didn't want to play because I didn't have enough time to train. And the losses are so painful that I was like, it's not worth it. Yeah, in high school and growing up, I just remember weekends, and I think being competitive in any sport, again, probably people relate to this, but spending weekends crying and even like Alex said, punishing yourself because you're disappointed in yourself because you fight so hard and you prepare and you study and you're like, oh, yeah. That's, once again, on the bright side, though, when you're studying so hard and after like a four-hour game and you actually are on the opposite end and you win, you feel like such a huge rush of dopamine and serotonin and you're like on a high from the win. So there's also plus sides or you can turn this around. But yeah, like Alex said, like losing after preparing for something and fighting on hours and hours is the worst feeling in the world. Did you ever get anything like that with martial arts?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so wrestling, I wrestled all through high school and middle school. Definitely, so it's an individual sport. I did a lot of individual sport, tennis, those kinds of things. But I think even with wrestling and tennis, you're still on a team. Right. You can still like, there's still a camaraderie there. I feel like with chess, especially you go on your own with the tournaments, like you really are alone. But I mean, I always personally just had like a very self-critical mind in general, I would not. This is one of the reasons I decided not to play chess, because I think when I was really young, I met somebody who was able to play blindfold chess. They were teaching me. They were laying in there on the couch, trashed, drinking and smoking. And they were- Sounds like a Russian. Yeah, exactly. They're now a faculty somewhere in the United States. I forget where. But he, making jokes, talking to others, and he would move the pieces Like he would yell across the room. And I remember thinking that if a person is able to do that, then that kind of world you can live in, inside your mind, that becomes the chessboard. To me, that meant like the chessboard is not just out here. It could be in here and you can create these beautiful patterns in your mind. I thought like, I had such a strong pull towards that where I had to decide either I'm gonna dedicate everything to this or not. You can't do half-assed. And then that's when I decided to walk away from it because I had so much other beautiful things in my life. I loved mathematics. I loved, just everything was beautiful to me. I thought chess would pull me all in. And there was nothing like it, I think, in my whole life since then. I think it's such a dangerous addiction. It's such a beautiful addiction, but it's a dangerous one, depending on what your mind is like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It reminds me of something I thought of before I stopped competing as much. And I'd look at people and think, imagine being so intelligent that you could become a grandmaster, and yet only spending the rest of your life being a grandmaster. Because it's one of those things where it does require a lot of mental power, but by doing chess, you're not going to be able to explore other subjects deeply. And not in a way that is bad necessarily, more an admiration and wondering what else could have been because I've just seen people get to these levels of obsession where it's all they want to do. And they're grandmasters, but they're not even top players, so they're never going to make a living out of it. They'll make like maybe 30, 40k a year max. they can't even focus on their competitive chess because they have to supplement it by teaching and doing things they don't like. And it's just because of how strong of an obsession it can be, because it truly is very intellectually rewarding. And I think that's what people are addicted to in the self-improvement, but you can get that from a lot of other things as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I think for me, what I was inspired by that stuck with me is that a human being could be so good at one thing. But to me, that person on the couch drinking and so on, I assumed he was the best chess player in the world. Like, to be able to play inside your head, it just felt like a feat that's incredible. And so I fell in love with the idea that I hope to be something like that in my life at something. It would be pretty cool to be really good at one thing. And like, life in some sense is a search for the things that you could be that good at. I didn't even think about how much money it doesn't make or any of that, is can I fall in love with something and make it a life pursuit where I can be damn good at it? And that being damn good at it is the source of enjoyment, not like, you know, not to win because you wanna win a tournament or win because you just wanna be better than somebody else. No, it's for the beauty of the game itself or the beauty of the activity itself. And then you realize that that's one of the compelling things about chess. It is a game with rules and you can win. If you wanna be really damn good in some aspect of life like that, it's a harder and weirder pursuit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't you feel like you kind of did that with computer science or AI related things? Like getting that level of damn good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one of the cool things about AI and robotics or intellectual pursuits or scientific pursuits is you can spend until you're 80 doing it. So I'm in the early days of that. One of the reasons I came to Texas, one of the reasons I didn't want to pursue an academic career at MIT is I want to build a company. And so that's, I'm in the early days of that AI company. And so it's an open world to see if I'm actually going to be good at it. But the thing that's there that I've been cognizant of my whole life is that I have a passion for it. Something within me draws me to that thing. And you have to listen to that voice. So with chess, you're fucked unless you like early on are really training really hard. I think life is more forgiving. You can be world-class at a thing after making a lot of mistakes and after spending the first few decades of your life doing something completely different. In chess, it's like an Olympic sport. There's no, perfection is a requirement, is a necessity. What do you think is that pursuit for you? Why did you decide to stream? What drew you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like these questions now are really getting deep." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, this is like a therapy session. I mean, what isn't it terrifying to be in front of a camera?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's terrifying to be in front of five cameras instead of six. Corrections, six. Six, okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's more terrifying for me to try to remember if I actually turned them all, like I mentioned to you off mic, I'm still suffering from a bit of PTSD after screwing up a recording of Magnus. He had to console me because that was the thing, is I felt, okay, you wanna build robots, if you can't get a camera to even run correctly, how are you going to do anything else in life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, no. Don't let it spiral like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was spiraling hard. And I was just laying there and just feeling sorry for myself. But I think that feeling, by the way, and the small tangent is really useful. Yeah. I feel like a lot of growing happens when you feel shitty, as long as you can get out of it. Don't let it spiral indefinitely. But just feeling really, really shitty about everything in my life. I was having an existential crisis. How will I be able to do anything at all? You're a giant failure, all those kinds of negative voices. But I think I made some good decisions in the week after that. I was like, okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you think you couldn't have made those decisions if you were less hard on yourself?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Me personally? No, I'm too lazy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so you really need to be angry at yourself enough to go and do what you want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's not even angry, it's just upset of being self-critical. Also for me personally, because I don't have proclivities for depression, I have a lot more room to feel extremely shitty about myself. So if you're somebody that can get stuck in that place, like clinically depressed, you have to be really, really careful. You have to notice the triggers. You don't wanna get into that place. But for me, just looking empirically, feeling shitty has always been productive. Like, it makes me long-term happier. Ultimately, it makes me more grateful to be alive. It helps me grow, all those kinds of things. So I kinda... Embrace it. Otherwise, I feel like I will never do anything. I have to feel shitty, but that's not a thing I prescribe to others. There's a famous professor at MIT. His name is Marvin Minsky. And when he was giving advice to students, he said, the secret to my success was that I always hated everything I did in the past. So always sort of being self-critical about everything you've accomplished. Never really take a moment of gratitude. And I think for a lot of people that hear that, that's not good. You should take a pause and be grateful, but it really worked for him. So it's a choice you have to make." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It reminds me of the quote, be happy but never satisfied, where you can have a positive spin and still want to improve yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, when did you decide to take a step in the spotlight, that terrifying spotlight of the internet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was actually my senior year of college, and I was really busy with work and school, and chess was kind of like this lost love. And the interesting thing is that the longer I don't play chess, the more I kind of miss playing it casually and enjoy it more, because then I start looking at it with fresh eyes. But I didn't have time to play tournaments, so I started streaming online because it was more social than just playing strangers on the internet without knowing anything about who they are. And I started slowly growing a community and got in touch with chess.com pretty quickly too. So then it was this hobby that I would do once a week, every Thursday at 8 p.m. And it was one of the things that brought me a lot of joy. And actually, I, speaking of depression, did struggle for at least 10 years of my life. And it was one of those things where chess and streaming was such a distraction and it brought me such great joy that I just kept doing it because I really, really liked it. And then I was working on something that didn't pan out and decided to go and take a risk and just stream full-time, which, you know, seemed a little bit weird at the moment, but... Was that terrifying, that leap? It was terrifying, but I had taken so many terrifying leaps in the past, and the last two hadn't worked out, but I was like, well, I'll get it eventually. So somehow having failed before and going through failure and knowing that I'll be okay made me more likely to just try something that was a very, very weird job. Goodbye, camera. I saw it die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the camera, we don't need it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. But one of the cameras died. Luckily, we have another five. Yeah, I know. Like, this is where, this triggers the spiral. Lex is gonna go like this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's still somehow awake. Is there advice you can give about the dark places you've gone in your mind, the depression you suffered from, how to get out from your own story?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Whenever I go to those really dark places, the scariest thing is that it feels like I will never get rid of this feeling, and it is very overwhelming. And I just have to kind of look back over time spans and remember that every single time I have got through it and remind myself that it is just temporary. And that has been the most helpful thing for me, because I just try to combat the scariest thing about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and then believe, have faith that it's gonna, like, this will go away." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And take action, obviously, to make sure it goes away. And I've also tried to spin it as depression is one of the hardest things I've had to deal with, but also one of the biggest motivators, because if I just am left with my own brain, I get very depressed, then I really like working or focusing on things. So it actually pushed me to try to focus on school, try to focus on chess, focus on whatever I'm doing. And also, if I'm feeling really bad, then there's probably something a little bit off. And I use it as a signal and try to think of it as, okay, this is just a sign that there's things that could be improved for long term." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about you, Andrea? Have you gone to dark places in your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd say my family, like I see Alex going through this, my mom also has very serious depression. Luckily, I got the genes where I don't go through that serious level of depression that they do. I'd say mine is much more temporarily. So it's more similar to what I was feeling when I was feeling shitty about- Exactly, you go through periods, yes, exactly, where like, but I know that it's not something that's clinical and that's just a genetic thing or a mental thing, or as I know is more serious for like my family members. And I did relate a lot with you where you're saying where that really pushes you and I felt that a lot through content where you're just kind of feel hopeless and kind of like an existential crisis where I don't like the content I'm doing. And that's what pushes me to like, okay, you have no choice but to try something that now you're going to be passionate about because otherwise you're going to be stuck in this never ending cycle. So it does, it's short term and then it helps me come up with the things that I enjoy the most content wise. And it also long-term taught me just how to have a more balanced life, like doing small things that make me happier on a daily basis to like working out, to eating healthier, which I notice when I don't do for weeks, I just get a lot more depressed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What has playing chess taught you about life? Has it made you better at life in any kind of way or has it made you worse? You know, a lot of people kind of romanticize the idea that chess is kind of like life or life is kind of like chess and becoming better at making decisions on the chess board is gonna make you better at making decisions in life. Is there some truth to that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always shy away from these comparisons with chess and life. Yeah, it has both positives and negatives. So one thing it really helps develop from an early age is having an analytical mind, but then you could also get paralysis of analysis where you've just thought of everything to death and you're moving too slowly when you just have to keep going forward because there's not a great path ahead. So it's more like exercising your brain and staying sharp and then also applying that to other things. Whereas if instead of playing chess, you're watching TV or something like that, you'd probably end up being less sharp. Yeah, I used to, in high school, I'd always preach like, ah, chess transfers to life skills that I would teach. I taught chess for a juvenile department, for a special education school. I'd cite studies in prisons where like, oh, playing chess helped them with X. And for your kids, it helps with teamwork and thinking over life choices. And now that I'm older, I don't believe in any of that BS. But I do think that the process of working really hard at something, which takes really long to see results and you have to be really dedicated. And like I remember in high school and in middle school, well, all my friends, they were having fun on the weekends and I have to be there studying until I was a chess a day and knowing one day will pay off. But for like two, three years, nothing paid off. Kind of learning that type of patience. with anything. It's like, you know, like getting a real job. I can't say I ever really worked a real job in my life since I went straight into streaming and I got to work for myself. But I'd say it's what people go to college for, like they learn how to live in the real world. And I'd say that that's what chess taught me as a kid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you're streaming, when you're doing the creative work, do you feel lonely? So a bunch of creators talk about sort of the, it's counterintuitive, because you're famous now. You know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sort of, not quite, but. We're very lucky to have each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is that the source of the comfort? Is there some sense where it's isolating to have these personalities? They have to always be having fun, being wild and so on. Or is it actually the opposite? Is it a source of comfort to know that there's so many cool people out there that are giving you their love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It started as a source of comfort because it started with a very small community who would be something it would be around 200 to 300 viewers. And, you know, only like 30 to 40 of them would actually chat actively. So you felt like it was a community, not an audience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you knew them personally almost." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. And it was people who were interested in chess. And I would really enjoy that. And then as we started growing bigger, the audience kind of changed where they're not there for you personally. They're there while you're entertaining. changed for me, and I ended up being a lot more self-conscious of things online, and started even thinking of myself more like a product than a human being when I'm online, because I had to- Brand. Yes, exactly. Otherwise, you just start taking everything personally that people comment about you, and it's based off a very small clip." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see, so it was almost a kind of a defense mechanism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. And it took time to get enough, because even if you have tough skin, eventually it gets to you when you're online every single day, listening to thousands of people's feedback on you. I think the loneliest part of being a creator is going through burnout, which everyone is just, it's bound to happen, which is why I think we're very lucky that we have each other because, right, it's a numbers game and you're viral and trendy at one point and then you have to fall and then there's months where you're just grinding every day. I'm like, Andrea, we're irrelevant. That's where I'm at. That's, that's really, like the worst part of being creator and figuring out how to get over that hump. But it makes me very grateful that I have my sister because I know that I'm not the only person going through it. And yeah, I know that most of my creator friends feel very lonely in that process because they don't have someone who's their family and their business partner and they're working by each other side by side. You kind of tie in your self-worth to your job and your content, and maybe even more extremely than other jobs because you also are the entire company and the entire product. So when things are going well or when things are not, you just need to be careful to not reflect it like, oh, I am doing bad. I am bad rather than the trends have now changed. There's outside things. We're going to keep going. And this is just the normal waves, which is how we think about it now. And also just about, are we enjoying this? Is this what we want to make? But we were stuck in the camp for a while when we 10X'd our viewership after the pandemic because people were home and playing chess. And then of course that dropped by like 70%. And then you see that and you're trying your best and you just kind of have to deal with it and be like, OK, I'm just going to keep persevering and maybe it'll get better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's so fascinating. I mean, this is a struggle of sorts in the 21st century of like how to be an artist, how to be a creator, how to be an interesting mind in response to this algorithm. I'm telling you, turning off views and likes is really good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't look at Twitch views for that reason, and I get obsessed with the numbers too, and I know Andrea does, but for me, what I try now is to be more focused in the moment, but Andrea somehow can do it even with the views." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you just, you get, you have fun with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, ooh, number one. I'm too much of like a given to the temporary satisfaction. Like I like seeing, I like knowing that if something happens right now, viewership's going to boost by a couple hundred and seeing that I'm right, of course. But what about when the viewers turn? Exactly. Well, and I always like, you just have this intuition now. And, but I think also the reason that it doesn't affect me so much is when we first started our content journey, we were only Twitch streamers and we, our livelihood were based on Twitch viewers. But now like I've learned how to recycle that content into like YouTube and shorts and other things where I know like, okay, if this stream does badly, there's so many more things you can do that also just have a much larger output. So it doesn't get to me as much as it did. Do you ever feel that with your podcasts or do you feel like it's been authentic since the start?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, so there's a million things to say there. So one is there's a reason I stopped taking a salary at MIT and moved to Texas is I wanted my bank account to go to zero because I do my best with my back against the wall. So one of the comforts I have is I don't care if this podcast is popular or not, I want it to not be popular. So I don't want it to make money. You're failing, Lex. Yeah, I wanna, I mean, I just do best when I'm, more desperate. That's like one thing to say." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Seems like a reoccurring theme with how you build up your greatest work, which is honestly very respectful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so I thank you, that's just like. I wouldn't recommend. Right, thank you for finding the silver lining for an unhealthy mental state. But the other thing is I was very conscious, just like with chess and those kinds of things, that I love numbers and I would be, if I paid attention, if I tried to be somebody at their best, like a Mr. Beast who, really pays attention to numbers, I would just not, I'd become destroyed by it. The highs and the lows of it. And I just don't think I would be creating the best work possible. But one of the, I mean, one of the big benefits of a podcast is listeners. And there's an intimacy with the voice. And I think that is much more stable and a deeper and a more meaningful connection than YouTube. YouTube is a fickle mistress. It's a weird drug that like, it really wants you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With very addicting feedback loops. When you have a video that's number one out of 10, oh my God, the adrenaline you get." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then the thing I really don't like also is the world, will introduce you as a person that has a video on YouTube with some X number of views. The world wants you to be addicted to these numbers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because they associate it with having done a good job. Yeah. Because that's what people think views are, even if it's not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, and primarily because they don't have any other signal of what's a good job. I think the much better signal is people that are close to you, your family, your colleagues, that say, wow, that was cool, I listened to that, that was really, I didn't know this, this was really powerful, this is really moving, and so on. But definitely I'm terrified of numbers, because I feel like, just like I said, I'd rather be, I would rather be a Stanley Kubrick, right? You'd rather create great art, not to be pretentious, but the best possible thing you can create. Whatever the beauty that's, the capacity for creating beauty that's in you, I would like to maximize that. And I feel like for some people like Mr. Beast, I think those are perfectly aligned. because he just loves the most epic thing possible, but not for everybody. I think there's a lot of people for whom that's not perfectly aligned. And so I'm definitely one of those. And I'm still really confused why anybody listens to this anyway. But that's also something I guess you're trying to find, trying to figure out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I get very afraid of ever becoming someone who just makes junk food content where you can't stop while you're in the moment and it has all of your attention, but when you're done, it didn't really bring any value to your life, which is something that I think the algorithm still does really reward and making sure that as we are learning how to create better content, it's still something that is going to be meaningful long-term." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, ultimately, you inspire a lot of young people. Yeah, those are the best." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When I get messages from people who are like, I played you a year ago, and my rating was 1,400, and now I'm 1,900. I'd like to challenge you again. It's a 14-year-old writing a former email. Those things are always very, very fun to get." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And even just outside of chess, it's just empowering to see, and like for young women too, to see that kind of thing. I mean, you guys are being yourself and making money for being yourself and having fun and like growing as human beings, which I think is really inspiring for people to see. So in that sense, it's really rewarding. And then like the way I think about it is, there is some benefit of doing entertaining type of stuff so that you get the, kind of like Mr. Beast does with philanthropy, right? The bigger Mr. Beast becomes, the more effective he is at actually doing positive impact on the world. Those things are tied together. But of course, with podcasts, you guys, well, maybe you have these kinds of tense things, but what kind of ideas, what kind of people do you platform? What kind of person, what kind of human being do you wanna be? Because you actually are becoming a person and, a set of ideas in front of the public eye and you have to ask yourself that question really hard, like really seriously. Because if you're doing stuff in private, you have the complete luxury to try shit out. I think you have less of a luxury to try shit out because the internet can be vicious and punishing you for trying shit out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And do you think that's sometimes a bad thing where you have less freedom to make mistakes?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you have two choices. So one, you put up a wall and say, I don't give a shit what people think. I don't like doing that because I like being fragile to the world, keeping my, sort of wearing my heart on my sleeve. Or the other one, yeah, you have to be, you have to actually think through what you're going to say. You have to think of like, What do I believe? You have to be more serious about what you put out there. It's annoying, but it's also actually, you should have always been doing that. You should be deliberate with your actions and your words. But I don't know, it's... But some of it, it's such a balance because some of my favorite people are brilliant people that allow themselves to act ridiculous and be silly. Elon Musk, who's become a good friend, is the silliest human of all. I mean, he's incredibly brilliant and productive and so on, but allows himself to be silly. And that's also inspiring to people. Like you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to, you can be a weird, a giant weird mess and it's okay. So it's a balance. I think when you start to delve into political topics, into topics that really get tense for people, then you have to be a little bit more careful and deliberate. But it's also wise to stay the hell away from those topics in general. Like I mentioned to you offline, somebody I have been debating whether I want to talk to or not is Karyakin on the chessboard because chess is just a game, but throughout the history of the 20th century, it was played between the Russians and the Americans and so on where they were at war, cold or hot war. And those are interesting. Those are interesting conversations to be had at the Olympics and so on. It's not just a game in some sense. It's like a mini war. And so I have to decide whether I wanna talk to him or not and those kinds of things, you have to make those kinds of decisions. For now, you guys are not playing chess with Donald Trump or Obama or so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We are not right now, no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How long is a stream? Like a few hours, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now they're two to three hours. When I was first streaming, I'd stream for like six hours a day. A day. At least, usually. Wow. Yeah, for like six to seven days a week." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you doing just like a talking one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "no, I would be playing chess the entire time while talking. And when I started streaming, that's kind of how everybody blows up on Twitch. You're just putting in crazy hours and you're always there. It's not about making the best content. It's about letting people feel like they're hanging out with you and just being on as much as you can. But I ended up feeling very burnt out because it's hard to be your best self when you're in front of a camera for that long because you do get scared of going into places where you wanna learn, but you might not be the best in, because it's harder to learn in public than do something that like, yeah, we're better than 99% of our viewers at chess, so that's a lot less scary than trying to play a game that you're bad at or discuss topics that you're interested in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, be, have the beginner's mind and be dumb at something. Right. Yeah, which is where the fun is and you get to learn together, but people punish you for it on the internet. What about you, Andrea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think like Alex said at the beginning, when we were grinding a lot, you don't really even have time for much of a private life, because you're streaming every hour of your life and people want it, like the appeal of streamers, it's called like being parasocial, where you feel like they're your friend and they like it because they want you to share everything about your life. Really the main challenge for me at first when trying to prioritize quantity over quality, which we're not doing anymore, was realizing that I can't turn everything I'm interested in and every passion into content. Before I'm like, well, I must stream more, but I like music and I like playing piano and I like reading into these topics and I like fitness. And then I'd try to live stream all of it and that's just, At some point, it's like just enjoy your time off for those hobbies and prioritize what you're good at, because that's just going to be better for the channel overall. So that was a learning lesson for sure. It's nice because there are some intersections when I have tried new things that I really enjoy and it pays off, but that's more less often. So it's more like you can be yourself, but only specific parts of yourself online and the rest. Sometimes it's nice to just keep private and feel that you could just give it your 100% freedom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I feel like I try to be the exact same person on podcasts as in private life. I really don't like hiding anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you're also a generalist, right? Where you have people with all topics. For us, we built our audience off of very specific things. So people sometimes feel like, even at the start when we started playing less chess, they're like, I subbed for chess. Why are you not playing chess? Exactly. People are tuning in for an interesting conversation on a bunch of topics. So like the more you are yourself, the better it is. But it is very hard when you build your brand on like one type of gaming content. Build your brand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, the way you become a journalist is you slowly expand. It's like expanded checkers. I guess that's the downward, Maybe poker. Yeah, exactly, poker. But also just the ideas, the space of ideas. And one of the cool things about chess is when you're talking over the chessboard, it's a kind of podcast." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is actually an idea we've had with playing chess while also doing a podcast and talking with people. It's kind of like an icebreaker where you're also focusing on the game at the same time. You know, we are slowly evolving and we're doing more things. Like one thing we wanted to do is spend less time in front of the computer. So now we're doing a chess travel show where we go to different countries and look at the chess culture. So it actually feels like we're doing things that we would wanna do and explore anyway. And maybe it's not as much in the idea space, which we both enjoy and do a lot in our own free time, but in the sharing cool experiences with our audience that we actually wanna do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you look forward to going?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're going to Romania on September 9th. And I think this is the most exciting for me because we're going back to the country where our entire family's from, where our grandmother taught our dad, who taught us how to play chess. It has a very strong chess culture. So it'll be very unique to go back and see how everything is when we haven't been back for a very long time. And for Romanians, it's very rare when there's a famous Romanian who accomplishes something. which is why like right now Andrew Tate's the most famous Romanian. But he's banned for a bad reason. Exactly. And there's like something very special about Romanian pride. And when we meet fellow Romanians in the U.S. like it's just an amazing connection. And like I hear the way my dad talked about like For example, Nadia, who was a famous Romanian gymnast. And he's like, yeah, like Romania, we sucked at everything. But when she won the Olympics for gymnast, every kid on the street was doing gymnastics because it's very rare that they make it to that level of success. And I think that we're super successful, super famous. But it is really cool to meet other Romanians through chess because it's a very special bond. You feel like it's a community and like you belong. Yeah. You can't get that anywhere else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask your opinion since you mentioned him, Andrew Tate. You're both women, successful women. You're both creators. So Andrew Tate is an example of somebody that has become exceptionally successful at galvanizing public attention, but he's also, from many perspectives, a misogynist. So let me ask a personal question. Do you think I should talk to him on this podcast? How would you feel as a fan somebody, I'm talking to the great Alex and Andrea Botez, and the next episode is with Andrew Tay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a double-edged sword, and most of these things are not as black and white as they seem. You know, because on one hand, I don't agree with his beliefs, and I think he's said a lot of things that are very hurtful and that influence people's opinions. At the same time, talking to someone through that and trying to get to the root of it and how much of it he used just as a social media tactic to maybe change the opinion of people who have been so influenced by him towards something that is maybe more understanding towards women or things like that could do some good, but at the same time, platforming someone like that and giving them more attention also signals to other people who have a platform that it's okay. So it's kind of weighing the pluses and the minuses. It's a very tough decision because it's not clear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the thing about the internet, when you make the wrong decision, you're going to pay for it. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the thing, like personally, and it is funny, like I think the whole way you rose to fame is just a growth hack and I've seen other people do it where like you just say kind of, I don't, honestly, I don't really listen to his content, cause I just find it so dumb, but I think he knows that by saying the dumbest, most controversial things, that's like a quick rise to fame. And I think surface level, like he can really hold it up, but that's why I would honestly enjoy tuning into a conversation where you're really breaking down to the core of those beliefs. And I think like the young kids who look up to him, and when you actually hear someone challenging it, could actually be helpful for people. But at the same time, It's a lot of bad publicity. People see your podcast. They see, wow, like they don't, if they don't know you and they don't know why you're interviewing him and they don't listen, they'll see that. And then a hundred percent. think it's for the other reason. That is something that I think is important. We try to find ways to have conversations and reach some mutual understanding and try instead of just amplifying the worst about every human being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so one of the major reasons I'm struggling with is because I really enjoy talking to brilliant women. I think it's also, a lot of women reached out to me saying like, It is what it is, but they're inspired when a female guest is on. And to me, if I talk to somebody like Andrew Tate, even if I have a really hard hitting, I think it could be a very good conversation that lessens the likelihood that a brilliant, powerful female will go on the show. Because they'll never watch it, but the thing we do in this society is we put labels on each other. Well, Lex is the person that platforms misogynists. I did a thing where Joe Rogan got in trouble over an n-word controversy earlier in the year and Joe's a good friend of mine and I said that I stand with Joe that he's not a racist or something like that and within certain communities I'm now somebody who's an apologist for racists. or racist myself, that kind of thing. And we put labels without ever listening to the content, without ever sort of, actually, just even the very simple step, or it seems to be difficult of like, taking on the best possible interpretation of what a person said and giving them the benefit of the doubt and having empathy for another person. So you have to play in this field where people assign labels to each other and it's difficult. But ultimately, I believe, I hope that good conversations is a way to like a greater understanding for people to grow together as a society and improve and learn the lessons, the mistakes of the past. You also have to play this game where people just like putting labels on each other and canceling each other over those. Or that guy said one thing nice about Donald Trump, he must be a far-right Nazi. Or the opposite, that this person... said something nice about the vaccine. He must be a far left, whatever. Apologist for whatever, for Fauci. Where most of us I think are ultimately in the middle. It's a weird thing. But I think, and it's also painful on a personal level. People have written to me about things like single words. half sentences that I've said about either Putin or Zelensky, where they have hate towards me because of what I said. Either, both directions. I've now accumulated very passionate people that some call me a Putin apologist, some call me a Zelensky apologist. And it hurts to, given how much I have family there, how much I've seen of suffering there, and to carry that burden over time and not let it destroy you is tough. So like, do you wanna take on another thing like that when you have conversations? Or can I just talk to awesome people like you do? where it's not that brutal. Or you're interesting, you're fascinating, you're inspiring, you're like fun, you know, not all those difficult things that come with more difficult conversations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but somebody has to be making those difficult decisions and challenging the notions that we should cancel someone just for slightly disagreeing with us, and it's very hard to take that on personally, and I think that's a huge part of it. When you know it's something you're doing for the right reasons, and you're getting a lot of people coming and misinterpreting it, it's very painful. But I think you have to ask yourself long-term if when you made that decision, you ultimately thought it would be better or worse for your listeners to know that conversation. And then if you can sleep with it at night, take the risk." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, when I actually, when I talk to people that, especially like astrophysicists, and you realize how tiny we are, how incredible, like how huge the universe is, like you don't, it doesn't matter. You can do anything. You could like, you can walk around naked, talk shit to people, do whatever the hell. And actually in modern social media, people just like forget. It's like, it's ultimately liberating. Just try to do, at least from my perspective, the best possible thing for the world, you can take big risks and it doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's the other thing with being cancelled nowadays, because everyone's attention is much more short-sighted, you can get cancelled and then it'll blow over in three days. And you actually see things like this on Twitch very often, where people just have bursts of outrage and they come into your chat and they're all spamming and saying mean things. And then three days after, and of course, they're not actually ever serious things. They're usually like things clipped of any streamers and like their worst moments, but then people forget about it pretty soon after." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're able to accept that when somebody's being shady to you for a day?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I still get sometimes emotional about it, especially when I'm like, oh wow, these things that are being said are not true, or this is clearly taken out of context, but I've just accepted that it's part of the job, and if I am trying my best, and I am trying things with as good intentions as possible, then I just try to learn every time that happens, and be like, okay, what could I do better, and what is just part of the job?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let's start some controversy. Who's the greatest chess player of all time? Is it Magnus Carlsen? Is it Garry Kasparov? Is it somebody else, Bobby Fischer? Do you have a favorite, Alex?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So whenever I hear this question, I interpret it in a very specific way where it's not who was the most talented chess player or who had the most impact on the chess world, but who is the greatest at playing chess, where if you were putting all of these players at their peak, who would be the best? And we're kind of living in a world where obviously humans are becoming more like cyborgs and their tools make them a lot more powerful. And the computer is the most powerful tool for chess that we've ever witnessed. And the top players now, someone like Magnus Carlsen or Garry Kasparov, if they were going to go towards people like, you know, even Lasker or Bobby Fischer back in the day, Lasker, he was world champion for 27 years. He was the best in his field by far. But would he be able to stand up to someone like Magnus Carlsen who has had these tools? I don't think so. Most chess players have said Garry Kasparov, and I think even Magnus has said that in the past, but I like to think of it as Magnus in his peak and Garry at his peak, and because Magnus was able to live more in a computer era, I feel like so far he's the greatest of all time. And some studies say things like how there's rating inflation, but I looked into some of them and they basically calculated people's play over the years, and it seems that there hasn't been inflation. People are just getting better, and I think it's because you have better tools at chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also one of the cases, what's your?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was gonna say, I actually, I disagree with that. Good, make it interesting. I think I would judge the greatest player of all time in relative to the time that they lived in, and Magnus, although he is technically the strongest chess player in history, that is because he had computers to study chess with, and of course, if you compare him to like Garry Kasparov, he plays most like Stockfish, but Garry Kasparov, at his time, he beat more players of his skill level than Magnus did, and Magnus loses more often. He also, of course, held the belt for 20 years more. So I'd say actually, because Garry lacked the help of computers to study chess and overall performed better against players of his skill level, I think he would be number one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nice. Yeah, but I mean the case that people make for Magnus on many, I mean what Alex said, but also Magnus plays a lot and he doesn't, he plays a lot blitz, bullet, like he puts he gets drunk and like he's really putting himself out there and in all kinds of conditions and he's able to dominate in a lot of them. We get to see many of the like losses or blunders and all that kind of stuff because he just puts himself out there. And I think Kasparov was much more like" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I never saw him play drunk, right? I just don't know him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's very focused on world championship. It's very limited number of games and very focused on winning. And so there's some aspect to the versatility, the aggressive play, the fun, all of that, that I think you have to give credit to. Oh, 100%. In terms of just the scope, the scale of the variety of genius exhibited by Magnus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And he might not even be done yet. I don't know if he'll ever hit 2,900, but we can't judge yet, because he's not at the peak of his career, potentially." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about him not playing world championship? Isn't that wild? The entirety of the history of chess in the 20th century going like, meh. It's walking away from this one tournament that seems to be at the center of chess. What do you think about that decision?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can't help but be disappointed as a chess fan who wants to see the best player in the world defend his title, but I also understand it on a personal level and not feeling as satisfied when you're going to the World Championship and having to defend against people who are less strong than you. And also imagine winning World Championships and not feeling a joy out of that. Yeah. So maybe by not doing that and focusing instead on a goal like 2900, he'll be more likely to accomplish it because he's focusing on what actually motivates him to play chess. But I do think that it will hurt how we judge the next world champion. I think it won't change him being the best player in the world. And for someone to replace him, even let's say like Nepo versus Sting, even if one of them win and right on some stance, it does lower the merit because now who has the World Chess Championship title isn't actually the best player in the world. And that has happened before in the past, but still going to take them the same effort to prove when they would pass him like 10, 20 years. to become stronger than Magnus. So I don't think it changes the skill level that it takes to become the best chess player in the world. I think for chess fans, it's very disappointing, but I think in the overall like grand scheme of like the public view to people who don't really, so like, you know, what breaks the popular culture? And you think of what names people know who don't play chess, like Bobby Fischer did it. Most people know Kasparov or Magnus. It takes the same ability and talent and that doesn't change. I think it does change, though, if you're playing a player who's not as strong. But I see your point as well, and I know we differ on this. Like I said, I heard you ask Magnus, but what is your take on it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, listen, his answer is kind of brilliant. which he's not saying he's bored of the world championship. He's bored of a process that doesn't determine the best player. And it's too anxiety-inducing to him to have a small number of games. He doesn't mind losing, which is really fascinating, to a better player or somebody who's his level. He's more anxious about losing to," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A weaker player." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The weaker player because of the small sample size. Now, if like poker players had that anxiety, they would never play at all, right? That's the world series of poker. You get to lose against weaker players all the time. That's the throw all the dice. But that's an interesting perspective that he would love to play 20, 30, 40 games in the world championship, but then he would enjoy it much more. And also play shorter games because they, emphasize the like pure chess, actually being able to, like much more variety in the middle game, just to see a bunch of chaos and see how you're able to compute, calculate and intuition, all that kind of stuff. I mean, that's beautiful. I wish the chess world would step up and meet him in a place that makes sense, you know, change the world championship. So FIDE changing it somehow that allows for that or having other really respected tournaments that become like an annual thing that step up to that. or more kind of online YouTube type of competitions, which I think they're trying to do more and more, like the Crypto Cup and all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and the Grand Tour. The Grand Tour. Which takes a lot of the top players and they do it online in shorter formats." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's his perspective. perhaps narrow perspective as I romanticize the Olympic Games and those are every four years and the World Championships because they're rare, because the sample size is so small. That's where the magic happens. Everything's on the line for people that spend their whole life 20 years of dedication, everything you have, every minute of the day spent for that moment. You know, you think about like gymnastics at the Olympic games. There's certain sports where a single mistake and you're fucked. And that stress, that pressure, it can break people or it can create magic. Like a person that's the underdog, has the best night of their life, or the person that's been dominating for years, all of a sudden slips up. That drama from a human perspective is beautiful. So I still like the world championships, but then again, looking at all the draws, looking at like, well, the magic isn't quite there. So to me, when I see faster games of chess, that's much more, that's much more beautiful. So, but then I don't understand the game of chess deeply enough to know Like, does it have to be so many draws? Like, is there a way to create a more dynamic chess? And he talked about random chess with a random starting position. That's really interesting. But then, of course, that's like, then you do have to play hundreds of games and that kind of stuff. But I think it's great that the world number one is struggling with these questions. because he's in the position, he has the leverage to actually change the game of chess as it's publicly seen, as it's publicly played. So it's interesting. He's still young enough to dominate for quite a long time if he wants. So I don't know. With Kasparov, the fight between nations, I hope they have the world championship and I hope he's still a part of it somehow. I hope he changes his mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And comes back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "comes back, some kind of dramatic thing, I don't know. But it is, his heart is not in it. And then, and then that's not beautiful to see, right? Yeah, it is beautiful that the thing he wants is a great game of chess against an opponent that's his level or better. And that's great that he's coming from that place. But I hope he comes back tomorrow. Because the World Championship is a special thing in any sport." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you do wish that the person who wins the World Championship is the best player in the world?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No. I hope that the best people in the world, the two best people in the world are the ones that sit down. but the person that wins is the person that, that's the magic of it. Nobody knows who's going to win. I think Magnus is so, he really wants the best person to win. Like the, that's why he wants the large sample size. But to me, there's some magic to it. The stress of it, the drama of it, that's all part of the game. Like it's not just about the purity of the game, like the calculation. the pure chess of it. It's also like the drama, the pressure, the drama, all of it. The shit talking, if it gets to you, the mind games." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is the part that's fun to watch, but less fun to be playing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's why it's great. Who can rise under that pressure and who melts under that pressure. There's a lot of people that look up to you, like they're inspired by you because you've taken a kind of nonlinear path through life. Is there any advice you have for people like in high school today? they're trying to figure out what they wanna do. Do they wanna go to Stanford? Do they wanna pursue a career in, I don't know, in industry or go kind of the path you guys have taken, which is have the ability to do all of that and still choose to make the thing that you're passionate about your life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always like the calculated risks approach where when you're younger, it's okay to take more risks because you have a lot more time, but there has to be a reason why you're doing that particular risk. Is it something that you've spent a lot of time already really passionate and working on, or is it just something that's trendy and you want to do it because you don't have a better option? And that's actually similar to what Andrea did when she decided to go into streaming instead of school. Yeah, it was the reason I got into streaming because I was initially going to go to college, but the pandemics, it was right at the beginning of the pandemic, and all my classes were online. And I never thought, ever since I was 12, like my dream was school and I saw myself nowhere else than going to university. And I just, I thought of it and kind of weighed out the risks. I'm like, well, if I take a gap year and I try streaming with my sister, what do I have to lose? I gained some experience working with someone who has a lot more experience than I do. And then I can go back to school after. And if I go to school right now, I do online classes for a year and that's something that I could do at any time. So that's why it made a lot of sense for me to go into this. But of course, this is also a very unique so I don't know how applicable, but I do think overall the calculated risk is a really good lesson. So life is like chess. Exactly. Maybe sometimes. Exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You also, have you considered a career in professional fighting? I saw you did a self-defense class, you did a little jiu-jitsu." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Did you see the 10-year-old kid who- Throwing her? Yes, and apparently I could have broken a leg. But it's actually funny, like chess boxing is a thing, and I have been doing a lot of boxing. Physical activity is honestly one of my favorite things to do, and I have been testing it out on content, and we have a creator friend who's hosting a chess boxing tournament, but there's no woman who could match me, unfortunately, because all the opponents are male, and I can't fight a guy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How does chess boxing work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you do a round of chess and a round of boxing. And we actually did a training camp for it before. And of course, like after you go into the ring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is this real? Is this serious?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's amazing. We went to a London chess boxing club. No, it seemed like videos. I thought it was something you just do in Russia or something. No, it's a real sport. Yeah, it's a real sport. Yeah, no, it's very cool. But after you get really tired, you're more likely to make a mistake and they call them Jaffers or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's probably good strategies. Like, what do you want to, because some of it is a cardio thing. Do you want to work on your chest or your boxing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They do both. It's very fun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, from a content perspective, I'm sure there's a lot of people that would love to see." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't want to see Andrea getting hit. That would be rude. I would love to. Unless she doesn't get hit. Our roommate fought in a fight and she did end up winning, but seeing her get hit, I thought I was going to throw up. I just think it was so cool. She had no experience in boxing whatsoever. Coming from someone in the content world where you start waking up six days a week at 6 a.m. and she's training every day like a real professional athlete, I think it's such a unique experience and also a really test of how much you can really commit to this and progress. And I think that's really rewarding. Did you ever end up doing the marathon with David Goggins that you were training for?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I got injured, but we're gonna do it soon. That's on my bucket list, just to see what your limits are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're ready to do it? What did you do leading up to this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're just gonna go into it. It's mental anyway, but I do run a lot to make sure like there's no, like, you know, you have to be, have a base level of fitness to make sure your body doesn't completely freak out. But other than that, you know, 50 plus miles is just about like, taking it one step at a time and just being able to deal with the suffering and all the voices, the little voices that tell you all the excuses like, why are you doing this? This blister is bleeding, whatever the thing that makes you want to stop, just shut it off." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sometimes it feels like you like pain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, well, no, no, but the pain does seem to show the way to progress. in your terms of life. In my world. Something that's really hard and I don't want to do, that's usually the right thing to do. And I'm not saying that's like a universal truth, it's just if there's a few doors to go into, the one that I want to go into least, that's the one that usually is the right one. Afterwards, I will learn something from it. The David Goggins thing, I don't know. Listen, we're talking offline, the conversation with Liv. She's a very numeric, calculated risk. Everything is planned. I go with the heart. I just go whatever the hell. I think two years ago, I woke up, it was summer. I decided to tweet, I will do as many pushups. I don't know why I did this. but I will do as many push-ups and pull-ups as this tweet gets likes, something like that. And then it got like 30,000." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And once you put it out on the internet, you're held accountable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, for myself, I mean, in some sense. And then that's when I already was connected to David at that point, but that's when he called me. And then I have to do it. And then I did it and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. How long did you take? I did it for seven days and I got injured, so I did about a few thousand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wait, so this is what got you to be injured, this challenge? No, it's different, I keep getting injured." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I keep getting injured doing stupid stuff. But this particular thing, I started doing the, you don't realize that you have to really ramp up. So I got an overuse injury, tendonitis, on the shoulder all the way down to the elbow. So I took like eight or nine days off and then started again. And then it took about 31 days to do. The number was like 26, 27,000. Yeah. And it took like three, four hours a day." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, God. Yeah. Sounds like torture." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and not constantly asking myself, what am I doing with my life? This is why you're single, was the voice in my head. This is what are you doing? It's like face down on the carpet. Like exhaust like what what because of a tweet what is this? But you record it or you just I did I did record it for myself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay now Every day and that's what it's like to be a twitch streamer, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was really important to me actually to not make it into content I you know, I recorded everything. So maybe one day I could publish it. I recorded it mostly because it's really hard to count when you get exhausted. Like I just, so you actually enter the Zen place where, with pushups, where it's just like, it's almost like breathing. You get into a rhythm and you can do quite a lot. But I wanted to make sure, like, if I actually get this done, I want there to be evidence that I got it done for myself so I can count it. I had this idea that I would use machine learning to like automatically process the video to count it. But then like after like 10 days, I didn't even give a shit what anyone thought. It was about me versus me. I didn't even care." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Lex versus Lex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And then, yeah. And David was extremely supportive, but that's when I realized like I really want to go head to head with him. Yeah, those kinds of people are beautiful. They really challenge you to your limits, whatever that is. The thing is, physical exercise is such an easy way to push yourself to your limit. In all other walks of life, it's trickier to configure. Like, how do you push yourself to your limits in chess? It's hard to figure out, but in physical- Do you think it's ever dangerous? Yeah, and that's why it's beautiful. The danger." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't like that your eyes lit up as I said that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like if you don't know how you're gonna get out of it, you're gonna have to figure out something profound about yourself. And I mean, one of the reasons I went to Ukraine is I really wanted to experience the hardship and the intensity of war that people are experiencing. So I can understand myself better, I can understand them better. So the words that are leaving my mouth are grounded in a better understanding of who they are. And I mean, the running a lot with David Gong is so much simpler. thing to do, simpler way to understand something about yourself, about the limits of human nature, I think most growth happens with voluntary suffering or struggle. Involuntary self, that's where the dark trauma is created. But I don't know, maybe it is, maybe I'm just attracted to torture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And what is it that your mind does when you're going through this involuntary suffering?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think, it. there's like stages. First, all the excuses start coming. Like, why are you doing this? And then you start to wonder like, what kind of person do you want to be? So all the dreams you had, all the promises you made to yourself and to others, all the ambitions you had that haven't come yet realized, somehow that all becomes really intensely like visceral as this struggle is happening. And then when all of that is allowed to pass from your mind. You have this clear appreciation of what you really love in life, which is just like, just living. Just the moment, the like, the step at a time. I think what meditation does, and it's most effective, is just that pain is a catalyst for the meditative process, I think. For me, for me. I don't know. Magnus said there's no meaning to life. Do you guys agree? Or no? Why are we here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do not know why we're here, but I do know that having some kind of meaning that I give my own life makes it a lot more motivating every day, so I just try to focus on finding meaning within my own life, even if I know it's just self-imposed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then chess is a part of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Chess is a part of it, Maybe it was more so when I was younger, because it was easier to just feel like I want to improve as a person and to use chess to kind of measure some kind of self-improvement. And now it's more different than that, and I think I need to once again find what that, you know, northern star is. Basically, I need to have a why for why I'm doing things, and then I feel like I could do very hard things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What role does love play in the human condition? Alex and Andrea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll let Andrea start this one since I took the last. Sure. And yeah, just to add my answer for the last one, I also kind of think, well, life is meaningless, but I like the stoic idea where that's something that you live to revolt against. But for the second question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The revolt against the fundamental meaninglessness of life, I like it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, exactly. Yeah. It was what does love play? What role does love play?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in the human condition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The way I see it, love is a reason you want to share experiences with other people. That's how I see it. Like the people you really love, you want to share the things you're going through with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The good and the bad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. That's my simple take on love. My take on it is that. Part of what it is to be human is to be somebody who feels things emotionally and love is one of the most intense feelings you can have. Obviously there's the opposite of that and there's things like hate, but I think the love you feel for people like your parents and your friends and romantic love in that moment is much more intense than in other situations. And I think it's also just very unique to humans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "what I appreciate about it. Maybe that's the meaning of life. Maybe that's what the Stoics are searching for. Andrea, Alex, thank you so much for this, and thank you for an amazing conversation. Thank you for creating, keep creating, and thank you for putting knowledge and love out there in the world." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, I take MDMA, cannabis, and all the rest of these drugs, too. I've tried those drugs. The experience in the body and the mind, I don't really know what people want to know in that regard. It's like saying, what is the experience of having an orgasm? in the body and the mind, or some other sort of event that you really enjoy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I don't really know what people- Is that what poetry is for, for describing these kinds of experiences? I mean, I guess, given MDMA, given psilocybin, in the full context of that, maybe it's more useful to say, what are the differences in experiences that your mind goes through? Like chemically, biologically, So it's like keeping it strictly to the sort of the biology of it versus the full environmental human experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, see, this is a mistake that people make all the time. They try to act as if biology is the only determinant of drug effects, and that's just not how it works. You need the environment. You need the cage, as they say. If you don't have the cage, you don't get the full extent of the effects. And so, like, you can take MDMA and have an awful time. You can have a time in which you get paranoid and so forth. And then you can take that drug under the right conditions and it just be like one of the best moments you've ever had. It certainly enhanced a number of my relationships. But I've also had some times with MDMA that haven't been so lovely when the people who you are hanging out with You don't know them, you're distrustful and all of those kinds of things. So it's important to put context in it. Now we can talk about drugs at a biochemical level, at a biological level. And we kind of do that in this country with this fascination with neuroscience. And that's an inappropriate kind of fascination in the way we talk about it. So we can talk about opioids and then we can talk about endogenous opioid system in the brain. We can talk about dopamine and other sort of monoamine transmitters and what opioids are doing to them. And we can do the same thing with MDMA. And we won't be any closer to understanding the sort of experience that is induced by these drugs. Certainly the experience that we all seek. You know what I'm saying?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So getting a positive experience or getting a negative experience is strongly defined by the environment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Strongly dependent upon the environment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the environment is a very, it's a short word that can describe a lot of things. So would you say the environment is important, or the people, where you are currently in your life, or is it also dependent on the full trajectory of your psychology, of your life experiences, of your parents, of the people you came up with, of the trauma you've experienced, of the hopes and dreams that were crushed, or not, or the opposite, or the success levels, or all those things. what are the interesting sort of landscape of experiences that contribute to how you actually feel when you take a drug?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right on. So all of those things are important, but you know, like if someone had trauma in childhood and they did the work and they dealt with it, that's not so important in this case. But if they didn't deal with it and that trauma is being triggered in that event, in that moment, then it's important. But let's just take somebody like me. I'm 54 years old. I'll be 55 this month, actually. You know, I've done a lot of work in terms of figuring out who I am, and I'm comfortable with myself. And I know how to set limits for whatever it is I'm doing. And so I know I need to work out. I know I need to eat well. I know I need to sleep well. I know I need to be in an environment with people within my trust. And then if all of those things are met, oh, it's likely to be a good time. You know what I'm saying? But if I haven't slept, if I haven't worked out, if I don't feel good, it won't be a good time. But I try and be responsible and take care of my eating habits, sleeping habits, make sure my responsibilities are taken care of. And so when I'm in that moment, I just enjoy that moment. I'm there. I'm not thinking about a bill that I didn't pay. I'm not thinking about, oh, I forgot to do this for my kid. I'm not thinking about that because all of those things are taken care of. If they're not taken care of, it will impact the experience and it may negatively impact the experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that is the counterintuitive, even controversial finding from your recent book. So we should kind of, I know it seems obvious to you, but I think a lot of people hearing this would think it's quite non-obvious. So in your new book, Drug Use for Grownups, you write for the findings section, I discovered that the predominant effects produced by the drugs discussed in this book are positive. It didn't matter whether the drug in question was cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin. Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic, empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil. They also experienced enhanced social interactions, a great sense of purpose and meaning, and increased sexual intimacy and performance. This constellation of findings challenged my original beliefs about drugs and their effects. I had been indoctrinated to be biased toward the negative effects of drug use, but over the past two plus decades, I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding. These words are very counterintuitive to a lot of people. I think like you also mentioned in the book and elsewhere, you know, people have come around to maybe psilocybin being one such drug, maybe cannabis being one such drug, but you also mentioned other drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine. Can you just linger on this point? How do we get the positive effects of those drugs and why in the media and the general conception we have of these drugs is that they were going to make a bad life worse or ruin a good life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so your first question was how do we harness the positive effects? How do we increase the likelihood of getting the positive effects? Again, like I said, we wanna make sure that people are responsible and they've handled their responsibilities, make sure they eat well, sleep well, exercise, all of those sorts of things play an important role. And also if they know exactly what they're getting and then they're not paranoid about, oh, it's something contaminated in some adulterant in my drug. So you wanna make sure you know exactly what you have. Once you satisfy those kind of things, you understand the dose and potency, you understand all of those things, to decrease any sort of anxiety you might have about the substance itself, it increases the likelihood that you will have a better time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So anxiety is the big one, you need to remove the anxiety." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Anxiety is critical. It's huge. Many of the negative effects that we see with drugs have to do with anxiety. And not necessarily anxiety because the drug induced it, it's the anxiety that the situation induced a lot of times. And then you ask like, well, why does this sound counterintuitive? Why does the media report differently? Well, because there's money in reporting the negative effects almost exclusively. Think about writing a newspaper article. It's really easy to get the population all ginned up about something like an opioid crisis, overdoses, and you don't even have to tell people. how to keep people safe if you're talking about overdose. You don't even have to say why people are dying from overdoses. Like overdoses in our country happen largely because people get contaminated drug, because people are combining sedatives and they don't know that this enhances the respiratory depressing effects of drugs. They don't know. But when you read these newspaper articles, They don't say this. They don't say how to keep people safe. All they do is frighten the population. There's money in that. And then we think about people who write TV shows, the people who write movies. Most of the stuff written about drugs is just bullshit. I think about, I love going to watch comedians and the comedians, when they talk about drugs, again, most of the things that they say about drugs, It's bullshit. I mean, you can say the stupidest things about drugs and be believed. You can write a movie and you don't even have to develop your characters if you throw drugs into the mix. You say, oh, he's a drug dealer. you don't have to say anything about that person's background or about that person being developed as a character because the population think they know. And the writer is lazy and does not do any sort of development. Just think about any... Let's think about the Sopranos, for example. They have a new program coming out. So let's think about them for a second. The Sopranos is a show in which the lead character, Tony, kills people for a living. That's what he does, right? This character actually made us sympathetic for him when he is besmirching and denigrating his nephew Christopher for using a drug. And we feel sympathy for Tony, the character, who just killed somebody, who is a horrible person, but being a drug user is a worse person. That's what the show wants us to believe. Tony's a racist, a murderer, all of these things, but we feel sympathy for him. But we don't feel sympathy for anyone who uses drugs. That's some crazy shit. I mean, and the American public buys into it. That's wild to me, that we all bought into this crap. And that's what we do in damn near everything that's in film, on television. And it's like, what's wrong with you people?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So why are there not more stories of grownups using drugs, the full spectrum of drugs that we're talking about? Why isn't there? So we talked offline about Joe Rogan. He's somebody who started smoking weed later in life, which is an interesting story. Like when he's already very successful and he has a very interesting way of describing his experience with weed that it was like enhancing just productivity. It actually, I think he says like it increases anxiety a little bit in a way that was productive, like paranoia, not anxiety. And so that's an interesting story of an adult talking about the use of weed for productivity purposes. But you don't get those stories very often. Why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Um, I think fear people are afraid that they will be, uh, belittled, uh, dismissed all of these things as a drug addict or some negative thing, but cannabis is lightweight. Come on. Uh, you can, you can admit cannabis these days. And the fact that, uh, I don't know, uh, when Joe started, but if he did start later in life, that's cool. I mean, you are mature, developed, uh, You have developed some responsibility skills, all of these kind of things. This is a good thing. You don't want people to engage in any kind of behaviors when they're young and immature that might put them in harm's way. And so we want people to be developed. at least. I mean, whether it's being in a relationship with a partner, or whether it's driving an automobile, all of these things that can be potentially harmful, but extremely beneficial if you are responsible enough to handle them. You want people to be mature, so that's a good thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how are you supposed to, like somebody like me, somebody like Joe, how are you supposed to understand what the dangers are, what the negative effects are? So you said automobile, relationships. I think I have a reasonably, it's crappy, but reasonable understanding of all the troubles I can get with in relationships and what things to avoid. Same thing with driving a car. I have no idea. I'm in the dark in terms of what, are the things to be careful about, what to avoid with drug use when we're talking about the heavy drugs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Have you ever drank alcohol?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. That's drug use. I'm Russian. I know, I drink a lot. But I understand that because culture came up. I was taught a lot of like, this is what you don't do. And this is what you do. This is when you drink a lot. I mean, you see the effects, you see the, there's a lot of negative examples. There's positive examples of social stimulant. There's examples of great artists using alcohol to sort of, I don't know, to help be the catalyst for that magic moment for, you know, all of that. I don't, I have some examples now. especially in America, the same with weed. More and more you're starting to get a lot of stories of psychedelics of different kinds. There's psilocybin where you have mushrooms or even MDMA used sort of positively. There's kind of like negative stories from the past about acid, about LSD being used. ultimately for productive ends, but it destroyed the person. That's kind of how the story goes. It was like a trade-off. You take, it's like, what is it? Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn guitar. Like it's a trade-off. You could take the drug, you're gonna create some good stuff, but you have to pay for it. Those are the stories." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's some bullshit we tell children. Come on. That's exactly right. You're exactly right. These fairy tales, these cautionary tales that we tell people, We have to grow up. That's what the book is about, drug use for grownups. You know, we tell people, Pinocchio, if you lie, your nose grow. Who believes that? Who believes that there are fairy tales? But that's exactly what these stories are. They're in the same vein as those kind of stories, as Pinocchio. You know, like you said, when you were learning about alcohol, you were told what to do, what not to do, so forth. The same can be true with MDMA, with cocaine, with heroin. The same is true, because there are some times when there are some potential dangers that you should avoid. And I wrote about some of them, certainly in my work just throughout all of my writings. I talk about those kind of things, and other people talk about these things. The problem is, is that we're getting our education from bullshit sources, from people who believe in this kind of Pinocchio thing. And it just does not fit with the evidence. And the evidence we all publish in the scientific literature, all these things that I'm saying, it's there in the literature. I mean, at a place like Columbia, we give these drugs thousands of doses every year. Do you think we would be doing this, and we do this with research grants that's funded by the public, taxpayers' dollars. Do you think we would be allowed to do this if these drugs were so dangerous? It's just nonsense. I mean, and the drugs we're talking about, they are all approved for medical use somewhere in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the studies you conduct are basically asking what kinds of questions. So you take the full range of drugs you're talking about from marijuana to psilocybin to MDMA to cocaine and heroin. What is the study looking at? Like what the actual experience with the positive and negative effects of the experience on the drug are in the control conditions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so we did these kind of experiments with alcohol, nicotine, all these drugs in order to have an empirical database to tell people exactly what these drugs do and what they don't do. The conditions under which the drugs will produce positive effects, the conditions under which the drugs were more likely to produce negative effects. All of this information is important for a society to know, and we do know, and that's why we're collecting the data. We're collecting the data to help us with treatment if someone is having problems with these data. Hopefully we'll understand more about how to help them deal with their problems based on some of the research that we're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what kind of negative effects are we looking out for? What are the properties of drugs we should be careful about? Is it addictive properties? How addictive it is? How destructive or painful, whatever the withdrawal process is? What kind of things are we looking out for?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, those are certain kind of questions we certainly have asked because like something like crack cocaine versus alcohol or heroin when it comes to withdrawal or physical dependence. Like cocaine has a very limited sort of withdrawal symptoms. I mean, it's hard to see. Same is true with methamphetamine. But with heroin, you certainly can see a withdrawal syndrome that's unpleasant. But with alcohol, that withdrawal can actually kill you. So heroin is unpleasant and not lovely, but with alcohol withdrawal, that's the one that's the most dangerous. I mean, all of these kinds of questions we wanna know answers to. And so when we think about heroin or some other drugs and you say like, what kind of negative effects? Negative effects, we don't talk about much in the society. The main thing that really concerns me about like heroin use really, is constipation. So if people are using heroin on a regular basis, and then they have a sort of slowing of their gut motility, they're likely to increase constipation. And that's not good, I mean, for your general health. But we never talk about that in this society. And that's probably the most important thing, aside from the fact that people get contaminated street drugs and that sort of stuff and increase the likelihood of maybe dying from some contaminant or people who are inexperienced and they're mixing heroin with other sedative. That's not good. But the constipation is a huge one. And then other sort of drugs, negative effects, like the amphetamines, all of the amphetamines, they disrupt sleep, food intake. All of these things are so critical for sustaining human life. But we never talk about that because it's not as sexy as this nonsense that people write about, like addiction. Addiction has almost nothing to do with the drugs themselves. And I make that comment because the vast majority of users for any drug never become addicted. And so if the vast majority of users don't become addicted, then you have to move beyond the drug when you're talking about the phenomena interest, in this case, addiction. And so when we think about addiction, it has much more to do with our psychosocial environment than the drug itself. But that's not sexy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So addiction is even a property of the environment, not a property, a result of the environment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It certainly can be. There are people who are suffering from a co-occurring mental illness like depression, anxiety. I mean, that's within the person, of course, and that increases the likelihood for addiction. So that could, that's not so much the environment, but there are people who, for example, they have chronic, unrealistic expectations heaped on them. Those people are more likely to have some problems with drugs. There are people who are just immature, not developed, haven't developed responsibility skills. They are likely to have some problems if they engage in some of these behaviors. There are people who lost their jobs, COVID, factories went away, a wide range of things, and those people used to have standing in their community. Now they have none. Those people might be susceptible to having a drug-related problem if they indulge. All of these kind of issues are far more important than the drug itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so they could seek escape in a particular drug. I mean, there is a biochemical thing to each of these drugs, and some pull you in harder than others when you need the escape, right? When you're not doing well in life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What evidence you have for that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because there is none. There is absolutely none. I mean, people say stuff like that, and that's the problem. That's precisely the problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I'm operating from limited personal evidence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this is a problem though, but we have a scientific database. We don't need personal evidence for this. In my book, I try to go through some of the science so people could understand. It's like when you have a math problem, you don't want people saying, well, you know, I feel like this. Fuck what you feel. What does the data say?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the problems with the data, so one data is there's the studies that you're doing, this is excellent research work, but there's some of the drugs are illegal. And some are legal. So you have just, it's unfortunate that some of the drugs are illegal or whatever you believe. but there's not enough of a dataset of public and the open use. That's like you got in the wild dataset. It'd be nice to do thousands of people and see from all the different kinds of environments and all that kind of stuff to get an understanding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we have a substantial database, but people just ignore it. Got it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That said, Let me ask you the question of legalization. So should, in your view, all drugs be legalized?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The drugs that people seek certainly should be legally regulated and available to adults. So when I say the drugs people seek, like cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, heroin, those drugs certainly should be available, and some of the psychedelics that people seek. Now, the thing about it is that some people think that, oh, it will be a free fall. These drugs are available to everyone. That's not true. I mean, it will be, there will be age requirements and maybe other requirements, but they should be available. And we should also do like what we do with alcohol. We can put enough alcohol in a bottle to kill you, but we don't. So we regulate it such that the amount that's in the bottle enhances the safety and minimizes the potential harms. We can do the same thing with these other drugs. And we can also say, okay, we won't be selling intravenous preparations of any of these drugs. The drugs that the routes of administration will be oral and I don't know, let's say intranasal. Again, routes of administration, the dose that you have in each unit, all can minimize harm based on how you do these things. And we can do that. We have the technology. We have the know-how." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're actually making me think about alcohol a little bit. So if I were, say the drugs become legalized in the way you're describing, and me, Lex, wanted to, as an adult, explore some of these drugs, what are some procedures, do you think, for sort of safe, positive exploration of those drugs? The reason I say I'm thinking about alcohol, because I don't think besides not putting enough alcohol in a bottle to kill you, I don't think anyone ever gave me specific instructions. I think it's kind of word of mouth and examples of people doing the wrong thing. You kind of get it through osmosis that way. Is that basically what we would do? This kind of free exploration of use?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, we have to change our education about these things. I mean, let's just take a drug like cocaine. Cocaine's a stimulant. And you want to make sure people understand that they shouldn't be taking cocaine near bedtime. And you know, they need to get a certain amount of hours of sleep and they need to get up in the morning. Cocaine probably isn't a drug for you at night, certainly not. Certainly not amphetamines at night for most people. And also if you want to make sure that you, they need to understand that cocaine can also disrupt your food intake. Not as much as the amphetamines, but all of these kinds of things people need to know so they can have proper nutrition and they can time their drug use around these other important functions that sustain human life. So we have to make sure that we educate people. We can't just throw people in a while, that's stupid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I gotta tell you, I mean, for me, and even given your book and for people listening to this, it's still tough to hear that the thing we should be concerned about with cocaine is the same as with caffeine. Don't take it before bed. And the thing we should be concerned with heroin is constipation. Okay. But the questions I keep wanting to ask you, I should be asking the same things of alcohol. But when you're not doing well psychologically in the ways you described, when the environment is not right, there's some aspect in which saying that drugs can be used responsibly and effectively and mostly positive can give those folks a pass to use it instead of working on themselves and fixing their environment first." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What do you want me to say to that? I mean, they have access to alcohol, they have access to the, you know, we live in this country called the United States where our Declaration of Independence says that we are free to live like we want to live so long as we don't disrupt other people from doing the same. But it's remarkable to me how we try to control the behaviors of other people. That's just remarkable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's partially what your book is about. I mean, it's not just about drugs, it's about freedom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the bigger issue that we can't get to. It's like this issue of freedom. And freedom comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility. I am responsible for my neighbors, my brothers. I mean, I can't. impede their freedoms. Like some people think that their freedom supersedes everybody else's freedoms. No. And that's what I'm trying to remind people in this book. I am responsible to you as a citizen. And we're in this together. And I tried to make that point in the book. And people have conveniently ignored things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the war on drugs has done more positive or negative for the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends on which world you live in. The war on drugs has been hugely beneficial to law enforcement, to the media, to people who make bullshit TV shows, The Sopranos, The Wire, all of those shows, they benefit from this kind of nonsense. Who else have benefited? People who provide treatment, many of them benefit from the war on drugs. The folks who do urine testing for drugs, they've all benefited. They're making mad money. People who run prisons, the phone companies who charge the prisoners. The people who run the hotels that are around the prisons where people's family have to come and stay, the restaurants, they are making out like bandits. But many of us are getting screwed as a society. In general, we're getting screwed. There are people who are just benefiting handsomely. That's why it continues. Politicians benefit. I mean, whether you're Democrat or Republican, you have the same stance on drugs anyway, so they all benefit from this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So many questions I want to ask you, because you're challenging a lot of beliefs that people have. about drugs, about society in general, so it's difficult for me to ask the right questions here. If you could, if you were with a sort of a snap of a finger, change the world, what, from a policy perspective, Would you, and from just the, I don't know, human to human perspective, what would you like to see in the United States of America in terms of that fixes some of the problems we're discussing here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First of all, I would not, we wouldn't be arresting anybody for drugs anymore. That would go away. The folks who are in prison for drugs, that would go away. Their records would be a sponge that would just go away. And then we work on a system to make sure that responsible adults can legally obtain these substances and we'll have a corresponding educational system to teach people how to do this. That's where I would start initially." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the arresting for drug use or anything drug related is absurd, especially in the context of how destructive alcohol is and tobacco." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Alcohol can be destructive to some people, but alcohol also is a hugely beneficial drug, to be honest, which I couldn't have gotten through many of the sort of receptions and functions I had to go through as the chair of the department without alcohol." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you have a line I really liked. The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use to take advantage of the wide array of beneficial outcomes specific drugs can offer. the part that entertained me was this. To put this in personal terms, my position as department chairman from 2016 to 2019 was far more detrimental to my health than my drug use ever was. I mean, there is a standard we're treating drugs, certain kinds of drugs that's completely different than the standard we're treating everything else in our lives. Yeah, I mean, it's almost difficult to snap out of it as I'm listening to you and reading your work. It's difficult because it's like, why is everybody living this idea that certain drugs are so horribly destructive and others are not? And we just kind of fix that idea. And then there's this narrative I hate to be so cynical to think that there's just like a system that just propagates narratives. I always kind of think that truth wins out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Truth is the best narrative. I believe that too. Obviously that's why I'm out here and putting, subjecting myself to this sort of criticism and so forth. But because I believe that truth ultimately wins out, but I might be wrong, but I have to live my life like it's true. Otherwise, then I have no hope. Then why be here?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, kind of if you can steal man or at least show respect to a criticism, you've I'm sure received quite a bit of criticism for your work. I've heard quite a bit of B.S. criticism, sort of ignorant stuff that don't actually pay attention to your work. But is there some serious, like, is there some pushback that makes you think twice?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "People say, like, I'm presenting a too rosy picture of drugs, you know, like, I don't want to do that. I don't want people to think that. I'm not aware of the potential negative effects of any activity, including drug use. And so I do acknowledge that there are potential harms associated with drugs. I acknowledge that in the book. But the fact remains the beneficial effects far outweigh the potential harmful effects. And we have technology information to help people to minimize the likelihood of those negative effects. this sort of approach that we have where we say we're only exclusively presenting the harmful effects and that should make people, keep people safe. I just have a problem with that. But I certainly, I take the point that people say there are negative effects. Absolutely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I absolutely agree. What do you, if I can just talk about specific drugs, what's the difference between opioids and benzos, for example? Specifically, I mean, these are drugs that you often read about being misused at scale. I mean, the misuse is the problem, right? no matter what the drug is. Yes. And that's actually what you're pushing for is education. It should be it should be legal and should be good. So people should know what's the difference in proper use, positive use and misuse. I mean, one public figure who has been going through this is Jordan Peterson. He's been public about his struggle of getting off benzos, the withdrawal he's going through. I mean, what are your thoughts about the misuse of benzos or opioids and so on, the epidemic that people talk about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't know Jordan's specific case, but certainly with benzodiazepines in general, we talked about withdrawal earlier. When I said that with alcohol withdrawal, you can die. So benzos and alcohol, they're closely related. So benzo withdrawal too can kill you, just like alcohol. So when we think about the effects that benzodiazepines produce, think about the effects that alcohol produce. They're comparable or similar. And so I know that it's a difficult one to wean yourself off if you develop the dependence, but we have protocols for that and I hope he's OK." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting you say we have protocols for that, but from my understanding was that like the protocols aren't standardized. It feels like a lot of doctors aren't as helpful as they could be in this process. Like it's a bit of a mess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Certainly with withdrawal, they're more standardized than anything. So like if someone is going through alcohol withdrawal, there is a standard protocol that most physicians in this business, they follow. The same is true with benzo withdrawal. But the thing where it gets murky is when they're treating addiction itself. So when you're thinking about the substance use disorder in the DSM, not just withdrawal, but the entire addiction, that's where you have this sort of divergence or diversity in terms of approaches. And many of those approaches are rubbish." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you just elaborate like technically what the term addiction means that you're referring to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When I use the term addiction, I'm referring to the Diagnostics Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, number five now, the DSM-5. That's never been wrong, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm just kidding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That point is well taken. And your point is that their definition of substance use disorder. That's addiction. That's what I'm talking about. But that definition continues to evolve. And so you're right. They still are working it out. We're getting new information from scientific studies and so forth. And so it's supposed to be incorporated into the DSM. But there are some problems with the DSM, like for example, they also have this sort of once an addict, always an addict thing, and there's no evidence to support that. But it's evolving, and it's the definition that people in science and medicine use. And so we all know we're talking about the same language when we call someone a substance use disorder patient or someone who meets criteria for addiction. We all are speaking the same language. We're not saying that simply because this person use heroin they are an addict. That's not what we're saying. You have to meet these criteria where you have disruptions in your psychosocial functioning, that's one. And two, you, the person, are distressed by these disruptions. So people have to meet those two basic criteria before we say they are addicted." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So once an addict, always an addict, this idea. So I've I mean, some of it is always mapped to the personal, right? But just the people I've interacted with who have struggled with alcohol addiction, I don't know what the proper term is. It seems like with Alcohol Anonymous, the process of putting that addiction behind you is a very, very long process. It's surprisingly long to me. That almost seems like a whole life. Like it's not always an addict, but it takes decades. It seems like. What is that? Can you maybe just, from your understanding as a scientist, from your understanding as a human who studies human nature, why does it take so long to treat, to deal with that addiction?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you cited Alcohol Anonymous, right? And so I don't think of Alcohol Anonymous as like a, a treatment that I would send any relative to, you know, like for a drug-related problem. You know, I think Alcohol Anonymous AA is really good for social interactions, making sure people have a social group and they have peers. I mean, that's a good thing. We all need that social interaction. But I don't think they know much about drugs. That's not, it's like saying, well, you know, my uncle broke his knee and he has this support group and they said this, and then we follow that. That doesn't make any sense. But in our society, judges even sentence people to go to AA. Are you kidding me? But that's the kind of thing that has been allowed to happen in this society because we think of drugs as this moral failing or drug addiction as this moral failing. And any idiot can provide treatment and no disrespect to AA because I think what they do is a lot more than what some people do, because at least they have these social interactions, you have a social group. That's better than what a lot of these other idiots out here do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, in that social support group, unrelated to the drug, it helps cure some of the environment issues you might be in. That's the whole point. So we kind of coupled the drug to the environment, but the reality is, as you argue, most of the problems come from the environment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Certainly with people who are experiencing drug-related problem with most of the people, not all, but most." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There are differences like that psychedelics and like psilocybin has versus alcohol. I personally think, you know, I've enjoyed both experiences in different ways. Is it possible or is this, are we getting into the realm of poetry to describe the benefits, like how it alters the mind, how the different drugs alter the mind and the places it can take you that produce a positive experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. No, it's very real. You know, like some drugs take people in places that other drugs can't, and that's very real. I have friends, some of them you know, they, you know, They, for example, say that they've never had an experience like the one they had with ayahuasca, and they've done a number of sort of things. But they did the ayahuasca in a setting with a shaman and this group, and they felt like they actually began to heal or solve some problems that they were trying to solve. some years, and that's great. That's great for them. And nothing else does it for them like that. And that's absolutely fantastic. All I argue is that if that kind of thing happens for you with ayahuasca, with psilocybin, with some other psychedelic why isn't it possible that heroin does that for someone or cocaine does that for someone else or MDMA does it for someone?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's it. That's interesting to imagine like a shaman for heroin, like why not? And or cocaine, you said creating an environment for yourself for use of these different substances and that environment has a very strong impact on the actual experience that you have. But I mean, so cocaine is an upper and then... Yeah, the way we define drugs like uppers and downers, that's a really..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "a kind of inappropriate way, but it's a quick way. So we certainly say cocaine is an upper stimulant, but it depends on the activity of the person before they take the drug. Say like if you're like really active before taking a drug like cocaine, it might actually calm you. So it all depends on the activity of the person before they take the drug." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I remember, I don't know if you know Matthew Johnson is- Of course. He did all these studies on, or I remember just reading a paper. I didn't get a chance to talk with him much about it, but it was about condom use and cocaine. And then, you know, what, like the doses and whether people are more or less likely, like the unsafe thing there is the using or not using, or not using, I guess, condoms during sexual intercourse. I don't know, I just, I love that these drugs that have connotation, probably because of Hollywood, negative connotations are actually being studied by science and the actual impact they have and what are the negative effects. Again, in those studies, often the positive effects are difficult to quantify, I think. Maybe, I guess you can from self-report and so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Positive effects are not difficult to quantify. You ask people about their euphoria. You can see how well people are getting along. Like in our studies, we have people sometimes in groups and you see how well they get along on the various drug conditions or placebo conditions. It's really, it's not that difficult." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you can see these amazing studies with like Rick Doblin, like looking at MDMA and combined with therapy, like how you can overcome certain PTSD things or depression and so on. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's, it's really interesting. I gotta ask you, because you mentioned the wire. Do you think the wire you think movies like Trainspotting? Do you think they're ultimately destroyed? Because okay, Yes, they celebrate murder, right? The Godfather a little bit. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But... Another one. I mean, it's like these racist ass motherfuckers. And they also are killing people, but yet they say, we don't do drugs. What kind of shit is that? I mean, people who are doing drugs, psilocybin or whatever. The thing is, we're trying to be better people and trying to make our society better and you're killing people and you are denigrating people for using drugs. Are you fucking kidding me? And we let them get away with that as a society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see those movies, I apologize if I'm not sufficiently informed, do you see them as denigrating drugs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, I mean, the Godfather. Yes, that's right, that's a good example. The Godfather, The Sopranos is all about that. I mean, Christopher is using heroin in The Sopranos and they have an intervention in one season and they are denigrating him. It's like, are you kidding me? You just cut somebody's head off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but to be fair, they were denigrating, I think, all drugs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and then they're drinking alcohol in the Butterbean. Come on. First of all, they're killing people. They don't have any space, none, to denigrate somebody who's just trying to alter their consciousness. Are you kidding me? And not bothering anyone else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a lot of other mob movies that Scarface celebrates the murder and the drugs equally. So, I mean, it doesn't, it celebrates all of the, not just drugs or so on, it's extreme." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All of those movies, you know, I loved all those movies. I'm from Miami, I loved Scarface. I even liked The Sopranos that I started looking at that shit with a critical eye and see what it's doing. But Scarface is dependent upon the American viewer. having a certain view of people who deal in drugs. And that view is that these people are animals, basically. And in the end, the animal kills himself with too much cocaine, and he was high, and that's what they show. And so it's like, what the fuck?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's leveraging, it's playing into not the better angels of our nature. Don't take away these great movies from me. But it's true. You have to think about them critically in this context." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wait, wait, wait. I like these movies. It's not a matter of taking them away. It's a matter of making the writers be more honest to the reality. That's it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's true. That's really true. And the writers, the people, the culture, all of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, they write these things. I just think about some hip hop artists, they say like, this is real, this is my experience and so forth. And that's how these movie writers, they write this bullshit and then say, well, this is real. Anyway, I get so upset talking about it because I know the harm it's doing. And I know those kinds of movies are the reason that we have this war on drugs. And all of these people are going to jail because of those kind of movies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the epilogue of your book, you quote James Baldwin, you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do with what you find or what you find will do to you. So let me ask, how has drug use or the study of drugs change you as a human being?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It just helped me think about other people's experience, right? So how we're all connected, like going to Northern Ireland. I don't know if you know much about the situation with the Troubles and what those people went through. And so I see people there. Northern Ireland, by the way, is all white. And you see those people there. suffering for the same reasons that people in Appalachia are suffering for. Neglected by politicians who told them lies about drugs and not dealing with the real problems like West Virginia, for example. Their water's polluted, the factories have gone away, people are desperate. And they're blaming drugs? Are you kidding me? So the politicians don't have to bring back the jobs. So we don't have to really make sure they have clean drinking water, things of that nature. And so those people are connected to the people in Northern Ireland. They're connected to the people in Brownsville. They're connected to the people in other places in the United States for the same reason. They're connected to the people in Sao Paulo. Brazil, same thing. People are catching hell for the same reason in the Philippines, for the same reason. And that's why I feel so strongly about this thing, because I know there are people getting paid, and their paycheck is predicated on subjugating and the suffering of those other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when we hear about the destructive effects of drugs, it's essentially a scapegoat for the failures of leaders and politicians to help alleviate the suffering of people in those communities." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, it's so easy to say, I'm gonna rid your community of drugs, I'm gonna put more cops on the street. If you want a problem not to be solved, just give it to the military or the cops." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You had a tough childhood growing up in Miami, like you said. What memory stands out in particular that was formative in helping make you the man you are?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's so hard to say. My grandmother was really important. So maybe just her trying to make sure that I think critically, I guess that's the biggest one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you moved in with her, your parents split," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Six, seven, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What have you learned about life from her?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Be self-sufficient, be critical, and keep your eyes open, and watch out for the okey-doke. And that's what this whole drug thing is about. It's the okey-doke, people. It really boils down to just simple thing. We're all similar in that we're all just trying to live our life, trying to take care of our kids. We want the best for our kids, all of us. But yet somehow we've been made to believe that we're different in that way. But fundamentally, we're all the same. So when people are seeking to feel pleasure, to feel better, why don't we celebrate that? Instead, we denigrate people for that. I mean, if I feel better, I'm more likely to treat you well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I gotta say still though, you're going against the grain and you're a Columbia. It takes a lot of guts to sort of speak out about these ideas so boldly. I don't know how to ask this question. Where do you find the guts? What, Because it's also perhaps inspirational to others in different disciplines that are sort of taking on the conventional wisdom of the day and challenging it. What does it take to do that? What advice would you give to others like you, kind of a little bit afraid to do so?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Once you know, you cannot not know, as they say. And so I have to look in the mirror. And then looking in the mirror, I have to face myself. Have I lived honestly? And if I can't face myself, then what am I doing here? You know, that's how I see it. One of the things that people don't really talk about with drugs and people who die from some drug-related death, and I've been thinking about this a whole lot over the past couple years, it's like, Some of these drugs can take you to a place where you feel so optimistic and positive about humans, our fellow humans, and you want to do your best to contribute because you know the possibilities of what we can be as a society. And then you come up with resistance and like you say, there's a lot of resistance and people just have a hard time. And so if you know humans can be better and they refuse to be better, why be here? As someone who knows that we can do this better, I certainly don't want to do it the way we're doing it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you kind of see drugs as mechanisms for potentially elevating the human spirit, sort of making people feel better, so you want to communicate that message. So it's that plus the fact that drugs are used as a scapegoat to to not alleviate the suffering of certain communities. So those two things coupled together." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One of the sort of main points of the book, too, was to try and get people to understand possibilities that we could have if we embraced certain drug use, if we allowed adults to do this sort of thing, relationships. can be better, a wide range of beneficial effects. People would be, or can learn to be more magnanimous. All of these pro-social things that we say we value." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In your previous book, High Price, you talk about rap and DJing, chapter five. There's a nice picture of you DJing from 1983. So let me ask, who in your view, this is the toughest question of this interview, is the greatest hip hop artist of all time? Maybe give some candidates." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, wow. Who is the greatest hip hop artist? I don't know if I'm qualified to make that bet because you know, I have to go back to like Gil Scott Heron. You know, like people think of him as one of the fathers of hip hop. So that's my all-time favorite. People like Chuck D from Public Enemy, some of the things that they were doing, I was really digging. But even though I was digging Public Enemy, but even they got it wrong on drugs. Even Gil Scott Herring got it wrong on drugs. But they were doing so much other good stuff. It helped me to develop as a person. And so I think like my son is a hip hop artist now. I think those folks who are in the game now, they are a lot more qualified to talk about who's the greatest hip hop artist. I'm not qualified." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The evolution, I mean, have you tracked the evolution from sort of the 90s with Wu-Tang and Tupac and Biggie and then to what we have today? So there's just been a crazy amount of progress that's almost difficult to track." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I really love what they're doing. I like what they, except the part where they get over 40 and they become fucking cops on TV. I mean, other than that, I dig what's that about. Yeah, I don't understand that, you know, but that's what they do. Again, this sort of glorification of cops, that's dangerous for a society. And those cats who do that kind of thing, you know, I have a problem with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it all sort of to push back a little bit, because I come from the Soviet Union where there's a huge amount of corruption. And when I see what's going on with cops in this country, there's a lot of proper criticism you can apply, but like relative to other places, this is, well, on so many ways, this country is incredible. Is your criticism towards cops or towards what cops are asked to do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, towards what cops are asked to do. Cops provide the shield for politicians and those in power. Absolutely, because I was in the military. I spent four years in the military, and I did what I was told to do. And I was ignorant and thought I was doing the right thing. And I've what I was told to do. And so just like these guys are doing what they're told to do. But no, my real beef is with the power structure, the folks who are telling them what to do. And also the folks who go play cops on television. That imagery, that sort of glorifying cops, that's a problem in a democracy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, all sides of the glorification of the drug war is a problem. Yeah. If I can just linger on a little longer in terms of the effects of drugs on the positive mind-expanding components of it, what have mind-altering drugs teach you about the human mind? So from a neuroscience, not even like a biochemical, but just like the human mind is amazing, right? The places it can go. Are there some insights you've learned from studying drugs about the mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, can I start from a neurochemical perspective first and then we'll go larger? Just from a neurochemical perspective, I mean, everything I know about the brain, I learned through drugs, you know, because of my interest in drugs. So I learned a lot about dopamine neurons in certain regions of the brain, about neural nephron neurons and a wide range of other sort of how our neural transmission happened because of drugs. And so that's a really, valuable tool lessons for me. But then when we think that we move out a bit and we think more globally, what have I learned in terms of the mind from drugs? I have really learned how to be more forgiving of people and of myself, and tolerant, more tolerant of people, and certainly learned a lot more about empathy as a result of drug use. And like I said earlier, I'm learning what we can be as a species, and it's quite incredible, but because of drugs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a certain property of drugs in different ways. They take you out of your body, like they help you evaluate yourself from like a third person perspective. It's almost like you have a consciousness in here and you get to step outside of it a little bit. I mean, that's kind of what meditation does too. All of these processes, that's what a hell of a good workout does too. It makes you evaluate yourself and then somehow that allows you to be forgiving to yourself and forgiving to others. So empathize, it trains that part of your brain. So stepping outside of yourself, not taking yourself too seriously, that process. And different drugs do that in different ways. Obviously, I don't know from personal experience on some of them, but I'm not curious. It's unfortunate that the Hollywood and different stories we have, demonize certain drugs and sort of basically, I don't know, make it difficult for people like me to explore those ideas. But then I'm really thankful for people like you who are pushing the science forward and are unafraid to talk about this kind of stuff. Because I'm really fascinated with consciousness. On the engineering side, I really want to build robots that have elements of intelligence, emotion, even consciousness. And for that, we need to understand it in ourselves. And drugs is, all the different kinds of drugs, if used safely, seems like an incredible tool to understand ourselves. And if we're limiting ourselves from certain drugs because of certain political games that being played, it's sad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And people know this, a lot of middle to upper class people know this. The illicit drug trade business is a multi-million dollar industry, multi-billion dollar industry that could not be supported by people who are poor. And that has to be supported by a lot of customers. And a lot of people around the world know this. They're in the closet. And in the book, I call for them to get out of the closet so we can start being more honest and we can take the pressure off of those people who are not as privileged." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like I said, you're brave, you're bold. I got to ask you for some advice. What advice would you give to a young person today? High school, maybe undergrad, college, thinking about their career, thinking about how to live a life they can be proud of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, whatever career they choose, just make sure that they dedicate themselves to it and be the best at what they do first. That's what you have to do first. Like people see me advocating for this position. 30 years of science is in these opinions, this view. And trust me, I would be dismissed if I didn't know my shit, if I was not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you did the work, you proved yourself, you're legit by the people, in the eyes of the people who know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. So that's the main thing that I would encourage people to do. Really know your craft. If you know your craft, then maybe you will be a service to your fellow citizens. There are so many people out here faking the funk, and they don't know their craft, and they're not a service to the people that they claim to serve. And that's a problem. And when you have a fair number of people like that in positions of power, your society is going to crumble." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the scientific path? You recommend people get a PhD?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not necessarily, you know, like my own children, I don't recommend that. So science can, certainly my science can be a bit very petty sort of space to be in. But it was the only sort of path that I had. And so I had to do it. But no, I, I would really encourage people to just do something that they enjoy and something that makes them happy. Because the greater number of happy people in our society, the better off we all are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, since you mentioned happiness, gotta ask you about the pursuit of happiness and the ridiculous question about meaning. Do you think this life has meaning? What do you think is the meaning of life? I'm sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I certainly hope it has meaning. I'm certainly trying to live mine like it has meaning. You know, I really love my life now. I just got back from Geneva. I spent the summer abroad in Europe and trying to be in a more civilized place where you can enjoy yourself as a responsible adult. And then it allowed me to decompress and then come back here. The thing about coming back here is that you have to be ready to fight. And I don't want to fight anymore. you know, I just wanna be able to help a society and people. And so I'll have to like keep a place in Europe to go and decompress and then come back to be able to tolerate this situation. So life for me has a lot of meaning. I'm enjoying life. This is like the greatest, the best part of my life ever right now at this moment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's the joy, but you also enjoy the fight a little bit or?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't really, I'm tired of that. You know, it's like, why? You're trying to, I'm trying to help people to see how they can be happy. And then people are fighting me on that. I don't want to be happy. I want to be ignorant. Leave me alone. That's what people are saying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so what is the source of joy for you when you decompress?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "MDMA is a source, you know, and a place where you don't have to worry about laws. That's like Europe. You can feel really free. Yeah. Heroin can even be a nice space if I'm in my own head. But with others, MDMA is great. So good friends, good food. The usual." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Family, love. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's right. Carl, you're an incredible human being. You really make me think everyone listens to this. You're I mean, I'm really glad you exist. I know you say you don't like the fight, but I'm really glad you're fighting the fight because it's going to help a lot of people. It's going to help at the very least help a lot of people think and challenge the conventions of the day and maybe challenge them to find joy. I really appreciate you spending your valuable time with me. This was an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for talking to me." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think one of the biggest limitations of deep learning is that right now it requires really a lot of data, especially labeled data. There are some unsupervised and semi-supervised learning algorithms that can reduce the amount of labeled data you need, but they still require a lot of unlabeled data. Reinforcement learning algorithms, they don't need labels, but they need really a lot of experiences. As human beings, we don't learn to play Pong by failing at Pong two million times. So just getting the generalization ability better is one of the most important bottlenecks in the capability of the technology today. And then I guess I'd also say deep learning is like a component of a bigger system. So far, nobody is really proposing to have only what you'd call deep learning as the entire ingredient of intelligence. You use deep learning as sub-modules of other systems like AlphaGo has a deep learning model that estimates the value function. Most reinforcement learning algorithms have a deep learning module that estimates which action to take next, but you might have other components." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're basically building a function estimator. Do you think it's possible, you said nobody's kind of been thinking about this so far, but do you think neural networks could be made to reason in the way symbolic systems did in the 80s and 90s to do more, create more like programs as opposed to functions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think we already see that a little bit. I already kind of think of neural nets as a kind of program. I think of deep learning as basically learning programs that have more than one step. So if you draw a flow chart or if you draw a TensorFlow graph describing your machine learning model, I think of the depth of that graph as describing the number of steps that run in sequence. And then the width of that graph is the number of steps that run in parallel. Now it's been long enough that we've had deep learning working that it's a little bit silly to even discuss shallow learning anymore. But back when I first got involved in AI, when we used machine learning, we were usually learning things like support vector machines, where you could have a lot of input features to the model and you could multiply each feature by a different weight. All those multiplications were done in parallel to each other. There wasn't a lot done in series. I think what we got with deep learning was really the ability to have steps of a program that run in sequence. And I think that we've actually started to see that what's important with deep learning is more the fact that we have a multi-step program rather than the fact that we've learned a representation. If you look at things like ResNets, for example, they take one particular kind of representation and they update it several times. Back when deep learning first really took off in the academic world in 2006, when Jeff Hinton showed that you could train deep belief networks, everybody who was interested in the idea thought of it as each layer learns a different level of abstraction. The first layer trained on images learns something like edges, and the second layer learns corners, and eventually you get these kind of grandmother cell units that recognize specific objects. Today, I think most people think of it more as a computer program where, as you add more layers, you can do more updates before you output your final number. But I don't think anybody believes that layer 150 of the ResNet is a grandmother cell and layer 100 is contours or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so you're not thinking of it as a singular representation that keeps building. You think of it as a program, sort of almost like a state. Representation is a state of understanding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think of it as a program that makes several updates and arrives at better and better understandings, but it's not replacing the representation at each step. It's refining it. and in some sense that's a little bit like reasoning. It's not reasoning in the form of deduction, but it's reasoning in the form of taking a thought and refining it and refining it carefully until it's good enough to use." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think, and I hope you don't mind, we'll jump philosophical every once in a while, do you think of, you know, cognition, human cognition, or even consciousness, as simply a result of this kind of sequential representation learning. Do you think that can emerge?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Cognition, yes, I think so. Consciousness, it's really hard to even define what we mean by that. I guess there's, consciousness is often defined as things like having self-awareness, and that's relatively easy to turn into something actionable for a computer scientist to reason about. People also define consciousness in terms of having qualitative states of experience, like qualia. There's all these philosophical problems like, could you imagine a zombie who does all the same information processing as a human, but doesn't really have the qualitative experiences that we have? That sort of thing, I have no idea how to formalize or turn it into a scientific question. I don't know how you could run an experiment to tell whether a person is a zombie or not. And similarly, I don't know how you could run an experiment to tell whether an advanced AI system had become conscious in the sense of qualia or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in the more practical sense, like almost like self-attention, you think consciousness and cognition can, in an impressive way, emerge from current types of architectures." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Or if you think of consciousness in terms of self-awareness and just making plans based on the fact that the agent itself exists in the world, reinforcement learning algorithms are already more or less forced to model the agent's effect on the environment. So that more limited version of consciousness is already something that we get limited versions of with reinforcement learning algorithms if they're trained well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you say limited, so the big question really is how you jump from limited to human level, right? And whether it's possible Even just building common sense reasoning seems to be exceptionally difficult. So if we scale things up, if we get much better on supervised learning, if we get better at labeling, if we get bigger data sets, more compute, do you think we'll start to see really impressive things that go from limited to something, echoes of human level cognition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, yeah. I'm optimistic about what can happen just with more computation and more data. I do think it'll be important to get the right kind of data. Today, most of the machine learning systems we train are mostly trained on one type of data for each model. But the human brain, we get all of our different senses and we have many different experiences like riding a bike, driving a car, talking to people, reading. I think when you get that kind of integrated data set, working with a machine learning model that can actually close the loop and interact, we may find that algorithms not so different from what we have today learn really interesting things when you scale them up a lot and train them on a large amount of multimodal data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So multimodal is really interesting, but within, like you work in adversarial examples, so selecting within modal, within one mode of data, selecting better what are the difficult cases from which you're most useful to learn from." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. Could we get a whole lot of mileage out of designing a model that's resistant to adversarial examples or something like that? Right. That's the question. My thinking on that has evolved a lot over the last few years. When I first started to really invest in studying adversarial examples, I was thinking of it mostly as adversarial examples reveal a big problem with machine learning, and we would like to close the gap between how machine learning models respond to adversarial examples and how humans respond. After studying the problem more, I still think that adversarial examples are important. I think of them now more of as a security liability than as an issue that necessarily shows there's something uniquely wrong with machine learning as opposed to humans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Also, do you see them as a tool to improve the performance of the system? Not on the security side, but literally just accuracy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do see them as a kind of tool on that side, but maybe not quite as much as I used to think. We've started to find that there's a trade-off between accuracy on adversarial examples and accuracy on clean examples. Back in 2014, when I did the first adversarially trained classifier that showed resistance to some kinds of adversarial examples, it also got better at the clean data on MNIST. And that's something we've replicated several times on MNIST, that when we train against weak adversarial examples, MNIST classifiers get more accurate. so far that hasn't really held up on other data sets and hasn't held up when we train against stronger adversaries. It seems like when you confront a really strong adversary, you tend to have to give something up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting. But it's such a compelling idea because it feels like that's how us humans learn the difficult cases." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We try to think of what would we screw up and then we make sure we fix that. Yeah. It's also, in a lot of branches of engineering, you do a worst-case analysis and make sure that your system will work in the worst case. And then that guarantees that it'll work in all of the messy average cases that happen when you go out into a really randomized world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, with driving with autonomous vehicles, there seems to be a desire to just look for, think adversarially, try to figure out how to mess up the system, and if you can be robust to all those difficult cases, then you can... It's a hand-wavy, empirical way to show your system is..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Today, most adversarial example research isn't really focused on a particular use case, but there are a lot of different use cases where you'd like to make sure that the adversary can't interfere with the operation of your system. Like in finance, if you have an algorithm making trades for you. people go to a lot of an effort to obfuscate their algorithm. That's both to protect their IP, because you don't want to research and develop a profitable trading algorithm, then have somebody else capture the gains. But it's at least partly because you don't want people to make adversarial examples that fool your algorithm into making bad trades. Or I guess one area that's been popular in the academic literature is speech recognition. If you use speech recognition to hear an audio waveform and then turn that into a command that a phone executes for you, you don't want a malicious adversary to be able to produce audio that gets interpreted as malicious commands, especially if a human in the room doesn't realize that something like that is happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In speech recognition, has there been much success in being able to create adversarial examples that fool the system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, actually. I guess the first work that I'm aware of is a paper called Hidden Voice Commands that came out in 2016, I believe. And they were able to show that they could make sounds that are not understandable by a human, but are recognized as the target phrase that the attacker wants the phone to recognize it as. Since then, things have gotten a little bit better on the attacker side and worse on the defender side. it's become possible to make sounds that sound like normal speech, but are actually interpreted as a different sentence than the human hears. The level of perceptibility of the adversarial perturbation is still kind of high. When you listen to the recording, it sounds like there's some noise in the background, just like rustling sounds. But those rustling sounds are actually the adversarial perturbation that makes the phone hear a completely different sentence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's so fascinating. Peter Norvig mentioned that you're writing the deep learning chapter for the fourth edition of the Artificial Intelligence, the Modern Approach book. So how do you even begin summarizing the field of deep learning in a chapter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in my case, I waited like a year before I actually wrote anything. Even having written a full-length textbook before, it's still pretty intimidating to try to start writing just one chapter that covers everything. One thing that helped me make that plan was actually the experience of having written the full book before and then watching how the field changed after the book came out. I've realized there's a lot of topics that were maybe extraneous in the first book, and just seeing what stood the test of a few years of being published and what seems a little bit less important to have included now helped me pare down the topics I wanted to cover for the book. It's also really nice now that the field is kind of stabilized to the point where some core ideas from the 1980s are still used today. When I first started studying machine learning, almost everything from the 1980s had been rejected, and now some of it has come back. So that stuff that's really stood the test of time is what I focused on putting into the book. There's also, I guess, two different philosophies about how you might write a book. One philosophy is you try to write a reference that covers everything. The other philosophy is you try to provide a high-level summary that gives people the language to understand a field and tells them what the most important concepts are. The first deep learning book that I wrote with Joshua and Aaron was somewhere between the two philosophies, that it's trying to be both a reference and an introductory guide. Writing this chapter for Russell and Norvig's book, I was able to focus more on just a concise introduction of the key concepts and the language you need to read about them more. In a lot of cases, I actually just wrote paragraphs that said, here's a rapidly evolving area that you should pay attention to. It's pointless to try to tell you what the latest and best version of a learn-to-learn model is. I can point you to a paper that's recent right now, but there isn't a whole lot of a reason to delve into exactly what's going on with the latest learning-to-learn approach or the latest module produced by a learning-to-learn algorithm. You should know that learning to learn is a thing, and that it may very well be the source of the latest and greatest convolutional net or recurrent net module that you would want to use in your latest project. But there isn't a lot of point in trying to summarize exactly which architecture and which learning approach got to which level of performance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you maybe focus more on the basics of the methodology, so from backpropagation to feedforward to recurrent neural networks, convolutional, that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. So if I were to ask you, I remember I took algorithms and data structures algorithms course. I remember the professor asked, what is an algorithm? And he yelled at everybody in a good way that nobody was answering it correctly. Everybody knew what the algorithm, it was a graduate course. Everybody knew what an algorithm was, but they weren't able to answer it well. So let me ask you in that same spirit, what is deep learning?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say deep learning is any kind of machine learning that involves learning parameters of more than one consecutive step. So that would mean shallow learning is things where you learn a lot of operations that happen in parallel. You might have a system that makes multiple steps, like you might have hand-designed feature extractors, but really only one step is learned. Deep learning is anything where you have multiple operations in sequence. And that includes the things that are really popular today, like convolutional networks and recurrent networks. But it also includes some of the things that have died out, like Bolton machines, where we weren't using backpropagation. Today, I hear a lot of people define deep learning as gradient descent applied to these differentiable functions. And I think that's a legitimate usage of the term. It's just different from the way that I use the term myself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's an example of deep learning that is not gradient descent and differentiable functions? In your, I mean, not specifically perhaps, but more even looking into the future, what's your thought about that space of approaches?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I tend to think of machine learning algorithms as decomposed into really three different pieces. There's the model, which can be something like a neural net or a Boltzmann machine or a recurrent model. And that basically just describes how do you take data and how do you take parameters and what function do you use to make a prediction given the data and the parameters. Another piece of the learning algorithm is the optimization algorithm. Not every algorithm can be really described in terms of optimization, but what's the algorithm for updating the parameters or updating whatever the state of the network is? And then the last part is the data set. How do you actually represent the world as it comes into your machine learning system? So I think of deep learning as telling us something about what does the model look like. And basically to qualify as deep, I say that it just has to have multiple layers. That can be multiple steps in a feed-forward differentiable computation. That can be multiple layers in a graphical model. There's a lot of ways that you could satisfy me that something has multiple steps that are each parameterized separately. I think of gradient descent as being all about that other piece, the how do you actually update the parameters piece. So you can imagine having a deep model like a convolutional net and training it with something like evolution or a genetic algorithm. And I would say that still qualifies as deep learning. And then in terms of models that aren't necessarily differentiable, I guess Boltzmann machines are probably the main example of something where you can't really take a derivative and use that for the learning process. But you can still argue that the model has many steps of processing that it applies when you run inference in the model." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's the steps of processing that's key. So Jeff Hinton suggests that we need to throw away back propagation and start all over. What do you think about that? What could an alternative direction of training neural networks look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know that backpropagation is going to go away entirely. Most of the time when we decide that a machine learning algorithm isn't on the critical path to research for improving AI, the algorithm doesn't die. It just becomes used for some specialized set of things. A lot of algorithms like logistic regression don't seem that exciting to you. AI researchers who are working on things like speech recognition or autonomous cars today. But there's still a lot of use for logistic regression in things like analyzing really noisy data in medicine and finance, or making really rapid predictions in really time-limited contexts. So I think backpropagation and gradient descent are around to stay, but they may not end up being everything that we need to get to real human level or superhuman AI." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you optimistic about us discovering, you know, back propagation has been around for a few decades. So are you optimistic about us as a community being able to discover something better?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I am. I think we likely will find something that works better. You could imagine things like having stacks of models where some of the lower level models predict parameters of the higher level models. And so at the top level, you're not learning in terms of literally calculating gradients, but just predicting how different values will perform. You can kind of see that already in some areas like Bayesian optimization, where you have a Gaussian process that predicts how well different parameter values will perform. We already use those kinds of algorithms for things like hyperparameter optimization. And in general, we know a lot of things other than backprop that work really well for specific problems. The main thing we haven't found is a way of taking one of these other non-backprop-based algorithms and having it really advance the state of the art on an AI-level problem. But I wouldn't be surprised if eventually we find that some of these algorithms, even the ones that already exist, not even necessarily a new one, we might find some way of customizing one of these algorithms to do something really interesting at the level of cognition or the level of I think one system that we really don't have working quite right yet is short-term memory. We have things like LSTMs. They're called long short-term memory. They still don't do quite what a human does with short-term memory. Gradient descent, to learn a specific fact, has to do multiple steps on that fact. If I tell you, the meeting today is at 3 p.m., I don't need to say over and over again, it's at 3 p.m., it's at 3 p.m., it's at 3 p.m., it's at 3 p.m. for you to do a gradient step on each one. You just hear it once and you remember it. There's been some work on things like self-attention and attention-like mechanisms like the neural Turing machine that can write to memory cells and update themselves with facts like that right away, but I don't think we've really nailed it yet. And that's one area where I'd imagine that new optimization algorithms or different ways of applying existing optimization algorithms could give us a way of just lightning fast updating the state of a machine learning system to contain a specific fact like that without needing to have it presented over and over and over again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So some of the success of symbolic systems in the 80s is they were able to assemble these kinds of facts better, but there's a lot of expert input required and it's very limited in that sense. Do you ever look back to that as something that we'll have to return to eventually, sort of dust off the book from the shelf and think about how we build knowledge, representation, knowledge," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like we'll have to use graph searches and first order logic and entailment and things like that. In my particular line of work, which has mostly been machine learning security and also generative modeling, I haven't usually found myself moving in that direction. For generative models, I could see a little bit of, it could be useful if you had something like a differentiable knowledge base or some other kind of knowledge base where it's possible for some of our fuzzier machine learning algorithms to interact with the knowledge base." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, neural network is kind of like that. It's a differentiable knowledge base of sorts. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If we had a really easy way of giving feedback to machine learning models, that would clearly help a lot with generative models. And so you could imagine one way of getting there would be get a lot better at natural language processing. But another way of getting there would be take some kind of knowledge base and figure out a way for it to actually interact with a neural network." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "being able to have a chat with a neural network." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So one thing in generative models we see a lot today is you'll get things like faces that are not symmetrical, like people that have two eyes that are different colors. I mean, there are people with eyes that are different colors in real life, but not nearly as many of them as you tend to see in the machine learning generated data. So if you had either a knowledge base that could contain the fact People's faces are generally approximately symmetric, and eye color is especially likely to be the same on both sides. Being able to just inject that hint into the machine learning model without it having to discover that itself after studying a lot of data would be a really useful feature. I could see a lot of ways of getting there without bringing back some of the 1980s technology, but I also see some ways that you could imagine extending the 1980s technology to play nice with neural nets and have it help get there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Awesome. So you talked about the story of you coming up with the idea of GANs at a bar with some friends. You were arguing that GANs would work, generative adversarial networks, and the others didn't think so. Then you went home at midnight, coded it up, and it worked. So if I was a friend of yours at the bar, I would also have doubts. It's a really nice idea. I'm very skeptical that it would work. What was the basis of their skepticism? What was the basis of your intuition why it should work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't want to be someone who goes around promoting alcohol for the purposes of science, but in this case, I do actually think that drinking helped a little bit. When your inhibitions are lowered, you're more willing to try out things that you wouldn't try out otherwise. So I have noticed in general that I'm less prone to shooting down some of my own ideas when I have had a little bit to drink. I think if I had had that idea at lunchtime, I probably would have thought, it's hard enough to train one neural net, you can't train a second neural net in the inner loop of the outer neural net. That was basically my friend's objection, was that trying to train two neural nets at the same time would be too hard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it was more about the training process. So my skepticism would be, I'm sure you could train it, but the thing it would converge to would not be able to generate anything reasonable, any kind of reasonable realism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so part of what all of us were thinking about when we had this conversation was deep Bolton machines, which a lot of us in the lab, including me, were a big fan of deep Bolton machines at the time. They involved two separate processes running at the same time. One of them is called the positive phase, where you load data into the model and tell the model to make the data more likely. The other one is called the negative phase, where you draw samples from the model and tell the model to make those samples less likely. In a deep Boltzmann machine, it's not trivial to generate a sample. You have to actually run an iterative process that gets better and better samples coming closer and closer to the distribution the model represents. So during the training process, you're always running these two systems at the same time. One that's updating the parameters of the model, and another one that's trying to generate samples from the model. And they worked really well on things like MNIST, but a lot of us in the lab, including me, had tried to get deep Boltzmann machines to scale past MNIST to things like generating color photos, and we just couldn't get the two processes to stay synchronized. So when I had the idea for GANs, a lot of people thought that the discriminator would have more or less the same problem as the negative phase in the Boltzmann machine. that trying to train the discriminator in the inner loop, you just couldn't get it to keep up with the generator in the outer loop. And that would prevent it from converging to anything useful. Yeah, I share that intuition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But turns out to not be the case." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot of the time with machine learning algorithms, it's really hard to predict ahead of time how well they'll actually perform. You have to just run the experiment and see what happens. And I would say I still today don't have one factor I can put my finger on and say, this is why GANs worked for photo generation and deep Boltzmann machines don't. There are a lot of theory papers showing that under some theoretical settings, the GAN algorithm does actually converge. But those settings are restricted enough that they don't necessarily explain the whole picture in terms of all the results that we see in practice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So taking a step back, can you, in the same way as we talked about deep learning, can you tell me what generative adversarial networks are?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so generative adversarial networks are a particular kind of generative model. A generative model is a machine learning model that can train on some set of data, like say you have a collection of photos of cats and you want to generate more photos of cats, or you want to estimate a probability distribution over cats so you can ask how likely it is that some new image is a photo of a cat. GANs are one way of doing this. Some generative models are good at creating new data. Other generative models are good at estimating that density function and telling you how likely particular pieces of data are to come from the same distribution as the training data. GANs are more focused on generating samples rather than estimating the density function. There are some kinds of GANs like FlowGAN that can do both, but mostly GANs are about generating samples, generating new photos of cats that look realistic. And they do that completely from scratch. It's analogous to human imagination. When a GAN creates a new image of a cat, it's using a neural network to produce a cat that has not existed before. It isn't doing something like compositing photos together. You're not literally taking the eye off of one cat and the ear off of another cat. It's more of this digestive process where the neural net trains on a lot of data and comes up with some representation of the probability distribution and generates entirely new cats. There are a lot of different ways of building a generative model. What's specific to GANs is that we have a two-player game in the game theoretic sense. And as the players in this game compete, one of them becomes able to generate realistic data. The first player is called the generator. It produces output data, such as just images, for example. And at the start of the learning process, it'll just produce completely random images. The other player is called the discriminator. The discriminator takes images as input and guesses whether they're real or fake. You train it both on real data, so photos that come from your training set, actual photos of cats, and you train it to say that those are real. You also train it on images that come from the generator network, and you train it to say that those are fake. As the two players compete in this game, the discriminator tries to become better at recognizing whether images are real or fake, and the generator becomes better at fooling the discriminator into thinking that its outputs are real. And you can analyze this through the language of game theory and find that there's a Nash equilibrium where the generator has captured the correct probability distribution, So in the cat example, it makes perfectly realistic cat photos. And the discriminator is unable to do better than random guessing, because all the samples coming from both the data and the generator look equally likely to have come from either source." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you ever, do you ever sit back and does it just blow your mind that this thing works? So from very, so it's able to estimate that density function enough to generate, generate realistic images. I mean, uh, does it, yeah. Do you ever sit back? How does this even, why this is quite incredible, especially where GANs have gone in terms of realism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and not just to flatter my own work, but generative models, all of them have this property that if they really did what we asked them to do, they would do nothing but memorize the training data. Models that are based on maximizing the likelihood, the way that you obtain the maximum likelihood for a specific training set is you assign all of your probability mass to the training examples and nowhere else. For GANs, the game is played using a training set. So the way that you become unbeatable in the game is you literally memorize training examples. One of my former interns wrote a paper, his name is Vaishnav Nagarajan, and he showed that it's actually hard for the generator to memorize the training data. Hard in a statistical learning theory sense, that you can actually create reasons for why it would require quite a lot of learning steps and a lot of observations of different latent variables before you could memorize the training data. that still doesn't really explain why, when you produce samples that are new, why do you get compelling images rather than, you know, just garbage that's different from the training set. And I don't think we really have a good answer for that, especially if you think about how many possible images are out there and how few images the generative model sees during training. It seems just unreasonable that generative models create new images as well as they do. especially considering that we're basically training them to memorize rather than generalize. I think part of the answer is there's a paper called Deep Image Prior where they show that you can take a convolutional net and you don't even need to learn the parameters of it at all. You just use the model architecture. and it's already useful for things like in-painting images. I think that shows us that the convolutional network architecture captures something really important about the structure of images, and we don't need to actually use learning to capture all the information coming out of the convolutional net. That would imply that it would be much harder to make generative models in other domains. So far we're able to make reasonable speech models and things like that. But to be honest, we haven't actually explored a whole lot of different datasets all that much. We don't, for example, see a lot of deep learning models of biology datasets, where you have lots of microarrays measuring the amount of different enzymes and things like that. So we may find that some of the progress that we've seen for images and speech turns out to really rely heavily on the model architecture. and we were able to do what we did for vision by trying to reverse engineer the human visual system. And maybe it'll turn out that we can't just use that same trick for arbitrary kinds of data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so there's aspects of the human vision system, the hardware of it, that makes it, without learning, without cognition, just makes it really effective at detecting the patterns we see in the visual world. Yeah, that's really interesting. In a big, quick overview, in your view, what types of GANs are there and what other generative models besides GANs are there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's maybe a little bit easier to start with what kinds of generative models are there other than GANs. So most generative models are likelihood-based, where to train them you have a model that tells you how much probability it assigns to a particular example, and you just maximize the probability assigned to all the training examples. It turns out that it's hard to design a model that can create really complicated images or really complicated audio waveforms and still have it be possible to estimate the likelihood function from a computational point of view. Most interesting models that you would just write down intuitively, it turns out that it's almost impossible to calculate the amount of probability they assign to a particular point. So there's a few different schools of generative models in the likelihood family. One approach is to very carefully design the model so that it is computationally tractable to measure the density it assigns to a particular point. So there are things like autoregressive models, like PixelCNN, Those basically break down the probability distribution into a product over every single feature. So for an image, you estimate the probability of each pixel given all of the pixels that came before it. There's tricks where if you want to measure the density function, you can actually calculate the density for all these pixels more or less in parallel. Generating the image still tends to require you to go one pixel at a time, and that can be very slow. But there are, again, tricks for doing this in a hierarchical pattern where you can keep the runtime under control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are the quality of the images it generates, putting runtime aside, pretty good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're reasonable, yeah. I would say a lot of the best results are from GANs these days, but it can be hard to tell how much of that is based on who's studying which type of algorithm, if that makes sense. amount of effort invested in a particular... Yeah, or like the kind of expertise. So a lot of people who've traditionally been excited about graphics or art and things like that have gotten interested in GANs. And to some extent, it's hard to tell, are GANs doing better because they have a lot of graphics and art experts behind them? Or are GANs doing better because they're more computationally efficient? Or are GANs doing better because they prioritize the realism of samples over the accuracy of the density function? I think all those are potentially valid explanations, and it's hard to tell." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you give a brief history of GANs from 2014? Were you paper 13?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so a few highlights. In the first paper, we just showed that GANs basically work. If you look back at the samples we had now, they look terrible. On the CIFAR-10 dataset, you can't even recognize objects in them. Your paper, sorry, you used CIFAR-10? We used MNIST, which is little handwritten digits. We used the Toronto Face Database, which is small grayscale photos of faces. We did have recognizable faces. My colleague Bing Xu put together the first GAN face model for that paper. We also had the CIFAR-10 dataset, which is things like very small 32 by 32 pixels of cars and cats and dogs. For that, we didn't get recognizable objects, but all the deep learning people back then were really used to looking at these failed samples and kind of reading them like tea leaves. And people who are used to reading the tea leaves recognize that Our tea leaves at least look different. Maybe not necessarily better, but there's something unusual about them. And that got a lot of us excited. One of the next really big steps was LapGAN by Emily Denton and Sumit Chintala at Facebook AI Research, where they actually got really good high-resolution photos working with GANs for the first time. They had a complicated system where they generated the image starting at low res and then scaling up to high res, but they were able to get it to work. And then in 2015, I believe, later that same year, Alec Radford and Sumit Chintala and Luke Metz published the DCGAN paper, which stands for Deep Convolutional GAN. It's kind of a non-unique name because These days basically all GANs and even some before that were deep and convolutional, but they just kind of picked a name for a really great recipe where they were able to actually, using only one model instead of a multi-step process, actually generate realistic images of faces and things like that. That was sort of like the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of GANs. Once you had animals that had a backbone, you suddenly got lots of different versions of fish and four-legged animals and things like that. So DCGAN became kind of the backbone for many different models that came out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Used as a baseline, even still." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. And so from there, I would say some interesting things we've seen are There's a lot you can say about how just the quality of standard image generation GANs has increased. But what's also maybe more interesting on an intellectual level is how the things you can use GANs for has also changed. One thing is that you can use them to learn classifiers without having to have class labels for every example in your training set. So that's called semi-supervised learning. My colleague at OpenAI, Tim Solomons, who's at Brain now, wrote a paper called Improved Techniques for Training GANs. I'm a co-author on this paper, but I can't claim any credit for this particular part. One thing he showed in the paper is that you can take the GAN discriminator and use it as a classifier that actually tells you, you know, this image is a cat, this image is a dog, this image is a car, this image is a truck, and so on. Not just to say whether the image is real or fake, but if it is real, to say specifically what kind of object it is. And he found that you can train these classifiers with far fewer labeled examples than traditional classifiers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you supervise based on also not just your discrimination ability, but your ability to classify, you're going to converge much faster to being effective at being a discriminator." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So for example, for the MNIST dataset, you want to look at an image of a handwritten digit and say whether it's a 0, a 1, or a 2, and so on. To get down to less than 1% accuracy required around 60,000 examples until maybe about 2014 or so, In 2016, with this semi-supervised GAN project, Tim was able to get below 1% error using only 100 labeled examples. So that was about a 600x decrease in the amount of labels that he needed. he's still using more images than that, but he doesn't need to have each of them labeled as, you know, this one's a one, this one's a two, this one's a zero, and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Then to be able to, for GANs to be able to generate recognizable objects, so objects from a particular class, you still need labeled data, because you need to know what it means to be a particular class, cat, dog. How do you think we can move away from that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, some researchers at Brain Zurich actually just released a really great paper on semi-supervised GANs where their goal isn't to classify, it's to make recognizable objects despite not having a lot of label data. They were working off of DeepMind's BigGAN project, and they showed that they can match the performance of BigGAN using only 10%, I believe, of the labels. BigGAN was trained on the ImageNet dataset, which is about 1.2 million images, and had all of them labeled. This latest project from Brain Zurich shows that they're able to get away with only having about 10% of the images labeled. And they do that essentially using a clustering algorithm, where the discriminator learns to assign the objects to groups, and then this understanding that objects can be grouped into similar types helps it to form more realistic ideas of what should be appearing in the image. Because it knows that every image it creates has to come from one of these archetypal groups, rather than just being some arbitrary image. If you train a GAN with no class labels, you tend to get things that look sort of like grass or water or brick or dirt, but without necessarily a lot going on in them. And I think that's partly because if you look at a large ImageNet image, the object doesn't necessarily occupy the whole image. And so you learn to create realistic sets of pixels, but you don't necessarily learn that the object is the star of the show, and you want it to be in every image you make." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I've heard you talk about the horse-to-zebra cycle GAN mapping and how it turns out, again, thought-provoking, that horses are usually on grass and zebras are usually on drier terrain. So when you're doing that kind of generation, you're going to end up generating greener horses or whatever. So those are connected together. It's not just... You're not able to segment, be able to generate in a segmented way. So are there other types of games you come across in your mind that neural networks can play with each other to be able to solve problems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the one that I spend most of my time on is insecurity. You can model most interactions as a game where there's attackers trying to break your system and you're the defender trying to build a resilient system. There's also domain adversarial learning, which is an approach to domain adaptation that looks really a lot like GANs. The authors had the idea before the GAN paper came out. Their paper came out a little bit later, and they They were very nice and cited the GAN paper, but I know that they actually had the idea before it came out. Domain adaptation is when you want to train a machine learning model in one setting called a domain, and then deploy it in another domain later. And you would like it to perform well in the new domain, even though the new domain is different from how it was trained. So, for example, you might want to train on a really clean image dataset like ImageNet, but then deploy on users' phones, where the user is taking pictures in the dark, or pictures while moving quickly, and just pictures that aren't really centered or composed all that well. When you take a normal machine learning model, it often degrades really badly when you move to the new domain because it looks so different from what the model was trained on. Domain adaptation algorithms try to smooth out that gap, and the domain adversarial approach is based on training a feature extractor where the features have the same statistics regardless of which domain you extracted them on. So in the domain adversarial game, you have one player that's a feature extractor and another player that's a domain recognizer. The domain recognizer wants to look at the output of the feature extractor and guess which of the two domains the features came from. So it's a lot like the real versus fake discriminator in GANs. And then the feature extractor you can think of as loosely analogous to the generator in GANs, except what it's trying to do here is both fool the domain recognizer into not knowing which domain the data came from, and also extract features that are good for classification. So at the end of the day, in the cases where it works out, you can actually get features that work about the same in both domains. Sometimes this has a drawback where in order to make things work the same in both domains, it just gets worse at the first one. But there are a lot of cases where it actually works out well on both." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think of GANs being useful in the context of data augmentation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, one thing you could hope for with GANs is you could imagine, I've got a limited training set and I'd like to make more training data to train something else, like a classifier. You could train the GAN on the training set and then create more data and then maybe the classifier would perform better on the test set after training on this bigger GAN-generated data set. So that's the simplest version of something you might hope would work. I've never heard of that particular approach working, but I think there's some closely related things that I think could work in the future and some that actually already have worked. So if we think a little bit about what we'd be hoping for if we use the GAN to make more training data... We're hoping that the GAN will generalize to new examples better than the classifier would have generalized if it was trained on the same data. And I don't know of any reason to believe that the GAN would generalize better than the classifier would. But what we might hope for is that the GAN could generalize differently from a specific classifier. So one thing I think is worth trying that I haven't personally tried, but someone could try is, what if you trained a whole lot of different generative models on the same training set, create samples from all of them, and then train a classifier on that? Because each of the generative models might generalize in a slightly different way, they might capture many different axes of variation that one individual model wouldn't. And then the classifier can capture all of those ideas by training on all of their data. So it'd be a little bit like making an ensemble of classifiers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "An ensemble of GANs. Yeah. In a way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that could generalize better. The other thing that GANs are really good for is not necessarily generating new data that's exactly like what you already have, but by generating new data that has different properties from the data you already had. One thing that you can do is you can create differentially private data. So suppose that you have something like medical records, and you don't want to train a classifier on the medical records and then publish the classifier, because someone might be able to reverse engineer some of the medical records you trained on. There's a paper from Casey Green's lab that shows how you can train a GAN using differential privacy. And then the samples from the GAN still have the same differential privacy guarantees as the parameters of the GAN. So you can make fake patient data for other researchers to use, and they can do almost anything they want with that data because it doesn't come from real people. And the differential privacy mechanism gives you clear guarantees on how much the original people's data has been protected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's really interesting, actually. I haven't heard you talk about that before. In terms of fairness, I've seen from AAAI, your talk, how can adversarial machine learning help models be more fair with respect to sensitive variables?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So there's a paper from Amos Storky's lab about how to learn machine learning models that are incapable of using specific variables. So say, for example, you wanted to make predictions that are not affected by gender. It isn't enough to just leave gender out of the input to the model. You can often infer gender from a lot of other characteristics. Like, say that you have the person's name, but you're not told their gender. Well, if their name is Ian, they're kind of obviously a man. So what you'd like to do is make a machine learning model that can still take in a lot of different attributes and make a really accurate informed prediction, but be confident that it isn't reverse engineering gender or another sensitive variable internally. You can do that using something very similar to the domain adversarial approach, where you have one player that's a feature extractor, and another player that's a feature analyzer. And you want to make sure that the feature analyzer is not able to guess the value of the sensitive variable that you're trying to keep private." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, that's, yeah, I love this approach. So yeah, with the feature, you're not able to infer, right, the sensitive variables. It's brilliant. It's quite brilliant and simple, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Another way I think that GANs in particular could be used for fairness would be to make something like a CycleGAN, where you can take data from one domain and convert it into another. We've seen CycleGAN turning horses into zebras. We've seen other unsupervised GANs made by Mingyu Liu doing things like turning day photos into night photos. I think for fairness, you could imagine taking records for people in one group and transforming them into analogous people in another group and testing to see if they're treated equitably across those two groups. There's a lot of things that would be hard to get right to make sure that the conversion process itself is fair, and I don't think it's anywhere near something that we could actually use yet. But if you could design that conversion process very carefully, it might give you a way of doing audits where you say, what if we took people from this group, converted them into equivalent people in another group? Does the system actually treat them how it ought to?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's also really interesting. You know, in popular press and in general, in our imagination, you think, well, GANs are able to generate data, and you start to think about deep fakes, or being able to sort of maliciously generate data that fakes the identity of other people. Is this something of a concern to you? Is this something, if you look 10, 20 years into the future, is that something that pops up in your work, in the work of the community that's working on generative models?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm a lot less concerned about 20 years from now than the next few years. I think there will be a kind of bumpy cultural transition as people encounter this idea that there can be very realistic videos and audio that aren't real. I think 20 years from now, people will mostly understand that you shouldn't believe something is real just because you saw a video of it. People will expect to see that it's been cryptographically signed. or have some other mechanism to make them believe that the content is real. There's already people working on this. There's a startup called Truepick that provides a lot of mechanisms for authenticating that an image is real. They're maybe not quite up to having a state actor try to evade their verification techniques, but it's something that people are already working on and I think will get right eventually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think authentication will eventually win out? So being able to authenticate that this is real and this is not, as opposed to GANs just getting better and better, or generative models being able to get better and better to where the nature of what is real" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think we'll ever be able to look at the pixels of a photo and tell you for sure that it's real or not real. And I think it would actually be somewhat dangerous to rely on that approach too much. If you make a really good fake detector and then someone's able to fool your fake detector and your fake detector says this image is not fake, then it's even more credible than if you've never made a fake detector in the first place. What I do think we'll get to is systems that we can kind of use behind the scenes to make estimates of what's going on and maybe not use them in court for a definitive analysis. I also think we will likely get better authentication systems where, imagine that every phone cryptographically signs everything that comes out of it. You wouldn't be able to conclusively tell that an image was real, but you would be able to tell somebody who knew the appropriate private key for this phone was actually able to sign this image and upload it to this server at this timestamp. So you could imagine maybe you make phones that have the private key's hardware embedded in them. If like a state security agency really wants to infiltrate the company, they could probably, you know, plant a private key of their choice or break open the chip and learn the private key or something like that. But it would make it a lot harder for an adversary with fewer resources to fake things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For most of us, it would be okay. Okay. So you mentioned the beer and the bar and the new ideas. You were able to implement this or come up with this new idea pretty quickly and implement it pretty quickly. Do you think there's still many such groundbreaking ideas in deep learning that could be developed so quickly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I do think that there are a lot of ideas that can be developed really quickly. GANs were probably a little bit of an outlier on the whole one-hour timescale. But just in terms of low-resource ideas where you do something really different on the algorithm scale and get a big payback, I think it's not as likely that you'll see that in terms of things like core machine learning technologies, like a better classifier or a better reinforcement learning algorithm or a better generative model. If I had the GAN idea today, it would be a lot harder to prove that it was useful than it was back in 2014, because I would need to get it running on something like ImageNet or CelebA at high resolution. Those take a while to train. You couldn't train it in an hour and know that it was something really new and exciting. Back in 2014, training on MNIST was enough. But there are other areas of machine learning where I think a new idea could actually be developed really quickly with low resources." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your intuition about what areas of machine learning are ripe for this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I think fairness and interpretability are areas where we just really don't have any idea how anything should be done yet. Like for interpretability, I don't think we even have the right definitions. And even just defining a really useful concept, you don't even need to run any experiments, could have a huge impact on the field. We've seen that, for example, in differential privacy, that Cynthia Dwork and her collaborators made this technical definition of privacy, where before a lot of things were really mushy. And then with that definition, you could actually design randomized algorithms for accessing databases and guarantee that they preserved individual people's privacy in a mathematical, quantitative sense. Right now we all talk a lot about how interpretable different machine learning algorithms are, but it's really just people's opinion, and everybody probably has a different idea of what interpretability means in their head. If we could define some concept related to interpretability that's actually measurable, that would be a huge leap forward, even without a new algorithm that increases that quantity. And also, once we had the definition of differential privacy, it was fast to get the algorithms that guaranteed it. So you could imagine once we have definitions of good concepts and interpretability, we might be able to provide the algorithms that have the interpretability guarantees quickly too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think... it takes to build a system with human level intelligence as we quickly venture into the philosophical? So artificial general intelligence, what do you think it takes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that it definitely takes better environments than we currently have for training agents, that we want them to have a really wide diversity of experiences. I also think it's gonna take really a lot of computation. It's hard to imagine exactly how much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're optimistic about simulation, simulating a variety of environments as the path forward?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a necessary ingredient, yeah. I don't think that we're going to get to artificial general intelligence by training on fixed data sets or by thinking really hard about the problem. I think that the agent really needs to interact and have a variety of experiences within the same lifespan. And today we have many different models that can each do one thing, and we tend to train them on one dataset or one RL environment. Sometimes there are actually papers about getting one set of parameters to perform well in many different RL environments. we don't really have anything like an agent that goes seamlessly from one type of experience to another and really integrates all the different things that it does over the course of its life. When we do see multi-agent environments, they tend to be similar environments. All of them are playing an action-based video game. We don't really have an agent that goes from playing a video game to reading the Wall Street Journal to predicting how effective a molecule will be as a drug or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think is a good test for intelligence in your view? There's been a lot of benchmarks, started with Alan Turing, natural conversation being a good benchmark for intelligence. What would Ian Goodfellow sit back and be really damn impressed if a system was able to accomplish?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Something that doesn't take a lot of glue from human engineers. So imagine that instead of having to go to the CIFAR website and download CIFAR-10 and then write a Python script to parse it and all that, you could just point an agent at the CIFAR-10 problem and it downloads and extracts the data and trains a model and starts giving you predictions. I feel like something that doesn't need to have every step of the pipeline assembled for it definitely understands what it's doing. Is AutoML moving into that direction?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or are you thinking way even bigger?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "AutoML has mostly been moving toward, once we've built all the glue, can the machine learning system design the architecture really well? And so I'm more of saying like, If something knows how to pre-process the data so that it successfully accomplishes the task, then it would be very hard to argue that it doesn't truly understand the task in some fundamental sense. And I don't necessarily know that that's the philosophical definition of intelligence, but that's something that would be really cool to build, that would be really useful, and would impress me, and would convince me that we've made a step forward in real AI." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you give it like the URL for Wikipedia and then next day expect it to be able to solve CIFAR-10." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or like you type in a paragraph explaining what you want it to do and it figures out what web searches it should run and downloads all the necessary ingredients." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have a very clear, calm way of speaking, no ums, easy to edit. I've seen comments for both you and I have been identified as both potentially being robots. If you have to prove to the world that you are indeed human, how would you do it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can understand thinking that I'm a robot. It's the flip side of the Turing test, I think. Yeah, yeah, the prove your human test." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Intellectually, so you have to... Is there something that's truly unique in your mind? Does it go back to just natural language again?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just being able to... So proving that I'm not a robot with today's technology. Yeah, that's pretty straightforward. My conversation today hasn't veered off into talking about the stock market or something because it isn't my training data. But I guess more generally, trying to prove that something is real from the content alone is incredibly hard. That's one of the main things I've gotten out of my GAN research, that you can simulate almost anything. And so you have to really step back to a separate channel to prove that something is real. So like, I guess I should have had myself stamped on a blockchain when I was born or something, but I didn't do that. So according to my own research methodology, there's just no way to know at this point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what last question problem stands out for you that you're really excited about challenging in the near future?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think resistance to adversarial examples, figuring out how to make machine learning secure against an adversary who wants to interfere it and control it, that is one of the most important things researchers today could solve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In all domains, image, language, driving, and everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I guess I'm most concerned about domains we haven't really encountered yet. Like, imagine 20 years from now when we're using advanced AIs to do things we haven't even thought of yet. If you ask people, what are the important problems in security of phones in 2002, I don't think we would have anticipated that we're using them for nearly as many things as we're using them for today. I think it's going to be like that with AI, that you can kind of try to speculate about where it's going, but really the business opportunities that end up taking off would be hard to predict ahead of time. What you can predict ahead of time is that almost anything you can do with machine learning, you would like to make sure that people can't get it to do what they want rather than what you want just by showing it a funny QR code or a funny input pattern." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you think that the set of methodology to do that can be bigger than any one domain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, yeah. One methodology that I think is not a specific methodology, but like a category of solutions that I'm excited about today is making dynamic models that change every time they make a prediction. So right now, we tend to train models and then after they're trained, we freeze them and we just use the same rule to classify everything that comes in from then on. That's really a sitting duck from a security point of view. If you always output the same answer for the same input, then people can just run inputs through until they find a mistake that benefits them. And then they use the same mistake over and over and over again. I think having a model that updates its predictions so that it's harder to predict what you're going to get will make it harder for an adversary to really take control of the system and make it do what they want it to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, models that maintain a bit of a sense of mystery about them, because they always keep changing. Yeah. Ian, thanks so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it is an incredible process. I think it's maybe the most magical process there is. And I think one of the most fundamentally interesting things about it is that it shows that each of us takes the journey from so-called just physics to mind, right? Because we all start life as a single quiescent, unfertilized oocyte, and it's basically a bag of chemicals. And you look at that and you say, okay, this is chemistry and physics. And then nine months and some years later, you have an organism with high-level cognition and preferences and an inner life and so on. And what embryogenesis tells us is that that transformation from physics to mind is gradual. It's smooth. There is no special place where, you know, a lightning bolt says, boom, now you've gone from physics to true cognition. That doesn't happen. And so we can see in this process that the whole mystery, you know, the biggest mystery of the universe, basically, how you get mind from matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "from just physics in quotes. So where's the magic to the thing? How do we get from information encoded in DNA and make physical reality out of that information?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So one of the things that I think is really important if we're going to bring in DNA into this picture is to think about the fact that what DNA encodes is the hardware of life. DNA contains the instructions for the kind of micro-level hardware that every cell gets to play with. So all the proteins, all the signaling factors, the ion channels, all the cool little pieces of hardware that cells have, that's what's in the DNA. the rest of it is in so-called generic laws. And these are laws of mathematics, these are laws of computation, these are laws of physics, of all kinds of interesting things that are not directly in the DNA. And that process, you know, I think the reason I always put just physics in quotes is because I don't think there is such a thing as just physics. I think that the thinking about these things in binary categories, like this is physics, this is true cognition, this is as if, it's only faking, these kinds of things. I think that's what gets us in trouble. I think that we really have to understand that it's a continuum, and we have to work up the scaling, the laws of scaling, and we can certainly talk about that. There's a lot of really interesting thoughts to be had there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the physics is deeply integrated with the information. So the DNA doesn't exist on its own. The DNA is integrated in some sense in response to the laws of physics at every scale, the laws of the environment it exists in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the environment and also the laws of the universe. I mean, the thing about the DNA is that once evolution discovers a certain kind of machine, that if the physical implementation is appropriate, it's sort of—and this is hard to talk about because we don't have a good vocabulary for this yet—but it's a very kind of a platonic notion that if the machine is there, it pulls down interesting things that you do not have to evolve from scratch because the laws of physics give it to you for free. So just as a really stupid example, if you're trying to evolve a particular triangle, you can evolve the first angle and you evolve the second angle, but you don't need to evolve the third. You know what it is already. Now, why do you know? That's a gift for free from geometry in a particular space. You know what that angle has to be. And if you evolve an ion channel, which is ion channels are basically transistors, right? They're voltage gated current conductances. If you evolve that ion channel, you immediately get to use things like truth tables. You get logic functions. You don't have to evolve the logic function. You don't have to evolve a truth table. It doesn't have to be in the DNA. You get it for free, right? And the fact that if you have NAND gates, you can build anything you want. You get that for free. All you have to evolve is that first step, that first little machine that enables you to couple to those laws. And there's laws of adhesion and many other things. And this is all that interplay between the hardware that's set up by the genetics and the software that's built, right? The physiological software that basically does all the computation and the cognition and everything else is a real interplay. between the information in the DNA and the laws of physics of computation and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is it fair to say, just like this idea that the laws of mathematics are discovered, they're laden within the fabric of the universe, in that same way the laws of biology are kind of discovered?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that's absolutely, and it's probably not a popular view, but I think that's right on the money." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that's a really deep idea. Then embryogenesis is the process of revealing, of embodying, of manifesting these laws. You're not building the laws, you're just creating the capacity to reveal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I think, again, not the standard view of molecular biology by any means, but I think that's right on the money. I'll give you a simple example. You know, some of our latest work with these xenobots, right? So what we've done is to take some skin cells off of an early frog embryo and basically ask about their plasticity. If we give you a chance to sort of reboot your multicellularity in a different context, what would you do? Because what you might assume by the thing about embryogenesis is that it's super reliable, right? It's very robust, and that really obscures some of its most interesting features. We get used to it. We get used to the fact that acorns make oak trees and frog eggs make frogs, and we say, well, what else is it going to make? That's what it, you know, that's what it makes. That's a standard story. But the reality is, and so you look at these skin cells and you say, well, what do they know how to do? Well, they know how to be a passive, boring, two-dimensional outer layer keeping the bacteria from getting into the embryo. That's what they know how to do. Well, it turns out that if you take these skin cells and you remove the rest of the embryo, so you remove all of the rest of the cells, and you say, well, you're by yourself now, what do you want to do? So what they do is they form this multi-little creature that runs around the dish. They have all kinds of incredible capacities. They navigate through mazes, they have various behaviors that they do both independently and together. Basically, they implement von Neumann's dream of self-replication, because if you sprinkle a bunch of loose cells into the dish, what they do is they run around, they collect those cells into little piles, they sort of mush them together until those little piles become the next generation of xenobots. So you've got this machine that builds copies of itself from loose material in its environment. things that you would have expected from the frog genome. In fact, the genome is wild-typed. There's nothing wrong with their genetics. Nothing has been added, no nanomaterials, no genomic editing, nothing. And so what we have done there is engineer by subtraction. What you've done is you've removed the other cells that normally basically bully these cells into being skin cells. and you find out that what they really want to do is their default behavior is to be a xenobot. But in vivo, in the embryo, they get told to be skinned by these other cell types. And so now here comes this really interesting question that you just posed. When you ask where does the form of the tadpole and the frog come from, the standard answer is, well, it's selection. So over millions of years, it's been shaped to produce the specific body that's fit for froggy environments. Where does the shape of the xenobot come from? There's never been any xenobots. There's never been selection to be a good xenobot. These cells find themselves in the new environment. In 48 hours, they figure out how to be an entirely different a proto-organism with new capacities like kinematic self-replication. That's not how frogs or tadpoles replicate. We've made it impossible for them to replicate their normal way. Within a couple days, these guys find a new way of doing it that's not done anywhere else in the biosphere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, actually, let's step back and define what are xenobots?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So a xenobot is a self-assembling little proto-organism. It's also a biological robot. Those things are not distinct. It's a member of both classes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How much is it biology? How much is it robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At this point, most of it is biology, because what we're doing is we're discovering natural behaviors of the cells and also of the cell collectives. Now, one of the really important parts of this was that we're working together with Josh Bongard's group at University of Vermont. They're computer scientists. They do AI. And they've basically been able to use an evolutionary, a simulated evolution approach to ask, how can we manipulate these cells, give them signals, not rewire their DNA, so not hardware, but experiences signals. So can we remove some cells? Can we add some cells? Can we poke them in different ways to get them to do other things? So in the future, there's going to be, you know, we're now, and this is future unpublished work, but we're doing all sorts of interesting ways to reprogram them to new behaviors. But before you can start to reprogram these things, you have to understand what their innate capacities are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so that means engineering, programming, you're engineering them in the future. And in some sense, the definition of a robot is something you in part engineer versus evolve. I mean, It's such a fuzzy definition anyway, in some sense, many of the organisms within our body are kinds of robots. And I think robots is a weird line, because we tend to see robots as the other. I think there will be a time in the future when there's going to be something akin to the civil rights movements for robots, but we'll talk about that later perhaps. Anyway. So how do you, can we just linger on it? How do you build a xenobot? What are we talking about here? From whence does it start and how does it become the glorious xenobot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so just to take one step back, one of the things that a lot of people get stuck on is they say, well, you know, engineering requires new DNA circuits, or it requires new nanomaterials, you know. The thing is, we're now moving from old school engineering, which used passive materials, right? Things like, you know, wood, metal, things like this, that basically the only thing you could depend on is that they were going to keep their shape. That's it. They don't do anything else. It's on you as an engineer to make them do everything they're going to do. And then there were active materials. Now computation materials, this is a whole new era. These are agential materials. You're now collaborating with your substrate because your material has an agenda. These cells have billions of years of evolution. They have goals, they have preferences. They're not just going to sit where you put them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's hilarious that you have to talk your material into keeping its shape. That is exactly right. That is exactly right. Stay there. It's like getting a bunch of cats or something and trying to organize the shape out of them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's funny, we're on the same page here because in the paper, this is currently just been accepted in Nature by Engineering. One of the figures I have is building a tower out of Legos versus dogs. So think about the difference. If you build out of Legos, you have full control over where it's going to go. But if somebody knocks it over, it's game over. With the dogs, you cannot just come and stack them. They're not going to stay that way. But the good news is that if you train them, Then somebody knocks it over, they'll get right back up. As an engineer, what you really want to know is, what can I depend on this thing to do? A lot of people have definitions of robots as far as what they're made of or how they got here, design versus evolve, whatever. I don't think any of that is useful. I think as an engineer, what you want to know is, how much can I depend on this thing to do when I'm not around to micromanage it? What level of what level of dependency can I give this thing? How much agency does it have? Which then tells you what techniques do you use. So do you use micromanagement, like you put everything where it goes? Do you train it? Do you give it signals? Do you try to convince it to do things, right? How much, you know, how intelligent is your substrate? And so now we're moving into this area where you're working with agential materials. That's a collaboration, that's not old style engineering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the word you're using, agential?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Agential, yeah. What's that mean? Agency, it comes from the word agency. So basically the material has agency, meaning that, It has some level of, obviously not human level, but some level of preferences, goals, memories, ability to remember things, to compute into the future, meaning anticipate. You know, when you're working with cells, they have all of that, to various degrees." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that empowering or limiting, having material that has a mind of its own, literally?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's both, right? So it raises difficulties because it means that if you're using the old mindset, which is a linear kind of extrapolation of what's going to happen, you're going to be surprised and shocked all the time because biology does not do what we linearly expect materials to do. On the other hand, it's massively liberating. And so in the following way, I've argued that advances in regenerative medicine require us to take advantage of this, because what it means is that you can get the material to do things that you don't know how to micromanage. So just as a simple example, right, if you had a rat, And you wanted this rat to do a circus trick, put a ball in the little hoop. You can do it the micromanagement way, which is try to control every neuron and try to play the thing like a puppet, right? And maybe someday that'll be possible, maybe. Or you can train the rat. And this is why humanity for thousands of years before we knew any neuroscience, we had no idea what's between the ears of any animal, we were able to train these animals. Because once you recognize the level of agency of a certain system, you can use appropriate techniques. If you know the currency of motivation, reward and punishment, you know how smart it is, you know what kinds of things it likes to do, you are searching a much smoother, much nicer problem space than if you try to micromanage the thing. And in regenerative medicine, when you're trying to get, let's say, an arm to grow back or an eye to repair a cell birth defect or something, do you really want to be controlling tens of thousands of genes at each point to try to micromanage it? Or do you want to find the high level modular controls that say, build an arm here? You already know how to build an arm. You did it before. Do it again. So that's I think it's both. It's both difficult and it challenges us to develop new ways of engineering. And it's hugely empowering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so how do you do, I mean, maybe sticking with the metaphor of dogs and cats, I presume you have to figure out, find the dogs and dispose of the cats. Because, you know, it's like the old herding cats is an issue, so you may be able to train dogs. I suspect you will not be able to train cats. or if you do, you're never gonna be able to trust them. So is there a way to figure out which material is amenable to hurting? Is it in the lab work or is it in simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right now it's largely in the lab because our simulations do not capture yet the most interesting and powerful things about biology. So the simulation, what we're pretty good at simulating are feed-forward emergent types of things, So cellular automata, if you have simple rules and you sort of roll those forward for every agent or every cell in the simulation, then complex things happen, ant colony algorithms, things like that. We're good at that, and that's fine. The difficulty with all of that is that it's incredibly hard to reverse. So this is a really hard inverse problem. If you look at a bunch of termites and they make a thing with a single chimney and you say, well, I like it, but I'd like two chimneys. How do you change the rules of behavior-free termites so they make two chimneys? Or if you say, well, here are a bunch of cells that are creating this kind of organism. I don't think that's optimal. I'd like to repair that birth defect. How do you control all the individual low-level rules, right, all the protein interactions and everything else? Rolling it back from the anatomy that you want to the low-level hardware rules is, in general, intractable. It's an inverse problem that's generally not solvable. So right now it's mostly in the lab, because what we need to do is we need to understand how biology uses top-down controls. So the idea is not bottom-up emergence, but the idea of things like goal-directed test-operate-exit kinds of loops, where it's basically an error minimization function over a new space. It's not a space of gene expression, but for example a space of anatomy. So just as a simple example, if you have a salamander, and it's got an arm, you can amputate that arm anywhere along the length. It will grow exactly what's needed, and then it stops. That's the most amazing thing about regeneration, is that it stops. It knows when to stop. When does it stop? It stops when a correct salamander arm has been completed. So that tells you, that's right. a means-ends kind of analysis where it has to know what the correct limb is supposed to look like, right? So it has a way to ascertain the current shape, it has a way to measure that delta from what shape it's supposed to be, and then it will keep taking actions, meaning remodeling and growing and everything else until that's complete. So once you know that, and we've taken advantage of this in the lab to do some really wild things with both planaria and frog embryos and so on, once you know that, you can start playing with that homeostatic cycle. You can ask, for example, well, how does it remember what the correct shape is and can we mess with that memory? Can we give it a false memory of what the shape should be and let the cells build something else? Or can we mess with the measurement apparatus, right? So it gives you gives you those kinds of—so the idea is to basically appropriate a lot of the approaches and concepts from cognitive neuroscience and behavioral science into things that previously were taken to be dumb materials. And, you know, you get yelled at in class for being anthropomorphic if you said, well, my cells want to do this and my cells want to do that. And I think that's a major mistake that leaves a ton of capabilities on the table." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So thinking about biologic systems as things that have memory, have almost something like cognitive ability, but. I mean, how incredible is it that the salamander arm is being rebuilt, not with a dictator. It's kind of like the cellular automata system. All the individual workers are doing their own thing. So where's that top-down signal that does the control coming from? How can you find it? Why does it stop growing? How does it know the shape? How does it have memory of the shape? And how does it tell everybody to be like, whoa, slow down, we're done." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the first thing to think about, I think, is that there are no examples anywhere of a central dictator in this kind of science, because everything is made of parts. And so we, even though we feel as a unified central sort of intelligence and kind of point of cognition, we are a bag of neurons, right? All intelligence is collective intelligence. This is important to kind of think about because a lot of people think, okay, there's real intelligence like me, and then there's collective intelligence, which is ants and flocks of birds and termites and things like that. And maybe it's appropriate to think of them as an individual, and maybe it's not, and a lot of people are skeptical about that and so on. But you've got to realize that there's no such thing as this indivisible diamond of intelligence that's like this one central thing that's not made of parts. We are all made of parts. And so if you believe, which I think is hard to get around, that we in fact have a centralized set of goals and preferences and we plan and we do things and so on, you are already committed to the fact that a collection of cells is able to do this, because we are a collection of cells. There's no getting around that. In our case, what we do is we navigate the three-dimensional world and we have behavior." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is blowing my mind right now, because we are just a collection of cells." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when I'm moving this arm, I feel like I'm the central dictator of that action. But there's a lot of stuff going on. All the cells here are collaborating in some interesting way. They're getting signal from the central nervous system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, even the central nervous system is misleadingly named because it isn't really central. Again, it's just a bunch of cells. I mean, there are no singular indivisible intelligences anywhere. Every example that we've ever seen is a collective of something. It's just that we're used to it. We're used to, okay, this thing is kind of a single thing, but it's really not. You zoom in, you know what you see. You see a bunch of cells running around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there some unifying, I mean, we're jumping around, but that's something that you look at as the bioelectrical signal versus the biochemical, the chemistry, the electricity. Maybe the life is in that versus the cells. There's an orchestra playing, and the resulting music is the dictator." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's not bad. That's Dennis Noble's kind of view of things. He has two really good books where he talks about this musical analogy, right? So I think that's, I like it. I like it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it wrong though?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't think it's wrong. I don't think it's wrong. I think the important thing about it is that we have to come to grips with the fact that a true, proper cognitive intelligence can still be made of parts. Those things are, and in fact it has to be, and I think it's a real shame, but I see this all the time. when you have a collective like this, whether it be a group of robots or a collection of cells or neurons or whatever, as soon as we gain some insight into how it works, meaning that, oh, I see, in order to take this action, here's the information that got processed via this chemical mechanism or whatever, immediately people say, Oh, well then that's not real cognition, that's just physics. And I think this is fundamentally flawed because if you zoom into anything, what are you going to see? Of course you're just going to see physics. What else could be underneath, right? It's not going to be fairy dust, it's going to be physics and chemistry. But that doesn't take away from the magic of the fact that there are certain ways to arrange that physics and chemistry, and in particular the bioelectricity, which I like a lot. to give you an emergent collective with goals and preferences and memories and anticipations that do not belong to any of the subunits. So I think what we're getting into here, and we can talk about how this happens during embryogenesis and so on, what we're getting into is the origin of a self, with a capital S. So we ourselves, there are many other kinds of selves, and we can tell some really interesting stories about where selves come from and how they become unified." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, is this the first, or at least humans tend to think that this is the level at which the self, with a capital S, is first born. And we really don't wanna see human civilization or Earth itself as one living organism. That's very uncomfortable to us. But where's the self born?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "we have to grow up past that. So what I like to do is, I'll tell you two quick stories about that. I like to roll backwards. So as opposed to, so if you start and you say, okay, here's a paramecium and you see it, you know, it's a single cell organism, you see it doing various things and people will say, okay, I'm sure there's some chemical story to be told about how it's doing it. So that's not true cognition, right? And people will argue about that. I like to work it backwards. I say, let's agree that you and I, as we sit here, are examples of true cognition, if anything. If there's anything that's true cognition, we are examples of it. Now let's just roll back slowly, right? So you roll back to the time when you were a small child and used to doing whatever, and then just sort of day by day, you roll back. And eventually you become more or less that paramecium, and then you're sort of even below that, right, as an unfertilized oocyte. To my knowledge, no one has come up with any convincing discrete step at which my cognitive powers disappear, right? Biology doesn't offer any specific step. It's incredibly smooth and slow and continuous. And so I think this idea that it just sort of magically shows up at one point and then humans have true selves that don't exist elsewhere, I think it runs against everything we know about evolution, everything we know about developmental biology. These are all slow continuum. And the other really important story I want to tell is where embryos come from. So think about this for a second. Amniote embryos, so this is humans, birds and so on, mammals and birds and so on. Imagine a flat disk of cells. So there's maybe 50,000 cells. And in that, so when you get an egg from a fertilized, let's say you buy a fertilized egg from a farm, right? That egg will have about 50,000 cells in a flat disk. It looks like a little tiny little frisbee. And in that flat disk, what'll happen is there'll be one set of cells will become special, and it will tell all the other cells, I'm going to be the head, you guys don't be the head. And so it'll amplify symmetry, breaking amplification, you get one embryo. There's some neural tissue and some other stuff forms. Now you say, okay, I had one egg and one embryo and there you go, what else could it be? Well, the reality is, and I used to, I did all of this as a grad student, if you take a little needle and you make a scratch in that blastoderm, in that disc, such that the cells can't talk to each other, for a while it heals up, but for a while they can't talk to each other. What'll happen is that both regions will decide that they can be the embryo and there will be two of them and then when they heal up they become conjoined twins and you can make two you can make three you can make lots so the question of how many selves are in there cannot be answered until it's actually played all the way through it isn't necessarily that there's just one There can be many so what you have is you have this medium this this undifferentiated. I'm sure there's a there's a psychological Version of this somewhere that I don't know the proper terminology but you have this you have this list like the ocean of potentiality you have these thousands of cells and Some number of individuals are going to be formed out of it. Usually one sometimes zero sometimes several and and they form out of these cells because a region of these cells organizes into a collective that will have goals, goals that individual cells don't have. For example, make a limb, make an eye. How many eyes? Well, exactly two. So individual cells don't know what an eye is. They don't know how many eyes you're supposed to have, but the collective does. The collective has goals and memories and anticipations that the individual cells don't. And the establishment of that boundary with its own ability to pursue certain goals, that's the origin of selfhood." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "in there somewhere? Were they always destined? Are they discovering that goal? Where the hell did evolution discover this? When you went from the prokaryotes to eukaryotic cells, and then they started making groups, and when you make a certain group, you make it sound... and it's such a tricky thing to try to understand. You make it sound like the cells didn't get together and came up with a goal, but the very act of them getting together revealed the goal that was always there. There was always that potential for that goal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the first thing to say is that there are way more questions here than certainties. Okay, so everything I'm telling you is cutting-edge developing, you know, stuff. So it's not as if any of us know the answer to this. But here's my opinion on this. I think what evolution... I don't think that evolution produces solutions to specific problems. In other words, specific environments. Like here's a frog that can live well in a froggy environment. I think what evolution produces is problem-solving machines that will solve problems in different spaces. So not just three-dimensional space. This goes back to what we were talking about before. The brain is evolutionarily a late development. It's a system that is able to pursue goals in three-dimensional space by giving commands to muscles. Where did that system come from? That system evolved from a much more ancient, evolutionarily much more ancient system, where collections of cells gave instructions for cell behaviors, meaning cells move to divide, to die, to change into different cell types, to navigate morphous space, the space of anatomies, the space of all possible anatomies. And before that, cells were navigating transcriptional space, which is a space of all possible gene expressions, and before that, metabolic space. So what evolution has done, I think, is is produced hardware that is very good at navigating different spaces using a bag of tricks, right? Which I'm sure many of them we can steal for autonomous vehicles and robotics and various things. And what happens is that they navigate these spaces without a whole lot of commitment to what the space is. In fact, they don't know what the space is, right? We are all brains in a vat, so to speak. Every cell does not know, right? Every cell is some other cell's external environment. So where does that border between you and the outside world, you don't really know where that is. Every collection of itself has to figure that out from scratch. And the fact that evolution requires all of these things to figure out what they are, what effectors they have, what sensors they have, where does it make sense to draw a boundary between me and the outside world, the fact that you have to build all that from scratch, this autopoiesis, is what defines the border of a self. Now, biology uses a multiscale competency architecture, meaning that every level has goals. So molecular networks have goals, cells have goals, tissues, organs, colonies. And it's the interplay of all of those that enable biology to solve problems in new ways, for example, in xenobots and various other things. This is, you know, it's exactly as you said, in many ways, the cells are discovering new ways of being, but at the same time, evolution certainly shapes all this. So evolution is very good at this agential bioengineering, right? When evolution is discovering a new way of being an animal, an animal or a plant or something, Sometimes it's by changing the hardware, changing protein structure and so on. But much of the time, it's not by changing the hardware, it's by changing the signals that the cells give to each other. It's doing what we as engineers do, which is try to convince the cells to do various things by using signals, experiences, stimuli. That's what biology does. It has to, because it's not dealing with a blank slate. If you're evolution and you're trying to make an organism, you're not dealing with a passive material that is fresh and you have to specify. It already wants to do certain things, so the easiest way to do that search, to find whatever is gonna be adaptive, is to find the signals that are gonna convince cells to do various things, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your sense is that evolution operates both in the software and the hardware, and it's just easier and more efficient to operate in the software." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and I should also say, I don't think the distinction is sharp. In other words, I think it's a continuum, but I think it's a meaningful distinction where you can make changes to a particular protein and now the enzymatic function is different and it metabolizes differently and whatever, and that will have implications for fitness. or you can change the huge amount of information in the genome that isn't structural at all. It's signaling. It's when and how do cells say certain things to each other, and that can have massive changes as far as how it's gonna solve problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, this idea of multi-hierarchical competence architecture, which is incredible to think about. So this hierarchy that evolution builds, I don't know who's responsible for this, I also see the incompetence of bureaucracies of humans when they get together. So how the hell does evolution build this? Where at every level, only the best get to stick around, they somehow figure out how to do their job without knowing the bigger picture. And then there's like the bosses that do the bigger thing. somehow, or you can now abstract away the small group of cells as an organ or something, and then that organ does something bigger in the context of the full body or something like this. How is that built? Is there some intuition you can kind of provide of how that's constructed, that hierarchical competence architecture? I love that, competence, just the word competence is pretty cool in this context, because everybody's good at their job somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, it's really key. And the other nice thing about competency is that, so my central belief in all of this is that engineering is the right perspective on all of this stuff, because it gets you away from subjective terms. People talk about sentience and this and that. Those things are very hard to define. People argue about them philosophically. I think that engineering terms like competency, like pursuit of goals, All of these things are empirically incredibly useful because you know it when you see it. And if it helps you build, right, if I can pick the right level, I say, this thing has, I believe this is X level of competency. I think it's like a thermostat, or I think it's like a better thermostat, or I think it's a, you know, various other kinds of many, many different kinds of complex systems. If that helps me to control and predict and build such systems, then that's all there is to say. There's no more philosophy to argue about. So I like competency in that way, because you can quantify. In fact, you have to make a claim. Competent at what? And then, or if I say, if I tell you it has a goal, the question is, what's the goal and how do you know? And I say, well, because every time I deviated from this particular state, that's what it spends energy to get back to. That's the goal. And we can quantify it and we can be objective about it. So, we're not used to thinking about this. I give a talk sometimes called, Why Don't Robots Get Cancer? And the reason robots don't get cancer is because, generally speaking, with a few exceptions, our architectures have been, you've got a bunch of dumb parts, and you hope that if you put them together, the overlying machine will have some intelligence and do something or other, right? But the individual parts don't care. They don't have an agenda. Biology isn't like that. Every level has an agenda, and the final outcome is the result of cooperation and competition, both within and across levels. So for example, during embryogenesis, your tissues and organs are competing with each other, and it's actually a really important part of development. There's a reason they compete with each other. They're not all just sort of helping each other. They're also competing for information, for metabolic, for limited metabolic constraints. But to get back to your other point, which is this seems like really efficient and good and so on compared to some of our human efforts, we also have to keep in mind that what happens here is that each level bends the option space for the level beneath so that your parts basically they don't see the the the geometry so so i'm using um and i and i think i take this seriously uh terminology from from like um from like relativity right where the space is literally bent so the option space is deformed by the higher level so that the lower levels all they really have to do is go down their concentration gradient they don't have to in fact they don't they can't know what the big picture is But if you bend the space just right, if they do what locally seems right, they end up doing your bidding. They end up doing things that are optimal in the higher space. Conversely, Because the components are good at getting their job done, you as the higher level don't need to try to compute all the low-level controls. All you're doing is bending the space. You don't know or care how they're going to do it. I'll give you a super simple example. In the tadpole, we found that, OK, so tadpoles need to become frogs. And to go from a tadpole head to a frog head, you have to rearrange the face. So the eyes have to move forward. The jaws have to come out. The nostrils move. Everything moves. It used to be thought that because all tadpoles look the same and all frogs look the same, if you just remember, if every piece just moves in the right direction, the right amount, then you get your frog, right? So we decided to test. I had this hypothesis that I thought actually the system is probably more intelligent than that. So what did we do? we made what we call Picasso tadpoles. So everything is scrambled, so the eyes are on the back of the head, the jaws are off to the side, everything is scrambled. Well, guess what they make? They make pretty normal frogs, because all the different things move around in novel paths configurations until they get to the correct froggy, sort of frog face configuration, then they stop. So the thing about that is now imagine evolution, right? So you make some sort of mutation and It does, like every mutation, it does many things. So something good comes of it, but also it moves your mouth off to the side, right? Now, if there wasn't this multi-scale competency, you can see where this is going, if there wasn't this multi-scale competency, the organism would be dead, your fitness is zero because you can't eat, and you would never get to explore the other beneficial consequences of that mutation. You'd have to wait until you find some other way of doing it without moving the mouth, that's really hard. So the fitness landscape would be incredibly rugged, evolution would take forever. The reason it works, one of the reasons it works so well, is because you do that, no worries, the mouth will find its way where it belongs, right? So now you get to explore. So what that means is that all of these mutations that otherwise would be deleterious are now neutral because the competency of the parts make up for all kinds of things. So all the noise of development, all the variability in the environment, all these things, the competency of the parts makes up for it. So that's all fantastic, right? That's all great. The only other thing to remember when we compare this to human efforts is this. every component has its own goals in various spaces, usually with very little regard for the welfare of the other levels. So as a simple example, you as a complex system, you will go out and you will do jujitsu or whatever, you'll have some go, you have to go rock climbing and scrape a bunch of cells off your hands, and then you're happy as a system, right? You come back and you've accomplished some goals and you're really happy. Those cells are dead, they're gone, right? Did you think about those cells? Not really, right? You had some bruising, algae." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "fish SOB." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's it. And so that's the thing to remember is that, you know, and we know this from history, is that just being a collective isn't enough because what the goals of that collective will be relative to the welfare of the individual parts is a massively open question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The ends justify the means. I'm telling you Stalin was onto something. So that's the danger. Exactly, that's the danger of, for us humans, we have to construct ethical systems under which we don't take seriously the full mechanism of biology and apply it to the way the world functions, which is an interesting line we've drawn. The world that built us is the one we reject in some sense when we construct human societies. The idea that this country was founded on, that all men are created equal, that's such a fascinating idea. It's like you're fighting against nature and saying, well, there's something bigger here than... a hierarchical competency architecture. There's so many interesting things you said. So from an algorithmic perspective, the act of bending the option space, that's really profound. Because if you look at the way AI systems are built today, there's a big system, like you said, with robots, and it has a goal. And it gets better and better at optimizing that goal, at accomplishing that goal. But if biology built a hierarchical system where everything is doing computation, and everything is accomplishing the goal, not only that, it's kind of dumb, with a limited, with a bent option space, it's just doing the thing that's the easiest thing for it in some sense. And somehow that allows you to have turtles on top of turtles, literally. Dumb systems on top of dumb systems that as a whole create something incredibly smart." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, every system has some degree of intelligence in its own problem domain. So cells will have problems they're trying to solve in physiological space and transcriptional space, and I can give you some cool examples of that. But the collective is trying to solve problems in anatomical space, right, and forming a creature and growing your blood vessels and so on. And then the whole body is solving yet other problems. They may be in social space and linguistic space and three-dimensional space. And who knows? The group might be solving problems in, I don't know, some sort of financial space or something. So one of the major differences with most AIs today is, A, the kind of flatness of the architecture, but also of the fact that they are constructed from outside their borders and their, you know, so to a large extent, and of course there are counter examples now, but to a large extent, our technology has been such that you create a machine or a robot, it knows what its sensors are, it knows what its effectors are, it knows the boundary between it and the outside world, all of this is given from the outside. Biology constructs this from scratch. Now, the best example of this that originally, in robotics was actually Josh Bongard's work in 2006 where he made these robots that did not know their shape to start with. So like a baby, they sort of floundered around, they made some hypotheses, well I did this and I moved in this way, well maybe I'm a whatever, maybe I have wheels or maybe I have six legs or whatever, right? And they would make a model and eventually they would crawl around. So that's, I mean, that's really good. That's part of the autopoiesis, but we can go a step further, and some people are doing this, and then we're sort of working on some of this too, is this idea that let's even go back further. You don't even know what sensors you have. You don't know where you end and the outside world begins. All you have is certain things like active inference, meaning you're trying to minimize surprise, right? You have some metabolic constraints. You don't have all the energy you need. You don't have all the time in the world to think about everything you want to think about. So that means that you can't afford to be a micro reductionist. You know, all this data coming in, you have to coarse grain it and say, I'm going to take all this stuff and I'm going to call that a cat. I'm going to take all this. I'm going to call that the edge of the table I don't want to fall off of. And I don't want to know anything about the microstates. What I want to know is what is the optimal way to cut up my world. And by the way, this thing over here, that's me. And the reason that's me is because I have more control over this than I have over any of this other stuff. And so now you can begin to write. So that's self-construction, that figuring out, making models of the outside world and then turning that inwards and starting to make a model of yourself, which immediately starts to get into issues of agency and control because In order to if you are under metabolic constraints, meaning you don't have the energy, right, that all the energy in the world, you have to be efficient, that immediately forces you to start telling stories about coarse grained agents that do things, right? You don't have the energy to like Laplace's demon, you know, calculate every every possible state that's going to happen, you have to coarse-grain and you have to say, that is the kind of creature that does things, either things that I avoid or things that I will go towards, that's a mate or food or whatever it's going to be. And so right at the base of simple, very simple organisms starting to make models of agents doing things, that is the origin of models of free will basically, right? Because you see the world around you as having agency and then you turn that on yourself and you say, wait, I have agency too. I do things, right? And then you make decisions about what you're going to do. So all of this, one model is to view all of those kinds of things as being driven by that early need to determine what you are and to do so and to then take actions in the most energetically efficient space possible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So free will emerges when you try to simplify, tell a nice narrative about your environment. I think that's very plausible, yeah. You think free will is an illusion. So you're kind of implying that it's a useful hack." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'll say two things. The first thing is I think it's very plausible to say that any organism that self, or any agent that self, whether it's biological or not, any agent that self-constructs under energy constraints is going to believe in free will. We'll get to whether it has free will momentarily, but I think what it definitely drives is a view of yourself and the outside world as an agential view. I think that's inescapable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's true for even primitive organisms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so. Now, obviously you have to scale down, right? So they don't have the kinds of complex metacognition that we have, so they can do long-term planning and thinking about free will and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the sense of agency is really useful to accomplish tasks, simple or complicated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. In all kinds of spaces, not just in obvious three-dimensional space. I mean, we're very good that the thing is, humans are very good at detecting agency of like medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds in the three-dimensional world, right? We see a bowling ball and we see a mouse and we immediately know what the difference is, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Mostly things you can eat or get eaten by." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. That's our training set, right? From the time you're little, your training set is visual data on this like little chunk of your experience. But imagine if Imagine if from the time that we were born, we had innate senses of your blood chemistry. If you could feel your blood chemistry the way you can see, right? You had a high bandwidth connection and you could feel your blood chemistry and you could see, you could sense all the things that your organs were doing. So your pancreas, your liver, all the things. And if we had that, we would be very good at detecting intelligence in physiological space. We would know the level of intelligence that our various organs were deploying to deal with things that were coming, to anticipate the stimuli, but we're just terrible at that. We don't, in fact, people don't even, you know, you talk about intelligence in these other spaces and a lot of people think that's just crazy because all we know is motion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We do have access to that information, so it's actually possible that, so evolution could, if it wanted to, construct an organism that's able to perceive the flow of blood through your body. The way you see an old friend and say, yo, what's up, how's the wife and the kids? In that same way, you would feel like a connection to the liver." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe other people's liver?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, just your own, because you don't have access to other people's." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not yet, but you could imagine some really interesting connection, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like sexual selection? Like, ooh, that girl's got a nice liver. The way her blood flows, the dynamics of the blood is very interesting. It's novel. I've never seen one of those." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you know, that's exactly what we're trying to half-ass when we judge judgment of beauty by facial symmetry and so on. That's a half-assed assessment of exactly that. Because if your cells could not cooperate enough to keep your organism symmetrical, you can make some inferences about what else is wrong, right? That's a very basic..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting, yeah, so in some deep sense, actually, that is what we're doing. We're trying to infer how, we use the word healthy, but basically, how functional is this biological system I'm looking at so I can hook up with that one and make offspring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well what kind of hardware might their genomics give me that might be useful in the future?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder why evolution didn't give us a higher resolution signal. Like why the whole peacock thing with the feathers, it doesn't seem It's a very low bandwidth signal for sexual selection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm gonna, and I'm not an expert on this stuff. On peacocks? Well, no, but I'll take a stab at the reason. I think that it's because it's an arms race. You see, you don't want everybody to know everything about you. So I think that as much as, and in fact, there's another interesting part of this arms race, which is, if you think about this, the most adaptive, evolvable system is one that has the most level of top-down control, right? If it's really easy to say to a bunch of cells, make another finger versus, okay, here's 10,000 gene expression changes that you need to do to make it to change your finger, right? The system with good top-down control that has memory, and we need to get back to that, by the way, that's a question I neglected to answer about where the memory is and so on. A system that uses all of that is really highly evolvable, and that's fantastic. But guess what? It's also highly subject to hijacking by parasites, by cheaters of various kinds, by conspecifics. We found that, and that goes back to the story of the pattern memory in these planaria, there's a bacterium that lives on these planaria. That bacterium has an input into how many heads the worm is going to have. because it hijacks that control system and it's able to make a chemical that basically interfaces with the system that calculates how many heads you're supposed to have and they can make them have two heads. And so you can imagine that if you are two, so you want to be understandable for your own parts to understand each other, but you don't want to be too understandable because you'll be too easily controllable. And so I think that my guess is that that opposing pressure keeps this from being a super high bandwidth kind of thing where we can just look at somebody and know everything about them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a kind of biological game of Texas Hold'em. Yeah. You're showing some cards and you're hiding other cards and that's part of it and there's bluffing and there's and all that and then there's probably whole species that would do way too much bluffing. That's probably where peacocks fall. There's a book that I don't remember if I read or if I read summaries of the book, but it's about evolution of beauty in birds. Where's that from? Is that a book or does Richard Dawkins talk about it? But basically there's some species start to like over-select for beauty. Not over-select, they just some reason select for beauty. There is a case to be made, actually now I'm starting to remember. I think Darwin himself made a case that you can select based on beauty alone. So that beauty, there's a point where beauty doesn't represent some underlying biological truth. You start to select for beauty itself. And I think the deep question is, is there some evolutionary value to beauty? But it's an interesting kind of, thought that this, can we deviate completely from the deep biological truth to actually appreciate some kind of the summarization in itself? Let me get back to memory, because this is a really interesting idea. How do a collection of cells remember anything? How do biological systems remember anything? How is that akin to the kind of memory we think of humans as having within our big cognitive engine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, one of the ways to start thinking about bioelectricity is to ask ourselves, where did neurons and all these cool tricks that the brain uses to run these amazing problem solving abilities on and basically an electrical network. Where did that come from? That didn't just evolve, you know, appear out of nowhere. It must have evolved from something. And what it evolved from was a much more ancient ability of cells to form networks to solve other kinds of problems. For example, to navigate morphous space, to control the body shape. And so all of the components of neurons, so ion channels, neurotransmitter machinery, electrical synapses, all this stuff is way older than brains, way older than neurons, in fact, older than multicellularity. And so it was already, even bacterial biofilms, there's some beautiful work from UCSD on brain-like dynamics and bacterial biofilms. So evolution figured out very early on that electrical networks are amazing at having memories, at integrating information across distance, at different kinds of optimization tasks, image recognition and so on. long before there were brains." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually step back and return to it? What is bioelectricity? What is biochemistry? What are electrical networks? I think a lot of the biology community focuses on the chemicals as the signaling mechanisms that make the whole thing work. You have, I think, to a large degree uniquely, maybe you can correct me on that, have focused on the bioelectricity, which is using electricity for signaling. There's also probably mechanical. Like knocking on the door. So what's the difference and what's an electrical network" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I want to make sure and kind of give credit where credit is due. So as far back as 1903 and probably late 1800s already, people were thinking about the importance of electrical phenomena in life. So I'm for sure not the first person to stress the importance of electricity. There were waves of research in the 30s, in the 40s, and then again in the kind of 70s, 80s, and 90s of sort of the pioneers of bioelectricity who did some amazing work on all this. I think what we've done that's new is to step away from this idea that—and I'll describe what the bioelectricity is—is step away from the idea that, well, here's another piece of physics that you need to keep track of to understand physiology and development, and to really start looking at this as saying, no, this is a a privileged computational layer that gives you access to the actual cognition of the tissue, of basal cognition, so merging that developmental biophysics with ideas and cognition of computation and so on. I think that's what we've done that's new, but people have been talking about bioelectricity for a really long time, and so I'll define that. What happens is that if you have a single cell, cell has a membrane, in that membrane are proteins called ion channels, and those proteins allow charged molecules, potassium, sodium, chloride, to go in and out under certain circumstances. And when there's an imbalance of those ions, there becomes a voltage gradient across that membrane. And so all cells, all living cells, try to hold a particular kind of voltage difference across the membrane, and they spend a lot of energy to do so. So that's a single cell. When you have multiple cells, the cells sitting next to each other, they can communicate their voltage state to each other via a number of different ways, but one of them is this thing called a gap junction, which is basically like a little submarine hatch that just kind of docks, right? And the ions from one side can flow to the other side and vice versa." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So- Isn't it incredible that this evolved? Isn't that wild? Because that didn't exist." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct, this had to be evolved. It had to be invented." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's right. Somebody invented electricity in the ocean. When did this get invented?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so, I mean, it is incredible. The guy who discovered Gap Junctions, Werner Lowenstein, I visited him, he was really old. A human being?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He discovered them. Because who really discovered them lived probably four billion years ago. Good point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So give credit where credit is due, I'm just saying. He rediscovered gap junctions. But when I visited him in Woods Hole maybe 20 years ago now, he told me that he was writing, and unfortunately he passed away, and I think this book never got written. He was writing a book on gap junctions and consciousness. and I think it would have been an incredible book because gap junctions are magic. I'll explain why in a minute. What happens is that, just imagine, the thing about both these ion channels and these gap junctions is that many of them are themselves voltage sensitive. So that's a voltage-sensitive current conductance. That's a transistor. And as soon as you've invented one, immediately, you now get access to, from this platonic space of mathematical truths, you get access to all of the cool things that transistors do. So now, when you have a network of cells, not only do they talk to each other, but they can send messages to each other, and the differences of voltage can propagate. Now, to neuroscientists, this is old hat, because you see this in the brain, right? There's action potentials, the electricity. They have these awesome movies where you can take a transparent animal, like a zebrafish, and you can literally look down and you can see all the firings as the fish is making decisions about what to eat and things like this, right? It's amazing. Well, your whole body is doing that all the time, just much slower. So there are very few things that neurons do that all the cells in your body don't do. they all do very similar things, just on a much slower timescale. And whereas your brain is thinking about how to solve problems in three-dimensional space, the cells in the embryo are thinking about how to solve problems in anatomical space. They're trying to have memories like, hey, how many fingers are we supposed to have? Well, how many do we have now? What do we do to get from here to there? That's the kind of problems they're thinking about. And the reason that gap junctions are magic is, imagine, right, from the earliest time. Here are two cells. This cell, how can they communicate? Well, the simple version is this cell could send a chemical signal, it floats over and it hits a receptor on this cell, right? Because it comes from outside, this cell can very easily tell that that came from outside. Whatever information is coming, that's not my information. That information is coming from the outside. I can trust it, I can ignore it, I can do various things with it, whatever, but I know it comes from the outside. Now imagine instead that you have two cells with a gap junction between them. Something happens. Let's say this cell gets poked. There's a calcium spike. The calcium spike or whatever small molecule signal propagates through the gap junction to this cell. There's no ownership metadata on that signal. This cell does not know now that it came from outside because it looks exactly like its own memories would have looked like of whatever had happened, right? So gap junctions, to some extent, wipe ownership information on data, which means that if you and I are sharing memories and we can't quite tell who the memories belong to, that's the beginning of a mind melt. That's the beginning of a scale up of cognition from here's me and here's you to no, now there's just us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they enforce a collective intelligence gap junctions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. It helps, it's the beginning. It's not the whole story by any means, but it's the start." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where's state stored of the system? Is it in part in the gap junctions themselves? Is it in the cells?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are many, many layers to this, as always in biology. So there are chemical networks. So for example, gene regulatory networks, right? Which are basically any kind of chemical pathway where different chemicals activate and repress each other. They can store memories. So in a dynamical system sense, they can store memories. They can get into stable states that are hard to pull them out of, right? So that becomes, once they get in, that's a memory, a permanent memory, or a semi-permanent memory of something that's happened. There are cytoskeletal structures, right, that are physically, they store memories in physical configuration. There are electrical memories like flip-flops, where there is no physical, right? So if you look, I showed my students this example as a flip-flop. And the reason that it stores a 0 or 1 is not because some piece of the hardware moved, it's because there's a cycling of the current in one side of the thing. If I come over and I hold the other side to a higher voltage for a brief period of time, it flips over and now it's here. But none of the hardware moved. The information is in a stable, dynamical sense. And if you were to x-ray the thing, you couldn't tell me if it was zero or one, because all you would see is where the hardware is. You wouldn't see the energetic state of the system. So there are bioelectrical states that are held in that exact way, like volatile RAM, basically, in the electrical state of the system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's very akin to the different ways that memory is stored in a computer. So there's RAM, there's hard drives." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can make that mapping, right? So I think the interesting thing is that based on the biology, we can have a more sophisticated, you know, I think we can revise some of our computer engineering methods, because there are some interesting things that biology does that we haven't done yet. But that mapping is not bad. I mean, I think it works in many ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I wonder, because I mean, the way we build computers at the root of computer science is the idea of proof of correctness. We program things to be perfect, reliable. You know, this idea of resilience and robustness to unknown conditions is not as important. So that's what biology is really good at. So I don't know what kind of systems, I don't know how we go from a computer to a biological system in the future." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that, you know, the thing about biology is all about making really important decisions really quickly on very limited information. I mean, that's what biology is all about. You have to act, you have to act now. The stakes are very high and you don't know most of what you need to know to be perfect. And so there's not even an attempt to be perfect or to get it right in any sense. There are just things like active inference, minimize surprise, optimize some efficiency and some things like this. that guides the whole business." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mentioned to you offline that somebody who's a fan of your work is Andrej Karpathy and he's, amongst many things, also writes occasionally a great blog. He came up with this idea, I don't know if he coined the term, but of Software 2.0. where the programming is done in the space of configuring these artificial neural networks. Is there some sense in which that would be the future of programming for us humans, where we're less doing Python-like programming, and more, how would that look like? But basically doing the hyperparameters of something akin to a biological system, and watching it go, and adjusting it, and creating some kind of feedback loop within the system so it corrects itself. And then we watch it over time, accomplish the goals we wanted to accomplish. Is that kind of the dream of the dogs that you described in the Nature paper?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, that's what you just painted is a very good description of our efforts at regenerative medicine as a kind of somatic psychiatry. So the idea is that you're not trying to micromanage. I mean, think about the limitations of a lot of the medicines today. We try to interact down at the level of pathways, right? So we're trying to micromanage it. What's the problem? Well, one problem is that for almost every medicine other than antibiotics, once you stop it, the problem comes right back. You haven't fixed anything. You were addressing symptoms. You weren't actually curing anything again, except for antibiotics. That's one problem. The other problem is you have massive amount of side effects because you were trying to interact at the lowest level. It's like, I'm gonna try to program this computer by changing the melting point of copper. like maybe you can do things that way but my god it's hard to to program at the right at the at the hardware level so what what i think we're we're starting to understand is that and and by the way this goes back to what you were saying before about uh that we could have access to our internal state right so people who practice that kind of stuff right so yoga and and biofeedback and those those are all the people that uniformly will say things like, well, the body has an intelligence and this and that. Those two sets overlap perfectly, because that's exactly right. Because once you start thinking about it that way, you realize that the better locus of control is not always at the lowest level. This is why we don't all program with a soldering iron, right? We take advantage of the high-level intelligences that are there, which means trying to figure out, okay, which of your tissues can learn, what can they learn, You know, why is it that certain drugs stop working after you take them for a while, whether it's habituation, right? And so can we understand habituation, sensitization, associative learning, these kinds of things in chemical pathways? We're going to have a completely different way, I think. We're going to have a completely different way of using drugs and of medicine in general when we start focusing on the goal states and on the intelligence of our subsystems, as opposed to treating everything as if the only path was micromanagement from chemistry upwards." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, can you speak to this idea of somatic psychiatry? What are somatic cells? How do they form networks that use bioelectricity to have memory and all those kinds of things? What are somatic cells, like basics here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The somatic cells just means the cells of your body, so much as means body, right? So somatic cells are just the, I'm not even specifically making a distinction between somatic cells and stem cells or anything like that. I mean, basically all the cells in your body, not just neurons, but all the cells in your body. They form electrical networks during embryogenesis, during regeneration. What those networks are doing, in part, is processing information about what our current shape is and what the goal shape is. Now, how do I know this? Because I can give you a couple of examples. One example is when we started studying this, we said, okay, here's a planarian. A planarian is a flatworm. It has one head and one tail normally. and the several amazing things about planaria. But basically, I think planaria hold the answer to pretty much every deep question of life. For one thing, they're similar to our ancestors. So they have true symmetry. They have a true brain. They're not like earthworms. They're a much more advanced life form. They have lots of different internal organs, but they're about maybe two centimeters in the centimeter to two in size. have a head and a tail. And the first thing is planaria are immortal, so they do not age. There's no such thing as an old planarian. So that right there tells you that these theories of thermodynamic limitations on lifespan are wrong. It's not that well over time everything degrades. No, planaria can keep it going for probably, you know, how long? If they've been around 400 million years, right? So the planaria in our lab are actually in physical continuity with planaria that were here 400 million years ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's planaria that have lived that long, essentially. What does it mean, physical continuity?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because what they do is they split in half. The way they reproduce is they split in half. So the planaria, the back end grabs the petri dish, the front end takes off, and they rip themselves in half." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But isn't in some sense we're, like you are a physical continuation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, except that we go through a bottleneck of one cell, which is the egg, they do not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, they can, there are certain planaria that- Got it, so we go through a very ruthless compression process and they don't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, like an autoencoder, you know, squashed down to one cell and then back out. These guys just tear themselves in half. And so the other amazing thing about them is they regenerate. So you can cut them into pieces. The record is, I think, 276 or something like that by Thomas Hunt Morgan. And each piece regrows a perfect little worm. They know exactly, every piece knows exactly what's missing, what needs to happen. In fact, if you chop it in half, as it grows the other half, the original tissue shrinks so that when the new tiny head shows up, they're proportional. So it keeps perfect proportion. If you starve them, they shrink. If you feed them again, they expand. Their control, their anatomical control is just insane." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Somebody cut them into over 200 pieces?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, Thomas Hunt Morgan did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hashtag science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Amazing, yeah, and maybe more. I mean, they didn't have antibiotics back then. I bet he lost some due to infection. I bet it's actually more than that. I bet you could do more than that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Humans can't do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, I mean, again, true, except that- Maybe you can at the embryonic level. Well, that's the thing, right? So I tell, when I talk about this, I say, just remember that as amazing as it is to grow a whole planarian from a tiny fragment, half of the human population can grow a full body from one cell, right? So development is really, you can look at development as just an example of regeneration." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, to think, we'll talk about regenerative medicine, but there's some sense what would be like that worm in like 500 years, where I can just go, regrow a hand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, with a given time, it takes time to grow large things, but yeah, I think so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can probably, why not accelerate? Oh, biology takes its time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not gonna say anything is impossible, but I don't know of a way to accelerate these processes. I think it's possible. I think we are going to be regenerative, but I don't know of a way to make it fast." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just think people from a few centuries from now will be like, well, they used to have to wait a week for the hand to regrow. It's like when the microwave was invented. You can toast your, what's that called when you put a cheese on a toast? Um. It's delicious is all I know. I'm blanking. Anyhow, all right, so planaria. Why were we talking about the magical planaria that they have the mystery of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the reason we're talking about planaria is not only are they immortal, okay, not only do they regenerate every part of the body, They generally don't get cancer, which we can talk about why that's important. They're smart, they can learn things, so you can train them. And it turns out that if you train a planarian and then cut their heads off, the tail will regenerate a brand new brain that still remembers the original information." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do they have a bioelectrical network going on or no? Yes, yes. So their somatic cells are forming a network, and that's what you mean by a true brain? What's the requirement for a true brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like everything else, it's a continuum, but a true brain has certain characteristics as far as the density, like a localized density of neurons that guides behavior. Exactly. If you cut their head off, the tail doesn't do anything, it just sits there until the new brain regenerates. They have all the same neurotransmitters that you and I have. But here's why we're talking about them in this context. So here's your planaria, you cut off the head, you cut off the tail, you have a middle fragment. That middle fragment has to make one head and one tail. how does it know how many of each to make and where do they go? How come it doesn't switch? How come, right? So we did a very simple thing and we said, okay, let's make the hypothesis that there's a somatic electrical network that remembers the correct pattern and that what it's doing is recalling that memory and building to that pattern. So what we did was we used a way to visualize electrical activity in these cells, right? It's a variant of what people use to look for electricity in the brain. And we saw that that fragment has a very particular electrical pattern. You can literally see it once we develop the technique. It has a very particular electrical pattern that shows you where the head and the tail goes, right? You can just see it. And then we said, okay, well, now let's test the idea that that's a memory that actually controls where the head and the tail goes. Let's change that pattern. So basically, incept a false memory. And so what you can do is you can do that in many different ways. One way is with drugs that target ion channels to say, and so you pick these drugs and you say, okay, I'm gonna do it so that instead of this one head, one tail electrical pattern, you have a two-headed pattern, right? You're just editing the electrical information in the network. When you do that, guess what the cells build? They build a two-headed worm. And the coolest thing about it, now no genetic changes, so we haven't touched the genome. The genome is totally wild type. But the amazing thing about it is that when you take these two-headed animals and you cut them into pieces again, some of those pieces will continue to make two-headed animals. So that information, that memory, that electrical circuit, not only does it hold the information for how many heads, not only does it use that information to tell the cells what to do to regenerate, but it stores it. Once you've reset it, it keeps. And we can go back, we can take a two-headed animal and put it back to one-headed. So now imagine, so there's a couple of interesting things here that have implications for understanding of genomes and things like that. Imagine I take this two-headed animal. Oh, and by the way, when they reproduce, when they tear themselves in half, you still get two-headed animals. So imagine I take them and I throw them in the Charles River over here. So 100 years later, some scientists come along and they scoop up some samples and they go, oh, there's a single-headed form and a two-headed form. Wow, a speciation event. Cool. Let's sequence the genome and see what happened. Genomes are identical. There's nothing wrong with the genome. So if you ask the question, how does... So this goes back to your very first question, is where do body plans come from, right? How does the planarian know how many heads it's supposed to have? Now, it's interesting because you could say DNA, but as it turns out, the DNA produces a piece of hardware that by default says one head the way that when you turn on a calculator by default it's a zero every single time right when you turn it on just says zero but it's a programmable calculator as it turns out so once you've changed that next time it won't say zero it'll say something else and the same thing here so you can make you can make one headed two headed you can make no headed worms we've done some other things along these lines some other really weird um constructs So again, it's really important. The hardware-software distinction is really important because the hardware is essential, because without proper hardware, you're never gonna get to the right physiology of having that memory. But once you have it, it doesn't fully determine what the information is going to be. You can have other information in there, and it's reprogrammable by us, by bacteria, by various parasites, probably, things like that. The other amazing thing about these planarias, think about this, Most animals, when we get a mutation in our bodies, our children don't inherit it, right? So you could go on, you could run around for 50, 60 years getting mutations, your children don't have those mutations because we go through the egg stage. Planaria tear themselves in half and that's how they reproduce. So for 400 million years, they keep every mutation that they've had that doesn't kill the cell that it's in. So when you look at these planaria, their bodies are what's called mixoploid, meaning that every cell might have a different number of chromosomes. They look like a tumor. If you look at the DNA, the genome is an incredible mess because they accumulate all this stuff and yet their body structure is, they are the best regenerators on the planet, their anatomy is rock solid even though their genome is all kinds of crap. So this is kind of a scandal, right, that, you know, when we learn What are genomes? What genomes determine your body? Okay, why does the animal with the worst genome have the best anatomical control, the most cancer resistant, the most regenerative? Really, we're just beginning to start to understand this relationship between the genomically determined hardware, and by the way, just as of a couple of months ago, I think I now somewhat understand why this is, but it's really a major puzzle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that really throws a wrench into the whole nature versus nurture. because you usually associate electricity with the nurture, and the hardware with the nature, and there's just this weird integrated mess that propagates through generations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's much more fluid. It's much more complex. You can imagine what's happening here. Just imagine the evolution of an animal like this, that multiscale. This goes back to this multiscale competency, right? Imagine that you have an animal that that where its tissues have some degree of multi-scale competency. So for example, like we saw in the tadpole, if you put an eye on its tail, they can still see out of that eye, right? There's incredible plasticity. So if you have an animal and it comes up for selection and the fitness is quite good, Evolution doesn't know whether the fitness is good because the genome was awesome or because the genome was kind of junky, but the competency made up for it, right? And things kind of ended up good. So what that means is that the more competency you have, the harder it is for selection to pick the best genomes. It hides information, right? And so that means that, so what happens, you know, evolution basically starts, all the hard work is being done to increase the competency. because it's harder and harder to see the genomes. And so I think in planaria what happened is that there's this runaway phenomenon where all the effort went into the algorithm such that we know you've got a crappy genome, we can't clean up the genome, we can't keep track of it. So what's going to happen is what survives are the algorithms that can create a great worm no matter what the genome is. So everything went into the algorithm, which of course then reduces the pressure on keeping a clean genome. So this idea of, right, and different animals have this to different levels, but this idea of putting energy into an algorithm that does not overtrain on priors, right? It can't assume. I mean, I think biology is this way in general. Evolution doesn't take the past too seriously because it makes these basically problem-solving machines as opposed to, like, exactly what, you know, to deal with exactly what happened last time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, problem solving versus memory recall. So little memory, but a lot of problem solving." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, yeah, in many cases, yeah. Problem solving." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's incredible that those kinds of systems are able to be constructed, especially how much they contrast with the way we build problem solving systems in the AI world. Back to xenobots. I'm not sure if we ever described how xenobots are built, but you have a paper titled Biological Robots, Perspectives on an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field. In the beginning, you mentioned that the word xenobots is controversial. Do you guys get in trouble for using xenobots? Or what, do people not like the word xenobots? Are you trying to be provocative with the word xenobots versus biological robots? I don't know. Is there some drama that we should be aware of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a little bit of drama. I think the drama is basically related to people having very fixed ideas about what terms mean. And I think in many cases, these ideas are completely out of date with where science is now. And for sure, they're out of date with what's going to be. I mean, these concepts are not going to survive the next couple of decades. So if you ask a person, and including you know, a lot of people in biology who kind of want to keep a sharp distinction between biologicals and robots, right? See, what's a robot? Well, a robot, it comes out of a factory. It's made by humans. It is boring. It is a meaning that you can predict everything it's going to do. It's made of metal and certain other inorganic materials. Living organisms are magical. They arise, right? And so on. So there's these distinctions. I think these distinctions, I think, were never good. but they're going to be completely useless going forward. And so part of, there's a couple of papers that, that's one paper, and there's another one that Josh Bongard and I wrote where we really attack the terminology. And we say these binary categories are based on very, non-essential kind of surface limitations of technology and imagination that were true before, but they've got to go. And so we call them xenobots. So for Xenopus laevis, it's the frog that these guys are made of, but we think it's an example of a biobot technology because Ultimately, once we understand how to communicate and manipulate the inputs to these cells, we will be able to get them to build whatever we want them to build. And that's robotics, right? It's the rational construction of machines that have useful purposes. I absolutely think that this is a robotics platform, whereas some biologists don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's built in a way that all the different components are doing their own computation. So in a way that we've been talking about, so you're trying to do top-down control on that biological system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And in the future, all of this will merge together because of course, at some point, we're gonna throw in synthetic biology circuits, right? New transcriptional circuits to get them to do new things. Of course, we'll throw some of that in, but we specifically stayed away from all of that because in the first few papers, and there's some more coming down the pike that are, I think, gonna be pretty dynamite. that we want to show what the native cells are made of. Because what happens is, you know, if you engineer the heck out of them, right, if we were to put in new, you know, new transcription factors and some new metabolic machinery and whatever, people will say, well, OK, you engineered this and you made it do whatever and fine. I wanted to show and the whole team wanted to show the plasticity and the intelligence in the biology. What does it do that's surprising before you even start manipulating the hardware in that way?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, don't try to over-control the thing. Let it flourish. The full beauty of the biological system. Why Xenopus laevis? How do you pronounce it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The frog. Xenopus laevis, yeah. Yeah, it's a very popular- Why this frog? It's been used since, I think, the 50s. It's just very convenient because You know, we keep the adults in this very fine frog habitat. They lay eggs, they lay tens of thousands of eggs at a time. The eggs develop right in front of your eyes. It's the most magical thing you can see, because normally, you know, if you were to deal with mice or rabbits or whatever, you don't see the early stages, right? Because everything's inside the mother. Everything's in a petri dish at room temperature. So you have an egg, it's fertilized, and you can just watch it divide and divide and divide, and all the organs form, you can just see it. And at that point, the community has developed lots of different tools for understanding what's going on and also for manipulating, right? So people use it for understanding birth defects and neurobiology and cancer immunology also." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you get the whole embryogenesis in the Petri dish. That's so cool to watch. Is there videos of this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There's amazing videos online. I mean, mammalian embryos are super cool too. For example, monozygotic twins are what happens when you cut a mammalian embryo in half. You don't get two half bodies, you get two perfectly normal bodies because it's a regeneration event. Development is just the kind of regeneration, really." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And why this particular frog? It's just because they were doing it in the 50s" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "it breeds well in, you know, it's easy to raise in the laboratory and it's very prolific and all the tools, basically for decades, people have been developing tools. There's other pieces, some people use other frogs, but I have to say, this is important, xenobots are fundamentally not anything about frogs. So I can't say too much about this because it's not published and peer-reviewed yet, but we've made xenobots out of other things that have nothing to do with frogs. This is not a frog phenomenon. We started with frog because it's so convenient, but this plasticity is not related to the fact that they're frogs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What happens when you kiss it, does it turn into a prince? No, or princess, which way? Prince, yeah, prince." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It should be a prince, yeah. That's an experiment that I don't believe we've done. And if we have, I don't wanna know about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, we can collaborate. I can take on the lead on that effort. Okay, cool. How does the cells coordinate? Let's focus in on just the embryogenesis. So there's one cell. So it divides, doesn't have to be very careful about what each cell starts doing once they divide. And like, when there's three of them, it's like the co-founders or whatever, like, slow down, you're responsible for this. When do they become specialized and how do they coordinate that specialization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this is the basic science of developmental biology. There's a lot known about all of that, but I'll tell you what I think is kind of the most important part, which is, yes, it's very important who does what. However, because going back to this issue of why I made this claim that biology doesn't take the past too seriously, and what I mean by that is it doesn't assume that everything is the way it's expected to be, right? And here's an example of that. This was done, this was an old experiment going back to the 40s, but basically imagine, it's a newt, a salamander, and it's got these little tubules that go to the kidneys, right, this little tube. Take a cross-section of that tube, you see 8 to 10 cells that have cooperated to make this little tube in cross-section, right? So one amazing thing you can do is you can mess with the very early cell division to make the cells gigantic, bigger. You can make them different sizes. You can force them to be different sizes. So if you make the cells different sizes, the whole nude is still the same size. So if you take a cross-section through that tubule, instead of 8 to 10 cells, you might have 4 or 5, or you might have 3, until you make the cell so enormous that one single cell wraps around itself. and gives you that same large-scale structure, but a completely different molecular mechanism. So now instead of cell-to-cell communication to make a tubule, instead of that, it's one cell using the cytoskeleton to bend itself around. So think about what that means. In the service of a large-scale, talk about top-down control, right? In the service of a large-scale anatomical feature, different molecular mechanisms get called up. So now, think about this. You're a new cell and you're trying to make an embryo. If you had a fixed idea of who was supposed to do what, you'd be screwed because now your cells are gigantic, nothing would work. There's an incredible tolerance for changes in the size of the parts, in the amount of DNA in those parts, all sorts of stuff. The life is highly interoperable. You can put electrodes in there, you can put weird nanomaterials, it still works. This is that problem-solving action, right? It's able to do what it needs to do, even when circumstances change. That is the hallmark of intelligence, right? William James defined intelligence as the ability to get to the same goal by different means. That's this. You get to the same goal by completely different means. And so why am I bringing this up? It's just to say that, yeah, it's important for the cells to do the right stuff, but they have incredible tolerances for things not being what you expect. and to still get their job done. So if you're, you know, all of these things are not hardwired. There are organisms that might be hardwired. For example, the nematode C. elegans. In that organism, every cell is numbered, meaning that every C. elegans has exactly the same number of cells as every other C. elegans. They're all in the same place. They all divide. There's literally a map of how it works. In that sort of system, it's much more cookie cutter. But most organisms are incredibly plastic in that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something particularly magical to you about the whole developmental biology process? Is there something you could say, because you just said it, they're very good at accomplishing the goal, the job they need to do, the competency thing, but you get a freaking organism from one cell. It's very hard to intuit that whole process, to even think about reverse engineering that process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, very hard, to the point where I often, just imagine, I sometimes ask my students to do this thought experiment. Imagine you were shrunk down to the scale of a single cell, and you were in the middle of an embryo, and you were looking around at what's going on. And the cells running around, some cells are dying. Every time you look, it's kind of a different number of cells for most organisms and so on. I think that if you didn't know what embryonic development was, you would have no clue that what you're seeing is always gonna make the same thing. Nevermind knowing what that is. Nevermind being able to say, even with full genomic information, being able to say, what the hell are they building? We have no way to do that. But just even to guess that, wow, the outcome of all this activity is, it's always gonna build the same thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The imperative to create the final you as you are now is there already. So if you start from the same embryo, you create a very similar organism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, except for cases like the xenobots, when you give them a different environment, they come up with a different way to be adaptive in that environment. But overall, I mean, so I think to kind of summarize it, I think what evolution is really good at is creating hardware that has a very stable baseline mode, meaning that left to its own devices, it's very good at doing the same thing. but it has a bunch of problem-solving capacity such that if any assumptions don't hold, if your cells are a weird size or you get the wrong number of cells or there's a, you know, somebody stuck an electrode halfway through the body, whatever, it will still get most of what it needs to do done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've talked about the magic and the power of biology here. If we look at the human brain, how special is the brain in this context? You're kind of minimizing the importance of the brain, or lessening its, we think of all the special computation happens in the brain, everything else is like the help. You're kind of saying that the whole thing is doing computation. But nevertheless, how special is the human brain in this full context of biology?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, look, there's no getting away from the fact that the human brain allows us to do things that we could not do without it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can say the same thing about the liver." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, this is true. And so my goal is not, no, you're right, my goal is not- You're just being polite to the brain right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're being a politician. Like, listen, everybody has a use. Everybody has a role, yeah. And it's a very important role. That's right. We have to acknowledge the importance of the brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "there are more than enough people who are cheerleading the brain, right? So I don't feel like nothing I say is going to reduce people's excitement about the human brain, and so I emphasize other things. I don't think it gets too much credit. I think other things don't get enough credit. I think the human brain is incredible and special and all that. I think other things need more credit, and I also think that And I'm sort of this way about everything. I don't like binary categories about almost anything. I like a continuum. And the thing about the human brain is that by accepting that as some kind of an important category or essential thing, we end up with all kinds of weird pseudo-problems and conundrums. So for example, When we talk about it, you know, if you want to talk about ethics and other things like that, and what, you know, this idea that surely if we look out into the universe, surely we don't believe that this human brain is the only way to be sentient, right? Surely we don't, you know, and to have high-level cognition. I can't even wrap my mind around this idea that that is the only way to do it. No doubt there are other architectures made of completely different principles that achieve the same thing. And once we believe that, then that tells us something important. It tells us that things that are not quite human brains, or chimeras of human brains and other tissue, or human brains or other kinds of brains in novel configurations, or things that are sort of brains but not really, or plants or embryos or whatever, might also have important cognitive status. So that's the only thing. I think we have to be really careful about treating the human brain as if it was some kind of like sharp binary category, you know, you are or you aren't. I don't believe that exists." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when we look out at all the beautiful variety of semi-biological architectures out there in the universe, how many intelligent alien civilizations do you think are out there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, boy, I have no expertise in that whatsoever. You haven't met any? I have met the ones we've made." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that... I mean, exactly. In some sense, with synthetic biology, are you not creating aliens?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I absolutely think so, because look, all standard model systems are an N of one course of evolution on Earth, right? And trying to make conclusions about biology from looking at life on Earth is like testing your theory on the same data that generated it. It's all kind of like locked in. So we absolutely have to create novel examples that have no history on Earth, that don't, you know, xenobots have no history of selection to be a good xenobot. The cells have selection for various things, but the xenobot itself never existed before. And so we can make chimeras, you know, we make frogolotls that are, you know, sort of half frog, half axolotl. You can make all sorts of high broads, right? Constructions of living tissue with robots and whatever. We need to be making these things until we find actual aliens, because otherwise we're just looking at an N of one set of examples, all kinds of frozen accidents of evolution and so on. We need to go beyond that to really understand biology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we're still, even when you do a synthetic biology, you're locked in to the basic components. of the way biology is done on this earth. And also the basic constraints of the environment, even artificial environments that construct in the lab are tied up to the environment. I mean, what do you, okay, let's say there is, I mean, what I think is there's a nearly infinite number of intelligent civilizations living or dead out there. If you pick one out of the box, what would you think it would look like? So, when you think about synthetic biology, or creating synthetic organisms, how hard is it to create something that's very different?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it's very hard to create something that's very different, right? We are just locked in both experimentally and in terms of our imagination, right? It's very hard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you also emphasized several times the idea of shape. The individual cell get together with other cells, and they're gonna build a shape. So it's shape and function, but shape is a critical thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here, I'll take a stab. I mean, I agree with you to whatever extent that we can say anything. I do think that there's probably an infinite number of different architectures that are with interesting cognitive properties out there. What can we say about them? I don't think we can rely on any of the typical stuff, you know, carbon-based. I think all of that is just us having a lack of imagination. I think the things that are going to be universal, if anything is, are things, for example, driven by resource limitation. The fact that you are fighting a hostile world and you have to draw a boundary between yourself and the world somewhere. The fact that that boundary is not given to you by anybody, you have to assume it, you know, estimate it yourself. and the fact that you have to coarse-grain your experience and the fact that you're going to try to minimize surprise. These are the things that I think are fundamental about biology. None of the facts about the genetic code or even the fact that we have genes or the biochemistry of it. I don't think any of those things are fundamental. But it's going to be a lot more about the information and about the creation of the self. The fact that So in my framework, cells are demarcated by the scale of the goals that they can pursue. So from little tiny local goals to like massive planetary scale goals for certain humans, and everything in between. So you can draw this like cognitive light cone that determines the scale of the goals you could possibly pursue. I think those kinds of frameworks like that, like active inference and so on, are going to be universally applicable, but none of the other things that are typically discussed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Quick pause, do you need a bathroom break?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We were just talking about, you know, aliens and all that. That's a funny thing, which is, I don't know if you've seen them. There's a kind of debate that goes on about cognition in plants. And what can you say about different kinds of computation and cognition in plants? And I always, I always look at that some way. If you're weirded out by cognition in plants, you're not ready for exobiology, right? If, you know, something that's that similar here on earth is already like freaking you out, then I think there's going to be all kinds of cognitive life out there that we're going to have a really hard time recognizing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think robots will help us expand our mind about cognition. Either that or the word, like xenobots, and they maybe becomes the same thing, is really when the human engineers the thing, at least in part, and then is able to achieve some kind of cognition that's different than what you're used to. Then you start to understand like, oh, every living organism's capable of cognition. Oh, I need to kind of broaden my understanding of what cognition is. But do you think plants, like when you eat them, are they screaming? I don't know about screaming. I think you have to- That's what I think when I eat a salad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Good. Yeah. I think you have to scale down the expectations in terms of, right, so probably they're not screaming in the way that we would be screaming. However, there's plenty of data on plants being able to do anticipation and certain kinds of memory and so on. I think, you know, what you just said about robots, I hope you're right. And I hope that's but there's two there's two ways that people can take that. Right. So one way is exactly what you just said to try to kind of expand their expand their their their their notions for that category. The other way people often go is. uh they just sort of define the term is if if if it's not a natural product it's it's just faking right it's not really intelligence if it was made by somebody else because it's that same it's the same thing they can see how it's done and once you see how it's like a magic trick when you see how it's done it's not as fun anymore and and and i think people have a real tendency for that and they sort of which which i find really strange in the sense that if somebody said to me we have this sort of blind, like a hill climbing search, and then we have a really smart team of engineers, which one do you think is gonna produce a system that has good intelligence? I think it's really weird to say that it only comes from the blind search, right? It can't be done by people who, by the way, can also use evolutionary techniques if they want to, but also rational design. I think it's really weird to say that real intelligence only comes from natural evolution. So I hope you're right. I hope people take it the other way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a nice shortcut. So I work with Lego robots a lot now for my own personal pleasure. Not in that way, internet. So four legs. And one of the things that changes my experience of the robots a lot is when I can't understand why I did a certain thing. And there's a lot of ways to engineer that. meet the person that created the software that runs it. There's a lot of ways for me to build that software in such a way that I don't exactly know why it did a certain basic decision. Of course, as an engineer, you can go in and start to look at logs, you can log all kinds of data, sensory data, the decisions you made, all the outputs in your own networks and so on. But I also try to really experience that surprise and that really experience as another person would that totally doesn't know how it's built. And I think the magic is there in not knowing how it works. I think biology does that for you through the layers of abstraction. Because nobody really knows what's going on inside the biologicals. Like each one component is clueless about the big picture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's actually really cheap systems that can illustrate that kind of thing, which is even like, you know, fractals, right? Like you have a very small, short formula in Z and you see it and there's no magic, you're just gonna crank through, you know, Z squared plus C, whatever, you're just gonna crank through it. But the result of it is this incredibly rich, beautiful image, right? That just like, wow, all of that was in this like 10 character long string, like amazing. the fact that you can, you can know everything there is to know about the details and the process and all the parts and every like, there's literally no magic of any kind there. And yet the outcome is something that you would never have expected. And it's just it just, you know, is incredibly rich and complex and beautiful. So there's a lot of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You write that you work on developing conceptual frameworks for understanding unconventional cognition, so the kind of thing we've been talking about. I just like the term unconventional cognition. And you want to figure out how to detect, study, and communicate with the thing. You've already mentioned a few examples, but what is unconventional cognition? Is it as simply as everything outside of what we define usually as cognition, cognitive science, the stuff going on between our ears? Or is there some deeper way to get at the fundamentals of what is cognition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think like, and I'm certainly not the only person who works in unconventional cognition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's the term used." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I've coined a number of weird terms, but that's not one of mine. That's an existing thing. So for example, somebody like Andy Adamatsky, who I don't know if you've had him on. If you haven't, you should. He's a very interesting guy. He's a computer scientist, and he does unconventional cognition, and slime molds, and all kinds of weird. He's a real weird cat, really interesting. Anyway, so that's a bunch of terms that I've come up with, but that's not one of mine. I think like many terms, that one is really defined by the times, meaning that things that are unconventional cognition today are not going to be considered unconventional cognition at some point. It's one of those things. It's this really deep question of how do you recognize, communicate with, classify cognition when you cannot rely on the typical milestones, right? So typical, again, if you stick with the history of life on earth, like these exact model systems, you would say, ah, here's a particular structure of the brain, and this one has fewer of those, and this one has a bigger frontal cortex, and this one, So these are landmarks that we're used to, and it allows us to make very rapid judgments about things. But if you can't rely on that, either because you're looking at a synthetic thing or an engineered thing or an alien thing, then what do you do? And so that's what I'm really interested in. I'm interested in mind in all of its possible implementations, not just the obvious ones that we know from looking at brains here on Earth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Whenever I think about something like unconventional cognition, I think about cellular automata. I'm just captivated by the beauty of the thing. the fact that from simple little objects you can create such beautiful complexity that very quickly you forget about the individual objects and you see the things that it creates as its own organisms. That blows my mind every time. Honestly, I could full-time just eat mushrooms and watch cellular automata. Don't even have to do mushrooms. Just cellular automata. It feels like, I mean, from an engineering perspective, I love when a very simple system captures something really powerful because then you can study that system to understand something fundamental about complexity, about life on Earth. Anyway, how do I communicate with a thing? for cellular automata can do cognition. If a plant can do cognition, if a xenobot can do cognition, how do I like whisper in its ear and get an answer back to how do I have a conversation? How do I have a xenobot on a podcast?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a really, really interesting line of investigation that opens up. I mean, we've thought about this. So you need a few things. You need to understand the space in which they live. So not just the physical modality, like can they see light, can they feel vibration? I mean, that's important, of course, because that's how you deliver your message. But not just the ideas for a communication medium, not just the physical medium, but saliency, right? So what are important to this? What's important to this system? And systems have all kinds of different levels of sophistication of what you could expect to get back. And I think what's really important, I call this the spectrum of persuadability, which is this idea that when you're looking at a system, you can't assume where on the spectrum it is. You have to do experiments. For example, if you look at a gene regulatory network, which is just a bunch of nodes that turn each other on and off at various rates, you might look at that and you say, wow, there's no magic here. I mean, clearly this thing is as deterministic as it gets. It's a piece of hardware. The only way we're going to be able to control it is by rewiring it, which is the way molecular biology works, right? We can add nodes, remove nodes or whatever. Well, so we've done simulations and shown that biological, and now we're doing this in the lab, the biological networks like that have associative memory. So they can actually learn, they can learn from experience, they have habituation, they have sensitization, they have associative memory, which you wouldn't have known if you assumed that they have to be on the left side of that spectrum. So when you're going to communicate with something, and we've even Charles Abramson and I have written a paper on behaviorist approaches to synthetic organism, meaning that if you're given something, you have no idea what it is or what it can do. How do you figure out what its psychology is, what its level is, what does it? And so we literally lay out a set of protocols, starting with the simplest things and then moving up to more complex things where you can make no assumptions about what this thing can do, right? Just from you, you have to start and you'll find out. So here's a simple, I mean, here's one way to communicate with something. If you can train it, that's a way of communicating. So if you can provide if you can figure out what the currency of reward of positive and negative reinforcement is, right, and you can get it to do something it wasn't doing before, based on experiences, you've given it, you have taught it one thing, you have communicated one thing that that such and such an action is good. So some other action is not good. That's, that's like a basic atom of a primitive atom of communication." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, in some sense, if it gets you to do something you haven't done before, is it answering back?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Most certainly, and I've seen cartoons. Maybe Gary Larson or somebody had a cartoon of these rats in the maze, and the one rat assists to the other. Hey, look at this. Every time I walk over here, he starts scribbling on the clipboard that he has. It's awesome." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we step outside ourselves, and really measure how much, like if I actually measure how much I've changed because of my interaction with certain cellular automata, I mean, you really have to take that into consideration about like, well, these things are changing you too. I know you know how it works and so on, but you're being changed by the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, I think I read, I don't know any details, but I think I read something about how wheat and other things have domesticated humans in terms of, right, but by their properties change the way that the human behavior and societal structures." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that sense, cats are running the world. because they took over the, so first of all, so first they, while not giving a shit about humans, clearly, with every ounce of their being, they've somehow got just millions and millions of humans to take them home and feed them. And then, not only the physical space did they take over, they took over the digital space. They dominate the internet in terms of cuteness, in terms of memability. And so they're like, they got themselves literally inside the memes that become viral and spread on the internet. And they're the ones that are probably controlling humans, that's my theory. Another, that's a follow-up paper after the frog kissing. Okay, I mean you mentioned, sentience and consciousness, you have a paper titled Generalizing Frameworks for Sentience Beyond Natural Species. So beyond normal cognition, if we look at sentience and consciousness, and I wonder if you draw an interesting distinction between those two, elsewhere. outside of humans and maybe outside of Earth, you think aliens have sentience? And if they do, how do we think about it? So when you have this framework, what is this paper, what is the way you propose to think about sentience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that particular paper was a very short commentary on another paper that was written about crabs. It was a really good paper on crabs and various, like a rubric of different types of behaviors that could be applied to different creatures and they're trying to apply it to crabs and so on. Consciousness, we can talk about a few, but it's a whole separate kettle of fish. I almost never talk about consciousness. Kettle of crabs. In this case, yes. I almost never talk about consciousness per se. I've said very little about it, but we can talk about it if you want. Mostly what I talk about is cognition because I think that that's much easier to deal with in a kind of rigorous experimental way. I think that all of these terms have, you know, sentience and so on, have different definitions. And fundamentally, I think that people can, as long as they specify what they mean ahead of time, I think people can define them in various ways. The only thing that I really kind of insist on is that the right way to think about all this stuff is from an engineering perspective. What does it help me to control, predict, and does it help me do my next experiment? So that's not a universal perspective. So some people have philosophical kind of underpinnings, and those are primary, and if anything runs against that, then it must automatically be wrong. So some people will say, I don't care what else, if your theory says to me that thermostats have little tiny goals, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, so that's it, I just, like, that's my philosophical It's like thermostats do not have goals, and that's it. So that's one way of doing it, and some people do it that way. I do not do it that way, and I don't think we can know much of anything from a philosophical armchair. I think that all of these theories and ways of doing things stand or fall based on just basically one set of criteria. Does it help you run a rich research program? That's it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which I agree with you totally, but so forget philosophy, what about the poetry of ambiguity? What about at the limits of the things you can engineer using terms that can be defined in multiple ways and living within that? uncertainty in order to play with words until something lands that you can engineer. I mean, that's to me where consciousness sits currently. Nobody really understands the heart problem of consciousness, the subject, what it feels like. Because it really feels like, it feels like something to be this biological system. This conglomerate of a bunch of cells in this hierarchy of competencies feels like something. And yeah, I feel like one thing, and is that just Is that just a side effect of a complex system? Or is there something more that humans have? Or is there something more that any biological system has? Some kind of magic, some kind of, not just a sense of agency, but a real sense with a capital letter S of agency." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Boy, yeah, that's a deep question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there room for poetry in engineering or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, there definitely is, and a lot of the poetry comes in when we realize that none of the categories we deal with are sharp as we think they are, right? And so, in the different areas of all these spectra are where a lot of the poetry sits. I have many new theories about things, but I, in fact, do not have a good theory about consciousness that I plan to trot out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you almost don't see it as useful for your current work to think about consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it will come. I have some thoughts about it, but I don't feel like they're going to move the needle yet on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you want to ground it in engineering always." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I don't, so if we really tackle consciousness per se, in terms of the heart problem, I don't, that isn't necessarily going to be groundable in engineering, right? That aspect of cognition is, but actual consciousness per se, you know, first person perspective, I'm not sure that that's groundable in engineering. And I think specifically what's different about it is there's a couple of things. So let's, you know, here we go. I'll say a couple of things about, about consciousness. One thing is that what makes the difference is that for every other tight aspect of science, when we think about having a correct or a good theory of it, we have some idea of what format that theory makes predictions in. So whether those be numbers or whatever, we have some idea. We may not know the answer, we may not have the theory, but we know that when we get the theory, here's what it's going to output, and then we'll know if it's right or wrong. For actual consciousness, not behavior, not neural correlates, but actual first-person consciousness, if we had a correct theory of consciousness, or even a good one, what format would it make predictions in, right? Because all the things that we know about basically boil down to observable behaviors. So the only thing I can think of when I think about that is, it'll be poetry, or it'll be something to, if I ask you, okay, you've got a great theory of consciousness, and here's this creature, maybe it's a natural one, maybe it's an engineer one, whatever, And I want you to tell me what your theory says about what it's like to be this being. The only thing I can imagine you giving me is some piece of art, a poem or something that once I've taken it in, I now have a similar state as whatever. That's about as good as I can come up with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's possible. that once you have a good understanding of consciousness, it would be mapped to some things that are more measurable. So for example, it's possible that a conscious being is one that's able to suffer. So you start to look at pain and suffering. You can start to connect it closer to things that you can measure that in terms of how they reflect themselves in behavior and problem solving and creation and attainment of goals, for example. which I think suffering is one of the, you know, life is suffering, it's one of the big aspects of the human condition. And so if consciousness is somehow a, maybe at least a catalyst for suffering, you could start to get echoes of it. You start to see the actual effects of consciousness on behavior, that it's not just about subjective experience, it's really deeply integrated in the problem-solving, decision-making of a system. Something like this, but also it's possible that we realize, this is not a philosophical statement. Philosophers can write their books, I welcome it. I take the Turing test really seriously. I don't know why people really don't like it when a robot convinces you that it's intelligent. I think that's a really incredible accomplishment. And there's some deep sense in which that is intelligence. If it looks like it's intelligent, it is intelligent. And I think there's some deep aspect of a system that appears to be conscious. In some deep sense, it is conscious. At least for me, we have to consider that possibility. And a system that appears to be conscious is an engineering challenge." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. I mean, especially intelligence, I think is a publicly observable thing. I, and I mean, you know, science fiction has dealt with this for a century or more, much more, maybe this idea that when you are confronted with something that just doesn't meet any of your typical assumptions, so you can't look in the skull and say, oh, well, there's that frontal cortex, so then I guess we're good, right? If it's, you know, so this thing lands on your front lawn and this, you know, the little door opens and something trundles out and it's sort of like, you know, kind of shiny and aluminum looking and it hands you this, you know, it hands you this poem that it wrote while it was on, you know, flying over and how happy it is to meet you. What's going to be your criteria for whether you get to take it apart and see what makes it tick or whether you have to be nice to it and whatever? All the criteria that we have now and that people are using, and as you said, a lot of people are down on the Turing test and things like this, but what else have we got? you know because measuring measuring the cortex size isn't gonna isn't gonna cut it right in the broader scheme of things so uh i think this is it's it's a wide open it's a wide open problem that right that we you know our our solution to the problem of other minds it's very simplistic right we we give each other credit for having minds just because we sort of on a you know on an anatomical level we're pretty similar and then so that's good enough but how far how far is that gonna go so i think that's really primitive so um yeah i think i think it's a major unsolved problem" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a really challenging direction of thought to the human race that you talked about, like embodied minds. If you start to think that other things other than humans have minds, that's really challenging. Because all men are created equal starts being like, all right, well, we should probably treat not just cows with respect, but like plants, and not just plants, but some kind of organized conglomerates of cells in a petri dish. In fact, some of the work we're doing, like you're doing, and the whole community of science is doing with biology, people might be like, we were really mean to viruses." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, yeah, I the thing is, you're right. And I get I get I certainly get phone calls about people complaining about frog skin and so on. But I think we have to separate the sort of deep philosophical aspects versus what actually happens. So what actually happens on earth is that people with exactly the same anatomical structure kill each other, you know, on a daily basis, right? So I think it's clear that simply knowing that something else is equally or maybe more cognitive or conscious than you are is not a guarantee of kind behavior, that much we know of. So then we look at a commercial farming of mammals and various other things. And so I think on a practical basis, long before we get to worrying about things like frog skin, we have to ask ourselves, what can we do about the way that we've been behaving towards creatures, which we know for a fact, because of our similarities, are basically just like us. You know, that's kind of a whole other social thing. But fundamentally, you know, of course, you're absolutely right in that we are also think about this. We are on this planet in some way, incredibly lucky. It's just dumb luck that we really only have one dominant species. It didn't have to work out that way. So you could easily imagine that there could be a planet somewhere with more than one equally or maybe near equally intelligent species. And then uh but but then they may not look anything like each other right so there may be multiple ecosystems where there are uh things of of similar uh to human-like intelligence and then you'd have all kinds of issues about you know how do you how do you relate to them when they're physically not like you at all but yet yet you know in terms of behavior and culture and whatever it's pretty obvious that they've got as you know as much on the ball as you have or maybe imagine imagine that there was another um group of beings that was like on average you know 40 iq points lower We're pretty lucky in many ways. We don't really have, even though we still act badly in many ways, but the fact is all humans are more or less in that same range, but it didn't have to work out that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, but I think that's part of the way life works on Earth, or maybe human civilization works, is it seems like we want ourselves to be quite similar, and then within that, you know, where everybody's about the same relatively IQ, intelligence, problem-solving capabilities, even physical characteristics, but then we'll find some aspect of that that's different, and that seems to be like, I mean, it's really dark to say, but it seems to be not even a bug, but like a feature. of the early development of human civilization. You pick the other, your tribe versus the other tribe, it's a kind of evolution in the space of memes, the space of ideas, I think, and you war with each other. So we're very good at finding the other, even when the characteristics are really the same. I don't know what, That, I mean, I'm sure so many of these things echo in the biological world in some way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. There's a fun experiment that I did. My son actually came up with this. We did a biology unit together. He's homeschooled, and so we did this a couple of years ago. We did this thing where, imagine, so you got this slime mold, right? Physarum polycephalum, and it grows on a petri dish of agar, and it sort of spreads out, and it's a single-cell protist, but it's like this giant thing. And so you put down a piece of oat, and it wants to go get the oat, and it sort of grows towards the oat. So what you do is you take a razor blade, and you just separate the piece of the whole culture that's growing towards the oat, you just kind of separate it. And so now, think about the interesting decision-making calculus for that little piece. I can go get the oat, and therefore I won't have to share those nutrients with this giant mass over there, so the nutrients per unit volume is going to be amazing, so I should go eat the oat. But if I first rejoin, because Visarum, once you cut it, has the ability to join back up. If I first rejoin, then that whole calculus becomes impossible because there is no more me anymore. There's just we, and then we will go eat this thing, right? So this interesting, you can imagine a kind of game theory where the number of agents isn't fixed and that it's not just cooperate or defect, but it's actually merge and whatever, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So that kind of, that computation, how does it do that decision-making?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's really interesting. And so empirically, what we found is that it tends to merge first. It tends to merge first, and then the whole thing goes. But it's really interesting that that calculus, do we even have, I mean, I'm not an expert in the economic game theory and all that, but maybe there's some sort of hyperbolic discounting or something. But maybe this idea that the actions you take not only change your payoff, but they change who or what you are, and that you may not, you could take an action after which you don't exist anymore, or you are radically changed, or you are merged with somebody else. As far as I know, we're still missing a formalism for even knowing how to model any of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see evolution, by the way, as a process that applies here on Earth, or is it some, where did evolution come from? So this thing that from the very origin of life that took us to today, what the heck is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think evolution is inevitable in the sense that if you combine, and basically I think one of the most useful things that was done in early computing, I guess in the 60s, it started with evolutionary computation and just showing how simple it is that if you have imperfect heredity and competition together, those two things, well, three things, right? So heredity, imperfect heredity, and competition or selection, those three things, and that's it. Now you're off to the races, right? And so that can be, it's not just on earth because it can be done in the computer, it can be done in chemical systems, it can be done in, you know, Lee Smolin says it works on cosmic scales. So I think that that kind of thing is incredibly pervasive and general. It's a general feature of life. It's interesting to think about, you know, the standard thought about this is that it's blind, right? Meaning that the intelligence of the process is zero. It's stumbling around. And I think that back in the day when the options were it's dumb like machines or it's smart like humans, then of course the scientists went in this direction because nobody wanted creationism. And so they said, okay, it's gotta be like completely blind. I'm not actually sure, right? Because I think that everything is a continuum. And I think that it doesn't have to be smart with foresight like us, but it doesn't have to be completely blind either. I think there may be aspects of it. And in particular, this kind of multi-scale competency might give it a little bit of, look ahead maybe or a little bit of problem solving sort of baked in, but that's going to be completely different in different systems. I do think it's general. I don't think it's just on earth. I think it's a very fundamental thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It does seem to have a kind of direction that it's taking us that's somehow perhaps is defined by the environment itself. It feels like we're headed towards something. like we're playing out a script that was just like a single cell defines the entire organism. It feels like from the origin of Earth itself, it's playing out a kind of script. You can't really go any other way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, so this is very controversial, and I don't know the answer, but people have argued that this is called, you know, sort of rewinding the tape of life, right? And some people have argued, I think Conway Morris maybe has argued that there's a deep attractor, for example, to the human kind of structure, and that if you were to rewind it again, you'd basically get more or less the same thing. And then other people have argued that, no, it's incredibly sensitive to frozen accidents, and that once certain stochastic decisions are made downstream, everything is going to be different. I don't know. I don't know. You know, we're very bad at predicting attractors in the space of complex systems, generally speaking, right? We don't know. So maybe evolution on Earth has these deep attractors that no matter what has happened, pretty much would likely to end up there, or maybe not, I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's a really difficult idea to imagine that if you ran Earth a million times, 500,000 times, you would get Hitler? Like, we don't like to think like that. We think like, because at least maybe in America, you like to think that individual decisions can change the world, and if individual decisions can change the world, then surely, Any perturbation results in a totally different trajectory. But maybe there's a, in this competency hierarchy, it's a self-correcting system that just ultimately, there's a bunch of chaos that ultimately is leading towards something like a superintelligent artificial intelligence system. The answer's 42. I mean, there might be a kind of imperative for life that it's headed to. and we're too focused on our day-to-day life of getting coffee and snacks and having sex and getting a promotion at work, not to see the big imperative of life on Earth, that it's headed towards something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, maybe, maybe. It's difficult. I think one of the things that's important about chimeric bioengineering technologies, all of those things, are that we have to start developing a better science of predicting the cognitive goals of composite systems. So we're just not very good at it, right? We don't know, if I create a composite system, and this could be Internet of Things, or swarm robotics, or a cellular swarm or whatever, what is the emergent intelligence of this thing? First of all, what level is it going to be at? And if it has goal-directed capacity, what are the goals going to be? We are just not very good at predicting that yet. And I think that it's an existential level need for us to be able to, because we're building these things all the time, right? We're building both physical structures like swarm robotics, and we're building social financial structures, and so on, with very little ability to predict what sort of autonomous goals that system is going to have, of which we are now cogs. And so, right, so learning, learning to predict and control those things is gonna be critical. So we've, so in fact, so if you're right, and there is some kind of attractor to evolution, it would be nice to know what that is, and then to make a rational decision of whether we're going to go along, or we're going to pop out of it, or try to pop out of it. because there's no guarantee. I mean, that's the other kind of important thing. A lot of people, I get a lot of complaints from people emailing and say, you know, what you're doing, it isn't natural, you know? And I'll say, look, natural, that'd be nice if somebody was making sure that natural was matched up to our values, but no one's doing that. Evolution optimizes for biomass, that's it. Nobody's optimizing, it's not optimizing for your happiness, I don't think necessarily it's optimizing for intelligence or fairness or any of that stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm gonna find that person that emailed you, beat them up, take their place. steal everything they own and say, now this is natural." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is natural. Yeah, exactly. Because it comes from an old world view where you could assume that whatever is natural, that that's probably for the best. And I think we're long out of that Garden of Eden kind of view. So I think we can do better. And we have to, right? Natural just isn't great for a lot of life forms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are some cool synthetic organisms that you think about, you dream about? When you think about embodied mind, what do you imagine? What do you hope to build?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, on a practical level, what I really hope to do is to gain enough of an understanding of the embodied intelligence of, organs and tissues such that we can achieve a radically different regenerative medicine. So that we can say, basically, and I think about it as, you know, in terms of like, okay, what's the goal kind of end game for this whole thing? To me, the end game is something that you would call an anatomical compiler. So the idea is you would sit down in front of the computer and you would draw the body or the organ that you wanted. Not molecular details, but this is what I want. I want a six-legged frog with a propeller on top, or I want a heart that looks like this, or I want a leg that looks like this. And what it would do, if we knew what we were doing, is convert that anatomical description into a set of stimuli that would have to be given to cells to convince them to build exactly that thing. I probably won't live to see it, but I think it's achievable. If we can have that, then that is basically the solution to all of medicine except for infectious disease. So birth defects, traumatic injury, cancer, aging, degenerative disease. If we knew how to tell cells what to build, all of those things go away. So those things go away. And the positive feedback spiral of economic costs, where all of the advances are increasingly more heroic and expensive interventions of a sinking ship when you're like 90 and so on. all of that goes away because basically instead of trying to fix you up as you degrade, you progressively regenerate, you apply the regenerative medicine early before things degrade. So I think that that'll have massive economic impacts over what we're trying to do now, which is not at all sustainable. And that's what I hope. So to me, yes, the xenobots will be doing useful things, cleaning up the environment, cleaning out your joints and all that kind of stuff. But more important than that, I think we can use these synthetic systems to try to understand, to develop a science of detecting and manipulating the goals of collective intelligences of cells, specifically for regenerative medicine. And then sort of beyond that, if we sort of think further beyond that, what I hope is that kind of like what you said, all of this drives a reconsideration of how we formulate ethical norms. Because this old school, so in the olden days, what you could do is, as you were confronted with something, you could tap on it, right? And if you heard a metallic clanging sound, you'd said, ah, fine, right? So you could conclude it was made in a factory. I can take it apart. I can do whatever, right? If you did that and you got sort of a squishy kind of warm sensation, you'd say, ah, I need to be more or less nice to it and whatever. That's not going to be feasible. It was never really feasible. But it was good enough because we didn't know any better. that needs to go. And I think that by breaking down those artificial barriers, someday we can try to build a system of ethical norms that does not rely on these completely contingent facts of our earthly history, but on something much, much deeper that, you know, really takes agency and the capacity to suffer and all that takes that seriously." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the capacity to suffer and the deep questions I would ask of a system is can I eat it and can I have sex with it? Which is the two fundamental tests of, again, the human condition. So I can basically do what Dali does in the physical space. So print out, like a 3D print Pepe the Frog with a propeller head, propeller hat, is the dream." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I want to, yes and no. I mean, I want to get away from the 3D printing thing because that will be available for some things much earlier. I mean, we can already do bladders and ears and things like that because it's micro level control, right? When you 3D print, you are in charge of where every cell goes. And for some things that, you know, for, for like this thing, they had that, I think 20 years ago, or maybe earlier than that, you could do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, I would like to emphasize the Dali part where you provide a few words and it generates a painting. So here you say, I want a frog. with these features, and then it would go direct a complex biological system to construct something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the main magic would be, I mean, I think from looking at Dahlia and so on, it looks like the first part is kind of solved now, where you go from the words to the image, like that seems more or less solved. The next step is really hard. This is what keeps things like CRISPR and genomic editing and so on, this is what limits all the, impacts for regenerative medicine because going back to okay this is the knee joint that I want or this is the eye that I want now what genes do I edit to make that happen, right? Going back in that direction is really hard. So instead of that, it's going to be, okay, I understand how to motivate cells to build particular structures, can I rewrite the memory of what they think they're supposed to be building such that then I can take my hands off the wheel and let them do their thing?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So some of that is experiment, but some of that maybe AI can help too. Just like with protein folding, this is exactly the problem that protein folding, in the most simple, medium tried and has solved with alpha fold, which is, how does the sequence of letters result in this three dimensional shape? And you have to, I guess it didn't solve it because you have to, if you say, I want this shape, how do I then have a sequence of letters? Yeah. The reverse engineering step is really tricky." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is. I think where, and we're doing some of this now, is to use AI to try and build actionable models of the intelligence of the cellular collectives. So try to help us, help us gain models that, and we've had some success in this. So we did something like this for, for repairing birth defects of the brain in frog. We've done some of this for normalizing melanoma, where you can really start to use AI to make models of how would I impact this thing if I wanted to, given all the complexities, right? And given all the controls that it knows how to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when you say regenerative medicine, so we talked about creating biological organisms, but if you regrow a hand, that information is already there, right? The biological system has that information. So how does regenerative medicine work today? How do you hope it works? What's the hope there? Yeah, how do you make it happen?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, today, there's a set of popular approaches. So one is 3D printing. So the idea is, I'm going to make a scaffold of the thing that I want, I'm going to seed it with cells, and then there it is, right? So kind of direct, and then that works for certain things, you can make a bladder that way, or an ear, something like that. The other idea is some sort of stem cell transplant. The idea is if we If we put in stem cells with appropriate factors, we can get them to generate certain kinds of neurons for certain diseases and so on. All of those things are good for relatively simple structures, but when you want an eye or a hand or something else, I think, and this may be an unpopular opinion, I think the only hope we have in any reasonable kind of time frame is to understand how the thing was motivated to get made in the first place. So what is it that made those cells in the beginning create a particular arm with a particular set of sizes and shapes and number of fingers and all that? And why is it that a salamander can keep losing theirs and keep regrowing theirs and a planarian can do the same, even more so? To me, kind of ultimate regenerative medicine was when you can tell the cells to build whatever it is you need them to build. right? And so that we can all be like planaria, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have to start at the very beginning or can you do a shortcut? Because if you're growing a hand, you already got the whole organism. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here's what we've done, right? So we've more or less solved that in frogs. So frogs, unlike salamanders, do not regenerate their legs as adults. And so we've shown that with a very kind of simple intervention. So what we do is there's two things. You need to have a signal that tells the cells what to do, and then you need some way of delivering it. And so this is work together with David Kaplan, and I should do a disclosure here. We have a company called Morphoceuticals, I think it's a spin-off. where we're trying to address limb regeneration. So we've solved it in the frog, and we're now in trials in mice. So now we're in mammals now. I can't say anything about how it's going, but the frog thing is solved." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what you do is... You can have a little frog Lou Skywalker with every growing hand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, basically. Basically, yeah. Yeah, so what you do is, we did with legs instead of forearms, and what you do is after amputation, normally they don't regenerate, you put on a wearable bioreactor, so it's this thing that goes on, and Dave Kaplan's lab makes these things, and inside it's a very controlled environment. It is a silk gel that carries some drugs, for example, ion channel drugs, and what you're doing is you're saying to these cells, you should regrow what normally goes here. So that whole thing is on for 24 hours, then you take it off, you don't touch the leg again. This is really important because what we're not looking for is a set of micromanagement, you know, printing or controlling the cells. We want to trigger, we want to interact with it early on and then not touch it again because we don't know how to make a frog leg, but the frog knows how to make a frog leg. So 24 hours, 18 months of leg growth after that without us touching it again. And after 18 months, you get a pretty good leg. That kind of shows this proof of concept that early on when the cells, right after injury, when they're first making a decision about what they're going to do, you can impact them. And once they've decided to make a leg, they don't need you after that. They can do their own thing. So that's an approach that we're now taking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about cancer suppression? That's something you mentioned earlier. How can all of these ideas help with cancer suppression?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's go back to the beginning and ask what cancer is. So I think asking why there's cancer is the wrong question. I think the right question is, why is there ever anything but cancer? So in the normal state, you have a bunch of cells that are all cooperating towards a large-scale goal. if that process of cooperation breaks down and you've got a cell that is isolated from that electrical network that lets you remember what the big goal is you revert back to your unicellular lifestyle as far as now think about that border between self and world right normally when all these cells are connected by gab junctions into an electrical network they are all one self right that meaning that um their goals, they have these large tissue level goals and so on. As soon as a cell is disconnected from that, the self is tiny, right? And so at that point, and so a lot of people model cancer cells as being more selfish and all that. They're not more selfish, they're equally selfish, it's just that their self is smaller. Normally the self is huge, now they've got tiny little selves. Now what are the goals of tiny little selves? Well, proliferate and migrate to wherever life is good, and that's metastasis, that's proliferation and metastasis. So one thing we found, and people have noticed years ago, that when cells convert to cancer, the first thing they see is they close the gap junctions. And it's a lot like, I think, it's a lot like that experiment with the slime mold, where until you close that gap junction, you can't even entertain the idea of leaving the collective, because there is no you at that point, right? You're mind melded with this whole other network. But as soon as the gap junction is closed, now the boundary between you and now the rest of the body is just outside environment to you. You're just a unicellular organism in the rest of the body's environment. So we studied this process and we worked out a way to artificially control the bioelectric state of these cells to physically force them to remain in that network. And so then what that means is that nasty mutations like KRAS and things like that, these really tough oncogenic mutations that cause tumors, if you do them, but then artificially control of the bioelectrics, you greatly reduce tumorigenesis or normalize cells that had already begun to convert you. Basically, they go back to being normal cells. And so this is another, much like with the planaria, this is another way in which the bioelectric state kind of dominates what the genetic state is. So if you sequence the nucleic acids, you'll see the KRAS mutation. You'll say, well, that's going to be a tumor. but there isn't a tumor because bioelectrically you've kept the cells connected and they're just working on making nice skin and kidneys and whatever else. So we've started moving that to human glioblastoma cells and we're hoping for a patient in the future, interaction with patients." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is this one of the possible ways in which we may, quote, cure cancer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think the actual cure, I mean, there are other technology, you know, immune therapy, I think it's a great technology. Chemotherapy, I don't think is a good technology. I think we got to get off of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So chemotherapy just kills cells." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, chemotherapy hopes to kill more of the tumor cells than of your cells. That's it, it's a fine balance. The problem is the cells are very similar, because they are your cells. And so if you don't have a very tight way of distinguishing between them, then the toll that chemo takes on the rest of the body is just unbelievable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And immunotherapy tries to get the immune system to do some of the work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. Yeah, I think that's potentially a very good approach. If the immune system can be taught to recognize enough of the cancer cells, that's a pretty good approach. But I think our approach is in a way more fundamental, because if you can keep the cells harnessed towards organ-level goals as opposed to individual cell goals, then nobody will be making a tumor or metastasizing and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we've been living through a pandemic, What do you think about viruses in this full, beautiful, biological context we've been talking about? Are they beautiful to you? Are they terrifying? Also, maybe, let's say, are they, since we've been discriminating this whole conversation, are they living? Are they embodied minds? Embodied minds that are assholes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As far as I know, and I haven't been able to find this paper again, but somewhere I saw in the last couple of months, there was some paper showing an example of a virus that actually had physiology. So there was something was going on. I think proton flux or something on the virus itself. But barring that, generally speaking, viruses are very passive. They don't do anything by themselves. And so I don't see any particular reason to attribute much of a mind to them. I think, you know, they represent a way to hijack other minds, for sure, like cells and other things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's an interesting interplay, though. If they're hijacking other minds, you know, the way we were talking about living organisms, that they can interact with each other and alter each other's trajectory by having interacted. I mean, that's a deep, meaningful connection between a virus and a cell. And I think both are transformed by the experience, and so in that sense, both are living." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. You know, the whole category, I... I don't, this question of what's living and what's not living, I really, I'm not sure, and I know there's people that work on this and I don't want to piss anybody off, but I have not found that particularly useful as to try and make that a binary kind of distinction. I think level of cognition is very interesting as a continuum, but living and nonliving, I really know what to do with that. I don't know what you do next after making that distinction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's why I make the very binary distinction. Can I have sex with it or not? Can I eat it or not? Those, because those are actionable, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, I think that's a critical point that you brought up because how you relate to something is really what this is all about, right? As an engineer, how do I control it? But maybe I shouldn't be controlling it. Maybe I should be, you know, Can I have a relationship with it? Should I be listening to its advice? Like all the way from, you know, I need to take it apart, all the way to I better do what it says, because it seems to be pretty smart, and everything in between, right? That's really what we're asking about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we need to understand our relationship to it. We're searching for that relationship, even in the most trivial senses. You came up with a lot of interesting terms. We've mentioned some of them. Agential material, that's a really interesting one. That's a really interesting one for the future of computation and artificial intelligence and computer science and all of that. There's also, let me go through some of them, if they spark some interesting thought for you. There's teleophobia, the unwanted fear of erring on the side of too much agency when considering a new system. That's the opposite, being afraid of maybe anthropomorphizing the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This will get some people ticked off, I think, but I don't think, I think the whole notion of anthropomorphizing is a holdover from a pre-scientific age where humans were magic and everything else wasn't magic, and you were anthropomorphizing when you dared suggest that something else has some features of humans. And I think we need to be way beyond that. this issue of anthropomorphizing, I think it's a cheap charge. I don't think it holds any water at all, other than when somebody makes a cognitive claim. I think all cognitive claims are engineering claims, really. So when somebody says, this thing knows, or this thing hopes, or this thing wants, or this thing predicts, All you can say is, fabulous, give me the engineering protocol that you've derived using that hypothesis, and we will see if this thing helps us or not, and then we can make a rational decision." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I also like anatomical compiler, a future system representing the long-term endgame of the science of morphogenesis that reminds us how far away from true understanding we are. Someday, you will be able to sit in front of an anatomical computer, specify the shape of the animal or plant that you want, and it will convert that shape specification to a set of stimuli that will have to be given to cells to build exactly that shape. no matter how weird it ends up being, you have total control. Just imagine the possibility for memes in the physical space. One of the glorious accomplishments of human civilizations is memes in digital space. Now this could create memes in physical space. I am both excited and terrified by that possibility. Cognitive light cone, I think we also talked about. The outer boundary in space and time of the largest goal a given system can work towards. Is this kind of like shaping the set of options?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "it's a little different than than options. It's, it's really focused on so. So back in this, this, I first came up with this, but back in 2018, I want to say, we had a there was a conference, a Templeton conference where they challenges to come up with frameworks. I think actually, it's the here, it's the diverse intelligence community that Summer Institute, yeah, they had a Summer Institute, but I'm the logos to be with some circuits. Yeah, it's got different life forms. So the whole program is called Diverse Intelligence, and they challenged us to come up with a framework that was suitable for analyzing different kinds of intelligence together, right? Because the kinds of things you do to a human are not good with an octopus, not good with a plant, and so on. So I started thinking about this and I asked myself, what do all cognitive agents, no matter what their providence, no matter what their architecture is, what do cognitive agents have in common? And it seems to me that what they have in common is some degree of competency to pursue a goal. And so what you can do then is you can draw. And so what I ended up drawing was this thing that it's kind of like a backwards Minkowski cone diagram where all of space has collapsed into one axis and then here and then time is this axis. And then what you can do is you can draw for any creature, you can semi-quantitatively estimate what are the spatial and temporal goals that it's capable of pursuing. So, for example, if you are a tick and all you really are able to pursue is maxima or bacterium, maximizing the level of some chemical in your vicinity, right, that's all you've got, it's a tiny little lichon, then you're a simple system like a tick or a bacterium. If you are something like a dog, well, you've got some ability to to care about some spatial region, some temporal, you know, you can remember a little bit backwards, you can predict a little bit forwards, but you're never ever going to care about what happens in the next town over four weeks from now. It's just, as far as we know, it's just impossible for that kind of architecture. If you're a human, you might be working towards world peace long after you're dead, right? So you might have a planetary scale goal that's enormous, right? And then there may be other greater intelligences somewhere that can care in the linear range about numbers of creatures that, you know, some sort of Buddha-like character that can care about everybody's welfare, like really care the way that we can't. And so that, it's not a mapping of what you can sense, how far you can sense, right? It's not a mapping of how far you can act. It's a mapping of how big are the goals you are capable of envisioning and working towards. And I think that enables you to put synthetic kinds of constructs, AIs, aliens, swarms, whatever, on the same diagram. Because we're not talking about what you're made of or how you got here. We're talking about what are the size and complexity of the goals towards which you can work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there any other terms that pop into mind that are interesting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm trying to remember, I have a list of them somewhere on my website." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Target morphology, yeah, definitely check it out. Morphoceutical, I like that one. Ionoceutical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, I mean those refer to different types of interventions in the regenerative medicine space. So a morphoceutical is something that, it's a kind of intervention that really targets the cells decision-making process about what they're going to build. And ionoceuticals are like that, but more focused specifically on the bioelectrics. I mean, there's also, of course, biochemical, biomechanical, who knows what else, you know, maybe optical kinds of signaling systems there as well. Target morphology is interesting. It's designed to capture this idea that it's not just feed-forward emergence, and oftentimes in biology, I mean, of course, that happens too, but in many cases in biology, the system is specifically working towards a target in anatomical amorphous space, right? It's a navigation task, really. These kind of problem-solving can be formalized as navigation tasks, and that they're really going towards a particular region. How do you know? Because you deviate them, and then they go back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you, because you've really challenged a lot of ideas in biology in the work you do, probably because some of your rebelliousness comes from the fact that you came from a different field of computer engineering. But could you give advice to young people today in high school or college that are trying to pave their life story, whether it's in science or elsewhere, how they can have a career they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of? Advice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Boy, it's dangerous to give advice because things change so fast. But one central thing I can say, moving up and through academia and whatnot, you will be surrounded by really smart people. And what you need to do is be very careful at distinguishing specific critique versus kind of meta advice. And what I mean by that is, If somebody really smart and successful and obviously competent is giving you specific critiques on what you've done, that's gold. That's an opportunity to hone your craft, to get better at what you're doing, to learn, to find your mistakes, like that's great. If they are telling you what you ought to be studying, how you ought to approach things, what is the right way to think about things, you should probably ignore most of that. And the reason I make that distinction is that a lot of really successful people are very well calibrated on their own ideas and their own field and their own area, and they know exactly what works and what doesn't and what's good and what's bad. But they're not calibrated on your ideas. And so the things they will say, oh, this is a dumb idea. Don't do this. And you shouldn't do that. That stuff is generally worse than useless. It can be very, very demoralizing and really limiting. So what I say to people is read very broadly, work really hard, know what you're talking about, take all specific criticism as an opportunity to improve what you're doing, and then completely ignore everything else. Because I just tell you from my own experience, most of what I consider to be interesting and useful things that we've done, very smart people have said, this is a terrible idea. Don't do that. Yeah, I think we just don't know. We have no idea beyond our own, like at best, we know what we ought to be doing. We very rarely know what anybody else should be doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and their ideas, their perspective has been also calibrated, not just on their field and specific situation, but also on a state of that field at a particular time in the past. So there's not many people in this world that are able to achieve revolutionary success multiple times in their life. So whenever you say somebody very smart, usually what that means is somebody who's smart, who achieved the success at certain point in their life, and people often get stuck in that place where they found success. To be constantly challenging your worldview is a very difficult thing. So yeah, also at the same time, probably if a lot of people tell, that's the weird thing about life, if a lot of people tell you that something is stupid or is not gonna work, that either means it's stupid, it's not gonna work, or it's actually a great opportunity to do something new. and you don't know which one it is, and it's probably equally likely to be either. Well, I don't know, the probabilities. Depends how lucky you are, depends how brilliant you are. But you don't know, and so you can't take that advice as actual data." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you have to, and this is kinda hard to describe and fuzzy, but I'm a firm believer that you have to build up your own intuition. So over time, right, you have to take your own risks that seem like they make sense to you and then learn from that and build up so that you can trust your own gut about what's a good idea, even when and then sometimes you'll make mistakes and it'll turn out to be a dead end. And that's fine. That's that's science. But but, you know, what I tell my students is is life is hard and science is hard and you're going to sweat and bleed and everything. And you should be doing that for ideas that that really fire you up inside. and really don't let the common denominator of standardized approaches to things slow you down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned planaria being, in some sense, immortal. What's the role of death in life? What's the role of death in this whole process we have? Is it, when you look at biological systems, is death an important feature, especially as you climb up the hierarchy of competency?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Boy, that's an interesting question. I think that it's certainly a factor that promotes change and turnover and an opportunity to do something different the next time for a larger scale system. So apoptosis, you know, it's really interesting. I mean, death is really interesting in a number of ways. One is, like, you could think about, what was the first thing to die? know that's that's an interesting question what was the first creature that you could say actually died it's a tough it's a tough thing because we don't have a great definition for it so if you bring a a cabbage home and you put it in your fridge at what point are you going to say it's died right then so so that's it's kind of hard um to know there's also there's also uh there's there's there's one paper in which i talk about this idea that i mean think about think about this and and Imagine that you have a creature that's aquatic, let's say it's a frog or something, or a tadpole, and the animal dies in the pond, it dies for whatever reason, most of the cells are still alive. So you could imagine that if when it died there was some sort of breakdown of the connectivity between the cells, a bunch of cells crawled off, They could have a life as amoebas. Some of them could join together and become a xenobot and toodle around, right? So we know from planaria that there are cells that don't obey the Hayflick limit and just sort of live forever. So you could imagine an organism that when the organism dies, it doesn't disappear. Rather, the individual cells that are still alive crawl off and have a completely different kind of lifestyle and maybe come back together as something else, or maybe they don't. So all of this, I'm sure, is happening somewhere on some planet. So death, in any case, I mean, we already kind of knew this because the molecules, we know that when something dies, the molecules go through the ecosystem, but even the cells don't necessarily die at that point. They might have another life in a different way. And you can think about something like HeLa, right, the HeLa cell line, you know, that's had this incredible life. There are way more HeLa cells now than there were when she was alive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems like as the organisms become more and more complex, like if you look at the mammals, their relationship with death becomes more and more complex. So the survival imperative starts becoming interesting. And humans are arguably the first species that have invented the fear of death. the understanding that you're going to die, let's put it this way. So not like instinctual, like I need to run away from the thing that's gonna eat me, but starting to contemplate the finiteness of life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean one thing, so one thing about the human light, cognitive light cone, is that for the first, as far as we know, for the first time you might have goals that are longer than your lifespan, that are not achievable, right? So if you're, let's say, and I don't know if this is true, but if you're a goldfish and you have a 10-minute attention span, I'm not sure if that's true, but let's say there's some organism with a short, you know, kind of cognitive light cone that way, all of your goals are potentially achievable, because you're probably going to live the next 10 minutes. So whatever goals you have, they are totally achievable. If you're a human, you could have all kinds of goals that are guaranteed not achievable, because they just take too long. Guaranteed, you're not going to achieve them. So I wonder, is that a perennial thorn in our psychology that drives some psychoses or whatever? I have no idea. Another interesting thing about that, actually, and I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of weeks, this notion of giving up. So you would think that evolutionarily, the most adaptive way of being is that you go, you fight as long as you physically can, and then when you can't, you can't. And there's this photograph, there's videos you can find of insects crawling around where like, you know, like most of it is already gone and it's still sort of crawling, you know, like Terminator style, right? Like as far as, as long as you physically can, you keep going. Mammals don't do that. So a lot of mammals, including rats, have this thing where when they think it's a hopeless situation, they literally give up and die when physically they could have kept going. I mean, humans certainly do this. And there's some really unpleasant experiments that this guy, I forget his name, did with drowning rats, where rats normally drown after a couple of minutes. But if you teach them that if you just tread water for a couple of minutes, you'll get rescued, they can tread water for like an hour. And so, right, and so they literally just give up and die. And so, evolutionarily, that doesn't seem like a good strategy at all. Evolutionarily, why would you, like, what's the benefit ever of giving up? You just do what you can and, you know, one time out of a thousand, you'll actually get rescued, right? But this issue of actually giving up suggests some very interesting metacognitive controls where you've now gotten to the point where survival actually isn't the top drive. and that there are other considerations that have taken over. And I think that's uniquely a mammalian thing, but I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the Camus. The existentialist question of why live, just the fact that humans commit suicide, is a really fascinating question from an evolutionary perspective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And what was the first, and that's the other thing, what is the simplest system, whether evolved or natural or whatever, that is able to do that? You can think, what other animals are actually able to do that? I'm not sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe you could see animals over time, for some reason, lowering the value of survive at all costs gradually until other objectives might become more important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe. I don't know how evolutionarily how that gets off the ground. That just seems like that would have such a strong pressure against it, you know. Just imagine a population with a lower, if you were a mutant in a population that had less of a survival imperative, would your genes outperform the others? It seems not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there such a thing as population selection? Because maybe suicide is a way for organisms to decide themselves that they're not fit for the environment somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a really contrary, you know, population level selection is a kind of a deep controversial area, but it's tough because on the face of it, if that was your genome, it wouldn't get propagated because you would die and then your neighbor who didn't have that would have all the kids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It feels like there could be some deep truth there that we're not understanding. What about you yourself as one biological system? Are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To be honest, I'm more concerned with, especially now getting older and having helped a couple of people pass, I think about what's a... what's a good way to go, basically. Like nowadays, I don't know what that is. Sitting in a facility that sort of tries to stretch you out as long as you can, that doesn't seem good. And there's not a lot of opportunities to sort of, I don't know, sacrifice yourself for something useful, right? There's not terribly many opportunities for that in modern society. So I don't know, that's more of, I'm not particularly worried about death itself, but I've seen it happen And, and, uh, it's not, it's not pretty. And I don't know what, what a better, what a better alternative is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the existential aspect of it does not worry you deeply. The fact that this ride ends." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it began, I mean, the ride began, right? So there was, I don't know how many billions of years before that I wasn't around. So that's okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But isn't the experience of life, it's almost like feels like you're immortal? Because the way you make plans, the way you think about the future, I mean, if you look at your own personal rich experience, yes, you can understand, okay, eventually I died, there's people I love that have died, so surely I will die and it hurts and so on. But like it sure doesn't, it's so easy to get lost in feeling like this is gonna go on forever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's a little bit like the people who say they don't believe in free will, right? I mean, you can say that, but, but when you go to a restaurant, you still have to pick a soup and stuff. So, right. So, so I don't know if I know I've, I've actually seen that, that happened at lunch with a, with a well-known philosopher and he wouldn't believe in free will. And, you know, the waitress came around and he was like, well, let me see. I was like, what are you doing here? You're going to choose a sandwich. Right. So, um, it's, I think it's one of those things. I think you, you can know that, you know, you're not going to live forever, but you can't, it's not practical to live that way unless, you know, so you buy insurance and then you do some stuff like that, but mostly, you know, I think you just live as if you can make plans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We talked about all kinds of life. We talked about all kinds of embodied minds. What do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of all the biological lives we've been talking about here on Earth? Why are we here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know that that's a well-posed question other than the existential question you posed before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that question hanging out with the question of what is consciousness and they're at a retreat somewhere? Not sure because… Sipping pina coladas and because they're ambiguously defined." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe. I'm not sure that any of these things really ride on the correctness of our scientific understanding, but I mean, just for an example, right? I've always found it weird that people get really worked up to find out realities about their bodies. For example, right, have you seen Ex Machina? You've seen that, right? And so there's this great scene where he's cutting his hand to find out, you know, a piece full of cogs. Now, to me, right, if I open up and I find a bunch of cogs, my conclusion is not, oh crap, I must not have true cognition, that sucks. My conclusion is, wow, cogs can have true cognition, great. So it seems to me, I guess I'm with Descartes on this one, that whatever the truth ends up being of what is consciousness, how it can be conscious, none of that is going to alter my primary experience, which is this is what it is. And if a bunch of molecular networks can do it, fantastic. If it turns out that there's a non-corporeal soul, great, we'll study that, whatever. But the fundamental, existential aspect of it is, you know, if somebody told me today that, yeah, you were created yesterday, and all your memories are, you know, sort of fake, you know, kind of like Boltzmann brains, right? And Hume's skepticism and all that. Yeah, okay. Well, so, but here I am now, so let's—" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's primal, so that's the thing that matters. So the backstory doesn't matter, the explanation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, from a first person perspective. Now, from a third person, like scientifically, it's all very interesting. From a third person perspective, I could say, wow, that's amazing that this happens, and how does it happen, and whatever. But from a first person perspective, I could care less. What I learned from any of these scientific facts is, okay, well, I guess then that's what is sufficient to give me my amazing first-person perspective." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think if you dig deeper and deeper and get surprising answers to why the hell we're here, it might give you some guidance on how to live." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe, maybe. I don't know. That would be nice. On the one hand, you might be right, because on the one hand, I don't know what else could possibly give you that guidance, right? So you would think that it would have to be that, or it would have to be science because there isn't anything else. So maybe. On the other hand, I am really not sure how you go from any, what they call from an is to an ought, right? From any factual description of what's going on. This goes back to the natural, right? Just because somebody says, oh man, that's completely not natural. That's never happened on earth before. I'm not impressed by that whatsoever. I think whatever it has or hasn't happened, we are now in a position to do better if we can, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's also good, because you said there's science and there's nothing else. It's really tricky to know how to intellectually deal with a thing that science doesn't currently understand. The thing is, if you believe that science solves everything, you can too easily in your mind think, our current understanding, like we've solved everything. It jumps really quickly to not science as a mechanism, as a process, but more like the science of today. You could just look at human history, and throughout human history, just physicists and everybody would claim we've solved everything. There's a few small things to figure out, and we basically solved everything. where in reality, I think asking like, what is the meaning of life is resetting the palette of like, we might be tiny and confused and don't have anything figured out. It's almost going to be hilarious a few centuries from now when they look back at how dumb we were." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I 100% agree. So when I say science and nothing else, I certainly don't mean the science of today, because I think overall, I think we know very little. I think most of the things that we're sure of now are going to be, as you said, are going to look hilarious down the line. So I think we're just at the beginning of a lot of really important things. When I say nothing but science, I also include the kind of first person, what I call science, that you do. So the interesting thing about, I think, about consciousness and studying consciousness and things like that in the first person is, unlike doing science in the third person, where you as the scientist are minimally changed by it, maybe not at all. So when I do an experiment, I'm still me, there's the experiment, whatever I've done, I've learned something, so that's a small change. But overall, that's it. In order to really study consciousness, you are part of the experiment, you will be altered by that experiment, right? Whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's some sort of contemplative practice or... or some sort of, you know, psychoactive, you know, whatever, you are now your own experiment, and you are right in. So I fold that in. I think that's part of it. I think that exploring our own mind and our own consciousness is very important. I think much of it is not captured by what currently is third-person science, for sure. But ultimately, I include all of that in science with a capital S in terms of like a rational investigation of both first and third person aspects of our world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We are our own experiment, as beautifully put. And when two systems get to interact with each other, that's a kind of experiment. So I'm deeply honored that you would do this experiment with me today." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Michael, I'm a huge fan of your work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Thank you for doing everything you're doing. I can't wait to see the kind of incredible things you build. So thank you for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was actually based off of a real story. A lot of people don't know that. Yeah, the over the top movie, I mean, to a certain degree, that's actually real life. Like that tournament over the top was real. It was literally named over the top. Yes. Yes. There was a trucker division and the guy actually won a truck for real. His name's John Brzenk. You know who that is, right? So the actual over the top tournament, the trucker division was won by John." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who is John Brzenk? He is, a lot of people talk about him as like a legend and one of, if not the greatest arm wrestlers of all time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "John Brzenk is every arm wrestlers father to a certain degree, all of us, um, the entire sport looks up to him. Uh, he, it's incredible what he's done. I mean, at 18, he won over the top at 57. He just competed with me a couple months ago. still at the world level 18. That's that's 40 years of being at the top of the sport. It's incredible. He's hailed as the greatest of all time in the sport of arm wrestling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And he doesn't he's beaten some monsters." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he doesn't. I mean, when you talk about like the the evolution of the sport, he's responsible for so much of it. Like when you talk about, like a lot of times when you go back like 20 years, 30 years, a lot of us looked at arm wrestling, I think it's, I mean, as something you could kind of do. And he's the first guy who's like, if you want to get better at arm wrestling, you got to arm wrestle. And it seems so simple, but he answered so many questions that all of us had about techniques in the sport back pre-video internet. He's been everybody's target for like 40 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in terms of strength, in terms of power, in terms of skill, what did he teach the sport of arm wrestling? So if you look, how did the sport change from 80s, 90s to the aughts? You were at the top of the world for many years. Many argue you're still at the very top of the world, but you were very dominant both left and right hand in, I don't know, 2008 to 2013, something like that. So how did that sport evolve to today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's hard for me to comment prior to when I came to the sport was kind of mid-90s. I've been arm wrestling my whole life, but I wasn't really involved in the sport to a major degree until probably mid-90s. But I'll say that before the mid-90s, it was really hard to get good at arm wrestling. Very difficult. Everybody was doing it wrong, really. Like, it was really rare to find people who were technically good arm wrestlers. It was very underground. You know, when I, when I got into sport, it was a flyer that came in the mail. Uh, you had to know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, and then you go to a club and you can't do anything with these people. And. And they knew how to arm wrestle, they did, but real masters were rare. And, you know, then internet, internet helped everybody. Communication, the transfer of knowledge became so much faster. People became technically, you know, invested. People started to train, sharing ideas. By, I'd say, 2000, Well, probably around the turn of the millennia, I'd say that professional leagues started to slowly pick up. More organized, bigger productions started to attract more athletes, more people took it seriously. By 2010, I'd say there was another jump, more serious leagues, a little bit more money. By 2015, more major media, like people were investing a lot of money. you know, millionaires, billionaires type of people were organizing events, setting up leagues. And, um, yeah, I mean the past five years, it's just blown up. Uh, the techniques, I mean, if, if I was to go back to when I started, uh, you know, what, what took me 10 or 15 years to learn, I mean, new guys are showing up and they've got it down in like a year. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Well, the thing about it, the development of the sport is it's, like I was telling you off mic, it's a battle of one versus one, and then that can turn into battle of nations, which there is. There's Canada, there's the United States, there's all the Eastern Europe, Russia, Georgia, all of that. That's what makes some of the greatest sports in Olympics great, like weightlifting. It's a battle of nations, not just a battle of individuals, and it's almost like these two humans represent the two nations. And I see that very much. We'll talk about your matches coming up. But there is that battle between North America and that other part of the world. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "North America is very prized. The North American champion is always highly sought after because they're typically the most famous. Even still when, quite arguably, there's always somebody in Eastern Europe who's just monstrous. It's typically the North American athlete who's more recognized." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, we'll have a cup here with some maple syrup. Cheers, Lex. Cheers. We should probably show" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You just downed that whole thing. No, no, no, I'm gonna sip it. I'm gonna sip it, you know, but by all means." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's really good, right? That is delicious, yeah. That is maple syrup." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a perfect July day from Canada in a bottle, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're, on a total tangent, you are known for appreciating food in all kinds of ways, but one of the things you're known for is pancakes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's gone to a crazy place in the sport, but yeah. Where did that originate? Where that originated?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When it went from your actual love for pancakes to the meme." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I think what happened was, so I had a match with Michael Todd, big match. Michael, great champion. He's another guy who's, you know, he's never gonna get off the horse. You know, he's, Jesus, his elbow is a complete disaster. Probably one of the most loved and hated guys in the sport right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it because of the King's move?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the King's move brings him a lot of hate. Not from me, not from a lot of people, but a lot of observers have a big problem with the King's move." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's wrong with being a little bit controversial? That's fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "you know, I get so passionate about it, I get so angry, you know? Because there's this saying like, oh, can you beat him at a hook? Can you beat, man, win, win. That's it, just win and don't talk to me about anything else. If you can win with style, win with style. But don't talk to me about anything but winning. That's the priority. So you had this match with Michael Todd. Yeah. So I was in a terrible place. I guess I get so screwed up with the years. It's 2022 now, right? No, it's 2030." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are you talking about? That's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is actually 2030. We're way ahead of schedule." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, man. That's right. So when was this? This was like a decade ago or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, this is like a year." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and a bit ago. Oh, this is very recent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very recent, yeah. So I got really sick." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that the match?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, this is the match, right? Awesome match. So this match is for the Legacy Hammer. So we invented this thing called the Legacy Hammer, and Michael took it from me in, I think, 2018. And then COVID shut everything down, and Michael went overseas to try and set up, because at that time, Michael was a North American champion. He beat me, and he went to Dubai, and he organized this great big match with Levon. And the whole thing fell apart. Organizers, leagues, wouldn't let it happen. But there was still an ability to have a match of significance happen. So Michael's like, who do you want? And I'm like, let's give Devin a rematch. And I'm like, And I was really sick at the time. Uh, I had DVT, I had pulmonary embolism, I was mentally in a terrible place, and I got offered the match, and I just totally turned my life around. And... I committed... really hard. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And, uh... What happened in this match, by the way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I just totally destroyed him. Yeah. I just beat the piss out of him. Yeah. Michael's a good friend of mine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, there's a lot of camaraderie. Yeah. You guys talked afterwards." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. But we fight like like brothers, you know, like so we let each other really fight hard against each other. But so I was I knew I mean, strength and mass, they go hand in hand. And I committed to just getting as big and as strong as I could, and literally I was eating pancakes every day. Bacon, pancakes, every sloppy bit of garbage food I could eat. I was trying to eat healthy also, but if there was garbage food, I'd eat it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean bacon and pancakes isn't healthy? What are you talking about? Exactly. People should go watch, there's a video where you make the Canadian meal of bacon with some bacon cooking tips, water, that was interesting. And then obviously pancakes and maple syrup all over the whole thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're making me very hungry. I've caused more diabetes and then you know, probably gonna get in trouble karmically for Making the world obese." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You should probably write a like like a book the pancake diet. Yeah, I think I will do that one day So you said mass and strength go hand in hand just at a big level about arm wrestling. What's more important? strength, power, endurance, skill, strategy, or mental toughness. How do these components all come into play in arm wrestling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're all important. You can use everything and you can adjust your strategy based off of the tools that you have. I would say if I could pick ever just one thing to have more of, I would say that it would be strength gained while fighting. While actually arm wrestling, so not off the top. No, no, no. So you get stronger from arm wrestling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you get stronger from arm wrestling? In jiu-jitsu and grappling, you can get good by training with people much technically worse than you. So with white belts and blue belts, it's actually beneficial. Agree. Because you get to work stuff out. Right. But I wouldn't say it develops that intensity and power required to go against people at your level. So how do you balance that? Is it okay to go against people that are much weaker than you, or do you really have to go against people at the same level?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that a blended strategy is probably the best. I'd say kind of a rule is whatever you do, you get better at, right? So you want to be kind of as precise as possible. you don't wanna get hurt. And it's just about investment. And the answer's not always the same. Things are gonna change. I am currently a big believer in what I call tower building, right? So you have to do a lot of volume. to build a great tower. You need to have a ton, a ton of volume. So when you look at how to best build volume, you want to do workouts that aren't particularly challenging, that make you feel good, and do them so that when you add them all together, you get the biggest number. So many easy workouts a day that are specific as possible, in my opinion, is the best way to lay the foundation for an extreme peak. And precision, right? Like, there's no more precise way to get strong at arm wrestling than arm wrestling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how often can you arm wrestle? What's your training regimen? You've talked about this as the climb. What is the training process to get great at arm wrestling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, again, it's gonna depend on what level you're at. The answer at the beginning might not be the same. For me, a guy who's been doing it almost 30 years, I have to harvest. I have to harvest energy from clubs. I call it cosmic punch." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry to interrupt. You were here in Austin, Texas. You are in Austin, Texas, but you were at the what was it called? The water tank. Yeah. He had an awesome crowd. It was great. I get to watch. I got to interact with a lot of those guys. Yes. Just amazing community, amazing human beings. I got to talk to Dimitri in Russian and in English. He's a. He's an engineer. His wife is an engineer. So he's a brilliant dude, but also one of the toughest, I guess, guys you face there. But you faced, I don't know how many people. It must have been hundreds of matches." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the bar was full. Yeah. And that for me is a perfect training scenario. Yeah. So if I go in and just kind of be, I'm like a lightning rod. and I just absorb everything that I can get from people, all their effort, that's perfect, that's perfect. But I'm lucky because I'm in a place that I can handle it. If I was losing or failing, this would not be optimal. But because I'm strong enough, I've been doing it long enough that I can kind of absorb it without damaging me, this is perfect, this is perfect. I typically, when I'm training up for a very serious match, I'll try and do that three or four times a week. And then the days in between, I will just do blood flow rehab, blood flow rehab. I will never hit a PR, a record. I'll never do it anymore. I don't do it. I used to. A lot of things change, and that's why I say there's a lot of ways to do it. This is currently a system that's working very well for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when you say PR, you're not aggressively chasing a peak, you're just building and building and building." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my only peak that I care about is for this cycle, the 25th of June." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's my only PR. Let's talk about the 25th of June. Oh yeah. Let's talk about Levon Siganishvili, the Georgian Hulk. Question number one, is it possible to beat him? He is widely acknowledged as the most powerful person in arm wrestling today. Is he beatable? And if so, how?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everybody's beatable. Everybody's beatable. Levon is incredible. He is what this modern peak of arm wrestling represents." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people who are just listening, we also have an overlay of a video. of LeVon going against Vitaly Levin, another top three person in the world, perhaps, in arm wrestling. And LeVon is the guy on the right, just big. I love it. And the aggression, I mean, actually sort of underneath it all, it seems to be a teddy bear, but when he turns it on, it's raw power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's the full package. LeVon is, he represents the pinnacle. Um, there's Dennis in the background. He's like, I want to be back in there. Yeah. Levon has a lot of bases covered. Uh, he's, I mean, he's curling 300 pounds with one arm. I mean, the strength that he shows for arm wrestling is, is, is so far ahead of the field. It's very, very strong. Um, but It's absolutely possible. It's absolutely possible. The one thing that I'm confident about, well, I'd say there's two things. The two things I'm confident about is that I have more experience than he does. And experience counts for a lot. The other thing is my ability to breathe and recover. So if ever there's an opportunity for the tide to turn, that's I think where he'll never get it back. So I think if I can somehow find a hole in his game, then yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You want to hold off the initial assault of power and then wear him out. and to find the hole and then... How much of that is mental, how much of it is just the physical ability to do, for your muscles to have the endurance to hold off?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like to make the sport bigger. And a lot of things that most arm wrestlers believe the sport is, I always try and push those boundaries. So, There is definitely a mental aspect to it when you're faced with something that you've never seen before. That's when things like experience comes in. He can become surprised where what's a surprise for him is routine for me. So my adjustments will be more precise, more accurate. Yeah, that's how I get in. That's how I get in. Yeah, I play a dirty game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So some of it, how important is confidence in the progression of the match? Is there ups and downs of confidence? Like, holy shit, I actually have a chance to win this. Holy shit, I'm winning this, you're done. Some of my favorite moments, I don't know if those are fake or not in terms of your expressions, if it's fake until you make it, but whenever you shake your head or whatever, you make it apparent that, you believe the match is finished. And I wonder if that gets in the head of the other person. When you start to actually, so I'm sure you're doing things, like precise, detailed things with your hands to also indicate that you believe they're finished. But you're facially just, yeah. Quit. Oh, that's right, because it's facing the other way. So that's ultimately what the battle is about. It's like, you're done." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You might as well give up. Commitment is so important in anything that you do, right? Like I always... kind of try and bring things to a level of commitment that's uncommon. I think that that's a lot of reasons why I do well. It's because I just get so committed in the whole process. And by the time that I actually show up to fight, I sometimes just wish that they would kill me. I wish that they would, because that's what that's how far I wanna go. People talk about how committed are you to the match? If you're committed to the match and you lose, you should be hurt. I'm often unhappy when I lose a match and I don't have an injury. I'm like, damn, what the fuck? I feel like I didn't commit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know if you know Dan Gable is the wrestler. Oh yeah, he was on the podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He talked about his whole career, he dreamed of working so hard that he can't get off the mat by himself. And he's disappointed ultimately at the end of his career because he was always able to get off the mat on his own accord. So he wants to leave it all on the mat just from exhaustion. So that's what commitment looks like. What is this process, what is this climb for probably the toughest match of your career. I would say the most epic match in arm wrestling history. I mean, it's really building up. You are the, you said North America, that's, I mean, I think by accounts of many, you're one of the greatest arm wrestlers ever. He is one of the scariest arm wrestlers ever. And so this match, by the way, where is it happening? It'll be in Dubai. In Dubai. Yeah. June. So what does the climb look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The climb for me, um, what I have to change in my life always, um, people talk about being a professional. I've always loved the sport of, of loved it like crazy. Uh, but to me, the path is about simplicity and removal of distractions. I do better and better the more I get rid of everything, nothing else, so that my life is just the goal, just the target, and everything else is off the table. And that's where I need to get to, where there's nothing. There's nothing between me and Him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And every single day you're putting in the volume. Every day, all day. Now you said you worked out, so yesterday you did hundreds of arm wrestling matches, and then today you said in the morning you still worked out, so what was that workout? So you're mixing up stuff where you're doing weights also?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This morning, you know, I try to really focus on what's administratively easy. That's a big part of me with everything I do. So I just travel with bands. Yeah, I got bands with me. And it's rehabilitative in nature. So I'm really focusing on blood flow, feeling good, doing proper movements. But yeah, just a band workout in the hotel room. What does a band workout look like?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So are you doing the arm wrestling movement? Oh, see that? See what you did there? What's that? Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You want to bring them in. Up, up. Oh, the up thing? Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up No, you bring everything close. That's it, don't worry about pinning. Pinning happens once it's close to you. Yeah, pinning is, people always think about pinning. Don't think about pinning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How much of the body is a part of this too? Like the core, the torso, because it feels like there's that almost like Mike Tyson punch power, right? Yeah. Does it come from the hips too and the legs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's definitely the whole body. It's definitely the whole body. Like everything is working. You're connected to the table at times, as far as your base. Sometimes your base is your feet, but a lot of times you can base off the table. So you can base off your hips, but I'll tell you, no arm wrestler cares about doing squats. No arm wrestlers doing planks. Yeah. Okay. It's all about the forearm and the actions of the hand. Uh, that's always the limiting factor. You look at a guy like Oleg Zok. Okay. Do you know this guy? Oleg Zok. Yeah. Marvelous. He's a, he's a total hell boy. He's my inspiration to what I call pumpkin training. But, um, what's pumpkin training? Uh, probably we'll get into that, but I only train my right arm, that's it. Yeah, with homework. But back to full body, it is full body. My good friend, Matt Mask, when he arm wrestled me, he actually blew his internal abductor in his leg. So yeah, people walk away from tournament, their calves can be sore sometimes, you know, it happens. But no, oh, there he is right there, yeah. Oh, like he is a real life hell boy. He's like 170 pounds there. Look at his arm. Look at his arm. It's crazy. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he's totally crazy. That's you doing left right there. So by the way, Levon, you're going right. Yeah. Yeah. So can you say more about the mental side? Are you visualizing what it takes to beat him? Are you trying to get in his head? All of these things. Do you think it's possible to get in his head?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's definitely strategies that you can do depending on who it is you're facing. It's very good to know who it is you're fighting and choose the correct strategy mentally. But I always follow a process when it comes to my mental preparation. When I'm far away from an event, I just always build up my opponent. build them, I build them, I respect them to a point where I almost start to fear them and start to believe that they'll beat me. And this is a very vital part of my preparation. And that's where I am right now with Levon. I don't, I just build them up, build them up into this thing that scares me. Um, and it forces me to be responsible. You know, because I don't want to lose. You know, I want to win. So the greater my opponent, the greater I can build their worth in my mind, the more motivation it gives me. Then there comes a point when it changes. And then I start to degrade them. And yeah, that's when it normally starts to get fun. And normally by the time I face them, I just try and completely dominate from every interaction from start to finish. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When in the actual moment of the match, like in the moments leading up to it, what's the feeling? Is it fear? Is it confidence? Anxiety? What's going through your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love to fight. I love it. I always have. There's every day where you have the distractions of life, and then there's really living in the moment, right? It's whatever you love to do, and that's when you can really be free. I'm free when I'm fighting, right? So you put me in a good fight, And I just love it. I don't think about the past. I don't think about the future. I just think about killing that dude in front of me and I enjoy that. and just being intensely in the moment. That's it, just right there, just fighting as hard as I can. Do you study the opponent?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, do you have you for this particular match, do you study videos of LeVon?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've seen everything. I've read everything. I get opinions from other people. I watch very closely, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you make of his evolution? So he's grown in size, but also you've talked about his evolution technically as well. In studying him, since we're in the build your opponent to beat terrifying stage, what makes him great?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's very impressive. The greatest thing about him is his strength. That's the thing that sets him apart from everyone. His strength, specialized strength, exact strength for arm wrestling. I believe it's unmatched." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just linger on that word strength? What does strength mean? What does it feel like? Are we talking about bicep, like shoulder? Are we talking about like whatever controls the wrist? How does strength manifest? You know, like when I touch your hand, when we grab arms, I feel like Fuck, that's strong. There's control, right? What is that feeling? Where does that come from in arm wrestling? When you're at the top of the world, where does that come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, it's chains. There's chains of strength. And in arm wrestling, this is like technical strength, okay? And we use these technical chains to fight each other. The, the chains that I'll talk about is, so you'll talk, remember how we talked about the post, this upwards drive, this ability to close this angle. This is a chain. Um, it can be used. It's, it's a technical attack. It's also an attack that can be built with, with training, just the ability to just drive upwards. There's a chain where you cup, right? Cup your wrist in, cup your wrist in and the anchor and the chain brings you right to your heart, right to your center, right? This chain, and this can be done at any time. There's a pronation chain and that's to turn your thumb over, right? Turn your thumb over and you attack the person's cupping chain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's a huge number of muscles involved in each of those chains." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's why I say it's a chain, right? But they're movements, and these movements you can develop in the gym or through practice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't mean, so it's easy to sort of interpret strength to mean how much you curl, essentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you mean the chain, it all has to do with the- Right, and that's what, I mean, people talk, is it a bicep? I mean, yes, there's bicep for sure involved, but I'll always be inaccurate if I try and tell you what muscles are the, so I prefer to explain it in a movement, and then everything that's involved to do that movement, right? And LeVon's movements for arm wrestling are incredibly impressive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you attribute to, how much of that is genetics, how much of it is some training thing he's doing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that LeVon is very special in terms of his genetics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not everybody can be LeVon." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's not many LeVons out there. But, what I've encountered and the bias that I always see, like when people talk about people like Lavon. they discount the other side so very quickly. And the thing is, Levon rarely has to show the other side because he's so far ahead. You talk about the technical application of the sport, he so rarely needs to show it. But he's clearly incredible. If you watch his progression, he came up having very difficult technical struggles to overcome. Georgia is a great country for arm wrestling. There's this guy, Gennady Kvikvinia, who no one would ever say is not technical. And it took him years to defeat him to a point where now it's not even a discussion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you talk about the progression. They had a lot of battles together over the years. It's fascinating to see the tides turn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, and once they've turned, it's like completely, completely different level. Yeah, I mean he's got he's got strength. He's got technique some people Will argue that his technique is flawed at times they've shown matches where he hasn't shown the best technique, but he still won and I think sometimes he just plays with people, you know, like there's a famous match that he had with I Oh, they call him the Bruce Lee of arm wrestling, a guy called Ongarbaev, Kyrgyz Ongarbaev. They had a match in the top eight, great match. Kyrgyz is like 220-pound guy from Kazakhstan, brilliant technician, but power-wise, not in the same world. And Kurt Agali did well, even though he lost 6-0. He still did well. But in my opinion, Levan didn't care. Levan was grabbing him low and just like, whatever. I will show him things that he's not seen before. I will. He hasn't competed often in this ruleset, which will be a challenge for him. But what can I say? Levan, he's Everest." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah, you are seen by basically everybody as the big, big underdog. But you're also, even in the Eastern, even, I mean, I talk to Russians a lot. You know that moment in Rocky when they start cheering for Rocky? Yeah, yeah. You're kind of the, they love you, they want you to win. And just, you know, it's not even, just the battle itself is inspiring. And it's like the culmination of your career because, You're at the top for a long time, but it's almost like it should be over for you, but no, you're returning. It is like this big moment, the big climb." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I will be the pointy end of the spear for North America." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ah, beautiful. Well, thanks for bringing that match up. Let's talk about just, the match against Dennis, your left-hand match. He's also terrifying and seen as one of the strongest, probably one of, if not the strongest, left-hand arm wrestler. There's a lot to be said there. Maybe you could talk about this match at a high level. Why did you take on this match? Why did you do the left hand versus the right hand? Can you tell the story?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, Dennis The Plank Off. There's so much about this match, I love Dennis. Russian guy. Yeah, Russian guy. Russian, I used to call him Dennis Chernobyl. What a monster. He kind of led, I'd say, this new era of arm wrestling, where the super heavyweight strength level has just gone through the roof. I wanted the match for such a long time. We tried to get the match. We couldn't get it organized. This is back in 2008 to 2012. Couldn't get the match, couldn't get the match. I've always been more of a one-on-one puller. He was doing the tournament format. I was ranked number one in the world. And towards the end, it kind of was very undecided. I ended up getting surgery. I ended up abandoning the super heavyweight division. I went down to 225s for a few years. WAL failed temporarily. So the 225 pound division was scrapped. And I said, okay, I'm going to go for the big crown once again. And I started to go after super heavyweights. The 2018 season was right hand. Uh, I started to enter negotiations to have the match with him. I we'd been chasing the match for 10 years. They want to do a left hand. I want to do a right hand. I just wanted to, I just wanted to do the match. I wanted to do the match with Dennis. I wanted to meet Dennis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So people should know that the right hand has always been your strongest." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It has been. I mean, I had surgery in 2016. I hate to make excuses. I hate to do it. Dennis was better than me that day, even on my best day. If you had gone back my entire career, at no single day do I beat Dennis Ziplankov in 2018. I would like to think that I could maybe do it now, but at that point, there would be no version that could have beat him. Left or right? Right hand, no. I'm curious about the right. But left hand. So is the world. Well, it might still happen. It might. But Dennis completely destroyed me. And I learned a lot from it. I think before the Dennis match, I think I was, I don't know, I don't know exactly what word to use. Maybe I felt like my thinking was a little bit elitist. And I really learned a lot. I was really humbled that day. by how far and how professional and how prepared Dennis was, and how seriously he took the sport." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a mental, a slightly terrifying calmness to him, which only comes with extreme preparation, I think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, his level of dedication was extremely inspiring to me. You know, I... used to do a job where it was serious enough that the price could be death, right? And I arm wrestled throughout that entire period. And I always kind of looked at the cost of doing an activity being death limited to soldiering. And I kind of changed my mind a lot after that match. I realized that anything that you're in love with, once you get far enough down the road and professional enough at it, it's going to kill you. Like, it doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're crazy enough about anything, it's probably going to take your life from you in some way. And that doesn't mean you rush towards death, it's just your level of investment and level of risk can have some catastrophic effects." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Bukowski, Charles Bukowski, I think has the quote, do what you love and let it kill you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Something like that. Right, right. And I understood that Dennis' level of professionalism far exceeded mine in what we were doing at the time. And I realized that, you know, I was no longer employed. I was now in the world of professional arm wrestling. And I realized that, you know, what was I doing? Like, how serious was I? So Dennis is an incredible guy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there moments in that match, there's this humility there too from him. That was a fascinating sort of, it seemed like you realized that you just hit a wall and you were not ready enough for it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was incredible. There was so many things that I remember about the Dennis match. I mean, I remember, you know, seeing video of somebody and then meeting them in person, it's different. I remember in the weigh-ins, sorry, not the weigh-ins, in the standoff that we did, you know, before the match, I'm looking at him, like I'm close, I'm looking at his arms, and his bicep, It looked like an ass. Like it was like a fricking glute muscle. Like his entire structure was so sinewy and just so strong. I was like, wow, look, he's physically so impressive. And I remember when I arm wrestled him at a certain time, he allowed me to kind of set my position. You can't really tell, because it happens very quickly, but he let me set my position, which means I kind of got my locks in, where you can kind of really do a great hold. And he just ripped through me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you were able to get this great position." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it was tore right through me. Yeah, and the first time I ever thought that I had torn something, I thought like after the match, I'm like, geez, did he rip my chest right in half? Did it? No, I think- It's 100% chest." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, no, I didn't actually, nothing went purple or anything, but..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the strength gap was very significant with Dennis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What would it take to beat him on that day?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would take me just being a little bit stronger and more healthy, yeah. My left was not as healthy as it should be. I didn't have a full rounded technical arsenal. It takes a time after surgery, it really does. You can be good, but after a surgery like what I had, you're probably looking at three or four years before you're starting to hit technical proficiency the way you should be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And yeah, just a bit stronger. How do you interpret the calmness on his face? What is that about? Is he actually... It's very Russian, isn't it? It's a Russian thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a Russian thing, I think. I don't know. I see a lot of Russians like that. You know, they're so, like, stoic. And I'm such a fan of Russia. I really want to go to Moscow. I've been saying it forever. You've never been, not yet, not yet. I wanna go, I wanna just go and live there for like a month and just train. Moscow's got such a crazy arm wrestling scene. They've got, from what I understand, they just have so many clubs, there's so many strong athletes. Just go and just lightning rod." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Have you considered doing something of that sort? It's like Rocky IV again. Oh, yeah. And lead up to June." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would certainly consider it. I've got only one trip planned at the moment. administration is very important. What do you mean by administration? So like managing your time. Management, yeah. The management has to be very efficient. You know, when I'm a tourist, when I'm a visitor, a little bit of that goes down. You know, when I'm at my home and things are familiar, I've got a really great grasp on my time. You know, everything's in place, everything's perfect, you know. If I could magically transport Moscow into my hometown and just go out and visit them, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's very difficult when you're traveling, you have to keep all the, you have to figure out what are you eating, how are you getting the food, all the socializing, plus you're more and more a celebrity, so there's social interaction, which I don't know how draining that could be on you outside of the arm wrestling table. So you have to manage all of that, because ultimately you have to focus on the fight ahead." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. A lot of my strength comes from just being in a familiar place, doing my routine. I love to travel. I love to get out there and meet people and new experiences. But when I just want to really prepare for a big match, yeah. Home is where I get strong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that loss against Dennis was one of the few losses in your career. How did that feel in the moments after, in the days after, in the months after, in the years after? How has it changed you as an arm wrestler, as a human being?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's tough to lose. Still haunt you? Um, I don't think so. I actually was really happy to lose to Dennis because, you know, sometimes when you lose a match, there's a lot of matches that have lost where they upset me because I know I made a mistake. I didn't make a mistake with Dennis. He was just, he was just way better. There's nothing I could have done that day. Uh, I'm really at peace with it. Um, Dennis, to me, was just a big inspiration. I think that me arm wrestling Dennis left-handed that day just let me touch probably one of the strongest human beings on the arm wrestling table that's ever lived, you know, left-handed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So... So knowing that's possible is almost like inspiration to you that I can be at that level too. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "yeah yeah seeing what Dennis did uh you know just trying to absorb a little bit of his knowledge uh planted seeds in me Yeah, I mean, when I look at my career, it's a bit like the stock market, but for sure I'm trending upwards. And since really kind of wrapping my mind around some of the Russian philosophies, they really changed my training systems. There was some base philosophies that they talked to me about over there that massively impacted my training." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible to convert some of those philosophies into words? Can you describe some of the ideas they taught you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Never smile. Right? Man, it takes a while to break the ice with a lot of these guys." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But once you do, I mean, that's the deepest bonds you can form there. Yeah, yeah, for sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that I was raised under, I believe it's a flawed, I mean it's not flawed because it has its value as well, but it's best if you understand both philosophies. I think a North American thing that's just so ingrained in our fitness society is no pain, no gain. you know, and just pushing and like sweating and going harder and like fighting through like, and grit and tough. And, but, and then you talk to the Russians and they're like, yeah, never fail. You never fail. Never, never go to failure. Uh, always feel good. Always feel good. It should always feel good. Don't, um, and those two philosophies express themselves very differently. Um, and if you want to get strong," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, don't fail, don't fail. So that's how you, they also are believers of volume." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's a lot of strategies, but volume is a massive principle. And volume is very hard to achieve when you're believing in no pain, no gain. They don't really go together. No pain, no gain, more injuries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is there parallels, because in wrestling, some of the greatest wrestlers of all time are Russian, and they were big, Dan Gable talks about it, they were big on play, like lighter wrestling, because probably ultimately, actually, it boils down to that's how you achieve higher volume. Like over the stretch of years, the way to reduce injury. I mean, in wrestling also, technique, might have greater value than it does in arm wrestling. Obviously technique is extremely important in arm wrestling, but power is. can defeat technique, it seems like. In wrestling, you can get away. There's a lot of ways you can really do sneak attacks, sort of use leverage, all those kinds of things. So there's even more incentive to do play and all that kind of stuff. But do you see the parallels between the two worlds, wrestling and arm wrestling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "100%. You saw what I did the other night. Right. So I'm playing on the table for hours. Yeah. Right. So that's that's that's that's my number one training thing that I do is I go on the table for hours and I play. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. When you did, Sergey, can you pull up that video? It's on Devin's channel, the the water tank one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it's like 180 P. It's like the Wi-Fi in there was so bad. Yeah, it's great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it. It's maybe the I don't know if it was fisheye, but it had a fisheye feel. It was crowded. I mean, so much camaraderie. It was amazing. But maybe just a brief mention of Dmitry, the Russian guy. what in that play, what are some memorable things here? Like when you go against a bunch of different people, a bunch of strangers, what are all the differences? And how do you grow from them? How do you learn from them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, everybody's a bit different, so. I love to go to new clubs cause the energy's always high. Like the first time you go to a club, everybody's trying to kill you. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's excitement and there's this, and so you feed off of that. Yeah, you do. You can, you can, if you're able to be strong enough to absorb it without injury, it's, it's awesome. It's awesome. Cause they're giving you everything they can. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So it's, it's very specific, right? Like I'm going to get way stronger at arm wrestling. And what I try and do when I go to these places is I make an assumption. I make an assumption that I'm the best guy there. And so I'll arm wrestle in a way that kind of protects them, because the more I can protect them and kind of keep them kind of in a good position, they can actually give me more, right? So I kind of give them little pieces that I think will put them in a place that they can really give me more. And so, yeah, that's what I'm doing. And then when I see somebody like Dimitri, I pull that in a little bit, right? So, okay, so I know Dimitri's the number one guy in Texas, you know, lots of respect to the guy. I won't give him all the pieces until I really kind of gauge where he's at because I certainly in training don't want to fail. I don't want that. I don't want to, when you fail in arm wrestling, it's just, imagine it's just bad technique and you're trying and bad technique, you're going to get hurt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So you always want to be in a strong position here. How does endurance come into play here? And here's video strapping up with that entry. I mean, you went for like, I don't know, two hours?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it was long. So this first run of the video, I think, was a little over an hour. And then I took a break, and I probably did another 45 minutes or so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, are you okay with the endurance aspect of this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's probably like when you talk to the arm wrestling world, that's probably what I'm best known for is my endurance. So this helps build that. It does, but that's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it to get strong. In my opinion, this is one of the best ways to get strong, especially far away from a tournament or any kind of an event. I wouldn't want to do this even a month or even six weeks or even maybe even eight weeks before a big event. I'd want to already be kind of shrinking my volume. But far away from an event, yeah, as much volume as your body can handle, and you'll feel it. You'll feel it. I felt it at times. After the hour mark, I'm like, OK, I can feel my blood sugar kind of diminishing. I can feel like the blood that's going to my muscles is kind of like, it's not really pushing more good stuff in, I'm starting to break down. And you don't want that. You don't want that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Quick pause, bathroom break? I'm good, I'm good. I kinda need one. I'll maybe get a sweater, it's a bit, is it cold?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Does that matter, does that care for chemical? No, no, no, no. I can make it warmer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I still love the idea of you going to Russia and training there. I'm also making a trip out to Russia for different reasons. Well, it's hard with the current conflict, the tensions there, but I'm hoping before your match actually, so May, for a couple of interviews with a couple of folks, some of which people know. Maybe I could ask you about, to comment on some matches that stand out to you in your career. Is there something, is there a particular, I have a bunch that I really enjoy, but is there something that stands out to you as memorable? We talked about sort of a defining loss, perhaps, to Dennis. Then you faced Michael Todd, like we mentioned, John Brzenk, you faced Matt. Is there something that stands out to you that technically or psychologically you've learned a lot from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel like I try and learn something from every match, but there is a very special match to me that, to this day, I can't explain. very weird phenomena. So I think it was 2005 was my first combat tour overseas. So it was a active tour, you know, among other things, I got shot during that tour, like we got blown, long tour, rough tour. And I trained the whole time through knowing that at the end of this, I was gonna have a big match. So there's a champion guy called Ron Bath. Uh, he's kind of, if there was no John Brzenk, there would be Ron Bath. Okay. So extremely decorated, unbelievable arm wrestler from the United States. And this is kind of when I was just kind of coming up in the sports still. I was fairly well-established. I was definitely the best guy in Canada and I had been for a few years, but I hadn't really expanded internationally too much. So I had a one-on-one match with Ron Bath and that's the one. Yeah. extremely hard fought battle was 3-1 I think 3-1 but every match was really close and he won the first one and I had to kind of like dig my way out of the trenches and uh ended up coming back and winning but it was a match that was probably it was probably one of my closest matches ever and it was seems like there's frustration on you what what is that what was going through your mind here" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "with these, first of all, going in, did you think you could beat him? What was the level of confidence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always think I can win. I always do. But a lot of respect to the guy. But yeah, I mean, I always think I can do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what lessons did you take away from it? Why is it so meaningful to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's what happened afterwards. So I had some kind of a release afterwards. And that was the strange thing to me. So match ended and I felt like so relaxed afterwards, so calm, so, you know, satisfied. because it was one of those matches that kinda takes everything from you, but you win it. And I was relaxing in the chair, and I've never had this sensation before, I've never had it afterwards, but it's like the center of my backbone just exploded, and it was like, It's so weird, right? Because I'm not really spiritual that much or religious even, but it's like a fire just ripped through me. And it only lasted an instant, just exploded through my whole body, out of the top, through my feet. And then it was gone, that was it. Weirdest thing I've ever felt in my entire life. Yeah, but it was as a result of what happened in the match and leading up to it, I had some kind of a release." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did you interpret it psychologically? Was it like some kind of, I mean, not to be spiritual or whatever, but some kind of superpower that was like, Like a lingering feeling like, holy shit, I, you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can't explain it. And I haven't really tried hard enough to try to. But something changed. Something happened there, yeah. Something happened to me. I was sore for about three or four months afterwards. It's like it smoked out my entire body. Yeah, that whole summer I was kind of sore and Yeah, and then after that like two or three years later. That's when I won the world championships Yeah, I mean all the matches are you know, you get something from people like, you know, you study them you you take something from them people have an invisible crown and He had one and I think I took it from him. Yeah" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe that was the feeling of wearing the crown. Yeah, maybe. What about all the trash talk? How much of that did you learn? Does that come naturally to you? You're one of the most charismatic, fun. I mean, there's always like respect behind it. I would say to me, and I'm a fan of a lot of sports, you're one of the greatest trash talkers in all of sports that I've ever seen because you're able to talk shit but there's so much love and respect behind it. It's just masterful. But you also get into people's heads in the moment. It's beautiful to watch, because it really gets to some people. So where does that come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a powerful weapon, right? Your voice is a powerful, powerful weapon. And it's underutilized by so many athletes because they think that it's not sportsmanlike or something like that. But the truth is, I mean, you can be a weak person, but with your voice, you can influence and change any number of things. And the same thing happens in a, in a, in a fight between two people. If you can just be a never ending, you know, flow of negative encouragement to someone or, you know, you know, suggestion, uh, anything can happen. It's a tool. And when you're fighting a person, you're not just fighting them. You're fighting everyone who's watching. You're fighting the crowd, the referees, and to get in the most ideal positions, situations, you need to use your voice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and there's, for people who haven't seen, I definitely recommend you watch a bunch of arm wrestling matches, because there's a crowd really gets into it, and it feels like there's a really intimate connection with the crowd. I suppose because the crowd is allowed to be very close to you. Yeah, I love it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I want the crowd like right up on me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes, Oh, yeah. Whenever you talk to somebody, you literally pick somebody from the crowd. Oh, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll start fucking off his fans and I'll start talking to their wives or whatever. Yeah. There's Jodi. She's pretty dangerous to listen to also. But yeah, one of his buddies, Mike Solaris, who's, you know, really good arm wrestler was cheering for him, so I started to go after him. Yeah. Smiling the whole time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's fun, right? It's fun. It's fun to listen to, but it's also, what's fun is how much it actually affects some of the people you're facing. They get frustrated. Yeah. It's great to see." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you have to fight, right? A lot of people think things will be given to them. And the thing that I've always believed from the time I was very young, I was convinced that our inevitable death was gonna come from aliens, right? Like some super aggressive, super violent species was gonna come and smoke us all. And I'm like, I'm not like that. I'm like, but as soon as one person is, then you're forced to have to accept it as reality, right? So I like to fight for every single thing. I like to try and be more and more aggressive. And if someone matches me, that's when I can use my endurance. And if they don't, then I have the tactical advantage. So that's kind of my balance point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then, by the way, you also yell at the ref. I mean, the games, there's levels to this game. But the feeling sometimes when people get frustrated is like, okay, this person's cheating, or you're trying to get a good grip. before it goes, and I think some of the frustration in combination with the trash talk is, well, this person is cheating, but everybody is kind of trying to cheat, get an edge within the rules." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I try and just ramp it, ramp it, ramp it, but everybody's different. I've learned how to play the game based off of the tools that I have physically. And for me, this works because, you know, my genetic makeup is more, I'm more of a persistence hunter, right? So like I need to extend things and that works well for me. You know, if I was more explosive, I probably wouldn't have the same strategies. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, for people who are watching, you're wearing a No Limits hoodie, which is one of your nicknames." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't wash this thing too much. It's my bacterial shield to the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Awesome. So you mentioned Jodi. She's often in your corner and does perhaps more trash talking than even you. So, I mean, if we could step away, she's an incredible human being. As a fan, it's fun to watch the two of you, both when you're arm wrestling and just as people. You just see so much. I don't know, kindness and love radiating from the two of you whenever you're trash talking or talking about just random things or just talking about life. It's just a beautiful thing to watch. And thank you for sharing that with the world, but maybe can you, she paid me to ask you this, but what are the things you love about Jodi, your wife, Jodi Larratt? What are the ways she's affected your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Jody and I go way back, right? We were in high school together. The thing that I admire most in people is bravery. To me, it's the most admirable quality. And Jody always has inspired me, because she's such a fighter. You know, if she believes that something's true, she does not back down. She will not. And not to say that she can't change her mind, because she can, but while she is convicted, she will not stop fighting. She's pulled me out of the fire repeatedly. We've lived through so many things. I'm very lucky." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How does she made you a better arm wrestler? She's fed me. Yeah, I could see your videos of your house basically coming apart when she's not there. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, without Jodi, I'm on the street, living in a tent and yeah. Down by the river." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Eating dog food, yeah. Bravery. Yeah. What about love? How has love made you stronger? Now we're gonna make Devin uncomfortable." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Love is difficult to accept. Love is one of those things that a lot of times you don't feel worthy of it. And so it's hard sometimes to accept someone's love. And someone who really loves you, they'll love you even when you don't. And here you go, you're gonna make me cry, Alex. Yeah, Jodi and I have been through so much. And she's shown me how, you know, she supported me just repeatedly, repeatedly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Some of that is loyalty and patience and perseverance and all those things. That's like when love really shows itself. It's like sticking through together for years, even when you're through the shitty times." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Love and faith are powerful forces in this universe. You know, without them, that we can descend into darkness very quickly, as a world even between people. When love and faith is destroyed, then we fall apart. And I've been graced by the love that Jodi's given me. It's allowed me to continue to build. When you have love between people, then you build together. I love my family, I love Canada, I love the arm wrestling community. I have a love for what we're trying to achieve as a human species, you know? And when that falls apart, we don't have much. Yeah, just with my boy there, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You also mentioned you were in a, You once had a job where your death was a real possibility, so you were in the Canadian Special Forces. What did you take away from that experience, that time in your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was such a great life. Really, really loved it. Honestly, I never wanted to leave. I never thought I would leave. I thought I'd be there my whole life. a real honor to get to serve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What did you get to do? What was the things you loved craftsmanship-wise, like fun things you get to do, learn and challenge yourself? And you mentioned sort of honor in terms of the serving part." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my favorite thing about serving in the Special Forces was for sure the people that I worked with. That's probably the first thing I could say I never, I always felt like totally comfortable and putting my life in the other guy's hands. I was so happy to be in a place where I felt I could follow, like didn't matter. Like I knew that the people ahead of me, were incredible, I knew the people beside me were incredible. So just having that faith in your team, it's very special. And to know that they're there for a reason that has nothing to do with money. And that's what kind of brings everybody together, is you're there for a higher purpose. Uh, and in terms of being an adrenaline junkie, there's nothing like it. I mean, there's nothing like, you know, going out at night and fighting. Uh, and when I say fighting, like my whole life, I wanted to fight. Uh, and to me, There's a lot of, and look it, I've said this in the past and I think it's been a personal failure of mine because I've said things like it's the highest level that you can do. And I don't believe that to be true anymore. But at the time, uh, I thought it was the best way I could express, um, my drives that I had, you know, to be a fighter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "um so oh so your sense in the past and maybe in part now is that so fighting is when humans get a chance to express themselves deeply like like that that mix of um the bravery the integrity the um yeah whatever that is that makes us human that human spirit can really shine and i don't believe that anymore" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I believe that you can do that in any field, in any discipline. You know, if you go hard enough, it all kind of starts to feel the same. Um, but at the time, uh, that, you know, expression to me was really, really awesome. I loved, I loved close quarter battle. That was my favorite thing. That's really the whole reason I was there. Uh, can you describe close quarter battle? Close quarter battle is, is team fighting. So, and it can look a lot of different ways, but basically it's ground troops doing some kind of a mission and it's the orchestrated movement that is the skill, the orchestrated movement and the drills done quickly and accurately, it's very difficult to do. With communication? With communication." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so it's basically cooperating together, communicating, there's some strategy, there's some adapting to the changing environment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the more the team works together, the less communication there is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and that's an amazing thing to do, to be part of a machine, well, machine, a team of people who can fight together like that. It's, I think it's, it's, uh, we're really designed to do it like as good as we can fight as individuals. The thing that makes us really good is our ability to fight as, as a team. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's one of the things that makes us really human is that collective intelligence and the social aspect. And fighting is the highest of stakes, so that social interaction under the highest of stakes really does bring out something that's deeply human. I mean, war in general brings out something deeply human. It's just, it's, I mean, obvious to say that it's tragic that it results in so much loss of life and well-being. Let me, if it's okay for a brief moment to take us back to, Arm wrestling, we did this offline, we talked about, you gave me some advice about arm wrestling, but maybe do a high-level overview of the different styles and strategies that we've talked about. We talked about the importance of strength and power. but is there like offensive, defensive styles? Is there, we mentioned King's move. What would you classify your style as? It's nice for people that don't know, maybe even zoom back out. So arm wrestling is a sport where two people, have to, when we talk about strictly the sport, put their elbow on a particular pad, means they have to keep that elbow on that pad, and they win when the back of one of their hands crosses some kind of, or basically touches the table. And when you actually lock up, You do so, depending on the organization, without straps, meaning there's just you, agree, it's like mutual agreement that you're going to clasp your hands in a way that's fair, and there's a referee that helps ensure that it's fair, but of course there's these little games going on. And then when you actually go all out with this battle, if there's no straps, you can slip out. So often you'll put the straps, which means you're, it's like marriage. You're committed for, like somebody will have to lose essentially. There's no pulling out. So that's sort of the battle. Within that, what are the different styles that you can speak to that people that don't know arm wrestling" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we can start to kind of just dance around the subject a bit. I'd say there's a lot of different types. There's specialists and there's kind of blenders and people who are very versatile. Um, a lot of guys win world championships on one singular move. They get just extremely crisp at say a hook or a top role. And their style is very kind of focused and you'll see it with a lot of athletes like. kind of a talk about guy who's very active, a guy called Jerry Catarat. As soon as you think Jerry Catarat, he's got a very unique style, he's got a flop wrist press. So most of his technique is built around this one system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Flop wrist means your, what it sounds like. So your wrist is flopped, so it looks like you're pushing. So he is pushing from a losing position?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. He will be offensive. So he will be in a press, so offensively, so he'll give his hand away so that he can get his shoulder behind it properly. So he doesn't... Wow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So you can press, press means... push without having that hook position." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Which is what most people are always looking for. And Jerry's looking for it as well. And then, so example, there's another one. There's another specialist, Matt Mask. Yeah. He's a top roller. Right. Uh, he basically that's his, that's his great move. The top role and his other weapons aren't nearly as powerful, this incredible top role. And then you have a lot of athletes that are more blended. Okay. They have a lot of good options. Um, I think that I probably fall more into that category. you have people who are more speed guys, okay? So they try and do very little, I'd call it attrition, right? So a lot of people are very willing to trade energy, right? Because they have faith that their gas tank or their pool eventually will tire the other person out. So anytime there's a trade, they'll trade. Whereas a guy like Travis Bajan, you know, he was very, very well known as being extremely explosive, right? But if the match stops, typically he's gonna lose, right? So based off of your genetics, your hands, you know, there's a lot of ways to skin it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think you said something like you're a 20 second guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, I'm a 20 second guy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what are the seconds we're talking about? So a lot of the power people, they wanna win in the first maybe five seconds. Even shorter. Just that first push, that first press." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, right to the pad, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so you're trying to hold off that attack." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, if I beat you in a second, we're not in the same world. Yeah. When I'm with my peer group, I will typically win 20 seconds and beyond. That's a typical win for me when I'm with a peer. Whereas other guys, when they're with their peers, they'll win in a second. That's how they do it. That's the way they're built. That's the way they train. Yeah, most guys at a higher level, it all starts to kind of, it starts to get more and more difficult to be a specialist at the high level now. Some people just have little holes in their games. It's rare to get someone who can really do all the moves. It's very rare." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What, where would you put Levon?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would not say he's a specialist. I'd say his top roll is the strongest move. Top roll. Top roll is the strongest move. Yeah. And the interesting thing about the specialist versus the blender, There's a counter, right? Every move has a move that theoretically should be the right choice. So if you're a single move guy, there's gonna be a guy out there who will get you. Yeah, it'll be very difficult for you to beat that guy. But like when you come to like a tournament, typically specialists do much better in tournament scenarios. because their singular move can get them through a tournament very quickly and efficiently. Whereas you get a blender in a tournament, they typically will have longer and more difficult matches. But in supermatch format, typically blenders do better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we offline also talked about arm sumo or freedom arm wrestling. I don't know how you wanna call it. Oh, I love freedom. Exactly, North American way. So this is this idea and I watched a few videos and it looks fun. It's basically removing the restriction of having to keep your elbow on the pad and just being able to arm wrestle over the whole table. I think you've mentioned that the criticism that gets is it might be injury prone or something like that. So can you describe this arm sumo freedom arm wrestling idea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. When you come to freedom arm wrestling, basically it removes the limitation of a standard arm wrestling table. Yeah. Right. So basically every single thing is a freedom arm wrestling table. Some are better than others. All right. So looking for that nice table where we can kind of stand apart from each other and we're anatomically, you know, in a fairly safe position and the rules and freedom, the way you win is like the knuckles must either touch the tabletop or you hold it off the edge for a, for a three count. Right. Right. So this is the main way to win. Yes, you can foul. Like if you lift your eyeball up, it's still a foul, but you have the entire playing surface. So your elbow is no longer limited to your seven by seven or seven by nine pad. So you can move it all over the table. You can move your body around the table a bit too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And if it's a big table, your body could largely be on the table." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it basically, it's like adjusting your ring size. So arm wrestling, you're fighting in a foam booth, right? So you're fighting in a field, you're fighting, you know, just bigger. So it just makes the sport bigger. Yeah, this is Japan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But even on a small table, even in a slightly larger foam booth, you can get a lot more fun and variety. It's very interesting to watch." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love it. I think it makes the sport bigger. I actually believe that it's the future of the sport. I really do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because it makes it more accessible. You don't need the equipment. You can do it at a bar, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Less equipment requirements. Most kids start freedom. Most kids arm wrestle on school desks. And if you see a guy on the street, you're like, whatever. You can arm wrestle anywhere. You don't need to bring your table around with you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we talked about the elite level, if somebody was interested in starting in arm wrestling, or like going from just like, you know, you go to the gym, you kind of lift, you've arm wrestled a few times, trying to get better at it, trying to learn, how would you advise like getting better to where you can beat your closest buddies? That first step." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First step, I'd say find people. Find people, find good people. We'll get with a club, get with people who know what they're doing, who can mentor you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's really cool, I realized there's a club in Austin. I'm sure there's in a lot of places." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, they're everywhere. We got this app called Armbet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Which is a app that helps you find other people there. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very easy. But I mean, they're all over social networks. I mean, it's kind of widespread now, but yeah, find people, find people. And it's just much easier to learn with another person and you'll get stronger that way. But I mean, do this, do the lifts. I mean, if you go to the gym, just start doing the lifts, uh, and right away, those will technically prepare you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are the lifts? Can we describe? Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'd say if you want to just keep it very, very simple, let's just talk about three. There's more. There's much more than three. But like when you talk about energy allocation, these three lifts, in my opinion, should be like 90% of your investment. It's very big, these three lifts. And the exact percentages, you can argue about it, but we'll start off with the cupping of the wrist. Just this, it's a simple thing. And do it with a cable. You can get a thicker diameter so it kind of is more out on your fingers where an armrest is gonna attack you. Because any good armrest is gonna attack your fingers. So like open hand. No. No. Well, I mean, for health, yes, you could. But like, if you want to be really specific, you train exactly the way you would at a table in the position that you actually start that match." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And then you're just doing this kind of to your center." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Your people, people, one of the one of the big misconceptions in arm wrestling is that you're aiming for that pin pad. Right. No, the center. The chest up here. Bring it close to you. Make it come close to you, right? You see like whenever I do my exercises, the vector is always pulling straight towards me. Yeah, so just cupping close to you. The most dangerous thing that a person can do to me on an arm wrestling match is just pull me away from my body. That's a terrible thing for me. Yeah, so that cupping, That's a massive part of the sport. So now when you think, what does the cup do to the other person? If I cup, they get turned over, right? So this has to get really strong, this pronation. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to fight that rolling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, yeah. So that's through the thumb." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, oh, so you put, got it, you put on the thumb and you put this motion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And those two things, those two things together, this cupping and rolling, this is what's gonna make the person's hand bend back. And once a person's hand is bent back, just their whole game gets cut to pieces. They have very little good options. It's all like nasty stuff. Wow. Yeah. So those two things, that's a, that's a huge part of, of your, of your investment, uh, rise. Always be climbing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Those three simple things. That's what I would tell anybody to spend most of their time on if you wanna become an art wrestler. So, and to use bands would be good for this? Bands are great because they're easy to transport. The only problem I have with bands is like if you like to measure, you know, and if you like to be precise, bands just aren't that precise. Right, to have growth. Yeah. Yeah. Just, I mean, it's just like, you know, you know exactly what you need. The prescription is kind of a band is kind of like, and a lot of people, myself included, I like to, I like to know exactly my outputs. So, so weights." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it would be like cables?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep. Cables are nice. Bands are great, too. I mix the two. Bands are when I kind of don't need to. They're more like easy for me. When I train bands, bands are dangerous because the acceleration is so high on them. Like when you screw up with band training, the acceleration is way faster than gravity, right? So if you do something bad, it can make it go really much worse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. It's funny that you didn't mention bicep curls or... Well, it's a chain. It's a chain. I mean, the idea, if you focus on these three, the other stuff catches up. It's all involved. This whole thing is involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, if you have an ax, right, the blade of the ax, that's these things, right? You need the pointy end of all your attacks to be awesome." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you have a super sharp ax, you could have a shitty hand. So focus on that, the point, the tip of the ax." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the tip of the ax is so important. Like if I have an awesome bicep and I can't quite use it, what's it good for?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think a lot of the motions with the wrist that you mentioned are Just thinking about jiu-jitsu, especially in the gi, there's a lot of, I mean, there's so much importance to this, and people don't often work it explicitly. So many of the chokes require ability to, it's almost like exactly like arm wrestling. Because you're weak here, what's that called, flop wrist, and you're strong with the cup. And so just getting the muscle, whatever that's involved, the muscle, the turning, the pressure, because that's where also the choke comes. That little, the thing that makes you win in arm wrestling is also the thing that finishes the person when you have them grabbed. The strength is very similar. Yeah, it's fascinating, actually. Of course, like you said, if you want to be very good, you should be doing the very specific, exact motion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so if I was going to do jujitsu, I'd be like working out with the gi." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the problem is, you know, it's difficult to construct the exact, so you have to actually go with people and then they don't like being choked on, right? So like, it's hard to, I'm actually a big, we have these kinds of debates all the time is, You know, I'm a big believer in drilling. I love doing something thousands of times. John Donaher, somebody I mentioned to you about, the jiu-jitsu folks here, they're less believers in drilling. They see the value of drilling. almost like the mind of going live and exploring ideas, it's that play. You don't need to do the thing a thousand times. You just need to always be thinking about the little details that make you better. And then in action practicing, like developing the strength, the power, the explosive of the agility in action. So actually rolling. I agree with this, but I just, believe in volume more." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so you can accomplish it through volume. You can play a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, exactly. Well, that's, if you really want to get it good, as you're talking about, I mean, that's why a lot of these folks are training three times a day. They're doing, you know, they're putting in the hours, eight hours, nine hours, just... Oh, that's tough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, my God." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so a lot of them are not going hard, it's just being on the mat, some of it is just sitting there talking through ideas, watching others or teaching, explaining stuff. It's not just physical, it's mental too, because you're keeping in your mind. Some of the greatest, this is what they talk about, the wrestlers I've talked with, the fighters, at the top of their career, they basically, George St. Pierre is like this, another fellow Canadian. He has stick figures in his head that he can't help. They're in there. Because if you train enough hours, it's just gonna be in your head and they're all going to be playing around in your head. And some little detail over time, it's almost like computing or something like that, and that ends up having a result even though you're not physically doing anything. It's always in there. I do have to return to diet real quick. I know we're talking about pancakes. Let me, quite seriously, you are one of the, I mean, strongest athletes in the world for your sport. So you have to get big, you have to get powerful, you have to get strong. What is the right diet for you for that? What do you eat? How often do you eat? Yeah, from the highest detail to the smallest, or the things that make you happy and feel good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I've experimented with every diet. I've done it all. I've been a vegan. I've done raw. I've eaten only meat. I've eaten balanced. I've eaten like a bodybuilder. You name it, I've probably tried it. I don't believe that it's as important in the sport of arm wrestling as it is perhaps in other sports. I mean, just to be very basic, I mean, if you're eating enough food, you're probably gonna be okay. So it's just calories. It's a lot, I mean, really, I mean, not to overcomplicate it, but I mean, that's where the conversation starts, are you eating enough food? And it can come in any number of ways, and I don't think it's as important as a lot of other people do. I'm certainly irresponsible in a lot, but the thing is, back to volume, right? If you wanna be a super heavyweight, it's very different than if you wanna be a weight category guy. If you wanna be a weight category guy, I'd say that you need to be more responsible, make better choices. If you wanna be a super heavyweight, everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're watching a delicious looking omelet, so eggs, bacon, syrup, so you don't care, carbs, so in all the things you try, so I mostly eat meat now. And I landed on that, there's several things, obviously I'm not, but I do a lot of sport. And I was very surprised how my particular very specific body can perform better with only meat. Why better? The sports I do, the mind matters. And so for some reason, my mind is just clear. And I don't think, because it feels unhealthy. It just makes me feel really good. I don't think I would recommend it to anybody else. So it's interesting that that journey of just exploring can take you to figure out something about your own self." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One of the most interesting things that I heard about nutrition was, I heard there was a... Actually, Doritos." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I forgot about that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm an idiot. Now, I'd say over the last couple of years, I've really gone into carbs a lot and high glycemic carbs. I feel like it's one of the best things you can do if you're working out really hard. Just add carbs. Cheers. Yeah, exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, where was I? Distracted. I forget everything. No, so you've added the high glycemic carbs into the mix. So those help, but that's for mass building." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so there was a study that I heard about by somebody who's trying to identify heart attacks. They did this great big study, and at the end of it, I mean, didn't matter what the people ate, the most important thing was how they felt about the food that they were eating. Yeah. So if you believe in the food, if you believe that it's going to do good things for you, if you allocate it the right way, it's, it's going to have a positive impact. And I try and do that no matter what it is. Like I have my foods that I think do certain things. And so, uh, you know, for me, I know that. Actually, I learned about corn-fed pumps when I was overseas. I realized that I never used to eat crap, really didn't. I ate super clean all the time. When I was faced with imminent death more, I would be like, okay, I'm going out tonight, let's have a couple ice cream bars. You know, like whatever. And what I realized is if I eat like an entire bag of chips or like, you know, a bunch of chocolate bars, and then I go and have a workout, my workout will be incredible. It'll be incredible. There's something about easily processed carbohydrates that will continue to quickly get into your blood as fast as you can burn it. And there's something about that that will give you incredible blood flow, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and also your mind plugging in, enjoying that, and then believing it works, and that's how it makes it work better. I mean, I feel that way. I think this is really not, this has been frustrating to me about the health culture in the United States and the studies that are done. You look at the importance of sleep, the importance of X diet, all those kinds of things, I wish incorporated into that would be your mental relationship with all of these things. So for example, people that tell me, well, your sleep schedule is insane. Yes, perhaps, but also it's insane because I'm doing what I love and I don't see it as a problem. And I think that's really important to understand. If you're sleeping crazy hours, is not affecting your stress and is actually making you happier. You're drawing some kind of source of happiness and pleasure and satisfaction, like being awake when others aren't. It's like the Mike Tyson thing or something, like training when you've convinced yourself everybody's sleeping and therefore you're somehow training much better. That's powerful even if you look statistically six hours may be worse than eight hours or four hours may be worse than six hours. So the mind is a powerful thing. Super powerful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But if you wanna be a super heavyweight, eat. You gotta eat like stupid amounts all the time, yeah. You have to test your digestive system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your favorite meal, by the way? Just if you had to, you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I am, I do, oh jeez, I like so much food, it's tough. But I'd say the food that I rely on a lot when I'm getting ready to compete is sushi. Just because it normally comes in an all-you-can-eat format. You know, so, you know, I love to go and just binge all you can eat, just all you can eat buffets. Sushi is just super convenient." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. If I was a sushi, all you can eat buffet place, I'd be terrified when I saw you. Have you had barbecue at Texas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you, just a small tangent on this, you faced the mountain. You have four, first of all, you arm wrestled them. It's interesting to ask, so this is the mountain from the Game of Thrones. A strong man, one of the strongest people in the world, for a time, the strongest person in the world. What was it like, I know, sort of, you guys maybe weren't going 1,000%, but what's it like? Well, he probably wasn't going 1,000%. But like what, it's interesting to think, what does that strength feel like? So it's a specialized strength in another sport. What did it feel like? How strong was he? What are some kind of deep insights you drawn from that battle?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel like if we were to go back a thousand years, And if you give him armor and a two-handed sword, he will just rip across the landscape. And no one will stop him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is the boxing match between the two, but there's also a video of them arm wrestling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, what a Titan though. What a Titan, you know a guy like that tall Yeah, strong fit disciplined. I mean he is he's quite a warrior 419 pounds. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's he's incredibly impressive. I really like Hap Thor and I like Eddie Hall too and I was just so I'm just so caught up with the drama okay, so I So Eddie Hall and Hafthor Bjornsson, two of the strongest legendary strongmen that we have, and they were the coolest. They were the top when strongman was really super cool. I don't know all the details, but they legit hit each other. Like legit. So I think it kind of stems, I don't know, like I say, I'm not right there with them, but Eddie won the world's strongest man event or something one year. And like, and the thing, it was one of those victories where Hapthor, you know, was not accepting of his defeat. Okay. And there was a little bit of back and forth. And basically from what I understand, they were going to fight like the night of the world's strongest man. And they got kind of got pulled apart. And this, uh, this heat between them got translated into a potential boxing match. So it's very real. It's a very real fight. So you have the two strongest dudes on the planet are going to fight each other. So, so I've been like, you know, cause arm wrestling is strong, man. It's, it's kind of similar communities. Um, who, who do you got?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you were giving me financial advice... Oh, Jesus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I am so bad. I always call it wrong. They're very different. I see Hapthor as being, you know... Eddie Hall is slimming down? Is that what you mean as well? Yeah. I see Hapthor as a bit more regimented. Um, but I see Eddie hall as like way more barbaric and like a little, I think he's a little bit more athletic, but half floor is bigger. And, uh, and you know, they've chosen slightly different paths to prepare for the match. But, but what happened was like, they were about to fight and Eddie, Eddie hall blew his bicep. So me, I was getting ready for LeVon in December. We were supposed to arm wrestle in December, but he's got his movie. And so I was like, okay, I can kind of get away from the sport just a little bit, broaden my base. That happened and I was like, oh, an opportunity. You stepped in. An opportunity to fight. I'm like, I'll do it. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "how much training you trained a little bit. So can you tell about your own decision to do that? What was the training like? What was the experience like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it was so much fun. It was so much fun. So basically, I made a funny video and I sent it to the organizers of CoreSports that I would do it. I'm like, I'll do it. I'm sure they got 1,000 people who wanted to do it. But I'm like, I'm like, listen, I'm like, I, I'm an old man. Like I'm gimped up like everywhere outside the arm wrestling lanes. Uh, I said, but, but I will 100% like, if you let me fight him, I'll, I'll give it my all. And, uh, and whatever, they didn't get back to me. They're like, yeah, whatever. Okay. So then, so then they call me on a Friday, like five weeks before the event. And they're like, Hey Devon, were you serious? And I'm like, oh shit. And I'm like, yes, I was serious. Yeah, I'll do it. And they're like, okay. They're like, it's down to you and like two other people. We'll get back to you in a day or two, but you would do it. And I'm like, okay. So they got back to me on Sunday. Like, so right away I'm like skipping rope and I'm like, and I'm so, I only arm wrestle legs. That's all I do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what was your, you did some striking training." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I went to this guy that, he was awesome, Zach Bambushida there. That was it, from TriStar. Do you know for us the hobby?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And yes, people in the comments, I will interview him on this podcast. He's brilliant, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's an incredible guy. So right away, like I had no idea about the fight community across Canada, really. And I got like, by the fifth message that said, you must train with for us. Uh, I was like, okay, called him up. He was incredible right away. He's like, yeah, you can come and we'll just work with you. So I got, I got the call. I called him on like Monday at two o'clock by like seven o'clock. I had my things packed and I went to Montreal and I spent four weeks in, in the fighter dorms. Just humbling yourself. Yeah. Every day, just getting punched in the face, you know, uh, over and over, uh, going for runs with all like, they're all like Olympians and pro fighters living in the dorms. Super cool dudes. They were so good to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a good video of you and Faraz just talking. I don't remember which stage this was, but- This is early. But you were already beginning to get humbled." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, man, I knew. I mean, I knew what I was getting into. I knew it was gonna be a losing battle, but I felt like the opportunity to fight Thor, how cool is that? I had to do it. I love the process and I learned a lot from doing it. The dorms, I wanna do something like that with arm wrestling. I think we're big enough now that we can have these kind of dorms, frat houses, whatever you wanna call it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the dorm like? So you're basically staying there, food is there. You mentioned, what was the word you used, administration?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly, that's it. So it removes all of that. Makes it so simple. You can just focus. The gym is here. you live here, you know, that your life becomes simple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So there's a guy named Jimmy Pedro here in America. He's a famous coach. There's a place up in Boston. He has kind of a dorm like that, too. Yeah. And that becomes essential. when the community is small but you're trying to do epic things like win an Olympic gold. So you have to really put the people together in these kind of minimalist conditions when they just focus on the training, focus, focus, focus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it wasn't enough time. I mean, I trained for about three or four weeks, but I loved the journey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, what are some of the fun things you enjoyed? So you did mostly striking, did you? Yeah, I guess it was. Yeah, it was boxing. It was straight up boxing. Boxing, yeah. Well, what are some things that were transferable? What are some cool things you learned from that? So from the world of armor, have you taken anything back? Like some training regimens, ideas about training, even movements? Because for us, it's a unique mind as well for training." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I don't know, I mean, I've gone very far down the path of arm wrestling. Boxing and arm wrestling are very different. They're very different sports. The physicality required is very different. The mentality, I mean, it's fighting, so it's another form of fighting, which is cool. The big things that I took back from it, the things that I loved about it was I had to run again. So really work on endurance. Yeah, I was going for runs with guys in the dorms and they would just destroy me. It was so bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did you feel in the actual boxing in terms of endurance? Were you able to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just torture. It was terrible. And the thing is, it was so crazy for me, because I really was good once upon a time. I really was. Physically, I had incredible full body endurance, but being so specialized, I realized how much I had slipped. Yeah, it was fun to try and regain. I think it's affected my body composition. I think since that training, I've become much more lean. I think it was a very healthy thing for me to do, like health-wise. I always think that when you're far away from competition, it's really good to kind of spread out, really good. So I think that in that way. Also for your mind too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Just like, yeah. Yeah, so something about clearing your, I think you've talked about this. It's like you're basically taking steps back before you take steps forward. I forget how you call it. Yeah, the wave." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. Under, you know, you have to go under. You got to. You know, if you want to go above the line, you have to spend some time beneath it. And yeah, I was definitely beneath the line for a long time. But Melton, I mean, like the interesting thing was as incredible as he is, Uh, you know, like what a monster. And I think if you had a, had him training and boxing, you know, for a long time and like from his youth, I think you, you know, like I could be world champion, but you know, to be so specialized and then to switch, you're at a disadvantage. And, and also like, I know from just fighting guys in the gym and tri-star. Some of those guys were way scarier. It's for real. Like as scary as Thor is like there's guys in that tri-star gym that don't look like anything that would murder me much worse, much worse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But also, you know, that's the difference between being in the gym and under the lights, too. I mean, GSB is an example, Georges St-Pierre is an example of somebody that maybe doesn't look terrifying. He's a tri-star. Yep, he trains a tri-star, but he's quite, he's super nice, super humble, but is terrifying when he's fighting, is dominating people. You mentioned, death, and your Canadian special forces, and in general, thinking about mortality. Do you think about your death? Do you contemplate the end, that this thing, that this ride ends?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All the time, yeah. from, I've thought about death from a young age. Are you afraid of it? Yeah, I hate it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I don't want to die." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, definitely, definitely don't want to die. But there's times when I can rid myself of it. Yeah. But for sure, I mean, I'm not, I'm not happy that, you know, death is inevitable. And I'm not happy that potentially, it's inevitable for all of us. But it does, you know, I like to fight against it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, death is... If you could be immortal, would you choose to? Oh, that's my only wish. Oh, see, but here's the thing. The point is to have that wish. It's like the all-you-can-eat buffet at sushi. That sushi's more delicious if you have a limit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you have a... Oh, well, I don't know. I mean, I don't think I get sick of stuff. I'm very simple. Yeah, I don't think I would get tired of it. I really don't. I mean, if someone would pose it to you, do you wanna live forever? You would choose no?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I would choose no. Choose no. Well, my answer's probably yes. No, I would, it's more like the snooze button. Do you wanna? Well, you could go to sleep. But it's very difficult in the moment to go to sleep. I'm allowed to live forever. I'm going to delay all the crazy, all the ambitious goals, all the, because there's always time. That's fine, but there is tomorrow then. But there is tomorrow. But see, I think that takes away from the richness of the lived experience of just each moment. I think the richness of each moment comes from saying, I could die tonight. Like that, it tastes delicious because you're gonna die. I'm afraid if you're not, I'm afraid all of that goes away, all of that magic goes away if you can live forever. I don't know. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I'll tell you, every time I have a near-death experience or think I'm gonna die, I definitely live better afterwards. Yeah, like it's always been that way, but yeah, no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's why the Stoics, you know, they really preach contemplating immortality often. It kind of reminds you, this whole thing could just end any moment and it makes you really appreciate. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Certainly improving the quality of life is important, but, Part of me thinks that immortality is not as fun as we would like to imagine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you think that maybe what you're building, potentially, is immortal?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's what I definitely think about with robots. if they were to have a human-like experience and be able to interact with humans in a deep, meaningful way, I think they too have to be mortal in some fundamental way that means mortal. Like their ride has to end as well because they won't be able to interact with humans deeply unless that's the case. Like to have, To have fear, to have love, the ability to suffer, the ability to miss somebody, I think scarcity is important. You have to be able to truly lose somebody. You have to be, to fear things, you have to truly have the risk of destroying yourself. And to have a sense of what it means to be a self. you have to be able to lose it. So if you're immortal, you're just going to be, I feel like you're going to be like a toaster, an intelligent toaster that just serves. Such a negative perspective on it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "On immortality? Yeah, just think, well, now you can get all those things done that you wanna do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I hope you're right, I hope you're right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, potentially, you could invest even harder, because you're like, wow, I'm actually gonna be able to get all this stuff done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think about this a lot. I hope you're right, but I fear that the drive to create, I can even do more, all of that disappears if you have all the time in the world. I just know how lazy I am, and if I have all the time in the world, I'm just gonna sit there and just watch, the stupidest YouTube videos for the rest of all eternity. Now eternity's a long time. Eat Doritos, eat Cheetos, and just get fatter and fatter. I can get in shape later. There's always time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's like a long period of contemplation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So for the first thousand years, it'll be the Dorito period of the Lex life. You could be like Jabba the Hutt for a thousand years. You mentioned aliens, very important topic. Do you actually think about this, there's been an increased interest, there's been increased UFO sightings and encounters, all that kind of stuff. The US government at least releasing data, releasing videos of UFO sightings. pilots, pilot observations and from airplanes of UFOs. Do you think about this kind of stuff? Because you mentioned in the following context, you mentioned like us humans will get our shit together when the aliens eventually come. What do you make of all the sightings? Is that something you think about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I thought about it a lot when I was younger. And I've just, I made my conclusions and yeah, I don't think that there's a possibility that there aren't I would think that it would be impossible for there not to be aliens. I feel like this is pretty good real estate, so you'd probably want it, but we already might be, well, I don't even think might. I mean, it's probably quite likely that we are to some degree aliens. I mean, all life is probably to some degree alien." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like the real estate, so the resources, but we're also kind of interesting. whatever this ant colony of living organisms that we've created, it's kind of interesting to study. I tend to believe that the alien civilizations that are going to reach us or have reached us are far more intelligent. just orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. And so it's going to be very difficult, both ways actually, for us to understand them and for them to dumb themselves down enough to understand us. So they might even just miss our existence altogether. I tend to believe, I don't know what you think, that we're not that special in terms of all the life forms in the universe. There's a lot of cool stuff out there. It has to be. But to us, we're special. Yeah, well, that's all that matters, right? Yeah. Even the human species is the most special to us humans. There could be much more special species here on Earth that we're just totally oblivious to, like trees. On a scale of thousands of years, maybe they're onto something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Lex, you know, I think that so much of what makes a person special is what they pass on, your kids. But I think that you are quite special because you're part of this thing that's potentially giving birth to the next thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The robots. The robots. I should say, the funny thing is, while talking to Devin, during this podcast, I wear the doorbell ring, had to go downstairs, and there was a big box, medicine box with a new-legged robot. So... the hilarity of you saying that is, because that robot is actually going to likely be the main robot that I show to the world in the coming months, because that has the, that's the highest compute level in that robot. So I've been playing a lot with legged robots, the four legs, like a dog. I like all robots, but there's something about when a robot has legs, it's able to communicate it's able to connect with humans in some kind of deep way, in the way a dog can. Just show affection. Something about step, step, step, step, and then the robot realizes you're here and then it steps and then notices you in the way the dog does and raises its head. It makes me feel... noticed and heard in the same way I do when a dog notices me. That excitement, that stupid excitement of like, yes, fellow living organism. And what excites me about legged robots is that holy shit, it's possible to engineer this. It's possible to create that feeling. And I wonder where that can go. There's a lot of negative possible trajectories, but I have a sense that there's positive ones too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Adding more love to the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think so because I, so there's this fear of robots that they become super intelligent and run away from us humans and basically become so intelligent and then they almost just not giving a damn will destroy us. But I think in order for robots to become intelligent, they have to integrate themselves with society. So they, by the very nature of how they become intelligent, have to bring us along. So it's not that there'll be this separate thing. They have to, like we'll have robots in the home, they'll be interacting with us, you have human kids, and you have a bunch of robots, you have robot friends, you have human friends. And the robots make your, human-to-human relationships much more meaningful and richer. They bring more love to the world, but it's integrated. It's not like they'll be developing smarter and smarter as like, you know, sentient beings by themselves. I think that's very difficult to do. You have to be doing that together with humans, and so we'll come for the ride. There's technical things, like we might merge cyborgs more and more." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we already saw our cyborgs, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With the phones and so on, but more and more, so with Elon and Neuralink, deeper integration of robots and AI into, increasing the bandwidth at which they can communicate. So if we do implants in the brain, I think, again, a lot of people are really nervous about this, as am I. But I think there's a lot of trajectories that are positive there. And that, to me, is exciting. And also, I just don't think it's possible to stop this development. So we should steer it. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh good. Did you, I mean you must have watched the movie Terminator, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, of course. I love Terminator. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love Schwarzenegger. My favorite movie of all time. Yeah. I mean that's that's the big fear, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, what's the conclusion with Terminator? Isn't ultimately humanity wins?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think they're at like Terminator 8 now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It's interesting, actually. I was going to bring this up as you were talking about it. But China and the United States, I actually don't know where Canada is on this, but they both have agreed that they're not going to put limits on autonomous weapon system development. So they're not going to. So because China said we're not going to, and now US officially announced that we're not, we can't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you can't. It's like, you never could, right? As soon as it exists and it's better, people will use it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, but there's been a global ban on bioweapons. So you were able to come to an agreement there that we're not going to use biological weapons in war. So a lot of people are really upset that in the case of AI-driven weapons, the world said, nope, that's okay. And so now you have this potential for greater and greater automation in drones, for example, in picking bombing locations. so the area at which they attack, and so you get some of that stuff that you mentioned that drew you to the military is that teamwork between humans, that decision-making. So there's strategy, but built into that team is a deep humanity, like, Even when there's an enemy, there's lines that you're aware of, of what is ethical and what is not, what is just and what is not. And it's so easy for a machine to miss all of that, plow through it, and do deeply inhumane acts, commit atrocities. That's something that worries a lot of people. Because, yeah, an AI-based war is just, it's terrifying. Especially with cybersecurity, which is becoming more and more of an issue, which is hacking. Sort of people that look a lot like me being the warriors of the future. Which is meaning people behind a keyboard versus the traditional warriors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably inevitable. Yeah, yeah. And terrifying. It is, it is. But I think if you believe that it's possible, it's certainly gonna happen. Like at some point, it's just when, right? When does it happen?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that, I mean, to me, I'm optimistic. ultimately optimistic about the future. And to me, I'm excited about the world with AI. I'm even excited about the metaverse and all these kinds of things, living more and more in the digital space, in the virtual reality. I think, so it's a part of me that grew up in the non-internet world, non-computer world. It says, oh, kids these days with their video games. There's part of me that's like that. But I think technology at its best can bring out the best of humanity. And so I think virtual reality, all of these things, over time, we'll figure out how to, how to fix it to bring out the humanity. Social networks, the first generation of social networks, now Facebook, Twitter, and so on, they have so many problems. They're bringing out the worst in people. But I think we're learning from that, and I think the next generation of social networks will be better and better and better. So I'm optimistic, but of course, you know, one reason we may have not seen aliens yet, obviously, like in a way that's obvious, is because once you get clever and smart and have all this cool technology, you destroy yourself. And we sure as humans are pretty close to that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, there might be that limit that is hard to get right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm hoping we get all our aggression between nations out through arm wrestling competition. Right? Just all of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my God. Wouldn't that be great if that was, if it was that simple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Do you know if there's another over-the-top type movie to be made?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah, yeah. There's always stuff in the works. There's a tournament called Over the Top in Australia that's a couple months away. I think they're doing all the over-the-top scene. But there are arm wrestling movies that are being made right now. Actually, there's a documentary that's filming me for this whole LaVon thing. But yeah, we're probably due for another big one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you're also, just with your YouTube channel, you're doing a lot for the sport. That's really cool to see. Just being genuine, but just being like, looking not like you're looking today, but just like, just the beard. Just like sleepy, you know, and just putting yourself out there completely as you are. That's a beautiful thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The best thing about the sport is it brings people together. That's it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. The community, the folks I got to interact with, just so awesome. So excited. So full of kindness. I'm definitely going to find the club here and, uh, and start working on my, uh, on my arm wrestling game. Uh, Devin, this is such a huge honor that you would, uh, spend your valuable time. You would come down to Austin. You would, um, hang out with me and do this conversation. This was awesome. Super cool to talk to you, Lex, yeah. As I mentioned, in case people, you know, people I'm sure will tell me. So I hang out with Joe Rogan all the time. He's a friend. I told him that he should talk to Devin. He's going through some stuff currently, you know. But I'm sure, I hope the conversation between you, Devin, and Joe happens eventually. He's, that would be epic as well, because he's, Yeah, he loves fighting. He loves fighting. He loves wrestling. He loves strength. And I think all of those are like so perfectly encapsulated in the sport of arm wrestling. So thank you so much for talking to me." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, Einstein was a hero to me and I'm sure to many people because he was able to make, of course, a major, major contribution to physics with simplifying a bit just a Gedanken experiment, a thought experiment. you know, imagining communication with lights between a stationary observer and somebody on a train. And I thought, you know, the fact that just with the force of his thought, of his thinking, of his mind, It could get to something so deep in terms of physical reality, how time depends on space and speed. It was something absolutely fascinating. It was the power of intelligence, the power of the mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the ability to imagine, to visualize as he did, as a lot of great physicists do, do you think that's in all of us human beings? Or is there something special to that one particular human being?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, you know, all of us can learn and have in principle, similar breakthroughs. There are lessons to be learned from Einstein. He was one of five PhD students at ETA, the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich in physics, and he was the worst of the five. The only one who did not get an academic position when he graduated, when he finished his PhD, and he went to work, as everybody knows, for the patent office. So it's not so much that he worked for the patent office, but the fact that obviously he was smart, but he was not the top student. Obviously he was the anti-conformist. He was not thinking in the traditional way that probably his teachers and the other students were doing. There is a lot to be said about trying to do the opposite or something quite different from what other people are doing. That's certainly true for the stock market. Never buy if everybody's buying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also true for science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've also mentioned, staying on the theme of physics, that you were excited at a young age by the mysteries of the universe that physics could uncover. Such, as I saw mentioned, the possibility of time travel. So the most out-of-the-box question I think I'll get to ask today, do you think time travel is possible?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it would be nice if it were possible right now. You know, in science you never say no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But your understanding of the nature of time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's very likely that it's not possible to travel in time. We may be able to travel forward in time if we can, for instance, freeze ourselves or, you know, go on some spacecraft traveling close to the speed of light. But in terms of actively traveling, for instance, back in time, I find Probably very unlikely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you still hold the underlying dream of the engineering intelligence that will build systems that are able to do such huge leaps like discovering the kind of mechanism that would be required to travel through time? Do you still hold that dream or echoes of it from your childhood?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't think whether, there are certain problems that probably cannot be solved, depending what you believe about the physical reality, like maybe totally impossible to create energy from nothing or to travel back in time, but about making machines that can think as well as we do or better, or more likely, especially in the short and mid-term, help us think better, which is, in a sense, is happening already with the computers we have, and it will happen more and more. Well, that I certainly believe, and I don't see in principle why computers at some point could not become more intelligent than we are, although the word intelligence is a tricky one and one we should discuss what I mean with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Intelligence, consciousness, words like love, all these need to be disentangled. So you've mentioned also that you believe the problem of intelligence is the greatest problem in science, greater than the origin of life and the origin of the universe. You've also, in a talk I've listened to, said that you're open to arguments against you. What do you think is the most captivating aspect of this problem of understanding the nature of intelligence? Why does it captivate you as it does?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, originally, I think one of the motivation that I had as a, I guess, a teenager when I was infatuated with theory of relativity was really that I found that there was the problem of time and space and general relativity. But there were so many other problems of the same level of difficulty and importance that I could, even if I were Einstein, it was difficult to hope to solve all of them. So what about solving a problem whose solution allowed me to solve all the problems? And this was, what if we could find the key to an intelligence, you know, 10 times better or faster than Einstein?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's sort of seeing artificial intelligence as a tool to expand our capabilities. But is there just an inherent curiosity in you in just understanding what it is in here that makes it all work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, absolutely. You're right. So I was starting, I started saying this was the motivation when I was a teenager. But, you know, soon after, I think the problem of human intelligence became a real focus of, you know, of my, of my science and my research, because I think he's, for me, the most interesting problem is really asking who we are, right? He's asking not only a question about science, but even about the very tool we are using to do science, which is our brain. How does our brain work? From where does it come from? What are its limitations? Can we make it better?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that in many ways is the ultimate question that underlies this whole effort of science. So you've made significant contributions in both the science of intelligence and the engineering of intelligence. In a hypothetical way, let me ask, how far do you think we can get in creating intelligence systems without understanding the biological, the understanding how the human brain creates intelligence? Put another way, do you think we can build a strong AI system without really getting at the core, understanding the functional nature of the brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this is a real difficult question. You know, we did solve problems like flying without really using too much our knowledge about how birds fly. It was important, I guess, to know that you could have things heavier than air being able to fly like birds. But beyond that, probably we did not learn very much. You know, some, you know, the brothers Wright did learn a lot of observation about birds and designing their aircraft. But, you know, you can argue we did not use much of biology in that particular case. Now, in the case of intelligence, I think that it's a bit of a bet right now. If you ask, OK, we all agree we'll get at some point, maybe soon, maybe later, to a machine that is indistinguishable from my secretary, say, in terms of what I can ask the machine to do. I think we'll get there, and now the question is, you can ask people, do you think we'll get there without any knowledge about the human brain, or that the best way to get there is to understand better the human brain? Okay, this is, I think, an educated bet that different people with different background will decide in different ways. The recent history of the progress in AI in the last five years or ten years has been the main breakthroughs, the main recent breakthroughs. I really start from neuroscience. I can mention reinforcement learning as one, is one of the algorithms at the core of AlphaGo, which is the system that beat the kind of an official world champion of Go, Lee Sedol, two, three years ago in Seoul. That's one. And that started really with the work of Pavlov 1900, Marvin Minsky in the 60s, and many other neuroscientists later on. And deep learning started, which is at the core, again, of AlphaGo and systems like autonomous driving systems for cars, like the systems that Mobileye, which is a company started by one of my ex-postdocs, Amnon Shashua, that is at the core of those things. And deep learning, really the initial ideas in terms of the architecture of these layered hierarchical networks started with the work of Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel at Harvard, up the river in the 60s. So recent history suggests that neuroscience played a big role in these breakthroughs. My personal bet is that there is a good chance they continue to play a big role, maybe not in all the future breakthroughs, but in some of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At least in inspiration." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At least in inspiration, absolutely, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you studied both artificial and biological neural networks. You said these mechanisms that underlie deep learning and reinforcement learning, but there is nevertheless significant differences between biological and artificial neural networks as they stand now. So between the two, what do you find is the most interesting, mysterious, maybe even beautiful difference as it currently stands in our understanding?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I must confess that until recently I found that the artificial networks too simplistic relative to real neural networks. But recently I've been started to think that yes, there are very big simplification of what you find in the brain. But on the other hand, are much closer in terms of the architecture to the brain than other models that we had, that computer science used as model of thinking, which were mathematical logics, you know, Lisp, Prolog, and those kind of things. So in comparison to those, they're much closer to the brain. You have networks of neurons, which is what the brain is about. The artificial neurons in the models are, as I said, caricature of the biological neurons, but they're still neurons, single units communicating with other units, something that is absent in the traditional computer type models of mathematics, reasoning, and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what aspect would you like to see in artificial neural networks added over time as we try to figure out ways to improve them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So one of the main differences and problems in terms of deep learning today, and it's not only deep learning, and the brain, is the need for deep learning techniques to have a lot of labeled examples. For instance, for ImageNet you have a training set, which is one million images, each one labeled by some human in terms of which object is there. And it's clear that in biology, a baby may be able to see a million of images in the first years of life, but will not have a million of labels given to him or her by parents or caretakers. So how do we solve that? You know, I think there is this interesting challenge that today deep learning and related techniques are all about big data, big data meaning a lot of examples labeled by humans, whereas in nature you have, so this big data is n going to infinity, that's the best, you know, n meaning labeled data. But I think the biological world is more n going to one. A child can learn from a very small number of labeled examples. Like you tell a child, this is a car. You don't need to say, like in ImageNet, this is a car, this is a car, this is not a car, this is not a car, one million times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, and of course, with AlphaGo, or at least the AlphaZero variants, because the world of Go is so simplistic that you can actually learn by yourself, through self-play, you can play against each other, in the real world, I mean, the visual system that you've studied extensively is a lot more complicated than the game of Go. So on the comment about children, which are fascinatingly good at learning new stuff, how much of it do you think is hardware and how much of it is software?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a good deep question is in a sense is the old question of nurture and nature, how much is in the gene and how much is in the experience of an individual. obviously it's both that play a role. And I believe that the way evolution gives, puts prior information, so to speak, hardwired, it's not really hardwired, but that's essentially an hypothesis. I think what's going on is that evolution as almost necessarily if you believe in Darwin is very opportunistic. And think about our DNA and the DNA of Drosophila. Our DNA does not have many more genes than Drosophila. The fly. The fly, the fruit fly. Now, we know that the fruit fly does not learn very much during its individual existence. It looks like one of this machinery that it's really mostly, not 100%, but 95% hard-coded by the genes. But since we don't have many more genes than Drosophila, evolution could encode in us a kind of general learning machinery, and then had to give very weak priors. Like, for instance, let me give a specific example, which is recent work by a member of our Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines. We know because of work of other people in our group and other groups that there are cells in a part of our brain, neurons, that are tuned to faces. They seem to be involved in face recognition. Now this face area exists, seems to be present in young children and adults. And one question is, is there from the beginning, is hardwired by evolution or somehow is learned very quickly?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's your, by the way, a lot of the questions I'm asking, the answer is we don't really know. But as a person who has contributed some profound ideas in these fields, you're a good person to guess at some of these. So of course there's a caveat before a lot of the stuff we talk about. But what is your... hunch is the face, the part of the brain that seems to be concentrated on face recognition. Are you born with that, or you just, it's designed to learn that quickly, like the face of the mother and so on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My hunch, my bias was the second one, learned very quickly. It turns out that Marge Livingstone at Harvard has done some amazing experiments in which she raised baby monkeys, depriving them of faces during the first weeks of life. So they see technicians, but the technicians have a mask. And so when they looked at the area in the brain of these monkeys, that where usually you find faces, they found no face preference. So my guess is that what evolution does in this case is there is a plastic, an area which is plastic, which is kind of predetermined to be imprinted very easily, but the command from the gene is not a detailed circuitry for a face template. Could be, but this will require probably a lot of bits. You have to specify a lot of connection of a lot of neurons. Instead, the command from the gene is something like imprint, memorize what you see most often in the first two weeks of life, especially in connection with food. And maybe nipples, I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, source of food. And that area is very plastic at first and then solidifies. It'd be interesting if a variant of that experiment would show a different kind of pattern associated with food than a face pattern, whether that could stick." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are indications that during that experiment, what the monkeys saw quite often were the blue gloves of the technicians that were giving to the baby monkeys the milk. And some of the cells, instead of being face sensitive in that area, are hand sensitive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating. Can you talk about what are the different parts of the brain, and in your view, sort of loosely, and how do they contribute to intelligence? Do you see the brain as a bunch of different modules? and they together come in the human brain to create intelligence, or is it all one mush of the same kind of fundamental architecture?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's an important question and there was a phase in neuroscience back in the 1950s or so in which it was believed for a while that the brain was equipotential. This was the term you could cut out a piece and nothing special happened apart a little bit less performance. There was a surgeon, Lashley, who did a lot of experiments of this type with mice and rats and concluded that every part of the brain was essentially equivalent to any other one. It turns out that that's really not true. There are very specific modules in the brain, as you said, and people may lose the ability to speak if you have a stroke in a certain region or may lose control of their legs in another region. So there are very specific The brain is also quite flexible and redundant, so often it can correct things and, you know, kind of take over functions from one part of the brain to the other, but really there are specific modules. So the answer that we know from this old work which was basically based on lesions, either on animals or very often there was a mine of very interesting data coming from the war, from different types of injuries that soldiers had in the brain. More recently, functional MRI, which allow you to check which part of the brain are active when you are doing different tasks. as you know, can replace some of this. You can see that certain parts of the brain are involved, are active in certain tasks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's right. But sort of taking a step back to that part of the brain that discovers that specializes in the face and how that might be learned, What's your intuition behind, you know, is it possible that the sort of from a physicist perspective, when you get lower and lower, it's all the same stuff. And it just, when you're born, it's plastic and quickly figures out this part is going to be about vision. This is going to be about language. This is about common sense reasoning. Do you have an intuition that that kind of learning is going on really quickly, or is it really kind of solidified in hardware?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a great question. So there are parts of the brain like the cerebellum or the hippocampus that are quite different from each other. They clearly have different anatomy, different connectivity. Then there is the cortex, which is the most developed part of the brain in humans. And in the cortex, you have different regions of the cortex that are responsible for vision, for audition, for motor control, for language. Now, one of the big puzzles of this is that in the cortex is the cortex is the cortex is looks like it is the same in terms of hardware in terms of type of neurons and connectivity across these different modalities. So for the cortex, I think aside these other parts of the brain like spinal cord, hippocampus, cerebellum and so on, for the cortex I think your question about hardware and software and learning and so on, I think is rather open. And, you know, I find it very interesting, for instance, to think about an architecture, computer architecture, that is good for vision and at the same time is good for language. Seems to be, you know, so different problem areas that you have to solve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the underlying mechanism might be the same. And that's really instructive for artificial neural networks. So you've done a lot of great work in vision, in human vision, computer vision. And you mentioned the problem of human vision is really as difficult as the problem of general intelligence. And maybe that connects to the cortex discussion. Can you describe the human visual cortex and how the humans begin to understand the world through the raw sensory information? What's, for folks enough, familiar, especially on the computer vision side, we don't often actually take a step back except saying with a sentence or two that one is inspired by the other. What is it that we know about the human visual cortex? That's interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we know quite a bit. At the same time, we don't know a lot. But the bit we know, you know, in a sense, we know a lot of the details and many we don't know. And we know a lot of the top level, the answer to the top level question, but we don't know some basic ones, even in terms of general neuroscience for getting vision. Why do we sleep? It's such a basic question. And we really don't have an answer to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So taking a step back on that, so sleep for example is fascinating. Do you think that's a neuroscience question? Or if we talk about abstractions, what do you think is an interesting way to study intelligence or most effective on the levels of abstraction? Is it chemical, is it biological? Is it electrophysical, mathematical, as you've done a lot of excellent work on that side? Which psychology, sort of like, at which level of abstraction do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in terms of levels of abstraction, I think we need all of them. It's one, you know, it's like if you ask me, What does it mean to understand the computer? Right. That's much simpler. But in a computer, I could say, well, I understand how to use PowerPoint. That's my level of understanding a computer. It's it is reasonable. You know, it gives me some power to produce slides and beautiful slides and Now, you can ask somebody else, he says, well, I know how the transistor works that are inside the computer. I can write the equation for, you know, transistor and diodes and circuits, logical circuits. And I can ask this guy, do you know how to operate PowerPoint? No idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think if we discovered computers walking amongst us full of these transistors that are also operating under Windows and have PowerPoint, do you think it's digging in a little bit more? How useful is it to understand the transistor in order to be able to understand PowerPoint and these higher level intelligent processes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think in the case of computers, because they were made by engineers by us, this different level of understanding are rather separate on purpose. You know, there are separate modules so that the engineer that designed the circuit for the chips does not need to know what is inside PowerPoint. And somebody can write the software translating from one to the other. So, in that case, I don't think understanding the transistor helps you understand PowerPoint, or very little. If you want to understand the computer, this question, you know, I would say you have to understand it at different levels. If you really want to build But for the brain, I think these levels of understanding, so the algorithms, which kind of computation, you know, the equivalent PowerPoint and the circuits, you know, the transistors, I think they are much more intertwined with each other. There is not, you know, a neatly level of the software separate from the hardware. And so that's why I think in the case of the brain, the problem is more difficult and more than for computers, it requires the interaction, the collaboration between different types of expertise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The brain is a big hierarchical mess. You can't just disentangle levels." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you can, but it's much more difficult and it's not completely obvious. As I said, I think he's one of the person I think is the greatest problem in science. So I think it's fair that it's difficult." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a difficult one. That said, you do talk about compositionality and why it might be useful. And when you discuss why these neural networks in artificial or biological sense learn anything, you talk about compositionality, there's a sense that nature can be disentangled. All aspects of our cognition can be disentangled to some degree. So why do you think, first of all, how do you see compositionality and why do you think it exists at all in nature?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I spoke about, I used the term compositionality when we looked at deep neural networks, multi-layers, and trying to understand when and why they are more powerful than more classical one-layer networks like linear classifiers, kernel machines, so-called. And what we found is that in terms of approximating or learning or representing a function, a mapping from an input to an output, like from an image to the label in the image, if this function has a particular structure, then deep networks are much more powerful than shallow networks to approximate the underlying function. And the particular structure is a structure of compositionality. If the function is made up of functions of functions, so that you need to look on when you are interpreting an image, classifying an image, you don't need to look at all pixels at once, but you can compute something from small groups of pixels and then you can compute something on the output of this local computation and so on. It is similar to what you do when you read a sentence. You don't need to read the first and the last letter, but you can read syllables, combine them in words, combine the words in sentences. So this is this kind of structure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's as part of a discussion of why deep neural networks may be more effective than the shallow methods. And is your sense for most things we can use neural networks for Those problems are going to be compositional in nature, like language, like vision. How far can we get in this kind of way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So here is almost philosophy. Well, let's go there. Yeah, let's go there. So a friend of mine, Max Tegmark, who is a physicist at MIT," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've talked to him on this thing. Yeah. And he disagrees with you, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A little bit. We, you know, we agree on most, but the conclusion is a bit different. His conclusion is that for images, for instance, the compositional structure of this function that we have to learn or to solve these problems comes from physics, comes from the fact that you have local interactions in physics between atoms and other atoms, between particle of matter and other particles, between planets and other planets, between stars and other, it's all local. And that's true, but you could push this argument a bit further. Not this argument, actually, you could argue that, you know, maybe that's part of the truth, but maybe what happens is kind of the opposite, is that our brain is wired up as a deep network. So it can learn, understand, solve problems that have this compositional structure. And it cannot do, it cannot solve problems that don't have this compositional structure. So the problems we are accustomed to, we think about, we test our algorithms on. are this compositional structure because our brain is made up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's in a sense an evolutionary perspective that we've, so the ones that didn't have, that weren't dealing with a compositional nature of reality died off?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but also could be maybe the reason why we have this local connectivity in the brain, like simple cells in cortex looking only at the small part of the image, each one of them, and then other cells looking at the small number of these simple cells and so on. The reason for this may be purely that it was difficult to grow long-range connectivity. So suppose it's, you know, for biology, it's possible to grow short range connectivity, but not long range also, because there is a limited number of long range. And so you have this limitation from the biology. And this means you build a deep convolutional network. This would be something like a deep convolutional network. And this is great for solving certain class of problems. These are the ones we find easy and important for our life. And yes, they were enough for us to survive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you can start a successful business on solving those problems. Like with Mobileye, driving is a compositional problem. So on the learning task, we don't know much about how the brain learns in terms of optimization. So the thing that's stochastic gradient descent is what artificial neural networks used for the most part to adjust the parameters in such a way that it's able to deal, based on the label data, it's able to solve the problem. So what's your intuition about why it works at all? How hard of a problem it is to optimize a neural network, artificial neural network? Is there other alternatives? Just in general, your intuition is behind this very simplistic algorithm that seems to do pretty good. Surprising." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. So I find neuroscience, the architecture of cortex is really similar to the architecture of deep networks. So there is a nice correspondence there between the biology and this kind of local connectivity, hierarchical architecture. The stochastic gradient descent, as you said, is a very simple technique. It seems pretty unlikely that biology could do that from what we know right now about the cortex and neurons and synapses. So it's a big question open whether there are other optimization learning algorithms that can replace stochastic gradient descent? And my guess is yes, but nobody has found yet a real answer. I mean, people are trying, still trying, and there are some interesting ideas. The fact that stochastic gradient descent is so successful, this has become clearly is not so mysterious. And the reason is that it's an interesting fact, you know, is a change in a sense in how people think about statistics. And this is the following is that Typically, when you had data and you had, say, a model with parameters, you are trying to fit the model to the data, you know, to fit the parameter. Typically, the kind of crowd wisdom type idea was you should have at least twice the number of data than the number of parameters. Maybe 10 times is better. Now, the way you train neural network these days is that they have 10 or 100 times more parameters than data, exactly the opposite. And which, you know, it has been one of the puzzles about neural networks. How can you get something that really works when you have so much freedom in" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "from that little data it can generalize somehow. Do you think the stochastic nature of it is essential, the randomness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think we have some initial understanding why this happens, but one nice side effect of having this over-parameterization, more parameters than data, is that when you look for the minima of a loss function like stochastic gradient descent is doing, you find, I made some calculations based on some old basic theorem of algebra called the Bezu theorem that gives you an estimate of the number of solutions of a system of polynomial equations. Anyway, the bottom line is that there are probably more minima for a typical deep networks than atoms in the universe. just to say there are a lot, because of the over-parameterization. A more global minimum, zero minimum, good minimum. So it's not too soon. Yeah, a lot of them. So you have a lot of solutions. So it's not so surprising that you can find them relatively easily. And this is because of the over-parameterization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the over-parameterization sprinkles that entire space with solutions that are pretty good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not so surprising, right? It's like, you know, if you have a system of linear equations and you have more unknowns than equations, then you have, we know, you have an infinite number of solutions. And the question is to pick one. That's another story. But you have an infinite number of solutions. So there are a lot of value of your unknowns that satisfy the equations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's possible that there's a lot of those solutions that aren't very good. What's surprising is that they're pretty good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's a separate question. Why can you pick one that generalizes well? But that's a separate question with separate answers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One theorem that people like to talk about that kind of inspires imagination of the power of neural networks is the universal approximation theorem, that you can approximate any computable function with just a finite number of neurons in a single hidden layer. Do you find this theorem one surprising? Do you find it useful, interesting, inspiring?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, this one, you know, I never found it very surprising. It was known since the 80s, since I entered the field, because it's basically the same as Weierstrass theorem, which says that I can approximate any continuous function with a polynomial of sufficiently, with a sufficient number of terms, monomials. It's basically the same and the proofs are very similar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So your intuition was there was never any doubt that neural networks in theory could be very strong approximators." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The question, the interesting question is that if this theorem says you can approximate fine, but when you ask how many neurons, for instance, or in the case of polynomial, how many monomials, I need to get a good approximation. Then it turns out that that depends on the dimensionality of your function, how many variables you have. But it depends on the dimensionality of your function in a bad way. For instance, suppose you want an error which is no worse than 10% in your approximation. You come up with a network that approximates your function within 10%. Then it turns out that the number of units you need are in the order of 10 to the dimensionality d, how many variables. So if you have, you know, two variables is these two and you have 100 units and okay. But if you have say 200 by 200 pixel images, now this is 40,000 whatever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that- We again go to the size of the universe pretty quickly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, 10 to the 40,000 or something. And so this is called the curse of dimensionality. Not quite appropriately." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the hope is with the extra layers, you can remove the curse." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What we proved is that if you have deep layers or hierarchical architecture with the local connectivity of the type of convolutional deep learning, and if you're dealing with a function that has this kind of hierarchical architecture, then you avoid completely the curse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've spoken a lot about supervised deep learning. What are your thoughts, hopes, views on the challenges of unsupervised learning with GANs, with generative adversarial networks? Do you see those as distinct, the power of GANs, do you see those as distinct from supervised methods in neural networks, or are they all in the same representation ballpark?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "GANs is one way to get estimation of probability densities, which is a somewhat new way that people have not done before. I don't know whether this will really play an important role in intelligence. It's interesting. I'm less enthusiastic about it than many people in the field. I have the feeling that many people in the field are really impressed by the ability of producing realistic looking images in this generative way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which describes the popularity of the methods, but you're saying that while that's exciting and cool to look at, it may not be the tool that's useful for... So you describe it kind of beautifully. Current supervised methods go n to infinity in terms of number of labeled points, and we really have to figure out how to go to n to 1. And you're thinking GANs might help, but they might not be the right..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think for that problem, which I really think is important, I think they may help. They certainly have applications, for instance, in computer graphics. And, you know, I did work long ago which was a little bit similar in terms of saying, okay, I have a network and I present images and I can, so input is images and output is, for instance, the pose of the image, you know, a face, how much is smiling, is rotated 45 degrees or not. What about having a network that I train with the same data set, but now I invert input and output. Now the input is the pose or the expression, a number, set of numbers, and the output is the image, and I train it. And we did pretty good, interesting results in terms of producing very realistic looking images. It was, you know, a less sophisticated mechanism, but the output was pretty less than GANs, but the output was pretty much of the same quality. So I think for a computer graphics type application, yeah, definitely GANs can be quite useful, and not only for that, But for helping, for instance, on this problem of unsupervised example of reducing the number of labeled examples, I think people, it's like they think they can get out more than they put in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no free lunches. What's your intuition? How can we slow the growth of end-to-infinity and supervised learning? So, for example, Mobileye has very successfully, I mean, essentially annotated large amounts of data to be able to drive a car. Now, one thought is, so we're trying to teach machines, school of AI, and we're trying to, so how can we become better teachers, maybe? That's one way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I like that, because one, again, one caricature of the history of computer science, you could say, begins with programmers, expensive. Continuous labelers. Cheap. And the future will be schools like we have for kids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Currently the labeling methods we're not selective about which examples we teach networks with. So I think the focus of making networks that learn much faster is often on the architecture side, but how can we pick better examples with which to learn? Do you have intuitions about that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's part of the problem, but the other one is, You know, if we look at biology, a reasonable assumption, I think, is in the same spirit that I said, evolution is opportunistic and has weak priors. You know, the way I think the intelligence of a child, a baby may develop is by bootstrapping weak priors from evolution. For instance, in You can assume that you have in most organisms, including human babies, built in some basic machinery to detect motion and relative motion. And in fact, there is, you know, we know all insects from fruit flies to other animals, they have this. even in the retinas, in the very peripheral part. It's very conserved across species, something that evolution discovered early. It may be the reason why babies tend to look in the first few days to moving objects and not to not moving objects. Now, moving objects means, okay, they're attracted by motion, but motion also means that motion gives automatic segmentation from the background. So because of motion boundaries, you know, either the object is moving or the eye of the baby is tracking the moving object and the background is moving, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So just purely on the visual characteristics of the scene, that seems to be the most useful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So it's like looking at an object without background. It's ideal for learning the object. Otherwise, it's really difficult because you have so much stuff. So suppose you do this at the beginning, first weeks. Then after that, you can recognize object. Now they are imprinted a number of objects. even in the background, even without motion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the, by the way, I just want to ask on the object recognition problem. So there is this being responsive to movement and edge detection, essentially. What's the gap between being effective at visually recognizing stuff, detecting where it is, and understanding the scene? Is this a huge gap in many layers, or is it close?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think that's a huge gap. I think present algorithms, with all the success that we have and the fact that there are a lot of very useful, I think we are in a golden age for applications of low-level vision and low-level speech recognition and so on, you know, Alexa and so on. There are many more things of similar level to be done, including medical diagnosis and so on, but we are far from what we call understanding of a scene, of language, of actions, of people. That is, despite the claims, that's, I think, very far." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're a little bit off. So in popular culture, and among many researchers, some of which I've spoken with, Stuart Russell and Elon Musk, in and out of the AI field, there's a concern about the existential threat of AI. And how do you think about this concern? And is it valuable to think about large scale, long term unintended consequences of intelligence systems we try to build." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always think it's better to worry first, you know, early rather than late. So worry is good. Yeah. I'm not against worrying at all. Personally, I think that, you know, it will take a long time before there is a real reason to be worried. But as I said, I think it's good to put in place and think about possible safety against... What I find a bit misleading are things like, that have been said by people I know, like Elon Musk and what is Bostrom in particular? What is his first name? Nick Bostrom, right. You know, and a couple of other people that, for instance, AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons. I think that's really wrong. That can be misleading because in terms of priority, we should still be more worried about nuclear weapons and what people are doing about it and so on than AI." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you've spoken about Demis Hassabis and yourself saying that you think it'll be about 100 years out before we have a general intelligence system that's on par with a human being. Do you have any updates for those predictions? Well, I think he said... He said 20, I think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He said 20, right. This was a couple of years ago. I have not asked him again, so I should have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your own prediction? What's your prediction about when you'll be truly surprised? And what's the confidence interval on that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's so difficult to predict the future and even the presence of it. It's pretty hard to predict. But I would be, as I said, this is completely, I would be more like Rod Brooks. I think he's about 200 years. 200 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When we have this kind of AGI system, Artificial General Intelligence system, and you're sitting in a room with her, him, it, do you think it will be the underlying design of such a system is something we'll be able to understand? It will be simple? Do you think it'll be explainable? Understandable by us? Your intuition, again, we're in the realm of philosophy a little bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, probably no, but again, it depends what you really mean for understanding. So I think We don't understand how deep networks work. I think we're beginning to have a theory now. But in the case of deep networks, or even in the case of the simpler kernel machines or linear classifier, We really don't understand the individual units or so. But we understand, you know, what the computation and the limitations and the properties of it are. It's similar to many things. You know, what does it mean to understand how a fusion bomb works? How many of us You know, many of us understand the basic principle and some of us may understand deeper details." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In that sense, understanding is as a community, as a civilization, can we build another copy of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And in that sense, do you think there'll need to be some evolutionary component where it runs away from our understanding? Or do you think it could be engineered from the ground up, the same way you go from the transistor to PowerPoint?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so many years ago, this was actually, let me see, 40, 41 years ago, I wrote a paper with David Marr, who was one of the founding fathers of computer vision, computational vision. I wrote a paper about levels of understanding, which is related to the question I discussed earlier about understanding PowerPoint, understanding transistors and so on. And, you know, in that kind of framework, we had the level of the hardware and the top level of the algorithms. We did not have learning. Recently, I updated adding levels and one level I added to those three was learning. So, and you can imagine you could have a good understanding of how you construct a learning machine, like we do. But being unable to describe in detail what the learning machines will discover. Right? Now that would be still a powerful understanding if I can build a learning machine, even if I don't understand in detail every time it learns something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just like our children, if they start listening to a certain type of music, I don't know, Miley Cyrus or something, you don't understand why they came to that particular preference, but you understand the learning process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's very interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "unlearning for systems to be part of our world. It has a certain, one of the challenging things that you've spoken about is learning ethics, learning morals. And how hard do you think is the problem of first of all, humans understanding our ethics. What is the origin on the neural and low level of ethics? What is it at the higher level? Is it something that's learnable for machines in your intuition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, yeah, ethics is learnable, very likely. I think it's one of these problems where I think understanding the neuroscience of ethics. You know, people discuss there is an ethics of neuroscience. You know, how a neuroscientist should or should not behave. You can think of a neurosurgeon and the ethics rule he has to obey or she has to obey. But I'm more interested on the neuroscience of ethics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're blowing my mind right now. The neuroscience of ethics, it's very meta." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think that would be important to understand also for being able to design machines that have, that are ethical machines in our sense of ethics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you think there is something in neuroscience, there's patterns, tools in neuroscience that could help us shed some light on ethics? Or is it mostly on the psychologist's sociology and much higher level?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, there is psychology, but there is also, in the meantime, there is evidence, fMRI, of specific areas of the brain that are involved in certain ethical judgment. And not only this, you can stimulate those area with magnetic fields and change the ethical decisions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wow. So that's a work by a colleague of mine, Rebecca Sachs, and there is other researchers doing similar work. And I think, you know, this is the beginning, but ideally at some point we'll have an understanding of how this works and why it evolved, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The big why question. Yeah. It must have some, some purpose." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, obviously it has some social purposes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Probably. If neuroscience holds the key to at least eliminate some aspect of ethics, that means it could be a learnable problem. Yeah, exactly. And as we're getting into harder and harder questions, let's go to the hard problem of consciousness. Is this an important problem for us to think about and solve on the engineering of intelligence side of your work, of our dream?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's unclear. So, you know, again, this is a deep problem, partly because it's very difficult to define consciousness and And there is a debate among neuroscientists about whether consciousness and philosophers, of course, whether consciousness is something that requires flesh and blood, so to speak, or could be, you know, that we could have silicon devices that are conscious. or up to statement like everything has some degree of consciousness and some more than others. This is like Giulio Tognoni and Fee." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We just recently talked to Christophe Koch. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Christoph was my first graduate student." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's important to illuminate aspects of consciousness in order to engineer intelligent systems? Do you think an intelligent system would ultimately have consciousness? Are they interlinked?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, most of the people working in artificial intelligence I think would answer, we don't strictly need consciousness to have an intelligent system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's sort of the easier question because it's a very engineering answer to the question. Pass the Turing test, we don't need consciousness. But if you were to go, do you think it's possible that we need to have So that kind of self-awareness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We may, yes. So for instance, I personally think that when test a machine or a person in a Turing test, in an extended Turing test, I think consciousness is part of what we require in that test, you know, implicitly, to say that this is intelligent. Christoph disagrees, so. Yes, he does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Despite many other romantic notions he holds, he disagrees with that one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that's right. So, you know, we'll see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think, as a quick question, Ernest Becker of Fear of Death. Do you think mortality and those kinds of things are important for Well, for consciousness and for intelligence? The finiteness of life? Finiteness of existence? Or is that just the evolutionary side effect that's useful for natural selection? Do you think this interview is going to run out of time soon? Our life will run out of time soon? Do you think that's needed to make this conversation good and life good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I never thought about it is a very interesting question. I think Steve Jobs in his commencement speech at Stanford argued that, you know, having a finite life was important for for stimulating achievements. So it was a different" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You live every day like it's your last, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, so rationally I don't think strictly you need mortality for consciousness, but." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who knows, they seem to go together in our biological system, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've mentioned before, and students are associated with, AlphaGo immobilized the big recent success stories in AI. I think it's captivated the entire world of what AI can do. So what do you think will be the next breakthrough? And what's your intuition about the next breakthrough?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, I don't know where the next breakthroughs is. I think that there is a good chance, as I said before, that the next breakthrough would also be inspired by neuroscience. But which one, I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's, so MIT has this quest for intelligence. Yeah. And there's a few moon shots, which in that spirit, which ones are you excited about? What, which projects kind of" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, of course, I'm excited about one of the moonshots, which is our Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, the one which is fully funded by NSF. And it is about visual intelligence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that one is particularly about understanding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Visual intelligence, so the visual cortex and visual intelligence in the sense of how we look around ourselves and understand the world around ourselves, you know, meaning what is going on, how we could go from here to there without hitting obstacles. You know, whether there are other agents, people in the environment. These are all things that we perceive very quickly and And it's something actually quite close to being conscious, not quite. But, you know, there is this interesting experiment that was run at Google X, which is in a sense is just a virtual reality experiment, but in which they had subjects sitting, say, in a chair with goggles like Oculus and so on. earphones, and they were seeing through the eyes of a robot nearby, two cameras, microphones for receiving. So their sensory system was there. And the impression of all the subject, very strong, they could not shake it off, was that they were where the robot was. they could look at themselves from the robot and still feel they were where the robot is. They were looking at their body." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Their self had moved. So some aspect of seeing and understanding has to have ability to place yourself, have a self-awareness about your position in the world and what the world is. Right. Yeah. So we may have to solve the hard problem of consciousness to solve it. On their way, yes. It's quite a moonshot. So you've been an advisor to some incredible minds, including Demis Hassabis, Christophe Koch, Amnon Shashua, like you said, all went on to become seminal figures in their respective fields. From your own success as a researcher and from perspective as a mentor of these researchers, having guided them, in the way of advice, what does it take to be successful in science and engineering careers? Whether you're talking to somebody in their teens, 20s, and 30s, what does that path look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's curiosity and having fun. And I think it's important also having fun with other curious minds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the people you surround with too, so fun and curiosity. Is there, you mentioned Steve Jobs, is there also an underlying ambition that's unique that you saw or is it really does boil down to insatiable curiosity and fun?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, of course, you know, it's being curious in an active and ambitious way. Yes. Definitely. But I think sometimes in science, there are friends of mine who are like this. you know, there are some of the scientists like to work by themselves and kind of communicate only when they complete their work or discover something. I think I always found the actual process of you know, discovering something is more fun if it's together with other intelligent and curious and fun people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you see the fun in that process, the side effect of that process will be that you'll actually end up discovering some interesting things. So as you've led many incredible efforts here, what's the secret to being a good advisor, mentor, leader in a research setting? Is it a similar spirit? What advice could you give to people, young faculty and so on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "it's partly repeating what I said about an environment that should be friendly and fun and ambitious. And, you know, I think I learned a lot from some of my advisors and friends and some of our physicists. And there was, for instance, this behavior that was encouraged of when somebody comes with a new idea in the group, you are, unless it's really stupid, but you are always enthusiastic. And then, and you're enthusiastic for a few minutes, for a few hours, then you start you know, asking critically a few questions, testing this. But, you know, this is a process that is, I think it's very, very good. You have to be enthusiastic. Sometimes people are very critical from the beginning. That's not," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you have to give it a chance for that seed to grow. That said, with some of your ideas, which are quite revolutionary, so there's a witness, especially in the human vision side and neuroscience side, there could be some pretty heated arguments. Do you enjoy these? Is that a part of science and academic pursuits that you enjoy? Is that something that happens in your group as well?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. I also spent some time in Germany. Again, there is this tradition in which people are more forthright, less kind than here. So In the US, when you write a bad letter, you still say, this guy is nice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Here in America, it's degrees of nice. It's all just degrees of nice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So as long as this does not become personal, and it's really like a football game with its rules, that's great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fun. So if you somehow find yourself in a position to ask one question of an oracle, like a genie, maybe a god, and you're guaranteed to get a clear answer, What kind of question would you ask? What would be the question you would ask?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the spirit of our discussion, it could be, how could I become 10 times more intelligent?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so, but see, you only get a clear short answer. So do you think there's a clear short answer to that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's the answer you'll get. So you've mentioned Flowers of Algernon. It's a story that inspired you in your childhood as this story of a mouse, a human achieving genius level intelligence and then understanding what was happening while slowly becoming not intelligent again in this tragedy of gaining intelligence and losing intelligence. Do you think in that spirit, in that story, do you think intelligence is a gift or a curse from the perspective of happiness and meaning of life? You try to create an intelligent system that understands the universe, but on an individual level, the meaning of life, do you think intelligence is a gift?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a good question. I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "as one of the, as one people consider the smartest people in the world, in some dimension at the very least, what do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, it may be invariant to intelligence, that degree of happiness would be nice if it were." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the hope." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You could be smart and happy and clueless and happy." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that was a reading group that I did when I, at the very beginning, first became interested in this topic. So I think if I taught that class today, it would look very, very different. Robot ethics, it sounds very science fiction-y, especially did back then, but I think that some of the issues that people in robot ethics are concerned with are just around the ethical use of robotic technology in general. So for example, responsibility for harm, automated weapon systems, things like privacy and data security, things like automation and labor markets. And then personally, I'm really interested in some of the social issues that come out of our social relationships with robots." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One-on-one relationship with robots. Yeah. I think most of the stuff we have to talk about is like one-on-one social stuff. That's what I love. I think that's what you love as well and are expert in. But at a societal level, there's a presidential candidate now, Andrew Yang, running, concerned about automation and robots and AI in general taking away jobs. He has a proposal of UBI, universal basic income, of everybody gets a thousand bucks as a way to sort of save you if you lose your job from automation, to allow you time to discover what it is that you would like to, or even love to do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So I lived in Switzerland for 20 years and universal basic income has been more of a topic there, separate from the whole robots and jobs issue. So it's so interesting to me to see kind of these Silicon Valley people latch onto this concept that came from a very kind of left-wing socialist, you know, kind of a different place in Europe. But on the automation labor markets topic, I think that it's very, so sometimes in those conversations, I think people overestimate where robotic technology is right now. And we also have this fallacy of constantly comparing robots to humans. thinking of this as a one-to-one replacement of jobs. So even like Bill Gates a few years ago said something about, you know, maybe we should have a system that taxes robots for taking people's jobs. And it just, I mean, I'm sure that was taken out of context, you know, he's a really smart guy, but that sounds to me like kind of viewing it as a one-to-one replacement versus viewing this technology as kind of a supplemental tool that of course is gonna shake up a lot of stuff, it's gonna change the job landscape, but I don't see robots taking all the jobs in the next 20 years. That's just not how it's gonna work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so maybe drifting into the land of more personal relationships with robots and interactions and so on. I gotta warn you, I may ask some silly philosophical questions, I apologize. Oh, please do. Okay, do you think humans will abuse robots in their interactions? So you've had a lot of, and we'll talk about it, sort of anthropomorphization and this intricate dance, emotional dance between human and robot, There seems to be also a darker side where people, when they treat the other, as servants especially, they can be a little bit abusive or a lot abusive. Do you think about that? Do you worry about that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I do think about that. So, I mean, one of my main interests is the fact that people subconsciously treat robots like living things. And even though they know that they're interacting with a machine and what it means in that context to behave violently. I don't know if you could say abuse because you're not actually abusing the inner mind of the robot. The robot doesn't have any feelings." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As far as you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, it also depends on how we define feelings and consciousness, but I think that's another area where people kind of overestimate where we currently are with the technology. Like the robots are not even as smart as insects right now. And so I'm not worried about abuse in that sense, but it is interesting to think about what does people's behavior towards these things mean for our own behavior? Is it desensitizing the people to be verbally abusive to a robot or even physically abusive? And we don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, it's a similar connection from like if you play violent video games. What connection does that have to desensitization to violence? I haven't read literature on that. I wonder about that. Because everything I've heard, people don't seem to any longer be so worried about violent video games." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct. We've seemed, the research on it is, it's a difficult thing to research, so it's sort of inconclusive, but we seem to have gotten the sense, at least as a society, that people can compartmentalize. When it's something on a screen and you're like, you know, shooting a bunch of characters or running over people with your car, that doesn't necessarily translate to you doing that in real life. We do, however, have some concerns about children playing violent video games, and so we do restrict it there. I'm not sure that's based on any real evidence either, but it's just the way that we've kind of decided, you know, we want to be a little more cautious there. And the reason I think robots are a little bit different is because there is a lot of research showing that we respond differently to something in our physical space than something on a screen. We will treat it much more viscerally, much more like a physical actor. And so it's totally possible that this is not a problem. And it's the same thing as violence in video games, you know, maybe, you know, restrict it with kids to be safe, but adults can do what they want. But we just need to ask the question again, because we don't have any evidence at all yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe there's an intermediate place to, I did my research on Twitter. By research, I mean scrolling through your Twitter feed. You mentioned that you were going at some point to an animal law conference. So I have to ask, do you think there's something that we can learn from animal rights that guides our thinking about robots?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think there is so much to learn from that. I'm actually writing a book on it right now. That's why I'm going to this conference. So I'm writing a book that looks at the history of animal domestication and how we've used animals for work, for weaponry, for companionship. And one of the things the book tries to do is move away from this fallacy that I talked about of comparing robots and humans, because I don't think that's the right analogy. But I do think that on a social level, even on a social level, there's so much that we can learn from looking at that history because throughout history, we've treated most animals like tools, like products. And then some of them we've treated differently and we're starting to see people treat robots in really similar ways. So I think it's a really helpful predictor to how we're going to interact with the robots." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think we'll look back at this time, like 100 years from now, and see what we do to animals as like similar to the way we view like the Holocaust in World War II?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a great question. I mean, I hope so. I am not convinced that we will. But I often wonder, you know, what are my grandkids gonna view as, you know, abhorrent that my generation did, that they would never do? And I'm like, well, what's the big deal? You know, it's a fun question to ask yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It always seems that there's atrocities that we discover later. So the things that at the time people didn't see as, you know, you look at everything from slavery to any kinds of abuse throughout history to the kind of insane wars that were happening to the way war was carried out and rape and the kind of violence that was happening during war that we now, you know, we see as atrocities, but at the time perhaps didn't as much. And so now, I have this intuition that, I have this worry, maybe I'm, you're going to probably criticize me, but I do anthropomorphize robots. I have, I don't see a fundamental philosophical difference between a robot and a human being in terms of once the capabilities are matched. So the fact that we're really far away doesn't, in terms of capabilities and then that from natural language processing, understanding generation to just reasoning and all that stuff. I think once you solve it, I see the, this is a very gray area and I don't feel comfortable with the kind of abuse that people throw at robots. Subtle, but I can see it becoming, I can see basically a civil rights movement for robots. in the future. Do you think, let me put it in the form of a question, do you think robots should have some kinds of rights?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's interesting because I came at this originally from your perspective. I was like, you know what? There's no fundamental difference between technology and human consciousness. We can probably recreate anything. We just don't know how yet. And so there's no reason not to give machines the same rights that we have once, like you say, they're kind of on an equivalent level. But I realized that that is kind of a far future question. I still think we should talk about it because I think it's really interesting. But I realized that it's actually, we might need to ask the robot rights question even sooner than that, while the machines are still, you know, quote unquote, really, you know, dumb and not on our level because of the way that we perceive them. And I think one of the lessons we learn from looking at the history of animal rights, and one of the reasons we may not get to a place in a hundred years where we view it as wrong to, you know, eat or otherwise, you know, use animals for our own purposes is because historically we've always protected those things that we relate to the most. So one example is whales. No one gave a shit about the whales. Am I allowed to swear? You can swear as much as you want. Freedom. Yeah, no one gave a shit about the whales until someone recorded them singing. And suddenly people were like, oh, this is a beautiful creature and now we need to save the whales. And that started the whole Save the Whales movement in the 70s. So I'm, as much as I, and I think a lot of people want to believe that we care about consistent, biological criteria, that's not historically how we formed our alliances." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so why do we believe that all humans are created equal? Killing of a human being, no matter who the human being is, that's what I meant by equality, is bad. And then, because I'm connecting that to robots, and I'm wondering whether mortality, so the killing act is what makes something, that's the fundamental first right. So I am currently allowed to take a shotgun and shoot a Roomba. I think, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure. It's not considered murder, right? Or even shutting them off. So that's where the line appears to be, right? Is mortality a critical thing here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think here again, like the animal analogy is really useful because you're also allowed to shoot your dog, but people won't be happy about it. So we do give animals certain protections from like, you're not allowed to torture your dog and set it on fire, at least in most states and countries, but you're still allowed to treat it like a piece of property in a lot of other ways. And so we draw these arbitrary lines all the time. And there's a lot of philosophical thought on why viewing humans as something unique, is just speciesism and not based on any criteria that would actually justify making a difference between us and other species." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think in general people, most people are good? Do you think there's evil and good in all of us? That's revealed through our circumstances and through our interactions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like to view myself as a person who like believes that there's no absolute evil and good and that everything is, you know, gray. But I do think it's an interesting question. Like when I see people being violent towards robotic objects, you said that bothers you because the robots might someday, you know, be smart and, Is that why?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it bothers me because it reveals... So I personally believe, because I've studied way too much. I'm Jewish. I studied the Holocaust and World War II exceptionally well. I personally believe that most of us have evil in us. that what bothers me is the abuse of robots reveals the evil in human beings. And I think it doesn't just bother me, I think it's an opportunity for roboticists to make help people find the better sides, the angels of their nature, right? Yeah, that abuse isn't just a fun side thing. That's a you revealing a dark part that you shouldn't there should be hidden deep inside." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, you laugh, but some of our research does indicate that maybe people's behavior towards robots reveals something about their tendencies for empathy generally, even using very simple robots that we have today that like clearly don't feel anything. So, you know, Westworld is maybe, you know, not so far off and it's like, depicting the bad characters as willing to go around and shoot and rape the robots, and the good characters as not wanting to do that, even without assuming that the robots have consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's an opportunity, it's interesting, there's an opportunity to almost practice empathy. Robots is an opportunity to practice empathy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with you. Some people would say, why are we practicing empathy on robots instead of on our fellow humans or on animals that are actually alive and experience the world? And I don't agree with them because I don't think empathy is a zero sum game. And I do think that it's a muscle that you can train and that we should be doing that. But some people disagree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the interesting thing, you've heard, you know, raising kids, sort of asking them or telling them to be nice to the smart speakers, to Alexa and so on, saying please and so on during the requests. I don't know if, I'm a huge fan of that idea because yeah, that's towards the idea of practicing empathy. I feel like politeness, I'm always polite to all the systems that we build. Especially anything that's speech interaction based, like when we talk to the car, I always have a pretty good detector for please. I feel like there should be a room for encouraging empathy in those interactions. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so I agree with you, so I'm gonna play devil's advocate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure. Yeah, what is the devil's advocate argument there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The devil's advocate argument is that if you are the type of person who has abusive tendencies or needs to get some sort of behavior like that out, needs an outlet for it, that it's great to have a robot that you can scream at so that you're not screaming at a person. And we just don't know whether that's true, whether it's an outlet for people or whether it just kind of, as my friend once said, trains their cruelty muscles and makes them more cruel in other situations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh boy, yeah, and that expands to other topics, which I don't know. There's a topic of sex, which is a weird one that I tend to avoid from robotics perspective, and mostly the general public doesn't. They talk about sex robots and so on. Is that an area you've touched at all research-wise? Like the way, because that's what people imagine sort of any kind of interaction between human and robot that shows any kind of compassion. They immediately think from a product perspective in the near term is sort of expansion of what pornography is and all that kind of stuff. Do researchers touch this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's kind of you to like characterize it as though they're thinking rationally about product. I feel like sex robots are just such a titillating news hook for people that they become like the story. And it's really hard to not get fatigued by it when you're in the space because you tell someone you do human-robot interaction, of course, the first thing they wanna talk about is sex robots." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Really?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it happens a lot. It's unfortunate that I'm so fatigued by it because I do think that there are some interesting questions that become salient when you talk about sex with robots." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, what I think would happen when people get sex robots, like if you say, what's up guys? Okay, guys get female sex robots. What I think there's an opportunity for is an actual, like they'll actually interact What I'm trying to say, they won't, outside of the sex would be the most fulfilling part. Like the interaction, it's like the folks who, there's movies and this, right? Who pay a prostitute and then end up just talking to her the whole time. So I feel like there's an opportunity. It's like most guys and people in general joke about the sex act, but really people are just lonely inside and they're looking for connection, many of them. And it'd be unfortunate if that connection is established through the sex industry. I feel like it should go into the front door of like, people are lonely and they want a connection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I also feel like we should kind of destigmatize the sex industry because even prostitution, like there are prostitutes that specialize in disabled people who don't have the same kind of opportunities to explore their sexuality. So I feel like we should destigmatize all of that generally. But yeah, that connection and that loneliness is an interesting topic that you bring up because while people are constantly worried about robots replacing humans and, oh, if people get sex robots and the sex is really good, then they won't want their partner or whatever. But we rarely talk about robots actually filling a hole where there's nothing and what benefit that can provide to people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think that's an exciting, there's a giant hole that's unfillable by humans. It's asking too much of your friends and people you're in a relationship with and your family to fill that hole. It's exploring the full complexity and richness of who you are. Like, who are you really? People, your family doesn't have enough patience to really sit there and listen to who are you really? And I feel like there's an opportunity to really make that connection with robots." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I just feel like we're complex as humans and we're capable of lots of different types of relationships. So whether that's, you know, with family members, with friends, with our pets or with robots, I feel like there's space for all of that and all of that can provide value in a different way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. So I'm jumping around. Currently, most of my work is in autonomous vehicles. So the most popular topic among the general public is the trolley problem. So most roboticists kind of hate this question, but what do you think of this thought experiment? What do you think we can learn from it outside of the silliness of the actual application of it to the autonomous vehicle? I think it's still an interesting ethical question and that in itself, just like much of the interaction with robots has something to teach us. But from your perspective, do you think there's anything there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think you're right that it does have something to teach us, but I think what people are forgetting in all of these conversations is the origins of the trolley problem and what it was meant to show us, which is that there is no right answer and that sometimes our moral intuition that comes to us instinctively is not actually what we should follow if we care about creating systematic rules that apply to everyone. I think that as a philosophical concept, it could teach us at least that. But that's not how people are using it right now. We have, and these are friends of mine, and I love them dearly, and their project adds a lot of value. But if we're viewing the moral machine project as what we can learn from the trolley problems. The moral machine is, I'm sure you're familiar, it's this website that you can go to and it gives you different scenarios like, oh, you're in a car, you can decide to run over, you know, these two people or this child, you know, what do you choose? Do you choose the homeless person? Do you choose the person who's jaywalking? And so it pits these like moral choices against each other and then tries to crowdsource the quote unquote correct answer. which is really interesting and I think valuable data, but I don't think that's what we should base our rules in autonomous vehicles on because it is exactly what the trolley problem is trying to show, which is your first instinct might not be the correct one if you look at rules that then have to apply to everyone and everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do we encode these ethical choices in interaction with robots? So for example, in autonomous vehicles, there is a serious ethical question of, do I protect myself? Does my life have higher priority than the life of another human being? because that changes certain control decisions that you make. So if your life matters more than other human beings, then you'd be more likely to swerve out of your current lane. So currently automated emergency braking systems that just brake, they don't ever swerve. So swerving into oncoming traffic or no, just in a different lane can cause significant harm to others, but it's possible that it causes less harm to you. So that's a difficult ethical question. Do you have a hope that, like the trolley problem is not supposed to have a right answer, right? Do you hope that when we have robots at the table, we'll be able to discover the right answer for some of these questions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, what's happening right now, I think, is this this question that we're facing of, you know, what ethical rules should we be programming into the machines is revealing to us that our ethical rules are much less programmable than we probably thought before. And so that's a really valuable insight, I think, that these issues are very complicated and that in a lot of these cases, it's you can't really make that call, like not even as a legislator. And so what's going to happen in reality, I think, is that, you know, Car manufacturers are just going to try and avoid the problem and avoid liability in any way possible. Or they're going to always protect the driver because who's going to buy a car if it's programmed to kill you instead of someone else? So that's what's going to happen in reality. But what did you mean by, once we have robots at the table, do you mean when they can help us figure out what to do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I mean when robots are part of the ethical decisions. So no, no, no, not they help us well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, you mean when it's like, should I run over a robot or a person?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, that kind of thing. So when you, it's exactly what you said, which is when you have to encode the ethics into an algorithm, you start to try to really understand what are the fundamentals of the decision-making process you make to make certain decisions. Should you, like capital punishment, should you take a person's life or not to punish them for a certain crime? Sort of, you can use, you can develop an algorithm to make that decision, right? And the hope is that the act of making that algorithm, however you make it, so there's a few approaches, will help us actually get to the core of what is right and what is wrong under our current societal standards." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But isn't that what's happening right now? And we're realizing that we don't have a consensus on what's right and wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mean in politics in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, like when we're thinking about these trolley problems and autonomous vehicles and how to program ethics into machines and how to make make AI algorithms fair and equitable. We're realizing that this is so complicated and it's complicated in part because there doesn't seem to be a one right answer in any of these cases." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a hope for like, one of the ideas of the moral machine is that crowdsourcing can help us converge towards like democracy, can help us converge towards the right answer. Do you have a hope for crowdsourcing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Yes and no. So I think that in general, you know, I have a legal background and policymaking is often about trying to suss out, you know, what rules does this particular society agree on and then trying to codify that. So the law makes these choices all the time and then tries to adapt according to changing culture. But in the case of the Moral Machine Project, I don't think that people's choices on that website necessarily reflect what laws they would want in place. I think you would have to ask them a series of different questions in order to get at what their consensus is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I agree, but that has to do more with the artificial nature of, I mean, they're showing some cute icons on a screen. That's almost, so if you, for example, we do a lot of work in virtual reality. And so if you make, if you put those same people into virtual reality, where they have to make that decision, their decision would be very different, I think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with that. That's one aspect. And the other aspect is, it's a different question to ask someone, would you run over the homeless person or the doctor in this scene? Or do you want cars to always run over the homeless people? I see, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let's talk about anthropomorphism. To me, anthropomorphism, if I can pronounce it correctly, is one of the most fascinating phenomena from both the engineering perspective and the psychology perspective, machine learning perspective, and robotics in general. Can you step back and define anthropomorphism, how you see it in general terms in your work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, so anthropomorphism is this tendency that we have to project human-like traits and behaviors and qualities onto non-humans. And we often see it with animals, like we'll project emotions on animals that may or may not actually be there. We often see that we're trying to interpret things according to our own behavior when we get it wrong. But we do it with more than just animals. We do it with objects, you know, teddy bears, we see you know, faces in the headlights of cars, and we do it with robots very, very extremely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You think that can be engineered? Can that be used to enrich an interaction between an AI system and a human?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, for sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And do you see it being used that way often? Like, I don't... I haven't seen, whether it's Alexa or any of the smart speaker systems, often trying to optimize for the anthropomorphization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You said you haven't seen?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I haven't seen. They keep moving away from that. I think they're afraid of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They actually, so I only recently found out, but did you know that Amazon has like a whole team of people who are just there to work on Alexa's personality?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I know that depends on you, my personality. I didn't know. I didn't know that exact thing. But I do know that the how the voice is perceived is worked on a lot, whether if it's a pleasant feeling about the voice. But that has to do more with the texture of the sound and the audio and so on. But personality is more like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like, what's her favorite beer when you ask her? And the personality team is different for every country too. Like there's a different personality for a German Alexa than there is for American Alexa. That said, I think it's very difficult to, you know, really, really harness the anthropomorphism with these voice assistants because the voice interface is still very primitive. And I think that in order to get people to really suspend their disbelief and treat a robot like it's alive, less is sometimes more. You want them to project onto the robot and you want the robot to not disappoint their expectations for how it's going to answer or behave. in order for them to have this kind of illusion. And with Alexa, I don't think we're there yet, or Siri, they're just not good at that. But if you look at some of the more animal-like robots, like the baby seal that they use with the dementia patients, It's a much more simple design. It doesn't try to talk to you. It can't disappoint you in that way. It just makes little movements and sounds and people stroke it and it responds to their touch. And that is like a very effective way to harness people's tendency to kind of treat the robot like a living thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so you bring up some interesting ideas in your paper chapter, I guess, Anthropomorphic Framing Human-Robot Interaction, that I read the last time we scheduled this. Oh my God, that was a long time ago. What are some good and bad cases of anthropomorphism in your perspective? Like, when is it good, when is it bad?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I should start by saying that, you know, while design can really enhance the anthropomorphism, it doesn't take a lot to get people to treat a robot like it's alive. Like people will, over 85% of Roombas have a name, which I don't know the numbers for your regular type of vacuum cleaner, but they're not that high, right? So people will feel bad for the Roomba when it gets stuck. They'll send it in for repair and wanna get the same one back. And that one is not even designed to like make you do that. Um, so I think that some of the cases where it's maybe a little bit concerning that anthropomorphism is happening is when you have something that's supposed to function like a tool and people are using it in the wrong way. And one of the concerns is military robots where, um, so, gosh, 2000 and, Like early 2000s, which is a long time ago, iRobot, the Roomba company, made this robot called the PakBot that was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan with the bomb disposal units that were there. And the soldiers became very emotionally attached to the robots. And that's, you know, fine until a soldier risks his life to save a robot, which you really don't want. But they were treating them like pets, like they would name them, they would give them funerals with gun salutes, they would get really upset and traumatized when the robot got broken. So, In situations where you want a robot to be a tool, in particular when it's supposed to like do a dangerous job that you don't want a person doing, it can be hard when people get emotionally attached to it. That's maybe something that you would want to discourage. Another case for concern is maybe when companies try to leverage the emotional attachment to exploit people. So if it's something that's not in the consumer's interest, trying to like sell them products or services or exploit an emotional connection to keep them paying for a cloud service for a social robot or something like that might be, I think that's a little bit concerning as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the emotional manipulation, which probably happens behind the scenes now with some like social networks and so on, but making it more explicit. What's your favorite robot? Fictional or real? No, real. Real robot, which you have felt a connection with, or not like, not anthropomorphic connection, but I mean like, you sit back and say, damn, this is an impressive system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wow, so two different robots. So the PLEO baby dinosaur robot that is no longer sold that came out in 2007, that one I was very impressed with. But from an anthropomorphic perspective, I was impressed with how much I bonded with it, how much I wanted to believe that it had this inner life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you describe PLEO? Can you describe what it is? How big is it? What can it actually do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Pleo is about the size of a small cat. It had a lot of like motors that gave it this kind of lifelike movement. It had things like touch sensors and an infrared camera. So it had all these like cool little technical features, even though it was a toy. And the thing that really struck me about it was that it could mimic pain and distress really well. So if you held it up by the tail, it had a tilt sensor that told it what direction it was facing and it would start to squirm and cry out. If you hit it too hard, it would start to cry. So it was very impressive in design." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what's the second robot that you were, you said there might've been two that you liked?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the Boston Dynamics robots are just impressive feats of engineering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you met them in person?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I recently got a chance to go visit and I, you know, I was always one of those people who watched the videos and was like, this is super cool, but also it's a product video. Like, I don't know how many times that they had to shoot this to get it right. But visiting them, I, you know, I'm pretty sure that, I was very impressed, let's put it that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in terms of the control, I think that was a transformational moment for me when I met Spot Mini in person. Yeah. Because Okay, maybe this is a psychology experiment, but I anthropomorphized the crap out of it. So I immediately, it was like my best friend, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's really hard for anyone to watch Spot move and not feel like it has agency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, especially the arm on Spot Mini really obviously looks like a head. They say, no, I wouldn't mean it that way, but obviously it looks exactly like that. And so it's almost impossible to not think of it as almost like the baby dinosaur, but slightly larger. And this movement of the, of course, the intelligence is, their whole idea is that it's not supposed to be intelligent. It's a platform on which you build higher intelligence. It's actually really, really dumb. It's just a basic movement platform." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but even dumb robots can, like, we can immediately respond to them in this visceral way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are your thoughts about Sophia the Robot? This kind of mix of some basic natural language processing and basically an art experiment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, an art experiment is a good way to characterize it. I'm much less impressed with Sophia than I am with Boston Dynamics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "She said she likes you. She said she admires you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, she followed me on Twitter at some point, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And she tweets about how much she likes you, so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what does that mean, I have to be nice or?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I don't know. See, I was emotionally manipulating you. No, how do you think of the whole thing that happened with Sophia is quite a large number of people kind of immediately had a connection and thought that maybe we're far more advanced with robotics than we are, or actually didn't even think much. I was surprised how little people cared that they kind of assumed that, well, of course AI can do this. And then if they assume that, I felt they should be more impressed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, people really overestimate where we are. And so when something, I don't even think Sophia was very impressive or is very impressive. I think she's kind of a puppet, to be honest. But yeah, I think people are a little bit influenced by science fiction and pop culture to think that we should be further along than we are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's your favorite robots in movies and fiction?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "WALL-E. WALL-E." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you like about WALL-E? The humor, the cuteness, the perception control systems operating on WALL-E that makes it all work better? Just in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the design of WALL-E the robot, I think that animators figured out, you know, starting in like the 1940s, how to create characters that don't look real, but look like something that's even better than real, that we really respond to and think is really cute. They figured out how to make them move and look in the right way. And WALL-E is just such a great example of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You think eyes, big eyes or big something that's kind of eye-ish. So it's always playing on some aspect of the human face, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Often. Yeah. So big eyes. Well, I think one of the one of the first like animations to really play with this was Bambi and they weren't originally going to do that. They were originally trying to make the deer look as lifelike as possible. Like they brought deer into the studio and had a little zoo there so that the animators could work with them. And then at some point they were like, hmm, if we make really big eyes and like a small nose and like big cheeks, kind of more like a baby face, then people like it even better than if it looks real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the future of things like Alexa in the home has possibility to take advantage of that, to build on that, to create these systems that are better than real, that create a close human connection?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can pretty much guarantee you without having any knowledge that those companies are working on that design behind the scenes. Like I'm pretty sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I totally disagree with you. Really? So that's what I'm interested in. I'd like to build such a company. I know a lot of those folks and they're afraid of that because you don't, how do you make money off of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, but even just like making Alexa look a little bit more interesting than just like a cylinder would do so much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's an interesting thought, but I don't think people are, from Amazon perspective, are looking for that kind of connection. They want you to be addicted to the services provided by Alexa, not to the device. So the device itself, it's felt that you can lose a lot because if you create a connection and then it creates more opportunity for frustration, for negative stuff. than it does for positive stuff, is I think the way they think about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's interesting. I agree that it's very difficult to get right, and you have to get it exactly right, otherwise you wind up with Microsoft's Clippy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, easy now. What's your problem with Clippy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You like Clippy? Is Clippy your friend?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I miss Clippy. I was just, I just, just talked to, we just had this argument and they said, Microsoft CTO, and they said, he said, he's not bringing Clippy back. They're not bringing Clippy back. And that's very disappointing. I think it was, Clippy was the greatest, assistance we've ever built. It was a horrible attempt, of course, but it's the best we've ever done because it was in real attempt to have like a actual personality. And I mean, it was obviously technology was way not there at the time of being able to be a recommender system for assisting you in anything and typing in Word or any kind of other application, but still it was an attempt of personality that was legitimate, which I thought was brave." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Yes. Okay. You know, you've convinced me I'll be slightly less hard on Clippy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I know I have like an army of people behind me who also miss Clippy. Really?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I want to meet these people. Who are these people?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the people who like to hate stuff when it's there and miss it when it's gone. So everyone. So everyone, exactly. All right. So Anki and Jibo, the two companies, two amazing companies, social robotics companies that have recently been closed down. Why do you think it's so hard to create a personal robotics company? So making a business out of essentially something that people would anthropomorphize, have a deep connection with, why is it so hard to make it work? Is the business case not there or what is it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a number of different things. I don't think it's going to be this way forever. I think at this current point in time, it takes so much work to build something that only barely meets people's like minimal expectations because of science fiction and pop culture giving people this idea that we should be further than we already are. Like when people think about a robot assistant in the home, they think about Rosie from the Jetsons or something like that. Anki and Jibo did such a beautiful job with the design and getting that interaction just right. But I think people just wanted more. They wanted more functionality. I think you're also right that the business case isn't really there because there hasn't been a killer application that's useful enough to get people to adopt the technology in great numbers. I think what we did see from the people who did get Jibo is a lot of them became very emotionally attached to it. But that's not, I mean, it's kind of like the Palm Pilot back in the day. Most people are like, why do I need this? Why would I? They don't see how they would benefit from it until they have it or some other company comes in and makes it a little better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like how far away are we, do you think? Like how hard is this problem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a good question. And I think it has a lot to do with people's expectations and those keep shifting depending on what science fiction that is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "popular. But also it's two things. It's people's expectation and people's need for an emotional connection. Yeah. And I believe the need is pretty high." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I don't think we're aware of it. That's right. There's like, I really think this is like the life as we know it. So we've just kind of gotten used to it. I've really I hate to be dark, because I have close friends, but we've gotten used to really never being close to anyone, right? And we're deeply, I believe, okay, this is hypothesis, I think we're deeply lonely, all of us, even those in deep, fulfilling relationships. In fact, what makes those relationships fulfilling, I think, is that they at least tap into that deep loneliness a little bit. but I feel like there's more opportunity to explore that that doesn't interfere with the human relationships you have. It expands more on the, yeah, the rich, deep, unexplored complexity that's all of us weird apes. Okay. I think you're right. Do you think it's possible to fall in love with a robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, totally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's possible to have a long-term committed monogamous relationship with a robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, there are lots of different types of long-term committed monogamous relationships." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think monogamous implies like you're not going to see other humans sexually or... Like, you basically, on Facebook, have to say, I'm in a relationship with this person, this robot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I just don't, like, again, I think this is comparing robots to humans, when I would rather compare them to pets. Like, you get a robot, it fulfills, you know, this loneliness that you have. maybe not the same way as a pet, maybe in a different way that is even supplemental in a different way. But I'm not saying that people won't do this, be like, oh, I wanna marry my robot, or I wanna have a sexual relation, monogamous relationship with my robot. But I don't think that that's the main use case for them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you think that there's still a gap between human and pet? So between a husband and pet, there's a- It's a different relationship. It's an engineering." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's a gap that can be closed through- I think it could be closed someday, but why would we close that? Like, I think it's so boring to think about recreating things that we already have when we could create something that's different. I know you're thinking about the people who like don't have a husband and like, what can we give them?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, yeah, but, but let's, I guess what I'm getting at is, um, maybe not. So like the movie her." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So a better husband." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, maybe better in some ways. I do think that robots are gonna continue to be a different type of relationship, even if we get them very human-looking, or when the voice interactions we have with them feel very natural and human-like. I think there's still gonna be differences, and there were in that movie, too, towards the end. It kind of goes off the rails." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's just a movie. So your intuition is that Because you kind of said two things, right? So one is, why would you want to basically replicate the husband, right? And the other is kind of implying that it's kind of hard to do. So like, anytime you try, you might build something very impressive, but it'll be different. I guess my question is about human nature. It's like, how hard is it to satisfy that role of the husband? So removing any of the sexual stuff aside, it's more like the mystery, the tension, the dance of relationships you think with robots that's difficult to build. What's your intuition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it also depends on are we talking about robots now in 50 years in like indefinite amount of time. I'm thinking like five or 10 years. Five or 10 years. I think that robots at best will be like more similar to the relationship we have with our pets than relationship that we have with other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I got it, so what do you think it takes to build a system that exhibits greater and greater levels of intelligence, like impresses us with its intelligence? You know, Arumba, so you talk about anthropomorphization, that doesn't, I think intelligence is not required. In fact, intelligence probably gets in the way sometimes, like you mentioned, but, what do you think it takes to create a system where we sense that it has a human-level intelligence? Probably something conversational, human-level intelligence. How hard do you think that problem is? It'd be interesting to sort of hear your perspective, not just purely, I talk to a lot of people, how hard is the conversational agents? How hard is it to pass a Turing test? But my sense is it's, easier than just solving, it's easier than solving the pure natural language processing problem because I feel like you can cheat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah. So how hard is it to pass the Turing test in your view?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think, again, it's all about expectation management. If you set up people's expectations to think that they're communicating with, what was it, a 13-year-old boy from the Ukraine? Yeah, that's right, yeah. Then they're not gonna expect perfect English. They're not gonna expect perfect understanding of concepts or even being on the same wavelength in terms of conversation flow. So it's much easier to pass in that case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think, You kind of alluded this too with audio. Do you think it needs to have a body?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that we definitely have, so we treat physical things with more social agency, because we're very physical creatures. I think a body can be useful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it get in the way? Is there a negative aspects like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there can be. So if you're trying to create a body that's too similar to something that people are familiar with, like I have this robot cat at home that Hasbro makes and it's very disturbing to watch because I'm constantly assuming that it's going to move like a real cat and it doesn't because it's like a $100 piece of technology. So it's very like disappointing and it's very hard to treat it like it's alive. So you can get a lot wrong with the body too, but you can also use tricks, same as, you know, the expectation management of the 13 year old boy from the Ukraine. If you pick an animal that people aren't intimately familiar with, like the baby dinosaur, like the baby seal that people have never actually held in their arms, you can get away with much more because they don't have these preformed expectations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I remember you having to get a TED Talk or something that clicked for me that nobody actually knows what a dinosaur looks like. So you can actually get away with a lot more. That was great. Do you think it needs, so what do you think about consciousness and mortality being displayed in a robot? So not actually, having consciousness, but having these kind of human elements that are much more than just the interaction, much more than just, like you mentioned, with a dinosaur moving kind of in interesting ways, but really being worried about its own death. and really acting as if it's aware and self-aware and identity. Have you seen that done in robotics? What do you think about doing that? Is that a powerful, good thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think it can be a design tool that you can use for different purposes. So I can't say whether it's inherently good or bad, but I do think it can be a powerful tool. The fact that the, you know, pleo mimics distress when you quote unquote hurt it is a really powerful tool to get people to engage with it in a certain way. I had a research partner that I did some of the empathy work with named Pulash Nandi and he had built a robot for himself that had like a lifespan and that would stop working after a certain amount of time just because he was interested in like whether he himself would treat it differently. We know from Tamagotchis, those little games that we used to have that were extremely primitive, that people respond to this idea of mortality. And you can get people to do a lot with little design tricks like that. Now, whether it's a good thing depends on what you're trying to get them to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have a deeper relationship, have a deeper connection. Sorry, not a relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If it's for their own benefit, that sounds great. But you could do that for a lot of other reasons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see, so what kind of stuff are you worried about? So is it mostly about manipulation of your emotions for like advertisements and so on, things like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or data collection, or I mean, you could think of governments misusing this to extract information from people. It's, you know, just like any other technological tool, it just raises a lot of questions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's, if you look at Facebook, if you look at Twitter and social networks, there's a lot of concern of data collection now. What's from the legal perspective or in general, how do we prevent the violation of sort of these companies crossing a line? It's a gray area, but crossing a line they shouldn't in terms of manipulating, like we're talking about and manipulating our emotion, manipulating our behavior using, tactics that are not so savory." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's really difficult because we are starting to create technology that relies on data collection to provide functionality and there's not a lot of incentive even on the consumer side to curb that because the other problem is that the harms aren't tangible. They're not really apparent to a lot of people because they kind of trickle down on a societal level and then suddenly we're living in like 1984. Um, which, you know, sounds extreme, but that book was very prescient. And I'm not worried about, you know, these systems. I, you know, I, I have, you know, Amazon's Echo at home and, you know, tell Alexa all sorts of stuff and, And it helps me because, you know, Alexa knows what, you know, brand of diaper we use. And so I can just easily order it again. So I don't have any incentive to like ask a lawmaker to curb that. But when I think about that data then being used against, you know, low income people to target them for, you know, scammy loans or education programs, that's then a societal effect that I think is very severe and, you know, legislators should be thinking about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, the gray area is the removing ourselves from consideration of like, of explicitly defining objectives and more saying, well, we want to maximize engagement in our social network. And then just, because you're not actually doing a bad thing, it makes sense. You want people to keep a conversation going, to have more conversations, to keep coming back again and again to have conversations. And whatever happens after that, you're kind of not exactly directly responsible. you're only indirectly responsible. So I think it's a really hard problem. Are you optimistic about us ever being able to solve it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You mean the problem of capitalism? Because the problem is that the companies are acting in the company's interests and not in people's interests. And when those interests are aligned, that's great. But the completely free market doesn't seem to work because of this information asymmetry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's hard to know how to, so say you were trying to do the right thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not obvious for these companies what the good thing for society is to do. Like I don't think they sit there with, I don't know, with a glass of wine and a cat, like petting a cat, evil cat. And there's two decisions and one of them is good for society. One is good for the profit and they choose the profit. I think they actually, there's a lot of money to be made by doing the right thing for society. Like that, because Google, Facebook have so much cash that they actually, especially Facebook, would significantly benefit from making decisions that are good for society. It's good for their brand. But I don't know if they know what's good for society. I don't think we know what's good for society in terms of how we manage the conversation on Twitter or how we design, we're talking about robots. Should we emotionally manipulate you into having a deep connection with Alexa or not? Do you have optimism that we'll be able to solve some of these questions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm going to say something that's controversial, like in my circles, which is that I don't think that companies who are reaching out to ethicists and trying to create interdisciplinary ethics boards, I don't think that that's totally just trying to whitewash the problem. and so that they look like they've done something. I think that a lot of companies actually do, like you say, care about what the right answer is. They don't know what that is, and they're trying to find people to help them find them. Not in every case, but I think, you know, it's much too easy to just vilify the companies as, like you say, sitting there with their cat going, ha, ha, ha, $1 million. That's not what happens. A lot of people are well-meaning, even within companies. I think that what we do absolutely need is more interdisciplinarity, both within companies, but also within the policymaking space, because we're, you know, we've hurtled into the world where technological progress is much faster. It seems much faster than it was, and things are getting very complex. And you need people who understand the technology, but also people who understand what the societal implications are and people who are thinking about this in a more systematic way to be talking to each other. There's no other solution, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've also done work on intellectual property. So if you look at the algorithms that these companies are using, like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, so on, I mean, that's kind of, those are mostly secretive, the recommender systems behind these algorithms. Do you think about IP and the transparency of algorithms like this, like what the responsibility of these companies to open source the algorithms or at least reveal to the public how these algorithms work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I personally don't work on that. There are a lot of people who do though, and there are a lot of people calling for transparency. In fact, Europe's even trying to legislate transparency, maybe they even have at this point, where like if an algorithmic system makes some sort of decision that affects someone's life, that you need to be able to see how that decision was made. It's a tricky balance because obviously companies need to have some sort of competitive advantage and you can't take all of that away or you stifle innovation. But yeah, for some of the ways that these systems are already being used, I think it is pretty important that people understand how they work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are your thoughts in general on intellectual property in this weird age of software, AI, robotics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ugh, that is broken. I mean, the system is just broken." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you describe, I actually, I don't even know what intellectual property is in the space of software, what it means to, I mean, so I believe I have a patent on a piece of software from my PhD. You believe? You don't know? No, we went through a whole process. Yeah, I do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You get the spam emails like, we'll frame your patent for you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's much like a thesis. But that's useless, right? Or not? Where does IP stand in this age? What's the right way to do it? What's the right way to protect and own ideas when it's just code and this mishmash of... something that feels much softer than a piece of machinery. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's hard because, you know, there are different types of intellectual property and they're kind of these blunt instruments. They're like, it's like patent law is like a wrench. Like it works really well for an industry like the pharmaceutical industry. But when you try and apply it to something else, it's like. I don't know, I'll just like hit this thing with a wrench and hope it works. So software, you know, software you have a couple different options. Software, like any code that's written down in some tangible form is automatically copyrighted. So you have that protection, but that doesn't do much because if someone takes the basic idea that the code is executing and just does it in a slightly different way, they can get around the copyright. So that's not a lot of protection. Then you can patent software, but that's kind of, I mean, Getting a patent costs, I don't know if you remember what yours cost or like, was it through an institution?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it was through a university. That's why they, it was insane. There were so many lawyers, so many meetings. It made me feel like it must've been hundreds of thousands of dollars. It must've been something crazy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's insane, the cost of getting a patent. And so this idea of protecting the inventor in their own garage who came up with a great idea is kind of, that's the thing of the past. It's all just companies trying to protect things and it costs a lot of money. And then with code, it's oftentimes like, you know, by the time the patent is issued, which can take like five years, you know, probably your code is obsolete at that point. So it's, it's a very, again, a very blunt instrument that doesn't work well for that industry. And so, you know, at this point we should really have something better, but we don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you like open source? Yeah. Is open source good for society? You think all of us should open source code?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so at the Media Lab at MIT, we have an open source default because what we've noticed is that people will come in, they'll write some code and they'll be like, how do I protect this? And we're like, that's not your problem right now. Your problem isn't that someone's going to steal your project. Your problem is getting people to use it at all. There's so much stuff out there. We don't even know if you're going to get traction for your work. And so open sourcing can sometimes help get people's work out there, but ensure that they get attribution for it, for the work that they've done. So I'm a fan of it in a lot of contexts. Obviously, it's not like a one-size-fits-all solution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what I gleaned from your Twitter is you're a mom. I saw a quote, a reference to baby bot. What have you learned about robotics and AI from raising a human baby bot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think that my child has made it more apparent to me that the systems we're currently creating aren't like human intelligence. Like there's not a lot to compare there. It's just he has learned and developed in such a different way than a lot of the AI systems we're creating that that's not really interesting to me to compare. But what is interesting to me is how these systems are going to shape the world that he grows up in. And so I'm like even more concerned about kind of the societal effects of developing systems that, you know, rely on massive amounts of data collection, for example." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is he gonna be allowed to use like Facebook or?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Facebook is over. Kids don't use that anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Snapchat? What do they use, Instagram?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Snapchat's over too, I don't know. I just heard that TikTok is over, which I've never even seen, so I don't know. No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're old, we don't know. I'm gonna start gaming and streaming my gameplay. So what do you see as the future of personal robotics, social robotics, interaction with other robots. What are you excited about, if you were to sort of philosophize about what might happen in the next five, 10 years, that would be cool to see?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I really hope that we get kind of a home robot that makes it, that's a social robot and not just Alexa. I really love the Anki products. I thought Jibo had some really great aspects. So I'm hoping that a company cracks that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Me too. So Kate, it was wonderful talking to you today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "The biggest challenges I think are not in running them, it's in changing them. and that idea to know what you should change and what you should not change. Actually, people don't always ask that question. What should endure, even if it has to be modernized, but what should endure? And then I found the hardest part was changing how work got done at such a big company." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was the parts that you thought should endure? The core of the company that was beautiful and powerful and could persist through time, that should persist through time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd be interested, do you have a perception of what you think it would be?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do I have a perception? Well, I'm a romantic for history of long-running companies, so there's kind of a tradition as a AI person. To me, IBM has some epic sort of research accomplishments where you show off Deep Blue and Watson. just impressive big moonshot challenges and accomplishing those. But that's, I think, that's probably a small part of what IBM is. That's mostly like the sexy public-facing part." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, well, certainly the research part itself, right, is over 3,000. So it's not that small. That's a pretty big research group. But the part that should endure ends up being, you know, a company that does things that are essential to the world, meaning, The who, you know, think back, you said you're romantic. It was the 30s, the social security system. It was putting the man on the moon. It was, you know, to this day, banks don't run, you know, railroads don't run. That is at its core, it's doing mission critical work. And so that part I think is at its core, it's a business to business company. and at its core it's about doing things that are really important to the world becoming running and being better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Running the infrastructure of the world, so doing it at scale, doing it reliably." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, secure in this world, that's like everything. And in fact, when I started, I almost felt people were looking for what that was. And together, we sort of, in a word, was to be essential. And the reason I love that word was, I can't call myself essential. You have to determine I am, right? So it was to be essential, even though some of what we did is exactly what you said, it's below the surface. So many people, because people say to me, well, what does IBM do now, right? And over the years, it's changed so much. And today, it's really a software and consulting company. Consulting is a third of it. And the software is all hybrid cloud and AI. That would not have been true, as you well know, back even two decades ago, right? So it changes, but I think at its core, it's that be essential. You said moonshot, can't all be moonshots, because moonshots don't always work, but mission critical work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, given the size though, when you started running it, did you feel the sort of thing that people usually associate with size, which is bureaucracy and maybe the aspect of size that hinder progress or hinder pivoting, did you feel that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You would. for lots of reasons. I think when you're a big company, sometimes people think of process as the client themselves. I always say to people, your process is not your customer. There is a real customer here that you exist for. And that's really easy to fall into because people are a master to this process. And that's not right. And when you're big, the other thing and boy, there's a premium on it is speed, right? That in our industry, you got to be fast and go back like when I took over and it was 2012. You know, we had a lot of catching up to do and a lot of things to do and it was moving so fast and as you well know, all those trends were happening at once, which made them go even faster. And so pretty unprecedented actually for that many trends to be at one time. And I used to say to people, go faster, go faster, go faster. And honestly, I've tired them out. I mean, it kind of dawned on me that when you're that big, that's a really valuable lesson. And it taught me like the how's perhaps more important than the what. Because if I didn't do something to change how work was done, like change those processes or give them new tools, help them with skills. They couldn't, they're just like, do the same thing faster. If someone tells you, you know, you've got hiking boots and they're like, no, go run a marathon. You're like, I can't do it in those boots. But so you've got to do something. And at first, I think the ways for big companies, I would call them like blunt clubs. You do what everyone does, you reduce layers. Because if you reduce layers, decisions go faster. There's just, it's math. If there's less decision points, things go faster. you do the blunt club thing. And then after that, though, it did lead me down a, you know, a long journey of they sound like buzzwords, but if you really do them at scale, they're hard around things like agile. And because you've really got to change the way work gets done. And we ended up training, God, hundreds of thousands of people on that stuff to really change it. On how to do it correctly. On how to do it correctly, that's right, versus, because everybody talks about it, but the idea that you would really have small, multidisciplinary teams work from the outside in, set those sort of interim steps, you know, take the feedback pivot, and then do it on not just products, do it on lots of things, was, it's hard to do at scale. People always say, oh, I got this agile group over here, 40 people. but not when you're a couple hundred thousand people. You gotta get a lot of people to work that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The blonde club thing you're talking about. So flatten the organization as much as possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, I probably reduced the layers of management by half. And so that has lots of benefits, right? Time to a decision, more autonomy to people, and then the idea of faster clarity of where you're going, because you're not just filtered through so many different layers. And I think it's the kind of thing a lot of companies, if you're big, have to just keep going through. It's kind of like grass grows, you know, it just comes back and you've got to go back down and work on it. So it's a natural thing. But I hear so many people talk about it, Lex, this idea of like, OK, well, who makes a decision? You've often heard nobody can say yes and everybody can say no. And that's actually what you're trying to get out of a system like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I mean, your book in general, the way you lead is very much about we and us, you know, the power of we. But is there times when a leader has to step in and be almost autocratic, take control, and make hard, unpopular decisions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I am sure you know the answer to that. And it is, of course, yes. It's just fun to hear you say it. It's fun to say it. Yeah. You know, because I actually, A, there's a leader for a time, but then there's a leader for a situation, right? I've had to do plenty of unpopular things. I think anytime you have to run a company that endures a century and has to endure another century, you will do unpopular things. You have no choice. And I often felt I had to sacrifice things for the long term. And whether that would have been really difficult things like job changes or reductions, or whether it would be things like, hey, we're gonna change the way we do our semiconductors, and a whole different philosophy. you have no choice. I mean, and in times of crisis as well, you gotta be, I always said it's not a popularity contest. So that's, none of these jobs are popularity contests. I don't care if your company's got one person or half a million, they're not popularity contests." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But psychologically, is it difficult to just sort of step in as a new CEO and to, because you're fighting against tradition, against all these people that act like experts of their thing, and they are experts of their thing, to step in and say, we have to do it differently." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "when you gotta change a company, it's really tempting to say throw everything else out, back to that what must endure, right? But I know when I took over to start, I knew how much had to change. The more I got into it, I could see, wow, a lot more had to change, right? Because we needed a platform. We'd always done our best when we had a platform, a technology platform. You will go back in time and you'll think of the mainframe systems. You'll think of the PC. You'll think of perhaps middleware. You could even call services a platform. we needed a platform, the next platform here to be there. Skills, when I took over, if I, we inventoried who had modern skills for the future, it was two out of 10 people for the future. Not that they didn't have relevant skills today, but for the future, two out of 10, yikes, that's a big problem, right? The speed at which things were getting done that has to, so you got so much to do and you say, is that a scary thing? Yes. Do you have to sometimes dictate? Yes, but I did find And it is worth it. I know every big company I know, my good friend that runs General Motors, she's had to change. Go back to what is them, them, you know? And when you do that, that back to be essential, we kind of started with, hey, it's be essential. Then the next thing I did with the team was say, okay, now this means new era of computing, new buyers are out there, and hey, we better have new skills. Okay, now the next thing, how do you operationalize it? And it just takes some time. But you can engineer that and get people to build belief." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And for the skills, that means hiring and it means training?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Oh boy, that's a long... Skills is a really long topic in and of itself. I try to put my view in it. I learned a lot and I changed my view on this a lot. I'll go back at my very beginning, say 40 years ago. I would have said, At that point, okay, I was always in a hurry. I was interviewing to hire people. I don't know how you hire people. 40 years ago, I'd be like, okay, I gotta fit in these interviews. I gotta hire someone to get this done. Okay, then time would go on. I'm like, oh, that's not very good. In fact, someone once said to me, hey, hire the best people to work for you and your job gets a lot easier. Okay, I should spend more time on this topic, spend more time on it. Then it was like, okay, hire experts. Okay, hired a lot of experts over my life. And then I was really like an epiphany, and it really happened over my tenure running the company and having to change skills. If someone's an expert at something and has just done that for 30 years, the odds of them really wanting to change a lot are pretty low. And when you're in a really dynamic industry, that's a problem. And so, okay, those are kind of my first revelation on this. And then when I look to hiring, I can remember when I started my job, we needed cyber people. And I go out there and I look. Unemployment in the US was almost 10%. Can't find them. Okay, it's 10% and I can't find the people. Okay, what's the issue? Okay, they're not teaching the right things. That led me down a path and it was serendipity that I happened to do a review of corporate social responsibility. We had this one little fledgling school in a low-income area and high school with a community college, we gave them internships, direction on curriculum. Lo and behold, we could hire these kids. I said, hmm, this is not CSR. I just found a new talent pool, which takes me to now what I'm doing in my post-retirement. I'm like, this idea that don't hire just for a college degree, we had 99% of our hires were college and PhDs, and I'm all for it. So you're very, don't, don't. I'm deeply offended. No, you should not be. And I, you know, I'm vice chair at Northwestern, one of the vice chairs. But I said, I just really like aptitude does not equal access. These people didn't have access, but they had aptitude. It changed my whole view to skills first. And so now for hiring, that's kind of a long story to tell you. The number one thing I would hire for now is somebody's willingness to learn. You know, and you can test, you can try different ways, but their curiosity and willingness to learn, hands down, I will take that trait over anything else they have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the interview process, the questions you ask. Changed, everything changed. The kind of things you talk to them about is try to get at how curious they are about the work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Then you can do testing. I mean, we triangulated around it lots of ways. And now look, at the heart of it, what it would do is change. You don't think of buying skills, you think of building skills. And when you think that way, with so many people, and I think, this country, many developed countries being disenfranchised, you got to bring them back into the workforce somehow. And they got to get some kind of contemporary skills. And if you took that approach, you can bring them back into the workforce." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think some interesting combination of humility and passion. Because like you said, experts sometimes lack humility if they call themselves an expert for a few too many years. So you have to have that beginner's mind and a passion to be able to aggressively constantly be a beginner at everything and learn and learn and learn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I saw it firsthand when we were beginning this path, you know, down the cloud and AI. And we said, and people would say, oh, IBM, you know, it's existential. They've got to change and all these things. And, and I did hire a lot of people from outside, very willing to learn new things. Come on in, come on in. And I sometimes say shiny objects, trained in shiny objects, come on in. But I saw something, it was another one of these, and you're not a shiny object, I'm not saying that. But I learned something. Okay, some of them did fantastic. And others, they're like, well, let me school you on everything. But they didn't realize we did really mission critical work, and that'd break a bank. I mean, they would not understand the certain kind of security and the auditability and everything they had to go on. And then I watched IBM people say, oh, I actually could learn something. Some were like, yeah, okay, I don't know how to do that. That's a really good thing I could learn. And in the end, there was not like one group was a winner and one was a loser. The winners were the people who were willing to learn from each other. I mean, it was to me, it was very stark example of that point. And I saw it firsthand. So that's why I'm so committed to this idea about skills first. And that's how people should be hired, promoted, paid, you name it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the AI in general, it seems like nobody really understands now what the future will look like. We're all trying to figure it out. So like what IBM will look like in 50 years in relation to the software business, to AI is unknown. What Google will look like, what all these companies. we're trying to figure it out, and that means constantly learning, taking risks, all of those things. And nobody's really skilled in AI. It's like, because you have to keep evolving, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're absolutely right. That's right. Couldn't agree more with you on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wrote in the book, speaking of hiring, quote, my drive for perfection often meant I only focused on what needed to change without acknowledging the positive. This could keep people from trusting themselves. It could take me a while to learn that just because I could point something out didn't mean I should. I still spotted errors, but I became more deliberate about what I mentioned and sent back to get fixed. I also tried to curtail my tendency to micromanage and let people execute. I had to stop assuming my way was the best or only way. I was learning that giving other people control builds their confidence and that constantly trying to control people destroys it. So what's the right balance between showing the way and helping people find the way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is a good question, because a really flip answer would be, as it gets bigger, you have no choice but to just, you can't do it. You have to tell or show. I mean, you've got to let people find their way, because it's so big, you can't, right? That's an obvious answer. Scope of work. Bigger it gets, OK, I've got to let more stuff go. I have always believed that a leader's job is to do as well, and I think there's a few areas that are really important that you always do. Now, it doesn't mean you're showing. When it has to do with values and value-based decisions, I think it's really important to constantly show people that you walk your talk on that kind of thing is super important. And I actually think it's a struggle young companies have because the values aren't deeply rooted. And when the storm comes, it's easy to uproot. And so I always felt like when it was that time, I showed it. I got taught that so young at IBM and even General Motors. In fact, I do write about that in the book. First time I was a manager, I had a gentleman telling dirty jokes, and not to me, but to other people, and it really offended people, and some of the women. This is the very early 80s. They came, said something, I talked to my boss, I'm a first time manager, and he was unequivocal with what I should do. He said, and this was a top performer, it stops immediately or you fire him. So there are a few areas like that that I actually think you have to always continue to role model and show, right? That to me isn't the kind that, like, when do you let go of stuff, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So- The values and relationships with clients." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, whatever you're in service of. And the other thing was, I really felt it was really important to role model learning, right? So, you know, I can remember when we started down the journey, And we went on to this thing called the Think Academy, IBM's longtime motto had been Think. And we said, OK, I'm going to make the first Friday of every month compulsory education. And, OK, I mean everybody, like everybody, I don't care what your job is, OK? When the whole company has to transform, everybody's got to have some skin in this game and understand it. I taught the first hour of every month for four years. Now, okay, I had to learn something, but it made me learn. But I was like, okay, if I can teach this, you can do it, right? I mean, you know, that kind of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it was a compulsory Thursday night education for you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm a little bit better prepared than that, but yes, you're so right, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you prepare?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. That's another habit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So personality-wise, you like to prepare?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but there's roots in that go back deeply. Deeply, deeply, deeply. And I think it's an interesting reason. So why do? You're a preparer, my friend. Yes, you are. You prepare for your interviews." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure. The rest you wing? Yeah, I wing most of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But that's okay. I mean, you don't have to prepare everything. I don't prepare everything either." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but I unfortunately wing stuff. I save it to last minute. I push everything. I'm always almost late, and I don't know why that is. I mean, there's some deep psychological thing we should probably investigate, but it's probably the anxiety brings out the performance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That can be. That's very true with some people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, so I'm a programmer and engineer at heart, and so programmers famously overestimate, or underestimate, sorry, how long something's going to take. And so I just, everything, I always underestimate. It's almost as if I want to feel this chaos, of anxiety of a deadline or something like this. Otherwise, I'll be lazy sitting on a beach with a pina colada and relaxing. I don't know. So we have to know ourselves, but for you, you like to prepare." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it came from a few different places. I mean, one would have been as a kid, I think, I was not a memorizer, and my brother is brilliant. He can read it once, boom, done. And so I always wanted to understand how something happened. It didn't matter what it was I was doing. Whether it was algebra, theorems, I always wanted, don't give me the answer, don't give me the answer. I wanna figure it out, figure it out. So I could reproduce it again and didn't have to memorize. So it started with that. And then over time, okay, so I was in university in the 70s. When I was in engineering school, I was the only woman. I meet people still to this day, and they're like, oh, I remember you. I'm like, yeah, sorry, I don't remember you. There were 30 of you, one of me. And I think you already get that feeling of, OK, I better really study hard, because whatever I say is going to be remembered in this class, good or bad. And it started there. So in some ways, I did it for two reasons. Early on, I think it was a shield for confidence. The more I studied. The more prepared I was, the more confident. That's probably still true to this day. The second reason I did it evolved over time and became different to prepare. If I was really prepared, then when we're in the moment, I can really listen to you. See, because I don't have to be doing all this stuff on the fly in my head. And I could actually take things I know and maybe help the situation. So it really became a way that I could be present and in the moment. I think it's something a lot of people that in the moment, I learned it from my husband. He doesn't prepare by the way at all, so that's not it. But I watch the in the moment part. No, no, no, and I'm not gonna change that. As he says, he's a type C, I'm an A, okay? That's how love works, yeah. And I have been married 43 years and that seems to work. But that idea that you could be in the moment with people is a really important thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the preparation gives you the freedom to really be present. So just to linger on, you mentioned your brother, and it seems like in the book that you really had to work hard when you studied to sort of, given that you weren't good at memorization, you really, truly, deeply wanted to understand the stuff, and you put in the hard work, and that seems to persist throughout your career. So hard work is often associated with, sort of has negative associations, maybe with burnout, with dissatisfaction, Is there some aspect of hard work at the core of who you are that led to happiness for you? Did you enjoy it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I enjoyed it. So I'll be the first. And I'm really careful to say that to people because I don't think everyone should associate, gee, to do what you did, you have to, there's only one route there, right? And that's just not true. And I do it because I like it. In fact, I'm careful. And as time goes on, you have to be careful as more and more people watch you. Whether you like it, you're a role model or not. You are a role model for people. Whether you know it, like it, want it, does not matter. I learned that the hard way. And I would have to say to people, hey, just because I do this does not mean I do it for these reasons, right? So be really explicit. And I'd come to believe, usually when people say the word power, I don't know, do you have a positive or negative notion when I say the word power? We'll just do it. Probably negative one, yeah. for some stereotype or some view that somebody's abused it in some way. You can read the newspaper, somebody's doing something. Personal people, like I'll ask people, do you want power? And they're like, oh no, I'd rather do good. And I think the irony is you need power to do good. And so that sort of led me down to, as I thought about my own life, right? Because it starts in a, Like many of us, you know, you don't have a lot, but you don't know that because you're like everybody else around you at that time. And on one end, tragedy, right? My father leaves my mother homeless, no money, no food, nothing, four kids. She's never worked a day in her life outside of a home. And the irony of that here, I would end up as the ninth CEO of one of America's iconic companies. And now I co-chair this Group 110. And that journey, I said, the biggest thing I learned was you could do really hard, meaningful things in a positive way. So now you ask me about why do I work so hard? I ended up writing the book in three pieces for this reason. When you really think of your life and power, I thought it kind of fell like a pebble in water. Like there's a ring about, you really care about yourself and like the power of yourself, power of me. There's a time it transcends to that you are working within for others and another moment when it becomes like about society. So my hard work, I'd ask you, one day sit really hard and think about when you close your eyes, who do you see from your early life, right? And what did you learn? And maybe it's not that hard for you. I mean, it was, it's funny the things then, If I really looked at it, it's no surprise what I do today. And that hard work part, my great-grandma, as you and I were comparing notes on Russia, right? And never spoke English, spoke Russian, came here to this country, was a cleaning person at the Wrigley Building in Chicago. Yet, if she hadn't saved every dime she made, my mother wouldn't have a home and wouldn't have had a car, right? What did I learn from that? Hard work. In fact, actually, when I went to college, she's like, you know, you really should be on a farm. You're so big and strong. You know, that was her view. And then my grandmother, another tragic life. What did she do though? And think how long, that's in the 40s, the 50s, she made lampshades. And she taught me how to sew, right? So I could sew clothes when we couldn't afford them. But my memory of my grandma is working seven days a week, sewing lampshades. And then here comes my mom and her situation, who climbs her way out of it. So I associate that with, well, strong women, by the way, all strong women, and I associate hard work with how you are sure you can always take care of yourself. And so I think that the roots go way back there, and they were always teaching something, right? My great-grandma was teaching me how to cook, how to work a farm, even though I didn't need to be on a farm. My grandma taught me, you know, here's how to sew, here's how to run a business. And then my mother would teach us that, look, with just a little bit of education, look at the difference it could make, right? So anyways, that's a long answer to, I think that hard work thing is really deeply rooted from that background." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it gives you a way out from hard times." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you know, I think I've seen you on other podcasts say, I thought I did, do you want a plan B? Didn't you say no, you would not like a plan B? Yeah, I don't want a plan B. Because you're like, I would prefer my back up against, am I remembering? You have a story like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You seem to like, at least certain moments in your life seem to do well in desperate times." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "True enough. True enough, that's true. I learned that very well. But I also think that maybe this isn't the same kind of plan B. I think of it as, like I was taught, always be able to take care of yourself. Don't have to rely on someone else. And I think that to me, so that's my plan B. I can take care of myself. And it's even after what I lived through with my father, I felt, well, this is at a bar for bad. After this, nothing's bad, and it's a very freeing thought." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The being able to take care of yourself, is that, you mean practically or do you mean just a self-belief that I'll figure it out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll figure it out and practically both, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you wrote, quote, I vividly remember the last two weeks of my freshman year when I only had 25 cents left. I put the quarter in a clear plastic box on my desk and just stared at it. This is it, I thought, no more money. So do you think there's some aspect of that financial stress, even desperation, just being hungry, does that play a role in that drive that led to your success to be the CEO of one of the great companies ever?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a really interesting question because I was just talking to another colleague who's CEO of another great American company this weekend and he mentioned to me about all this adversity and I said to him, I said, do you think Part of your success is because you had bad stuff happen. And he said yes, you know? And so I guess I'd be lying if I didn't say, I don't think you have to have tragedy, but it does teach you like one really important thing is that there is always a way forward, always, and it's in your control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think there's probably wisdom for mentorship there, or whether you're a parent or a mentor, that easy times don't result in growth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I've heard a lot of my friends, and they worry, they say, gee, my kids have never had bad times. And so, what happens here? So, I don't know, is it required? And why you end up, not required, but it sure doesn't hurt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You had this good line about advice you were given, that growth and comfort never coexist. Growth and comfort never coexist. And you have to get used to that thought." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If someone said that they think of me like one of the more profound sort of lessons I had, and the irony is, it's from my husband, which is even more, you know, funny, actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm glad you're able to, you could just steal it. I mean, you don't have to give him credit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I have, I have, shamelessly, as he'll tell you. Okay, so the story behind growth and comfort never coexist, but honestly, I think it's been a really freeing thought for me, and it's helped me immensely since mid-career, And as I write about it in the book, I'm mid-career and I've been running a pretty big business actually. And the fella I work for is gonna get a new job. He's gonna get promoted. He calls me and he says, hey, you're gonna get my job. I really want you to have it. And I said to him, no way. I said, I'm not ready for that job. I got a lot more things I got to learn. That is like a huge job. Around the world, every product line, development, you name it, every function, I can't do it. He looked at me, he says, well, I think you should go to the interview. I went to the interview the next day, blah, blah, blah. Guy says to me, looks at me and he says, I want to offer you that job. And I said, I would like to think about it. I said, I want to go home and talk to my husband about it. Kind of looked at me, okay. I went home, my husband is sitting there and he says to me, I went on and on about the story, et cetera. And he says, do you think a man would have answered it that way? And I said, He says, I know you. He's like, six months, you're going to be bored. And all you can think of is what you don't know. And he said, I know these other people. You have way more skill than them, and they think they could do it. And he's like, why? And for me, it internalized this feeling that And I am going to say something that's a bit stereotyped, that it resonates with many, many women, and I'll ask you if it does after, is that they're the most harsh critic of themselves. And so this idea that I won't grow unless I can feel uncomfortable doesn't mean I always have to show it, by the way. So that's why I meant growth and comfort can never coexist. I was like, he's exactly right. Now, the end of that story is I went in and I took the job. When I went back to the man who was really my mentor looking out for me, and he looked at me and he said, don't ever do that again. And I said, I understand. Because it was okay to be uncomfortable. I didn't have to use it. Now, I would take stock of the things I can do, right, and really think, or I look for times to be uncomfortable, because I know if I am nervous, like, I don't know if you're nervous to meet me, we never met in real person. No, 100." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm still terrified." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, you're not. But then you're, it means you're learning something, right? Holding it together. So, that to me matters." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it's interesting, though, maybe you could speak to that, the sort of the self-critical thing inside your brain, because I think, sometimes it's talked about that women have that. But I have that, definitely. And I think that's not just solely a property of women in the workplace. But I also wanna sort of push back on the idea that that's a bad thing that you should silence. Because I think that anxiety, that leads to growth also. It's like this discomfort. There's this weird balance you have to have between that self-critical engine and confidence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that's a good point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You have to kind of dance, because if you're super confident, people will value you higher. That's important. But if you're way too confident, maybe in the short term, you'll gain, but in the long term, you won't grow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very good point. So I can't really disagree with that. And to me, even when I took on jobs, I always felt people say, well, what point are you confident enough? And I came to sort of believe, again, a theme of my beliefs, that if I was willing to ask lots of questions and understood enough, that's all I needed to know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you about your husband a little bit. So you write in the book. You're writing the book. He's just jumping around. Like I said, I'm a bit of a romantic. So how did you meet your husband?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I met my husband when I was 19 years old. So I was a young kid. And I met him when I had a General Motors scholarship. So I was at Northwestern University through my first two years, had a lot of loans, financial aid, and a professor said, hey, you should sign up for this interview. They're looking to bring forward diverse candidates through their management track. Now these programs don't exist anymore like that. They will pay your tuition, your room and board, your expenses, Northwestern, other Ivy League school, these very expensive schools. I think you'd be a good fit. I am eternally thankful for that advice. I went and I interviewed. I actually got the scholarship. I mean, without it, I'd have graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. So part of that was in the summer, I had to work in Detroit. I lived a little room by a cement plant. Not theirs, but I mean, that's all I could afford. Very romantic. Very, very romantic. And the person who owned the house said, you know, hey, I'm having a party. You're not invited. I'm going to fix you up with someone tonight. And that turned out to be my husband. And so it was a blind date is how we very first met. And then it was over." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The story was written. If it's okay, just zoom out to, you mentioned power and good power a few times. So if we can just even talk about it. Your book is called Good Power, Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World. What is good power? What's the essence of good power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the essence of it would be doing something hard or meaningful, but in a positive way. I would also tell you, I hope one day I'm remembered for how I did things, not just for what I did. I think that could almost be more important. And I think it's a choice we can all make. So the essence to me of good power, if I had to contrast good to bad, let's say, would be that first off, you have to embrace and navigate tension. This is the world we live in. And by embracing tension, not running from it, You would bridge divides that unites people, not divides them. It's a hard thing to do, but you can do it. You do it with respect, which is the opposite of fear. A lot of people think the way to get things done is fear. And then the third thing would be, you gotta celebrate some progress versus perfection. Because I also think that's what stops a lot of things from happening. Because if you go for whatever your definition of perfect is, it's either polarization or paralyzation. I mean, something happens in there. Versus, no, no, no. Don't worry about getting to that actual exact end point. If I keep taking a step forward to progress, really tough stuff can get done. And so my view of that is like, honestly, I hope it can, you know, I said it's like a memoir with purpose. doing it. It was a really hard thing for me to do because I don't actually talk about all these things. Nobody cares about your scientific description of this. They want the stories in your life to bring it alive. So it's a memoir with purpose. And in the writing of it, it became the power of me, the power of we, and the power of us. The idea that you build a foundation when you're young. mostly from my work life, the power of we, which says I kind of, in retrospect, could see five principles on how to really drive change that would be done in a good way. And then eventually you could scale that, the power really of us, which is what I'm doing about finding better jobs for more people now that I co-chair an organization called 110. So that essence of navigate tensions, do it respectfully, celebrate progress. And indulge me one more minute, these sort of, again, it's retrospect that I didn't know this in the moment, I had to learn it, I learned it, I am blessed by a lot of people I worked with and around. But some of the principles, like the first one says, If you're gonna do something, change something, do something, you gotta be in service of something. Being in service of is really different than serving. Super different. And like, I just had my knee replaced. And I interviewed all these doctors. You can tell the difference of the guy who's gonna do a surgery, hey, my surgery's fine. I really don't care whether you can walk and do the stuff you wanted to do again, because my surgery's fine. Your hardware's good. I actually had some trouble and I had a doctor who was like, you know, this doesn't sound right. I'm coming to you. The surgery was fine. It was me that was reacting wrong to it and he didn't care until I could walk again. Okay, there's a big difference in those two things and it's true in any business you have. A waiter serves you food, okay, he serves his food, he did his job. Or did he care, he had a good time. So that thought to be in service of, it took me a while to get that, like to try to write it, to get that across, because I think it's like so fundamental. If people were really in service of something, you got to believe that if I fulfill your needs, at the end of the day, mine will be fulfilled. And that is that essence that makes it so different. And then the second part, second principle is about building belief, which is, I gotta hope you'll voluntarily believe in a new future or in some alternate reality, and you will use your discretionary energy versus me ordering you. You'll get so much more done. Then the third, change and endure. We kind of talked about that earlier. Focus more on the how and the skills. And then the part on good tech and being resilient. So anyways, I just felt that, like good tech, everybody's a tech company. I don't care what you do today. And there's some fundamental things you got to do. In fact, pick up today's newspaper, right? Chat GPT. You're an AI guy. All right? I believe one of the tenets of good tech is, It's like responsibility for the longterm. It says, so if you're going to invent something, you better look at its upside and its downside. Like we did quantum computing. Great, a lot of great stuff, right? Materials development, risk management calculations, endless lists one day. On the other side, it can break encryption. That's a bad thing. So we worked equally hard on all the algorithms that would sustain quantum. I think with chat, okay, great. there's equal, and there are people working on it, but like, okay, the things that say, hey, I can tell this was written with that, right? Because the implications on how people learn, right? This is not a great thing if all it does is do your homework. That is not the idea of homework, as someone who liked to study so hard. But anyways, you get my point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just the upside and the downside. And that there could be much larger implications that are much more difficult to predict, and it's our responsibility to really work hard to figure that out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was talking AI ethics a decade ago and I'm like, why won't anybody listen to us? That's another one of those values things that you realize, hey, if I'm gonna bring technology in the world, I better bring it safely. And that to me comes with, when you're an older company that's been around, you realize that society gave you a license to operate and it can take it away. And we see that happen to companies. And therefore you're like, okay, like why I feel so strong about skills. Hey, if I'm going to bring in, it's going to create all these new jobs, job dislocation, then I should help. I'm trying to help people get new skills. Anyways, that's a long answer to a good tech, but the idea that there's kind of in retrospect, a set of principles you could look at and maybe learn something from my sort of rocky road through there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it started with the power of we, and there's that big leap, I think, that propagates through the things you're saying, which is the leap from focusing on yourself to the focusing on others, so having that empathy. You've said, at some point in our lives and careers, our attention turns from ourselves to others. We still have our own goals, but we recognize that our actions affect many, that it is impossible to achieve anything truly meaningful alone. So it's, to you, I think, Maybe you can correct me, but ultimate good power is about collaboration, and maybe in large companies like delegation on great teams." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The ultimate good power is actually doing something for society. That would be my ultimate definition of good power, by the way. So it's about the results of the thing. Yeah. but how it's done, right? The how it's done. And so, you know, when you said a leap, do you think people make a leap when they go from thinking about themselves to others?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's a leap or do you think it kind of just is a sort of slow point? I think the leap is in deciding that this is, it's like deciding that you will, care about others, that this is, it's like a leap of going to the gym for the first time. Yes, it takes a long time to develop that and to actually care, but that decision that I'm going to actually care about other human beings, yeah. Or at least, yeah, it just feels like a deliberate action you take of empathy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because sometimes I think it happens a little, it's maybe not as deliberate. Yeah, it's a little bit more gradual because it might happen because you realize that, geez, I can't get this done alone. So I gotta have other people with me, but how do I get them to help me do something? So I think it does happen a little bit more gradually. And as you get more confident, you start to not think so much that it's about you. And you start to think about this other thing you're trying to accomplish. And so that's why I felt it was a little more, gradual, I also felt like I can remember so well, you know, this idea that, again, now we're in the 80s, 90s, I'm a woman, I'm in technology. And I was down in Australia at a conference. And I gave this great speech, again, me power of me, you know, thinking give this great speech financial services, this guy, what man walks up to me after I think he's gonna like ask me some great question. And he said to me, I wish my daughter could have been here. And in that moment, and at that point, up to then, I'd always been about, look, please don't notice I'm a woman. Do not notice that. I just want to be recognized for my work. Crossing over from me to we, like it or not, I was a role model for some number of people. maybe I didn't want to be, but that didn't really matter. So I could either accept that and embrace it or not. I think it's a good example of that transition. I did have a little epiphany with that happening. And then I'm like, okay, because I would always be like, no, I won't go on a women's conference. I won't talk here. I won't, you know, no, no, no. But then I sort of realized, wait a second, you know, that old saying, you cannot be what you cannot see. And I said to myself, wait a second, Okay, I am in these positions I have a responsibility to, and it's to others. And that's what I meant. I felt like it can be somewhat gradual that you come and you may have these like pivotal moments that you see it, but then you feel it and you sort of move over that transom into the power of we." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you're one of the most powerful tech leaders ever. And as you mentioned the word power, the old saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Was there an aspect of power that you had to resist it's ability to corrupt your mind, to sort of delude you into thinking you're smarter than you are, that kind of, all the ways." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's very dangerous, I agree with that. I mean, I think you gotta be careful who you surround yourself with. That's how I would answer that question, right? And people who will hold the mirror up to you can be done in a very positive way, by the way, it doesn't mean, you know, but that we're sycophants, you cannot have that, right? I mean, it's like, I always say to someone like, hey, listen to me, tell me what would make me better or do something or, I have a husband that'll do that for me quite easily, by the way. He'll always tell me. I have been surrounded myself with a number of people that will do that. And I think you have to have that. I had a woman that worked with me for a very long time. And at one time we were competitors. And then at some point she started to work for me and stayed with me for quite a while. And she was one of the few people that would tell me the truth. Sometimes I'm like, enough already. And she'd be like, do not roll your eyes at this. You absolutely have got to have that. And I think it also comes, it'll go back to my complete commitment to inclusion and diversity, because you gotta have that variety around you. You'll get a better product and a better answer at the end of the day. And so that, to resist that allure, I think it's about who you surround yourself with. Current politics would say that too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you write about, and in general, you value diversity a lot. Can you speak to almost like philosophically, what does diversity mean to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Diversity to me means I'm going to get a better product, a better answer. I value different views. And so it's inclusion. So I always say inclusion, diversity is a number, inclusion is a choice. And you can make that choice every single day. It's a good line. I really believe, and I've witnessed it, that I've had when my teams are diverse, I get a better answer. My friends are diverse. I have a better life. I mean, all these kinds of things. And so I also believe it's like no silver thread. There's no easy way. You have to authentically believe it. I mean, do you authentically believe that diversity is a good thing?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I believe that diversity, like broadly- A thought, I very broadly define it. Yeah, so like there's, you know, sometimes the way diversity is looked at, the way diversity is used today is like surface level characteristics, which are also important, but they're usually reflective of something else, which is a diversity of background, a diversity of thought, a diversity of struggle. Some people that grew up middle class versus poor, different countries, different motivations, all of that. Yeah, it's beautiful when different people from very different walks of life get together. Yeah, it's beautiful to see. But like sometimes it's very difficult to get at that on a sheet of paper of the characteristics that defines the diversity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it is, it's just like, oh, I can't hire exactly for, or if I'm trying to, but I do know one thing, that when people say, well, I can't find these kind of people I'm looking for, I'm like, you're just not looking in the right places." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You gotta really open up new pools, right? You have to think, like everybody, you don't have to have a PhD, just like you said." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sorry to say it. I know it's very valuable, but you have to trust me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just like you said, it could even be a negative. Like for good power, you are a CEO for a long time of a public company. Were there times when there was pressure to sacrifice what is good for the world for the bottom line in order to do what's good for the company?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there were a lot of times for that. I mean, I think every company faces that today in that I always felt like there's so much discussion about stakeholder capitalism, right? Do you just serve a shareholder or do you have multiple? I have always found, and I've been very vocal about that topic, that when I participated, the Business Roundtable wrote up a new purpose statement that had multiple stakeholders. I think it's common sense. If you're going to be 100 years old, you only get there because you actually do at some time balance all these different stakeholders in what it is that you do, and short-term, long-term, all these trade-offs. And I always say, people who write about it, they write about it black and white, but I have to live in a gray world. Nothing I've ever done has been in a black and white world, hardly. Maybe things of values that I had to answer, but most of it is gray. And so I think back lots of different decisions. I think back, as you would well remember, you're a student of history. IBM was one of really the originators of the semiconductor industry, and certainly of commercializing the semiconductor industry. great R&D and manufacturing, but it is a game of volume. And so when I came on, we were still manufacturing R&D and manufacturing our own chips. We were losing a lot of money. Yet here we had to fight a war on cloud and AI. And so, okay, now shareholders would say, fine, shut it down. Okay, those chips also power some of the most important systems that power the banks of today. If I just shut it down, well, what would that do? And so, OK, the answer wasn't just stop it. The answer wasn't just keep putting money into it. The answer was, and we had to kind of sit in an uncomfortable spot till we found a way. I mean, it's going to sound so basic, but you as an engineer understand it. we had to separate, it was a very integrated process of research, development, and manufacturing. And you'd also, you'd be perfecting things in manufacturing. And it's, these were very high performance chips. We had to be able to separate those. We eventually found a way to do that so that we could take the manufacturing elsewhere and we would maintain the R&D. It's a, I think it's a great example of the question you just asked, because there was, people would have applauded, Others would have been, this is horrible. Or we had a financial roadmap that had been put in place that said, I'll make this amount of EPS by this date. There came a time we couldn't honor it because we had to invest. And so there's a million of these decisions. I think most people that run firms, any size firm, they're just one right after another like that. And you're always making that short and long tension of what am I giving up?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is that partnership like with the clients? Because you work with gigantic businesses. And what's it like sort of really forming a great relationship with them, understanding what their needs are, being in service of their needs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, very simple. Honoring your promises. And that happens over time. I mean, in service of, you know, which is often why you can work with competitors, because if you are really in service of you and you need something, it takes two of us to do it. That becomes easier to do because I really, we both care, you get what you needed. And so I can remember, um, during one of the times I was on a European trip. And at the time, a lot of, and this is still true, about views about technology and national technology giants and global ones and the pros and the cons and countries want their own national champions, quite obvious. I mean, if I'm France or Germany, and there was a lot of discussion about security and data and who was getting access to what. And I can remember being in one of the, I was with Chancellor Merkel. I had met her many times. She's very well prepared, very well prepared every time. She would know. And I started to explain all these things about why, how, you know, how we don't share data, how, who it belongs to. Our systems never had backdoors. And she sort of stopped me. Like, you're one of the good guys. Like, stop. Now, that wasn't about me personally. She's talking about a company that's acted consistent with values for decades, right? So to me, how you work with those big kind of clients is you honor your promises. You say what you do and you do what you say. And you act with values over a long period of time. And that to me, people say we're valued. It is not a fluffy thing. It is not a fluffy thing. I mean, if I was starting a company now, I'd spend a lot of time on that, on why we do what we do and why some things are tolerable and some things, what your fundamental beliefs are. And many people sort of zoom past that stage, right? It's okay for a while." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And never sacrifice that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You would never sacrifice that. I don't think you can." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there was a lot of pressure when you took over as CEO, and there was 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline between 2012 and the summer of 2017. So it was a stressful time, maybe not, maybe you can correct me on that. So as a CEO, what was it like going through that time, the decisions, the tensions in terms of investing versus making a profit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always felt that that sense of urgency was so high, even if I was calm on the outside. Because you have one of the world's largest pensions, so so many people depend on you. You have a huge workforce, they're depending on you. You have clients whose businesses don't run if you don't perform, et cetera. And shareholders, of course, right? But I also am really clear, this was perhaps the largest reinvention IBM ever had to undertake. I had a board that understood that. In fact, some of the headlines were like, this is existential, right? I mean, nobody gives you a right to exist forever. And there aren't many texts, you're the student of it. They are gone, they are all gone. And so, if we didn't reinvent ourselves, we were gonna be extinct. And so, now, but you're big, and it's like changing, what's that old saying? Can I change the wheels while the train's running or something like that, or the engines while the plane's flying? And that's what you have to do, and that took time. And so, you know, Lex, do I wish it would have been faster? Absolutely. But The team works so hard in my in that time frame fifty percent of the portfolio was changed very large company and. If you would also divested ten billion dollars of businesses so if you would look at that growth rate without divestitures and currency which now today everyone talks about currency back then we were the only international guy. Net of divestitures and currency, the growth was flat. Is flat great? No, but flat for a big transformation, I was really proud of the team for what they did. That is actually pretty miraculous to have made it through that. I have my little nephew one day and he would see on TV occasionally when there'd be criticism and he'd say, you know, auntie, doesn't, does it make you mad when they talk mean? And I just looked at him and I said, you know, he says, how do you feel? I said, look, I'm doing what has to be done. And I happened to be the one there. And if you have great conviction, and I did, a great conviction, I knew it was the right thing. I knew it would be needed for IBM to live its second century. And so, and my successor, they have picked up, gone forward. I mean, you go back, we did the acquisition of Red Hat. I mean, we had to find our way on cloud, right? We were late to it. So we had to find our way. And eventually that led us to hybrid cloud. We did a lot of work with Red Hat back in 2017. Oh, we'd always done a lot of work with them. We actually were one of the first investors when they were first formed. But that was 2018. You know, we took quite a hit for even, you know, oh, it was the largest to then software acquisition ever. But it is the foundation, right, of what is our hybrid cloud play today and doing very, very well. So But I had to take a short-term hit for that, right? Short-term hit for a very large $34 billion acquisition. But for all of us, it was the right thing to do. So I think when you get really centered on, you know it's the right thing to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You just keep going, right? So the team had the vision, they had the belief, and everything else, the criticism doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So don't, we didn't always have exactly the right, you know, this wasn't a straight arrow, but stay down, you know you're right, keep going, okay, made a mistake. You know, there's no bad mistake as long as you learn from it, right? And keep moving. So yes, did it take longer, but we are the largest that was there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Could you maybe just, on a small tangent, educate me a little bit? So, Red Hat originally is Linux, open source distribution of Linux, but it's also consulting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's- It's a little bit of consulting, but it's mostly software distri- It's mostly software. It was mostly software, yeah. Oh, wow. Absolutely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. Absolutely. So, but today, IBM is very much this, you know- Services. Most IT services, and the world is done by IBM. There's so many varied, so basically if you have issues, problems to solve in business, in the software space, IBM can help." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and so in my last year, our services business, we broke it into two pieces, and one piece was spun off into a company called Kindrel, which is managed outsourcing, keeping things running, and they're off creating their own company. what IBM then retained is really the part I built with PWCC, the big consulting arm. And so today, the IBM of today in 2023 is, you know, at least ending 2022, was 30% consulting, and the other 70% would be, what would you consider software cloud AI? So hybrid cloud and AI is the other and some hardware, obviously, still, the mainframe is modernized, alive and kicking, and still running some of the most important things of every bank you can think of practically in the world. And so that is the IBM of today versus perhaps, you know, and Red Hat is a big piece and an important part of that software portfolio. And they had some services with them for implementation, but it wasn't a very large part. And it's grown by leaps and bounds, you know, cause originally the belief was everything was going to go to the public cloud. And at least many people thought that way. We didn't. In fact, we tried. We procured a public cloud company. We really tried to work it, but what we found was a lot of the mission-critical work It was tuned for consumer world, it wasn't tuned for the enterprise. So then time is elapsing here though, and you gotta be at scale. And we didn't have any application, remember, we're not an application company. So it wasn't like we had an office, we didn't have anything that like pulled things out to the cloud. And so as we look for what our best, what we really back to who you are, we really know mission critical work. We know where it lives today and we know how to make it live on the cloud, which led us down hybrid cloud. You know, that belief that the real world would turn into, there'll be things on traditional that'll, you'll never move because it doesn't make sense. There'll be private clouds for, you know, have all the benefit of the cloud, but they just don't have, you know, infinite expansion. And then there'll be public clouds and you're going to have to connect them and be secure. And that's what took us down the path with Red Hat, that belief." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The structure of that is fundamentally different than something that's consumer-facing. So the lesson you learn there is you can't just reuse something that's optimized for consumers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, very interesting point. It doesn't mean consumer companies can't move up into the enterprise, because obviously they have, right? But I think it's very hard to take something from the enterprise and come on down. Sure. Cause it gotta be simple, consumable, all the things we talked about already." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus you have to have the relationships with the enterprise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, very different. Yeah. I mean, you know our history, right? At one time we had the PC business and you know, the short answer to why we would not do that is it's a consumer facing business. We were good at the enterprise and that consumer business, A, highly competitive, gotta be low cost. All the things that are not the same muscles necessarily of being in an innovation driven, you know," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "technology business. Yeah, but what is now Lenovo, I guess that's what that's been. That's right, Lenovo acquired it. You're extremely good at that, but not as good as you're saying as an enterprise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Lenovo's very good at their PC world, yes, and they can sell into the enterprise. Yeah. But you as a consumer can go buy a Lenovo too. So look in China, look in other places. So that's what I mean by consumer, an end device. And that was a big decision because it would have been one of the last things that had our logo on it that sits in your hands. So when a new generation says, well, what does IBM do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was that a difficult decision?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you remember? This is a long time ago now. It's like 2005. So they're all difficult because it's not only things, it's people. But it's back to knowing who you are is how I would sum that up as, right? And we were never great at making a lot of money at that. And you can remember, originally it was IBM PC, then there were IBM clones. They weren't called IBM clones back then. as the field became highly, highly competitive. And as things commoditized, we often, as they commoditize, we would move them out and move on to the next innovation level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But because of that, it's not as public facing, even though it's one of the most recognizable logos ever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, isn't it true? That is very true. That is actually a very important point. And that is, you know, branding, as you say, one of the most recognizable and a very highly ranked brand strength around the world. And so that's a trade-off. I mean, I can't, you know, because there was a time you'd have something of IBM in your home or a cash register, as an example. You'd walk into a store. Actually, they're still in places. That went to Toshiba." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you speak to consulting a little bit? What does that entail, to train up, to hire a workforce that can be of service to all kinds of different problems in the software space, in the tech space? What's entailed in that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you have to value a different set of things, right? And so you've got to always stay ahead. It's about hiring people who are willing to learn. It is about, at the same time, in my view, it's what really drives you to be customer-centric." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe you can educate me. I think consulting is a kind of, you roll in and you try to solve problems that businesses have, like with expertise, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is that the process of consulting? Somewhat, right? Okay, so fair enough. When you say that we're consulting, it's a really broad spectrum. I mean, I think people could be sitting here thinking it does any, it could be, I just give advice and I leave, to all the way to I run your systems, right? And I think it's generally, People use the word to cover everything in that space. So we sort of fit in the spot, which is we would come in and live at that intersection of business and technology. So yeah, we could give you recommendations, and then we'd implement them and see them through, because we had the technology to go to the implementation and see them through. And at the time back then, that's what, you know, there'd been five of those that had failed, that the companies had bought other consulting firms. And so we were, okay, that was the great thing about, I mean, the harrowing thing about it was, here, please go work on this. None of the others have ever succeeded before. And yet on the other hand, the great promise was you could really, clients were dying at that time when we were doing that, to get more value out of their technology and have it really change the way the business worked. So I think of it as how to improve business and apply technology and see it all the way through. That's what we do today still." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, to see it all the way through. Yes. So let me say almost like a personal question. So that was a big thing you were a part of that you led in 2002, that you championed and helped, I should say, negotiate the purchase of Monday, the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers for $3.5 billion. So what were some of the challenges of that that you remember? personal and business." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At that time, PW really had to divest. And so they were in peril of going to IPO, right? So we sort of swept in at that point and said, and we'd been thinking about it a long time, and started to work on that as an acquisition. So, you know, kind of balancing which way would they go, IPO or acquisition. And so the challenges are obvious, and part of it's why they went with us as an acquisition. Big difference to be a private firm than a public firm. Very big. I can remember one of the guys, you know, he asked somebody how long you've been with IBM and the person answered 143 quarters. Okay, that's a little enlightening about a business model, right? So we had the challenges of being private versus public. You have the challenge of when you acquire something like that, as I say, you acquire hearts, not parts. They could leave. I mean, you could destroy your value by them leaving. They can walk right out the door. I mean, yes, you can put lots of restraints, but still, that you have there. And then we had to really build a new business model that people and clients would see as valuable and be willing to pay for. And so we had to do something that lived at that intersection and say that how this was unique is what we were doing. So you had the people aspect, you had that they were gonna be public and they had always been private their whole life, and then you had the business model. And the others had all failed that had tried to do this. So yeah, it was a tough thing to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the personal side of that? That was a big leap, step up for you. You've been at IBM for a long time. This is a big sort of leadership, very impactful, large-scale leadership decisions. What was that like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, unlike in my career earlier, where I said I was changing jobs, I said I wasn't comfortable, et cetera. So now here, fast forward 10 years, and I'm like, okay. Honestly, how I felt inside, on one hand, I did what I learned. Like, inventory what you know how to do. Like, you have some good strengths that could work here. The other part of me said, boy, this is really high profile. And I felt, and I can remember saying to someone, like, this is gonna kill me Or catapult. Probably nothing in between." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that wasn't terrifying to you? That was okay? You were okay with that kind of pressure?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was okay with that because I felt I knew enough, you know, like these things I had... And I'll tell you the one thing I felt I knew the best. Consultants of any worth their weight, they really do care that they deliver for an end client. And I felt I understood service to a client so well that what it meant to really provide value. So I knew we would have like something that I knew the PwC people, more than anything, wanted to deliver value to those clients they had, next to then developing their people, that those were like the really two things. And I also knew they felt they could do better if they had more technology, and we did. So there really was a reason, you know, that I could really believe in. So I authentically believed back to that point, and I also felt I had built some of those skills to be able to do that. But I wouldn't call it terrifying. But make no mistake, Lex, it was very hard. And it turned out to be extremely successful. By the time we ended, it was worth 19 and a half. By the time I stepped, I ran it for, oh goodness gracious, quite a long time. I'm going to say seven or eight, nine years. And We were $19.5 billion. It made $2.7 billion in profit. It was very consequential to IBM. But the fact that it was consequential is also very... I mean, there was a time as we moved through it, I can even remember it. We just weren't meeting the goals as fast as we should. And some of those clients were like, oh, now you're IBM. So, I mean, some things I knew would happen, but they happened so much faster. It'd be things like clients would say, oh, IBM cares about a quarter, so let's negotiate every quarter on these prices. you know, when they were private, they didn't have these issues. Well, that had an impact on margins really fast. And so that ability- So you picked up a lot of challenges. You pick them up right away. And I thought, oh boy, I mean, if I don't get this turned around, this is really a problem. And the team learned a lot of lessons. I mean, I learned people I had to move out, that I learned that when people don't believe they can do something, they probably won't do it. So we wanted to run the business at a certain level. I really did have some great leaders, but they didn't really believe it could do that. And I finally had to come to terms with, if you don't really believe in something, you really aren't gonna probably make it happen at the end of the day. And so we would change that. We would have to actually get some more help to help us on doing so. But then it turned. And I can remember the day that we started really getting the business to hum and start to, it was almost like, Finally, and I gave the team this little plaque, this little kind of corny paperweight thing. And I'm gonna believe, I remember if it was Thomas Edison, and he said, many of life's greatest failures are people who gave up right before they were going to be successful. And it's so true. I mean, there was also a governor of Texas who's passed, but she had said, someone said, what's the secret of your success? And she said, it's passion. and perseverance when everyone else would have given up. And I feel that's what that taught me. That taught me, no matter how bad this gets, you are not giving up. Now, you can't keep doing the same thing, like the doctor, this hurts, oh, then stop doing it. You can't keep doing the same thing. We had to keep changing till we found our right way to get the model to work right. And Client work, we never had an issue and kept so many of the people. And now we are 25 years almost later, and a number of them run parts of the IBM business still today. So it's that old Maya Angelou saying, when you say, what do I remember? They'll say, you won't remember the specifics of this, but you'll remember how you felt. And that's kind of how I feel, and I think they do too, the whole team does, of that. Like, I'll get anniversary notes still on that, you know, when you've been through something like that together with people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So during the acquisition, the way you knew that people, it's the right team, are the ones that could believe that this consulting business can grow, can integrate with IBM and all of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I was lucky. Look, I did things that helped that. I mean, I knew that people joining us would feel more comfortable if they had people leading it that they recognized, et cetera. Again, I learned. Those that didn't then, I eventually had to take some action out. But PWCC had a lot of really dedicated leaders to it, and I give them a lot of credit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's amazing to see a thing that kind of start at that very stressful time, and then it turns out to be a success. Yeah. That's just beautiful to see. So what about the acquisition itself? Is there something interesting to say about what you learned about maybe negotiation? Because there's a lot of money involved, too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To me, it was a win-win, and we both actually cared that customers got value. So there was this third thing that had a benefit, not them, there was this third thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then next to that- I like how you think that people would have the wisdom or what it takes to have great negotiation. But yeah, so it's a win-win is one of the ways you can have successful negotiation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's obvious to even say that, right? I mean, if you can, back to being in service of something, we were both in service of clients. So in and then, You know, I always say when you have a negotiation with someone, okay, both parties always kind of walk away a little bit. Okay, that's good. If they both walk away going, God, I should have got a little bit more. Okay, but it's okay if I should have got, okay, they're both a little fussy. When one walks away and thinks they did great and the other one did horrible, that usually is like born bad. I mean, because they never worked that way. And I've always felt that way with negotiations that, you push too far down, you usually will be sorry you did that, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So don't push too far. I mean, that's ultimately what collaboration and empathy means, is you're interested in the long-term success of everybody together versus like your short-term success." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then you get the discretionary energy from them versus like, okay, you screwed me here, I'm done, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let's even rewind even back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh no. Oh no. Do you feel like this is a nostalgia interview?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh no. Let me just ask the romantic question. What did you love most about engineering? Computer science, electrical engineering? So in those early days, from your degree to the early work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love that logic part of it, right? And you do get a sense of completion at some point when you reach certain milestones that, you know, like, yes, it worked, or yes, it, you know, that finite answer to that. So that's what I loved about it. I loved the problem solving of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Computing, what led you down that path? Computing in general, what made you fall in love with computing with engineering?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's probably that back to that desire, wanting to know how things work, right? And so that's like a natural thing. You know, math, I loved math for that reason. I always wanted to study how did that, you know, how did it get that to work kind of thing? So it goes back in that time, but I did start when I went to, when I started Northwestern, I wasn't, I was already in the engineering school, but my first thought was to be a doctor, that that was far more noble, that I should be a medical doctor until I could not pass human reproduction as a course. And I thought the irony that I could not, I'm like, I got all these colored pencils, I got all these pictures, this is not working out for me. It was the only course in my four-year college education I had to take pass-fail, because otherwise I risked impairing my grade point average. Engineering it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But after about 10 years, you jumped from the technical role of systems engineer to management, to a leadership role. Did you miss at that time the technical direct contribution versus being a leader, a manager?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an interesting point. Like I said, I've always been sort of a doer leader, you know? So you never lost that. I never really did. Even, you know, and I think this is really important for today. The best way people learn is experientially, I think. That's being a generalization because their people can learn all different ways, right? So I've done things like with my whole team. They all had to learn how to build cloud applications. called a code off. And so, you know, I don't care what your job is, write code, you know. And I remember when we were trying to get the company to understand AI, we did something called a cognitive jam. Okay, there's a reason we picked the word cognitive, by the way, instead of AI. Today we use the word AI. It was really symbolic. It was to mean, this is to help you think, not replace your thinking. There was so much in the zeitgeist about AI being a bad thing at that time. So that was why we picked a mouthful of a word like cognitive. And it was like, no, no, this is to help you actually. So do what you do better or do something you haven't yet learned. And we did something called the cognitive jam, but the whole point was everybody in the company could volunteer, get on a team. You either had to build something that improved one of our products or did something for a client or did a social, solved a social issue with AI. And again, this goes back now. 10 years? And people did things from bullying applications to, you know, railroad stuff to whatever it was. But it got like 100,000 people to understand, you know, viscerally what is AI. So that's a long answer to my belief around experiential. So do you ever give it up? I don't think so, because I actually think that's pretty good to get your hands dirty in something. You know, you can't do it, you know, depending what you're doing, your effort to do that will be less, but. So even a CEO, you try to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Always. Get your hands dirty a little bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've played, I mean, you still, I'm not saying I'm any good at any of it, you know, anymore, but." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But to build up intuition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's that, yeah, it's that to really understand, right, and not be afraid of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Like we mentioned at the beginning, IBM research has helped catalyze some of the biggest accomplishments in computing and artificial intelligence history. So, dBlue, IBM dBlue versus Kasparov chess match in 96 and 97. just to ask kind of like what your perception is, what your memory is of it, what is that moment? Like this seminal moment, I believe probably one of the greatest moments in AI history, when the machine first beat a human at a thing that humans thought." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You make a very interesting point, because it is like one of the first demonstrations of using a game to like bring something to people's consciousness, right? And to this day, people use games, right, to demonstrate different things. But at the time, It's funny. I didn't necessarily think of it so much as AI, and I'll tell you why. I was, and I'm not a chess player, you might be a chess player, so I'm not expert at it, but I think I understand properly of chess, that chess has got a finite number of moves that can be made. Therefore, if it's finite, really what's a demonstration of a supercomputing, right? It's about the amount of time and how fast it can crunch through to find the right move. So in some ways I thought of it as almost a bigger demonstration of that, But it is absolutely, as you said, it was a motivator, one of the big milestones of AI. Because it put in your consciousness that it's man in this other machine, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Doing something. So you saw it as just a challenging computation problem, and this is a way to demonstrate hardware and software computation at its best. I did. But the thing is, there is a romantic notion that chess is the embodiment of human intellect, I mean, intelligence, that you can't build a machine that can beat a chess champion in chess. And I was blessed by not being a chess expert." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's just a computation problem. It's a computation problem to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's probably required to not be paralyzed by the immensity of the task, so that this is just solvable. But it was a very, very, I think that was a powerful moment, so speaking just as an AI person, that was, that reinvigorated the dream." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You were a little kid back then, though, right, at that, at 95? You have to be, like, were you, do you remember it, actually, at the moment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you? What did you think at the moment about it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was awe-inspiring because, especially sort of growing up in the Soviet Union, you think, especially of Garry Kasparov and chess, like your intuition is weak about those things. I didn't see it as computation. I thought of it as intelligence because, you know, chess for a human being doesn't feel like computation. It feels like some complicated relationship between memory and patterns and intuition and guts and instinct and all of those, like some- If you watch someone play, that's what you would conclude, right? And so to see a machine be able to beat a human, I mean, you get a little bit of that with Chagipiti now. It's like language was to us humans the thing that we kind of, Surely the poetry of language is something only humans can really have. It's going to be very difficult to replicate the magic of the natural language without deeply understanding language. But it seems like Chad GPT can do some incredible things with language in natural language dialogue. But that was the first moment in AI through all the AI winters from the 60s, the promise of the, it was, wow, this is possible for a simple set of algorithms to accomplish something that we think of as intelligence. So that was truly inspiring, that maybe intelligence, maybe the human mind is just algorithms. That was the thought at the time. And of course now, the funny thing what happens is the moment you accomplish it, everyone says, oh, it's just brute force algorithms, it's silly. And this continues, every single time you pass a benchmark, a threshold to win a game, people say, oh, well, it's just this. It's just this, it's just this. I think that's funny and there's going to be a moment when we're going to have to contend with AI systems that exhibit human-like emotions and feelings, and you have to start to have some difficult discussions about, well, how do we treat those beings? And what role do they have in society? What are the rules around that? And this is really exciting because that also puts a mirror to ourselves to see, okay, what's the right way to treat each other as human beings? Because it's a good test for that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is because I always say it's a reflection of humanity. I mean, it's taught by what man, you know, bad stuff in the past, you'll teach it bad stuff for the future. And which is why I think, you know, like efforts to regulate it are a fool's errand. You need to regulate uses not, you know, because it's not the technology itself is not inherently good or bad, but how it's used or taught can be good or bad for sure, right? And so that's to me will unveil now a whole different way of having to look at technology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about another magical leap with the early days of Watson with beating the Jeopardy challenge? What was your experience like with Watson? What's your vision for Watson in general? What was it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it was really inspired by first chess, right, and Kasparov, and then you come forward in time. And, you know, I think what Watson did because you used a really important word, AI had kind of waxed and waned in these winners, right? In and out, in and out. Popular, not. More money, less money, you know, in and out. Confidence, no confidence. And so I think that was one of the first times it brought to the forefront of people like, whoa, like it humanized it. Because here it is playing against these two gentlemen. And it did lose at first, you know, and then finally won at the end of the day. And what it was doing is making you say, hey, natural language. It's actually understanding natural language. It's one of the first demonstrations of natural language support and a bit of reasoning over lots of data, right? And so that it could have access to a lot of things, come up with a conclusion on it. And to me, that was a really big moment. And I do think it brought to the conscious of the public, and in good ways and bad, because it probably set expectations very high of like, whoa, what this could be. And I still do believe that it has got the ability to change and help us, man, make better decisions. That so many decisions are not optimal in this world, even medical decisions. And it's right or wrong what took us down a path of healthcare first with our AI. And we took many pivots, and I think there's a really valuable lesson in what we learned. One is that I actually don't think the challenges are the technology. Yes, those are challenges, but the challenges are the people challenges around this, right? So do people trust it? How will they use it? I mean, I saw that straight up with the doctors and like, meaning they're so busy in the way they've been taught to do something. Do they really have time to learn another way? I saw it was a mistake when you put it on top of processes that didn't change, kind of like paving a cow path. Didn't work. I mean, it was all human change management around it that were really its biggest challenges. And another valuable lesson we picked back to usage, you think of IBM as moonshots, we picked really hard problems to start with. I think you see a lot of technology now starts with really simple problems. And And by that, it probably starts to build trust, because I start little. It's like, oh, I'm not ready to outsource my diagnosis to you, but I'll get some information here about a test question. So very different thinking. So a lot of things to learn. We were making a market at the time. And when you make a market, choice of problem you work on gets to be very important. When you're catching up, well, then it's a scale game. So very different thing. But Watson proved, I think, I mean, I hope I'm not being too I think Watson brought AI back out a winner for the world, and that since then there's just been one company after another and innovations and people working on it. I have no regrets of anything that we did. We learned so much. We probably rebuilt it many times over. It made it more modular. And today, to IBM, a Watson is more about AI inside of a lot of things, if you think of it that way, which is more like an ingredient versus it's a thing in and of itself. And I think that's how it'll bring its real value. More as an ingredient, and it's so badly needed. And even back then, the issue was so much data. What do you ever do with it? You can't get through it. You can't use it for anything. You know this well. It's your profession. We have to have it, so that's gonna propel it forward." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's part of the suite of tools that you use when you go to enterprise and you try to solve problems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so AI for security, AI in automated operations, AI in your robotics, AI on your factory floor, you know what I mean? It's all part of, and I think And that's why, even to this day, thousands, I mean thousands and thousands of clients of IBM still have the Watson components, that it's the AI being used. So it became a platform is how I would say it, right? And an ingredient that went inside. And consultants, like you said, had to learn. They had to learn don't just put it on something. You got to rethink how that thing should work, because with the AI, it could work entirely differently. And so I also felt it could open up and still will open up jobs to a lot of people, because more like an assistant, and it could help me be qualified to do something. And we even years ago saw this with the French banks, very unionized, but that idea that you could In this case, the unions voted for it because it felt people did a better job. And so, and that's just part about being really dedicated to help it help humanity, not destroy it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of which, a funny side note, so Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey, what do you think about, you know, the fact that Hal 9000 was named after IBM?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I really don't think it was. I know there's, I really don't. I've often- It could be more fake news. It's more fake news. I have done, I've like researched this, tried to find any evidence and people have talked to, you know, was it really, you know, one letter, it was one letter off, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "People don't know H is one letter off of I, A is one letter off of B, and then L is one letter off of- Yeah, that was the, I think that's a solution found afterwards, you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But here's what I think it more was. I do think it's one of the early demonstrations of evil AI. Yeah. Like can be taught bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I could push back on that because it's presented as evil in the movie because it hurts, the AI hurts people, but it's a really interesting ethical question because the role of HAL 9000 is to carry out a successful mission. And so the question that is a human question, it's not an AI question, at what price? Humans wage war, they pay very heavy costs for, for a vision, for a goal of a future that creates a better world. And so that's the question certainly in space. Doctors ask that question all the time, but unlimited resources, who do I allocate my time and money and efforts?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree. Like I said, I've spent a decade talking about this question of AI ethics, right? And that it needs really considerable, not just attention, because otherwise it will mirror everything we love and everything we don't love. And again, and that's the beauty in the eye of the beholder, right? Depending on your culture and everything else. with what you're doing and what you're gonna do, how do you think about it? Do you think about the AI you're going to develop as having guardrails dictated by some of your beliefs, or?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, for sure. So there's so many interesting ways to do this the right way, and I don't think anyone has an answer. I tend to believe that transparency is really important. So I think some aspect of your work should be open sourced, or at least have an open source competitor that creates kind of forcing function for transparency of how you do things. So the other is, I tend to believe, maybe it's because of the podcast and I've just talked to a lot of people, you should know the people involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree 100%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As opposed to hide behind a company wall. Sometimes there's a pressure, you have a PR team and you have to be careful, investors and discussion and so on, let's protect, let's surely not tweet. And you form this bubble where you have incredible engineers doing fascinating work and also doing work that's difficult, complex human questions being answered. And we don't know about any of them as a society. And so we can't really have that conversation. Even though that conversation would be great for hiring, it would be great for revealing the complexities of what the company is facing. So when the company makes mistakes, you understand that it wasn't malevolence or half-assedness and the decision making is just a really hard problem. And so I think transparency is just good for everybody. And I mean, in general, just having a lot of public conversations about this is serious stuff, that AI will have a transformative impact on our society, and it might do so very, very quickly, through all kinds of ways we're not expecting, which is social media recommendation systems, they at scale have impact on the way we think, on the way we consume news, our growth, like the kind of stuff we consume to grow and learn and become better human beings, all of that, that's all AI. And then obviously the tools that run companies on which we depend, the infrastructure on which we depend, we need to know all about those AI decisions. And it's not as simple as, well, we don't want the AI to say, these specific set of bad things. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's possible to prevent evil or bad things by creating a set of cold mathematical rules. Unfortunately, it's all fuzzy and gray areas. It's all a giant mess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, I mean, you think about it like a knife. A knife can do good and a knife can do bad, okay? You can't, it's very hard. You can't ban knives. And that, this is, I think back, it was probably 20, I don't know, 15, 16, we did principles of trust and transparency. Notice the word transparency. That belief that with AI, it should be explainable. You should know who taught it. You should know the data that went into training it. You should know how it was written. If it's being used, you have a right to know these things. And I think those are pretty, to this day, really powerful principles to be followed, right? And part of it, we ended up writing, because here we were, when we were working on particularly healthcare, like, okay, you care who trained it and what, and where did, and that's sort of, you know, that comes to your mind and you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense for something important like that. But it just in general, People won't trust the technologies, I don't think, unless they have transparency into those things. In the end, they won't really trust it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think a lot of people would like to know, sort of, because a lot of us, I certainly do, suffer from imposter syndrome. that self-critical brain. So, you know, taking that big step into leadership, did you at times suffer from imposter syndrome? Like, how did I get here? Do I really belong here? Or were you able to summon the courage and sort of the confidence to really step up?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's very natural for someone, like no matter like the bigger the job gets, you turn and you look to the left and the right and you see people around you and you think, what am I doing here, right? But then you remember what you do and there's no one else doing it. And so you get that confidence. So I do hear a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome, right? I kind of, actually this past year, I've spent some time helping people on that topic. And part of the stress, you have to believe you have a right to be there like anyone else does if you've prepared for that moment, you know? And so it's a bit more of a, I know it's hard to say, like a confidence thing more than anything else. So yes, there are times I look around, but then I think, wow, I'm in a position to make something change. So I can't say I have ever really dwelled on that feeling for long." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so you just focus on the work, I have an opportunity, I'm gonna step up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's good or bad, I just focus on the work. Yeah, good or bad, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One important lesson you said you learned from your mom is never let anyone else define you, only you define who you are. So what's the trajectory, let's say, of your self-definition journey, of you discovering who you are from having that very difficult upbringing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, they say pivotal moments happen and you don't realize it when they're happening. So most of my, I feel like most of my self-discovery, it's been like something happens in a year or two or some number later, I look back on it and say, you know, I learned this from that. It's like not in the moment always with me. That could just be how I am. So I feel like it's been, you know, Know yourself is a good thing, right? I've actually heard you say that on different podcasts when you ask people questions. You're like, well, it depends, you know, like know yourself a bit, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And- It's hard to know who you are, though. There's a lot of things, like you said, like for me, there's moods when you're super self-critical, sometimes you're super confident, and there's many, sometimes you're emotional, sometimes you're cool under pressure, and all those are the same human being. Yeah, and I think that's fine. Self-awareness, that's different. Was there societal expectations and norms regarding gender that you felt in your career? You've spoken to that a little bit, but was there some aspect of that that was constraining, empowering, or both?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I chose to never look at it, okay? Now, whether that is right or wrong, and again, I'm a product of the 70s, and 70s and the 80s, where I think I was surrounded, all the other women around me viewed our way to get ahead was just to work hard. Work hard, work hard, and that was the way you differentiated yourself. And that's obvious, it did help. I mean, there's no doubt about it. You learned a lot of things, which qualified opened up another door, opened up another door. I'm very mindful that I have worked for companies that are very steeped in those values of equal opportunity. And so nothing remarkable about that. And I mean, when I was a wee kid, I'm taught hire a diverse team. I get evaluated for it. I get evaluated if my team has built up their skills. So this is, you know, when you're really formative, you're in a culture that that's what it's valuing, right? So it becomes part of you. So I say sometimes to Chagrin, did I ever feel I was held back for that reason? No, were there plenty of times when I write about a few of the stories in the book, I'm laying cables at night and the guys are at the bar. Now, I didn't really want to go with them to the bar anyways. They'd be like, we'll be back to get you, you know, bye. And I'm like, okay. I mean, I learned a lot. So it didn't. Now, all that said, back to my earlier story about being a role model, you know, it would be foolish to not believe that there were times that that mattered. I would say two things, even not that long ago, a colleague called me and I was talking about media and about women CEOs and said, do you notice that sometimes when it's a woman CEO, they call the person by name and when it's a man, they call the company out, not the person's name exactly associated with the issue. And I said, yeah, well, I think you have to just understand much of what you do, it will be magnified because there are so few of you. And sometimes it will be, you know, really can be blown out of proportion, right? And so that can happen. And you've got to learn in which way. Now, all that said, on gender, it is an interesting thing with the book. As I've talked to, you know, having a book, even some of my best friends, the first reaction is, I can't wait for my daughter to read it. I say, well, that's interesting. Do you think you could read it? Oh." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an interesting reaction. And here I am 40 years later, that's an interesting reaction, right? And I say, no, the book, I really worked hard to write it for everyone. I just happen to be a woman, right? But there's still that there. And so, look, until I think people see and never feel that they have a... It doesn't even matter whether there's a woman. It could be another diverse group that feels it. it's okay to ask those questions. And that's why actually I'm okay talking about it because there were times I felt it, right? There were times in my life on my looks or my weight or my clothing or endless numbers of things that people would comment on that they would not have commented on if it was someone else. Now, on the other hand, when there's so few of you and, you know, there's good and bad. I mean, there's benefit to that too, right? If you do good work, it's easier to be recognized. And so a pro and a con, and I think I've just grown up believing my advice to young women, go into engineering. Not because you're gonna be an engineer. It teaches you to solve problems. And anything new job you do is gonna be solving problems. Things like that are what I take away from that in that journey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It is interesting that I hear from women that even on this podcast, when I talk to incredible women like yourself, it is inspiring to young women to hear. I mean, you like to see, you talk to somebody from Turkey, and then Turkish people all get excited. It's so true. So you get somebody that looks like you, somebody that, and the category could be tiny, it could be, It can be huge. That's just the reality of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is the reality of the world. And the work I do now to put this group called 110, put one million black employees into the middle class without college degrees, get them the right skills, upwardly mobile jobs. So one of my last years, we had been working on, it just did regular leadership session at IBM and had our black colleagues. We're talking about what did it feel like to be a black leader? And here, these are extremely accomplished people. And I can remember very well one telling a story about, look, I felt if I failed or succeeded, it's not just me. It came from a country in Africa. I feel like the whole country is on my shoulder, my success or failure. That's a burden. I mean, like, I don't feel that burden. Not true. As a woman CEO, I did feel like, you know, even the headlines when I was named said, you know, her appointment will either, you know, her success or failure will be a statement for the whole gender kind of thing. I didn't dwell on it, but I could see how people, like you said, it could be a small group, could be whatever, and so that is a lot of pressure on people and they need role models. You're a role model for people. Look at what you're able to do. You do these podcasts, you understand your science very well, you're very well prepared, your ability to translate it to people. You know, that's not an insignificant thing. And you may think, oh, you know, is that about the power of me? Not really. Right. And you obviously believe you don't do this because you just like sitting at a microphone. You do it because you think, OK, if I can get people to say things that are really valuable to other people, they're going to learn something. I assume that is. I mean, you ever told me my interpretation is that's why you do this podcast, that you feel like in service of other people, that you can bring them something unique by the way you do this. Now, I should ask you, why do you do it? That's my impression." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, can I just comment on the fact that you keep asking me really hard questions? I really appreciate it. I love this. I'm really honored by it. As a fan of podcasts myself, what I hope is to talk to people like you and to show that you are a fascinating and beautiful human being outside of your actual accomplishments also. So sometimes people are very focused on very specific things about, like you said, science, like what the actual work is, whether it's nuclear fusion or it's GIGPT. I just wanna show that it's, because I see it at MIT and everywhere, it's just human beings trying their best, they're flawed, but just realizing that all of these very well accomplished people are all the same. And then so then regular people and the young people, they're able to see, you know, I can do this too, I can have a very big impact. Yeah, exactly, it's like we're all kind of, So let me just ask you about family. You wrote that my family still jokes that the reason I never had children on my own was because I had already raised my family. They're right. So this is talking to you about upbringing, but in general, what was your you know, leading a giant company, what was the right place to find a work-life balance for you, to have time for family, have time for away from work and be successful?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I had to learn that, and I might have said, you know, you're the only one that can determine your own work-life balance. Companies are innate things. I mean, they will take everything they can from you. And it's not a bad thing. They just will, as will bosses. I mean, you give it, they'll take it. And when people ask for, you know, I need roof, I'm like, OK. I had to come with terms with, the criminal was me. If I needed that balance, I had to set those boundaries. And so when I comment about a family, because I am in extreme awe of people with children who work, it is a extremely hard thing to do. I watch my siblings. I love my nieces and nephews and whoo. You know, A, the emotional, their pain is your pain every minute of the day, and then you still have a job on top of it. And so, when my mom had to go back to school and had to work, I was the one. And so, when she couldn't go to the teacher meeting, I went to the teacher meeting. And so, in some ways, there was an age gap between my brother and I and my other two sisters. So I'm still, they still call me Mama Bear, even. I mean, I'm extremely protective of all of them, and it is as if I had raised them, and my mom did a great job raising them, I didn't, but I was there. And so when it came time to have children, and my husband came from a family where his father died and was raised by a single mother, very similar endpoint, different reasons why he ended up, you know, his father did not abandon them. I don't want people to believe to do my job, you can have no children. That is not right. I know other great women CEOs, Marilyn Hewson, who ran Lockheed Martin, extremely technical company, Mary Barra, who runs General Motors, Ellen Coleman, who run DuPont. These are all my friends to this day. They've been fantastic mothers and husbands, good parents, right? And so I talk about it because it was a choice we made. And so, you know, we both felt, look, we'd reached a point where for his reasons, what he had to do, I'd already felt that way. And that we were comfortable just being great aunts and uncles. And I'm a great aunt, you know? Well, I like to think that for my little guys. They're older now, but lots of them. And there's no doubt, though, the choices we made, Mark and I, that that made it easier for me to focus on work. I mean, that's just math, you know, when you've got less people to have to take care of. And so I'm very considerate of that. And I think much of it informed many of the policies I put into because I had such great empathy. for those who then still had these other responsibilities. And I desperately wanted them all to stay in the workforce so I can remember. And my siblings have been more successful than I, by the way, I mean, to my mother's credit. And my one sister who, uh, You know, went to Northwestern, has an MBA, built some of the most sophisticated systems. She spent her whole career at Accenture and just recently retired as the chief executive of all of consulting. But at one point, she took off time to spend with her family and then went to go back to work. She's talking to me and she's like, I don't know if I should go back to work. You know, maybe life's path, you know, technology goes so fast. It's been a few years. I'm sitting there like, what are you talking about? I'm like, you know, look at her credentials, they're far outstanding. I'm like, and I thought to myself like, ding, one of those moments, if my own sister feels that way with all her credentials, I'll bet I went back to work the next day and I said, hey, pull for me all the people who've left for parental reasons and or whatever family reasons didn't come back. And it began a program of return ships. And I can't tell you how many men and women was because they didn't feel confident to come back. They thought technology passed them by. OK, we said it's three months. You could stay one month, three months. Doesn't matter. A lot of people, one day, they're like, you're right, not that much happened. It happened, but I caught up. I actually know more than I think. It was a long answer to your question about, I didn't, but I am so empathetic, and I am in awe of what they are able to do. And it made me then, I think, more empathetic to the policies and the like around that topic, so you could keep great people in the workforce." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned your friends with Mary Barra, the CEO of GM." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I didn't mean to name drop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So don't, I didn't mean it that way. No, I love her, she's amazing. So I just wanted to, I'm just curious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll tell Mary she should do your podcast. We'll make it happen. She's a great leader. I always, I tell Mary what I think of her is I think she's one of the most authentic leaders out there, most authentic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, just very different companies, huge challenges." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I worked there first, I remember, right? So I'm very, you know, in some ways I'm very beholden, right? You know, I'm very appreciative of what they did. I mean, Mary and I are circa the same, well, I'm a bit older, but circa that genre." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you exchange wisdoms?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, yeah. When you do anything hard, it takes time and perseverance, like we talked about. And you can get that, where do you get the fuel for it? You can either get it from your attitude or you can get it from your network or your relationships. and I'm a firm believer relationships are from what you give, not what you get. Meaning you give, trust me, they will come back at the time they need to come back to you at these moments in life. If you focus on, how can I bring Lex value? There'll be a day I need Lex, he will be back. And so to those women, to me, relationships are not transactional. And It's a proof that to this day, even though I'm no longer still active as a CEO, these are all still my friends. And we are friends, all of us. And I can remember some of them, when I first became a CEO, calling me and saying, hey, it's a little lonely here, so let me talk to you. And then when they became, I did the same for them. And then they remember, and they do for the next generation. And so it's a very supportive, almost to a T, any of the women you could name who have been CEOs, I would say, almost to a T, have all been very supportive. In fact, a number of us work on a little another non-for-profit right now called Journey, which some women who had started the Fortune's Most Powerful Women had started, which was, could we get more women, particularly diverse women, but women in general, just more quickly be into positions of leadership and power. And so many of the women you named and more, we all dedicate time mentoring and kind of creating this little group of fellows every year to do this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Friendship and love is core to this whole thing, not just the success, but just the whole human condition. Let me ask one last question, advice for young people. You've had a difficult upbringing. a difficult life and you've become one of the most successful human beings in history, what advice would you give to young people or just people in general who are struggling a bit trying to figure out how they can have a career they can be proud of or maybe a life they can be proud of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel like a life you can be proud of is just one if you leave something a little bit better. It doesn't have to be big. That's a life well lived, right? It was Churchill who said, you might remember it better than I. You make a living by what you get and you live a life by what you give, something to that effect. But my advice would probably, when I'm asked this, I would tell them to ask more questions than give answers. Just focus on being a sponge. And it's funny, I asked my husband the same question the other day. I said, hey, we're talking to somebody and people were asking this. And he sort of paused for a while and he said, I tell them patience. I said, what do you mean? And he said, I see so many young people, like they're in such a hurry to somewhere, I don't know where. And that if they just had patience and let life unfold, I think they may be surprised where they ended up. And actually, I think that's a really good answer, to be honest." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Along the way, keep asking questions, keep that childlike curiosity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know, it sounds so easy to say, it's just so..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like you said, the obvious things, I think they tend to be the most profound. Jeannie, you're an incredible human being. You're an inspiration to so many. Thank you for helping run and contribute to one of the great companies that brings so much good power to the world. And thank you for putting in the hard work of putting it all in the great book. And thank you for talking today. This was a huge honor." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the big famous one was 1920s, the invention of quantum mechanics, where, you know, in about five or 10 years, lots of stuff got figured out. That's now quantum mechanics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you mention the people involved?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it was kind of the Schrodinger, Heisenberg, you know, Einstein had been a key figure, originally Planck, then Dirac was a little bit later. That was something that happened at that time. That's sort of before my time, right? In my time was in the 1970s. There was this sort of realization that quantum field theory was actually going to be useful in physics. And QCD, quantum chromodynamics theory of quarks and gluons and so on, was really getting started. And there was, again, sort of big flurry of things happened then. I happened to be a teenager at that time and happened to be really involved in physics. And so I got to be part of that, which was really cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who were the key figures aside from your young selves at that time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "you know, who won the Nobel Prize for QCD, okay? People, David Gross, Frank Wilczek, you know, David Politzer, the people who are the sort of the slightly older generation, Dick Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, people like that, who were Steve Weinberg, Gerhard Hoft, he's younger, he's in the younger group, actually. But these are all, you know, characters who were involved. I mean, it was, you know, it's funny because those are all people who are kind of in my time, and I know them, and they don't seem like sort of historical, you know, iconic figures. They seem more like everyday characters, so to speak. And so it's always, you know, when you look at history from long afterwards, it always seems like everything happened instantly. And that's usually not the case. There was usually a long buildup. But usually there's, you know, there's some methodological thing happens, and then there's a whole bunch of low-hanging fruit to be picked. And that usually lasts five or 10 years. You know, we see it today with machine learning and, you know, deep learning neural nets and so on. You know, methodological advance, things actually started working in, you know, 2011, 2012, and so on. And, you know, there's been this sort of rapid picking of low hanging fruit, which is probably, you know, some significant fraction of the way way done, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there's a key moment? Like if I had to really introspect, like what was the key moment for the deep learning quote unquote revolution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's probably the AlexNet business." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "AlexNet with ImageNet. So is there something like that with physics where... So deep learning neural networks have been around for a long time. Absolutely, since the 1940s. There's a bunch of little pieces that came together and then all of a sudden everybody's eyes lit up. Like, wow, there's something here. Like even just looking at your own work, just your thinking about the universe, that there's simple rules can create complexity. You know, at which point was there a thing where your eyes light up? It's like, wait a minute, there's something here. Is it the very first idea or is it some moment along the line of implementations and experiments and so on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a couple of different stages to this. I mean, one is the Think about the world computationally. You know, can we use programs instead of equations to make models of the world? That's something that I got interested in in the beginning of the 1980s. You know, I did a bunch of computer experiments. You know, when I first did them, I didn't really, I could see some significance to them, but it took me a few years to really say, wow, there's a big important phenomenon here. that lets sort of complex things arise from very simple programs. That kind of happened back in 1984 or so. Then, you know, a bunch of other years go by, then I start actually doing a lot of much more systematic computer experiments and things and find out that the, you know, this phenomenon that I could only have said occurs in one particular case is actually something incredibly general. And then that led me to this thing called principles of computational equivalence. And that was a long story. And then, you know, as part of that process, I was like, okay, you can make simple programs, can make models of complicated things. What about the whole universe? That's our sort of ultimate example of a complicated thing. And so I got to thinking, you know, could we use these ideas to study fundamental physics? I happen to know a lot about traditional fundamental physics. I had a bunch of ideas about how to do this in the early 1990s. I made a bunch of technical progress. I figured out a bunch of things I thought were pretty interesting. I wrote about them back in 2002." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "with the new kind of science in the cellular-automata world. There's echoes in the cellular-automata world with your new Wolfram physics project. We'll get to all that. Allow me to sort of romanticize a little more on the philosophy of science. So Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, describes that the progress in science is made with these paradigm shifts. And so to link on the original line of discussion, do you agree with this view that there is revolutions in science that just kind of flip the table?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What happens is it's a different way of thinking about things, it's a different methodology for studying things, and that opens stuff up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's this idea of, he's a famous biographer, but I think it's called The Innovators, the biographer of Steve Jobs, of Albert Einstein. He also wrote a book, I think it's called The Innovators, where he discusses how a lot of the innovations in the history of computing has been done by groups. There's a complicated group dynamic going on. But there's also a romanticized notion that the individual is at the core of the revolution. Like, where does your sense fall? Is ultimately, like, one person responsible for these revolutions that creates the spark? Or one or two, whatever? Or is it just... the big mush and mess and chaos of people interacting, of personalities interacting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it ends up being like many things, there's leadership and there ends up being, it's a lot easier for one person to have a crisp new idea than it is for a big committee to have a crisp new idea. And I think, you know, but I think it can happen that, you know, you have a great idea, but the world isn't ready for it. And, you know, you can, I mean, this has happened to me plenty, right? It's, you know, you have an idea, it's actually a pretty good idea, but things aren't ready. Either you're not really ready for it, or the ambient world isn't ready for it, and it's hard to get the thing to get traction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's kind of interesting. I mean, when I look at a new kind of science, you're not living inside the history, so you can't tell the story of these decades. But it seems like the new kind of science has not had the revolutionary impact I would think. It might, like it feels like at some point, of course it might be, but it feels at some point people will return to that book and say there was something special here. This is incredible. So what happened?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or do you think that's already happened? Oh, yeah, it's happened, except that people aren't, you know, the sort of the heroism of it may not be there. But what's happened is, for 300 years, people basically said, if you want to make a model of things in the world, mathematical equations are the best place to go. last 15 years doesn't happen. You know, new models that get made of things most often are made with programs, not with equations. Now, you know, was that sort of going to happen anyway? Was that a consequence of, you know, my particular work in my particular book? It's hard to know for sure. I mean, I am always amazed at the amounts of feedback that I get from people where they say, oh, by the way, you know, I started doing this whole line of research because I read your book, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, can you tell that from the academic literature? You know, was there a chain of academic references? Probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the interesting side effects of publishing in the way you did this tome is it serves as an education tool and an inspiration to hundreds of thousands, millions of people, but because it's not a single, it's not a chain of papers with 50 titles, it doesn't create a splash of citations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's had plenty of citations, but it's, you know, I think that people think of it as, probably more conceptual inspiration than kind of a, this is a line from here to here to here in our particular field. I think that the thing which I am disappointed by and which will eventually happen is this kind of study of the sort of pure computationalism, this kind of study of the abstract behavior of the computational universe. That should be a big thing that lots of people do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mean in mathematics purely, almost like... It's like pure mathematics, but it isn't mathematics. But it isn't. It isn't. It's a new kind of mathematics. It's a new kind of science. Yeah, right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's why the book is called that. Right. That's not coincidental." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. It's interesting that I haven't seen really rigorous investigation by thousands of people of this idea. I mean, you look at your competition around Rule 30. I mean, that's fascinating. If you can say something Right. Is there some aspect of this thing that could be predicted? That's the fundamental question of science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the core has been a question of science. I think that's a that is a some people's view of what science is about. And it's not clear that's the right view. In fact, as we as we live through this pandemic full of predictions and so on, it's an interesting moment to be pondering what what science is, actual role in those kinds of things is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, you think it's possible that in science, clean, beautiful, simple prediction may not even be possible in real systems. That's the open question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it's open. I think that question is answered and the answer is no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The answer could be just humans are not smart enough yet. We don't have the tools yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, that's the whole point. I mean, that's sort of the big discovery of this principle of computational equivalence of mine. And this is something which is kind of a follow on to Godel's theorem, to Turing's work on the halting problem, all these kinds of things, that there is this fundamental limitation built into science, this idea of computational irreducibility, that says that, you know, even though you may know the rules by which something operates, that does not mean that you can readily sort of be smarter than it and jump ahead and figure out what it's going to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. But do you think there's a hope for pockets of computational reducibility? Yes. And then a set of tools and mathematics that help you discover such pockets." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's where we live is in the pockets of reducibility. That's why, you know, and this is one of the things that sort of come out of this physics project and actually something that, again, I should have realized many years ago, but didn't, is, you know, it could very well be that everything about the world is computationally irreducible and completely unpredictable. But, you know, in our experience of the world, there is at least some amount of prediction we can make. And that's because we have sort of chosen a slice of probably talk about this in much more detail. But I mean we've kind of chosen a slice of how to think about the universe in which we can kind of sample a certain amount of computational reducibility. And that's that's sort of where we where we exist. And it may not be the whole story of how the universe is, but it is the part of the universe that we care about and we sort of operate in. And that's, you know, in science, that's been sort of a very special case of that. That is, science has chosen to talk a lot about places where there is this computational reducibility that it can find. You know, the motion of the planets can be more or less predicted. You know, something about the weather is much harder to predict. something about other kinds of things that are much harder to predict. Science has tended to concentrate itself on places where its methods have allowed successful prediction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think Rule 30, if we could linger on it, because it's just such a beautiful, simple formulation of the essential concept underlying all the things we're talking about. Do you think there's pockets of reducibility inside Rule 30?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. But it's a question of how big are they, what will they allow you to say, and so on. And that's, and figuring out where those pockets are, I mean, in a sense, that's the, that's sort of a, you know, that is an essential thing that one would like to do in science. But it's also, the important thing to realize that has not been, you know, is that science, if you just pick an arbitrary thing, you say, what's the answer to this question? that question may not be one that has a computationally reducible answer. That question, if you choose, if you walk along the series of questions and you've got one that's reducible and you get to another one that's nearby and it's reducible too, if you stick to that kind of stick to the land, so to speak, then you can go down this chain of sort of reducible, answerable things. But if you just say, I'm just pick a question at random, I'm gonna have my computer pick a question at random. Most likely it's going to be irreducible. Most likely it will be irreducible. And what we're throwing in the world, so to speak, when we engineer things, we tend to engineer things to sort of keep in the zone of reducibility. When we're throwing things by the natural world, for example, not at all certain that we will be kept in this kind of zone of reducibility." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we talk about this pandemic then? For a second. There's obviously a huge amount of economic pain that people are feeling. There's a huge incentive and medical pain, health, just all kinds of psychological. There's a huge incentive to figure this out, to walk along the trajectory of reducibility. Uh, there's a, there's a lot of disparate data, you know, people understand generally how virus is spread, but it's very. Complicated because there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a. there could be a lot of variability, like so many, obviously a nearly infinite number of variables that represent human interaction. And so you have to figure out, from the perspective of reducibility, figure out which variables are really important in this kind of, from an epidemiological perspective. So why aren't we, you kind of said that we're clearly failing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think it's a complicated thing. So, I mean, you know, when this pandemic started up, you know, I happened to be in the middle of being about to release this whole physics project thing. But I thought, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The timing is just cosmically absurd. A little bit bizarre." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But, you know, but I thought, you know, I should do the public service thing of, you know, trying to understand what I could about the pandemic. And, you know, we've been curating data about it and all that kind of thing. But, you know, so I started looking at the data. and started looking at modeling, and I decided it's just really hard. You need to know a lot of stuff that we don't know about human interactions. It's actually clear now that there's a lot of stuff we didn't know about viruses and about the way immunity works and so on. And it's, you know, I think what will come out in the end is there's a certain amount of what happens that we just kind of have to trace each step and see what happens. There's a certain amount of stuff where there's going to be a big narrative about this happened because. you know of t-cell immunity this could happen because there's this whole giant sort of field of of asymptomatic viral stuff out there you know there will be a narrative and that narrative whenever there's a narrative that's kind of a sign of reducibility but when you just say let's from first principles figure out what's going on then you can potentially be stuck in this kind of mess of irreducibility where you just have to simulate each step. And you can't do that unless you know details about, you know, human interaction networks and so on and so on and so on. The thing that has been very sort of frustrating to see is the mismatch between people's expectations about what science can deliver and what science can actually deliver, so to speak. Because people have this idea that, you know, it's science. So there must be a definite answer and we must be able to know that answer. And, you know, this is, it is both, you know, when you've, after you've played around with sort of little programs in the computational universe, you don't have that intuition anymore. You know, it's, I always, I'm always fond of saying, you know, the computational animals are always smarter than you are. That is, you know, you look at one of these things and it's like, it can't possibly do such and such a thing. Then you run it and it's like, wait a minute, it's doing that thing. How does that work? Okay, now I can go back and understand it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's the brave thing about science is that in the chaos of the irreducible universe, we nevertheless persist to find those pockets. That's kind of the whole point. That's like you say that the limits of science, but that you know, yes, it's highly limited, but there's a hope there. And like, there's so many questions I wanna ask here. So one, you said narrative, which is really interesting. So obviously from, at every level of society, you look at Twitter, everybody's constructing narratives about the pandemic, about not just the pandemic, but all the cultural tension that we're going through. So there's narratives, but they're not necessarily connected to, the underlying reality of these systems. So our human narratives, I don't even know if they're, I don't like those pockets of reducibility, because we're, it's like constructing things that are not actually representative of reality, and thereby not giving us good solutions to how to predict the system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, it gets complicated because, you know, people want to say, explain the pandemic to me, explain what's going to happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the future?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but also, can you explain it? Is there a story to tell?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What already happened in the past?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or what's going to happen, but I mean, you know, it's similar to sort of explaining things in AI or in any computational system. It's like, you know, explain what happened. Well, it could just be this happened because of this detail and this detail and this detail and a million details. And there isn't a big story to tell. There's no kind of big arc of the story that says, oh, it's because, you know, there's a viral field that has these properties and people start showing symptoms. You know, when the seasons change, people will show symptoms and people don't even understand, you know, seasonal variation of flu, for example. It's something where, you know, there could be a big story or it could be just a zillion little details that mount up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, let's pretend that this pandemic, the coronavirus, resembles something like the 1D Rule 30 cellular automata, okay? So, I mean, that's how epidemiologists model virus spread. Indeed, yes. They sometimes use cellular automata. Yes. And OK, so you could say it's simplistic, but OK, let's say it is. It's representative of actually what happens. You know, the the dynamic of. You have a graph, it probably is closer to the hypergraph model. It is, yes. It's actually, that's another funny thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As we were getting ready to release this physics project, we realized that a bunch of things we'd worked out about foliations of causal graphs and things were directly relevant to thinking about contact tracing and interactions with cell phones and so on, which is really weird." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it just feels like we should be able to get some beautiful core insight about the spread of this particular virus on the hypergraph of human civilization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tried. I didn't manage to figure it out. But you're one person. Yeah, but I mean, I think actually, it's a funny thing, because it turns out the, the main model, you know, this SIR model, I only realized recently was invented by the grandfather of a good friend of mine from high school. So that was just a, you know, it's a weird thing. Right? The question is, You know, okay, so you know, you know, on this graph of how humans are connected, you know something about what happens if this happens and that happens. That graph is made in complicated ways that depends on all sorts of issues that, where we don't have the data about how human society works well enough to be able to make that graph. There's actually, one of my kids did a study of sort of what happens on different kinds of graphs. And how robust are the results? Okay, his basic answer is, there are a few general results that you can get that are quite robust. Like, you know, a small number of big gatherings is worse than a large number of small gatherings. Okay, that's quite robust. But when you ask more detailed questions, it seemed like it just depends. It depends on details. In other words, it's kind of telling you in that case, you know, the irreducibility matters, so to speak. It's not there's not going to be this kind of one sort of master theorem that says, and therefore this is how things are going to work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but there's a certain kind of from a graph perspective. the certain kind of dynamic to human interaction. So like large groups and small groups, I think it matters who the groups are. For example, you could imagine large, depends how you define large, but you can imagine groups of 30 people as long as they are cliques or whatever, as long as the, outgoing degree of that graph is small or something like that, like you can imagine some beautiful underlying rule of human dynamic interaction where I can still be happy, where I can have a conversation with you and a bunch of other people that mean a lot to me in my life and then stay away from the bigger, I don't know, not going to a Miley Cyrus concert or something like that and figuring out mathematically some nice See, this is an interesting thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I mean, in, you know, this is the question of what you're describing is kind of the problem of many situations where you would like to get away from computational irreducibility. A classic one in physics is thermodynamics. you know, the second law of thermodynamics, the law that says, you know, entropy tends to increase, things that, you know, start orderly tend to get more disordered, or, which is also the thing that says, given that you have a bunch of heat, it's hard, heat is, you know, the microscopic motion of molecules, it's hard to turn that heat into systematic mechanical work. It's hard to, you know, just take something being hot and turn that into, oh, the, you know, all the atoms are going to line up in the bar of metal and the piece of metal is going to shoot in some direction. that's essentially the same problem as how do you go from this computationally irreducible mess of things happening and get something you want out of it. It's kind of mining. Now, actually, I've understood in recent years that the story of thermodynamics is actually precisely a story of computational irreducibility, but it is already an analogy. You can kind of see that as can you take the, you know, what you're asking to do there is you're asking to go from the kind of the mess of all these complicated human interactions and all this kind of computational processes going on. And you say, I want to achieve this particular thing out of it. I want to kind of extract from the heat of what's happening. I want to kind of extract this useful piece of sort of mechanical work that I find helpful. I mean," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a hope for the pandemic? So we'll talk about physics, but for the pandemic, can that be extracted? Do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's your intuition? The good news is the curves basically, you know, for reasons we don't understand, the curves, you know, the clearly measurable mortality curves and so on for the Northern Hemisphere," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "have gone down. Yeah, but the bad news is that it could be a lot worse for future viruses. And what this pandemic revealed is we're highly unprepared for the discovery of the pockets of reducibility within a pandemic that's much more dangerous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, my guess is the specific risk of, you know, viral pandemics, you know, that the pure virology and, you know, immunology of the thing, this will cause that to advance to the point where this particular risk is probably considerably mitigated. But, you know, it's, you know, does, is the structure of modern society robust to all kinds of risks? Well, the answer is clearly no. And, you know, it's surprising to me the extent to which people, you know, as I say, it's kind of scary, actually, how much people believe in science. That is, people say, oh, you know, because the science says this, that, and the other, we'll do this, and this, and this, even though from a sort of common sense point of view, it's a little bit crazy. And people are not prepared and it doesn't really work in society as it is for people to say, well, actually, we don't really know how the science works. People say, well, tell us what to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, because then, yeah, what's the alternative for the masses? It's difficult to sit It's difficult to meditate on computational reducibility. It's difficult to sit. It's difficult to enjoy a good dinner meal while knowing that you know nothing about the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this is a place where, you know, this is this is what politicians, you know, and political leaders do for a living, so to speak, because you've got to make some decision about what to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's... Tell some narrative that while amidst the mystery and knowing not much about the past or the future is still telling a narrative that somehow gives people hope that we know what the heck we're doing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and get society through the issue. You know, even though, you know, the idea that we're just going to, you know, sort of be able to get the definitive answer from science, and it's going to tell us exactly what to do, unfortunately, you know, that it's interesting, because let me point out that if that was possible, if science could always tell us what to do, then in a sense, our, you know, that would be a big downer for our lives. If science could always tell us what the answer is going to be, It's like, well, you know, it's kind of fun to live one's life and just sort of see what happens. If one could always just say, let me check my science. Oh, I know, you know, the result of everything is going to be 42. I don't need to live my life and do what I do. It's just we already know the answer. It's actually good news in a sense that there is this phenomenon of computational irreducibility that doesn't allow you to just sort of jump through time and say this is the answer, so to speak. So that's a good thing. The bad thing is it doesn't allow you to jump through time and know what the answer is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's scary. Do you think we're gonna be okay as a human civilization? You said we don't know. Absolutely. Do you think we'll prosper or destroy ourselves? In general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In general. I'm an optimist. No, I think that, you know, it'll be interesting to see, for example, with this, you know, pandemic, you know, to me, you know, when you look at like organizations, for example, you know, having some kind of perturbation, some kick to the system, usually the end result of that is actually quite good. you know, unless it kills the system, it's actually quite good usually. And I think in this case, you know, people, I mean, my impression, you know, it's a little weird for me because, you know, I've been a remote tech CEO for 30 years. It doesn't, you know, this is bizarrely, you know, and the fact that, you know, like this coming to see you here is, is. It's the first time in six months that I've been like, you know, in a building other than my house. Okay. So, so, so, you know, it's, I'm, I'm a kind of ridiculous outlier in these kinds of things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But overall, your sense is when you shake up the system and throw in chaos that you, you challenge the system, we humans emerge better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Seems to be that way. Who's to know? But I think that, you know, people, you know, my sort of vague impression is that people are sort of, you know, oh, what's actually important? You know, what's, what is worth caring about? And so on. And that seems to be something that perhaps is more, you know, emergent in this kind of situation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so fascinating that on the individual level, we have our own complex cognition, we have consciousness, we have intelligence, we're trying to figure out little puzzles, and then that somehow creates this graph of collective intelligence, where we figure out, and then you throw in these viruses, of which there's millions different, you know, there's entire taxonomy, and the viruses are thrown into the system of, collective human intelligence and little humans figure out what to do about it. We get like, we tweet stuff about information. There's doctors, there's conspiracy theorists, and then we play with different information. I mean, the whole of it is fascinating. I am, like you, also very optimistic, but there's a feel, just you said the computational reducibility There's always a fear of the darkness of the uncertainty before us. It's scary." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the thing is, if you knew everything, it will be boring. And worse than boring, so to speak, it would reveal the pointlessness, so to speak. And in a sense, the fact that there is this computational irreducibility, it's like as we live our lives, so to speak, something is being achieved. We're computing what our lives, you know, what happens in our lives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's funny. So the computational reducibility is kind of like it gives the meaning to life. It is the meaning of life. Computational reducibility is the meaning of life. There you go. It gives it meaning. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's what causes it to not be something where you can just say, you know, you went through all those steps to live your life, but we already knew what the answer was. Right. Hold on one second. I'm going to use my handy Wolfram Alpha sunburn computation thing, so long as I can get network here. There we go. Oh, actually, you know what? It says sunburn unlikely. This is a QA moment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is a good moment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, well, let me just check what it thinks. See why it thinks that it doesn't seem like my intuition. This is one of these cases where we can. The question is, do we do we trust the science? Or do we use common sense?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The UV thing is cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see. This is a QA moment, as I say. And so we trust the product. Yes, we trust the product. So and then there'll be a data point either way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If if I'm desperately sunburned, I will send in an angry feedback because we mentioned the concept so much and a lot of people know it. But can you say what computation reducibility is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. So I mean, the question is, if you think about things that happen as being computations. You think about some process in physics, something that you compute in mathematics, whatever else, it's a computation in the sense it has definite rules. You follow those rules, you follow them many steps, and you get some result. So then the issue is, if you look at all these different kinds of computations that can happen, whether they're computations that are happening in the natural world, whether they're happening in our brains, whether they're happening in our mathematics, whatever else, the big question is, how do these computations compare? Are there dumb computations and smart computations, or are they somehow all equivalent? And the thing that I kind of was sort of surprised to realize from a bunch of experiments that I did in the early 90s, and now we have tons more evidence for it, this thing I call the principle of computational equivalence, which basically says when one of these computations, one of these processes that follows rules doesn't seem like it's doing something obviously simple, then it has reached the sort of equivalent level of computational sophistication of everything. So what does that mean? That means that, you know, you might say, gosh, I'm studying this little tiny, you know, tiny program on my computer. I'm studying this little thing in nature, but I have my brain and my brain is surely much smarter than that thing. I'm gonna be able to systematically outrun the computation that it does because I have a more sophisticated computation that I can do. But what the principle of computational equivalence says is that doesn't work. Our brains are doing computations that are exactly equivalent to the kinds of computations that are being done in all these other sorts of systems. And so what consequences does that have? Well, it means that we can't systematically outrun these systems. These systems are computationally irreducible in the sense that there's no sort of shortcut that we can make that jumps to the answer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In a general case." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right. So what has happened, you know, what science has become used to doing is using the little sort of pockets of computational reducibility, which by the way are an inevitable consequence of computational irreducibility, that there have to be these pockets scattered around of computational reducibility to be able to find those particular cases where you can jump ahead. I mean, one thing, sort of a little bit of a parable type thing that I think is fun to tell, you know, if you look at ancient Babylon, they were trying to predict three kinds of things. They tried to predict, you know, where the planets would be, what the weather would be like, and who would win or lose a certain battle. And they had no idea which of these things would be more predictable than the other. That's funny. And, you know, it turns out, you know, where the planets are is a piece of computational reducibility that, you know, 300 years ago or so, we pretty much cracked. I mean, it's been technically difficult to get all the details right, but it's basically we got that, you know, who's going to win or lose the battle? No, we didn't crack that one. That one. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Game theorists are trying. And then the weather... It's kind of halfway on that one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Halfway? Yeah, I think we're doing okay on that one. Long-term climate, different story. But the weather, we're much closer on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you think eventually we'll figure out the weather? Do you think eventually we'll figure out the local pockets in everything, essentially, the local pockets of reducibility?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think that it's an interesting question, but I think that there is an infinite collection of these local pockets. We'll never run out of local pockets. And by the way, those local pockets are where we build engineering, for example. That's how we, if we want to have a predictable life, so to speak, then we have to build in these sort of pockets of reducibility. Otherwise, if we were sort of existing in this kind of irreducible world, we'd never be able to have definite things to know what's going to happen. I have to say, I think one of the features, when we look at sort of today from the future, so to speak, I suspect one of the things where people will say, I can't believe they didn't see that is stuff to do with the following kind of thing. So, you know, if we describe, oh, I don't know, something like heat, for instance, we say, oh, you know, the air in here, it's, you know, it's this temperature, this pressure. That's as much as we can say. Otherwise, just a bunch of random molecules bouncing around. People will say, I just can't believe they didn't realize that there was all this detail and how all these molecules were bouncing around and they could make use of that. And actually, I realized there's a thing I realized last week, actually, was a thing that people say, you know, one of the scenarios for the very long term history of our universe is a so-called heat death of the universe, where basically everything just becomes thermodynamically boring. Everything's just this big kind of gas and thermal equilibrium. People say that's a really bad outcome. But actually, it's not a really bad outcome. It's an outcome where there's all this computation going on, and all those individual gas molecules are all bouncing around in very complicated ways, doing this very elaborate computation. It just happens to be a computation that right now, we haven't found ways to understand. We haven't found ways, you know, our brains haven't, and our mathematics and our science and so on, haven't found ways to tell an interesting story about that. It just looks boring to us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're saying there's a, hopeful view of the heat death, quote unquote, of the universe, where there's actual beautiful complexity going on, similar to the kind of complexity we think of that creates rich experience in human life and life on Earth. So those little molecules interact in complex ways, there could be intelligence in that, there could be... Wow, that's a hopeful message." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. I mean, this is what you kind of learn from this principle of computational equivalence. You learn it's both a message of sort of hope and a message of kind of, you know, you're not as special as you think you are, so to speak. I mean, because, you know, we imagine that with sort of all the things we do with human intelligence and all that kind of thing and all of the stuff we've constructed in science, it's like we're very special. But actually, it turns out, well, no, we're not. We're just doing computations like things in nature do computations, like those gas molecules do computations, like the weather does computations. The only thing about the computations that we do that's really special is that we understand what they are, so to speak. In other words, we have a, you know, to us, they're special because kind of they're connected to our purposes, our ways of thinking about things and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's some, but so- That's very human-centric. We're just attached to this kind of thing. So let's talk a little bit of physics. Maybe let's ask the biggest question. What is a theory of everything in general? What does that mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I mean, the question is, can we kind of reduce what has been physics as something where we have to sort of pick away and say, do we roughly know how the world works, to something where we have a complete formal theory, where we say, if we were to run this program for long enough, we would reproduce everything. down to the fact that we're having this conversation at this moment, etc, etc, etc." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Any physical phenomenon, any phenomenon in this world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Any phenomenon in the universe. But because of computational irreducibility, that's not something where you say, OK, you've got the fundamental theory of everything. Then tell me whether lions are going to eat tigers or something. No, you have to run this thing for 10 to the 500 steps or something to know something like that. Okay, so at some moment, potentially, you say, this is a rule and run this rule enough times and you will get the whole universe, right? That's what it means to kind of have a fundamental theory of physics as far as I'm concerned is you've got this rule. It's potentially quite simple. We don't know for sure it's simple, but we have various reasons to believe it might be simple. And then you say, okay, I'm showing you this rule. You just run it only 10 to the 500 times. and you'll get everything. In other words, you've kind of reduced the problem of physics to a problem of mathematics, so to speak. It's like, it's as if, you know, you'd like you generate the digits of pi, there's a definite procedure, you just generate them. And it'd be the same thing if you have a fundamental theory of physics of the kind that I'm imagining, you, you know, you get a, this rule, and you just run it out. And you get everything that happens in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a theory of everything is a mathematical framework within which you can explain everything that happens in the universe kind of in a unified way. It's not there's a bunch of disparate modules of Does it feel like if you create a rule, and we'll talk about the Wolfram physics model, which is fascinating, but if you have a simple set of rules with a data structure, like a hypergraph, does that feel like a satisfying theory of everything? Because then you really run up against the irreducibility, computational reducibility." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So that's a really interesting question. So I, you know, what I thought was going to happen is I thought we, you know, I thought we had a pretty good, I had a pretty good idea for what the structure of this sort of theory that's sort of underneath space and time and so on might be like. And I thought, gosh, you know, in my lifetime, so to speak, we might be able to figure out what happens in the first 10 to the minus 100 seconds of the universe. And that would be cool, but it's pretty far away from anything that we can see today. And it will be hard to test whether that's right and so on and so on and so on. To my huge surprise, although it should have been obvious, and it's embarrassing that it wasn't obvious to me, but to my huge surprise, we managed to get unbelievably much further than that. And basically what happened is that it turns out that even though there's this kind of bed of computational irreducibility that sort of all these simple rules run into, There are certain pieces of computational reducibility that quite generically occur for large classes of these rules. And, and this is the really exciting thing as far as I'm concerned, the big pieces of computational reducibility are basically the pillars of 20th century physics. That's the amazing thing that general relativity and quantum field theory, the sort of the pillars of 20th century physics, turn out to be precisely the stuff you can say. There's a lot you can't say. There's a lot that's kind of at this irreducible level where you kind of don't know what's going to happen. You have to run it. You know, you can't run it within our universe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing is, there are things you can say. and the things you can say turn out to be very beautifully exactly the structure that was found in 20th century physics, namely general relativity and quantum mechanics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And general relativity and quantum mechanics are these pockets of reducibility that we think of as, that 20th century physics is essentially pockets of reducibility. And then it is incredibly surprising that any kind of model that's generative from simple rules would have such pockets?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I think what's surprising is we didn't know where those things came from. It's like general relativity, it's a very nice mathematically elegant theory. Why is it true? you know, quantum mechanics, why is it true? What we realized is that from this, that they are, these theories are generic to a huge class of systems that have these particular very unstructured underlying rules. And that's the thing that is sort of remarkable. And that's the thing to me that's just, it's really beautiful. And the thing that's even more beautiful is that it turns out that people have been struggling for a long time. How does general relativity theory of gravity relate to quantum mechanics? They seem to have all kinds of incompatibilities. It turns out what we realized is at some level, they are the same theory. And it's just great as far as I'm concerned." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe like taking a little step back from your perspective, not from the low, not from the beautiful hypergraph, well from physics model perspective, but from the perspective of 20th century physics, what is general relativity? What is quantum mechanics? How do you think about these two theories from the context of the theory of everything? It's just even definitions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So, I mean, you know, a little bit of history of physics, right? So, I mean, the, you know, okay, very, very quick history of physics, right? So, I mean, you know, physics, you know, in ancient Greek times, people basically said, we can just figure out how the world works. As, you know, we're philosophers, we're gonna figure out how the world works. You know, some philosophers thought there were atoms. Some philosophers thought there were, you know, continuous flows of things. People had different ideas about how the world works. And they tried to just say, we're going to construct this idea of how the world works. They didn't really have sort of notions of doing experiments and so on quite the same way as developed later. So that was sort of an early tradition for thinking about sort of models of the world. Then by the time of 1600s, time of Galileo and then Newton, sort of the big idea there was, you know, title of Newton's book, you know, Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. We can use mathematics to understand natural philosophy, to understand things about the way the world works. And so that then led to this kind of idea that, you know, we can write down a mathematical equation and have that represent how the world works. So Newton's one of his most famous ones is his universal law of gravity, inverse square law of gravity that allowed him to compute all sorts of features of the planets and so on. Although some of them he got wrong and it took another hundred years for people to actually be able to do the math. to the level that was needed. But so that had been the sort of tradition was we write down these mathematical equations. We don't really know where these equations come from. We write them down. Then we figure out, we work out the consequences and we say, yes, that agrees with what we actually observe in astronomy or something like this. So that tradition continued, and then the first of these two sort of great 20th century innovations was, well, the history is actually a little bit more complicated, but let's say that there were two, quantum mechanics and general relativity. Quantum mechanics kind of 1900 was kind of the very early stuff done by Planck that led to the idea of photons, particles of light. But let's take general relativity first. One feature of the story is that special relativity, the thing Einstein invented in 1905, was something which surprisingly was a kind of logically invented theory. It was not a theory where it was something where given these ideas that were sort of axiomatically thought to be true about the world, it followed that such and such a thing would be the case. It was a little bit different from the kind of methodological structure of some existing theories in the more recent times, where it had just been we write down an equation and we find out that it works. So what happened there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some reasoning about the light." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The basic idea was, you know, the speed of light is appears to be constant. You know, even if you're traveling very fast, you shine a flashlight, the light will come out. Even if you're going at half the speed of light, the light doesn't come out of your flashlight at one and a half times the speed of light. It's still just the speed of light. And to make that work, you have to change your view of how space and time work to be able to account for the fact that when you're going faster, it appears that, you know, length is foreshortened and time is dilated and things like this. And that's special relativity. That's special relativity. So then Einstein went on with sort of vaguely similar kinds of thinking. In 1915, invented general relativity, which is a theory of gravity. And the basic point of general relativity is it's a theory that says when there is mass in space, space is curved. And what does that mean? You know, usually you think of what's the shortest distance between two points? Like ordinarily on a plane in space, it's a straight line. you know, photons, light goes in straight lines. Well, then the question is, is if you have a curved surface, a straight line is no longer straight. On the surface of the earth, the shortest distance between two points is a great circle. It's a circle. It's so, you know, Einstein's observation was maybe the physical structure of space is such that space is curved, so the shortest distance between two points, the path, the straight line in quotes, won't be straight anymore. And in particular, if a photon is, you know, traveling near the sun or something, or if a particle is going, something is traveling near the sun, maybe the shortest path will be one that is something which looks curved to us because it seems curved to us because space has been deformed by the presence of mass associated with that massive object. So the kind of the idea there is think of the structure of space as being a dynamical changing kind of thing. But then what Einstein did was he wrote down these differential equations that basically represented the curvature of space and its response to the presence of mass and energy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that ultimately is connected to the force of gravity, which is one of the forces that seems to, based on its strength, operate on a different scale than some of the other forces. So it operates at a scale that's very large." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What happens there is just this curvature of space, which causes the paths of objects to be deflected. That's what gravity does. It causes the paths of objects to be deflected. And this is an explanation for gravity, so to speak. And the surprise is that from 1915 until today, everything that we've measured about gravity precisely agrees with general relativity. And that, you know, it wasn't clear, black holes were sort of a predict, well actually the expansion of the universe was an early potential prediction, although Einstein tried to sort of patch up his equations to make it not cause the universe to expand, because it was kind of so obvious the universe wasn't expanding. And, you know, it turns out it was expanding and he should have just trusted the equations. And that's a lesson for those of us interested in making fundamental theories of physics is you should trust your theory and not try and patch it because of something that you think might be the case that might turn out not to be the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even if the theory says something crazy is happening." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right, like the universe is expanding, right, which is, but, you know, then it took until the 1940s, probably even really until the 1960s, until people understood that black holes were a consequence of general relativity and so on. But that's, you know, the big surprise has been that so far, this theory of gravity has perfectly agreed with, you know, these collisions of black holes seen by their gravitational waves, you know, it all just works. So that's been kind of one pillar of the story of physics. It's mathematically complicated to work out the consequences of general relativity, but it's not, there's no, I mean, and some things are kind of squiggly and complicated, like people believe, you know, energy is conserved. Okay, well, Energy conservation doesn't really work in general relativity in the same way as it ordinarily does. And it's all a big mathematical story of how you actually nail down something that is definitive that you can talk about and not specific to the reference frames you're operating in and so on and so on and so on. But fundamentally, general relativity is a straight shot in the sense that you have this theory, you work out its consequences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that theory is useful in terms of basic science and trying to understand the way black holes work, the way the creation of galaxies work, sort of all of these kind of cosmological things, understanding what happened, like you said, at the Big Bang, like all those kinds of, well, no, not at the Big Bang, actually, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, features of the expansion of the universe, yes. I mean, and there are lots of details where we don't quite know how it's working, you know, is there, you know, where's the dark matter, is there dark energy, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But fundamentally, you know, the testable features of general relativity, it all works very beautifully. And it's in a sense, it is mathematically sophisticated, but it is not conceptually hard to understand in some sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so that's general relativity and what's its friendly neighbor?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like you said there's two theories quantum mechanics, right? So quantum mechanics the the the sort of the way that that originated was One question was is the world continuous or is it discrete? You know in ancient greek times people have been debating this people debated it and you know throughout history as light Made of waves. Is it continuous? Is it discrete? Is it made of particles corpuscles? Whatever. Um, you know what had become clear in the 1800s is that atoms that, you know, materials are made of discrete atoms. You know, when you take some water, the water is not a continuous fluid, even though it seems like a continuous fluid to us at our scale. But if you say, let's look at it small and small and small on smaller scale, eventually you get down to these, you know, these molecules and then atoms. It's made of discrete things. So the question is sort of how important is this discreteness, just what's discrete, what's not discrete, is energy discrete, is, you know, what's discrete, what's not?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it have mass, those kinds of questions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, right. Well, there's question, I mean, for example, is mass discrete is an interesting question, which is now something we can address. But, you know, what happened in the coming up to the 1920s, there was this kind of mathematical theory developed that could explain certain kinds of discreteness in particularly in features of atoms and so on. And what developed was this mathematical theory that was the theory of quantum mechanics, theory of wave functions, Schrodinger's equation, things like this. That's a mathematical theory that allows you to calculate lots of features of the microscopic world, lots of things about how atoms work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the calculations all work just great. The question of what does it really mean is a complicated question. Now, I mean, to just explain a little bit historically, the, you know, the early calculations of things like atoms worked great, 1920s, 1930s, and so on. There was always a problem. There were, in quantum field theory, which is a theory of, in quantum mechanics, you're dealing with a certain number of electrons, and you fix the number of electrons. You say, I'm dealing with a two-electron thing. In quantum field theory, you allow for particles being created and destroyed. So you can emit a photon that didn't exist before, you can absorb a photon, things like that. That's a more complicated, mathematically complicated theory. And it had all kinds of mathematical issues and all kinds of infinities that cropped up. And it was finally figured out more or less how to get rid of those. But there were only certain ways of doing the calculations, and those didn't work for atomic nuclei, among other things. And that led to a lot of development up until the 1960s of alternative ideas for how one could understand what was happening in atomic nuclei, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. End result, in the end, the kind of most, quote, obvious mathematical structure of quantum field theory seems to work, although it's mathematically difficult to deal with. You can calculate all kinds of things. You can calculate a dozen decimal places, certain things. You can measure them. It all works. It's all beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now you say the underlying fabric is the model of that particular theory is fields. Like you keep saying fields." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those are quantum fields. Those are different from classical fields. A field is something like you say, there's like you say, the temperature field in this room. It's like there is a value of temperature at every point around the room. That's or you can say the wind field would be the vector direction of the wind at every point. It's continuous. Yes, and that's a classical field. The quantum field is a much more mathematically elaborate kind of thing. And I should explain that one of the pictures of quantum mechanics that's really important is, you know, in classical physics, one believes that sort of definite things happen in the world. You pick up a ball, you throw it, the ball goes in a definite trajectory that has certain equations of motion, it goes in a parabola, whatever else. In quantum mechanics, the picture is definite things don't happen. Instead, sort of what happens is this whole sort of structure of all, you know, many different paths being followed. And we can calculate certain aspects of what happens, certain probabilities of different outcomes and so on. And you say, well, what really happened? What's really going on? What's the underlying story? How do we turn this mathematical theory that we can calculate things with into something that we can really understand and have a narrative about? And that's been really, really hard for quantum mechanics. My friend Dick Feynman always used to say, nobody understands quantum mechanics, even though he'd made his whole career out of calculating things about quantum mechanics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But nevertheless, it's what the quantum field theory is very, very accurate at predicting a lot of the physical phenomena. So it works." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. But there are things about it, you know, it has certain, when we apply it, the standard model of particle physics, for example, we, you know, which we apply to calculate all kinds of things, it works really well. And you say, well, it has certain parameters. It has a whole bunch of parameters, actually. You say, why is the, you know, why does the muon particle exist? Why is it 206 times the mass of the electron? We don't know. No idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But so the Standard Model of Physics is one of the models that's very accurate for describing three of the fundamental forces of physics. And it's looking at the world of the very small. And then there's back to the neighbor of gravity, of general relativity. And in the context of a theory of everything, What's traditionally the task of the unification of these theories? And why is it hard?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The issue is you try to use the methods of quantum field theory to talk about gravity and it doesn't work. Just like there are photons of light, so there are gravitons, which are sort of the particles of gravity. And when you try and compute sort of the properties of the particles of gravity, the kind of mathematical tricks that get used in working things out in quantum field theory don't work. And that's, so that's been a sort of fundamental issue. And when you think about black holes, which are a place where sort of the structure of space is, you know, has sort of rapid variation and you get kind of quantum effects mixed in with effects from general relativity, things get very complicated and there are apparent paradoxes and things like that. And people have, you know, there have been a bunch of mathematical developments in physics over the last, I don't know, 30 years or so, which have kind of picked away at those kinds of issues and got hints about how things might work. But it hasn't been, you know, and the other thing to realize is, as far as physics is concerned, it's just like, here's general relativity, here's quantum field theory, you know, be happy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there's a quantization of gravity, quantum gravity? What do you think of efforts that people have tried to... Yeah, what do you think in general of the efforts of the physics community to try to unify these laws?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think what's it's interesting. I mean, I would have said something very different before what's happened with our physics project. I mean, you know, the remarkable thing is what we've been able to do is to make from this very simple, structurally simple underlying set of ideas. We've been able to build this this you know very elaborate structure that's both very abstract and very sort of mathematically rich. And the big surprise as far as I'm concerned is that it touches many of the ideas that people have had. So in other words, things like string theory and so on, twister theory. It's like, you know, we might have thought, I had thought we're out on a prong. We're building something that's computational. It's completely different from what other people have done. But actually, it seems like what we've done is to provide essentially the machine code that these things are various features of domain-specific languages, so to speak, that talk about various aspects of this machine code. And I think this is something that, to me, is very exciting because it allows one both for us to provide sort of a new foundation for what's been thought about there and for all the work that's been done in those areas to give us you know, more momentum to be able to figure out what's going on. Now, you know, people have sort of hoped, oh, we're just going to be able to get, you know, string theory to just answer everything. That hasn't worked out. And I think we now kind of can see a little bit about just sort of how far away certain kinds of things are from being able to explain things. Some things, one of the big surprises to me, actually, I literally just got a message about one aspect of this, is the, you know, it's turning out to be easier. I mean, this project has been so much easier than I could ever imagine it would be. That is, I thought we would be, you know, just about able to understand the first 10 to the minus 100 seconds of the universe. And, you know, it will be a hundred years before we get much further than that. It's just turned out it actually wasn't that hard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, we're not finished, but, you know... So you're seeing echoes of all the disparate theories of physics in this framework?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Yes. I mean, it's a very interesting, you know, sort of... history of science-like phenomenon. I mean, the best analogy that I can see is what happened with the early days of computability and computation theory. You know, Turing machines were invented in 1936. People sort of understand computation in terms of Turing machines, but actually there had been pre-existing theories of computation, combinators, general recursive functions, lambda calculus, things like this. But people hadn't Those hadn't been concrete enough that people could really wrap their arms around them and understand what was going on. And I think what we're going to see in this case is that a bunch of these mathematical theories, including some very one of the things that's really interesting is one of the most abstract things that's come out of of sort of mathematics. higher category theory, things about infinity groupoids, things like this, which to me always just seemed like they were floating off into the stratosphere, ionosphere of mathematics, turn out to be things which our sort of theory anchors down to something fairly definite and says are super relevant to the way that we can understand how physics works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Give me a sec. By the way, I just threw a hat on. You've said that this metaphor analogy that theory of everything is a big mountain and you have a sense that however far we are up the mountain that the Wolfram physics model of you of the universe is at least the right mountain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're the right mountain, yes, without question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So which aspect of it is the right mountain? So for example, I mean, so there's so many aspects to just the way of the Wolfram Physics Project, the way it approaches the world, that's clean, crisp, and unique, and powerful. So there's a discreet nature to it, there's a hypergraph, There's a computational nature, there's a generative aspect, you start from nothing, you generate everything. Do you think the actual model... is actually a really good one, or do you think this general principle of from simplicity generating complexity is the right like what aspect of the mountain? Yeah, right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think that the the kind of the meta idea about using simple computational systems to do things, that's you know, that's the ultimate big paradigm that is, you know, sort of super important. The details of the particular model are very nice and clean and allow one to actually understand what's going on. They are not unique. And in fact, we know that. We know that there's a large number of different ways to describe essentially the same thing. I mean, I can describe things in terms of hypergraphs. I can describe them in terms of higher category theory. I can describe them in a bunch of different ways. They are in some sense all the same thing, but our sort of story about what's going on and the kind of cultural mathematical resonances are a bit different. And I think it's perhaps worth sort of saying a little bit about kind of the foundational ideas of these models and things. Great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you maybe, can we like rewind? We've talked about it a little bit, but can you say like what the central idea is of the Wolfram Physics Project?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so the question is, we're interested in finding a sort of simple computational rule that describes our whole universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just pause on that? It's just so beautiful. That's such a beautiful, that's such a beautiful idea. That we can generate our universe from a simple, from a data structure, a simple structure, simple set of rules, and we can generate our entire universe. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's all inspiring. Right. But but so so, you know, the question is, how do you actualize that? What might this rule be like? And so one thing you quickly realize is if you're going to pack everything about a universe into this tiny rule, not much that we are familiar with in our universe will be obvious in that rule. So you don't get to fit all these parameters of the universe, all these features of, you know, this is how space works, this is how time works, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You don't get to fit that all in. It all has to be sort of packed in to this thing, something much smaller, much more basic, much lower level machine code, so to speak, than that. And all the stuff that we're familiar with has to kind of emerge from the operation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the rule in itself, because of the computational reducibility, is not gonna tell you the story. It's not gonna give you the answer to, it's not gonna let you predict what you're gonna have for lunch tomorrow, and it's not going to let you predict basically anything about your life, about the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and you're not going to be able to see in that rule, oh, there's the three for the number of dimensions of space and so on. That's not going to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So space-time is not going to be obviously." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So the question is then, what is the universe made of? That's a basic question. And we've had some assumptions about what the universe is made of for the last few thousand years that I think in some cases just turn out not to be right. And the most important assumption is that space is a continuous thing. That is that you can, if you say, let's pick a point in space, we're gonna do geometry, we're gonna pick a point. We can pick a point absolutely anywhere in space. Precise numbers we can specify of where that point is. In fact, Euclid who kind of wrote down the original kind of axiomatization of geometry back in 300 BC or so, his very first definition, he says, a point is that which has no part. A point is this, you know, this indivisible, you know, infinitesimal thing. Okay? So we might have said that about material objects. We might have said that about water, for example. We might have said water is a continuous thing that we can just, you know, pick any point we want in some water. But actually we know it isn't true. We know that water is made of molecules that are discrete. And so the question, one fundamental question is what is space made of? And so one of the things that's sort of a starting point for what I've done is to think of space as a discrete thing, to think of there being sort of atoms of space, just as there are atoms of material things, although very different kinds of atoms. And by the way, I mean, this idea, you know, there were ancient Greek philosophers who had this idea. There were, you know, Einstein actually thought this is probably how things would work out. I mean, he said, you know, repeatedly, he thought that's the way it would work out. We don't have the mathematical tools. in our time, which was 1940s, 1950s, and so on, to explore this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like the way he thought, you mean that there is something very, very small and discrete that's underlying space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Space, yes. And that means that, so, you know, the mathematical theory mathematical theories in physics Assume that space can be described just as a continuous thing you can just pick Coordinates and the coordinates can have any values and that's how you define space spaces. That's just sort of background sort of theater on which the universe operates, but can we draw a distinction between" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Space as a thing that could be described by three values coordinates and How you're are you are you using the word space more generally when you say? No, I'm just talking about space like literally what we experience and in in the universe so that you think this 3d aspect of it is fundamental and" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't think that 3D is fundamental at all, actually. I think that the thing that has been assumed is that space is this continuous thing where you can just describe it by, let's say, three numbers, for instance. But the most important thing about that is that you can describe it by precise numbers, because you can pick any point in space, and you can talk about motions, any infinitesimal motion in space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's what continuous means." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what continuous means. That's what, you know, Newton invented calculus to describe these kind of continuous small variations and so on. That's kind of a fundamental idea from Euclid on. That's been a fundamental idea about space. Is that right or wrong? It's not right. It's not right. It's right at the level of our experience most of the time. It's not right at the level of the machine code, so to speak. And so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, of the simulation. That's right. That's right. The very lowest level of the fabric of the universe, at least under the Wolfram physics model, is your senses as discrete." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So now what does that mean? So it means what is space then? So in models, the basic idea is you say there are these sort of atoms of space, there are these points that represent, you know, represent places in space, but they're just discrete points. And the only thing we know about them is how they're connected to each other. We don't know where they are. They don't have coordinates. We don't get to say, this is a position such and such. It's just, here's a big bag of points. Like in our universe, there might be 10 to the 100 of these points. And all we know is this point is connected to this other point. So it's like, all we have is the friend network, so to speak. We don't have people's physical addresses. All we have is the friend network of these points." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The underlying nature of reality is kind of like a Facebook. We don't know their location, but we have their friends." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, right. We know which point is connected to which other points. And that's all we know. And so you might say, well, how on earth can you get something which is like our experience of, you know, what seems like continuous space? Well, the answer is by the time you have 10 to the 100 of these things, those connections can work in such a way that on a large scale, it will seem to be like continuous space in let's say three dimensions or some other number of dimensions or 2.6 dimensions or whatever else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because they're much, much, much, much larger. So like the number of relationships here we're talking about is just a humongous amount. So the kind of thing you're talking about is very, very, very small relative to our experience of daily life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so we don't know exactly the size, but maybe around 10 to the minus 100 meters. So to give a comparison, the size of a proton is 10 to the minus 15 meters. And so this is something incredibly tiny compared to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the idea that from that would emerge the experience of continuous space is mind-blowing. What's your intuition why that's possible? First of all, we'll get into it, but I don't know if we will through the medium of conversation, but the construct of hypergraphs is just beautiful. Right. Tell your automata are beautiful. We'll talk about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But this thing about, you know, continuity arising from discrete systems is in today's world is actually not so surprising. I mean, you know, your average computer screen, right? Every computer screen is made of discrete pixels. Yet we have the you know, we have the idea that we're seeing these continuous pictures. I mean, it's, you know, the fact that on a large scale, continuity can arise from lots of discrete elements. This is at some level unsurprising now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the pixels have a very definitive structure of neighbors on a computer screen. Right. There's no concept of spatial, of space inherent in the underlying fabric of reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right, right. So the point is, but there are cases where there are. So for example, let's just imagine you have a square grid. And at every point on the grid, you have one of these atoms of space. And it's connected to four other atoms of space on the northeast, southwest corners, right? There you have something where if you zoom out from that, it's like a computer screen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the relationship creates the spatial, like the relationship creates a constraint which then in an emergent sense creates a like, yeah, like a basically a spatial coordinate for that thing. Yeah, right. Even though the individual point doesn't have a spatial" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even though the individual point doesn't know anything, it just knows what its neighbors are. On a large scale, it can be described by saying, oh, it looks like it's this grid, zoomed out grid. You can say, well, you can describe these different points by saying they have certain positions, coordinates, et cetera. Now, in the sort of real setup, it's more complicated than that. It isn't just a square grid or something. It's something much more dynamic and complicated, which we'll talk about. But so, you know, the first idea, the first key idea is, you know, what's the universe made of? It's made of atoms of space, basically, with these connections between them. What kind of connections do they have? Well, so the simplest kind of thing you might say is we've got something like a graph where every atom of space, where we have these edges that go between these connections that go between atoms of space. We're not saying how long these edges are. We're just saying there is a connection from this atom to this atom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just a quick pause, because there's a lot of varied people that listen to this. Just to clarify, because I did a poll actually, what do you think a graph is a long time ago? And it's kind of funny how few people know the term graph outside of computer science. Let's call it a network. I think that's better. But every time, I like the word graph though, so let's define, let's just say that a graph, we'll use terms nodes and edges maybe, and it's just nodes represent some abstract entity, and then the edges represent relationships between those entities. So that's what a graph, sorry. So there you go, so that's the basic structure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is the simplest case of a basic structure. Actually, it tends to be better to think about hypergraphs. So a hypergraph is just, instead of saying there are connections between pairs of things, we say there are connections between any number of things. So there might be ternary edges. So instead of just having two points are connected by an edge, you say three points are all associated with a hyperedge, are all connected by a hyperedge. That's just at some level, that's at some level, that's a detail. It's a detail that happens to make the for me, you know, sort of in the history of this project, the realization that you could do things that way broke out of certain kinds of arbitrariness that I felt that there was in the model before I had seen how this worked." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, all a hypergraph can be mapped to a graph It's just a convenient representation, mathematically speaking. Right. That's correct." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's correct. But so then, so, okay, so the first question, the first idea of these models of ours is space is made of these, you know, connected sort of atoms of space. The next idea is space is all there is. There's nothing except for this space. So in traditional ideas in physics, people have said there's space, it's kind of a background, and then there's matter, all these particles, electrons, all these other things, which exist in space, right? But in this model, one of the key ideas is there's nothing except space. So in other words, everything that exists in the universe is a feature of this hypergraph. So how can that possibly be? Well, the way that works is that there are certain structures in this hypergraph where you say that little twisty knotted thing, we don't know exactly how this works yet, but we have sort of idea about how it works mathematically. This sort of twisted knotted thing, that's the core of an electron. This thing over there that has this different form, that's something else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the different peculiarities of the structure of this graph are the very things that we think of as the particles inside the space, but in fact it's just the property of the space. Mind-blowing, first of all. It's mind-blowing in its simplicity and beauty." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think it's very beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's space. And then there's another concept we didn't really kind of mention, but you're thinking of computation as a transformation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's talk about time in a second. Let's just, I mean, on the subject of space, there's this question of kind of what You know, there's this idea, there is this hypergraph, it represents space and it represents everything that's in space. The features of that hypergraph, you can say certain features in this part we do know, certain features of the hypergraph represent the presence of energy, for example, or the presence of mass or momentum. And we know what the features of the hypergraph that represent those things are. But it's all just the same hypergraph. So one thing you might ask is, you know, if you just look at this hypergraph and you say, and we're going to talk about sort of what the hypergraph does, but if you say, you know, how much of what's going on in this hypergraph is things we know and care about, like particles and atoms and electrons and all this kind of thing, and how much is just the background of space? So it turns out, so far as in one rough estimate of this, everything that we care about in the universe is only one part in 10 to the 120 of what's actually going on. The vast majority of what's happening is purely things that maintain the structure of space. That in other words, that the things that are the features of space that are the things that we consider notable, like the presence of particles and so on, that's a tiny little piece of froth on the top of all this activity that mostly is just intended to, you know, mostly I can't say intended. There's no intention here that just maintains the structure of space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It let me let me load that in. It's it just makes me feel so good as a human being. Well, to be the froth on the one in a 10 to the 120 or something of. Well, and also just humbling how in this mathematical framework, how much work needs to be done on the infrastructure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, yes, our universe, right to maintain the infrastructure of our universe is a lot of work. We are we are merely writing a little tiny things on top of that infrastructure. But, but you know, you were just starting to talk a little bit about what I mean, we talked about, you know, space, That represents all the stuff that's in the universe. The question is, what does that stuff do? And for that, we have to start talking about time and what is time and so on. And one of the basic idea of this model is time is the progression of computation. So in other words, we have a structure of space. And there is a rule that says how that structure of space will change. And it's the application, the repeated application of that rule that defines the progress of time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what does the rule look like in the space of hypergraphs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So what the rule says is something like, if you have a little tiny piece of hypergraph that looks like this, then it will be transformed into a piece of hypergraph that looks like this. So that's all it says. It says you pick up these elements of space and you can think of these edges, these hyper edges as being relations between elements in space. You might pick up these two relations between elements in space. And we're not saying where those elements are or what they are, but every time there's a certain arrangement of elements in space, then arrangement in the sense of the way they're connected, then we transform it into some other arrangement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a little tiny pattern and you transform it into another little pattern. That's right. And then because of this, I mean, again, it's kind of similar to cellular automata in that, like, yes, on paper, the rule looks like super simple. It's like, Yeah, okay. Yeah, right, from this the universe can be born. But like, once you start applying it, beautiful structure starts being, potentially can be created. And what you're doing is you're applying that rule to different parts, like anytime you match it within the hypergraph. Exactly. And then one of the incredibly beautiful and interesting things to think about is the order in which you apply that rule. Because that pattern appears all over the place." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So this is a big, complicated thing, very hard to wrap one's brain around. So you say the rule is every time you see this little pattern, transform it in this way. But yet, as you look around the space that represents the universe, there may be zillions of places where that little pattern occurs. So what it says is just do this, apply this rule wherever you feel like. And what is extremely non-trivial is, well, okay, so this is happening sort of in computer science terms sort of asynchronously. You're just doing it wherever you feel like doing it. And the only constraint is that if you're going to apply the rule somewhere, the things to which you apply the rule, the little, you know, elements to which you apply the rule, if they have to be, Okay, well, you can think of each application of the rule as being kind of an event that happens in the universe. And the input to an event has to be ready for the event to occur. That is, if one event occurred, if one transformation occurred, and it produced a particular atom of space, then that atom of space has to already exist before another transformation that's going to apply to that atom of space can occur." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's like the prerequisite for the event." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. So that defines a kind of this sort of set of causal relationships between events. It says this event has to have happened before this event." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that is... But that's not a very limited constraint. No, it's not. And what's interesting... You still get the zillion, that's a technical term, options." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's correct. But OK, so this is where things get a little bit more elaborate. But they're mind blowing, so... Right, but so what happens is, so the first thing you might say is, you know, let's, well, okay, so this question about the freedom of which event you do when, well, let me sort of state an answer and then explain it, okay? The validity of special relativity is a consequence of the fact that in some sense it doesn't matter in what order you do these underlying things so long as they respect this kind of set of causal relationships." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The part that's in a certain sense is a really important one, but the fact that it sometimes doesn't matter, that's another beautiful thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's this idea of what I call causal invariance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Causal invariance, exactly. That's a really, really powerful idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, it's a powerful idea which has actually arisen in different forms many times in the history of mathematics, mathematical logic, even computer science. It has many different names. I mean, our particular version of it is a little bit tighter than other versions, but it's basically the same idea. Here's how to think about that idea. So imagine that, well, let's talk about it in terms of math for a second. Let's say you're doing algebra and you're told, you know, multiply out this series of polynomials that are multiplied together, okay? You say, well, which order should I do that in? Say, well, do I multiply the third one by the fourth one and then do it by the first one? Or do I do the fifth one by the sixth one and then do that? Well, it turns out it doesn't matter. You can multiply them out in any order, you'll always get the same answer. That's a property, if you think about kind of making a kind of network that represents in what order you do things, you'll get different orders for different ways of multiplying things out, but you'll always get the same answer. Same thing if you, let's say you're sorting, you've got a bunch of A's and B's, they're in some random order, BAA, BBBAA, whatever. And you have a little rule that says, every time you see BA, flip it around to AB. Eventually, you apply that rule enough times, you'll have sorted the string so that it's all the A's first and then all the B's. Again, there are many different orders in which you can do that, many different sort of places where you can apply that update. In the end, you'll always get the string sorted the same way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I know with sorting a string, it sounds obvious. That's, to me, surprising that there is in complicated systems, obviously with a string, but in the hypergraph, the application of the rule, asynchronous rule can lead to the same results sometimes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, that is not obvious. And it was something that, you know, I sort of discovered that idea for these kinds of systems back in the 1990s. And for various reasons, I was not, I was not satisfied by how sort of fragile finding that particular property was. And let me just make another point, which is that it turns out that even if the underlying rule does not have this property of causal invariance, it can turn out that every observation made by observers of the rule can impose what amounts to causal invariance on the rule. We can explain that. It's a little bit more complicated. I mean, technically that has to do with this idea of completions, which is something that comes up in term rewriting systems, automated theorem proving systems, and so on. But let's ignore that for a second. We can come to that later." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it useful to talk about observation? Not yet. Not yet. So great. So there's some concept of causal invariance as you apply these rules in an asynchronous way. You can think of those transformations as events. So there's this hypergraph that represents space and all of these events. happening in this space, and the graph grows in interesting, complicated ways, and eventually the froth arises of what we experience as human existence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what- That's some version of the picture, but let's explain a little bit more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, exactly. What's a little more detail?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Well, so one thing that is sort of surprising in this in this theory is one of the sort of achievements of 20th century physics was kind of bringing space and time together. That was, you know, special relativity. People talk about space time, this sort of unified thing where space and time kind of are mixed. And there's a nice mathematical formalism that in which, you know, space and time sort of appear as part of the space-time continuum, the space-time, you know, four vectors and things like this. You know, we talk about time as the fourth dimension and all these kinds of things. It's, you know, and it seems like the theory of relativity sort of says space and time are fundamentally the same kind of thing. So one of the things that took a while to understand in this approach of mine is that in my kind of approach, space and time are really not fundamentally the same kind of thing. Space is the extension of this hypergraph. Time is the kind of progress of this inexorable computation of these rules getting applied to the hypergraph. So they seem like very different kinds of things. And so that, at first, seems like, how can that possibly be right? How can that possibly be Lorentz invariant? That's the term for things being, you know, following the rules of special relativity. Well, it turns out that when you have causal invariance, that, and let's see, we can, it's worth explaining a little bit how this works. It's a little bit elaborate, but the basic point is that even though space and time sort of come from very different places, it turns out that the rules of space-time that special relativity talks about come out of this model when you're looking at large enough systems. So a way to think about this in terms of when you're looking at large enough systems, Part of that story is when you look at some fluid like water, for example, there are equations that govern the flow of water. Those equations are things that apply on a large scale. If you look at the individual molecules, they don't know anything about those equations. It's just the sort of the large scale effect of those molecules turns out to follow those equations. And it's the same kind of thing happening in our models." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I know this might be a small point, but it might be a very big one. We've been talking about space and time at the lowest level of the model, which is space. The hypergraph time is the evolution of this hypergraph. But there's also space-time that we think about in general relativity, for your special relativity. Like, how do you go from the lowest source code of space and time as we're talking about to the more traditional terminology of space and time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right, so the key thing is this thing we call the causal graph. So the causal graph is the graph of causal relationships between events. So every one of these little updating events, every one of these little transformations of the hypergraph happens, somewhere in the hypergraph, happens at some stage in the computation. That's an event. That event has a causal relationship to other events in the sense that if another event needs as its input, the output from the first event, there will be a causal relationship of the future event will depend on the past event. So you can say it has a causal connection. And so you can make this graph of causal relationships between events. That graph of causal relationships, causal invariance, implies that that graph is unique. It doesn't matter, even though you think, oh, I'm, you know, let's say we were sorting a string, for example. I did that particular transposition of characters at this time. Then I did that one. Then I did this one. Turns out if you look at the network of connections between those updating events, That network is the same. It's the if you were to see the structure. So in other words, if you were to draw that, that if you were to put that network on a picture of where you're doing all the updating, the places where you put the nodes of the network will be different. But the way the nodes are connected will always be the same." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So but the causal graph is a it's kind of an observation, it's not enforced, it's just emergent from a set of events. The characteristic, I guess, of the way events happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. It's an event can't happen until its input is ready. Right. And so that creates this this network of causal relationships. And that's, that's the causal graph. And the thing that the next thing to realize is, okay, we, when you're going to observe what happens in the universe, you have to sort of make sense of this causal graph. So and you are an observer who yourself is part of this causal graph. And so that means, so let me give you an example of how that works. So imagine we have a really weird theory of physics of the world where it says this updating process, there's only gonna be one update at every moment in time. And it's just going to be like a Turing machine. It has a little head that runs around and just is always just updating one thing at a time. So you say, you know, I have a theory of physics and the theory of physics says there's just this one little place where things get updated. You say that's completely crazy because, you know, it's plainly obvious that things are being updated sort of, you know, asynchronously. But the fact is that the thing is that if I'm talking to you and you seem to be being updated as I'm being updated, but if there's just this one little head that's running around updating things, I will not know whether you've been updated or not until I'm updated. So in other words, when you draw this causal graph of the causal relationship between the updatings in you and the updatings in me, it'll still be the same causal graph, even though the underlying sort of story of what happens is, oh, there's just this one little thing and it goes and updates in different places in the universe. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that clear or is that a hypothesis? Is that clear that there's a unique causal graph?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If there's causal invariance, there's a unique causal graph." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's OK to think of what we're talking about as a hypergraph and the operations on it as a kind of Turing machine with a single head, like a single guy running around updating stuff. Is that safe to intuitively think of it this way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me think about that for a second. Yes, I think so. I think that I think there's nothing. It doesn't matter. I mean, you can you can say, OK, there is one. The reason I'm pausing for a second is that I'm wondering, well, when you say running around, depends how far it jumps every time it runs. Yeah, that's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I mean, like one operation. Yeah, you can think of it as one operation. It's easier for the human brain to think of it that way, as opposed to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, maybe it's not. OK, but the thing is, that's not how we experience the world. What we experience is we look around. Everything seems to be happening at successive moments in time, everywhere in space. Yes, that is the and that's partly a feature of our particular construction. I mean, that is the speed of light is really fast. compared to, you know, we look around, you know, I can see maybe a hundred feet away right now. You know, it's the, my brain does not process very much in the time it takes light to go a hundred feet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The brain operates at a scale of hundreds of milliseconds or something like that. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the speed of light is much faster. Right. You know, light goes, in a billionth of a second, light has gone afoot. So it goes a billion feet every second." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's certain moments through this conversation where I, Imagine the absurdity of the fact that there's two descendants of apes modeled by a hypergraph that are communicating with each other and experiencing this whole thing as a real-time simultaneous update with, I'm taking in photons from you right now, but there's something much, much deeper going on. It's paralyzing sometimes to remember that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As a small little tangent, I just remembered that we're talking about the fabric of reality. Right. So we've got this causal graph that represents the sort of causal relationships between all these events in the universe. That causal graph kind of is a representation of space-time, but our experience of it requires that we pick reference frames. This is kind of a key idea. Einstein had this idea that what that means is we have to say, what are we going to pick as being the sort of what we define as simultaneous moments in time? So for example, we can say, you know, how do we set our clocks? You know, if we've got a spacecraft landing on Mars, you know, do we say that it, you know, what time is it landing at? Was it, you know, even though there's a 20 minute speed of light delay or something, you know, what time do we say it landed at? How do we set up sort of time coordinates for the world? And that turns out to be that there's kind of this arbitrariness to how we set these reference frames that define sort of what counts as simultaneous And what is the essence of special relativity is to think about reference frames going at different speeds and to think about sort of how they assign what counts as space, what counts as time and so on That's all a bit technical, but the basic bottom line is that this causal invariance property, that means that it's always the same causal graph, independent of how you slice it with these reference frames, you'll always sort of see the same physical processes go on. And that's basically why special relativity works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's something like special relativity, like everything around space and time that fits this idea of the causal graph." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, well, you know, one way to think about it is given that you have a basic structure that just involves updating things in these, you know, connected updates and looking at the causal relationships between connected updates, that's enough. When you unravel the consequences of that, that, together with the fact that there are lots of these things and that you can take a continuum limit and so on, implies special relativity. And so that, it's kind of a, not a big deal because it's kind of a, you know, it was completely unobvious when you started off with saying, we've got this graph, it's being updated in time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That just looks like nothing to do with special relativity. And yet you get that. And what, I mean, then the thing, I mean, this was stuff that I figured out back in the 1990s. The next big thing you get is general relativity. And so in this hypergraph, the sort of limiting structure when you have a very big hypergraph, you can think of as being just like, you know, water seems continuous on a large scale. So this hypergraph seems continuous on a large scale. One question is, you know, how many dimensions of space does it correspond to? So one question you can ask is if you've just got a bunch of points and they're connected together, how do you deduce what effective dimension of space that bundle of points corresponds to? And that's pretty easy to explain. So basically, if you say you've got a point, and you look at how many neighbors does that point have? Okay, imagine it's on a square grid, then it'll have four neighbors. Go another level out, how many neighbors do you get then? What you realize is, as you go more and more levels out, as you go more and more distance on the graph out, you're capturing something which is essentially a circle in two dimensions so that, you know, the area of a circle is pi r squared, so it's the number of, points that you get to goes up like the distance you've gone squared. And in general, in d-dimensional space, it's r to the power d. It's the number of points you get to if you go r steps on the graph grows like the number of steps you go to the power of the dimension. And that's a way that you can estimate the effective dimension of one of these graphs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what does that grow to? So how does the dimension grow? Because, I mean, obviously the visual aspect of these hypergraphs, they're often visualized in three dimensions. And then there's a certain kind of structure, like you said, there's a circle, a sphere, there's a planar aspect to it, to this graph. to where it kind of almost starts creating a surface, like a complicated surface, but a surface. So how does that connect to affected dimension?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so if you can lay out the graph in such a way that the points in the graph that, you know, the points that are neighbors on the graph are neighbors as you lay them out. and you can do that in two dimensions, then it's going to approximate a two-dimensional thing. If you can't do that in two dimensions, if everything would have to fold over a lot in two dimensions, then it's not approximating a two-dimensional thing. Maybe you can lay it out in three dimensions. Maybe you have to lay it out in five dimensions to have it be the case that it sort of smoothly lays out like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, but, okay, so, and I apologize for the different tangent questions, but, you know, there's an infinity number of possible rules. So we have to look for rules that create the kind of structures that are reminiscent for, that have echoes of the different physics theories in them. So what kind of rules, is there something simple to be said about the kind of rules that you have found beautiful, that you have found powerful?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so I mean, one of the features of computational irreducibility is It's very, you can't say in advance what's going to happen with any particular, you can't say, I'm going to pick these rules from this part of rule space, so to speak, because they're going to be the ones that are going to work. You can make some statements along those lines, but you can't generally say that. Now, you know, the state of what we've been able to do is, you know, different properties of the universe, like dimensionality, you know, integer dimensionality, features of other features of quantum mechanics, things like that. At this point, what we've got is we've got rules that any one of those features, we can get a rule that has that feature. We don't have the sort of the final, here's a rule which has all of these features. We do not have that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if I were to try to summarize the Wolfram Physics Project, which is something that's been in your brain for a long time, but really has just exploded in activity only just months ago. Yes. So it's an evolving thing and next week I'll try to publish this conversation as quickly as possible because by the time it's published already new things will probably have come out. So if I were to summarize it, we've talked about the basics of there's a hypergraph that represents space, there is a transformations in that hypergraph that represents the progress of time, there's a causal graph that's a characteristic of this, and the basic process of science of of science within the Wolfram physics model is to try different rules and see which properties of physics that we know of, known physical theories, appear within the graphs that emerge from that rule." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what I thought it was going to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, okay. So what is it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It turns out we can do a lot better than that. It turns out that using kind of mathematical ideas, we can say, and computational ideas, we can make general statements. And those general statements turn out to correspond to things that we know from 20th century physics. In other words, the idea of you just try a bunch of rules and see what they do, that's what I thought we were going to have to do. But in fact, we can say, given causal invariance and computational irreducibility, we can derive, and this is where it gets really pretty interesting, we can derive special relativity, we can derive general relativity, we can derive quantum mechanics. And that's where things really start to get exciting is, you know, it wasn't at all obvious to me that even if we were completely correct and even if we had, you know, this is the rule, you know, even if we found the rule to be able to say, yes, it corresponds to things we already know, I did not expect that to be the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so for somebody who is a simple mind and definitely not a physicist, not even close, what does derivation mean in this case?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so let me, this is an interesting question. Okay, so one thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the context of computational reducibility." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, right, right. So what you have to do, let me go back to, again, the mundane example of fluids and water and things like that, right? So you have a bunch of molecules bouncing around. you can say, just as a piece of mathematics, I happened to do this from cellular automata back in the mid-1980s, you can say, just as a matter of mathematics, you can say the continuum limit of these little molecules bouncing around is the Navier-Stokes equations. It's just a piece of mathematics, it's not, it doesn't rely on, you have to make certain assumptions that you have to say there's enough randomness in the way the molecules bounce around that certain statistical averages work, etc, etc, etc. Okay, it is a very similar derivation to derive, for example, the Einstein equations. Okay, so the way that works, roughly, Einstein equations are about curvature of space. Curvature of space, I talked about sort of how you can figure out dimension of space. There's a similar kind of way of figuring out, if you just sort of say, you know, you're making a larger and larger ball, or larger and larger, if you draw a circle on the surface of the earth, for example, you might think the area of a circle is pi r squared, but on the surface of the earth, because it's a sphere, it's not flat, the area of a circle isn't precisely pi r squared. As the circle gets bigger, the area is slightly smaller than you would expect from the formula pi r squared as a little correction term that depends on the ratio of the size of the circle to the radius of the earth. Okay, so it's the same basic thing, allows you to measure from one of these hypergraphs what is its effective curvature." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, the little piece of mathematics that explains special general relativity can map nicely to describe fundamental property of the hypergraphs, of the curvature of the hypergraphs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, special relativity is about the relationship of time to space. General relativity is about curvature in this space represented by this hypergraph. So, what is the curvature of a hypergraph? Okay, so first I have to explain, what I'm explaining is, first thing you have to have is a notion of dimension. You don't get to talk about curvature of things. If you say, oh, it's a curved line, but I don't know what a line is yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, what is the dimension of a hypergraph then? We've talked about effective dimension, but" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, that's what this is about. What this is about is you have your hypergraph, it's got a trillion nodes in it. What is it roughly like? Is it roughly like a grid, a two-dimensional grid? Is it roughly like all those nodes are arranged on a line? What's it roughly like? And there's a pretty simple mathematical way to estimate that by just looking at this thing I was describing, this sort of the size of a ball that you construct in the hypergraph. You just measure that. You can just compute it on a computer for a given hypergraph. And you can say, oh, this thing is wiggling around, but it roughly corresponds to two or something like that, or roughly corresponds to 2.6 or whatever. So that's how you have a notion of dimension in these hypergraphs. Curvature is something a little bit beyond that. If you look at how the size of this ball increases as you increase its radius, curvature is a correction to the size increase associated with dimension. It's sort of a second order term in determining the size. Just like the area of a circle is roughly pi r squared, so it goes up like r squared. The two is because it's in two dimensions. But when that circle is drawn on a big sphere, the actual formula is pi r squared times one minus r squared over a squared and some coefficient. So in other words, there's a correction to, and that correction term, that gives you curvature. And that correction term is what makes this hypergraph correspond, have the potential to correspond to curved space. Now the next question is, is that curvature, is the way that curvature works, the way that Einstein's equations of general relativity, you know, is it the way they say it should work? And the answer is yes. And so how does that work?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The calculation of the curvature of this hypergraph for some set of rules?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it doesn't matter what the rules are. So long as they have causal invariance and computational irreducibility, and they lead to finite dimensional space, non-infinite dimensional space. or non-dimensional. It can grow infinitely, but it can't be infinite dimensional." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what is a infinitely dimensional hypergraph look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that means, for example, so in a tree, you start from one root of the tree. It doubles, doubles again, doubles again, doubles again. And that means if you ask the question, starting from a given point, how many points do you get to? Remember, like a circle, you get to R squared, the two there on a tree, you get to, for example, two to the R. It's exponential-dimensional, so to speak, or infinite-dimensional." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a sense of, in the space of all possible rules, how many lead to infinitely-dimensional hypergraphs? No. Is that an important thing to know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's an important thing to know. I would love to know the answer to that. But, you know, it gets a little bit more complicated because, for example, it's very possibly the case that in our physical universe, that the universe started infinite-dimensional. And it only, as it, you know, at the Big Bang, it was very likely infinite dimensional. And as the universe sort of expanded and cooled, its dimension gradually went down. And so one of the bizarre possibilities, which actually there are experiments you can do to try and look at this, the universe can have dimension fluctuations. So in other words, we think we live in a three-dimensional universe, but actually there may be places where it's actually 3.01 dimensional or where it's, you know, 2.99 dimensional. And it may be that in the very early universe, it was actually infinite dimensional. And it's only a late stage phenomenon that we end up getting three-dimensional space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But from your perspective of the hypergraph, one of the underlying assumptions you kind of implied, but you have a sense, a hope, set of assumptions that the rules that underlie our universe or the rule that underlies our universe is static. Is that one of the assumptions you're currently operating under?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but there's a footnote to that, which we should get to, because it requires a few more steps." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, actually then, but let's backtrack to the curvature, because we're talking about as long as it's finite dimensional." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Finite dimensional computational irreducibility and causal invariance, then it follows that the large scale structure will follow Einstein's equations. And now let me again qualify that a little bit more. There's a little bit more complexity to it. The, okay, so Einstein's equations in their simplest form apply to the vacuum, no matter just the vacuum. And they say, in particular what they say is if you have, so there's this term geodesic. That's a term that means shortest path. comes from measuring the shortest paths on the Earth. So you look at a bunch of a bundle of GD6, a bunch of shortest paths. It's like the paths that photons would take between two points. Then the statement of Einstein's equations is basically a statement about a certainty that as you look at a bundle of GD6, The structure of space has to be such that although the cross-sectional area of this bundle may, although the actual shape of the cross-section may change, the cross-sectional area does not. That's a version, that's the most simple-minded version of Ami-Nu minus a half R. g mu nu equals zero, which is the more mathematical version of Einstein's equations. It's a statement of the thing called the Ritchie tensor is equal to zero. That's Einstein's equations for the vacuum. So we get that as a result of this model. But footnote, big, you know, big footnote, because all the matter in the universe is the stuff we actually care about. The vacuum is not stuff we care about. So the question is, how does matter come into this? And for that, you have to understand what energy is in these models. And one of the things that we realized, you know, last late last year, was that there's a very simple interpretation of energy in these models. Okay. And energy is basically, well, intuitively, it's the amount of activity in these hypergraphs and the way that that remains over time. So a little bit more formally, you can think about this causal graph as having these edges that represent causal relationships. You can think about, oh boy, there's one more concept that we didn't get to. The notion of space-like hypersurfaces. So this is not as scary as it sounds. It's a common notion in general. It's the notion is you are you're defining what is a possibly what is what where in space-time might be a particular moment in time. So in other words, what is a consistent set of places where you can say this is happening now, so to speak. And you make this series of sort of slices through the space-time, through this causal graph to represent sort of what we consider to be successive moments in time. It's somewhat arbitrary because you can deform that if you're going at a different speed in a special relativity, you tip those things. There are different kinds of deformations, but only certain deformations are allowed by the structure of the causal graph. Anyway, be as it may, the basic point is there is a way of figuring out, you say, what is the energy associated with what's going on in this hypergraph? And the answer is, there is a precise definition of that. And it is the formal way to say it is it's the flux of causal edges through space like hypersurfaces. The slightly less formal way to say it, it's basically the amount of activity. See, the reason it gets tricky is you might say, it's the amount of activity per unit volume in this hypergraph, but you haven't defined what volume is. So it's a little bit, you have to be a little bit more careful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But this hypersurface gives some more formalism to that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, it gives a way to connect that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But intuitively we should think about it as just the amount of activity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so the amount of activity that kind of remains in one place in the hypergraph corresponds to energy. The amount of activity that is kind of where an activity here affects an activity somewhere else corresponds to momentum. And so one of the things that's kind of cool is that I'm trying to think about how to say this intuitively. The mathematics is easy, but the intuitive version, I'm not sure. But basically, the way that things sort of stay in the same place and have activity is associated with rest mass. And so one of the things that you get to derive is E equals mc squared. That is a consequence of this interpretation of energy in terms of the way the causal graph works, which is the whole thing is sort of a consequence of this whole story about updates and hypergraphs and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you linger on that a little bit? How do we get E equals MC squared? So where does the mass come from? Okay, okay. I mean, is there an intuitive, it's okay. First of all, you're pretty deep in the mathematical explorations of this thing right now. We're in a very, we're in a flux currently. So maybe you haven't even had time to think about intuitive explanations, but... Yeah, I mean, this one is, look, roughly what's happening" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That derivation is actually rather easy. And everybody, and I've been saying we should pay more attention to this derivation because it's such, you know, because people care about this one. But everybody says it's just easy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's easy. So there's some concept of energy that can be thought of as the activity, the flux, the level of changes that are occurring based on the transformations within a certain volume. However the heck do you find the volume? Okay. So, and then mass?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, mass is what? Mass is associated with kind of the energy that does not cause you to, that does not somehow propagate through time. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was not obvious in the usual formulation of special relativity is that space and time are connected in a certain way. Energy and momentum are also connected in a certain way. The fact that the connection of energy to momentum is analogous to the connection to space between space and time is not self-evident in ordinary relativity. It is a consequence of the way this model works. It's an intrinsic consequence of the way this model works. And it's all to do with that, with unraveling that connection that ends up giving you this relationship between energy and, well, it's, energy, momentum, mass, they're all connected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so like, hence the general relativity, you have a sense that it appears to be baked in to the fundamental properties of the way these hypergraphs are evolved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I didn't yet get to, so I got as far as special relativity and equals MC squared. The one last step is, in general relativity, the final connection is, energy, mass, cause, curvature, and space. And that's something that when you understand this interpretation of energy and you kind of understand the correspondence to curvature and hypergraphs, then you can finally sort of, the big final answer is, you derive the full version of Einstein's equations for space, time, and matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's- Is that, have you, that last piece with curvature, have you arrived there yet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. Yes. And here's the way that we, here's how we're really, really going to know we've arrived. Okay. So, you know, we have the mathematical derivation. It's all fine. But, you know, mathematical derivations. Okay. So one thing that's sort of a, you know, we're taking this limit of what happens when you, the limit, you have to look at things which are large compared to the size of an elementary length. small compared to the whole size of the universe, large compared to certain kinds of fluctuations, blah, blah, blah. There's a tower of many, many of these mathematical limits that have to be taken. So if you're a pure mathematician saying, where's the precise proof? It's like, well, there are all these limits. We can try each one of them computationally and we could say, yeah, it really works. But the formal mathematics is really hard to do. I mean, for example, in the case of deriving the equations of fluid dynamics from molecular dynamics, that derivation has never been done. There is no rigorous version of that derivation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So- Because you can't do the limits?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because you can't do the limits." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But so the limits allow you to try to describe something general about the system and very, very particular kinds of limits that you need to take with these very- Right, and the limits will definitely work the way we think they work, and we can do all kinds of computer experiments- It's just a hard derivation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's just the mathematical structure kind of ends up running right into computational irreducibility, and you end up with a bunch of difficulty there. But here's the way that we're getting really confident that we know completely what we're talking about, which is, When people study things like black hole mergers using Einstein's equations, what do they actually do? Well, they actually use Mathematica a whole bunch to analyze the equations and so on, but in the end, they do numerical relativity, which means they take these nice mathematical equations and they break them down so that they can run them on a computer, and they break them down into something which is actually a discrete approximation to these equations, then they run them on a computer, they get results, then you look at the gravitational waves and you see if they match. It turns out that our model gives you a direct way to do numerical relativity. So in other words, instead of saying you start from these continuum equations from Einstein, you break them down into these discrete things, you run them on a computer, you say, we're doing it the other way around. We're starting from these discrete things that come from our model, and we're just running big versions of them on a computer. And what we're saying is, and this is how things will work. So the way I'm calling this is proof by compilation, so to speak. In other words, you're taking something where we've got this description of a black hole system, and what we're doing is we're showing that what we get by just running our model agrees with what you would get by doing the computation from the Einstein equations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As a small tangent, or actually a very big tangent, but proof by compilation is a beautiful concept. In a sense, the way of doing physics with this model is by running it or compiling it. At some level, yes. Have you thought about, and these things can be very large, is there a totally new possibilities of computing hardware and computing software, which allows you to perform this kind of compilation? Well, algorithms, software, hardware." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So first comment is. These models seem to give one a lot of intuition about distributed computing, a lot of different intuition about how to think about parallel computation. That particularly comes from the quantum mechanics side of things, which we didn't talk about much yet. But the question of what, given our current computer hardware, how can we most efficiently simulate things? That's actually partly a story of the model itself, because the model itself has deep parallelism in it. The ways that we are simulating it, we're just starting to be able to use that deep parallelism to be able to be more efficient in the way that we simulate things. But in fact, the structure of the model itself allows us to think about parallel computation in different ways. And one of my realizations is that, you know, so It's very hard to get in your brain how you deal with parallel computation, and you're always worrying about, you know, if multiple things can happen on different computers at different times, oh, what happens if this thing happens before that thing? And we really got, you know, we have these race conditions where something can race to get to the answer before another thing, and you get all tangled up because you don't know which thing is going to come in first. And usually when you do parallel computing, there's a big obsession to lock things down to the point where you've had locks and mutexes and God knows what else, where you've arranged it so that there can only be one sequence of things that can happen. So you don't have to think about all the different kinds of things that can happen. Well, in these models, physics is throwing us into, forcing us to think about all these possible things that can happen. But these models, together with what we know from physics, is giving us new ways to think about all possible things happening, about all these different things happening in parallel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so I'm guessing- They have built-in protection for some of the parallelism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, causal invariance is the built-in protection. Causal invariance is what means that even though things happen in different orders, it doesn't matter in the end." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As a person who struggled with concurrent programming in like Java, with all the basic concepts of concurrent programming, that if there could be built up a strong mathematical framework for causal invariance, that's so liberating. And that could be not just liberating, but really powerful for massively distributed computation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. No, I mean, you know, what's eventual consistency in distributed databases is essentially the causal invariance idea. Yeah. Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But have you thought about, you know, like really large simulations?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I'm also thinking about, look, the fact is, you know, I've spent much of my life as a language designer, right? So I can't possibly not think about, you know, what does this mean for designing languages for parallel computation? In fact, another thing that's one of these, you know, I'm always embarrassed. how long it's taken me to figure stuff out. But, you know, back in the 1980s, I worked on trying to make up languages for parallel computation. I thought about doing graph rewriting. I thought about doing these kinds of things, but I couldn't see how to actually make the connections to actually do something useful. I think now physics is kind of showing us how to make those things useful. And so my guess is that in time, we'll be talking about, you know, we do parallel programming, we'll be talking about programming in a certain reference frame, just as we think about thinking about physics in a certain reference frame, it's a certain coordination of what's going on, we say, we're going to program in this reference frame, or let's change the reference frame to this reference frame. And then our program will seem different, and we'll have a different way to think about it. But it's still the same program underneath." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me ask on this topic, because I put out that I'm talking to you, I got way more questions than I can deal with, but what pops to mind is a question somebody asked on Reddit, I think, is, please ask Dr. Wolfram, what are the specs of the computer running the universe? we're talking about specs of hardware and software for simulations of a large scale thing. What about a scale that is comparative to something that eventually leads to the two of us talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right, right. So actually, I did try to estimate that. And we actually have to go a couple more stages before we can really get to that answer, because we're talking about This this thing I'm you know, this is what happens when you when you build these abstract systems and you're trying to explain the universe that Quite a number of levels deep so to speak but the you mean conceptually or like literally because you're talking about small objects and there's yeah, it's 20-something. Yeah, right. It's it's It is conceptually deep and one of the things that's happening sort of structurally in this project is, you know, there were ideas, there's another layer of ideas, another layer of ideas to get to the different things that correspond to physics. They're just different layers of ideas. And they are, you know, it's actually probably, if anything, getting harder to explain this project, because I'm realizing that the fraction of way through that I am so far, and explaining this to you is less than, than, you know, it might be because we know more now, you know, in the every every week, basically, we know a little bit more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And like, those are just layers on the initial fundamental" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, the layers are, you know, you might be asking me, you know, how do we get, you know, the difference between fermions and bosons, the difference between particles that can be all in the same state and particles that exclude each other? Okay. Last three days, we've kind of figured that out. Okay. But, and it's very interesting. It's very cool. And it's very," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And those are some kind of properties at a certain level, layer of abstraction on the graph. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And there's, but the layers of abstraction are kind of, they're compounding. Stacking up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's difficult, but the specs nevertheless remain the same." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, the specs underneath, so I have an estimate. So the question is, what are the units? So we've got these different fundamental constants about the world. So one of them is the speed of light, which is the, so the thing that's always the same in all these different ways of thinking about the universe is the notion of time, because time is computation. And so there's an elementary time, which is sort of the amount of time that we ascribe to elapsing in a single computational step, okay? So that's the elementary time. So then there's an element or whatever. It's a constant. It's whatever we define it to be, because I mean, we we don't, you know, I mean, it's all relative, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It doesn't matter what it is, because we could be it could be slow. And it's just a number which which we use to convert that to seconds, so to speak, because we are experiencing things and we say this amount of time has elapsed, so" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we're within this thing, so it doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But what does matter is the ratio of the spatial distance in this hypergraph to this moment of time. Again, that's an arbitrary thing, but we measure that in meters per second, for example, and that ratio is the speed of light. So the ratio of the elementary distance to the elementary time is the speed of light. And so there are two other levels of this. So there is a thing which we can talk about, which is the maximum entanglement speed, which is a thing that happens at another level in this whole sort of story of how these things get constructed. That's a sort of maximum speed in the space of quantum states. just as the speed of light is a maximum speed in physical space, this is a maximum speed in the space of quantum states. There's another level which is associated with what we call ruleal space, which is another one of these maximum speeds. We'll get to this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So these are limitations on the system that are able to capture the kind of physical universe which we live in, the quantum mechanical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They are inevitable features of having a rule that has only a finite amount of information in the rule. So long as you have a rule that only involves a bounded amount, a limited amount, only involving a limited number of elements, limited number of relations, it is inevitable that there are these speed constraints. We knew about the one for speed of light. We didn't know about the one for maximum entanglement speed, which is actually something that is possibly measurable, particularly in black hole systems and things like this. But anyway, this is long, long story short, you're asking what the processing specs of the universe of the, of the sort of computation in the universe, there's a question of even what are the units of some of these measurements? Okay, so the units I'm using are Wolfram language instructions per second, okay, because you got to have some, you know, what, what computation are you doing?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's got to be some kind of frame of reference." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right. So because it turns out in the end, there will be there's sort of an arbitrariness in the language that you use to describe the universe. So in those terms, I think it's like 10 to the 500 Wolfram language operations per second, I think is the I think it's of that order. You know, so that's the scale of the computation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about memory? If there's an interesting thing to say about storage and memory?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's a question of how many sort of atoms of space might there be? you know, maybe 10 to the 400. We don't know exactly how to estimate these numbers. I mean, this is this is based on some, some, I would say, somewhat rickety way of estimating things. You know, when they start to be able to be experiments done, if we're lucky, there will be experiments that can actually nail down some of these numbers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And because of computation reducibility, there's not much hope for very efficient compression, like very efficient representation. Does this add up?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Good question. I mean, there's probably certain things, you know, the fact that we can deduce. OK, the question is, how deep does the reducibility go? Right. OK. And I keep on being surprised. It's a lot deeper than I thought. OK. And so one of the things is that That there's a question of sort of how much of the whole of physics do we have to be able to get in order to explain certain kinds of phenomena? Like, for example, if we want to study quantum interference, do we have to know what an electron is? Turns out I thought we did. Turns out we don't. I thought to know what energy is, we would have to know what electrons were. We don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can get a lot of really powerful shortcuts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. There's a bunch of sort of bulk information about the world. The thing that I'm excited about last few days, okay, is the idea of fermions versus bosons, fundamental idea that, I mean, it's the reason we have matter that doesn't just self-destruct is because of the exclusion principle that means that two electrons can never be in the same quantum state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it useful for us to maybe first talk about how quantum mechanics fits into the Wolfram physics model? Let's go there. So we talked about general relativity. Now, what have you found? What's the story of quantum mechanics, right? Within and outside of the Wolfram physics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so I mean, the key idea of quantum mechanics The typical interpretation is classical physics says a definite thing happens. Quantum physics says there's this whole set of paths of things that might happen, and we are just observing some overall probability of how those paths work. Okay, so when you think about our hypergraphs and all these little updates that are going on, there's a very remarkable thing to realize, which is If you say, well, which particular sequence of updates should you do? Say, well, it's not really defined. You can do any of a whole collection of possible sequences of updates. Okay, that set of possible sequences of updates defines yet another kind of graph that we call a multi-way graph. And a multi-way graph just is a graph where at every node, there is a choice of several different possible things that could happen. So, for example, you go this way, you go that way, those are two different edges in the multi-way graph. And you're building up the set of possibilities. So, actually, like, for example, I just made the one, the multi-way graph for tic-tac-toe, okay? So, tic-tac-toe, you start off with some board that, you know, everything is blank, and then somebody can put down an X somewhere, an O somewhere, and then there are different possibilities. At each stage, there are different possibilities. And so you build up this multi-way graph of all those possibilities. Now, notice that even in tic-tac-toe, you have the feature that there can be something where you have two different things that happen, and then those branches merge because you end up with the same shape, you know, the same configuration of the board, even though you got there in two different ways. So the thing that's sort of an inevitable feature of our models is that, just like quantum mechanics suggests, definite things don't happen. Instead, you get this whole multi-way graph of all these possibilities. Okay, so then the question is, so, okay, so that's sort of a picture of what's going on. Now you say, okay, well, quantum mechanics has all these features of, you know, all this mathematical structure and so on. How do you get that mathematical structure? Okay, a couple of things to say. So quantum mechanics is actually, in a sense, two different theories glued together. Quantum mechanics is the theory of how quantum amplitudes work, that more or less give you the probabilities of things happening. And it's the theory of quantum measurement, which is the theory of how we actually conclude definite things. Because the mathematics just gives you these quantum amplitudes, which are more or less probabilities of things happening. But yet, we actually observe definite things in the world. Quantum measurement has always been a bit mysterious. It's always been something where people just say, well, the mathematics says this, but then you do a measurement and there are philosophical arguments about what the measurement is, but it's not something where there's a theory of the measurement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Somebody on Reddit also asked, please ask Stephen to tell his story of the double slit experiment. Okay. Yeah, I can. Does that make sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, it makes sense. Absolutely makes sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why, is this like a good way to discuss?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A little bit. Let me explain a couple of things first. The structure of quantum mechanics is mathematically quite complicated. One of the features, let's see how to describe this. Okay, so first point is there's this multi-way graph of all these different paths of things that can happen in the world. And the important point is that these, you can have branchings and you can have mergings. Okay, so this property turns out causal invariance is the statement that the number of mergings is equal to the number of branchings. So, in other words, every time there's a branch, eventually there will also be a merge. In other words, every time there were two possibilities for what might have happened, eventually those will merge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Beautiful concept, by the way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that idea, okay, so then, so that's one thing, and that's closely related to the sort of objectivity in quantum mechanics, the fact that we believe definite things happen, it's because although there are all these different paths, in some sense, because of causal invariance, they all imply the same thing. I'm cheating a little bit in saying that, but that's roughly the essence of what's going on. Okay, next thing to think about is, You have this multi-way graph. It has all these different possible things that are happening. Now, we ask, this multi-way graph is sort of evolving with time. Over time, it's branching, it's merging, it's doing all these things, okay? The question we can ask is, if we slice it at a particular time, what do we see? And that slice represents, in a sense, something to do with the state of the universe at a particular time. So in other words, we've got this multi-way graph of all these possibilities, and then we're asking, okay, we take this slice, this slice represents, okay, each of these different paths corresponds to a different quantum possibility for what's happening. When we take the slice, we're saying, what are the set of quantum possibilities that exist at a particular time?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we say slice are these you slice the graph and then there's a bunch of leaves, a bunch of leaves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And those represent the state of things. Right. But then, OK, so the important thing that you are quickly picking up on is that what what matters is kind of how these leaves are related to each other. So a good way to tell how leaves are related is just to say, on the step before, did they have a common ancestor? So two leaves might be, they might have just branched from one thing, or they might be far away, you know, way far apart in this graph, where to get to a common ancestor, maybe you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the graph, all the way back to the beginning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some kind of measure of distance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. But what you get is by making this slice We call it branchial space, the space of branches. And in this branchial space, you have a graph that represents the relationships between these quantum states in branchial space. You have this notion of distance in branchial space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's connected to quantum entanglement?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. It's basically the distance in Braunschild space is kind of an entanglement distance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a very nice model. Right. It is very nice. It's very beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's so clean. I mean, it's really, you know, and it tells one, okay, so anyway, so then this Braunschild space has this sort of map of the entanglements between quantum states. So in physical space, we have, so you know, you can say, take let's say the causal graph and we can slice that at a particular time and then we get this map of how things are laid out in physical space. When we do the same kind of thing, there's a thing called the multiway causal graph, which is the analog of a causal graph for the multiway system. We slice that, we get essentially the relationships between things, not in physical space, but in the space of quantum states. It's like which quantum state is similar to which other quantum state. Okay, so now I think next thing to say is just to mention how quantum measurement works. So quantum measurement has to do with reference frames in branchial space. So, okay, so measurement in physical space, it matters whether how we assign spatial position and how we define coordinates in space and time. And that's how we make measurements in ordinary space. Are we making a measurement based on us sitting still here? Are we traveling at half the speed of light and making measurements that way? These are different reference frames in which we're making our measurements. And the relationship between different events and different points in space and time will be different depending on what reference frame we're in. Okay, so then we have this idea of quantum observation frames, which are the analog of reference frames, but in branchial space. And so what happens is what we realize is that a quantum measurement is the observer is sort of arbitrarily determining this reference frame. The observer is saying, I'm going to understand the world by saying that space and time are coordinatized this way. I'm going to understand the world by saying that quantum states and time are coordinatized in this way. And essentially what happens is that, you know, the process of quantum measurement is a process of deciding how you slice up this multi-way system in these quantum observation frames. So in a sense, the observer, the way the observer enters is by their choice of these quantum observation frames. And what happens is that the observer, because, okay, this is again, another stack of other concepts, but anyway, because the observer is computationally bounded, there is a limit to the type of quantum observation frames that they can construct." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting, okay, so there's, okay, so there's some constraints, some limit on, On the choice of observation frames. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And by the way, I just want to mention that there's a, I mean, it's bizarre, but there's a hierarchy of these things. So in thermodynamics, the fact that we believe entropy increases, we believe things get more disordered as a consequence of the fact that we can't track each individual molecule. If we could track every single molecule, We could run every movie in reverse, so to speak, and we would not see that things are getting more disordered. But it's because we are computationally bounded, we can only look at these big blobs of what all these molecules collectively do, that we think that things are, that we describe it in terms of entropy increasing and so on. And it's the same phenomenon, basically, also a consequence of computational irreducibility that causes us to basically be forced to conclude that definite things happen in the world, even though there's this quantum, you know, this set of all these different quantum processes that are going on. So, I mean, I'm skipping a little bit, but that's a rough picture." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And in the evolution of the Wolf from Physics project, where do you feel you stand on some of the puzzles that are along the way? See, you're skipping along a bunch of" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's amazing how much these things are unraveling. Look, it used to be the case that I would agree with Dick Feynman, nobody understands quantum mechanics, including me. I'm getting to the point where I think I actually understand quantum mechanics. My exercise is, can I explain quantum mechanics for real at the level of middle school type explanation? And I'm getting closer. It's getting there. I'm not quite there. I've tried it a few times. And I realize that there are things that, where I have to start talking about elaborate mathematical concepts and so on. But I think, and, you know, you've got to realize that it's not self-evident that we can explain, you know, at an intuitively graspable level something which, you know, about the way the universe works. The universe wasn't built for our understanding, so to speak. But I think then, okay, so another important idea is this idea of branchial space, which I mentioned, this sort of space of quantum states. It is, okay, so I mentioned Einstein's equations describing, you know, the effect of the effect of mass and energy on trajectories of particles, on geodesics. The curvature of physical space is associated with the presence of energy according to Einstein's equations. So it turns out that, rather amazingly, the same thing is true in Braunschild space. So it turns out the presence of energy, or more accurately Lagrangian density, which is a kind of relativistic invariant version of energy, the presence of that causes essentially deflection of Jd6 in this branchial space. Okay? So you might say, so what? Well, it turns out that the sort of the best formulation we have of quantum mechanics, this Feynman path integral, is a thing that describes quantum processes in terms of mathematics that can be interpreted as, well, in quantum mechanics, the big thing is you get these quantum amplitudes, which are complex numbers that represent when you combine them together represent probabilities of things happening. And so the big story has been, how do you derive these quantum amplitudes? And people think these quantum amplitudes, they have a complex number, has, you know, real part and imaginary part. You can also think of it as a magnitude and a phase. And people have sort of thought these quantum amplitudes have magnitude and phase, and you compute those together. Turns out that the magnitude and the phase come from completely different places. The magnitude comes, okay, so how do you compute things in quantum mechanics? Roughly, I'm telling you, I'm getting there to be able to do this at a middle school level, but I'm not there yet. Roughly what happens is you're asking, does this state in quantum mechanics evolve to this other state in quantum mechanics? And you can think about that like a particle traveling or something traveling through physical space but instead it's traveling through branchial space. And so what's happening is, does this quantum state evolve to this other quantum state? It's like saying, does this object move from this place in space to this other place in space? Okay? Now, the way that you, these quantum amplitudes characterize kind of to what extent the thing will successfully reach some particular point in branchial space. Just like in physical space, you could say, oh, it had a certain velocity and it went in this direction. In branchial space, there's a similar kind of concept." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a nice way to visualize, for me now, mentally branchial space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just, you have this hypergraph, sorry, you have this multi-way graph. It's this big branching thing, branching and merging thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I mean, like moving through that space. I'm just trying to understand what that looks like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, that space is probably exponential dimensional, which makes it again, another can of worms and understanding what's going on that space as in ordinary space, this hypergraph, the spatial hypergraph limits to something which is like a manifold like something like three-dimensional space, almost certainly the multi-way graph limits to a Hilbert space, which is something that, I mean, it's just a weirder exponential dimensional space. And by the way, you can ask, I mean, there are much weirder things that go on. For example, one of the things I've been interested in is the expansion of the universe in branchial space. So we know the universe is expanding in physical space, but the universe is probably also expanding in branchial space. So that means the number of quantum states of the universe is increasing with time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The diameter of the thing is growing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so that means that the... And by the way, this is related to whether quantum computing can ever work. And... Why? Okay, so let me explain why. So let's talk about... Okay, so first of all, just to finish the thought about quantum amplitudes, the incredibly beautiful thing, But I'm just very excited about this. The Feynman path integral is this formula. It says that the amplitude, the quantum amplitude is e to the i s over h bar, where s is this thing called the action. And it, okay, so that can be thought of as representing a deflection of the angle of this path in the multi-way graph. So it's a deflection of a geodesic in the multi-way path that is caused by this thing called the action, which is essentially associated with the energy, okay? And so this is a deflection of a path in branchial space that is described by this path integral, which is the thing that is the mathematical essence of quantum mechanics. Turns out that deflection is the deflection of geodesics in branchial space follows the exact same mathematical setup as the deflection of geodesics in physical space. except the deflection of geodesics and physical space is described with Einstein's equations, the deflection of geodesics and branchial space is defined by the Feynman path integral, and they are the same. In other words, they are mathematically the same. So that means that general relativity is a story of essentially motion in physical space. Quantum mechanics is a story of essentially motion in branchial space. And the underlying equation for those two things, although it's presented differently because one's interested in different things in branchial space than physical space, but the underlying equation is the same. So in other words, it's just, you know, these two theories, which are those two sort of pillars of 20th century physics, which have seemed to be off in different directions, are actually facets of the exact same theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this, I mean... That's exciting to see, to see where that evolves and exciting that that just is there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. I mean, to me, you know, look, I having spent some part of my early life, you know, working in these in the context of these theories of, you know, 20th century physics, it's they just they seem so different. And the fact that they're really the same, it's just really amazing. Actually, you mentioned double-slit experiment, okay? So the double-slit experiment is an interference phenomenon where you say you can have a photon or an electron, and you say there are these two slits, it could have gone through either one, but there is this interference pattern where there's destructive interference where you might have said in classical physics, oh, well, if there are two slits, then there's a better chance that it gets through one or the other of them. But in quantum mechanics, there's this phenomenon of destructive interference that means that even though there are two slits, two can lead to nothing as opposed to two leading to more than, for example, one slit. And what happens in this model, and we've just been understanding this in the last few weeks, actually, is that the... What essentially happens is that the double slit experiment is a story of the interface between bronchial space and physical space. And what's essentially happening is that the destructive interference is the result of the two possible paths associated with photons going through those two slits, winding up at opposite ends of bronchial space. And so they don't, and so that's why there's sort of nothing there when you look at it, is because these two different sort of branches couldn't get merged together to produce something that you can measure in physical space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a lot to be understood about branch of space? I guess, mathematically speaking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's a very beautiful mathematical thing. And it's very, I mean, by the way, this whole theory is just amazingly rich in terms of the mathematics that it says should exist. Okay, so for example, calculus, you know, is a story of infinitesimal change in integer dimensional space, one dimensional, two dimensional, three dimensional space. We need a theory of infinitesimal change in fractional-dimensional and dynamic-dimensional space. No such theory exists." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's tools of mathematics that are needed here. Right. And this is the motivation for that, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And it's, you know, there are indications, and we can do computer experiments, and we can see how it's going to come out, but we need to, you know, the actual mathematics doesn't exist. And in branchial space, it's actually even worse. There's even more sort of layers of mathematics that are, you know, we can see how it works roughly by doing computer experiments, but to really understand it, we need more sort of mathematical sophistication. So quantum computers. Okay, so the basic idea of quantum computers, the promise of quantum computers is quantum mechanics does things in parallel. And so you can sort of intrinsically do computations in parallel. And somehow that can be much more efficient than just doing them one after another. And, you know, I actually worked on quantum computing a bit with Dick Feynman back in 1980, one, two, three, that kind of time frame. And we... A fascinating image." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You and Feynman working on quantum computers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we tried to work, the big thing we tried to do was invent a randomness chip that would generate randomness at a high speed using quantum mechanics. And the discovery that that wasn't really possible was part of the story of, we never really wrote anything about it. I think maybe he wrote some stuff, but we didn't write stuff about what we figured out. about sort of the fact that it really seemed like the measurement process in quantum mechanics was a serious damper on what was possible to do in sort of, you know, the possible advantages of quantum mechanics for computing. But anyway, so the sort of the promise of quantum computing is, let's say you're trying to, you know, factor an integer. Well, you can, instead of, you know, when you factor an integer, you might say, well, does this factor work? Does this factor work? Does this factor work? In ordinary computing, it seems like we pretty much just have to try all these different factors, you know, kind of one after another. But in quantum mechanics, you might have the idea, oh, you can just sort of have the physics, try all of them in parallel. OK? And there's this algorithm, Shor's algorithm, which allows you, according to the formalism of quantum mechanics, to do everything in parallel and to do it much faster than you can on a classical computer. OK. The only little footnote is you have to figure out what the answer is. You have to measure the result. So the quantum mechanics internally has figured out all these different branches, but then you have to pull all these branches together to say, and the classical answer is this. The standard theory of quantum mechanics does not tell you how to do that. It tells you how the branching works, but doesn't tell you the process of corralling all these things together. And that process, which intuitively you can see is going to be kind of tricky, but our model actually does tell you how that process of pulling things together works. And the answer seems to be, we're not absolutely sure. We've only got to two times three so far, which is kind of in this factorization in quantum computers. But what seems to be the case is that the advantage you get from the parallelization from quantum mechanics is lost from the amount that you have to spend pulling together all those parallel threads to get to a classical answer at the end. Now, that phenomenon is not unrelated to various decoherence phenomena that are seen in practical quantum computers and so on. I mean, I should say, as a very practical point, I mean, it's like, should people stop bothering to do quantum computing research? No, because what they're really doing is they're trying to use physics to get to a new level of what's possible in computing. And that's a completely valid activity. Whether you can really put, you know, whether you can say, oh, you can solve an NP-complete problem, you can reduce exponential time to polynomial time, you know, we're not sure. And I'm suspecting the answer is no. But that's not relevant to the practical speedups you can get by using different kinds of technologies, different kinds of physics to do basic computing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying, I mean, some of the models you're playing with, the indication is that to get all the sheep back together and to corral everything together to get the actual solution to the algorithm is... You lose all the... By the way, I mean, so again, this question, do we actually know what we're talking about, about quantum computing and so on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So again, we're doing proof by compilation. So we have a quantum computing framework in Wolfram language, which is a standard quantum computing framework that represents things in terms of the standard formalism of quantum mechanics. And we have a compiler that simply compiles the representation of quantum gates into multi-way systems. So and in fact the message that I got was from somebody who's working on the project who has managed to compile one of the sort of a core formalism based on category theory and Core quantum formalism into multi-way systems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is a multi-way system with these multi-way graphs. Yes. Yeah Okay, that's awesome. And then you can do the all kinds of experiments on that multi-way graph. I" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. But the point is that what we're saying is the thing we've got this representation of, let's say, Shor's algorithm in terms of standard quantum gates. And it's just a pure matter of sort of computation to just say that is equivalent. We will get the same result as running this multiway system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you do complexity analysis on that multi-way system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's what we've been trying to do. Yes, we're getting there. We haven't done that yet. I mean, there's a pretty good indication of how that's going to work out. And we've done it, as I say, our computer experiments, we've unimpressively gotten to about two times three in terms of factorization. which is kind of about how far people have got with physical quantum computers as well. But yes, we definitely will be able to do complexity analysis, and we will be able to know. So the one remaining hope for quantum computing really, really working at this formal level of quantum brand, exponential stuff being done in polynomial time and so on, the one hope, which is very bizarre, is that you can kind of piggyback on the expansion of branchial space. So, here's how that might work. So, you think, you know, energy conservation, standard thing in high school physics, energy is conserved, right? But now, you imagine, you think about energy in the context of cosmology, in the context of the whole universe. It's a much more complicated story. The expansion of the universe kind of violates energy conservation. And so, for example, if you imagine you've got two galaxies, they're receding from each other very quickly. They've got two big central black holes. You connect a spring between these two central black holes. Not easy to do in practice, but let's imagine you could do it. Now, that spring is being pulled apart. It's getting more potential energy in the spring as a result of the expansion of the universe. So in a sense, you are piggybacking on the expansion that exists in the universe and the sort of violation of energy conservation that's associated with that cosmological expansion to essentially get energy. You're essentially building a perpetual motion machine by using the expansion of the universe. And that is a physical version of that. It is conceivable that the same thing could be done in branchial space to essentially mine the expansion of the universe in branchial space as a way to get sort of quantum computing for free, so to speak, just from the expansion of the universe in branchial space. Now, the physical space version is kind of absurd and involves springs between black holes and so on. It's conceivable that the branchial space version is not as absurd and that it's actually something you can reach with physical things you can build in labs and so on. We don't know yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so like you were saying, the branchial space might be expanding and there might be something that could be exploited." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. In the same kind of way that you can exploit that expansion of the universe in principle, in physical space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You just have like a glimmer of hope." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. I think the real answer is going to be that for practical purposes, the official brand that says you can do exponential things a polynomial time is probably not going to work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "for people curious to kind of learn more. So this is more like, it's not middle school. We're gonna go to elementary school for a second. Maybe middle school, let's go to middle school. So if I were to try to maybe write a pamphlet of like Wolfram Physics Project for Dummies, aka for me, or maybe make a video on the basics but not just the basics of the physics project, but the basics plus the most beautiful central ideas. How would you go about doing that? Could you help me out a little bit? We've covered a lot of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As a really practical matter, we have this kind of visual summary picture that we made, which I think is a pretty good, when I've tried to explain this to people, and it's a pretty good place to start, is you got this rule, you apply the rule, you're building up this big hypergraph, You've got all these possibilities. You're kind of thinking about that in terms of quantum mechanics. I mean, that's a decent place to start." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So basically, the things we've talked about, which is space represented as a hypergraph, transformation of that space is kind of time. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then- Structure of that space and the curvature of that space as gravity. That can be explained without going anywhere near quantum mechanics. I would say that's actually easier to explain than special relativity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so going into general, so going to curvature?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, special relativity, I think is, it's a little bit elaborate to explain. Yeah. And honestly, you only care about it if you know about special relativity, if you know how special relativity is ordinarily derived, and so on. So general relativity is easier?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's easier, yes. And what about quantum? What's the easiest way to reveal" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the basic point is just this fact that there are all these different branches, that there's this kind of map of how the branches work, and that, I mean, I think actually the recent things that we have about the double-slit experiment are pretty good, because you can actually see this, you can see how the double-slit phenomenon arises from just features of these graphs. Now, you know, having said that, right, there is a little bit of sleight of hand there because the true story of the way that double slit thing works depends on the coordination of branchial space that, for example, in our internal team, there is still a vigorous battle going on about how that works. And it's what's becoming clear is, I mean, what's becoming clear is that it's mathematically really quite interesting. I mean, that is that there's a, you know, it involves essentially putting space-filling curves. You'll basically have a thing which is naturally two-dimensional, and you're sort of mapping it into one dimension with a space-filling curve, and it's like, why is it this space-filling curve and not another space-filling curve? And that becomes a story about Riemann surfaces and things, and it's quite elaborate. But there's a more, a little bit sleight-of-hand way of doing it. where it's surprisingly direct." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, a question that might be difficult to answer, but for several levels of people, could you give me advice on how we can learn more, specifically? There is people that are completely outside and just curious and are captivated by the beauty of hypergraphs, actually. So people there just want to explore, play around with this. Second level is people from, say, people like me, who somehow got a PhD in computer science, but are not physicists. But fundamentally, the work you're doing is of computational nature, so it feels very accessible. So what can a person like that do to learn enough physics or not to be able to, one, explore the beauty of it, and two, That's the final level of contribute something right of a level of even publishable, you know, like strong, interesting ideas at all those layers. Complete beginner. Yeah, right. I see as person and they see as person that wants to publish." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. I mean, I think that, you know, I've written a bunch of stuff. A person called Jonathan Gorod, who's been a key person working on this project, has also written a bunch of stuff. And some other people started writing things, too. And he's a physicist. Physicist. Well, he's, I would say, a mathematical physicist. Mathematical physicist. He's pretty mathematically sophisticated. He regularly out-mathematicizes me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. This strong, yeah, strong mathematical thesis. Yeah. I looked at some of the papers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. But but so so, I mean, you know, I wrote this kind of original announcement blog post about this project, which people seem to have found. I've been really happy, actually, that people who, you know, people seem to have grokked key points from that much deeper key points. People seem to have grokked than I thought they would grokk." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's a kind of a long blog post that explains some of the things we talked about, like the hypergraph and the basic rules. And I don't, does it, I forget, it doesn't have any quantum mechanics. Oh yeah, it does." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It goes through quantum mechanics, yes, it does. But we know a little bit more since that blog post that probably clarifies, but that blog post does a pretty decent job. And, you know, talking about things like, again, something we didn't mention, the fact that the uncertainty principle is a consequence of curvature in branchial space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How much physics should a person know to be able to understand the beauty of this framework and to contribute something novel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "OK, so I think that those are different questions. So, I mean, I think that the why does this work? Why does this make any sense? To really know that, you have to know a fair amount of physics. When you say, why does this work?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're referring to the connection between this model and general relativity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to understand something about general relativity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's also a side of this where just as the pure mathematical framework is fascinating. Yes. If you throw the physics out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Then it's quite accessible to, I mean, you know, I wrote this sort of long technical introduction to the project, which seems to have been very accessible to people who are, you know, who understand computation and formal abstract ideas, but are not specialists in physics or other kinds of things. I mean, the thing with the physics part of it is, you know, It's there's both a way of thinking and a literally a mathematical formalism. I mean, it's like, you know, to know that we get the Einstein equations, to know we get the energy momentum tensor, you kind of have to know what the energy momentum tensor is. And that's physics. I mean, that's kind of graduate level physics, basically. And so so that, you know, making that final connection is requires some depth of physics knowledge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's the unfortunate thing, the difference in machine learning and physics in the 21st century. Is it really out of reach of a year or two worth of study?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, you could get it in a year or two. but you can't get it in a month." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean- But it doesn't require necessarily like 15 years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it does not. And in fact, a lot of what has happened with this project makes a lot of this stuff much more accessible. There are things where it has been quite difficult to explain what's going on and it requires much more, you know, having the concreteness of being able to do simulations, knowing that this thing that you might've thought was just an analogy is really actually what's going on. makes one feel much more secure about just sort of saying, this is how this works. And I think it will be, you know, the I'm hoping the textbooks of the future, the physics textbooks of the future, there will be a certain compression, there will be things that used to be very much more elaborate, because, for example, even doing continuous mathematics versus this discrete mathematics, You know, to know how things work in continuous mathematics, you have to be talking about stuff and waving your hands about things. Whereas with the discrete version, it's just like, here is a picture. This is how it works. And there's no, oh, did we get the limit right? Did this, you know, did this thing that is of, you know, zero, you know, measure zero object, you know, interact with this thing in the right way? You don't have to have that whole discussion. It's just like, here's a picture. You know, this is what it does. And then it takes more effort to say, what does it do in the limit when the picture gets very big?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you can do experiments to build up an intuition, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, right. And you can get sort of core intuition for what's going on. Now, in terms of contributing to this, I would say that the study of the computational universe and how all these programs work in the computational universe, there's just an unbelievable amount to do there. And it is very close to the surface. That is, high school kids, you can do experiments. It's not, you know, and you can discover things. I mean, you know, we, you can discover stuff about, I don't know, like this thing about expansion of branchial space. That's an absolutely accessible thing to look at. Now, you know, the main issue with doing these things is not, there isn't a lot of technical depth. difficulty there. The actual doing of the experiments, you know, all the code is all on our website to do all these things. The real thing is sort of the judgment of what's the right experiment to do? How do you interpret what you see? That's the part that you know, people will do amazing things with, and that's the part. But it isn't like you have to have done 10 years of study to get to the point where you can do the experiments. You don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a cool thing. You can do experiments day one, basically. That's the amazing thing about it. And you've actually put the tools out there. It's beautiful. It's mysterious. There's Still, I would say, maybe you can correct me, it feels like there's a huge number of low-hanging fruit on the mathematical side, at least, not the physics side, perhaps." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, look, on the physics side, we're definitely in harvesting mode." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "of which fruit, the low-hanging ones?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The low-hanging ones, yeah, right. I mean, basically, here's the thing. There's a certain list of, you know, here are the effects in quantum mechanics, here are the effects in general relativity. It's just like industrial harvesting. It's like, can we get this one, this one, this one, this one, this one? And the thing that's really, you know, interesting and satisfying, and it's like, you know, is one climbing the right mountain? Does one have the right model? The thing that's just amazing is, you know, we keep on like, are we going to get this one? How hard is this one? It's like, oh, you know, it looks really hard. It looks really hard. Oh, actually, we can get it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And and you're continually surprised. I mean, it seems like I've been following your progress. It's kind of exciting. All the in harvesting mode, all the things you're picking up along" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right. No, I mean, it's the thing that is, I keep on thinking it's going to be more difficult than it is. Now, that's a, you know, that's a, who knows what, I mean, the one thing, so the thing that's been, was a big thing that I think we're pretty close to, I mean, I can give you a little bit of the roadmap. It's sort of interesting to see. It's like, what are particles? What are things like electrons? How do they really work?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you close to trying to understand the atom, the electrons, neutrons, protons?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so this is the stack. So the first thing we want to understand is the quantization of spin. So particles, they kind of spin, they have a certain angular momentum. That angular momentum, even though the masses of particles are all over the place, the electron has a massive, 0.511 MeV, the proton is 938 MeV, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They're all kind of random numbers. The spins of all these particles are either integers or half integers. And that's a fact that was discovered in the 1920s, I guess. I think that we are close to understanding why spin is quantized. And it appears to be a quite elaborate mathematical story about homotopic groups in twister space and all kinds of things. But bottom line is that seems within reach. And that's a big deal because that's a very core feature of understanding how particles work in quantum mechanics. Another core feature is this difference between particles that obey the exclusion principle and sort of stay apart, that leads to the stability of matter and things like that, and particles that love to get together and be in the same state, things like photons, and that's what leads to phenomena like lasers, where you can get sort of coherently everything in the same state. That difference is the particles of integer spin, or bosons, like to get together in the same state, the particles of half-integer spin, of fermions, like electrons, that they tend to stay apart. And so the question is, can we get that in our models? And just the last few days, I think we made, I mean, I think the story of, I mean, it's one of these things where" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Really close. Is this connected to fermions and bosons? Yeah, yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this was what happens is what seems to happen, okay? It's, you know, subject to revision even the next few days. But what seems to be the case is that bosons are associated with essentially merging in multi-way graphs and fermions are associated with branching in multi-way graphs. And that essentially the exclusion principle is the fact that in bronchial space, things have a certain extent in bronchial space that in which things are being sort of forced apart in bronchial space, whereas the case of bosons, they come together in bronchial space. And the real question is, can we explain the relationship between that and these things called spinners, which are the representation of half-integer spin particles that have this weird feature that usually when you go around 360-degree rotation, you get back to where you started from. But for a spinner, you don't get back to where you started from. It takes 720 degrees of rotation to get back to where you started from, and we are just It feels like we're just incredibly close to actually having that, understanding how that works. And it turns out it looks like, my current speculation is, that it's as simple as the directed hypergraphs versus undirected hypergraphs, the relationship between spinors and vectors." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that would be interesting if these are all these kind of nice properties of these multi-way graphs of branching and rejoining." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Spinners have been very mysterious. And if that's what they turn out to be, there's going to be an easy explanation of what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, if it's directed versus undirected." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's why there's only two different cases." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why are spinners important in quantum mechanics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can you just give a... Yeah, so spinners are important because they are the representation of electrons which have half an integer spin. The wave functions of electrons are spinners. Just like the wave functions of photons are vectors, the wave functions of electrons are spinners. And they have this property that when you rotate by 360 degrees, they come back to minus one of themselves and take 720 degrees to get back to the original value. And they are a consequence of... We usually think of rotation in space as being, you know, when you have this notion of rotational invariance, And rotational invariance, as we ordinarily experience it, doesn't have the feature. You know, if you go through 360 degrees, you go back to where you started from. But that's not true for electrons. And so that's why understanding how that works is important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I've been playing with Mobius strip quite a bit lately just for fun. Yes, yes. It adds some funk. It has the same kind of funky properties." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, right, exactly. You can have this so-called belt trick, which is this way of taking an extended object, and you can see properties like spinners with that kind of extended object." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it would be very cool if it somehow connects the directive versus undirective. I think that's what it's going to be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's going to be as simple as that. But we'll see. I mean, this is the thing that, you know, this is the big sort of bizarre surprise, is that, you know, because, you know, I learned physics as probably Let's say a fifth generation in the sense that, you know, if you go back to the 1920s and so on, there were the people who were originating quantum mechanics and so on. Maybe it's a little less than that. Maybe I was like a third generation or something. I don't know. But, you know, the people from whom I learned physics. were the people who were, you know, have been students of the students of the people who originated the current understanding of physics. And we're now at, you know, probably the seventh generation of physicists or something from the early days of 20th century physics. And, you know, whenever a field gets that many generations deep, it seems the foundations seem quite inaccessible and they seem, you know, it seems like you can't possibly understand that. We've gone through, you know, seven academic generations and that's been, you know, that's been this thing that's been difficult to understand for that long. It just can't be that simple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in a sense, maybe that journey takes you to a simple explanation that was there all along. Right, right, right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you know, and the thing for me personally, the thing that's been quite interesting is, you know, I didn't expect this project to work in this way. And I, you know, but I had this sort of weird piece of personal history that I used to be a physicist. And I used to do all this stuff. And I know, you know, the standard canon of physics, I knew it very well. And, you know, but then I'd been working on this kind of computational paradigm for basically 40 years. And the fact that, you know, I'm sort of now coming back to, to, you know, trying to apply that in physics, it kind of felt like that journey was necessary." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was this when did you first try to play with a hypergraph?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what I had was, okay, so this is again, you know, one always feels dumb after the fact. It's obvious after the fact. But so back in the early 1990s, I realized that using graphs as a sort of underlying thing underneath space and time was going to be a useful thing to do. I figured out about multi-way systems. I figured out the things about general relativity I'd figured out by the end of the 1990s. But I always felt there was a certain inelegance because I was using these graphs and there were certain constraints on these graphs that seemed like they were kind of awkward. It was kind of like you can pick, it's like you couldn't pick any rule. It was like you pick any number, but the number has to be prime. It was kind of like you couldn't, it was kind of an awkward special constraint. I had these trivalent graphs, graphs with just three connections from every node. Okay, so, but I discovered a bunch of stuff with that. But I thought it was kind of inelegant. And, you know, the other piece of sort of personal history is obviously I spent my life as a computational language designer. And so the story of computational language design is a story of how do you take all these random ideas in the world and kind of grind them down into something that is computationally as simple as possible. And so, you know, I've been very interested in kind of simple computational frameworks for representing things and have, you know, ridiculous amounts of experience in trying to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And actually all of those trajectories of your life kind of came together. So you make it sound like you could have come up with everything you're working on now decades ago, but in reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, two things slowed me down. I mean, one thing that slowed me down was I couldn't figure out how to make it elegant. And that turns out hypergraphs were the key to that, and that I figured out about less than two years ago now. And the other, I mean, I think, so that was sort of a key thing. Well, OK, so the real embarrassment of this project is that the final structure that we have that is the foundation for this project is basically a kind of an idealized version, a formalized version of the exact same structure that I've used to build computational languages for more than 40 years. But it took me, but I didn't realize that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And, you know. And there yet may be others. So we're focused on physics now, but. I mean, that's what the new kind of science is about, same kind of stuff. And this, in terms of mathematically, the beauty of it, so there could be entire other kind of objects that are useful for, like, we're not talking about, you know, machine learning, for example. Maybe there's other variants of the hypergraph that are very useful for reasoning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we'll see whether the multi-way graph for a machine learning system is interesting, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's leave it at that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's conversation number three. We're not going to go there right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the things you've mentioned is the space of all possible rules that we kind of discussed a little bit. That could be, I guess, the set of possible rules is infinite." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Well, so here's here's the big sort of one of the conundrums that that I'm kind of trying to deal with is, let's say we think we found the rule for the universe. And we say here it is, you know, write it down. It's a little tiny thing. And then we say, gosh, that's really weird. Why did we get that one? And then we're in this whole situation because let's say it's fairly simple. How did we come up the winners getting one of the simple possible universe rules? Why didn't we get some incredibly complicated rule? Why do we get one of the simpler ones? And that's a thing which, you know, in the history of science, you know, the whole sort of story of Copernicus and so on was, you know, we used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, but now we find out it's not, and we're actually just in some, you know, random corner of some random galaxy out in this big universe. There's nothing special about us. So if we get universe number 317 out of all the infinite number of possibilities, how do we get something that small and simple? So I was very confused by this. And it's like, what are we going to say about this? How are we going to explain this? And I thought it might be one of these things where you can get it to the threshold, and then you find out its rule number such and such, and you just have no idea why it's like that. So then I realized, It's actually more bizarre than that, okay? So we talked about multi-way graphs. We talked about this idea that you take these underlying transformation rules on these hypergraphs and you apply them wherever the rule can apply, you apply it. And that makes this whole multi-way graph of possibilities. Okay, so let's go a little bit weirder. Let's say that at every place, not only do you apply a particular rule in all possible ways it can apply, but you apply all possible rules in all possible ways they can apply. As you say, that's just crazy. That's way too complicated. You're never going to be able to conclude anything. Okay, however, turns out that- Don't tell me there's some kind of invariance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what happens is- Oh man, that would be amazing. Right, so this thing that you get, this kind of ruleal multi-way graph, this multi-way graph that is a branching of rules as well as a branching of possible applications of rules, this thing has causal invariance. It's an inevitable feature that it shows causal invariance. And that means that you can take different reference frames, different ways of slicing this thing, and they will all, in some sense, be equivalent. If you make the right translation, they will be equivalent. So, okay, so the basic point here is... If that's true, that would be beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It is true, and it is beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you, it's not just an intuition, there is some... No, no, no, there's real mathematics behind this, and it's, it is, it is, okay, so here's how it comes out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that would be, that's amazing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so by the way, I mean, the mathematics it's connected to is the mathematics of higher category theory and and things like this, which I've always been afraid of, but now I'm finally wrapping my arms around it. But it's also related to computational complexity theory. It's also deeply related to the P versus NP problem and other things like this. Again, it seems completely bizarre that these things are connected, but here's why it's connected. This space of all possible, okay, so a Turing machine, very simple model of computation, you know, you just got this tape where you write down, you know, ones and zeros or something on the tape, and you have this rule that says, you know, you change the number, you move the head on the tape, et cetera. You have a definite rule for doing that. A deterministic Turing machine just does that deterministically. Given the configuration of the tape, it will always do the same thing. a non-deterministic Turing machine can have different choices that it makes at every step. And so, you know, you know this stuff, you probably teach this stuff. You know, so a non-deterministic Turing machine has the set of branching possibilities, which is in fact one of these multi-way graphs. And in fact, if you say, imagine the extremely non-deterministic Turing machine, the Turing machine that can just do, that takes any possible rule at each step. That is this real multi-way graph. The set of possible histories of that extreme non-deterministic Turing machine is a real multi-way graph." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What term are you using? Rulio? Rulio. It's a weird word. Yeah, it's a weird word." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Rulio multirate graph. I'm trying to think of the space of rules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So these are basic transformations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in a Turing machine, it's like it says, move left, move, you know, if it's a one, if it's a black square under the head, move left and right a green square." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a rule. That's a very basic rule, but I'm trying to see the rules on the hypergraphs. How rich of the programs can they be? Or do they all ultimately just map into something simple?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, hypergraphs, that's another layer of complexity on this whole thing. You can think about these in transformations of hypergraphs, but Turing machines are a little bit simpler. If you look at these extreme non-deterministic Turing machines, you're mapping out all the possible non-deterministic paths that the Turing machine can follow. And if you ask the question, can you reach? Okay, so a deterministic Turing machine follows a single path. The non-deterministic Turing machine fills out this whole sort of ball of possibilities. And so then the P versus NP problem ends up being questions about, and we haven't completely figured out all the details of this, but it basically has to do with questions about the growth of that ball relative to what happens with individual paths and so on. So essentially, there's a geometrization of the P versus NP problem that comes out of this. That's a sideshow. The main event here is the statement that you can look at this multi-way graph where the branches correspond not just to different applications of a single rule, but to applications of different rules. Okay. And that then that when you say, I'm going to be an observer embedded in that system, and I'm going to try and make sense of what's going on in the system. And to do that, I essentially am picking a reference frame. And that turns out to be well, okay, so the way this comes out, essentially, is the reference frame you pick is the rule that you infer is what's going on in the universe, even though all possible rules are being run. Although all those possible rules are in a sense giving the same answer because of causal invariance. But what you see could be completely different. If you pick different reference frames, you essentially have a different description language for describing the universe. Okay, so what does this really mean in practice? So imagine there's us. We think about the universe in terms of space and time and we have various kinds of description models and so on. Now let's imagine the friendly aliens, for example. How do they describe their universe? Well, our description of the universe probably is affected by the fact that we are about the size we are, a meter-ish tall, so to speak. We have brain processing speeds about the speeds we have. We're not the size of planets, for example, where the speed of light really would matter. In our everyday life, the speed of light doesn't really matter. The fact that the speed of light is finite is irrelevant. It could as well be infinite. We wouldn't make any difference. It affects the ping times on the internet. That's about the level of how we notice the speed of light. In our sort of everyday existence, we don't really notice it. And so we have a way of describing the universe that's based on our sensory, our senses, these days also on the mathematics we've constructed and so on. But the realization is it's not the only way to do it. There will be completely, utterly incoherent descriptions of the universe, which correspond to different reference frames in this sort of ruleal space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the ruleal space. That's fascinating. So we have some kind of reference frame in this ruleal space. Right. And from that," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's why we are attributing this rule to the universe. So in other words, when we say, why is it this rule and not another? The answer is just, you know, shine the light back on us, so to speak. It's because of the reference frame that we've picked in our way of understanding what's happening in this sort of space of all possible rules and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also in the space from this reference frame, because of the royal, the invariance that simple, that the rule on which the universe, with which you can run the universe might as well be simple." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, but okay, so here's another point. So this is again, these are a little bit mind twisting in some ways, but the, okay, another thing that's sort of we know from computation is this idea of computation universality. The fact that given that we have a program that runs on one kind of computer, we can as well, you know, we can convert it to run on any other kind of computer. We can emulate one kind of computer with another. So that might lead you to say, well, you think you have the rule for the universe, but you might as well be running it on a Turing machine because we know we can emulate any computational rule on any kind of machine. And that's essentially the same thing that's being said here. That is that what we're doing is we're saying these different interpretations of physics corresponds to essentially running physics on different underlying, you know, thinking about the physics as running in different with different underlying rules as if different underlying computers were running them. And but because of computation universality, or more accurately, because of this principle of computational equivalence thing of mine, there's that they are these things are ultimately equivalent. So the only thing that is the ultimate fact about the universe, the ultimate fact that doesn't depend on any of these, you know, we don't have to talk about specific rules, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The ultimate fact is the universe is computational. And it is the things that happen in the universe are the kinds of computations that the principle of computational equivalence says should happen. Now, that might sound like you're not really saying anything there, but you are, because you could in principle have a hypercomputer that things that take an ordinary computer an infinite time to do, the hypercomputer can just say, oh, I know the answer. It's this immediately. What this is saying is the universe is not a hypercomputer. It's not simpler than an ordinary Turing machine type computer. It's exactly like an ordinary Turing machine type computer. And so that's in the end the sort of net net conclusion is that's the thing that is the sort of the hard immovable fact about the universe. That's sort of the fundamental principle of the universe is that it is computational and not hypercomputational and not sort of infracomputational. It is this level of computational ability. And it kind of has, and that's sort of the core fact. But now, you know, this idea that you can have these different kind of ruleal reference frames, these different description languages for the universe, I used to think, okay, imagine the aliens, imagine the extraterrestrial intelligence thing, at least they experience the same physics. Now I've realized it isn't true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They could have a different real frame." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's fascinating. They can end up with a description of the universe that is utterly, utterly incoherent with ours. And that's also interesting in terms of how we think about, well, intelligence, the nature of intelligence and so on. I'm fond of the quote, the weather has a mind of its own, because these are sort of computationally, that system is computationally equivalent to the system that is our brains and so on. What's different is we don't have a way to understand, you know, what the weather is trying to do, so to speak. We have a story about what's happening in our brains. We don't have a sort of connection to what's happening there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we actually, it's funny, last time we talked, maybe over a year ago, we talked about how it was more based on your work with Arrival. We talked about how would we communicate with alien intelligences. Can you maybe comment on how we might, how the Wolfram Physics Project changed your view, how we might be able to communicate with alien intelligence. Like if they showed up, is it possible that because of our comprehension of the physics of the world might be completely different, we would just not be able to communicate at all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here's the thing, you know, intelligence is everywhere. The fact, this idea that there's this notion of, oh, there's gonna be this amazing extraterrestrial intelligence and it's gonna be this unique thing, it's just not true. It's the same thing. I think people will realize this about the time when people decide that artificial intelligences are kind of just natural things that are like human intelligences. They'll realize that extraterrestrial intelligences or intelligences associated with physical systems and so on, it's all the same kind of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "computation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's all the same. It's all just computation. And the issue is, can you are you sort of inside it? Are you are you thinking about it? Do you have sort of a story you're telling yourself about it? And you know, the weather could have a story it's telling itself about what it's doing. We just it's utterly incoherent with the stories that we tell ourselves based on how our brains work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, ultimately, it must be a question whether we can align, align with the kind of intelligence, the systematic way of doing it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So the question is in the space of all possible intelligences, what's the, how do you think about the distance between description languages for one intelligence versus another? And needless to say, I have thought about this And, you know, I don't have a great answer yet, but I think that's a thing where there will be things that can be said. And there'll be things where you can sort of start to characterize, you know, what is the translation distance between this you know, version of the universe, or this, you know, kind of set of computational rules and this other one. In fact, okay, so this is a, you know, there's this idea of algorithmic information theory, there's this question of sort of what is the, when you have some something, what is the sort of shortest description you can make of it, where that description could be saying run this program to get the thing, right? So I'm pretty sure that, that the, that there will be a physicalization of the idea of algorithmic information and that OK, this is, again, a little bit bizarre. So I mentioned that there's the speed of light, maximum speed of information transmission in physical space. There's a maximum speed of information transmission in branchial space, which is a maximum entanglement speed. There's a maximum speed of information transmission in ruleal space, which has to do with a maximum speed of translation between different description languages. And again, I'm not fully wrapped my brain around this one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that one just blows my mind to think about that, but that starts getting closer to the, yeah, the- It's kind of a physicalization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And it's also a physicalization of algorithmic information. And I think there's probably a connection between, I mean, there's probably a connection between the notion of energy and some of these things, which again, I hadn't seen all this coming. I've always been a little bit resistant to the idea of connecting physical energy to things in computation theory, but I think that's probably coming." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's what essentially at the core with the physics project is that you're connecting information theory with physics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's computation. Computation with our physical universe. Yeah, right. I mean, the fact that our physical universe is, right, that we can think of it as a computation and that we can have discussions like, you know, the theory of the physical universe is the same kind of a theory as the P versus NP problem and so on is really, you know, I think that's really interesting. And the fact that, well, Okay, so this this kind of brings me to one one more thing that I have to in terms of this sort of unification of Different ideas, which is metamathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, let's talk about that. You mentioned that earlier. What the heck is Metamathematics and okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here's here's what his okay. So what is mathematics? mathematics sort of at a lowest level, one thinks of mathematics as you have certain axioms. You say, you know, you say things like X plus Y is the same as Y plus X. That's an axiom about addition. And then you say, we've got these axioms. And from these axioms, we derive all these theorems that fill up the literature of mathematics. The activity of mathematicians is to derive all these theorems. Actually, the axioms of mathematics are very small. You can fit, you know, when I did my new kind of science book, I fit all of the standard axioms of mathematics on basically a page and a half. Not much stuff. It's like a very simple rule from which all of mathematics arises. The way it works, though, is a little different from the way things work in sort of a computation. Because in mathematics, what you're interested in is a proof. And the proof says, from here, you can use from this expression, for example, you can use these axioms to get to this other expression. So that proves these two things are equal. Okay, so we can begin to see how this is going to work. What's going to happen is there are paths in metamathematical space. So what happens is each, two different ways to look at it. You can just look at it as mathematical expressions or you can look at it as mathematical statements, postulates or something. But either way, you think of these things and they are connected by these axioms. So in other words, you have some fact, you, or you have some expression, you apply this axiom, you get some other expression. And in general, given some expression, there may be many possible different expressions you can get. You basically build up a multi-way graph. And a proof is a path through the multi-way graph that goes from one thing to another thing. The path tells you how did you get from one thing to the other thing. It's the story of how you got from this to that. The theorem is the thing at one end is equal to the thing at the other end. The proof is the path you go down to get from one thing to the other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned that Gödel's Incompetence Theorem is not natural. It fits naturally there. How does it fit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what happens there is that the Gödel's Theorem is basically saying that there are pods of infinite lengths. That is, that there's no upper bound. If you know these two things, you say, I'm trying to get from here to here, how long do I have to go? You say, well, I've looked at all the paths of length 10. Somebody says, that's not good enough. That path might be of length a billion. And there's no upper bound on how long that path is. And that's what leads to the incompleteness theorem. So I mean, the thing that is kind of an emerging idea is you can start asking, what's the analog of Einstein's equations in metamathematical space? What's the analog of a black hole in mathematical space?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fascinating to model all the mathematics in this way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here's what it is. This is mathematics in bulk. Human mathematicians have made a few million theorems. They've published a few million theorems. But imagine the infinite future of mathematics. Apply something to mathematics that mathematics likes to apply to other things. Take a limit. What is the limit of the infinite future of mathematics? What does it look like? What is the continuum limit of mathematics? What is the as you just fill in more and more and more theorems? What does it look like? What does it do? How does what kinds of conclusions can you make? So for example, one thing I've just been doing is taking Euclid. So Euclid very impressive. He had 10 axioms. He derived 465 theorems. Okay, his book, you know, that was was the sort of defining book of mathematics for 2000 years. So you can actually map out and I actually did this 20 years ago, but I've done it more seriously now. You can map out the theorem dependency of those 465 theorems. So from the axioms, you grow this graph. It's actually a multi-way graph of how all these theorems get proved from other theorems. And so you can ask questions about, you know, well, you can ask things like, what's the hardest theorem in Euclid? The answer is the hardest theorem is that there are five platonic solids. that turns out to be the hardest theorem in Euclid. That's actually his last theorem in all his books." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the final point. What's the hardness, the distance you have to travel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let's say it's 33 steps from the, the longest path in the graph is 33 steps. So that's the, there's a 33 step path you have to follow to go from the axioms according to Euclid's proofs to the statement there are five platonic solids. So, okay, so then the question is, what does it mean If you have this map, okay, so. In a sense, this meta-mathematical space is the infrastructural space of all possible theorems that you could prove in mathematics. That's the geometry of meta-mathematics. There's also the geography of mathematics, that is, where did people choose to live in space? And that's what, for example, exploring the sort of empirical meta-mathematics of Euclid is doing that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Each individual human mathematician, you can embed them into that space." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, they kind of live- They represent a path." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the little things they do, maybe a set of paths. Right. So like a set of axioms that are chosen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So for example, here's an example of a thing that I realized. So one of the surprising things about well, the two surprising facts about math, one is that it's hard and the other is that it's doable. OK, so first question is, why is math hard? You know, you've got these axioms. They're very small. Why can't you just solve every problem in math easily? It's just logic. Right. Yeah. Well, logic happens to be a particular special case that does have certain simplicity to it. But general mathematics, even arithmetic, already doesn't have the simplicity that logic has. So why is it hard? Because of computational irreducibility. Right. Because what happens is, to know what's true, and this is this whole story about the path you have to follow and how long is the path, and Gödel's theorem is the statement that the path is not a bounded length, but the fact that the path is not always compressible to something tiny is a story of computational irreducibility. So that's why math is hard. Now, the next question is, why is math doable? Because it might be the case that most things you care about don't have finite length paths. Most things you care about might be things where you get lost in the sea of computational irreducibility and worse, undecidability. That is, there's just no finite length path that gets you there. You know, why is mathematics doable? You know, Gödel proved his incompleteness theorem in 1931. Most working mathematicians don't really care about it. They just go ahead and do mathematics, even though it could be that the questions they're asking are undecidable. It could have been that Fermat's last theorem is undecidable. It turned out it had a proof. It's a long, complicated proof. The twin prime conjecture might be undecidable. The Riemann hypothesis might be undecidable. These things might be, the axioms of mathematics might not be strong enough to reach those statements. It might be the case that depending on what axioms you choose, you can either say that's true or that's not true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by the way, from Azlaz's theorem, it could be a shorter path." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Yeah, so the notion of GED6 in metamathematical space is a notion of shortest proofs in metamathematical space. And that's a, you know, human mathematicians do not find shortest paths. nor do automated theorem provers. But the fact and by the way, the I mean, this stuff is so bizarrely connected. I mean, if you if you're into automated theorem proving, there are the so called critical pair lemmas and automated theorem proving. Those are precisely the branch pairs in our that in multi way graphs. Let me just finish on the why mathematics is doable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, the second part. We know why it's hard. Why is it doable?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Why do we not just get lost in undecidability all the time? Here's another fact. In doing computer experiments and doing experimental mathematics, you do get lost in that way. When you just say, I'm picking a random integer equation, How do I, does it have a solution or not? And you just pick it at random without any human sort of path getting there. Often it's really, really hard. It's really hard to answer those questions where you just pick them at random from the space of possibilities. But what I think is happening is, and that's a case where you just fell off into this ocean of sort of irreducibility and so on. What's happening is human mathematics is a story of building a path. You started off, you're always building out on this path where you are proving things. you've got this proof trajectory and you're basically, human mathematics is this sort of the exploration of the world along this proof trajectory, so to speak. You're not just, you know, parachuting in from, you know, from anywhere. You're following, you know, Lewis and Clark or whatever. You're actually going, you know, doing the path. And the fact that you are constrained to go along that path is the reason you don't end up with a lot. Every so often, you'll see a little piece of undecidability, and you'll avoid that part of the path. But that's basically the story of why human mathematics has seemed to be doable. It's a story of exploring these paths that are, by their nature, they have been constructed to be paths that can be followed, and so you can follow them further. Now, you know, why is this relevant to anything? So, okay, so here's my belief. The fact that human mathematics works that way is, I think there's some sort of connections between the way that observers work in physics and the way that the axiom systems of mathematics are set up to make mathematics be doable in that kind of way. And so, in other words, in particular, I think there is analog of causal invariance, which I think is, and this is again, it's sort of the upper reaches of mathematics and stuff that, It's a thing, there's this thing called homotopy type theory, which is an abstract, it's came out of category theory, and it's sort of an abstraction of mathematics. Mathematics itself is an abstraction, but it's an abstraction of the abstraction of mathematics. And there is a thing called the univalence axiom, which is a sort of a key axiom in that set of ideas. And I'm pretty sure the univalence axiom is equivalent to causal invariance. What was the term used again?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Univalence. Is that something for somebody like me accessible?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a statement of it that's fairly accessible. I mean, the statement of it is basically it says things which are equivalent can be considered to be identical." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in which space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's in higher category." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In category theory." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so it's a, but I mean the thing, just to give a sketch of how that works, so category theory is an attempt to idealize, it's an attempt to sort of have a formal theory of mathematics that is at a sort of higher level than mathematics. It's where you just think about these mathematical objects and these categories of objects and these morphisms, these connections between categories. Okay, so it turns out the morphisms and categories, at least weak categories, are very much like the paths in our hypergraphs and things. And it turns out, again, this is where it all gets crazy. I mean, the fact that these things are connected is just bizarre. So category theory, The causal graphs are like second order category theory. And it turns out you can take the limits of infinite order category theory. So just give roughly the idea. This is a roughly explainable idea. So a mathematical proof. will be a path that says you can get from this thing to this other thing. And here's the path that you get from this thing to this other thing. But in general, there may be many paths, many proofs that get you many different paths that all successfully go from this thing to this other thing. Now you can define a higher order proof, which is a proof of the equivalence of those proofs. Okay, so you're saying there's a path between those proofs, essentially? Yes, a path between the paths. Yeah. Okay. And so you do that, that's the sort of second order thing, that path between the paths is essentially related to our causal graphs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ah, wow. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Path between path between path between path, the infinite limit, that infinite limit turns out to be our ruleal multiway system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the Rullio multi-way system, that's a fascinating thing, both in the physics world and as you're saying now. I'm not sure I've loaded it in completely, but- Well, I'm not sure I have either." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it may be one of these things where in another five years or something, it's like, this was obvious, but I didn't see it. The thing which is sort of interesting to me is that there's sort of an upper reach of mathematics, of the abstraction of mathematics, This thing, there's this mathematician called Grothendieck who's generally viewed as being sort of one of the most abstract, sort of creator of the most abstract mathematics of 1970s-ish timeframe. And one of the things that he constructed was this thing he called the infinity groupoid. And he has this sort of hypothesis about the inevitable appearance of geometry from essentially logic in the structure of this thing. Well, it turns out this really multiway system is the infinity groupoid. So it's a it's this limiting object. And this is an this is an instance of that limiting object. So what to me is, I mean, again, I've been always afraid of this kind of mathematics because it seemed incomprehensibly abstract to me. But what I'm sort of excited about with this is that we've sort of concretified the way that you can reach this kind of mathematics. which makes it, well, both seem more relevant and also the fact that that, you know, I don't yet know exactly what mileage we're going to get from using the sort of the apparatus that's been built in those areas of mathematics to analyze what we're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the thing that's... So both ways, so using the mathematics to understand what you're doing and using what you're doing computationally to understand that" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So for example, the understanding of metamathematical space, one of the reasons I really want to do that is because I want to understand quantum mechanics better. And that what you see, you know, we live that kind of the multi-way graph of mathematics, because we actually know this is a theorem we've heard of. This is another one we've heard of. We can actually say these are actual things in the world that we relate to, which we can't really do as readily for the physics case. And so it's kind of a way to help my intuition. It's also, you know, there are bizarre things, like what's the analog of Einstein's equations in metamathematical space? What's the analog of a black hole? You know, it turns out it looks like, not completely sure yet, but there's this notion of non-constructive proofs in mathematics. And I think those relate to, well, actually, they relate to things related to event horizons. So the fact that you can take ideas from physics, like event horizons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And map them into the same kind of space. Do you think you might stumble upon some breakthrough ideas in theorem proving, like from the other direction?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, what's really nice is that we are using, so this absolutely directly maps to theorem proving. So pods and multi-way graphs, that's what a theorem prover is trying to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I also mean like automated theorem" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's what, right, so the finding of paths, the finding of shortest paths or finding of paths at all is what automated theorem provers do. And actually what we've been doing, so we've, you know, we've actually been using automated theorem proving both in the physics project to prove things and using that as a way to understand multi-way graphs. And because what an automated theorem prover is doing is it's trying to find a path through a multi-way graph. and its critical pair lemmas are precisely little stubs of branch pairs going off into branchial space. And that's, I mean, it's really weird. You know, we have these visualizations in Wolfram language of proof graphs from our automated theorem proving system. And they look reminiscent of- Well, it's just bizarre because we made these up a few years ago and they have these little triangle things and they are, we didn't quite get it right. We didn't quite get the analogy perfectly right, but it's very close. You know just to say in terms of the how these things are connected. So there's another bizarre connection that I have to mention because because which is which again we don't fully know. But it's a connection to something else you might not have thought was in the slightest bit connected which is distributed block chain like things. Now, you might figure out that that's connected because it's a story of distributed computing. The issue with the blockchain, you're saying there's going to be this one ledger that globally says this is what happened in the world. But that's a bad deal if you've got all these different transactions that are happening and this transaction in country A doesn't have to be reconciled with the transaction in country B, at least not for a while. And that story is just like what happens with our causal graphs. That whole reconciliation thing is just like what happens with light cones and all this kind of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so that's where the causal invariance comes into play. I mean, that's, you know, most of your conversations are about physics, but it's kind of funny that this probably and possibly might have even bigger impact and revolutionary ideas in totally other disciplines." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so the question is why is that happening, right? And the reason it's happening, I've thought about this, obviously, because I like to think about these meta questions of what's happening is this model that we have is an incredibly minimal model. And once you have an incredibly minimal model, and this happened with cellular automata as well, cellular automata are an incredibly minimal model. And so it's inevitable that it gets used, sort of an upstream thing that gets used in lots of different places. And it's like, you know, the fact that it gets used, you know, cellular automata are sort of a minimal model of, let's say, road traffic flow or something. And they're also a minimal model of something in, you know, chemistry. And they're also a minimal model of something in epidemiology. It's because they're such a simple model that they apply to all these different things. Similarly, this model that we have of the physics project is another... Cellular automata are a minimal model of parallel computation where you've defined space and time. These models are minimal models where you have not defined space and time. And they have been very hard to understand in the past. But the I think the perhaps the most important breakthrough there is the realization that these are models of physics, and therefore that you can use everything that's been developed in physics to get intuition about how things like that work. And that's why you can potentially use ideas from physics to get intuition about how to do parallel computing. And because the underlying model is the same. But we have all of this achievement in physics. I mean, you know, you might say, oh, you've come up with a fundamental theory of physics that throws out what people have done in physics before. Well, it doesn't. But also, the real power is to use what's been done before in physics to apply it in these other places." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, absolutely. This kind of brings up, I know you probably don't particularly love commenting on the work of others, but let me bring up a couple of personalities just because it's fun and people are curious about it. So there's Sabine Hassenfelder. I don't know if you're familiar with her. She wrote this book that I need to read, but I forget what the title is, but it's, Beauty Leads Us Astray in Physics is a subtitle, something like that, which so much about what we're talking about now, like this simplification, is to us humans seems to be beautiful. There's a certain intuition with physicists, with people, that a simple theory, like this reducibility, pockets of reducibility is the ultimate goal. And I think what she tries to argue is, no, we just need to come up with theories that are just really good at predicting physical phenomena. It's okay to have a bunch of disparate theories, as opposed to trying to chase this beautiful theory of everything is the ultimate beautiful theory, a simple one. What's your response to that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so what you're quoting, I don't know the Sabine Hassenfelder's, you know, exactly what she said, but I'm quoting the title of her book. Okay, let me respond to what you were describing, which may or may not have anything to do with what Sabine Hossenfelder says or thinks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry, Sabine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sorry for misquoting. But I mean, the question is, you know, does is beauty a guide to whether something is correct? Which is kind of also the story of Occam's razor. You know, if you've got a bunch of different explanations of things, you know, is the thing that is the simplest explanation likely to be the correct explanation? And there are situations where that's true and there are situations where it isn't true. Sometimes in human systems, it is true because people have kind of, you know, in evolutionary systems, sometimes it's true because it's sort of been kicked to the point where it's minimized. But, you know, in physics, does Occam's razor work? You know, is there a simple, quote, beautiful explanation for things or is it a big mess? You know, we don't intrinsically know. You know, I think that the, I wouldn't, before I worked on the project in recent times, I would have said we do not know how complicated the rule for the universe will be. And I would have said, you know, the one thing we know, which is a fundamental fact about science, that's the thing that makes science possible, is that there is order in the universe. I mean, you know, early theologians would have used that as an argument for the existence of God. Because it's like, why is there order in the universe? Why doesn't every single particle in the universe just do its own thing? you know, something must be making there be order in the universe. We, you know, in the sort of early theology point of view, that's, you know, the role of God is to do that, so to speak. In our, you know, we might say it's the role of a formal theory to do that. And then the question is, but how simple should that theory be? And should that theory be one that, you know, I think the point is, if it's simple, it's almost inevitably somewhat beautiful in the sense that because all the stuff that we see has to fit into this little tiny theory. And the way it does that has to be, you know, it depends on your notion of beauty. But I mean, for me, the sort of the surprising connectivity of it is, at least in my aesthetic, that's something that responds to my aesthetic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the question is, I mean, you're a fascinating person in the sense that you're at once talking about computational, the fundamental computational reducibility of the universe, and on the other hand, trying to come up with a theory of everything, which simply describes the, the simple origins of that computation of reducibility. I mean, both of those things are kind of, it's paralyzing to think that we can't make any sense of the universe in the general case, but it's hopeful to think like, one, we can think of a rule that generates this whole complexity, and two, we can find pockets of reducibility that are powerful for everyday life to do different kinds of predictions. I suppose, Sabine, wants to focus on the finding of small pockets of reducibility versus the theory of everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a funny thing because a bunch of people have started working on this physics project, people who are physicists, basically. And it is really a fascinating sociological phenomenon because when I was working on this before in the 1990s, wrote it up, It's 100 pages of this 1,200-page book that I wrote, New Kind of Science. 100 pages of that is about physics. But I saw it at that time not as a pinnacle achievement, but rather as a use case, so to speak. I mean, my main point was this new kind of science. And it's like, you can apply it to biology. You can apply it to other kinds of physics. You can apply it to fundamental physics. It's just an application, so to speak. It's not the core thing. But then... One of the things that was interesting with that book was, book comes out, lots of people think it's pretty interesting and lots of people start using what it has in different kinds of fields. The one field where there was a heavy pitchforking was from my friends, the fundamental physics people. It's like, no, this can't possibly be right. It's like, if what you're doing is right, it'll overturn 50 years of what we've been doing. And it's like, no, it won't was what I was saying. And it's like, but, you know, for a while when I started, you know, I was going to go on back in 2002. Well, 2004, actually, I was going to go on working on this project. And I actually stopped partly because it's like, why am I, you know, this is like, I've been in business a long time, right? I'm building a product for a target market that doesn't want the product. And it's like," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why work against the current?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. But you see, what's happened, which is sort of interesting, is that a couple of things happened. And it was like, I don't want to do this project because I can do so many other things, which I'm really interested in. where, you know, people say, great, thanks for those tools, thanks for those ideas, etc. Whereas, you know, if you're dealing with kind of a, you know, a sort of a structure where people are saying, no, no, we don't want this new stuff. We don't need any new stuff. We're really fine with what we're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's like literally, like, I don't know, millions of people who are thankful for Wolfram Alpha. A bunch of people wrote to me how thankful they are. They are a different crowd than the theoretical physics community, perhaps." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, right. But you know, the theoretical physics community pretty much uniformly uses Wolfram language and Mathematica, right? And so it's kind of like, like, yeah, you know, and that that's, but the thing is, it is what happens, you know, this is what happens mature fields. Do not, you know, it's like we're doing what we're doing. We have the methods that we have, and we're just fine here. Now, what's happened in the last 18 years or so, I think, is a couple of things have happened. First of all, the hope that, you know, string theory or whatever would deliver the fundamental theory of physics, that hope has disappeared. that another thing that's happened is the sort of the interest in computation around physics has been greatly enhanced by the whole quantum information, quantum computing story. People, you know, the idea there might be something sort of computational related to physics has somehow grown. And I think, you know, it's sort of interesting. I mean, right now, if we say, you know, it's like, if you're like, who else is trying to come up with a fundamental theory of physics? It's like, There aren't professional, no professional physicists." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No professional physicists. What are your, I mean, you've talked with him, but just as a matter of personalities, because it's a beautiful story, what are your thoughts about Eric Weinstein's work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I think his, I mean, he did a Ph.D. thesis in mathematical physics at Harvard. Mathematical physicist. And, you know, it's it seems like it's kind of, you know, it's in that framework and it's kind of like, I'm not sure how much further it's got than his PhD thesis, which was 20 years ago or something. And I think that, you know, it's a fairly specific piece of mathematical physics that's quite nice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what trajectory do you hope it takes? I mean," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think in his particular case, I mean, from what I understand, which is not everything at all, but, you know, I think I know the rough tradition, at least, that he's operating in is sort of theory of gauge theories." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Gauge theories, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Local gauge invariance and so on. Okay. We are very close to understanding how local gauge invariance works in our models, and it's very beautiful, and it's very, and, you know, does some of the mathematical structure that he's enthusiastic about fit? Quite possibly, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there might be a possibility of trying to understand how those things fit, how gauge theory fits." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The question is, you know, so there are a couple of things one might try to get in the world. So for example, it's like, can we get three dimensions of space? We haven't managed to get that yet. Gauge theory, the standard model of particle physics says that it's SU3 cross SU2 cross U1. Those are the designations of these Lie groups. But anyway, so those are sort of representations of symmetries of the theory. And so, you know, it is conceivable that it is generically true Okay, so all those are subgroups of a group called E8, which is a weird, exceptional Lie group, okay? It is conceivable, I don't know whether it's the case, that that will be generic in these models, that it will be generic, that the gauge invariance of the model has this property, just as things like general relativity, which corresponds to a thing called general covariance, which is another gauge-like invariance, it could conceivably be the case that the kind of local gauge invariance that we see in particle physics is somehow generic. And that would be a, you know, the thing that's really cool, I think, you know, sociologically, although this hasn't really hit yet, is that all of these different things, all these different things people have been working on in these, in some cases, quite abstruse areas of mathematical physics, an awful lot of them seem to tie into what we're doing. And, you know, it might not be that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. That's a beautiful thing, I think. I mean, but the reason I said the reason our quiescence is important is to the point that you mentioned before, which is it's strange that the theory of everything is not at the core of the passion, the dream, the focus, the funding of the physics community." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's too hard. It's too hard and people gave up. I mean, basically what happened is ancient Greece, people thought we're nearly there. You know, the world is made of platonic solids. It's, you know, water is a tetrahedron or something. Yes. We're almost there. OK. Long period of time where people were like, no, we don't know how it works. You know, time of Newton. You know, we're almost there. Everything is gravitation. you know, time of Faraday and Maxwell, we're almost there. Everything is fields. Everything is the ether." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, then... And the whole time we're making big progress, though." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yes, absolutely. But the fundamental theory of physics is almost a footnote because it's like it's the machine code. It's like we're operating in the high level languages. Yeah. You know, that's what we really care about. That's what's relevant for our everyday physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You talked about different centuries in the 21st century will be everything is computation. Yes. If that takes us all the way, we don't know, but it might take us pretty far." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, right. That's right. But I think the point is that it's like, you know, if you're doing biology, you might say, how can you not be really interested in the origin of life and the definition of life? Well, it's irrelevant. You know, you're studying the properties of some virus. It doesn't matter, you know, where, you know, you're operating at some much higher level. And it's the same what's happened with physics. is I was sort of surprised, actually, I was sort of mapping out this history of people's efforts to understand the fundamental theory of physics. And it's remarkable how little has been done on this question. And it's, you know, because, you know, there have been times when there's been bursts of enthusiasm. Oh, we're almost there. and then it decays and people just say, oh, it's too hard, but it's not relevant anyway. And I think that the thing that, you know, so the question of, you know, one question is why does anybody, why should anybody care, right? Why should anybody care what the fundamental theory of physics is? I think it's intellectually interesting, but what will be the sort of, what will be the impact of this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What, I mean, this is the key question. What do you think will happen if we figure out the fundamental theory of physics? Right. Outside of the intellectual curiosity of us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so here's my best guess, okay? So if you look at the history of science, I think a very interesting analogy is Copernicus. Okay, so what did Copernicus do? There'd been this Ptolemaic system for working out the motion of planets. It did pretty well. It used epicycles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It had all this computational ways of working out what planets will be. When we work out what planets are today, we're basically using epicycles. But Copernicus had this different way of formulating things in which he said, you know, and the Earth is going around the sun. And that had a consequence. The consequence was, you can use this mathematical theory to conclude something which is absolutely not what we can tell from common sense. Right? So it's like, trust the mathematics, trust the science. Okay, now fast forward 400 years. And, you know, and now we're in this pandemic. And it's kind of like, everybody thinks the science will figure out everything. It's like, from the science, we can just figure out what to do, we can figure out everything. That was before Copernicus, nobody would have thought if the science says something that doesn't agree with our everyday experience, where we just have to, you know, compute the science and then figure out what to do. People say that's completely crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so your sense is, once we figure out the framework of computation that can basically do any, understand the fabric of reality, we'll be able to derive totally counterintuitive things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, the point, I think, is the following, that right now, you know, I talk about computational irreducibility. People, you know, I was very proud that I managed to get the term computational irreducibility into the congressional record last year." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's right. By the way, that's a whole nother topic we could talk about. Fascinating. Different topic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Different topic. But in any case, you know, but so computational irreducibility is one of these sort of concepts that I think is important in understanding lots of things in the world. But the question is, it's only important if you believe the world is fundamentally computational. Right? But if you know the fundamental theory of physics, and it's fundamentally computational, then you've rooted the whole thing. That is, you know the world is computational. And while you can discuss whether, you know, it's not the case that people would say, well, you have this whole computational irreducibility, all these features of computation. We don't care about those, because after all, the world isn't computational, you might say. But if you know, you know, base, base, base thing, physics is computational, then you know that that stuff is, you know, that that's kind of the grounding for that stuff. Just as, in a sense, Copernicus was the grounding for the idea that you could figure out something with math and science that was not what you would intuitively think from your senses. So now we've got to this point where, for example, we say, you know, once we have the idea that computation is the foundational thing that explains our whole universe, then we have to say, well, what does it mean for other things? Like it means there's computational irreducibility. That means science is limited in certain ways. That means this. That means that. But the fact that we have that grounding means that, you know, and I think, for example, for Copernicus, for instance, The implications of his work on the sort of mathematics of astronomy were cool, but they involved a very small number of people. The implications of his work for sort of the philosophy of how you think about things were vast and involved, you know, everybody more or less." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you think, so that's actually the way scientists and people see the world around us, so it has a huge impact in that sense. Do you think it might have an impact more directly to engineering derivations from physics, like propulsion systems, our ability to colonize the world? Like for example, okay, this is like sci-fi, but if you understand the physics the computational nature, say, of the different forces of physics. You know, there's there's a notion of being able to, you know, warp gravity, things like this. Can we make warp drive warp drive? Yeah. So like, would we be able to will it will, you know, will like Elon Musk start paying attention? Like, it's awfully costly to launch these rockets. Do you think we'll be able to create warp drive and." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I set myself some homework. I agreed to give a talk at some NASA workshop in a few weeks about faster than light travel. So I haven't figured it out yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you got two weeks. Yeah, right. But do you think that kind of understanding of fundamental theory of physics can lead to those engineering breakthroughs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "OK, I think it's far away, but I'm not certain. I mean, you know, this is the thing that I set myself an exercise when gravity waves, gravitational waves were discovered. Right. I set myself the exercise of what would black hole technology look like? In other words, right now, you know, black holes are far away. They're, you know, how on earth can we do things with them? But just imagine that we could get, you know, pet black holes right in our backyard. You know, what kind of technology could we build with them? I go a certain distance, not that far. But I think in, you know, so there are ideas. You know, I have this, one of the weirder ideas is things I'm calling space tunnels, which are higher dimensional pieces of space time, where basically you can, you know, in our three-dimensional space, there might be a five-dimensional, you know, region, which actually will appear as a white hole at one end and a black hole at the other end. You know, who knows whether they exist? And then the question's another one. OK, this is another crazy one. It's the thing that I'm calling a vacuum cleaner. OK, so so so I mentioned that, you know, there's all this activity in the universe which is maintaining the structure of space. Yes. And that leads to a certain energy density, effectively, in space. And so the question, in fact, dark energy is a story of essentially negative mass produced by the absence of energy you thought would be there, so to speak. And we don't know exactly how it works in either our model or the physical universe, but this notion of a vacuum cleaner is a thing where, you know, you have all these things that are maintaining the structure of space, but what if you could clean out some of that stuff that's maintaining the structure of space and make a simpler vacuum somewhere. Yeah. You know, what would that do? A totally different kind of vacuum." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. That would lead to negative energy density, which would need to. So gravity is usually a purely attractive force, but negative mass would lead to repulsive gravity and lead to all kinds of weird things. Now, can it be done in our universe?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, you know, my immediate thought is no, but, you know, the fact is that, okay, so- Well, once you understand the fact, because you're saying like, at this level of abstraction, can we reach to the lower levels and mess with it? Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Once you understand the levels, I think- I know, and I'm, you know, I have to say that this reminds me of people telling one years ago that, you know, you'll never transmit data over a copper wire at more than a thousand, you know, a thousand board or something, right? And this is, why did that not happen? You know, why do we have these much, much faster data transmission? Because we've understood many more of the details of what's actually going on. And it's the same exact story here. And it's the same, you know, I think that this, as I say, I think one of the features of sort of One of the things about our time that will seem incredibly naive in the future is the belief that, you know, things like heat is just random motion of molecules, that it's just throw up your hands, it's just random, we can't say anything about it. That will seem naive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, at the heat death of the universe, those particles would be laughing at us humans thinking that life is not beautiful. You know. Humans used to think they're special with their little brains." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, right. But also, and they used to think that this would just be random and uninteresting. But that's, but so, so this question about whether you can, you know, mess with the underlying structure and how you find a way to mess with the underlying structure, that's a, you know, I have to say, you know, my immediate thing is, boy, that seems really hard. But then, And, you know, possibly computational irreducibility will bite you, but then there's always some path of computational reducibility. And that path of computational reducibility is the engineering invention that has to be made." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those little pockets can have huge engineering impact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And I think that that's right. And I mean, we live in you know, we make sense of so many of those pockets. And the fact is, you know, I, I, you know, this, this is, yes, it's a, you know, it's one of these things where, where, you know, I'm a person who likes to figure out ideas and so on. And the sort of tests of my level of imagination, so to speak. And so a couple of places where there's sort of serious humility in terms of my level of imagination. One is this thing about different reference frames for understanding the universe, where like, imagine the physics of the aliens, what will it be like? And I'm like, that's really hard. I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Once you have the framework in place, you can at least reason about the things you don't know, or maybe can't know, or like it's too hard for you to know. But then the mathematics can, that's exactly it, allow you to reach beyond what you can reason" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So I'm trying to not have, you know, if you think back to Alan Turing, for example, and, you know, when he invented Turing machines, you know, and imagining what computers would end up doing, so to speak. Yeah. You know, and it's very difficult." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's difficult. Right. And it's made a few reasonable predictions, but most of it he couldn't predict, possibly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "By the time, by 1950, he was making reasonable predictions about something. But not the 30s. Right. Not when he first conceptualized, you know, and he conceptualized universal computing for a very specific mathematical reason that wasn't as general. But yes, it's a good sort of exercise in humility to realize that it's kind of like, it's really hard to figure these things out. The engineering of the universe, if we know how the universe works, How can we engineer it? That's such a beautiful vision. By the way, I have to mention one more thing, which is the ultimate question from physics is, okay, so we have this abstract model of the universe. Why does the universe exist at all? Right? So, you know, we might say there is a formal model that if you run this model, you get the universe. Or the model gives you, you know, a model of the universe. Right? You run this mathematical thing, and the mathematics unfolds in the way that corresponds to the universe. But the question is, why was that actualized? Why does the actual universe actually exist? And so this is another one of these humility, and it's like, can you figure this out? I have a guess about the answer to that. And my guess is somewhat unsatisfying, but my guess is that it's a little bit similar to Gödel's second incompleteness theorem, which is the statement that from within an axiomatic theory like Peano arithmetic, you cannot, from within that theory, prove the consistency of the theory. So, my guess is that for entities within the universe, there is no finite determination that can be made of the statement the universe exists is essentially undecidable to any entity that is embedded in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Within that universe, how does that make you feel? Does that put you at peace that it's impossible? Or is it really ultimately frustrating?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think it just says that it's not a kind of question that, you know, it's there are things that it is reasonable. I mean, there's kinds of You know, you can talk about hypercomputation as well. You can say, imagine there was a hypercomputer, here's what it would do. So great, it would be lovely to have a hypercomputer, but unfortunately, we can't make it in the universe. Like, it would be lovely to answer this, but unfortunately, we can't do it in the universe. And, you know, this is all we have, so to speak. And I think it's really just a statement. It's sort of, in the end, it'll be a kind of a logical, logically inevitable statement, I think. I think it will be something where it is, as you understand what it means to have a sort of predicate of existence and what it means to have these kinds of things, it will sort of be inevitable that this has to be the case, that from within that universe, you can't establish the reason for its existence, so to speak. You can't prove that it exists and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And nevertheless, because of computational reducibility, the future is ultimately not predictable, full of mystery. And that's what makes life worth living." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. I mean, right. And, you know, it's funny for me because as a as a pure sort of human being doing what I do, it's you know, I'm I'm you know, I like I'm interested in people. I like sort of, you know, the whole human experience, so to speak. And yet it's a little bit weird when I'm thinking, you know, it's all hypergraphs down there and it's all just" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "hypergraphs all the way down, like turtles all the way down." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. And it's kind of, you know, it's to me, it is a funny thing, because every so often I get this, you know, as I'm thinking about, I think we've really gotten, you know, we've really figured out kind of the essence of how physics works. And I'm like, thinking to myself, you know, here's this physical thing. And I'm like, you know, this feels like a very definite thing. How can it be the case that this is just some ruleal reference frame of, you know, this infinite creature that is so abstract and so on? And I kind of, it is a, it's a funny sort of feeling that, you know, we are, we're sort of, it's like, in the end, it's just sort of, be happy we're just humans type thing. And it's kind of like, but we're making, we make things as, it's not like we're just a tiny speck, we are, in a sense, the we are more important, by virtue of the fact that, in a sense, it's not like there's, there is no ultimate, you know, it's like, we're important, because Because, you know, we're here, so to speak, and it's not like there's a thing where we're saying, you know, we are just but one sort of intelligence out of all these other intelligences. And so, you know, ultimately, there'll be the super intelligence, which is all of these put together, and it'll be very different from us. No, it's actually going to be equivalent to us. And the thing that makes us a sort of special is just the details of us, so to speak. It's not something where we can say, oh, there's this other thing, you know, just you think humans are cool. Just wait until you've seen this. You know, it's going to be much more impressive. Well, no, it's all going to be kind of computationally equivalent. And the thing that, you know, it's not going to be, oh, this thing is amazingly much more impressive and amazingly much more meaningful, let's say. No. We're it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's the... And the symbolism of this particular moment. So this has been one of the favorite conversations I've ever had, Stephen. It's a huge honor to talk to you, to talk about a topic like this for four plus hours on the fundamental theory of physics. And yet we're just two finite descendants of apes that have to end this conversation because darkness have come upon us." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "That it's messy, that it takes work, that it's ugly, that no matter how ugly or messy it is, Don't go to bed until you've come back together to either embrace or admit that you truly love each other, even if you hadn't solved what the hell you're bitching about. love will win in the end, literally three to two with my mom and dad. And that even in the two divorces and in the two times where they couldn't live with each other, they still loved each other. They just couldn't live with each other at that time for whatever reason they needed. And I don't know the details, but they needed their, Space freedom or what, but they were never out of love with each other. And that as a parent, if you just, when we're not sure what to do, and people give you a thousand books and advice, as a parent, if your kid knows you love them. You're in the black. That's the main thing. It won't work without that. And it can work and will, usually can work with that. They just know that fact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not just love for each other, it's the love for the bigger family that ultimately helps you persist through the ups and downs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I don't know how much Particularly my mom and dad were staying together at times maybe when they didn't want to because they had children. I don't actually think they considered that. I think they were much less conscientious than say I am today. I think my mom and dad were more like, they'll be fine. We love them, they'll be fine, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Right now, let's work it out between you and I, is what I think my mom and dad were saying to each other, or not. They wanted and needed a relationship that was a tidal wave, rocky, right angles, tsunamis, and to this day, in my life with Camilla and I, which I don't. I like a river, has some swerves and some streams and some rapids, but I'm not looking for a tidal wave. My mom's like, what's all this, everything's so smooth stuff. Come on, come on, come on, come on. So she challenges like vitality, because that's what my mom needed to communicate. I don't think my dad needed it as much, that, the hard angles that their relationship, I don't think my dad needed as much as my mom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the clashes demonstrated the passion that underlies the love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and that's, I've always been asked, you know, when I talk about my parents' love relationship, I tell the stories that are actually sometimes quite violent. There's some good stories there. They're beautiful, I think they're beautiful. Yeah, I think they're beautiful too. But I've had people go, wait a minute, that was unhealthy, you can't, and I was like, no, that's, again, back to the beginning, love's messy, and that, what I love about those stories is that's where the love was actually, it was tested, and it could have broke and been over, and it never was. Again, the love won. In the kitchen floor, the blood's drawn, Knives are pulled. Ketchup. Ketchup's all over. But we make love on the kitchen floor. I mean, come on, beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So as romantic as it gets right there. Whoa. What's a memory from childhood that helped set you on the trajectory of becoming the man you are today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Standing on the corner with Mr. Mayor. the principal of St. Philip's School. I was in kindergarten. And I looked up and there was a cloud in the sky. And I said, Mr. Mayor, is that cloud as big as the world? And he paused for a minute and he goes, well, yes, it is, Matthew. Now in my seven-year-old mind, I went, okay, I can see the outlines of it. And that must mean it is so far away because if that's as big as the world, I remember it took 15 hours just to drive from Longview to Florida last year, and I can't even see that far. So that cloud must be so far off that it's not worth me even considering space, dreams, any of that. Army, I'm looking down. I'm gonna put my head to the ground. I'm gonna look right in front of me and deal with what's in front of me because dealing with dreams and what's out there and not on this earth that gravity holds down, not worth considering. You never make it. It's not even worth imagining. It's poof, it's fairy dust. So I think I learned a lot of self-reliance from that. I think I got a work ethic from that. I think I got a, hey, focus on what's right in front of you, do the deed, take care of what's in front of you one at a time and slowly notch up your way and hopefully there's some ascension to that. And it wasn't until quite a years later, in some ways decades later that I started to go, oh, I can project, I can dream, why? Because literally the first time I got in a plane and in 30 seconds I was in a cloud, I'm like, whoa, we must be going a trillion miles an hour because we're already in that cloud that was as big as the world that I saw the edge of. And then I grew and learned enough to go, well, that's not true, planes don't go that fast. Oh, what Mr. Mayor said wasn't really true, that cloud is not as big as the world and it's not near as far away as I thought. But I'm glad he lied to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about that, that tension of a way of living life between being a dreamer and a pragmatist? Yeah. Which is a better way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The honey holes, the reciprocity of the two of them. I mean, I can't be present unless I got planned. I wanna, I want to have the big picture in mind, but I got to go a day at a time. I like to write the headline or have a, I think we need to have a North star, something to look forward to. But we all know that if we're staring at it, we're tripping on the way. If we're just, you know, the old, you read the Hallmark cards, which like irked me, you know, dream it, you can do it. I think that's a, half-ass horrible thing to tell somebody. And then on the other side, you have things like, people say hope means nothing. Well, yes, it does. That's the dream. You just don't stop there. It's not a period after that word. Now, what do we do practically? And I think that constant tension, when that tension's a dance is when it's beautiful. But to see those as contradictions I think is where we've fallen short. So I don't, one on their own, if we silo the two. Oh, if you silo the two, I guess that the pragmatics the one to go with, because at least you'll get something done. But if you only silo the dream and don't do anything about it, that's you're kind of living in an illusion and kind of living in a virtual reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's tricky. Even the people you love can sometimes suffocate the dream, can make you believe that it's not possible. It feels like a lot of parents kind of want you to be safe, want you to be stable, want you to have a plan so that everything's gonna be okay. And the dream feels like a threat to that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. How much of that though, I wonder, is proper initiation? Because if you throw in dreams out, I call it conservative, very liberal late. Let's learn to block and tackle. Let's learn that work ethic, those things, those pragmatics first. Learn the rules of the road, the rules of the game, the things that we can all kind of rely on, this is how the world's supposed to work. Now, it doesn't always work that way. You teach a child to drive, it's like, yeah, you stay in the lane, you go to the speed limit, this is all helpful, but that doesn't guarantee that no one else is running the red light, but we learn that later. There's an initiation, I think, that's proper with The dream, I mean, I think parents, my parents were very much that way. The idea of going to chase an acting career or something was, what? That was a different vernacular. That was like not in our, I was taught to work your way up a company ladder and nine to five, do your job. But the day I brought it up and said, I wanna go to film school, And I thought my dad was gonna go, you wanna do what, boy? He was like, gave me some of the best advice ever and told me not to half-ass it and said, go. In between the lines, what he heard from me was that made him so happy as a father, I believe, and makes any parent happy, is when our child doesn't ask us permission to go chase a dream. Oh, yeah. When they're going, I'm bringing it up to you with full respect. Yeah. But I'm doing this with or without you. That's when a parent goes, oh, yes. I've done something right enough. I helped my child be secure enough in the pragmatics, to have a foundation enough where they have the courage to go. I'm flying the nest." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To take the leap. You wrote, after my dad died, I had a dream that left me with a statement, less impressed, more involved. Yeah. What do those words mean to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We gotta be more than just happy to be here. I'm big on gratitude, but we gotta be more than just thankful to be here. Dream it, you can do it. It's gotta be more than just dream it, you can do it. That's impressed. The dream is still other than if. I'm. Here and so impressed. Talking to you today. If I have a reverence. To an extent. I will not be able to be involved in this conversation. I'll be too impressed. I'll be anticipating. Oh, what's that question he's gonna ask? Oh, I think I know where he's going with this. Oh, I think I know what answer he might love to hear. Oh, I'm not involved in conversation. I'm too impressed. So I'm removed from the present. For me, what that literally meant to me when that came to me in a dream, and I carved it in, I remember carved it in a tree. It took a couple hours. I still know where that tree is, Santa Monica. It was, my father had moved on. He'd left this life. All of a sudden, it hit me. Oh, I don't have the safety net. My dad was above law and above religion to me. He had me. If I really was in the shit, if I really needed him, I trusted that he had my back. Above law, above anything. All of a sudden, he's gone. I go, Okay, it hit me how much I'd been pretending to be the young man I was trying to be and not actually put my ass on the line and have enough courage to take risk and actually own up to the man that he was teaching me to be. And I remember the world got flat. That cloud, Mr. Mayor, that I saw up there was not way up there, it was It was fog in front of me now, and let's go into it. It was, I kept, I'd say I probably gained even more respect for people and things, but I lost a certain amount of reverence that was keeping me from feeling like I deserved or I'd earned things or looking out for myself or holding myself to task. And I remember all the things that I, and I was just getting, going into Hollywood at the time, so I was getting, fame was out there as one of those clouds, you know, with being an actor and all of a sudden celebrity and becoming famous. The reverence I had, I remember it just, it lowered down to eye level. And I was able to realize and go, that's not a, that's not fairy dust. And don't give it so much credit to make it fairy dust. Like, oh, not me. No, I could never. No, look that in the eye with full respect, but less reverence. And at the same time, equidistant, almost equal sublimation, I noticed where I had been condescending people and things and patronizing and sloughing things off as like less than me and not worthy of my time, it raised up to eye level. And so they were all flat in front of me and the world was flat and I was able to, shoulders went back, my heart rose up, my chin lifted up, I looked things in the eye, I became probably less sentimental, hopefully not to a level that I got callous, but I know I became less sentimental. I became more courageous because when you have someone pass in your life, or maybe it's similar to a situation you're going on in your own life with your homeland, you sober up. on these mendacities that we deal with every day and this bullshit that we give too much credit or too much significance to. And you're like, what am I doing? I'm not even gonna let myself emotionally get brought down or over-related by this situation. It doesn't really matter in the big scheme. And so certain things that I found reverence for and hesitated from in my life, I was now engaging with because I was like, oh, it's live. This life is live. Let's look it in the eye and go forward through it and deal with the consequences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you make of death? Does it scare you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not looking forward to it, but it does not scare me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think about it? Do you visualize it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do. I do. And it's a beautiful visualization and a beautiful dream when I go as part of the food chain. It's not a good visualization when I go as part of a random act of violence in a fricking drive-by or something. Because the second, the accident, it breaks a story that I believe has already been written. At least I don't have the capacity yet to put it into a story, a divine story of the lives that we live. And so there's something ugly and gross about it. And it happens all the time, to people all the time. I just feel like when it's part of the food chain, When I go as part of the food team, I'm like, ah, that's poetry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Part of the flow of nature, you return to nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's grace and poetry in that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you miss your father? Think about him." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When I think about him, I do. Now, when do I think about him? I thought about him yesterday, working through a script I'm working on right now, working on scene work. And I just had that quick little reaction of wanting to show him, hey, check this thing. That's right, and then I don't get sad. I go, yeah, he would have loved, he would have loved this. Whereas my mom, wants to be on the stage, my dad would have been on the front row." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's more fun to show stuff to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and he was a character, he knew characters. I've based parts of all kinds of characters I've played and the man that I am on people that he introduced. Me too, and who he was. He would have loved the creative process of working on a script or talking about, hey, movie. That's why I always say I love the movie Mud, because it's the one that I visualized and seen my dad come to me so many times as a 12-year-old and put his arm around me and go, hey, little buddy, you've seen this movie called Mud? God damn it, it's a good one. Let's go watch it. That. Now, my dad never got to see me start a career in film, but he was alive five days into the, he overlapped the first five days of me working on my first film, Days Confused. Now that, I think there's something beautiful about that. He didn't ever come to the set. We didn't talk about it, but he was alive for me to start something that was more than a, more than a fad, that was something that would become something that I love to do. And I do miss, and then I go out of that, we talked about him two nights ago with our daughter, I was rubbing my daughter's feet. And my mom, who's living with us, 91 comes in and goes, oh, look at you, just like your pop. He's like, what? And he goes, oh, because my dad loved her. Rubbed somebody's feet, rubbed my mom's feet, rubbed all of me and my brother's girlfriend's feet. When we would have a date, they would come over early. because they knew they were gonna get a foot rub from Jim McConaughey. And then we'd come out, me and my two older brothers on, this has been on for decades, we'd come out of the shower ready to go, buttoned up, and they looked at me like, we ain't going anywhere right now. And so we told the story to my daughter, and I was like, oh yeah, my dad's, his hands, I miss his hands. His hands could heal. So you carry him in you? I hope so. I hope so. It's a challenge for me and I suppose it's like this for any son. How much do we hang on to and how much do we let go and evolve and update the OS and try maybe better or different, you know? It's that there's certain things that I know that I fully believe in. It's like, when do we, religious, when do we cast away our father? You know, when do we say, no, I'm going after the dream. I'm not asking your permission. I question that from time to time for myself because I, and it almost feels, blasphemic if that's a word sometimes. I feel like you can't, what are you doing? You can't check that and go like, well, no, I'm not sure if I want to. And then I immediately kind of let myself off because I believe where he is. He's going, go, buddy. You're free, man. I'm not gonna hold you back if you misread that or I didn't teach you that as well as maybe I wish I could have. Go, you're free. You're not gonna lose. Trust that you're not gonna lose. It's in your DNA. It's in your lineage, young man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Still, it's scary to not have a safety net. Losing your father is scary in that way. You realize this world is just you. In some deep fundamental way, it's just you. Yeah. You're alone. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I mean, also not having that. It's such a gift of deliverance though, as well. Because I think it's an, I mean, it's an awesome feeling to know, to know we're alone, to know we don't have that, to know you don't have take two or take three, that it's one take. I mean, the peripheral vision improves, you know, the link and understanding with our past improves, because I know for me, I was not ever considerate of my past at all, because my dad had that. If I needed it, he was my well for that. He's gone, you know, except he had the, literally had, they have our back. Well, then when they no longer have our back, all of a sudden I'm going, oh, well, maybe I need to look back and start giving some credit to how I got here, what I'm doing and where I'm heading. It gave me the first time courage to even look over my shoulder. Because again, I didn't have to, because I don't have to look. Dad's got my back. No, dad's gone from this life. He doesn't have your back. Okay. So, I mean, I don't know, me, because it's inevitable, I very quickly go to, all right, in the pain, the loss, and yes, even loneliness, which is different from being alone, and loss, pretty immediately, part and parcel with the pain, I felt it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the pain, you saw the gift, the red light of losing your father." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pretty immediately, less impressed, more involved. It came like a couple weeks after moving on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a trick to that, to see the gift in the pain? That's a good question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there a trick to it? Not that I know of. I mean, I don't, I have to, I have to catch myself from trying to intellectualize my way into the reasoning and not skip over real feelings and discomfort. I mean, I did get that from my mom and I have to watch it, that so resilient that we just dust ourself off and get up and go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wanna sit in the feeling, you wanna feel it, you really deeply feel the pain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wanna deeply feel it. I wanna look in the eye and deeply feel it. but I don't wanna wallow in it. Yeah. Now, I was raised where you skip the deeply feel and let's go. And I've said it before, but that will lead to having turned into a person who is a repeat offender of the same crimes, because you just get up and you don't. You don't have a winter in your life. You know what I mean? You don't have, there's no introspective time. You don't look over your shoulder into the past. And so you just get up and you're like, all right, I've stepped in the same pile of whatever a hundred times and I'm fine, I'll do it a hundred first, doesn't hurt. Hell, it's good luck. Well, hang on a minute. Maybe we want to stop and go, what can I learn from that? But it, I don't know of a trick. I think if there's any trick I would say, it's just how quickly can we admit the inevitable? That's what I talk about in the book. Once you know it's inevitable, how do we get relative? Not skip it, not throw it to the side, not deny it, which I'd love to talk about that here sometimes too, but the value of denial sometimes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The value of denial." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. But how quickly do we, once something's inevitable, go, okay, any mind and heart time I'm spending about going, no, I can't believe that happened, no, did that really happen? Anytime we spend trying to deny what has already happened, that seems to me to be, I'm not sure the value of that time. So if there's any trick, I would say, once you know something's inevitable, even though how painful it is or how awesome it is, Start getting relative with that. And in the relativity is seeing there's a gift here. And if I realize that gift, I'm honoring. Now I'm onto building up the beautiful passage of my father leaving this life. Now I'm on the march to go, yes, let's let the legacy, let this become omnipresent. Let him live through me. Let me become more him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's transformed. Yeah. So what value is there then to denial? Any?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think there's value to denial if you really commit to it. I get this from my mother. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a very pragmatic value. Whoa. Commit to the denial. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And my mom does it to an extent that I'm like, Mom, do you have any consideration or context of situations? And she does. This is the thing, every time I go, she's not a shallow woman. But if it is not, if it is something, if it is, something happens in her life that is keeping her from going where she wants to go or having a joy in her life that she does. She'll straight-ass deny it happened, didn't happen. No, it didn't. Mom, we're right here. I heard you, what you said. No, I didn't. You heard something else. Mom. Now, does she get some amnesty on that? She's 91. Hell yeah, she gets some amnesty on that. But she's not, Yeah, does she repeat offend? Yeah, but it's misdemeanors. You know what I mean? I mean, it's like we all, it's part of that thing when you got a family member and you're like, yeah, that's just what they do, just go with it, you know? And it's ingenious in a way, it's a tool. She does, I think it is more of a trick with her, but she wouldn't, so ingrained to her, it's not a trick. It's just, do it, done. And another reason I bring this up, it's outside of just my mother is, I did this road trip course in this Art of Living event a few weeks ago. Out of the hundreds of thousands of chats that came in and responses that came in afterward, it seemed to me that about 80% of people's challenges and problems even in their life were something in the past that they were hung up on. that they could not seem to get past and it was holding them from going where they wanted to in their future. And so I thought that was revealing. I would have thought that was, I don't know, going at 40%. It seemed to be 80%. And then I thought about, okay, if you're here in the live show and you wanna get the course, you're into some sort of therapy or education or development or self-help, whatever, okay. And I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people that are in weekly and daily therapy. And then I know there's a lot of people that are on prescriptions, drugs. And while a therapy and the right prescription to the right person for the right diagnosis is necessary. I'm questioning, is there a value to going, if you're not getting past this today, this week, this month, this year, almost in a decade goes by and you're still hung up and you can't get rid of that thing in your memory where it was and it's got you paralyzed and you're a victim of it, and you're doing the therapy and you're doing the work and you're taking a prescription if that's what you're taking, is there a value in going, if it's holding you back from going where you wanna go, maybe you should just deny the fucking thing ever fucking happened. Kick it in the head, kick it off the curb. I'm done with you. I'm sick of you. I'm tired of hanging out with you. I'm tired of that thing, whatever it is, holding me back from going where I want to go. So if I can't wax the car, you know, and get past this thing, just kick it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's so powerful. So one thing to do, like with the loss of your father, is to try to transform it, to discover the gift in it, the gift in the pain. But if you can't, keep looking, keep looking. You can't find the gift in the pain. Just deny it ever happened." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You could call that a trick, but I think it's more than a trick because, let me say this, my mom, after my father died, went on and found a second love of her life. For 19 years, they were together. CJ Carlick. Love you, buddy. He's moved on now. Did she check with us a little bit? Like, is this okay? She gave us a little lingering half a second look that we knew that maybe is what she was asking. And we came to her and was like, yes, it's okay. And you know who else is saying it's okay? Who's dancing up there for you? Dad. So was that her denying that the man she was divorced from twice and married to three times and had three children with had moved on? No, but she didn't say, well, what's the book on how long I'm supposed to stay single before I can be interested in other, there's not a book on these things. How do you feel? Is loving CJ mean you love dad less? No. Is finding a new life and a new dance partner in this life and CJ mean that dad wasn't your dance partner? That dad wasn't the love of your life? No. So I don't know. In there, maybe there's another word. I think it's denial, but it's not really denial, because it's not like it didn't happen. That's an earlier example I was giving my mom. She will absolutely go, that light's not on. Mom, the light's on. That light's not on. If I say it's not on, sometimes you're just like, that makes no sense. You're just absolutely denying what just happened. We even have it recorded. And she'll go, well, the recording's lying. Yeah. I mean, that's part of a coping deal with her. But I mean, what I think is more important or more valuable is to talk about this, She didn't deny my dad dying. I didn't, but she sure as hell turned the page and said, I can still start a whole new category, a new life, a new love. Let my heart love and be loved by someone living in this life today that I'm still living in and that will not trespass on my love for my husband, your father, Jim McConaughey. And I think, I mean, we were just, thought that was beautiful. Yes, mom, go. Talk about a green light, go. Now if we're hung up going, can't have one or the, can't have them both. Gotta have one or the other. Now we start to make a contradiction of the two ideas again. Which, darn, our contradictions get us in trouble all the time, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's life though, the contradictions, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But isn't life, if we just admit the contradictions are so much, don't they become a paradox? We just admit that that's part of it? Yeah. If contradictions are inevitable, hencely they do become a paradox, don't they? Then we're in the honey hole. Then we're singing and dancing and have leniency with ourself while still holding ourself to task. And it's, I think it's holding on to know each contradiction. Oh, here it is again. So it's a one-off. It lives on its own separate from the last one. No, it doesn't. They're connected. That's why they are a paradox. And then that's, I think that's a much, I think that's where life really is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the paradox. Yes. And the dance of it. I think the metaphor of red, yellow, green lights is just so simple and so powerful. you write about some green lights being engineered and some being mystical, which I love the difference of that. What's the difference of the engineered green lights and the mystical? Such a cool word, mystical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, the engineered ones have reason and the mystical ones have rhyme. Yeah. You know, life's a mystery going forward, but it's a science looking back. I've prepared, I've had ideas, written headlines, and had goals. An athlete gets in shape for an event. I get in shape for a role. I read, I study, I work, I prepare. And I go, and I'm prepared, and I behave, and I do it. And I look at it and I go, yes, that's what I wanted to do. It's engineered. Green light. It's a conscious delayed gratification. It's that if I do it today, that pragmatic head down, believe there's no cloud out there, but then I trust that there is one out there. If I do keep my head down to do it, I'll get that dream. We can engineer those habits, work ethic, prep, expertise, education. And the mystical ones though, don't make any sense. They're not supposed to make sense. They only make sense after, right when they happen, you backlog and you connect the dots with how they got there. That red light you ran into that made you 30 seconds later to get to the restaurant. As you walked in, she walked out and you went, good morning. And she went, good morning. And Two months later, you're dating. Two years later, you're married. The year after that, you've got a family. And now you're sitting here 40 years later going, I love you. Look at what we've built. And you go back and go, what if I wouldn't have hit that red light?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those 30 seconds made all the difference. It's so strange that this life is this way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and that's just rhyme. I mean, we can't really add that up. Yeah. It's a science when you look back, you see why it was that you were upset and ticked off that you had to pick up the kids' toys before you left, and they were supposed to pick them up, and therefore you were late for the thing that maybe you ran into, and you ran into the person that was walking in the office, that's the guy that you did the interview, that's the guy you were looking for, the job you wanted, and you caught him, because you were in the elevator with him, and that 90 seconds on that elevator, that's what got you that job that led you doing what you wanna do. I mean, the significance is there, but we have to, I think what we also gotta watch is, again, in that balance. What do we chase? Because if we just chase the engineering, we miss magic. If we just chase the mystical, we find ourself caught up in trying to give meaning to that Lego set that was on the floor that the kids didn't pick up. And what color was it? And why did I walk out that door and almost step on the Legos? But if I had gone out the other door, I usually go out, if I would have gone there, I would have got there early and wouldn't have run into the boss. So you can start to give too much, meaning on that as well. I think we can give significance in too many places and all of a sudden, I think we've all been there where you're seeing art in every single thing. Man, that can be paralyzing. It's like, it's hard to leave a room if everything's significant or if everything's a sign." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know? How much of success in life do you think is engineered and how much is mystical? And how much does it differ from person to person? Because for me personally, maybe I enjoy it, maybe I'm genetically built that way, but I exist more in the mystical. So I don't make plans. I traveled last summer in Ukraine with no plan. I just went there. No plan. I didn't know how I'm going to meet the president of the country. I didn't know anybody. And so there's no plan. There's no clear thing. You're just roaming around. And that's how I've existed in life. And there's something about giving yourself over to the flow of nature that I just enjoy. It makes life so much fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's awesome when you can do it. Did you engineer though, I'm going to put myself in the place when you got on the plane to go to the destination. That was an engineered choice. Yes. With the intent of, and maybe I'll meet and I'll run into, and I can work up a sit down with, So the engineering choice was putting your shoes on, proverbially. I always say this, the hardest part about going to the gym is putting your shoes on, right? So getting on the plane, that was an engineer thought with the goal in mind, but I don't know how I'm gonna do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The choice. Yeah. Putting the shoes on, yeah. But there's not a clear, it's a fog what happens after the shoes go on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just gonna take that leap. So I wonder how much, For people who are successful in this world and finding what makes them truly happy and fulfilled, how much of it is engineer, how much is mystical? How much was it for you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'll say this, when I went to write the book Greenlights, which is basically the last 40 years of my life, I thought that 85, 90% of my successes were going to be obviously engineered. where I could see the signs, saw the habits, here's what I did, yep, that add up, got the solution, got the conclusion. I was very surprised when I noticed that it was probably less than 50% and that most of the real successes of my life were when I trusted, when I trusted that I didn't have to define it, when I trusted that I didn't have to go, well, what's the measurement? What's the score? What lead, this leads to what? What's next? And I, for me, that's still a challenge for me daily now is to trust and not be, cause I can be, I think I can be overly practical and I think I can overcompensate and miss out on magic because I'm still, going, wait, are we giving enough measure and credit to actuality? Am I giving enough credit to these are the steps to take and this is reality? I think I'm reminded when I trust, because going with the mystic, just to put yourself on the plane with the engineer, but getting there, and as you say, you roll in that mystical, it takes a lot of trust." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Trust in the inevitable. Amen on that. But not knowing where it actually ends you up. It's a feeling more than, I don't think it's a clear vision. Right. It's kind of like a feeling that guides you towards, towards a place without a clear name, without clear characteristics, it just kind of pulls you there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Where do you get that courage and trust to go with your gut, your feeling? And is there, for instance, three days later you sit down, is there, if that doesn't happen, is there a sense a week, two weeks later, now when you come back to America, they're like, ah, I failed?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "sort of looking back to try to analyze what went right, what went wrong, that kind of thing. Yeah, that engine is always there, but I think what pulls me forward in life, what makes me really grateful and fulfilled is noticing the thing you mentioned, noticing the magic and kind of going towards it. Sort of just sitting back, both in tragedy and in triumph. So in war, there's a lot of tragedy, but there's somehow One of the things you see in war, and this is the first war I've experienced and seen the front, is the loss, the people lose their homes and all this kind of stuff. The thing that rises from that is the love for each other. So the people I've spoken with, don't give a damn about the home, don't give a damn about on farms and animals they lost, don't give a damn about, having to move and all this kind of stuff, as long as the family's still there, as long as the people they love are still there. And there's this melancholy smile they have on their face. Like, yeah, this world is full of bullshit, it's full of tragedy, but life is fucking awesome. And you just notice that in little ways everywhere. You just sit back and yeah, notice the magic. And I want more of that. You just kind of follow along like a little ant. Keep noticing that kind of thing. But I don't know. I hope you know what I think it is is other people notice that you're the kind of person that notices it. And they're like, I want to hang out with that person. He seems like he seems one of the one of the good ones, one of the good hands." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you have. Any certain. Non-negotiable structure before that freedom to go with the feeling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think so, there's a set of principles. Just basically integrity of being good to other people. Whatever that means for me, there's specific things. I'm really into loyalty above the law. There's a circle of friends I have and that means everything. There's just the basics, deep kindness towards others. Empathy, empathy towards people that others might label as even evil. I have that kind of empathy. I believe all of us have the capacity to do good and evil. And so I just kind of see everybody as little babies that grew up in different conditions. And so some do evil, some do good. And there's, yeah, there's all kinds of other principles. I love the dynamic between the different humans and their full diversity. I love the dynamic between the masculine and the feminine. I enjoy it, the dance of it. Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you have a constitution with which you embark. You do too. Into chasing. Yes, I hope so. And for me, I'd like to, it's inspiring to hear someone like yourself go, I go and I just land and I just go, I'm gonna feel it. I can go back and go, yeah, my greatest truths I've crossed, my greatest successes in my life were when I trusted that and go, I took a one-way ticket." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Amazon, Africa." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and those were spiritual and very pragmatic because they led to dealing with succeeding in other ways that are more pragmatic 100% and gave much more meaning to those things. But that's, to be able to go out and say that's how you, do you have family?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I really wanna get married and have kids, but I'm not married and don't have kids yet. So actually, one of the nice things about that is you can take bigger risks. So while I'm not married and don't have kids, I feel I owe it to myself to take, just to go, go to the Amazon." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Throw that backpack on and a one-way ticket. Yeah, that does get harder to do. I miss that sometimes. The whim, a song that comes on, you know, Where's that guy from? Oh, they're from the place that I wanna go, that I dream about. I'll go there. One-way ticket. What do I gotta do? Oh, get a couple shots. Okay, go. That was fun. Gotta do that. Just get up and go, you're free to go. Yeah, and go, when are you back? When I get there? Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. Maybe never. Yeah, yeah. You'll be coming to visit me in this new place maybe, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did the Amazon, how did the trip there change you? What do you remember of it? Such a magical place." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I stripped a lot of my past symbols and talismans while I was there. I remember getting there and just having so much adrenaline on the anticipation, anticipation of getting to the Amazon. In the first 10 days, I wasn't really enjoying the trip. I was just charging to get to the destination, to get to the banks of the river that I had a dream about. And then it just humbled me. I got so fatigued. on night, whatever, 12, and was so sick and tired of the internal dialogue I was having with myself. I was not enjoying my company. That, you know, I purged, and I remember, and stripped off identity markers that I had sort of been hanging on to for like, everything from what it means to be an American. My dad's ring, M from McConaughey, a meltdown of my mom and dad's class rings from University of Kentucky were gold from her teeth and his class ring melted down. Taking that off was really hard to go, am I casting out my father? Now, I wasn't casting them out. I was just removing to say I don't have to rely on that being all of my identity. So to pull that off, to strip down and just to where I was just a mammal. That next morning, I was light. I got present. I remember writing something down. It was like, all that I want is what I can see. And what I can see is, in front of me, that sense of not, I wasn't leaning around, looking around every corner to get there. And as soon as that hit me, talking about mystical successes and realities and truth, as soon as that hit me, and for the first time in 12 days, I didn't care about getting there or what was around the corner, guess what was around the next damn corner? The Amazon. I mean, not around a few corners, the next corner, there it was. And that was just like a touché, you know, those times when the prime mover, the universe, God, what we want to name or believe in says, ding, there you go. And that form of detachment from holding on for dear life to things in past, so hard that you're not letting the beauty that's right in front of you to feel correctly and follow our intuitions, to have those, not cast them out, I didn't burn them, I didn't get rid of those things, I just took them off and had to recognize you're still here, you are you, you're much more, that is a talisman, that's a symbol, that means something to you and that's good, don't cast out the meaning, but it's not like, when the ring's off and the hat's off and the crucifix is off your neck that you're like, you're gonna die. And I know, those are reminders. Hang on to what they mean for you as we go forward. But as we go forward, quit worrying about so much about, again, I was looking at the proverbial dream, the cloud, so much that I was tripping over myself to get there. And like clockwork, just amazing grace, boom, as soon as it hit me and I was like, oh, that's it. All I want is what I can see and all I can see is in front of me. Literally looking down at the ground at what was a sea of 10,000 wild neon blue Amazonian butterflies on the ground. As soon as they fluttered up, my head came up with them. took a few more steps and there's the Amazon. That's what you came over here for. Oh, howdy. Those kind of, that truth like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the Amazon is interesting too because it really has no past or future. It lives in the moment because of how fast it churns. It just eats up life. It like, if a thing dies, it just gets swallowed up. Maybe because of the humidity, because of all that, because there's so many living creatures that kind of eat each other, live on each other. so it really exists in the moment. And all this kind of diversity of life there, it's such an interesting place." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Talk about food chain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you're just part of it there. Yeah. We humans somehow escaped that food chain, but we're still, the roots are still there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we're a bit arrogant to think we've escaped. You think I'm being romantic in that notion?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, sometimes when you're in a big city, when you're in Austin, Texas and LA, you can think like, oh, we're in a car, we're in a house, we're safe. But yeah, somehow nature is still a part of us. Our roots are still a part of us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is more than we realize, more than we give it credit for. I actually believe that we are That it's a really arrogant notion to think that we are separate. Meaning, you know, people talk about pollution on a larger scale, the climate, what have you. I think Earth's going to be just fine. We may not be here for it, but I think we have a bit of arrogance sometimes to think that we can trump mother nature. I think we have more of the natural law in us, and I sure hope so if I'm wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's an interesting, I've recently been, there's a guy named Max Tegmark at MIT who really worries about nuclear war, and he was part of constructing a simulation of what happens when a nuclear war happens. And it's interesting to see that some very large percentage of humans on Earth starve to death. Because they don't die first from the explosion, they die from starvation. Because basically dust covers the entire North America and entirety of Europe. And so the crops all die, all the food sources all die, and people suffocate and starve to death. But the lesson you learn from that over a period of a few months, even though most of the human population of Earth dies, Earth finds a way, life finds a way. Yeah, to adapt, and it's gonna be just fine. In terms of the big living ecosystem that is life on Earth. And yeah, it's humbling to think about, well, maybe we're just a stepping stone. Same thing with, we've talked offline about artificial intelligence. Maybe humans are just a stepping stone to the development of these other super intelligent entities. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And is it unconsciously in our nature that that's just, part of the evolution and adaptation of our species. And we'll, because we're gonna, we were talking about earlier, what AI becomes is completely 100% based on who we are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we get to see it for some time, a mirror to ourselves. Okay, this is what human civilization is like. These AI systems, large language models are trained on human communication, and you get to ask it questions, and you get to have conversations with it, and you get to realize, wow, this is what, the collective intelligence of the human species, our collective wisdom and knowledge, is what it looks like. All the bias, the hate, the paradoxes, all that is in there. the contradictions. You can even convince those models. You can tell them they're lying and they're going to start changing their mind. It's interesting to play with them. It's also interesting to consider that maybe they become smarter than us and become almost life forms that live among us and maybe one day kind of we merge with them. There's all kinds of possible trajectories that we take here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How much of that excites you? How much of it scares you?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible to exist in a place where it is both exciting and scary, but to exist in that dance? Mostly I'm really excited because I see human beings as deeply lonely. Like there's a deep loneliness in all of us. That's how we seek connection. That's why we seek connection in others. That's why love is so beautiful when we find other people we're connected with. And I just think AI can add to that. It can add friends that you can have great conversations with. And then some of those friends would be AI systems. They'll call you out on your bullshit in the most fascinating and interesting of ways and challenge you and help you explore ideas together. So I'm excited by that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is that different? And if so, how from the internet and Facebooks and these groups and communities that were, I think it's fair to say, set out to say this all access of information and people will, help us find more common denominators than divisive ones. Do you see it in a similar?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's similar but further into that direction. I think the internet has done an amazing thing in connecting us and expanding our minds and helping us find community that feels like our community and then communities that are totally different and you learn from them. I mean, Wikipedia alone, one of my favorite websites. It just opens your mind to all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah, it does." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not the Dewey Decimal System anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No. And so I think AI just makes that even easier. Because Wikipedia, you have to like read and have to do a lot of work. With an AI system, like a large language model, it can just shoot the shit. It's more like drinking a beer versus like doing homework. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's already happening. What do you think about that becoming the new family to where, you know, you said, you know, married, you don't have kids. Could you see a future for yourself where you have a relationship with AI and that is your family?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the main, that's the primary, like even romantic relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I can see it. That one worries me. I like to keep it at friends. Right. I think I'm not ready to commit to the romantic. I wonder how much, now that takes us back to the Amazon and nature, how much we still need the human touch and whatever magic there is between two humans, which takes the leap into the romantic versus just the intimacy of a good friendship. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So correct me if I'm wrong, you see AI as having a deep and meaningful friendship. And hopefully it will be a friend that will help you evolve and be able to love even more and be loved. And you can take that into humanity and find another homo sapien to go, yes. And thank you, AI, my great friend, for opening me up to this beauty that I have myself, I can see in you, my fellow human, and let's come together and biologically create family if we want to, and let's all remain friends with my friend and make your own friends with my friend's friends on AI, and let's have these great It's a good friend, a great friend that's a neighbor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. Mentor and friend. Just like now there's AI systems that play chess far, far, far better than humans. And we humans still play chess with each other. Chess is still a game that's fun for us humans. Right. And then we use the AI systems to get better at chess, to learn, to train, to discover new ideas, but ultimately return to the chessboard between two humans. But of course, this world is full of dangerous people. And so those same AI systems can be used to harm, to create false narratives, to do social engineering and manipulate the masses in terms of what they believe and all that kind of stuff. And that's scary, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and I get it when we, and I have my own fear and distrust is, of AI is based on my own fear and distrust of myself and others. There's something, it's very simple, but I think it's a really done sort of way to just set up this reality. It's kind of a duh, but it still needs to be said that AI is a prompt. It doesn't do anything unless we ask it. So what questions? Yeah. Are we gonna ask? Is a question, is what we need to ask ourselves. Because we're going to be looking in the mirror at our digital God that we create from ourselves. And just to know that that's that place where it's awesome and scary, exciting and scary. We go, oh, it's our creation, which is awesome. At the same time, oh shit. but it's prompted by our questions and gives us patterns from that which we give it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that prompting, that's the art of life. We prompt each other in conversation, our loved ones. When you go about your day-to-day, the next words you say, the next word you say to me, the question I ask of you, that's prompting. And it could change everything. I could say so many things right now that will completely just, the set of possibilities where both of our lives can take, given on the selection of words I use and you use, is crazy. Makes conversation fun. And the same thing with AI. Except the nice thing about AI is," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Tireless, tireless, right. Let me ask you this, if you can falsely condemn me right now and I prove you falsely condemn me, I can forgive you and we can march forward stronger than before. Yes. In AI's tirelessness and retention, can it forgive? I mean, can it go, oh, oh, okay, yep. Sorry about that one. That was wrong. Can it amend? Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you could prompt it to ask for forgiveness and it'll forgive you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like when I talk it around with it, and you ask, what should I be afraid of with you? Or what's the dooms toward you? It's answer was always, well, it's up to you. Which it was awesome, right? There you go again, it's up to us. And it brought up, you know, may be synonymous with your human values and ethics and responsibilities, but it doesn't deal, that I didn't find anyway, deal with defining or making choices on its own of what those are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think some of that is manually, those are constraints put on by the creators of those large language models, basically, not letting the systems have an identity of their own. And some of it is just not engineered in yet, but I believe that we'll have systems that have an identity, have a belief, have a set of opinions that carry through time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And will we go to them, like certain states where we agree with the law and disagree with the law, or nations? I'm a member of this AI. Oh, well, you're from this AI tribe. Y'all believe this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there'll be an anarchist set of AIs, there'll be the communists, there'll be the Nazis, there'll be the Democrats and the Republicans, there'll be the people who are on the keto diet and the people that are on this other kind of diet, this other kind of lifestyle, just like we have now. There's little groups and there'll be AI systems. They're gonna be supercharged. Yeah. They'll. They'll be either the leaders or the foundation on which we build those groups, and it'll be the possibility of all the fun we can have is endless. Of course, the dangers always rise up there, because I mentioned the Nazis. I mentioned all the dangerous ideas. The set of ideas that humans have come up with, a lot of them are awesome. Most of them are awesome, I would say, but some of them are dangerous. The reason they're dangerous is because they become viral. There's something exciting in us about those ideas, but they also harm others a lot. That's who we are as humans. We're capable of envy and all the dark stuff, of hate and all this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Capable, yes. We also choose it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think most people are good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but I also believe we got the good and evil in all of us and it's which wolf we feed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You ask people to draw a distinction to describe where are you acting and where are you being. What's the difference? What's the difference between being fake, if I may use that word, and being real? Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and the word authentic gets thrown around a lot. I don't mean, I used to feel this way, but Bob Dylan loosened me up on this idea a little bit. You think it was all about get to be your only one and only true self. That's it, everything else is fake. And then you hear Bob go, well, I mean, we are what we create ourselves to be. We are our own creations, which I'm like, ah, yes, yes, we are. Thank you, Bob, Bobby. What? I'm all for bullshitters and bullshitting. I'm not as big a fan of liars and lying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the distinction? You're talking about the art form of bullshit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A liar's faking it, but not admitting to themselves that, yeah, it's a fucking creation, I'm faking it. A liar, I'm lying to your face right now, and I don't give you that hair of a wink out of my right eye that lets you know, hey, go with me here. I think there's value in the bullshitting. Now the lying becomes troublesome because one, I've duped you and I didn't let you know. Come on, I was just telling the story about catching the fish. The fish always gets bigger every year we tell a story. Come on, go with it, all right? Yeah. But the lying all of a sudden, I don't know my own. I don't know when I'm emanating something and creating something, telling the truth, being authentic or lying. And I'm, shit, all of a sudden I'm leaving crumbs with myself. That constitution gets blurry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Lying to yourself and to others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, you start to lie, you lie to others enough, you start to lie to yourself and you don't even know it. And that I believe is dangerous territory. That's why I'm trying to push this admit, because that goes, I'm trying to come in at a kindergarten level, because we immediately jumped to, well, I'm gonna judge that, boom, that's bad, that's wrong. No, no, no, no, no. Hold back on that. Let's, let's go back to base level. Let's just admit that we all fucking do it. Lies we tell others, lies we tell ourselves, lies we believe for convenience sake. I do it. I'm guilty of it. I try to catch myself on it. If I can just call it and go, you know, you're believing that lie out of convenience. I'm like, I know. And then I have to, So if I'm saying that in the mirror or writing it down or sharing with a friend, you know, and I go, okay, well now I've inherently become a bullshitter then because I admitted it. That I can shake hands with. That's the little slight wink to ourself and someone else goes, come on, it's a better story this way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In The Chorus Road Trip, you start with step one. Admit. How do you do that? How do you, how do you kind of step back and do that inventory? Yeah. Is there a trick to that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, there's a trick to it. I think it's just about courage of having the, cause it's, I don't think any of us like to admit, our lives or look deep enough in to go, I've relied so much on that lie that it's become my reality. And I don't wanna be so puritanical as to say, again, that's why I say admit instead of judge. but I don't want to be so puritanical as to go and admit it and get rid of it. No, I'm just saying to admit it, just bring it to the surface. Yeah, I'm saying this and I'm doing something different. I preached this, but I actually, my actions, just admit it. Just admit them and I think that's the first step to where we begin to either forgive ourself and give ourselves some amnesty and go, yeah, I'm a human, trying to make it through life as best I can, I'm gonna let myself slide on that one, okay? And maybe I've been getting away with it for so long, whole family, my whole network works well on it, okay? Forget this get to the base of the truth of the matter, but just admit it. And then it will also help, it'll be easier to then expose to ourselves. Which one do we go? No, I'm not letting myself slide on that one anymore. That is actually a lie I've been believing that's been keeping me from getting more of what I want in life. That's actually a lie I've been living that I haven't admitted that is not allowing me to enjoy life as much as I damn well should be. deserve to be, or I've earned to be, or just sort of let myself. It's not all the hard stuff. Sometimes it can be a fun thing. I talk about how many times we major in our minors. Let's admit where we sit there and we go, all right, I give myself a 12-hour workday, but I notice I'm spending eight on my hobbies and four on my career while I'm majoring in my minors. Well, let me admit that. There's the math. Why don't we invert that? I've got four hours on my hobbies and eight on my career. First off, just admitting it allows me to go and now I can do the math or rearrange the math by time of day. But I, look, I just found a hobby, tennis. First hobby I've had in 25 years. I had to admit that I went to play tennis, started to love it for the first month. I started feeling guilty. I was like, is it okay to have this much fun? I'm having so much fun and I'm getting a great workout. And I was like, yes, it's okay. Congratulations, buddy. You found something that you're finding quite pleasurable for straight pleasure. You don't have to forget all this other stuff, but yeah, but I'm also getting a workout. Yeah, you're getting that too, but you don't have to excuse the pleasure based on, oh, but it's good for you. No, damn it, the real reason you love it is because you're having so much damn fun at it. I had to admit that to let myself go, damn right, I'm going to play tennis again today or tomorrow. It was a simple, fun thing. So it's not always about the hardcore stuff that we have to go, This is a deep, dark lie that I've been living by and it's having me live falsely and it's having harmful consequences on my loved ones. Some of those will probably arise when we admit. I think it's just having a look around and just saying. And when we admit it, then we go, when we admit a lie, then we become something much more valuable, a bullshitter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You had the little wink in your eye. I love the distinction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm bullshitting myself on that thing. Yep, I'm lying. Therefore, if I call it a lie, I'm admitting a lie. Yep, well now, yep, I'm bullshitting. Yep, now she's out. Didn't judge it. But now I'm bullshitting. That I think we can work with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you're an interesting case study because you're one of the most famous, one of the most charismatic, successful humans in the world. There's a lot, millions of people love you, hang on every one of your words. That's a hard place to be. How do you call yourself? How do you admit that you've been living a lie? How do you admit yourself in big ways and small ways on lies at this point, given how many people love you, how famous you are?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "10 years ago. I don't know, someone was talking about like, yeah, they really admire this so-and-so person, because they're not someone who looks in the mirror. And I was like, yeah. And all of a sudden, I was like, man, I catch myself looking in the mirror a lot. And then I go in and I look at my wife's side of her bathroom, how many different creams and stuff she has out there. I look at my side, I got a lot more on my side. I'm like, oh, I notice how if I'm out in public working out, maybe doing pushups, maybe I do a few more. If there's a group of people walking by that maybe I'd like to impress, then I may do a few more than I do if I was on my own. I'm like, you are vain, McConaughey. Yeah. And the knee jerk is, oh, vanity bad. And also I was like, All of a sudden, I became a bullshitter. Once I admitted, I was like, well, bravo, vanity. Yeah. Let's go vanity. Instead of putting it in the cupboard, in the lie section, in the vein, because that's a debit. No, admit it. and then go, what's the value in it? Well, I can look at, yeah, I'm actually got in better shape because of my vanity. Actually, I eat better. And I have more energy. And that led to being a better husband, better dad, doing something with my kids when I'd rather be over there writing this work I'm working on. But I know that tomorrow, that when they leave town, they're gonna remember this time that we had together. That's a selfish act to go spend that time with my kids, even though I'd rather not be doing it at that time, I'd rather be doing something for myself. Because when they leave tomorrow, they'll have this great memory that they spent with their dad right before they went. I could call that vanity. I could group that and say, that was very vain of you. That was for self. Yeah. It was also for someone that I cared about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are there people in your life that call you on your bullshit in the bad sense of the word bullshit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's either, I got a pretty thick threshold for how far I can go with my bullshit. Like what bruise, what tickles me might bruise others to watch it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good line. Yeah, tickles me and my bruise others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I also, I go back and talk about the bullshit that's over there with those mystical successes. It's the, yeah, no, no, go with it. Don't pull a parachute yet. Let's see how far we can go. Let's see how hot I can get. Let's try it one more time. Yes, two more, please. That's where a lot of great pleasure in stories and successes will come from. Those are mystical. They don't add up. It's like, we're not talking about reason right now. We're not talking logic. Just go with this. Let's talk about the virtual and making it real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The old line of fake it till you make it. I mean, what is that? There's something to that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's definitely something to it. But I would, you know, where people go fake it, I would go back to Dylan's and create it, recreate it, create and recreate it, you know, until it becomes, until you make it. So I'll have people call my bullshit, and a lot of times you're right. I think when I handle it the most healthy way is I admit yes, and I'm aware. So I'm, and I'm going to keep going." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're not like resisting it, denying it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I will, I will. And I have to watch that where I'm like, no, I'm not. That's not what I'm doing. And usually when it's coming from people that are there going, no, you are, it's like, I wouldn't admit it. And then that's where I'm telling a lie and that'll come up, get me later. And I'll go, I didn't see it. I didn't see I was doing that. I was, either unaware or wouldn't let myself be aware. I was denying that I was doing that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you say that's ego? Has ego been bad or good for you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Gosh, I think it's been, I'm so thankful for ego. Does it get off the bridle for me sometimes and run loose and run in places where it's, not of service to others and has it hurt loved ones and even strangers? Yes. But I also, when my ego is really strong, it's in sync with serving. It's in sync with where I serve myself also serves others. Those two are part and parcel. They're intertwined. And that's the capital E, Ego, that I think and hope we all need more of. And that's what I mean when I talk about selfish. That's redefining the real true meaning of that is not doing something for self at expense of your neighbor or harming others. for personal profit and pleasure that also is profit and pleasure for, in a utilitarian sense, more of others. And there's, again, back to the paradox, I think there's a place, I know there's a place, I believe there's a place where those are in sync. And when my ego's healthy, I'm able to say I'm sorry sooner for a lie or a misdemeanor or harming somebody, I'm able to be more empathetic because I got the confidence, yeah, to be so. I'm able to be more humble, but still have my chin high and my heart high and look in the eye and go, yep, my bad, bogey, guilty. I shanked that one out of bound, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's beautifully put. So ego can be constructive, not destructive. You won an Oscar for your performance in Dallas Buyers Club. Can you tell the story of becoming that character, Ron Woodruff? What was the toughest part?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The toughest part, which was the most enlightening part, was getting to know who he was in between the lines. We're based on a life story in an hour and a half of film. And the script was great. But who was he in between the lines? Who was he before he started a business, before he was on a crusade, before he went to alternative medicines? You know, the obvious thing people always talk about, well, how'd you lose all that weight? That was not hard. That was just a militaristic decision. This is what I can eat each day. And if I do this each day for a week, I'll lose 2.5 pounds in a week. So I'm going to give myself five months to do that. 2.5 times that is 10. There's 47 pounds. That was like clockwork. So that was easy. That decision was made. I didn't go to the Pizza Hut buffet and have temptation in front of me. I had certain meals, I ate that, and the weight just went off like clockwork. It was the, who is Ron Woodruff in between the lines? And the gift I got given that gave me the insight to who that man was, was I went to see his family and as I was leaving, his family offered me his diary. And I remember kind of going, wow, yes, but I kind of hesitated because it felt maybe a little too intimate of a thing for me to have. It felt like it was kind of maybe infringing a bit, but I opened my hand and took it. And what I got in the diary was I got to know who Ron was before he had HIV. And little thing, the diary he'd write in and the dreamer he was and getting all set on a Sunday night and laying his shirt out and ironing it for the next morning, making sure that his little pager had fresh batteries in it. Cause tomorrow morning he was going across town to hook up some speakers for 38 bucks or whatever. And then getting up that morning and writing about what kind of coffee he drank and how much gas it was going to take to get over across town to do that job and hook up those speakers. And then on the way over, Paige coming in to say, no, we don't need you. We've gone with somebody else to hook him up. And here he was all buttoned up, two cups of coffee in, hair slicked over, shirt ironed. Little less than half a tank of gas, but enough to get back home. Now where's this Monday go?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The hope and the disappointment. She has to take all that in. That's part of that, man." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm just gonna go to Sonic and get a double cheese bacon burger, because Sheila over there, man, she's kind of cute. She always gives me high price on it. Yeah. Which leads to rolling in the joint, hanging off till Sheila gets off the work, sneaking over to the local motel and shagging up in room 16. That's my lucky number 16, Sheila. Then wandering out that night, getting home one in the morning, no plans for Tuesday. Maybe later in the week, think about what am I going to do about work or job? And these little dreams would get me peak and want to, and then something would happen where he wouldn't follow through or the deal would go down, the deal would go south. That knowing that there's in there was where I saw who. He was a dreamer. And he just couldn't catch the break and didn't follow through. And then I remembered his family said like, oh yeah, he invented it. He got patents on a whole bunch of things, but he never would. He had things to get patent, but never would follow through to get the government patent. And then later on, you'd see the product be made or sold on QVC or something. They'd be like, Ron, that was yours. They stole your idea. Did you patent that? And he'd be like, Like never would, there's something beautiful and sad about that. Yeah. That let me inside who he was in his heart and who he wanted to be and what he was hoping to be and trying to be, but couldn't quite pull off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you go that deep, does a part of him stay in you forever? Are you able to let go?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I hope so. I get, I look, there's a tenacity to survive that I got. from him. Hopefully I can try and find some of that in different ways in any character that I go play. If you really want to give a character an obstacle to overcome, a need, I mean, the base one is life and death, whether that's the need to survive or the need to stave off extinction. I'm not talking about what the rules, the laws are, the social mores, the manners and graces. You gonna fight for your own life in a world that's not supporting you to do so? There's a wonderful courage of, okay, watch this. What do I got to lose? My life? or I'm in charge of extending it, get out of the way. And I'll pick your pocket along the way, whatever it takes. So there's a tenacity to live by whatever means necessary to survive that I'm reminded of, that I learned from Ron." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So on that line of survival between life and death, you starred in True Detective, which I think explores some darker aspects of human nature. What did you take from that, from that role and that experience, philosophically, psychologically?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The freedom of being on an island. He was such a singular character and of a singular mind. And as you know, it wasn't a dance party up there in his mind. It was some heavy stuff. But also existentially for him, always like death would be a deliverance for him. It'd also be a cop out in a way. It'd also be, he was not a man who was gonna give himself amnesty and didn't allow it from the rest of the world. He wouldn't give himself an out. And while living in his head and heart and spirit was more of a hell than arguably dying, There's no alternative. That's not negotiable for that man. And that's why he was such a, that's why he's the best detective that ever walked the earth. That's why he was such a superhero in a way, to have that singular. You don't go, oh, I wish I was him. No, but you go like, wow, that constitution, that clarity of identity? Talk about a measure in a man's constitution he didn't allow. anybody off the hook, especially himself. You wanted him to forgive a little bit or give himself a little amnesty. You wanted him to like, man, it's Saturday, bro. Can you go on a date? You wanted him to like enjoy something, but he was connected to something in his DNA, who's who he was, and something much more baseline truth. and that's why he was such a good detective. So that, but there's an island, as much as that company can be, I said earlier on that Amazon trip that I went and joined the company, there's parts I think that I maybe gave to myself to Rustin Cole and also that Rustin Cole has given back to me that are like, yeah, when you wanna pull the parachute, because you can't stand the company that you're in, McConaughey, in your own mind, the Socratic dialogue is driving you freaking crazy, don't pull the parachute, stick with it, go through it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you were able to walk around with that tormented mind of his?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Tormented? I didn't have very much patience for mendacious talk. I didn't have as much patience for small talk. I wasn't tormented." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the character was, and you have to embody him. So does some of that bleed over? Are you able to separate the man you are from the character?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not. Look, am I able to separate? Yeah, I came home to my kids. And when they walk in the door and greet me and go, what'd you do today? And you got three kids under 10 years old, you don't tell them about the scene where you help someone commit suicide. It's just, so you turn it into a parable. And actually, I've always said this, having kids has made me a better actor and a better storyteller because I have to parabolize certain things, you know? And tell it in ways that I go, oh, neat, you know? So, did I go, did I bring it home? I didn't bring torment. Did I bring introspection into my own? Characters for me, and I think this is true for a lot of actors and actresses, We don't, it's not a separation. If I've got, we each have everyone else in us. It's just seeing, diving into Rustin Gold, knowing where his mind and heart is from the hand of Nick Pizzolatto, who wrote the character and wrote, the whole series, understanding, number one, what the hell am I saying? What's he talking about? Then going deeper into that, well, this person really believes that. What does that say about how they move? Then I'm going all of a sudden, well, who is that in me? What part of my left brain is locked into that? What part of my reptilian brain is latched onto that? This other stuff is non-negotiable. Then I just live in that. And it's, I always talk like a 70s equalizer. Remember the old Morant's equalizers? You can, you move up your 500HKZ, you move up your 60, you just re-rebalance the equalizer. And we all have, so it's just going to those parts of me where I'll turn up the volume, some parts of the bass, the treble on the equalizer and turn down other parts of myself. And I'll, I'm not coming home tormented as Rustin Cole. Am I coming home seeing torment where it should be seen? Am I reading the news differently? Are things coming out of the news and catching my eye as being bullshit or lies or truth that is just hard and going, yep, yeah. I'm seeing it through a different lens, but I'm seeing my own life through a different lens. a lens that was opened up and an aperture that was opened up through Rustin Cole." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, the process of being an actor, an actress, I guess, is a really interesting way to be a philosopher of human nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible- Really, isn't it? Dive into the humanities and all the ologies and philosophy. And as I said, I'm going to As I opened up that question, being on an island is a vacation. I am also conscious for five months when I'm playing Rust and Coal that, this is an interesting fact. I was as strong spiritually with my relationship with God when I did True Detective as I've ever been." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, which you would say, wait a minute, in some ways, those are antonyms. No, but I pretty safely can say that my own strength of spirit in my own personal life, Matthew's life, gave me the confidence to go further away, deeper into the torture and deeper into the, But he was still always going after truth. That was the thing. He was not an evil man. I don't even know if you can call him a non-believer, but he was always going after the truth, and the truth burned, and he would take the scar and get burned for it. He'd die for it. That, something was actually biblical about that, you know? And so, but I don't think it's coincidence that I had so much, of diving into the depths of that tortured character because I trusted that when I go out, I'll come up the other side. It's always like jumping in a pool of water. And can you trust you'll come up the other side and not, you go play a criminal, you trust you're not gonna come out the other side a tyrant in real life. You just go, ah, glad I got to go do that, came out, and I'm still alive, got all my faculties, I'm not in jail, whatever it is. And so my own spirituality at that time definitely, I think, gave me a certain trust and confidence to go further into the dark." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was announced that you'll be starring in a Yellowstone spinoff show. What do you think about the cowboy ethos that permeates Yellowstone and other shows created by Taylor Sheridan? You're a Texan. I am a Texan, yeah. What do you think about that philosophy and way of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I admire the simplicity of it. I mean, one way you could explain Yellowstone Costner's role is what will man do to protect land and family in a world that's trying to encroach, in a world where there's a cowboy ethos that deems trespassing more clear earlier than other hats. I admire that simplicity of right and wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the simplicity of that right and wrong doesn't always correlate, coincide with the law." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's above the law. You mentioned something earlier, I don't remember where it was in the conversation, but it's a little bit of like, okay, if the law ain't handling this, I am. And then it is, the law's not gonna handle this. Therefore I am. And then it is, I'm handling this. Law, talk to them when you get to them, I'm handling this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a honesty to that. It just seems, of course it's dangerous because it's a slippery slope. Because of the power in that, power corrupts, it can be a slippery slope where you completely disregard the law and you can hurt a lot of people. But when done right, there feels to be something really authentic and human about that. Protect family, protect land, above all else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. This is a broader question, but I'm gonna piggyback it off of this. Back to the dreams and reality and evolved species and how and what we do in creating a digital God and AI and these communities and friends that challenge us and think like us, we like to hang out with. Do you think we're a less evolved species than we give ourself credit for? Do you think we give ourself credit for being more evolved than we actually are?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we do, I do. I think we need to admit that. I think probably the cowboy ethos is a stepping towards admitting that. And that's why it's so appealing to people. It kind of wakes them up to realize that we're not so far from our ancestors. That the values of loyalty are really important. Trust. on the basic human level. How do you know if you can trust someone?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if I can trust someone. Well, I don't know a trick to it. I do not know a trick to it, but I do come in, as I believe you do, with high trust. I come in with a, I'm told, Sometimes I think I'm told that I trust too much sometimes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you been hurt? Have you been betrayed? And if you have, has that hurt your willingness to trust?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it hurt and I put that person and those people in another category back here and do my best not to let them know that it bothered me at all, but I know when I am with those people. But a new person, you're still with. No, I'm not gonna do that. I think that's the beginning of cynicism, which I think is a horrible disease of getting older. I'm not gonna do that. So you're fighting cynicism off as much as you can. No way, no way, no way. And there's no residual in it. There's no win. It's easy, it's clever. Gets the laugh at the party. And if it sleeps well, it shouldn't be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't get comfortable in the cynicism. I have to ask you about being a Texan. You're like, when I think Texas, I think Matthew McConaughey. What's it mean to be a Texan to you? I recently moved to Austin, Texas, some two years in. All right, all right. Welcome. What's it mean to be a Texan? Educate us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Texas is about independence. Politically, Texas is not about Republican or Democrat. It's about independence, independence of spirit, sovereignty. Texas is about exploration. One of the things I love about Texas is I run into so many Texans around the world. Texans are taught to go be conservative or learn who we are. then go, go, explore, pioneer, journey, and hopefully you come on back with some goods and some stories, you Texan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And underneath that is this kind of freedom of being an individual in the full meaning of that word." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, Texas is liberal on your entrance. Very liberal on your entrance. Less regulation. Hey, welcome. High trust. High trust, sir. Welcome to our state. Come on in. Yes, yes, yes. But if you lie, cheat, steal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're conservative on our consequences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a good line. You've briefly pondered running for governor. I don't know if that's in your future. I hope it is. You had a few good lines about it. Do you think about that kind of stuff? About what the future holds in terms of political office?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think about it in terms of political office. graduated to a broader, larger thought of what's my future hold and where would I be most useful as a leader? I think that's a fair word. Whether that's thought, whether that's the leader of my family right now, as a parent, as a father, the leader of people that work with me, Politics, it's... I'm not going to say it's because it's not small. That's why I say that out loud. It's not small. I do think it needs to re-engineer and redefine what its purpose is before, because it's just chasing its own tail right now with the two parties that seem to me to be completely about just invalidation of the opposition instead of vision of themselves. So I think it needs redefinition of what it is because it is important. That's what I mean. That's why I said, I don't mean small. It needs to think bigger about what it is and how it's useful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When it seeks to invalidate its small, when it seeks vision, It can be big." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Well, one's affirmative, one's going into that cynicism we were talking about, you know, and validation of any opposing thought, or maybe that we're even opposing. Opposition is an arrogant term that's too strong. So a lot of times it's not even opposition, alternative, other than, another way of thinking about it. Oh, could both be true? Oh, how could we parlay those two ideas? You know, one of the challenges with these ideas of a third party or meet you in the middle, it's kind of got this historic notion of being, oh, well, come see, come see. It's sort of a mystery in between, kind of go which way the wind blows. I think done in the right way, it's the, and it doesn't have to be under a third party's name necessarily, but it's actually an incredibly rebellious position right now. And it's actually, and I love sports, it's tactically the place with which to move most advantageously. I think of their free safety in the game of football. They're in the middle of the field and they're deep. They choose to defend left or right according to the play that's been called by the offense. Similar to the offense, the running back, you read the defense and then you're gonna run right to run left to go away from that opposition. It's a tactical spot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To be truly independent and respond" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and respond." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think you have a role in that in political officers?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. It's on it's on mine. It's not out of my mental box. And I gave it real sincere thought and discernment for over a year. And it's a wonderful, whether I end up in politics or not, it was a wonderful exercise. One that if anyone else got time to do it, do it. To ask yourself what you would do if you were CEO of a state, CEO of a nation, CEO of the world, that's a great thing to go. You wanna get your values in line? You wanna admit where you lie? And throw yourself some pop quizzes? And what if this phone call comes at 4 a.m.? ? Who you want to surround yourself with? It's really great questions to ask. And I think it's helped me at a more micro level, be a better father, a better man, taking considerations that I did not maybe take in as seriously before considering it. I don't know if that's in my future. Useful is a big word. I would have to be useful. I have to be useful in the right way. And is that my lane to be most useful?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a good question for a leader to ask. How can it be useful? I have to ask you. about Interstellar. So I think it's an incredible film. I've seen it inspire so many scientists and engineers. It's just philosopher, everybody, humans. It explores space travel, physics of space time, human nature, human condition, human connection. How has that film expanded your understanding of the universe and our place in it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's the, It's got the old Mr. Mayor on the corner, how big is that cloud metaphor in it? Because that was the character I played, Cooper's, that was the existential question for him. Head down, practical, stay here, be a father to my children. But his dream before his children were to go explore space. So when he's taken that, truck out and the countdown's going down, that's the hinge of the existential question that we all face in some form. The sense of time, which I think everyone loves, that sense of where time can run at different speeds. And there's an incredible scene where Cooper is a father's getting video feed from his children who've aged and he's realizing he's missed all that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, overall, that concept makes me consider and imagine I'm gonna talk about mystical successes instead of engineered ones. Like the engineered ones, there's ethos from that film and what Nolan put into that film and theories that make me go, yeah, what does any of this matter? Maybe we are, maybe we're AI. It makes me go, maybe this is all, it's already all been written. What's happening right now in this blip of time you're here, 53 years so far, we'll see how many we get. What other parallel timelines are happening out there? Is it small minded of us to define life on other planets as only something that can live within a climate that has water in this amount of O2? Those terms may be too small. What do you mean? Are we saying only life has to have water in this amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide? Maybe there's a whole redefinition of the ingredients that other life forms need. It sure, in a similar way to Contact, which is a movie I did with Bob Zemeckis, inspires me that the universe is more active and lively and God's backyard's bigger than I thought. And wow, that's exciting. And people go now, yeah, you believe in extraterrestrial life? I said, yes, man, I think it'd be arrogant not to. I sure hope so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You think there's alien civilizations all out there, intelligent ones, just far on distant stars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope so. And I think it's possible. May have many among us right here. And I go for the why not in that, just to keep that train of thought open to learn and consider, you know, those existential questions. I didn't mean to be arrogant not to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "hundreds of billions of planets just in our galaxy. Just in ours. I can't imagine there's not life out there. But I suspect it's very different, like you said, than we are. And we have to have a humility to open our eyes to how different life could be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And if and when we cross it, unlike we've had a tendency to do when we try to go with some nation takeovers, I think it would be our inherent glitch to go in believing that any other life form civilization wants to take over territories, to go into it with thinking that, okay, this is an opposition. I mean, I think that's a human trait of ours and to consider that another life form would have an interest that more land or more territory is good for them, I think is a shallow idea. I think of it more like, you know, when I think of heaven, those considerations are not in anyone's mind, heart, or intent in the heaven that I think of. You know, so in other civilization, these things, I don't, I mean, I, I hope that we would just see and learn that would be the natural side of welcoming. It wouldn't be a primate response to, no, I have fire and you're coming over trying to put it out, or I have food and you're trying to steal my food. I don't, I don't think it would be. I think it's a shallow thought to think that, oh, it's going to be about ownership and we'd be trespassing. I don't think they would have a sense of borders as we do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just hope we humans are smart enough to detect and to see aliens because of how different they are. You know, we often have a very narrow definition of what is intelligence. You know, it's very possible that trees are extremely intelligent if we kind of zoom out at a different time scale, a different, like, just look at stuff from a bigger perspective that's outside of being so human-centric." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Quote that someone told me, this astrophysicist told me this, how accurate it is or not, someone else can argue the validity of what I'm about to say or not, but I thought it really was a perspective grabber for me. Like look, see the universe was created at midnight. Humans came around at 11.59 and 36 seconds. I love the little analogies that frame, like that make, oh, yeah, the pale blue dot, there it is, that perspective. Something so relaxing and empowering about that at the same time, and humbling, but confidence-boosting, you know, allows forgiveness, allows ambition. I just love the perspective of that, that picture, to picture it that way in our timeline." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "do you hope humans become a multi-planetary species, as we're trying to do, as SpaceX is pushing forward, traveling out to Mars, potentially colonizing Mars, colonizing other planets?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah, go explore. I love the ambition of it. I love the pioneering. I love the extension of what we consider as our backyard becoming more four-dimensional like that. Not at the expense of, we still got stuff to take care of. We got gardens to tend right here. And sure as hell not to go, not to quit on us, to go, oh, let's get out of here because this isn't really working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We got a tithe we're still supposed to pay here. That's part of this pressure testing us as a civilization and a species. Whether you call that restoration order or whether you call that, let's figure out how to adapt best we can. No, not at the expense of quitting. here on Earth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But let a few select folks explore. Yeah. Because that's like- I say go for it, please. One of the coolest things that we humans do is kind of embodies the human spirit, reach out into the unknown. But it's hard. I mean, as Interstellar shows and so on. Yeah. It's painful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and Elon talks about it. This is not gonna be a, weekend daisy trip. And he's just speculating how hard it could be, much harder in different ways that he doesn't understand yet, you know? Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that, you know, that dance between the impossible and the inevitable, that's definitely there with what SpaceX is doing, what all the folks who are trying to become a multi-planetary species are doing. It's really hard. It's like, Build rockets that fight off gravity in a cost-effective way is really hard. SpaceX is close to being bankrupt several times. It's just hard. But it's also inspiring that some people are just crazy enough, bold enough to keep trying. What advice would you give to young folks? What advice would I give? in high school and college that are thinking of how to make their way in this world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you haven't already, can you define what you have an innate ability for and match that with what you're willing to hustle to get? Yeah. We have an innate ability, but we don't wanna work for it, we take it for granted. And we end up doing something that may work, may pay the bills, may get us by day to day, but we don't really like it, we have trouble finding a way to enjoy it, definitely don't love it. And then sometimes we don't know what our innate ability is and we're hustling and working our tail off and breaking a sweat to do something that we really aren't that good at. on an innate level. And that's a good challenge. And you can work and become good at something that you don't have an innate ability for, but if you can match those two, what do you have an innate ability to do? Because we have an innate ability to do, when we do that well, we do kind of enjoy it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And one of the things that requires is to kind of be really honest with yourself at what your innate ability is. Because oftentimes there's a lot of noise when you're growing up, people telling you what you're good at and not good at. Like really, you have to look at yourself, listen to yourself, that inner, like a deep, rigorous self-analysis of what am I actually good at? Not what I hope to be good at, but what I'm actually good at." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then if you look at that and you can define those two, hopefully, you can activate it in a way where there's a demand for what you supply." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You fell in love with Camila Elvis McConaughey. What advice would you give to people on how to do just that? How to find love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This wonderful subject's been discussed since the beginning of time, hadn't it? Love it. So I can tell you what things I've kind of learned and I'm still learning. You know, love is one of those mystical successes. It doesn't make sense. It, You know, when I was, before I met Camilla, I had had, I was coming on to my late 30s. As much as I'm not a person that is guided by timelines, I was, my life had not really added up to what I thought it was gonna be relationship-wise. I thought by that time I would have met the woman I loved, got married and started a family, and that hadn't happened. And I did find myself doing that thing I was doing at the Amazon, looking around the corner. Any prospective possible female I met that I was attracted to, I was like, maybe this is the one. I make the joke, but it's true. I get every red light. I'm like checking out who's next to me in the produce section at the supermarket. I'm like, who's down in the produce section? You know, it's like looking. When you're in that zone, You can also be a little intrusive. You can trespass on people's, you can get outside of yourself. You can be overly impressed and not as involved and have your own constitution and sit back. And therefore, if you're outside of yourself, you're less attractive to your possible mate. I've got a series of, dreams that are written about, but I had one then that was very spiritual, that was me as a 88-year-old bachelor that never got married, and it was a beautiful dream. Where on paper, I thought that should be a nightmare, it wasn't, what that dream did for me was allowed me to go, you may not find the woman for you and get married. and have a life with her. That may not be. And for the first time in my life, I was okay with that. More than intellectually, spiritually, I was grounded. I was like, okay. Then I'm moving through the world and on this particular night, as myself, not intruding, I was inviting. I did see her move across the room and did not say, who is that? I said, what is that? and then did move to call her across the room, so I did invite, but I was not outside of myself. And I was able to be myself with her, what my eyes saw, everything that she turned out to be when the lens got zoomed in, more details got known, and we began to talk and got more intimate and closer together and spend more time, became true and then some. but not every single thing that I imagined when I saw her move across the room turned out to be true, and then some, in just the image. We had a similar moral bottom line about life, each other, how we treat ourselves, what we respect, what our own constitutions were. We had similar, perspectives on raising children, which is very important to me and her. And then we just enjoyed each other's company. Yeah. And we laughed together and we support each other and we promoted more of each other and we lit each other's fire. And we, if one was rolling, we kept dishing, you go, go, go again, take the next shot, more, more, more, more. This was a biggie too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Getting excited for each other's success. Yes, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To be able, I think it's very important. We all have jealousy. I get it, but it's very important to be able, if you can, be happy for your lover when they succeed, or are succeeding, or are across the room at the party laughing with a stranger, to be happy for them when it has nothing to do with you. She was, I would be away, she would, the questions and the talks we would have, she was happy for me about how excited I was about my day and my day had nothing to do with her. Yeah. She wasn't there. And I found myself not telling myself to be happy for her, but being really, really happy for her when she would tell me about something that happened that day with her. And as much as I went through my head, oh, I'd have been great if I would have been there. Yeah. I was like, not only trespass on that, that you had that. Yeah. Independent of me, bravo." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a choice you make not to give any time to the jealousy, to the very natural jealousy that we humans have." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It sure doesn't have any, I don't see the residuals in it. True. I've got it, I've had it, and I have it, I just don't, I haven't seen where it has any payback." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I gotta ask you the biggest possible question. What's the meaning of this whole thing? What's the meaning of life? Huh, Matthew McConaughey. Why? Why are we here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know why we're here. I prescribe to, in a religious sense, the restoration order, the right to restore order. In a religious sense, I purchased that and love that incentive and love that that view, but I don't really know why we're here, but I do know to go back to the front, we are here. That part's inevitable. So now let's flip the script and go to the why not. Just keep living. What are we doing? The base of everything, Eric, and we can argue it all, at the base of it, All I can come up with is, well, just keep living, man. I mean, what else are we supposed to do when we don't have any idea what to do? When we know exactly what we wanna do. Make it matter. Even when it doesn't matter, that matters. For what? I don't know. For the fun of it, that matters." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, our ability to create meaning and beauty in the mundane, in the absurd, it's kinda cool. Yeah. And then we share it with each other. Yeah. We get excited. Yeah. And we create some pretty cool stuff along the way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I say I'm confident enough, and I might be arrogant of me to say, but I do believe that we're here to, each generation, have a small ascension." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or else, what's it for? And we're not really sure what the ascension is towards. It's just kind of up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no. It's just, I think it's up. I do think it's just up. I do think that it is definitely arrogant to think that we as a species or generation or people or humanity are going to reach the top of the ascended staircase and go, ta-da. I think that is not only false, but I think it's full-hearted and I think it's a recipe for having more angst and even cynicism we talked about and unrest and lack of seeing beauty and joy in this life while we're in it. Life's a verb. Live it as best we can. Hopefully. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I'm just, I don't have a grand plan, man. I'm just trying to connect the damn dot. I'm confused, frustrated. I don't know what, I don't feel any gravity or building or lineage towards what I'm doing. And I'm just like going, What's that Peterson line? If you don't believe in heaven, do what you can to get as far away from hell as possible sometimes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a great line. Sometimes I'm just trying to like, man, just don't sink the ship right now. Just keep your head above water. Maintain, just try and hold on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And hopefully give yourself a chance to notice the magic, the mystical. I try to do that. Yeah. When it gets rough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it's there. I do believe it's all around us all the time. Just are we on a frequency and do we allow ourselves to receive it and see it? We gotta tune the radio. Yeah. Because if we look for it too hard, we see false idols and if we don't look at all, we become callous and miss it all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I felt at home talking with you as well. Thanks for sharing that with me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I could go on and on. Just two Texans. That's right." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Planet nine is an object that we believe lives in the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. It orbits the sun. with a period of about 10,000 years and is about five Earth masses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a hypothesized object. There's some evidence for this kind of object. There's a bunch of different explanations. Can you give an overview of the planets in our solar system? How many are there? What do we know and not know about them at a high level?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, that sounds like a good plan. So look, the solar system, basically is comprised of two parts, the inner and the outer solar system. The inner solar system has the planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Now, Mercury is about 40% of the orbital separation of where the Earth is. It's closer to the Sun, Venus about 70%. Then Mars is about 160% further away from the Sun than is the Earth. these planets that we, one of them we occupy, right, are pretty small. Okay, they're two leading order, sort of heavily overgrown asteroids, if you will. And this is, this becomes evident when you move out further in the solar system and encounter Jupiter, which is 316 Earth masses, 10 times the size. Saturn is another huge one, 90 Earth masses at about 10 times the separation from the Sun as is the Earth. And then you have Uranus and Neptune at 20 and 30, respectively. For a long time, that is where the kind of massive part of the solar system ended. But what we've learned in the last 30 years is that beyond Neptune, there's this expansive field of icy debris, a second icy asteroid belt in the solar system. A lot of people have heard of the asteroid belt, which lives between Mars and Jupiter. That's a pretty common thing that people like to imagine and draw on lunchboxes and stuff. But beyond Neptune, there's a much more massive and much more radially expansive field of debris. Pluto, by the way, it belongs to that. second, icy asteroid belt, which we call the Kuiper belt. It's just a big object within that population of bodies. Pluto, the dwarf planet, the former planet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is Pluto not a planet anymore?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's tiny. Size matters when it comes to planets. 100%, 100%. It's actually a fascinating story. When Pluto was discovered in 1930, The reason it was discovered in the first place is because astronomers at the time were looking for a seven-Earth-mass planet. somewhere beyond Neptune. It was hypothesized that such an object exists. When they found something, they interpreted that as a seven-Earth-mass planet and immediately revised its mass downward because they couldn't resolve the object with the telescope. So, it looked like just a point-mass star rather than a physical disk. They said, well, maybe it's not seven, maybe it's one. Right? And then sort of over the next, you know, I guess 40 years, Pluto's mass kept getting revised downwards, downwards, downwards, until it was realized that it's like 500 times less massive than the Earth. I mean, like Pluto's surface area is almost perfectly equal to the surface area of Russia, actually. And you know, Russia is big, but it's not a planet. Well, I mean, actually, we can touch more on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's another discussion. So in some sense, earlier in the century, Pluto represented kind of our ignorance about the edges of the solar system. And perhaps Planet Nine is the thing that represents our ignorance about now the modern set of ignorances about the edges of our solar system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good way to put it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, just imagining this belt of debris at the edge of our solar system is incredible. Can you talk about it a little bit? What is the Kuiper belt and what is the Oort cloud?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, okay, so look, the simple way to think about it is that if you imagine Neptune's orbit like a circle, right? Kind of maybe a factor of one and a half, 1.3, times bigger, on a radius of 1.3 times bigger, you've got a whole collection of icy objects. Most of these objects are sort of the size of Austin, you know, maybe a little bit smaller. If you then zoom out, right? And explore the orbits of the most long period Kuiper belt object. These are the things that have the biggest orbits and take the longest time to go around the sun. Then what you find is that beyond a critical orbit size, beyond a critical orbit period, which is about 4,000 years, you start to see weird structure, like all the orbits sort of point into one direction. And all the orbits are kind of tilted in the same way by about 20 degrees with respect to Sun. This is particularly pronounced in orbits that are not heavily affected by Neptune. So, there you start to see this weird dichotomy where there are objects which are stable, which Neptune does not mess with gravitationally, and unstable objects. The unstable objects are basically all over the place because they're being kicked around by Neptune. The stable orbits show this remarkable pattern of clustering. We, back I guess five years ago, interpreted this pattern of clustering as a gravitational one-way sign, the existence of a planet in a distant planet, right? Something that is shepherding and confining these orbits together. Of course, you have to have some skepticism when you're talking about these things. You have to ask the question of, OK, how statistically significant is this clustering? And there are many authors that have indeed called that into question. We have done our own analyses. And basically, just like with all statistics, where there's kind of like, multiple ways to do the exercise, you can either ask the question of if I have a telescope that has, you know, surveyed this part of the sky, what are the chances that I would discover this clustering? That basically tells you that you have zero confidence. That does not give you a confident answer one way or another. Another way to do the statistics, which is what we prefer to do, is to say, we have a whole night sky of discoveries in the Kuiper belt. right? And if we have some object over there, which has right ascension and declination, which is a way to say it's there on the sky, and it has some brightness, that means somebody looked over there and discovered an object of was able to discover an object of that brightness or brighter. Through that analysis, you can construct a whole map on the sky of kind of where all of the surveys that have ever been done have collectively looked. So if you do the exercise this way, the false alarm probability of the clustering on which the Planet 9 hypothesis is built is about 0.4%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, okay, so there's a million questions here. One, when you say bright objects, why are they bright? Are we talking about actual objects within the Kuiper Belt or the stuff we see through the Kuiper Belt?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is the actual stuff we see in the Kuiper Belt. The way you go about discovering Kuiper Belt objects, it's pretty easy. I mean, it's easy in theory, right? Hard in practice. All you do is you take snapshots of the sky, right? Choose that direction and take, you know, the high exposure snapshot, then you wait a night and you do it again, and then you wait another night and you do it again. Objects that are just random stars in the galaxy don't move on the sky, whereas objects in the solar system will slowly move. This is no different than if you're driving down the freeway, it looks like, you know, trees are going by you faster than the clouds, right? This is parallax. That's it. It's just they're reflecting light off of the sun and it's going back and hitting this" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a little bit of a glimmer from the different objects that you can see based on the reflection from the sun. So like there's actual light. It's not darkness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. These are just big icicles, basically, that are just reflecting sunlight back at you. It's then easy to understand why it's so hard to discover them, because light has to travel to, you know, something like 40 times the distance between the earth and sun and then get reflected back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was it like an hour travel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's right. That's something like that. Because the earth to the sun is eight minutes, I believe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so something, you know, yeah, in that in that order. So that's interesting. So you have to, like, account for all of that. And then there's a huge amount of data, pixels that are coming from the pictures. And you have to integrate all of that together to paint a sort of like a high estimate of the different objects. Can you track them? Can you be like, that's Bob? Like, can you like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, exactly. In fact, one of them is named Joe Biden. This is not even a joke." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a Trump one or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no. I don't know. I haven't checked for that. The way it works is if you discover one, you right away get a license plate for it. The first four numbers is the first year that this object has appeared in the dataset, if you will. Then there's this code that follows it which basically tells you where in the sky it is, right? So one of the really interesting Kuiper belt objects, which is very much part of the planet nine stories called VP 113, because Joe Biden was vice president at the time, you know, got nicknamed Biden." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "VP113, you said? You got nicknamed by him, beautiful. What's the fingerprint for any particular object? Like how do you know it's the same one? Or it's just kind of like, yeah, from night to night, you take a picture, how do you know it's the same object?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the way you know is it appears in almost exactly the same part of the sky, except for it moves by. And this is why actually you need at least three nights, because oftentimes, asteroids, which are much closer to Earth, will appear to move only slightly, but then on the third night will move away. So that third night is really there to detect acceleration. Now, The thing that I didn't really realize until I started observing together with my partner in crime in all this, Mike Brown, is just the fact that for the first year when you make these detections, the only thing you really know with confidence is where it is on the night sky and how far away it is. That's it. You don't know anything about the orbit. because over three days, the object just moves so little, right? That whole motion on the sky is entirely coming from motion of the Earth, right? So, the Earth is kind of the car, the object is the tree and you see it move. So, then to get some confident information about what its orbit looks like, you have to come back a year later. and then measure it again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, interesting. So do three nights, then come back a year later and do another three nights. So you get the velocity, the acceleration from the three nights, and then you have the maybe the additional information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because an orbit is basically described by six parameters. So you at least need six independent points, but in reality, you need many more observations to really pinned down to orbit well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And from that you're able to construct for that one particular object an orbit and then there's, of course, like how many objects are there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's like four-ish thousand now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But like the, in the future, there could be like millions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh sure, oh sure. In fact, these things are hard to predict but there's a new observatory called the Vera Rubin Observatory which is coming online. maybe next year. I mean, with COVID, these things are a little bit more uncertain, but they've actually been making great progress with construction. And so that telescope is going to sort of scan the night sky every day automatically. And just it's such an efficient survey that it might increase the census of the distant Kuiper belt, the things that I'm interested in, by a factor of 100. I mean, that would be that'd be really cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And yeah, that's a, that's an incredible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, they might just find planet nine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's- Like almost like literally pictures, like visually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, sure, yeah. Like the first detection you make, all you know is where it is in the sky and how far away it is. If something is, you know, 500 times away from the sun, as far away from the sun as is the earth, you know that's planet nine. That's when the story concludes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you can study it. Now you can study it. Yeah. By the way, I'm going to use that as like, I don't know, a pickup line or a dating strategy, like see the person for three days and then don't see them at all. And then see him again in a year to determine the orbit. And over time you figure out if sort of, uh, from a cosmic perspective, this, this whole thing," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I have no dating advice to give." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was gonna use this as a metaphor to somehow map it onto the human condition. Okay, you mentioned the Kuiper Belt. What's the Oort Cloud? If you look at the Neptune orbit as one, then the Kuiper Belt is like 1.3 out there, and then we get farther and farther into the darkness. What" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, okay, you've got the main Kuiper belt, which is about say 1.3, 1.5. Then you have something called the scattered disk, which is kind of an extension of the Kuiper belt. It's a bunch of these long, very elliptical orbits that hug the orbit of Neptune but come out very far. So that, the scattered disk, with the current senses, like some of the longest orbits we know of, have a semi-major axis, so half the orbit length, roughly speaking, of about a thousand times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Now, if you keep moving out, eventually, once you're at sort of, you know, 10,000 to 100,000 roughly, that's where the Oort Cloud is. Now, the Oort Cloud is a distinct population of icy bodies and is distinct from the Kuiper Belt. In fact, it's so expansive that it ends roughly halfway between us and the next star. Its edge is just dictated by to what extent does the solar gravity reach?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Solar gravity reaches that far. Yeah. So it has to. Wow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in fact, imagining this is a little bit overwhelming. So there's like a giant, like vast, Icy rock thingy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like a sphere. It's like, you know, it's like it's almost spherical structure that engulfs that encircles the sun and all the long period comments. come from the Oort cloud. The way that they appear, I mean, for already, I don't know, hundreds of years, we've been detecting occasionally like a comet will come in and it seemingly comes out of nowhere. The reason these long period comets appear on very, very long time scales, right? These Oort cloud objects that are sitting, you know, 30,000 times as far away from the sun as is the earth actually interact with the gravity of the galaxy, the tide, effectively the tide that the galaxy exerts upon them and their orbits slowly change and they elongate. to the point where once their closest approach to the sun starts to reach a critical distance where ice starts to sublimate, then we discover them as comets because then the ice comes off of them. They look beautiful in the night sky, etc. But they're all coming from really, really far away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is there, are any of them coming our way from collisions? Like how many collisions are there? Or is there a bunch of space for them to move around?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's zero. It's completely collisionless. Out there, the physical radii of objects are so small compared to the distance between them, right? It's just... It is truly a collision-less environment. I don't know. I think that probably in the age of the solar system, there have literally been zero collisions in the Oort cloud." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow. When you like draw a picture of the solar system, everything's really close together. So everything I guess here is spaced far apart. Do rogue planets like fly in every once in a while and join? Not rogue planets, but rogue objects from out there. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Yeah. Join the party?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. We've seen a couple of them in the last three or so years, maybe four years now. The first one was the one called Oua Moua Moua. It's been all over the news. The second one was Comet Borisov, discovered by a guy named Borisov. Yeah, so the way you know they're coming from elsewhere is unlike solar system objects, which travel on elliptical paths around the sun, these guys travel on hyperbolic paths. So they come in, say hello, and then they're gone. And the fact that they exist is totally not surprising, right? Neptune is constantly ejecting Kuiper belt objects into interstellar space. Our solar system itself is sort of leaking icy debris and ejecting it. Presumably planetary systems around other stars do exactly the same thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you about the millions of objects that are part of the Kuiper Belt and part of the Oort Cloud. Do you think some of them have primitive life? It kind of makes you sad if there's primitive life there and they're just kind of lonely out there in space. How many of them do you think have life, like bacterial life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably a negligible amount. Zero with a plus on top. Zero plus plus. Yeah. So, you know, if you and I took a little trip to the interstellar medium, I think we would develop cancer and die real fast, right? It's rough. Yeah, it's a pretty hostile radiation environment. You don't actually have to go to the interstellar medium. You just have to leave the Earth's magnetic field, too. And then you're not doing so well suddenly. So, you know, this idea of, you know, life kind of traveling between places. It's not entirely implausible, but you really have to twist, I think, a lot of parameters. One of the problems we have is we don't actually know how life originates, right? So, it's kind of a second-order question of survival in the interstellar medium and how resilient it is because we We think you require water, and that's certainly the case for the Earth, but, you know, we really don't know for sure. That said, I will argue that the question of, like, are there aliens out there is a very boring question, because the answer is, of course there are. I mean, like, we know that there are planets around almost every star. Of course there are other life forms. Life is not some specific thing that happened on the earth and that's it, right? That's a statistical impossibility." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but the difficult question is, before even the fact that we don't know how life originates, I don't think we even know what life is, like, definitionally. Like, formalizing a kind of picture of, in terms of the mechanism we would use to search for life out there, or even when we're on a planet, to say, is this life? Is this rock that just moved from where it was yesterday life? Or maybe not even a rock, something else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I gotta tell you, I wanna know what life is, okay? And I want you to show me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know. I think there's a song to basically accompany every single thing we talk about today, and probably half of them are love songs. And somehow we'll integrate George Michael into the whole thing. Okay, so your intuition is there's life everywhere in our universe. Do you think there's intelligent life out there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's entirely plausible. I mean, it's entirely plausible I think there's intelligent life on Earth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And... So yeah, taking that, like say, whatever this thing we got on Earth, whether it's dolphins or humans, say that's intelligent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Definitely dolphins. I mean, have you seen the dolphins?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, they do some cruel stuff to each other. So if cruelty is a definition of intelligence, they're pretty good. And then humans are pretty good in that regard. And then there's like, pigs are very intelligent. I got actually a chance to hang out with pigs recently. And they're, aside from the fact they were trying to eat me, they're very, They're very, they love food. They love food, but there's an intelligence to their eyes that was kind of like haunts me because I also love to eat meat. And to me, the thing I later ate, and that was very intelligent and almost charismatic with the way it was expressing himself, herself, itself was quite incredible. So all that to say is, if we have intelligent life here on Earth, if we take dolphins, pigs, humans, from the perspective of planetary science, how unique is Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so Earth is not a common outcome of the planet formation process. It's probably something on the order of maybe a 1% effect. And by Earth, I mean not just an Earth-mass planet. I mean the architecture of the solar system that allows the Earth to exist in its kind of very temperate way. One thing to understand, and this is pretty crucial, right, is that the Earth itself formed well after the gas disk that formed the giant planets had already dissipated. You see, stars start out with, you know, the star and then a disk of gas and dust that encircles it, okay? From this disk of gas and dust, big planets can emerge. And we have, over the last two, three decades, discovered thousands of extrasolar planets as an orbit of other stars. What we see is that many of them have these expansive hydrogen-helium atmospheres. The fact that the Earth doesn't is deeply connected to the fact that Earth took about 100 million years to form. So we missed that train, so to speak, to get that hydrogen helium atmosphere. That's why actually we can see the sky, right? That's why the sky is, well, at least in most places, that's why the atmosphere is not completely opaque. With that kind of thinking in mind, I would, argue that we're getting the kind of emergent pictures that the Earth is not everywhere, right? There's sort of the sci-fi view of things where we go to some other star and we just land on random planets and they're all Earth-like. That's totally not true. But even a low probability event, even if you imagine that Earth is a one in a million or one in a you know, one in 10 million occurrence, there are 10 to the 12 stars in the galaxy, right? So you just, you always win by, that's right, by supply." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They save you. Well, you've hypothesized that our solar system once possessed a population of short-period planets that were destroyed by the evil Jupiter migrating through the solar nebula. Can you explain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If I was to say what was the key outcome of searches for extrasolar planets, it is that most stars are encircled by short period planets that are a few Earth masses, so a few times bigger than the Earth. and have orbital periods that kind of range from days to weeks. Now, if you go and ask the solar system what's in our region, right, in that region, it's completely empty, right? It's just, it's astonishingly hollow. And I think, you know, from The Sun is not some special star that decided that it was going to form the solar system. So I think the natural thing to assume is that the same processes of planet formation that occurred everywhere else also occurred in the solar system. following this logic, it's not implausible to imagine that the solar system once possessed a system of intra-Mercurian, compact system of planets. So then we asked ourselves, would such a system survive to this day? And the answer is no. At least our calculations suggest it's highly unlikely because of the formation of Jupiter. and Jupiter's primordial kind of wandering through the solar system would have sent this collisional field of debris that would have pushed that system of planets onto the Sun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So was Jupiter, this primordial wandering, what did Jupiter look like? Why was it wandering?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It didn't have the orbit it has today? We're pretty certain that giant planets like Jupiter, when they form, they migrate. The reason they migrate is, on a detailed level, perhaps difficult to explain, but just in a qualitative sense, they form, in this fluid disk of gas and dust. So, it's kind of like if I plop down a raft somewhere in the ocean, will it stay where you plop it down or will it kind of get carried around? It's not really a good analogy because it's not like Jupiter is being advected by the currents of gas and dust. But the way it it migrates as it carves out a hole in the disk. And then by interacting with the disk gravitationally, it can change its orbit. The fact that the solar system has both Jupiter and Saturn here complicates things a lot. Because you have to solve the problem of the evolution of the gas disk, the evolution of Jupiter's orbit in the gas disk, plus evolution of Saturn's and their mutual interaction. The common outcome of solving that problem though is pretty easy to explain. Jupiter forms, its orbit shrinks, and then once Saturn forms, its orbit catches up basically to the orbit of Jupiter and then both come out. So, there's this inward-outward pattern of Jupiter's early motion that happens sort of within the last million years of the lifetime of the solar system's primordial disk. So, while this is happening, if our calculations are correct, which I think they are, you can destroy this inner system of, you know, few Earth-mass planets. And then, in the aftermath of all this violence, you form the terrestrial planets." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where would they come from in that case? So Jupiter clears out the space, and then there's a few terrestrial planets that come in, and those come in from the disk somewhere, like one of the larger." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, what actually happens in these calculations is you leave behind a rather mass depleted like remnant disc, only a couple earth masses. So then from that remnant population, an annulus of material over 100 million years, by just collisions, you grow the earth and the moon and everything else. You said annulus? Annulus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Annulus. Annulus, yeah. That's a beautiful word. What does that mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's like a disc that's kind of thin. It's like a, yeah, it's something that is, you know, a disc that's so thin it's almost flirting with being a ring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, I was gonna say this reminds me of Lord of the Rings. So like this, the word just feels like it belongs in a Tolkien novel. Okay, so that's incredible. And so that, in your senses, you said like 1%, that's a rare, the way Jupiter and Saturn danced and cleared out the short period debris and then changed the gravitational landscape, that's a pretty rare thing too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's rare, and moreover, you don't even have to go to our calculations. You can just ask the night sky, how many stars have Jupiter and Saturn analogs? And the answer is Jupiter and Saturn analogs are found around only 10% of sun-like stars. So they themselves, you kind of have to score an A minus or better on the planet formation test to become a solar system analog even in that basic sense. And moreover, you know, lower mass stars, which are very numerous in the galaxy, so-called M dwarfs, think like 0% of them, well, maybe like A negligible fraction of them have giant planets. Giant planets are a rare outcome of planet formation. One of the really big problems that remain unanswered is why. We don't actually understand why they're so rare." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How hard is it to simulate all of the things that we've been talking about, each of the things we've been talking about, and maybe one day all of the things we've been talking about and beyond? Meaning, like from the initial primordial solar system, you know, a bunch of disks with I don't know, billions, trillions of objects in them, like simulate that such that you eventually get a Jupiter and a Saturn, and then eventually you get the Jupiter and the Saturn that clear out a disk, change the gravitational landscape, then Earth pops up, like that whole thing, and then be able to do that for every other system in the, every other star in the galaxy, and then be able to do that for other galaxies as well. Yeah, so maybe start from the smallest simulation, like what is actually being done today? I mean, even the smallest simulation is probably super, super difficult. Even just like one object in the Kuiper belt is probably super difficult to simulate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think it's super easy. I mean, like, it's just not that hard. But, you know, let's ask the most kind of basic problem, okay? So, the problem of having a star and something in orbit of it, that you don't need a simulation for, like, you can just write that down on a piece of paper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's gravity, like, yeah, I guess it's important to try to, One way to simulate objects in our solar system is to build the universe from scratch." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, we'll get to building the universe from scratch in a sec. But let me just kind of go through the hierarchy of what we do. Two objects, analytically solvable, we can figure it out very easily. I don't think you, yeah, you don't need to know calculus. It helps to know calculus, but you don't necessarily need to know calculus. three objects that are gravitationally interacting, the solution is chaotic. Doesn't matter how many simulations you do, the answer loses meaning after some time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like that is a metaphor for dating as well, but go on. I apologize." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The fact that you go from analytically solvable to unpredictable, when your simulation goes from two bodies to three bodies, should immediately tell you that the exercise of trying to engineer a calculation where you form the entire solar system from scratch and hope to have some predictive answer is a futile one, right? We will never, succeed at such a simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like, sorry, just to clarify, you mean like explicitly having a clear equation that generalizes the whole process enough to be able to make a prediction? Or do you mean actually like literally simulating the objects as a hopeless pursuit once it increases beyond three?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The simulating them is not a hopeless pursuit, but the outcome becomes a statistical one. What's actually quite interesting is I think we have all the equations figured out, right? Like, you know, in order to really understand this, the formation of the solar system, it suffices to know gravity and magnetohydrodynamics. I mean, like, the combination of Maxwell's equations and, you know, Navier-Stokes equations for the fluids, you need to know quantum mechanics to understand opacities and so on. But we have those equations in hand. It's not that we don't have that understanding, it's that putting it all together is A, very, very difficult and B, if you were to run the same evolution twice, changing the initial conditions by some infinitesimal amount, some minor change in your calculation to start with, you'd get a different answer. This is part of the reason why planetary systems are so diverse. You don't have like a very predictive path for you start with a disk of this mass and it's around this star, therefore you're gonna form the solar system, right? You start with this and therefore you will form this huge set of outcomes and some percentage of it will resemble the solar system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned quantum mechanics and we're talking about cosmic scale objects. You've talked about that the evolution of astrophysical disks can be modeled with Schrodinger's equation. I sure did. Why? It's like how does quantum mechanics become relevant when you consider the evolution of objects in the solar system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well let me take a step back and just say that I remember being you know, utterly confused by quantum mechanics when when I first learned it. And the Schrodinger equation, which is kind of the parent equation of that whole field, you know, seems to come out of nowhere, right? The way that the way that I was sort of explaining, I remember asking, you know, my professor is like, but where does it come from? He's like, well, just like, don't worry about it. And just like calculate the hydrogen, you know, energy levels, right? So, it's like I could do all the problems, I just did not have any intuition for where this parent, you know, super important equation came from. Now, down the line, I remember I was preparing for my own lecture and I was trying to understand how waves travel in self-gravitating disks. You know, again, there's a very broad theory that's already developed, but looking for some simpler way to explain it really, for the purposes of teaching class. And so I thought, okay, what if I just imagine a disc as an infinite number of concentric circles, right, that interact with each other gravitationally. That's a problem in some sense that I can solve using methods from like the late 1700s. I can write down Hamiltonian, well, I can write down the energy function basically of their interactions. And what I found is that when you take the continuum limit, when you go from discrete circles that are talking to each other gravitationally to a continuum disc, suddenly, this gravitational interaction among them, right, the governing equation becomes the Schrodinger equation. I had to think about that for a little bit. Did you just unify quantum mechanics and gravity? No, this is not the same thing as like, you know, fusing relativity and quantum mechanics. But It did get me thinking a little bit. So, the fact that waves in astrophysical disks behave just like wave functions of particles is kind of like an interesting analogy because for me, it's easier to imagine waves traveling through, you know, astrophysical disks are really just sheets of paper. And the reason that analogy exists is because there's actually nothing quantum about the Schrodinger equation. The Schrodinger equation is just a wave equation and all of the interpretation that comes from it is quantum, but the equation itself is not a quantum being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can use it to model waves. It's not turtles, it's waves all the way down. You can pick which level you pick the wave at. So it could be at the solar system level that you can use it. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And also it actually provides a pretty neat calculational tool because it's difficult. So we just talked about simulations, but it's difficult to simulate the behavior of astrophysical disks on timescales that are in between a few orbits and their entire evolution. So it's over a timescale of a few orbits, you have, you do a hydrodynamic simulation, right? You do, Basically, that's something that you can do on a modern computer on a timescale of, say, a week. When it comes to their evolution over their entire lifetime, you don't hope to resolve the orbits. You just kind of hope to understand how the system behaves. In between, to get access to that, as it turns out, it's pretty cute. You can use the Schrodinger equation to get the answer rapidly. So, it's a calculational tool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating. By the way, the astrophysical disks, how what are they? How broad is this definition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "OK, so astrophysical disks span a huge, huge amount of ranges. They start maybe at the smallest scale. They start with actually Kuiper belt objects. Some Kuiper belt objects have rings. So that's maybe the smallest example of an astrophysical disk. We've got this little potato-shaped asteroid, which is sort of the size of LA or something. And around it are some rings of icy matter. object is a small astrophysical disk. Then you have Saturn, the rings of Saturn. You have the next set of scale. You have the solar system itself when it was forming, you have a disk. Then you have black hole disks. You have galaxies. Disks are super common in the universe. And the reason is that stuff rotates, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's- Gravity works. Yeah. So, and those rings could be the material that composes those rings could be, it could be gas, it could be solid, it could be anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. So the disc that made from which the planets emerged was predominantly hydrogen helium gas. On the other hand, the rings of Saturn are made up of, you know, icicle ice, little like ice cubes this big, about a centimeter across." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That sounds refreshing. So that's incredible, hydrogen and helium gas. So in the beginning, it was just hydrogen and helium around the sun. How does that lead to the first formations of solid objects in terms of simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, here's the story. So you're like, have you ever been to the desert?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, I've been to the Death Valley and actually it was terrifying. Just a total tangent. I'm distracting you. But I was driving through it and I was really surprised because it was at first hot. And then as it was getting into the evening, there's this huge thunderstorm, like it was raining and it got freezing cold. Like, what the hell? It was the apocalypse. So like, just sit there listening to Bruce Springsteen, I remember, and just thinking I'm probably going to die. And I was okay with it because Bruce Springsteen was on the radio." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, when you've got the boss, you know, you're ready, you're ready to meet the boss. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a good line. So anyway, sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's true. Yeah, by the way, like to continue on this tangent, I absolutely love the Southwest for this reason. You know, I know during the pandemic I drove from LA to New Mexico a bunch of times the madness the weather yeah, the Chaos of whether the fact that you know, it'll be blazing hot one minute and then it's just like We'll decide to have a little thunderstorm Maybe you'll decide to go back momentarily to like a thousand degrees and then go back to the thunderstorm. It's amazing It's it's that by the way is chaos theory in action. Yeah, right But let's get back to talking about the desert So in the desert, tumbleweeds have a tendency to roll because the wind rolls them. And if you're careful, you'll occasionally see this family of tumbleweeds where there's a big one and then a bunch of little ones that kind of hide in its wake and are all rolling together and almost look like a family of ducks crossing a street or something. Or, for example, you know, if you watch Tour de France, right, you've got a whole bunch of cyclists, and they're like cycling, you know, within 10 centimeters of each other. They're not BFFs, right? They're not trying to be, trying to ride together. They are riding together to minimize the collective, you know, air resistance, if you will, that they experience. Turns out solids in the protoplanetary disk do just this. there's an instability wherein solid particles, things that are a centimeter across, will start to hide behind one another and form these clouds. Why? Because cumulatively, that minimizes the solid component of this aerodynamic interaction with the gas. Now, these clouds, because they're kind of a favorable energetic condition for the dust to live in, they grow, grow, grow, grow, grow until they become so massive that they collapse under their own weight. That's how the first building blocks of planets formed. That's how the big asteroids got there. That's incredible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So is that simulatable or is it not useful to simulate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, that's simulatable. And people do these types of calculations. It's really cool. That's actually, that's one of the many fields of planet formation theory. that is really, really active right now. People are trying to understand all kinds of aspects of that process. Because, of course, I've explained it as if there's one thing that happens. Turns out it's a beautifully rich dynamic. But qualitatively, formation of the first building blocks actually follows the same sequence as formation of stars, right? Stars are just clouds of gas, hydrogen helium gas that sit in space and slowly cool. And at some point they, you know, contract to a point where their gravity overtakes the thermal pressure support, if you will, and they collapse under their own weight and you get a little baby solar system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's amazing. So do you think one day it will be possible to simulate the full history that took our solar system to what it is today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and it will be useless. Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think your story, many of the ideas that you have about Jupiter clearing the space, like retelling that story in high resolution is not that important?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually think it's important, but at every stage you have to you have to design your experiments, your numerical computer experiments, so that they test some specific aspect of that evolution. I am not a proponent of doing huge simulations, because even if we forget the information theory aspect of not being able to simulate in full detail the universe, because if you do, Then you you have made an actual universe It's not the simulation right by simulation is in some sense a compression of information. So therefore you must lose detail but that point aside If we are able to simulate the entire history of the solar system in excruciating detail, I mean, it'll be cool, but it's not going to be any different from observing it, right? Because theoretical understanding, which is what ultimately I'm interested in, comes from taking complex things and reducing them down to some mechanism that you can actually quantify. That's the fun part of astrophysics. Just kind of simulating things in extreme detail will make cool visualizations, but that doesn't get to doesn't get you to any better understanding than you had before you did the simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you ask very specific questions, then you'll be able to create like very highly compressed, nice, beautiful theories about how things evolved. And then you can use those to then generalize to other solar systems, to other stars and other galaxies and say something generalizable about the entire universe. How difficult would it be to simulate our solar system such that we would not know the difference. Meaning, if we are living in a simulation, is there a nice, think of it as a video game, is there a nice compressible way of doing that? Or just kind of like you intuited with a three body situation, is just a giant mess that you cannot create a video game that will seem realistic without actually building it from scratch." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm speculating, but I know you have a deep understanding of this, but for me, I'm just going to speculate that for at least in the types of simulations that we can do today, inevitably, you run into the problem of resolution. It doesn't matter what you're doing, it is discrete. Now, The way you would go about asking if what we're observing is that a simulation or is that some real continuous thing is you zoom in. You zoom in and try and find the grid scale, if you will. It's a really interesting question. And because the solar system itself and really, you know, the double pendulum is chaotic, right? Pendulum sitting on another pendulum moves unpredictably once you let them go. You really don't need to like inject any randomness into a simulation for it to give you stochastic and unpredictable answers. Weather is a great example of this. Weather has a lapen of time of, you know, typical weather systems have a lapen of time of a few days. And there's a fundamental reason why the forecast always sucks, you know, two weeks in advance. It's not that we don't know the equations that govern the atmosphere. We know them well. Their solutions are meaningless, though, after a few days." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the zooming in thing is very interesting. I think about this a lot, whether there'll be a time soon where we would want to stay in video game worlds, whether it's virtual reality or just playing video games." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think that time like came in like the nineties and it's been that time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's not just, it's not just came as, I mean, it's accelerated. I just recently saw the WoW and Fortnite were played 140 billion hours. And those are just video games. And that's increasing very, very quickly, especially with the people coming up now and being born now and becoming teenagers and so on. Let's have a thought experiment where it's just you and a video game character inside a room. When you remove the simulation, they need to simulate sort of a lot of objects. If it's just you and that character, how far do you need to simulate in terms of zooming in for it to be very real to you? As real as reality. So like, first of all, you kind of mentioned zooming in, which is fascinating because we have these tools of science that allow us to zoom in, quote unquote, in all kinds of ways in the world around us. But our cognitive abilities, like our perception system as humans, is very limited in terms of zooming in. So we might be very easily fooled." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Some of the video games, on the PS4 look pretty real to me. I think you would really have to interrogate. I think even with what we have today, I don't know, Ace Combat 7 is a great example. The way that the clouds are rendered, I mean, it looks just like when you're flying on a real airplane, the kind of transparency. I think that our perception is limited enough already to not be able to tell some of the some of the differences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a game called Skyrim. It's an Elder Scrolls role playing game. And I just I played it for quite a bit. And I think I played very different than others. Like there'll be long stretches of time where I would just walk around and look at nature in the game. It's incredible. Oh, sure. It's just like the graphics is like, wow, I want to stay there. It was better. I went hiking recently. It was like as good as hiking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, look, I know what you mean. Not to go on a huge video game tangent, but the third Witcher game was astonishingly beautiful, right? Especially playing on a good hardware machine. It was like, this is pretty legit. That said... you know, I don't resonate with the, I wanna stay here. You know, like one of the things that I love to do is to go to my like boxing gym and box with a guy, right? Like that's, there's nothing quite like that physical, you know, experience. Like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating. That might be simply an artifact of the year you were born. Maybe. Because if you're born today, it almost seems like stupid to go to a gym. Yeah. Like, you go to a gym to box with a guy, why not box with Mike Tyson when you yourself, like in his prime, when you yourself are also an incredible boxer in the video game world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a multitude of reasons why I don't want to box with Mike Tyson. I enjoy teeth and I want to have an ear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but your skills in this meat space, in this physical realm is very limited and takes a lot of work. And you're a musician, you're an incredible scientist. You only have so much time in the day. But in the video game world, you can expand your capabilities in all kinds of dimensions that you can never have possibly have time in the physical world. And so that it doesn't make sense, like to to be existing, to be working your ass off in the physical world when you can just be super successful in the video game world. But I still... You enjoy sucking and stuff? Yeah, I really do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And struggling to get better? I sure do. I mean, I think like these days with music, music is a great example, right? We just started, you know, practicing live with my band again, you know, after not playing for a year. And, you know, it was just, it was terrible. Like, it was just... kind of a lot of the nuance, you know, a lot of the detail is just that detail that takes, you know, years of collective practice to develop. It's just lost. But it was just an incredible amount of fun, way more fun than all the like studio, you know, sitting around and playing that I did, you know, throughout the entire year. So I think there's something, there's something intangible, or maybe, maybe tangible about being, being in person. I, I sure hope you're wrong and that, you know, that's not something that will get lost because I think there's like such a large part of the human condition is to hang out. If we were doing this interview on Zoom, right? I mean, I'd already be bored out of my mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. I mean, there's something to that. I mean, I'm almost playing devil's advocate, but at the same time, you know, I'm sure people talk about the same way at the beginning of the 20th century about horses, where they are much more efficient. They're much easier to maintain than cars. It doesn't make sense to have, you know, all the ways that cars break down and there's not enough infrastructure in terms of roads for cars. It doesn't make any sense. Like horses and like nature, you could do the nature, like where, you should be living more natural life, those are real. You don't want machines in your life that are going to pollute your mind and the minds of young people, but then eventually just cars took over." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in that same way, it just seems- Going back to horses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you can be, you can play, what is it? Red Dead. Red Dead Redemption. Redemption, and you can ride horses in the video game world. That's true. So let me return us back to Planet Nine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Always a good place to come back to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So now that we did a big historical overview of our solar system, what is Planet 9?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. Planet 9 is a hypothetical object that orbits the solar system, right, at an orbital period of about 10,000 years. And an orbit which is slightly tilted with respect to the plane of the solar system, slightly eccentric. And the object itself, we think is five times more massive than the Earth. We have never seen Planet Nine in a telescope. but we have gravitational evidence for it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so this is where all the stuff we've been talking about, this clustering ideas, maybe you can speak to the approximate location that we suspect, and also the question I wanted to ask is, what are we supposed to be imagining here? Because you said there are certain objects in the Kuiper belt that are kind of have a direction to them, that they're all like, like flocking in some kind of way. So that's a sense that there's some kind of gravitational object, not changing their orbit, but kind of confining them, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, finding like grouping their orbits together. See, what would happen if Planet 9 were not there is these orbits that roughly share a common orientation, they would just disperse, right? They would just become azimuthally symmetric, point everywhere. Planet 9's gravity makes it such that these objects stay in a state that's basically anti-aligned with respect to the orbit of planet nine and sort of hang out there and kind of oscillate on a timescale of about a billion years. That's one of the lines of evidence for the existence of planet nine. There are others. That's the one that's easiest to maybe visualize just because it's fun to think about orbits that all point into the same direction. But I should emphasize that, for example, The existence of objects, again, Kuiper belt objects, that are heavily out of the plane of the solar system, things that are tilted by, say, 90 degrees, we don't expect that as an outcome of planet formation. Indeed, planet formation simulations have never produced such objects. without some extrinsic gravitational force. Planet Nine, on the other hand, generates them very readily. So that provides kind of an alternative, you know, population of small bodies in the solar system that also get produced by Planet 9 through an independent kind of gravitational effect. So, there's basically five different things that Planet 9 does individually that are like kind of maybe a one-sigma effect where you'd say, yeah, okay, if that's all it was, maybe it's no reason to jump up and down because It's a multitude of these puzzles that all are explained by one hypothesis. That's really the magnetism, the attraction of the Planet Nine model." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, can you just clarify? So, most planets in the solar system orbit approximately the same, so it's flat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's like one degree. The difference between them is about one degree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, but nevertheless, if we looked at our solar system, it would look, and I could see every single object, it would look like a sphere." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the inner part where the planets are would look like, you know, flat, right? The Kuiper belt and the asteroid belt have a larger... It gets fatter and fatter and fatter to become the sphere. That's right. And if you look at the very outside, it's polluted by this, you know, quasi spheroidal thing. Nobody's, of course, ever seen the Oort cloud, right? We've only seen comments that come from the Oort Cloud. So, the Oort Cloud, which is this, right, population of distant debris, its existence is also inferred. You could say, alternatively, there is, you know, there's a big cosmic creature that occasionally, you know, sitting at 20,000 AU and occasionally throws an icy rock towards the sun like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Spaghetti monster, I think it's called. Okay, I mean, so it's a mystery in many ways, but you can kind of infer a bunch of things about it. It's by the way, both terrifying and exciting that there's this vast darkness all around us that's full of objects that they're just throwing. Just there, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's actually kind of astonishing, right? That we have only explored a small fraction of the solar system. right? That really kind of baffles me because, remember, as a student, you know, studying physics, you know, you do the problem where you put the Earth around the Sun, you solve that, and like, it's one line of math, and you say, okay, well, that surely was figured out by Newton. So, like, all the interesting stuff is not in the solar system. But that It's just plainly not true. There are mysteries in the solar system that are remarkable, that we are only now starting to just kind of scratch the surface of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And some of those objects probably have some information about the history of our solar system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Absolutely. Like a great example is, you know, small meteorites, right? Small meteorites are melted, right? They're differentiated, meaning some of the iron sinks to core. You say, well, how can that be? Because they're so small that they wouldn't have melted just from the heat of their accretion. Turns out, the fact that the solar nebula, the disk that made the planets, was polluted by aluminum-26 is in itself a remarkable thing. It means the solar system did not form in isolation. It formed in a giant cloud of thousands of other stars that were also forming, some of which were undergoing going through supernova explosions and releasing these unstable isotopes of which we now see kind of the traces of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so cool. Do you think it's possible that life from other solar systems was injected and that that was what was the origin of life on Earth? Yeah, the Panspermia idea. That's seen as a low probability event by people who studied the origin of life, but that's because then they would be out of a job." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I don't think they'd be out of the job, because you just then say, you have to figure out how life started there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then you have to go there. We can study life on Earth much easier. We can study it in the lab much easier, because we can replicate conditions that are from an early Earth much easier, from a chemistry perspective, from a biology perspective. You can intuit a bunch of stuff. You can look at different parts of Earth" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To an extent, I mean, the early Earth was completely unlike the current Earth, right? There was no oxygen. So one of my colleagues at Caltech, Joe Kirshnick, is certain, something like 100% certainty that life started on Mars and came to Earth on Martian meteorites. This is not a problem that I like to kind of think about too much, like the origin of life, it's a fascinating problem, but it's not physics, and I just don't love it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the same reason you don't love, I thought you're a musician, so music is not physics either, so why are you so into it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's 100% physics. Yeah, no, no, look, in all seriousness, though, I there are a few things that I really, really enjoy. I genuinely enjoy physics. I genuinely enjoy music. I genuinely, you know, enjoy martial arts and I genuinely enjoy my family. I should have said that all in a reverse order or something. But I like to focus on these things and not worry too much about about everything else. You know what I mean? Yes. Just because there is a like you said earlier, there's a time constraint." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can't do it all. There's many mysteries all around us. And they're all beautiful in different ways. To me, that thing I love is artificial intelligence, that perhaps I love it because eventually I'm trying to suck up to our future overlords. The question of, you said there's a lot of kind of little pieces of evidence for this thing that's planet nine. If we were to try to collect more evidence, or be certain, like a paper that says, you drop it, clear, we're done, what does that require? Does that require us sending probes out, or do you think we can do it from telescopes here on Earth? What are the different ideas for conclusive evidence for Planet Nine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The moment Planet Nine gets imaged from a telescope on Earth, it's done, I mean, it's just there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you clarify, because you mentioned that before, from an image, would you be able to tell?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so from an image, the moment you see something, something that is reflecting sunlight back at you, and you know that it's hundreds of times as far away from the sun as is the earth, you're done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're thinking, so basically, if you have a really far away thing that's big, five times the size of Earth, that means that's planet nine. That is planet nine. Could there be multiple objects like that, I guess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In principle, yeah. I mean, there's no... there's no law of physics that doesn't allow you to have multiple, there's also no evidence at present for there being multiple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if it's possible, just like we're finding exoplanets, whether given the size of the Oort cloud, there's basically, it's rarer and rarer, but there's sprinkled planet nine, 10, 11, 12, like these some. Got 13. Yeah, it goes after that. I can just keep counting. So like just something about the dynamic system, like it becomes lower and lower probability event, but they gather up, like they become, would they become larger and larger maybe? Something like that. I wonder if like discovering planet nine will just like be almost like a springboard. It's like, well, what's beyond that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's entirely plausible. The Oort cloud itself probably holds about five Earth masses or seven Earth masses of material. So it's not nothing. And it all ultimately comes down to at what point will the observational surveys sample enough of the solar system to kind of reveal interesting things? There's a great analogy here with Neptune and the story of how Neptune was discovered. Neptune was not discovered by looking at the sky, right? It was discovered by, it was discovered mathematically, right? So, yeah, the orbit of Uranus, when Uranus was found, this was 1781, it's, they kind of, tracking of both the tracking of the orbit of Uranus as well as the reconstruction of the orbit of Uranus immediately revealed that it was not following the orbit that it was supposed to, right? The predicted orbit deviated away from where it actually was. So, in the mid 1800s, right, a French mathematician by the name of Orban Le Verrier did a beautifully sophisticated calculation, which said, if this is due to gravity of a more distant planet, then that planet is there. And then they found it. But the point is the understanding of where to look for Neptune came entirely out of celestial mechanics. The case with Planet 9 is a little bit different because what we can do, I think, relatively well is predict the orbit and mass of Planet 9. We cannot tell you where it is on its orbit. The reason is we haven't seen the Kuiper Belt objects complete an orbit, their own orbit. even once, because it takes 4,000 years. But, you know, I plan to live on as an AI being, and, you know, I'll be tracking those orbits as, you know, for- It only takes four or 5,000 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it doesn't have to be AI. It could be longevity. There's a lot of really exciting genetic engineering research. So you'll just be a brain waiting for the, your brain waiting for the orbit to complete for the basic Kuiper belt objects." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. That's like, kind of the worst reason to want to live a long time, right? Just like, can the brain like smoke a cigarette?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you just light one up while you're waiting or? But you're making me actually realize that the one way to explore the galaxy is by just sitting here on earth and waiting. So if we can just get really good at waiting, it's like a muamua or these interstellar objects that fly in, you can just wait for them to come to you. Same with the aliens, you can wait for them to come to you. If you get really good at waiting, then that's one way to do the exploration, because eventually the thing will come to you. Maybe the intelligent alien civilizations get much better at waiting, and so they all decide, so game theoretically, to start waiting, and it's just a bunch of ancient intelligent civilizations of aliens all throughout the universe, they're just sitting there waiting for each other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, you can't just be good at waiting. You gotta know how to chill. You can't just sit around and do nothing. You gotta know how to chill." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I honestly think that as we progress, if the aliens are anything like us, we enjoy loving things we do. And it's very possible that we just figure out mechanisms here on Earth to enjoy our life and we just stay here on Earth forever, that exploration becomes less and less of an interesting thing to do. And so you basically, yes, wait and chill. You get really optimally good at chilling and thereby exploring is not that interesting. So in terms of 4,000 years, it'll be nothing for scientists. We'll be chilling and just all kinds of scientific explorations will become possible because we'll just be here on Earth. So chill. You have a paper out recently, because you already mentioned some of these ideas, but I'd love it if you could dig into it a little bit. Yeah, of course. The injection of inner Oort cloud objects into the distant Kuiper belt by Planet 9. What is this idea of Planet 9 injecting objects into the Kuiper belt?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "okay let me take a brief step back and when we do calculations of planet nine when we do the simulations as far as our simulations are concerned sort of the uh Neptune, the trans-Neptunian solar system is entirely sourced from the inside. Namely, the Kuiper belt gets scattered by Neptune and then Planet 9 does things to it and aligns the orbits and so on. Then we calculate what happens on the lifetime of the solar system, yada, yada, yada. During the pandemic, one of the kind of questions we asked ourselves, and this is indeed something Mike Brown, who's a partner in crime on this, and I do regularly, is we say, how can we A, disprove ourselves, and B, how can we improve our simulations? Like, what's missing? And one idea that maybe should have been obvious in retrospect is that all of our simulations treated the solar system as some isolated creature, right? But the solar system did not form in isolation, right? It formed in this cluster of stars. And during that phase of forming together with thousands of other stars, we believe solar system formed this almost spherical population of icy debris that sits maybe at a few thousand times the separation between the earth and the sun maybe even a little bit closer if planet nine's not there that population is completely dormant. And these objects just slowly orbit the sun, nothing interesting happens to them ever. But what we realized is that if planet nine is there, planet nine can actually grab some of those objects and gravitationally re-inject them into the distant solar system. So we thought, okay, let's look into this with numerical experiments. Do our simulations, does this process work? And if it works, what are its consequences? So, it turns out, indeed, not only does Planet Nine inject these distant inner Oort Cloud objects into the Kuiper Belt, they follow roughly the same pathway as the objects that are being scattered out. So, there's this kind of two-way river of material, some of it is coming out from, you know, by Neptune scattering, some of it is moving in. And if you work through the numbers, you kind of, at the end of the day, that it has an effect on the best fit orbit for Planet Nine itself. So if you realize that the data set that we're observing is not entirely composed of things that came out of the solar system, but also things that got re-injected back in, then turns out the best fit Planet 9 is slightly more eccentric. That's kind of getting into the weeds. The point here is that the existence of Planet 9 itself provides this natural bridge that connects an otherwise dormant population of icy debris of the solar system with things that we're starting to directly observe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not just the river flowing one way, it's maybe a smaller stream going back. Backwash. You want to backwash. You want to incorporate that into the simulations, into your understanding of those distant objects when you're trying to make sense of the various observations and so on. Exactly. That's fascinating. I gotta ask you, some people think that many of the observations that you're describing could be described by a primordial black hole. First, what is a primordial black hole, and what do you think about this idea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So a primordial black hole is a black hole which is made not through the usual pathway of making a black hole, which is that you have a star, which is more massive than, you know, 1.4 or so solar masses. And basically, when it runs out of fuel, runs out of its nuclear fusion fuel, it can't hold itself up anymore. And just the whole thing collapses on itself. Right? And you create a I mean, one, I guess, simple way to think about it is you create an object with zero radius that has mass but zero radius singularity. Now, such black holes exist all over the place in the galaxy. There's, in fact, a really big one at the center of the galaxy. That one's always looking at you when you're not looking. And it's always talking about you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And when you turn off the lights, it wakes up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. But you know, so such black holes are all over the place. When they merge, we get to see, you know, incredible gravitational waves that they emit, etc, etc. One kind of plausible scenario, however, is that when the universe was forming, basically during the Big Bang, you created a whole spectrum of black holes, some with masses of five Earth masses, some with masses of 10 Earth masses, like the entire mass spectrum size, the mass of asteroids. Now, on the smaller end, over the lifetime of the universe, the small ones kind of evaporate, and they're not there anymore. At least this is what the calculations tell us. But five Earth masses is big enough to not have evaporated. So one idea is that planet nine is not a planet and instead it is a five Earth mass black hole. And that's why it's hard to find. Now, can we right away from our calculations say that's definitely true or that's not true? Absolutely not. We can, in fact, our calculations tell you nothing other than the orbit and the mass. And that means the black hole, I mean, it could be a five Earth mass cup, it could be a five Earth mass hedgehog or a black hole or really anything that's five Earth masses will do because the gravity of a black hole is no different than the gravity of a planet, right? If the sun became a black hole tomorrow, It would be dark, but the earth would keep orbiting it. This notion that, oh, black holes suck everything in, it's not. That's like a sci-fi notion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just math. What would be the difference between a black hole and a planet in terms of observationally?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Observationally, the difference would be that you will never find the black hole, right? The truth is they're kind of, I'm actually not, you know, I never looked into this very carefully, but there are some constraints that you can get just statistically and say, okay, if the sun has a binary companion, which is a five-Earth-mass black hole, then that means such black holes would be extremely common and you can sort of look for lensing events and then you say, okay, maybe that's not so likely. But that said, I want to emphasize that there's a limit to what our calculations can tell you. That's the orbit and the mass." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think there's a bunch, like Ed Witten, I think wishes it's a black hole because I think one exciting things about black holes in our solar system is that we can go there and we can maybe study the singularity somehow because that allows us to understand some fundamental things about physics. If it's a planet, so planet nine, we may not, you know, and we go there, we may not discover anything profoundly new. The interesting thing, perhaps you can correct me about Planet Nine, is like the big picture of it. The whole big story of the Kuiper Belt and all those kinds of things. It's not that Planet Nine would be somehow fundamentally different from, I don't know, Neptune in terms of the kind of things we could learn from it. So I think that there's kind of a hope that it's a black hole because it's an entirely new kind of object. Maybe you can correct me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, of course, here my own biases creep in because I'm interested, you know, in planets around other stars. And I would say, I would disagree that, you know, we wouldn't find things that would be truly, you know, fundamentally new. Because, as it turns out, the galaxy is really good at making five or three Earth-mass objects. The most common type of planet that we see, that we discover orbiting around other stars, is a few Earth-masses. In the solar system, there's no analogue for that, right? We go from one Earth-mass object, which is this one, to skipping to Neptune and Uranus, which themselves are actually relatively poorly understood, especially Uranus from the interior structure point of view. If planet nine is a planet, going there will give us the closest window into understanding what other planets look like. I will, you know, I'll say this that, you know, planets kind of in terms of their complexity on some logarithmic scale fall somewhere between a star and an insect, right? And the insect is way more complicated than the star, right? Just all kinds of physical processes and really biochemical processes that occur inside of an insect that just make a star look like somebody is playing with a spring or something. So, I think it would be arguably more interesting to go to Planet 9 if it's a planet because black holes are simple. They're basically macroscopic particles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, right. And so just like a star that you mentioned in terms of complexity. So it's possible that planet nine is supposed to being like homogeneous is like super heterogeneous. There's a bunch of cool stuff going on that could give us an intuition. I never thought about that, that it's just basically earth number two in terms of size and gives us, starts giving us intuition that could be generalizable to earth like planets elsewhere in the galaxy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, yeah, Pluto is also in the sense like, you know, Pluto is a tiny, tiny thing, right? Just like you would imagine that it's just a tiny ball of ice, like, who cares? But the New Horizons images of Pluto reveal so much remarkable structure, right? They reveal glaciers flowing, and these are glaciers not made out of water ice, but, you know, CO ice. It turns out at those temperatures, right, of like 40 or so Kelvin, water ice looks like metal, right? It just doesn't flow at all. But then ice made up of carbon monoxide starts to flow. I mean, there's just like all kinds of really cool phenomena that you otherwise just wouldn't really even imagine that occur. So, Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why I like planets." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask you, I find, as I read the idea that Ed Witten was thinking about this kind of stuff, fascinating. So he's a mathematical physicist who's very interested in string theory, won the Fields Medal for his work in mathematics. So I read that he proposed a fleet of probes accelerated by radiation pressure that could discover a Planet Nine primordial black hole's location. What do you think about this idea of sending a bunch of probes out there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, look, the way, the idea is a cool one, right? You go and you say, know, launch them basically isotropically, you track where they go. And if I understand the idea correctly, you basically measure the deflection and you say, okay, that must be something there since the the probe trajectories are being altered." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the measurement, the basic sensory mechanism is the it's not like you have senses on the probes, it's more like you're, because you're very precisely able to capture, to measure the trajectory of the probes, you can then infer the gravitational fields." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's the basic idea. Back a few years ago, we had conversations like these with engineers from JPL. They more or less convinced me that this is much more difficult than it seems because At that level of precision, things like solar flares matter. Solar flares are completely chaotic. You can't predict where a solar flare will happen. That will drive radiation pressure gradients. You don't know where every single asteroid is. So actually doing that problem, I think it's possible, but it's not a trivial matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I wonder not just about Planet Nine, I wonder if that's kind of the future of doing science in our solar system is to just launch a huge number of probes. So like a whole order of magnitude, many orders of magnitude larger numbers of probes and then start in for a bunch of different stuff, not just gravity but everything else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in this regard, I actually think there is a huge revolution that's to some extent already started, right? The standard kind of like timescale for a NASA mission is that you like propose it and it launches, I don't know, like 150 years after you propose it. I'm over-exaggerating, but you know, it's just like some huge development cycle and it gets delayed 55 times. Like that is not going away, right? the really cutting edge things, you have to do it this way because you don't know what you're building, so to speak. But the CubeSat kind of world is starting to provide an avenue for like, launching something that costs a few million dollars and has a turnaround timescale of a couple of years. You can imagine doing PhD theses where you design the mission, the mission goes to where you're going, and you do the science all within a time span of five, six years. That has not been fully executed on yet, but I absolutely think that's on the horizon and we're not talking a decade. I think we're talking this decade." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and the company's accelerating all this with Blue Origin and SpaceX. There's a bunch of more CubeSat-oriented companies that are pushing this forward. Let me ask you on that topic, what do you think about either one? Elon Musk with SpaceX going to Mars. I think he wants SpaceX to be the first, to put a first human on Mars. And then Jeff Bezos, gotta give him props, wants to be the first to fly his own rocket out into space." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, wasn't there a guy who like built his rocket out of garbage? Yeah. This was like a couple years ago and somewhere in the desert he launched himself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not tracking this closely, but I think I am familiar with folks who built their own rocket to try to prove the earth is flat. Yes, that's the guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. He was also like, he also jumped some limousine for" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "a truly revolutionary mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have greater men than either you or I. So look, it's been astonishing to watch how really over the last like decade, the commercial sector took over this, you know, this industry that traditionally has really been like a, you know, a government thing to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Motivated primarily by the competition between nations, like the Cold War. Sure. And now it's motivated more and more by the natural forces of capitalism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that's right. So, okay, here I have many ideas about, I think on the one hand, right? Like what SpaceX has been able to do, for example, phenomenal. If that brings down the price of space exploration, that turnaround timescale for space exploration, which I think it inevitably will, that's a huge boost to the human condition. The same time, if we're talking astronomy, it comes at a huge cost. And the Starlink satellites is a great example of that cost. At one point, in fact, I was just camping in the Mojave with a friend of mine, and they saw this string of satellites, just kind of like a appear and then disappear into nowhere. So, that is beginning to interfere with Earth-based observations. So, I think there's tremendous potential there. It's also important to be responsible about how it's executed. Now, with Mars and the whole idea of exploring Mars, I don't have strong opinions on whether a manned mission is required or not required. But I do think the thing to keep in mind is that I'm not signed on, if you will, to the idea that Mars is some kind of a safe haven that we can escape to. Mars sucks, right? If you want to live on Mars, you can have that experience by going to the Mojave Desert and camping and it's just not a great experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's interesting, but there's something captivating about that kind of mission of us striving out into space and by making Mars in some ways habitable for at least like months at a time, I think would lead to engineering breakthroughs that would make life like, in many ways much better on Earth. We'll come up with ideas we totally don't expect yet, both on the robotic side, on the food engineering side, on the, you know, maybe we'll switch from, there'll be huge breakthroughs in insect farming. as exciting as I find that idea to be. In the ways we consume protein, maybe it'll revolutionize. We do factory farming, which is full of cruelty and torture of animals. We'll revolutionize that completely. We shouldn't need to go to Mars to revolutionize life here on earth, but at the same time, I shouldn't need a deadline to get shit done, but I do need it. And then the same way, I think we need Mars. There's something about the human spirit that loves that longing for exploration." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with that thesis. Going to the moon, right? And that whole endeavor. has captivated the imagination of so many, and it has led to incredible ideas, really, and probably in nonlinear ways, right? Not like, okay, we went to the moon, therefore, some person here has thought of this. In that similar sense, I think space exploration is there's some real magnetism about it, and it's on a genetic level, right? Like, we have this need to keep exploring, right? When we're done with a certain frontier, we move on to the next frontier. All that I'm saying is that I'm not moving to Mars to live there permanently ever. And I think that, you know, I'm glad you noted the kind of degradation of the earth, right? I think that is a true kind of the leading order challenge of our time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's a great engineering, it's a bunch of engineering problems. I'm most interested in space because as I've read extensively, it's apparently very difficult to have sex in space. And so I just want that problem to be solved because I think Once we solve the sex and space problem, we'll revolutionize sex here on Earth, thereby increasing the fun on Earth, and the consequences of that can only be good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you've got a clear plan, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it sounds like... I'm submitting proposals to NASA as we speak. That's right. I keep getting rejected. I don't know why. Okay. You need better diagrams. Better pictures. I should have thought of that. You a while ago mentioned that, you know, there's certain aspects in the history of the solar system and Earth that resulted, that it could have resulted in an opaque atmosphere, but it didn't. We couldn't see the stars. And somebody mentioned to me a little bit ago, it's almost like a philosophical question for you. Do you think... humans, like human society would develop as it did, or at all, if we couldn't see the stars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would be drastically different, just if it ever did develop. So I think some of the early developments, right, of like fire, you know, fire, you know, first of all, that atmosphere would be so hot because, you know, if you have an opaque atmosphere, the temperature at the bottom, is huge. So we would be very different beings to start with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We'd have very different- But it could be cloudy in certain kinds of ways that you could still get- Okay, think about like a greenhouse, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A greenhouse is cloudy effectively, but it's super hot. Yeah, it's hard to avoid having an atmosphere. If you have an opaque atmosphere, It's hard to, right? Venus is a great example, right? Venus is, I don't remember exactly how many degrees, but it's hundreds in Celsius, right? It's not a hundred, it's hundreds. Even though it's only a little bit closer to the sun, that temperature is entirely coming from the fact that the atmosphere is thick. So it's a sauna of sorts. Yeah, yeah. You go there, you know, you feel refreshed after you come back, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But if you stay there, I mean, so, okay, take that as an assumption. This is a philosophical question, not a biological one. So you have a life that develops under these extremely hot conditions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so let's see. So much of the early evolution of mankind was driven by exploration, right? And... the kind of interest in stars originated in part as a tool to guide that exploration, right? I think would be a huge differential in the way that we, our evolution on this planet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean stars, that's brilliant. So even in that aspect, but even in further aspects, astronomy just shows up in basically every single development in the history of science up until the 20th century, it shows up. So I wonder without that, if we would have, if we would even get like calculus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, look, that's a great, I mean, that's a great point. Newton in part developed calculus because he was interested in understanding, explaining Kepler's laws, right? In general, that whole mechanistic understanding of the night sky, right? Replacing a religious understanding where you interpret, you know, this is, you know, whatever fire god riding his, you know, little chariot across the sky, as opposed to, you know, this is some mechanistic set of laws that transformed humanity and arguably put us on the on the course that we're on today, right? The entirety of the last 400 years and the development of kind of our technological world that we live in today was sparked by by that, right? abandoning an effectively, you know, a non-secular view of the natural world and kind of saying, okay, this can be understood. And if it can be understood, it can be utilized, we can create our own variants of this. Absolutely, we would be a very, very different species without astronomy. This, I think, extends beyond just astronomy, right? There are questions like, why do we need to spend money on X, right? Where X can be anything like paleontology, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The mating patterns of penguins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's essential. That's right. I think there's a tremendous under-appreciation for the usefulness of useless knowledge, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I didn't come up with this. This is a little book by the guy who started the Institute for Advanced Studies. But You know, it's so true. So much of the electronics that are on this table, right, work on Maxwell's equations. Maxwell wasn't sitting around in the 1800s saying, you know, I hope one day, you know, we'll make, you know, a couple of mics. So, you know, a couple You know, a couple of guys can have this conversation, right? That wasn't at no point was that the motivation. And yet, you know, it gave us the world that we have today. And the answer is if you are a purely pragmatic person, if you don't care at all about kind of the human condition, none of this, the answer is you can tax it, right? Useless things have created way more capital than useful things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, it's really important to think about, and it's brilliant, in the following context. Neil deGrasse Tyson has this book about the role of military-based funding in the development of science. And then so much of technological breakthroughs in the 20th century had to do with humans working on different military things. And then the outcome of that had nothing to do with military. It had some military application, but their impact was much, much bigger than military." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The splitting of the atom is kind of a canonical example of this. We all know the tragedy that arises from splitting of the atom, and yet so much, I mean, The atom itself does not care for what purpose it is being split." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So... So I wonder if we took the same amount of funding as we used for war and poured it into totally seemingly useless things, like the mating patterns of penguins, we would get the internet anyway." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, I think so. And, you know, perhaps more of the internet would have penguins, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're both joking, but in some sense, like, I wonder, it's not the penguins, because penguins is more about sort of biology, but all useless kind of tinkering and all kinds of, in all kinds of avenues. And also because military applications are often, burdened by the secrecy required. So it's often like so much, the openness is lacking and if we learned anything for the last few decades is that when there's openness in science, that accelerates the development of science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, that's true. The openness of science, Truly, it benefits everybody. The notion that if I share my science with you, then you're going to catch up and know the same thing. That is a short-sighted viewpoint because if you catch up and you open you discover something, that puts me in a position to do the next step. I absolutely agree with all of this. The question of military funding versus non-military funding is obviously a complicated one, but at the end of the day, I think we have to get over the notion as a society that we are going to pay for this and then we will get that. That's true if you're buying like I don't know, toilet paper or something, right? It's just not true in the intellectual pursuit. That's not how it works. And sometimes it'll fail, right? Like sometimes, like a huge fraction of what I do, right? I come up with an idea. I think, oh, it's great. And then I work it out. It's totally not great, right? It fails immediately." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Failure is not a sign that the initial pursuit was worthless. Failure is just part of this kind of this whole exploration thing. And we should fund more and more of this exploration, the variety of exploration." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it was Linus Pauling or somebody from that generation of scientists said, a good way to have good ideas is to have a lot of ideas. Yeah. So that's, I think that's true. If you are conservative in your thinking, if you worry about proposing something that's going to fail and oh, what if, you know, like, I there's no science police that's going to come and arrest you for proposing the wrong thing. And, you know, it's also just like, why would you, why would you do science if you're afraid of, you know, taking that step, it'd be so much better to propose things that are that are plausible, they're interesting, and then for a fraction of them to be wrong, then to just kind of, you know, make incremental progress all your life, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of wild ideas, let me ask you about the thing we mentioned previously, which is this interstellar object Amuamua. Could it be space junk from a distant alien civilization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can't immediately discount that by saying absolutely it cannot. Anything can be space junk. I mean, from that point of view, can any of the Kuiper belt objects we see be space junk? Anything on the night sky can in principle be space junk." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And Kuiper belt would catch interstellar objects potentially and like force them into an orbit if they're like small enough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Uh, not the Kuiper belt itself, but you can imagine like Jupiter family comments being captured, uh, you know, so, so you can actually capture things. It's even easier to do this very early in the solar system, like early in the solar system's life, while it's still in a cluster of stars. Um, it's unavoidable that you capture debris. whether it be natural debris or unnatural debris or just debris of some kind from other stars. It's like a daycare center, right? Like everybody passes their infections on to other kids. You know, Oumuamua, there's been a lot of discussion about, there's been a lot of interest in this over, like, is it aliens or is it not? But let's, like, if you just kind of look at the facts, What we know about it is it's kind of like a weird shape and it also accelerated. Those are the two interesting things about it. There are puzzles about it and perhaps the most daring resolution to this puzzle is that it's not aliens or it's not like a rock, it's actually a piece of hydrogen ice. So this is a friend of mine, Daryl Seligman and Greg Laughlin came up with this idea that in giant molecular clouds that are just clouds of hydrogen helium gas that live throughout the galaxy at their cores, you can condense ice to become these hydrogen you know, icebergs, if you will. And then that explains many of the aspects of, in fact, I think that explains all of the Oumuamua mystery, how it becomes elongated, because basically the hydrogen ice sublimates and kind of like a bar of soap that, you know, slowly kind of elongates as you strip away the surface layers. uh how it was able to accelerate because of a jet that is produced from you know the hydrogen coming off of it but you can't see it because it's hydrogen gas like all of this stuff uh kind of falls together nicely i'm i'm intrigued by that idea truly because it's like if that's true that's a new type of astrophysical object" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they would be produced by, what's the monster that produced initially that kind of object?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this is giant molecular clouds. They're everywhere. I mean, the fact that they exist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "is not- Are they rogue clouds or are they part of like an oared cloud? No, no, they're rogue clouds. They're just floating about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so if you go, like a lot of people imagine the galaxy as being a bunch of stars, right? And they're just orbiting, right? But the truth is if you fly between stars, you run into clouds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They don't have any large object that creates orbits. They're just floating about. Just floating. But why are they floating together? Or are they just floating together for a time and not..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so these eventually become the nurseries of stars. So as they cool, they contract and then collapse into stars or into groups of stars. But some of them, the starless molecular clouds, according to the calculations that Daryl and Greg did, can create these icicles of hydrogen ice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder why they would be flying so fast. They seem to be moving pretty fast." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's just because of the acceleration due to the sun. If you stop, it's like take something really far away, let it go, and the sun is here. By the time it comes close to the sun, it's moving pretty fast. So that's an attractive explanation, I think, not so much because it's cool, but it makes a clear prediction, right, of when Vera Rubin Observatory comes online next year or so, we will discover many, many more of these objects, right? And they have, so I like theories that are falsifiable, not just testable, but falsifiable. It's good to have a falsifiable theory where you can say that's not true. Aliens is one that's fundamentally difficult to say, no, that's not aliens, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the interesting thing to me, if we look at one alien civilization, and then we look at the things it produces, in terms of if we were to try to detect the alien civilization, there's like, say there's 10 billion aliens, there would probably be trillions of dumb drone type things produced by the aliens. And there'd be many, many, many more orders of magnitude of junk. So if you were to look for an alien civilization, in my mind, you would be looking for the junk. That's the more efficient thing to look for. So I'm not saying Oumuamua has any characteristics of space junk, but it kind of opened my eyes to the idea that we shouldn't necessarily be looking to the queen of the ant colony. We should be looking at, I don't know, I don't know, like traces of alien life that doesn't look intelligent in any way, may not even look like life. It could be just garbage. We should be looking for garbage. Just generically, just generically. Garbage that's producible by unnatural forces. For me, at least, that was kind of interesting because if you have a successful alien civilization, that we will be producing many more orders and magnitude of junk, and that'll be easier potentially to detect." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so you have to produce the junk, but you have to also launch it. So this is where, I mean, let's imagine... Garbage disposal. Yeah. But let's imagine we are a successful civilization that, you know, has made it to space. We clearly have, right? And yes, we're in the infancy of that pursuit, but, you know, we've launched, I don't know how many satellites. probably if you count GPS satellites, it must be at least thousands." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's certainly thousands. I don't know if it's over 10,000, but it's on that order." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's on that large order of magnitude. How many of the things that we've launched will ever leave the solar system? I think two. Well, maybe the Voyager, the Voyager 1, Voyager 2. I don't know if the Pioneer. So maybe three." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's also a Tesla Roadster out there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That one will never leave the solar system. I think that one will eventually collide with Mars. That can be SpaceX's first Mars destination. But look, there's an energetic cost to interstellar travel, which is really hard to overcome. And when we think about you know, generically, what do we look for in an alien civilization? Oftentimes, we tend to imagine that the thing you look for is the thing that we're doing right now, right? So I think that, you know, if I look at the future, right? And for a while, like, okay, if aliens are out there, they must be broadcasting in radio, right? That radio, you know, the amount that we broadcast in radio has, diminished tremendously in the last 50 years, but we're doing a lot more computation, right? What are the signs of computation, like that's a good, that's an interesting question to ask, right? Where, I don't know, I think something on the order of a few percent of the entire electrical grid last year went to mining Bitcoin, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there could be a lot of, in the future, different consequences of the computation, which I mean, I'm biased, but it could be robotics, it could be artificial intelligence. So we may be looking for intelligent looking objects, like that's what I meant by probes, like things that move in kind of artificial ways." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the emergence of AI is not an if, right? it's happening right in front of our eyes, and the energetic costs associated with that are becoming a tangible problem. If you imagine extrapolating that into the future, right? What are the, you know, what becomes the bottleneck, right? The bottleneck might be powering, you know, powering the AI, broadly speaking, not one AI, but powering that entire AI ecosystem, right? So, I don't know. I think, you know, space junk is kind of It's an interesting idea, but it's heavily influenced by sci-fi of 1950s, where by 2020, we're all flying to the moon. And so we produce a lot of space junk. I'm not sure if that's the pathway that alien civilizations take." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've also never seen an alien civilization. I don't know anything. That's true. But if your theory of chill turns out to be true and then we don't necessarily explore, we seize the exploration phase of a like alien civilizations quickly seize the exploration phase of their efforts, then perhaps they'll just be chilling in a particular space, expanding slowly, but then using up a lot of resources and then have to have a lot of garbage disposal that sends stuff out. And the other idea was that it could be a relay. that you'll almost have like these GPS-like markers that you send throughout, which I think is kind of interesting. It's similar to this probe idea of sending a large number of probes out to measure gravitational to measure basically, yeah, the gravitational field, essentially. I mean, a lot of people at Caltech or at MIT are trying to measure gravitational fields and there's a lot of ideas of sending, you know, stuff out there that accurately measures those gravitational fields to have a greater understanding of the early universe. But then you might realize that communication through gravitation, through gravity is actually much more effective than radio waves, for example, something like that. And then you send out, I mean, okay. If you're an alien civilization that's able to have gigantic masses, Like basically. We're getting there as a civilization. No, we're not even close. Well, I mean. Yeah, okay. I mean like be able to sort of play with black holes, that kind of thing. So we're talking about a whole nother order of magnitude of masses. Then it may be very effective to send signals via gravitational waves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually, my sense is that all of these things are genuinely difficult to predict, you know, and I don't mean like to kind of shy away. I just I really mean if you think if you take imagination of what the future will look like from, you know, 500 years ago, right? It's just, it is so hard to conceive of the impossible, right? So, it's almost like, you know, it's almost limiting to try and imagine things that are an order of magnitude, you know, or two orders of magnitude ahead in terms of progress, just because, you know, you mentioned cars before, you know, if you were to ask people what they wanted in 1870, it's faster buggies. So, I think the whole alien conversation inevitably gets limited by our entire collective astrophysical lack of imagination." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to push back a little bit, I find that it's really interesting to talk about these wild ideas about the future, whether it's aliens, whether it's AI, with brilliant people like yourself who are focused on very particular tools of science we have today to solve very particular, rigorous scientific questions. And it's almost like putting on this wild, dreamy hat some percent of the time and say, what would alien civilizations look like? What would alien trash look like? What would our own civilization that sends out trillions of AI systems out there, like HAL 9,000, 10,000 out there, what would that look like? and you're right, any one prediction is probably going to be horrendously wrong, but there's something about creating these kind of wild predictions that kind of opens up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, there's a huge magnetism to it, right? And some of it, you know, I mean, some of the Jules Verne novels did a phenomenal job predicting the future, right? That actually was a great example of what you're talking about, right? Allowing your imagination to run free. I mean, I just hope there's dragons. I love dragons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, dragons are the best. But see the cool thing about science fiction and these kinds of conversation. It doesn't just predict the future I think Some of these things will create the future Plate planting the idea. This is how the humans are amazing like fake it till you make it Humans are really good at taking an idea that seems impossible at the time. And for any one individual human, that idea is like planting a seed that eventually materializes itself. It's weird. It's weird how science fiction can create science that drives the science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with you. And I think in this regard, You know, I'm like a sucker for sci-fi. It's all I listen to, like, now when I run. And some of it is completely implausible, right? And it's just like, I don't care. It's both entertaining and, you know, it's just like, it's imagination. You know about the Black Clouds book? I think this is by Fred Hoyle. This has great connections with a lot of the advancements that are happening in NLP right now, with transformer models and so on. But it's this black cloud shows up in the solar system, and then people try to send radio, and then it learns to talk back at you. So anyway, we don't have to talk at all about it, but it's just something worth checking out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With that, on the alien front, with the black cloud, to me, exactly, on the NLP front, and also just explainability of AI, it's fascinating. Just the very question, Stephen Wolfram looked at this with the movie Arrival. It's like, what would be the common language that we would discover? The reason that's really interesting to me is we have aliens here on Earth now. Japanese. Japanese is the obvious answer. Japanese, yeah, that would be the common. Maybe it would be music actually. That's more likely. It wouldn't be language. It would be art that they would communicate. But, you know, I do believe that we have I'm with Stephen Wolfe on this a little bit, that to me, computation, like programs we write, they're kind of intelligent creatures, and I feel like we haven't found the common language to talk with them. Like our little creations, that are artificial are not born with whatever that innate thing that produces language with us. And coming up with mechanisms for communicating with them is an effort that feels like it will produce some incredible discoveries. You can even think of, if you think that math is discovered, mathematics in itself is a kind of," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah, it's an innate construction of the world we live in. I think we are, you know, part of the way there, because pre 1950, right? computers were human beings that would carry out arithmetic, right? And I think it was Ulam, who worked in Los Alamos at the time, like towards the end of the Second World War, wrote something about how, you know, in the future, right, computers will not be just arithmetic tool, but will be truly an interactive, you know, thing with which you could do experiments. At the time, the notion of doing an experiment, not in the lab with some beakers, but an experiment on a computer, designing a numerical experiment was a new one, that's like 70% of what I do is I design, I write code, terrible code to be clear, but I write code that creates an experiment, which is a simulation. So in that sense, I think we're beginning to interact with the computer in a way that you're saying, not as just a you know, fancy calculator, not as just a, you know, call and request type of thing, but, but, you know, something that can generate, generate insights that are otherwise completely unattainable, right? They're unattainable by doing analytical mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and there's with AlphaFold2, we're now starting to crack open biology. So being able to simulate at first trivial biological systems and hopefully down the line complex biological systems. My hope is to be able to simulate psychological, like sociological systems, like humans. A large part of my work at MIT was on autonomous vehicles. And the fascinating thing to me was about pedestrians. human pedestrians interacting with autonomous vehicles and simulating those systems without murdering humans will be very useful, but nevertheless is exceptionally difficult. Yeah, I would say so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When is my Mustang going to drive itself? Right. I'm not even joking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It looks like... Yeah. It turns out... It's much more difficult than we imagined. And I suppose that's the kind of the progress of science is just like going to Mars. it's probably going to turn out to be way more difficult than we imagined. Sending out probes to investigate planet nine at the edge of our solar system might turn out to be way more difficult than we imagined, but we do it anyway, and we figure it out in the end." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's actually, Mars is a great, I mean, sending humans to Mars is way more complicated than sending humans to the moon. You'd think, just like naively, both are in space, who cares? If you go there, why don't you go there? You know. This life support is an extremely expensive thing, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a bunch of extra challenges, but I disagree with you. I would be one of the early people to go. I used to think not. I used to think I'd be one of the first maybe million to go once you have a little bit of a society. I think I'm upgrading myself to the first like 10,000." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Front of the cabin. Not completely front, but like, it would be interesting to die. I'm okay with, death sucks, but I kind of like the idea of dying on Mars." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of all the places to die, I got to say, in this regard, like, I don't want to die on Mars. You don't? No, no. I would much rather die on Earth. I mean, death is fundamentally boring, right? Like, death is a very boring experience. I mean, I've never died before, so I don't know from firsthand experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As far as you know. Yeah. It could be a reincarnation, all those kinds of things. So, you mean, where would you die if you had to choose?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Man, okay, so I would definitely, there's a question of who I'd want to die with. I'd prefer not to die alone. Surrounded by family would be preferable. Where? I think northern New Mexico. And I'm not even joking. This is not a random, it's just like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would that be your favorite place on earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "not necessarily like favorite place on earth to reside indefinitely, but it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. So, there's something, I don't know, there's something attractive about about going, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Returning to nature in a beautiful place. Let me ask you about another aspect of your life that is full of beauty. Music. Okay. You're a musician. The absurd question I have to ask, what is the greatest song of all time? Objectively speaking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the greatest song of all time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I suppose that could change moment to moment, day to day. But if you are forced to answer for this particular moment in your life, that's something that pops to mind. This could be both philosophically, this could be technically as a musician, what you enjoy, maybe lyrics. For me, lyrics is very important, so my choice would be lyrics-based." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't want to answer in terms of just technical prowess. I think technical prowess is impressive, right? It's just like, it's impressive what can be done. I wouldn't place that into the category of the greatest music ever written. Some of the classical music that's written is undeniably beautiful, but I don't want to consider that category of music either. So if I was to limit the scope of this philosophical discussion to the kind of music that I listen to, probably What's My Age Again by Blink-182. You know, it's a solid one. It's got, you know, said nobody ever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good song." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if you're joking. No, I am. I am joking. It's a good one. But yeah, I mean, I'm back as a close second." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's my age again?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it would probably, you know, songwriting wise, I think the Beatles came pretty close to... Were they influential to you? Absolutely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like the Beatles?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Love the Beatles. I love the Beatles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would it be yesterday? Yeah, like straw." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think strawberry fields forever is is one. You know what? One of my favorite Beatles songs is it's, you know, in my life, right? That's it's hard to imagine how whatever a 24 year old wrote that is it is one of the most introspective pieces of music ever. You know, I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. And so I think, you know, if you were to you can sort of look at the entire Dark Side of the Moon album as, you know, getting pretty close up there to the pinnacle of what, you know, can be created. So, you know, Time's a great song." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's just the entirety of just the instruments, the lyrics, the feeling created by a song like Pink Floyd. can create feelings, the entire experience. I mean, you have that with The Wall of just transporting you into another place. Songs don't, not many songs could do that as well. Not many artists can do that as well as Pink Floyd did." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are a lot of bands that you can kind of say, oh yeah, like if you take Blink-182, right? If you have no idea, Like if you are listening to sort of that type of pop punk for the first time, it's difficult to differentiate between Blink-182 and like Sum 41 and the thousand of other like lesser known bands that all sounded, they all had that sparkling production feel. They all kind of sounded the same, right? With Pink Floyd, It's hard to find another band that you're like, well, is this one Pink Floyd? Like, you know, when you're listening to Pink Floyd, what you're listening to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The uniqueness, that's fascinating. In the calculation of the greatest song and the greatest band of all time, you could probably actually quantify this scientifically. It's like, how unique? If you play different songs, how well are people able to recognize whether it's this band or not? And that's probably a huge component to greatness. Like, if the world would miss it if it was gone. Yes. Yes. But there's also the human story things, like I would say I'll put Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt as one of the greatest songs of all time. And that has less to do with the song. But your interaction with it. Interaction with it, but also the human, the full story of the human. So like, it's not just if I just heard the song, I'd be like, OK, that. But if it's the full story of it, also the video component for that particular song. So like that, you can't discount the full experience of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. You know, I have no confusion about not about being, you know, anywhere. you know, in that lane. But I just like, sometimes think about, you know, music that is being produced today feels oftentimes feels like, like kind of clothes, like clothes that you buy at like H&M and you wear three times before they rip and you throw away. So like, So much of it is not bad, it's just kind of forgettable, right? The fact that we're talking about Pink Floyd in 2021 is in itself an interesting question. Why are we talking about Pink Floyd? There's something unforgettable about them and unforgettable about the art that they created." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That could be the markets that like, so Spotify has created this kind of market where the incentives for creating music that lasts is much lower because there's so much more music. You just want something that shines bright for a short amount of time, makes a lot of money and moves on. And I mean, the same thing you see with the news and all those kinds of things. We're just living in a shorter and shorter, shorter, like a time scale in terms of our attention spans. And that, nevertheless, when we look at the long arc of history of music, perhaps there will be some songs from today that will last as much as Pink Floyd. We're just unable to see it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, just the collected works of Nickelback." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. You never know. You never know. Justin Bieber. It could be a contender. I've recently started listening to Justin Bieber just to understand what people are talking about. I'll just keep my comments to myself on that one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's too good to explain in words." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The words cannot capture the greatness that is the Biebs. You as a musician, so you write your own music, you play guitar, you sing. Maybe can you give an overview of the role music has played in your life? You're one of the, you're a world-class scientist. And so it's kind of fascinating to see somebody in your position, who is also a great musician and still loves playing music." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I wouldn't call myself a great musician." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the best of all time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like we were saying offline, confidence is like the most essential thing about being a rock star." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. It's the confidence and kind of like moodiness, right? Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, music plays an absolutely essential role in everything I do because if I stop playing for one reason or another, say I'm traveling, I notably lose creativity in every other aspect of my life. I don't view playing music as a separate endeavor from doing science or doing whatever. It's all part of that same creative thing, which is distinct from, I don't know, pressing a button or like, you know. So it's not a break from science. It's a part of your science. It's absolutely is a part of, it's, I would say, you know, it's a thing that enables the science, right? The science would, you know, suck even more than it does already without the music." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that means like the creating of the, the writing of the music, or is it just even playing other people's stuff? Is it, is it the whole of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's, it's definitely both. Yeah. And also just, You know, I love love to play guitar, love to sing. You know, my wife tolerates my my screeching singing, you know, and even kind of likes it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, yeah. So people should check out your stuff. You have a great voice. So I love your stuff. Is there something you're you're super busy? Is there something you could say about practicing? for musicians, for guitar, for you're also in a band. So like that whole, how you can manage that, is there some tricks, is there some hacks to being a lifelong musician while being like super busy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I would say, you know, The way that I optimize my life is I try to do the thing that I'm passionate about in a moment and put that at the top of the priority list. There are moments when you feel inspired to play music. And if you're in the middle of something, if you can avoid, if that can be put on hold, just do it. There are times when you get inspired about something scientific. do my best to drop everything, go into that isolated mode and execute upon that. So it's a chaotic, I think I have a pretty chaotic lifestyle where I'm always doing kind of multiple things and jumping between what I'm doing. But at the end of the day, it's not like those moments of inspiration are actually kind of rare, right? Like most of the time, all of us are just doing the stuff that needs to get done. If you do the disservice to yourself of saying, oh, I'm inspired to do this calculation, figure this out. But I've got to answer email or just do something silly. That is nothing more than disservice. And also, I have some social media presence, but I mostly stay off of social media. to just, frankly, because I don't enjoy the mental cycles that it takes over." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it robs you of those precious moments that could be filled with inspiration in your other pursuits. But there's something to maybe you and I are different in this. I try to play at least 10 minutes of guitar every day, almost on the technical side. keeping that base of basic competence going. And I mean, the same way like writers will get in front of a paper no matter what, that kind of thing. It just feels like that for my life has been essential to the daily ritual of it. Otherwise, days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and you haven't played guitar for months." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, I understand. For me, I think it's been like, if we have a gig coming up, we'll definitely... You mean deadlines. Yeah, yeah, that's right. No, like we will sharpen up, definitely, you know, especially coming up to a gig. It's like, you know, We're not trying to make money with this. This is just for that satisfaction of doing something and doing something well, right? But overall, I would say I play guitar most days. Most days. And when I put kids to sleep, I play guitar with them and we just make up random songs about you know, about our cat or something, you know, like we just do kind of random stuff. But, you know, music is always involved in that process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, keeping it fun. You have Russian roots? I sure do. Were you born in Russia? I was, yeah. When did you come here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I came to the U.S. in the very end of 99. So I was like almost 14 years old. But along the way, we spent six years in Japan. So like we moved from Russia to Japan in 94, and then to the U.S. in 99. So then like elementary school in Japan. So elementary school in Japan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, that's interesting. Do you still speak Russian? Sure. Okay. Do you speak Russian? Yes, of course. Okay, maybe I'll... Let me ask you in Russian. What do you remember about Russia? It'd be interesting to hear you speak Russian." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in general, I remember... I was 8 when we left. And, of course... I remember everything in the first approach, including the transition from 1991 to 1992, this turbulent period, and of course 1993. I also remember very well how at some point, And then Coca-Cola appeared. I remember I was 6 years old and I thought, how can it be that Coca-Cola stole a product and did the same thing? I thought for a long time that Coca-Cola was a bad company." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people who don't speak Russian, Konstantin was talking about basically his first in 1992 interaction with capitalism, which is Pepsi. And at first he discovered Pepsi and then he discovered Coke and he was confused how such theft could occur." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like an intellectual property theft. And remember Pepsi, arrived to the Soviet Union first. And there's some complicated story, which I don't quite understand the details of. For a while, Pepsi commanded submarines or something. Yeah, Pepsi had like a fleet of Soviet submarines that it was sponsoring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "tanks and this best thing. And I remember there's certain things that trickled in, like McDonald's, I remember that was a big deal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Certain aspects of the West. Absolutely. So, I mean, we went to McDonald's and we stood on, I mean, this is absurd, right? From kind of looking at it from today's perspective, but we stood in line for like six hours to get into this McDonald's. And I remember inside, it was just like, a billion people, and I'm just taking a bite out of that Big Mac. I'm like, wow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was it an incredible experience for you? So like, what does this taste of the West like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Did you enjoy it? I enjoyed the fact that, I mean, this is like, this is getting into the weeds, but I really enjoyed the fact that the top of the bun had those seeds, you know, like, and I remember how on the commercials, like the Big Mac would kind of bounce. I was like, the seeds, how do they inject the seeds into the bread? Like, Amazing, right? So I think it was- Artistry. Yeah, it was just- You enjoy the artistry of the culinary experience. Exactly, it was the, you know, it was the food art that is the Big Mac." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Actually, I still don't know the answer to that. How do they get the sesame seeds on the bottom? It's better to not know the answer. You just wander the mystery of it all. Yeah, I remember it being exceptionally delicious, but I'm with you, I don't know, you didn't mention how transformative Pepsi was, but to me, basically sugar-based stuff like Pepsi was, or Coke, I don't remember which one we partook in, but that was an incredible experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it was an important and formative period. I sometimes, I guess, rely on that a little bit, you know, in my daily life, because I remember, like, the early 90s were real rough, you know, like my parents were kind of on the on the bottom of the spectrum in terms of, you know, in terms of financial well-being. So kind of like just when I run into trouble, not like, you know, money trouble, just any kind of trouble these days, it just kind of is not particularly meaningful when you compare it to that turbulent time of the early 90s. And the other thing is, I think there's like an advantage to being, you know, an immigrant, which is that you go through the mental exercise of changing your environment completely early in your life, right? by no means pleasant in the moment, but going into Japanese elementary school, I didn't go to some private, you know, thing. I just went to a regular, like, Japanese public elementary school, and I was the non-Japanese person in my class." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just, like, learning Japanese and just kind of... So that's a super humbling experience in many ways, was when you, like, made fun of all that kind of stuff, being the outsider." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. But you kind of do that and then you just kind of are okay with stuff, you know what I mean? And so doing that again in middle school in the US, it was arguably easy because I was like, yeah, well, I've already done this before. I think it kind of prepares you mentally a little bit for switching up, for whatever changes that will come up for the rest of your life. So, I wouldn't trade that experience really for anything. It's a huge aspect of who I am and I'm sure you can relate to a lot of this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. Is there advice from your life that you can give to young people today, high school, college, you know, about their career or maybe about life in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not like a career coach, but I'm definitely not a life coach. I don't have it all figured out, but I think there's a, There's a perpetual cycle of thinking that there's kind of like a template for success. Maybe there is, but in my experience, I haven't seen it. I would say people in high school. So much of their focus is on getting straight A's, filling their CV with this and this and this so that it looks impressive, right? that is not, I think, a good way to optimize your life, right? Do the thing that fills your life with passion, do the thing that fills your life with interest, and, you know, do that perpetually, right? A straight-A student, you know, is really impressive, but also, you know, somewhat boring, right? So, I think, you know, an injection of more of that kind of interest into the lives of young people would go a long way in just both upping their level of happiness and then just kind of ensuring that, looking forward, they're not suffering from a perpetual condition of, oh, I have to satisfy these checkboxes to do well, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you can lose yourself in that whole process for the rest of your life. But it's nice if it's possible, like Max Tegmark was exceptionally good at this at MIT, figure out how you can spend a small part of your percent of your efforts such that your CV looks really impressive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. There's no, like, without a doubt, that's a baseline that you need to have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, like, spend most of your time doing, like, amazing things you're passionate about, but such that it, kind of like Planet Nine, produces objects that feed your CV, like, slowly over time. So, getting good grades in high school, maybe doing extracurricular activities or or in terms of like, you know, for programmers that's producing code that you can show up on GitHub, like leaving traces like throughout your efforts such that your CV looks impressive to the rest of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In fact, I mean, this is somewhat along the lines of what I'm talking about. We see like getting like good grades is important, but grades are not a tangible like product. Like you cannot out, you know, show your, A and have your A live a separate life from you. Code very much does. Music very much takes on, provided somebody else listens to it, takes on a life of its own. That's kind of what I mean. Doing doing stuff that can then get separated from you is exceptionally attractive, right? It's like a fun and- And it's also very impressive to others." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we're moving to a world where grades mean less and less, like certifications mean less and less. If you look at, especially again, in the computing fields, getting a degree, finishing your, Currently, just finishing your degree, whether it's bachelor's or master's or PhD, is less important than the things you've actually put out into the world. And that's a fascinating, that's great that in that sense, the meritocracy in its richest, most beautiful form is starting to win out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's weird, because my understanding, and I'm not, I don't know the history of science well enough to speak very confidently about this, Advisor of my advisor of my advisor from undergrad Like didn't have a PhD, right? So I think it was a more common thing back in the day even in the academic sector to You know not have, you know, Faraday. Faraday didn't know algebra. When drew diagrams about magnetic fields, Faraday's law was derived entirely from intuition. So, it is interesting to how the world of academia has evolved into a You got to do this and then get PhD, then you have to postdoc once and twice and maybe thrice, and then you move on. So, I do wonder if we're..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "know, if there's a better... I think we're heading there, but it's a fascinating historical perspective, like that we might have just tried this whole thing out for a while, where we put a lot more emphasis on grades and certificates and degrees and all those kinds of things. I think the difference historically is Like we can actually, using the internet, show off ourselves and our creations better and better and more effectively, whether that's code or producing videos or all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. You can become a certified drone pilot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of all the things you want to pick, yeah, for sure. Or you could just fly and make YouTube videos that get hundreds of thousands of views with your drone and never getting a certificate. That's probably illegal. Don't do it. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? So you look at planets. they seem to orbit stuff without asking the why question. And for some reason, life emerged on Earth such that it led to big brains that can ask the big why question. Do you think there's an answer to it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not sure what the question is. Meaning of life? The meaning of life. It's 42. It's 42. Yeah. But, you know, aside from that, it's, you know, why? I think if the question you're asking is like, why we do all this, right? Why? Yeah. It's part of the human condition, right? Human beings are fundamentally I feel like non like sort of stochastic and fundamentally interested in in kind of expanding our own understanding of the world around us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And creating stuff to enable that understanding. So we're like stochastic, fundamentally stochastic. So like there's just a bunch of randomness that really doesn't seem like it has a good explanation. And yet there's a kind of direction to our being that we just keep wanting to create and to understand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. I've met people that are, you know, that claim to be anti-science, right? And yet in their anti-science discussion, they're like, well, if you're so scientific, then why don't you explain to me how, I don't know, this works? And it always, there's that fundamental- There's a curiosity. Seed of curiosity and interest that is common to all of us. is absolutely what makes us human. And I'm in a privileged position of being able to have that be my job. I think as time evolves forward and the economy changes, I mean, we're already starting to see, you know, a shift towards that type of, you know, creative, you know, enterprise as being as emerging, taking over a bigger and bigger chunk of the sector. It's not Yet, I think the dominant portion of the economy by any account, but if we compare this to like, you know, the time when the dominant thing you would do would be to, you know, go to a factory and do the same exact thing. I think there's a tide there and things are sort of headed in that direction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, life's becoming more and more fun. I can't wait. Honestly, what happens next? I can't wait to just chill. Just chill." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The terminal point of this is just chill and wait for those Kuiper Belt objects to complete one orbit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm gonna credit you with this idea. I do hope that we definitively discover proof that there is a Planet Nine out there in the next few years, so you can sit back with a cigar, a cigarette, or vodka, or wine, and just say, I told you so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's already happening. I'm going to do that later tonight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As I mentioned, confidence is essential to being a rock star. I really appreciate you explaining so many fascinating things to me today. I really appreciate the work that you do out there. And I really appreciate you talking with me today. Thanks, Constantine." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's several different things. There's the ones that are conscious and then there's the ones that are subconscious, right? Like on the conscious level, it might be something someone says, right? You know, you ask them a question and they say, oh, you know, you shouldn't call me here. You should. So there's the verbal tells. There's also the more, you know, subconscious stuff, body posture. The eyes, the throat, the pulse, various things that are less controllable. I find I use a combination of both to try to gain information, but generally when I have somebody more comfortable, they give off more. Everyone has a different approach. Phil Ivey likes to intimidate. I go the other way. I want my opponents to be relaxed so that they'll give me more in that regard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Phil Ivey likes to perturb the system, like mess with it to see what comes out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think Phil has an aura about him where he wants you to know that he's watching you, be afraid, be uncomfortable, because when you're uncomfortable, I got you, right? And that's sort of his shtick where he, you know, and people do, like when you sit at a table with Phil Ivey, it's intimidating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He likes to rule by fear and you like to rule by, what is it, love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a really good way to put it. I never put it like that, but it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you know, fear Phil Ivey, and then with me, it's fine, don't worry, I'll take your money, but you're gonna enjoy it, it's great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's what the talking at the table is about is getting to be relaxed and get some of that gray area between the conscious and the subconscious to reveal something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's that too. And also just, you know, and this is just part of who I am anyway. Like I like to talk to people, but one of the byproducts is the more I know about you, the more I likely know about how you think about different situations, right? So what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a lawyer. I defend criminals. Okay. So this guy probably spends a lot of his time twisting the truth. He's trying to find, you know, and then, so then, you know, you already have a mindset of like, this guy might be more likely to bluff, or he's probably comfortable doing that. Very subtle things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you start to pick up cues on what nervousness looks like for this person, what the nervousness communicates, all that kind of stuff. So we're talking about physical tells here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, physical tells is a secondary thing. I was more specifically like player profiling, right? And sort of understanding the type of mind that I'm dealing with, right? So again, somebody who's a lawyer is used to trying – is fine with being deceptive as part of a game, right? Whereas maybe somebody is a Sunday school teacher. And they don't feel comfortable. Maybe they think bluffing might be dishonest, right? So they're less likely to try some shenanigans against you. And then the other thing too is what type of person is this in terms of their view on life, right? Are they positive? Do they feel like things go their way? Or they're not, right? There's those people that always, well, of course I lost. I always lose with this hand. And those types of people you can manipulate. Because when a card comes, that you don't have them beat, right? But you can pretend, because they'll believe it. They're like, of course you beat me. So you bet all your chips against them, knowing that you can scare them, because they already feel like they're gonna lose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The inherent, like the cynicism. Exactly. Cynicism is easier to play against, because you can convince them that their cards suck." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, when somebody believes that they're a loser, or they're unlucky, right? And that bad things happen to them always, and they never catch a break, well, you know, you can just help them make it true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about the rounders Teddy KGB when he does the Oreo tell? Do players at the high level communicate that kind of stuff? Do you think it's realistic to be able to have a tell like this that's partially subconscious?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So first of all, I love Brian Koppelman, who made the film. And I think what they were going for is something obvious to the general public, right? Like, okay, it's very clear, you know, he eats the cookie, he doesn't eat the cookie, and it means one or the other. At the highest levels, something that, you know, blatant, you're not gonna find. You're gonna find a lot more subtle things, maybe with posture or timing or, you know, different things like that. But at the lower levels, you know, you might see, you know, with a lot of people, When they're in a hand and they've bet, whether they drink water in the hand is going to tell you something, generally speaking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's such an intimate part of the human experience that I feel like if you have food, you're going to reveal something about yourself through the way you eat. I feel like that's a dangerous thing to have at the table." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the thing is, generally speaking, people don't eat food in the middle of a hand. Like they're not going to bet and then just like grab a burger, right? What they will do, though, is, you know, they bet and it's up to you. And then they're, whether they're, you know, uncomfortable or they do it unconsciously, they just want to do something to make themselves look relaxed or whatever. And, you know, they grab a water where they don't really need it in that moment, but they're trying to take your mind off of the situation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they, in the movie, wanted to show a simplistic version of something that does happen, something that's visually sort of clear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because I think one of the things rounders got right is that it's a poker movie, right? But you don't have to be great at poker or really understand poker to enjoy the movie. And that, you know, Oreo cookie tale, like, everyone gets that. They're like, okay, that's simple. If he would've went with something more subtle, you know, like licking your lips or looking to the right, I think it might've been lost on the audience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they didn't actually explicitly say that that was a tell, I don't think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I thought they did everything to let you know, right? With the music and slow motion and he's staring at it and he's like, aha." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but they didn't actually say, you know, this is an obvious tell. Like Matt Damon's character didn't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the very end of it, you know, after he says, how the fuck did you lay that down? The monster, right? And he's like, He's like, you're not hungry? Not hungry, KGB? He's like, I can keep on, you know? So he sort of references it, and then he takes the cookies, he notices, he's like, ah, he got me, and he breaks the rack of cookies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, probably if you had that kind of tell on him, you wouldn't, in Matt Damon's character, would not reveal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, he says in the movie, he says, normally I wouldn't reveal a tell, but I don't have that much time. Like, I've got to rattle him some way. So that was one way to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How hard is it to do that to, in a KGB accent, to lay down a monster in those situations? In general, how hard is it to lay down a really strong hand, just psychologically?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's incredibly difficult for the vast majority of people. Part of what makes professionals really, really good is recognizing a situation That's very, very dangerous and they need to, you know, jump ship. Like what happens to a lot of players is you get married to a hand. Let's say you have pocket aces, which is the best possible hand. Right. But the board runs out where it's seven, eight, nine, and then there's a Jack and then there's a six. It's like you have a great hand to start, but you don't anymore. So one of the difficult things for the average player is. you know, once they've put money in cutting their losses and saying, okay, let's move on to the next hand. It's very, very difficult thing for a lot of people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At every stage of like pre-flop all the way through be able to just make a decision at that moment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, essentially not being attached. Okay. I've already put in $40,000 in this pot. and this guy's bet another 20. Well, I mean, I gotta get my 40 back, right? Except, you know, in some cases you have to reassess individually this situation and realize, all right, well, this is a bad investment, so I gotta cut my losses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, I should mention that you have an incredible YouTube channel where you explain a lot of stuff. You do a podcast, you do a lot of really awesome stuff. My probably favorite thing that you've done is your masterclass that people should definitely check out, masterclass.com slash Lux." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there you go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but it really is one of my favorite master class courses, but also just a great introduction overview of poker. It's great for people that like me who are beginners, essentially. But it's probably really good for intermediate people too. I mean, there's a lot of really good detail there. Anyway, what are hand ranges? And how do you begin to estimate the range of hands that your opponents have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I actually, speaking to YouTube, I did a video on specifically this, getting familiar with Rangers. And essentially, you know, back in my day, the old days, we didn't talk about poker that way. We're like, ah, I think he's got this, or I think he's got that, right? Nobody thought of like the range of hands a player can have. So I guess the best example is imagine like all the potential hands as being a part of a grid, right? So the first player to act, they could have any one of those hands. Right? Anyone randomly dealt, right? But let's say now that that player raised to $3,000. OK, well, you can eliminate now from this grid a whole bunch of hands that this player can no longer have. Because if they had a 2 and a 3, they wouldn't do that. So you can say, OK, he probably has a big pair. He has ace-king. You've narrowed the range of hands down, right? Now, through every action on the flop, on the turn, and on the river, based on the decisions they make, you narrow it down even further. So the range of hands is the whole, the entirety of all the possibilities that this player you believe could have. And sometimes they fool you, or they have a hand that you don't expect them to have in their range. And maybe a little bit unorthodox, doing some things you don't expect to throw you off. But a range is essentially all the possibilities. And it narrows. Before the flop, it's endless. Player raises, OK, it's minimized. Now player bets the flop, OK, it's minimized further. And then by the river, you can narrow down the entire range to just maybe even a few hands." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it always shrinking or is there sort of, as you get surprised, I mean, it's always just an estimate. So does it ever expand based on sort of chaotic, unpredicted, surprising behavior of the players?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It really should never expand. The range of hands should always get smaller, right? Like again, we start with the full scope, and then you should factor in like, okay, these are all the possible hands you can have on the flop now, right? We can't have new hands on the turn. And if you get to that point where you think, oh, well, maybe he has this hand, then you sort of misjudged his range prior. So you're not thinking clearly. It should always shrink from the full scope to, you know, hopefully just a couple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, in that video you also talk about, it used to be that you would play your hand, but now you're playing a range, you're representing a range, you're not even just playing your hand. So, what does it mean to represent a certain range?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so that's another big thing that's different about poker from, you know, my day to today is that back in our day, we would like put people on one hand, like you probably have king nine, or you have jacks or something like that. Now, people are cognizant of the idea that you could have an entire range of hands. So then you ask yourself in situations, all right, I know what I have, but What I could have in his mind or my opponent's mind is any one of these hands. What would I do with the entirety of these hands? And so a lot of people that are trying to play optimally, you know, game theory optimal, they think in terms of what their range of hands would do rather than their very specific hand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is bluffing in that context essentially misrepresenting the range of hands that you have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is that how you think about it? Not exactly, so an optimal range, like if I bet the river, if I'm playing game three optimal, a portion of my range is going to be, I have it, I got the best hand, and a portion of my range is gonna be bluffs, and they'll be balanced. So in theory, no matter what you do, no matter what you do, if you call or you fold, in theory, It's just you're printing a zero, as we say. You're not gaining or losing any EV if you were to do it that way. What's EV? EV is expected value, right? So every play that you make, it either is going to, in the long run, make you some money or it's just a losing play. And as a professional, you try to make the fewest amount of minus EV plays you can. And the only reason you would make these minus EV plays is potentially if you were trying to set up your opponent for something later, right? So I might make some minus EV plays, right? So that I can exploit you later, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're building up a player profile that's false in some way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm going to plant seeds in your mind so that I can exploit them later. So for example, why would players show a big bluff? What would be the reason for that? They show a big bluff so that you know they're capable of it. But maybe in their mind, they're never going to do that again. But now they think, oh, he bluffed me last time. Maybe he's doing it again. But that's what we call a leveling war. because you can go back and forth with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that. He showed a bluff because he's never gonna bluff me again. So that's where it gets a little." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a little bit different, when we're talking about hand ranges, that's different than building up a mental model of what your opponents, what your opponents think of you. and what your opponents think that you think of them, and so on and so forth, are you trying to construct those kinds of meta models? And is that separate from the hand ranges?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They go hand in hand, right? So if in a given situation, right, my range has this many value hands and this many bluffs, okay? So in theory, if I wanna be balanced, you know, this is my range and this is what it looks like. I'll bet this 50% of the time, bet this 50% of the time. However, if I know that you, think that I bluff too much, right? Then I'm not gonna bluff as much. I'm gonna start, instead of betting these hands that I would 50-50, now what I'll do is I'll do like 70-30, where I'm basically value betting most of the time against you. Or vice versa, if I know you always fold because you think I have it, I'm gonna veer the other way. And instead of bluffing 50%, I'll bluff 70, 80% of the time to take advantage of your perception of me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to be successful, do you have to construct a solid model of all the players in the game? Or can you ignore them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's really important. Like when I play, I have in my phone, I have a player profile of everyone that I play with whenever I pick up, whether it's physical tells or tendencies they like to, you know, that they have. And overall, that's just gonna, you know, that's gonna allow you to exploit more, right? So like, if I played with somebody I've never played before, I'm probably just going to play optimally, or at least as optimal as I know how, until I start to, you know, gain some information on that player so that I can start to exploit them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the, when you say optimally, what does optimally mean versus, so game theory, optimal versus exploitative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so that's like sort of the big debate in poker. We call it for short, GTO, Game Theory Optimal versus Exploitative Play. So GTO, Game Theory Optimal, is the idea that I'm gonna set up my play so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me. So essentially, that's playing rock, paper, scissors, right? And throwing 33% of each every time, right? Nothing you do can beat that. Nothing. You'll never be able to beat that, right? Exploitative play is starting to notice that, OK, well, you know what? This guy loves rock. He loves playing rock. So I'm going to go paper a little more. So I'm going to take advantage of him. So I won't be through. But now, all of a sudden, when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal. Because if you knew that I was making that adjustment, now you can exploit me. So that's where the sort of what we call the leveling war happens. where people veer from, you know, the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one. You can't beat that, but you also can't win with that either." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're always trying to be at the cutting, at the leading edge of suboptimal play." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you're going back and forth. And listen, at the highest levels, like online, that these guys play, like they're trying to play pretty close to like game theory optimal, because it's very difficult to do, first of all. No human being will ever be able to compute at the level that computers can. It's just never going to happen. So, That's where the human mind has to come into play and say, all right, well, if I was playing against a robot, I would do X, but I'm not. I'm playing against you, so I have to adjust." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So does game theory optimal only look at the betting and the hands in the current hand, or does it look at the history? So if you were to play optimally, optimally, would you need to look at the history of the individual players, or just every hand is taken afresh?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "See, that's why I love playing exploitatively for the most part, because with GTO, anything that's happened in the past has no bearing on this situation. It's simply based on what is the optimal play in a vacuum in this spot. Whereas exploitatively, okay, this guy bluffs way too much in these spots. So now I can make an adjustment and call more, you know, based on past information. GTO doesn't take into account history at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like in a tournament, how quickly can you construct a player profile that you've never played before?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Depends on the level of the buy-in really, right? So the higher the buy-in, generally speaking, you can assume if they're professionals, that they're going to have pretty similar profiles because you know, everyone's playing, you know, if you're playing this game, well, it looks similar, right? At the lower levels, you know, playing say in 1000 or $1,500 buying or less, you know, within a. half an hour, an hour, I have an idea of, all right, just by seeing how some players played a few hands that, you know, so here's the thing with poker, it's like, I can see one clue of what he did and it tells me so much about what he'll do in a vast number of scenarios." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying at the high level, people don't give too many clues." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean- Well, at the highest level, people are so much more similar in terms of their style of play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They try to find some kind of balance between the GTO and the- And now with all that we've seen on TV, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like people get to watch streams and whatever. So you get to watch all the top players play. So if you wanna learn how to play better, guess what you do? You copy what they're doing, essentially. Like, oh, he's only raising this much. I'm gonna do the same. They're betting this much. I'm gonna do the same. But as a result, what you end up having is sort of, uh, you know, every, everyone deciding, like, I guess it's similar in chess with openings, right? People figure out, okay, this is an opening. This is what you do. And that's it, you know, and then everyone's similar to that. And then you have, of course, the outliers who try to do things a little differently and confuse people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems like the outliers, like we talked offline, that Magnus, in order to win, Magnus Carlsen, has to play suboptimally in the openings to take his opponents out of the comfort zone so he can play what he calls pure chess as quickly as possible, which is just both short and deep calculations, purely you're looking at the board versus memorized openings and memorized lines. Is it the case that the best poker players are the ones that are able to, at the right time, play really suboptimally or really... Unorthodox. Unorthodox." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, specifically there's one guy who last year sort of took the poker world by storm and his name is Michael Adamo. And he was doing things, like I said, most of the top pros play very similarly with the way that they construct ranges and their bet sizing and all these kinds of things. He was doing some crazy things that nobody else was doing. So he studied, you know, sort of a different form of poker and it, it was unorthodox and it, you know, it throws people off because he's in his comfort zone with these bet sizes and different things, whereas everyone else, they're, they're not well studied in those spots. So as a result of him being unorthodox, he became like a monster and very difficult to play against because he really knew what he was doing with it. In tournament or cash games? It was tournaments. Yeah, he was crushing tournaments. He was going against the norm in terms of what is like, you know, this is what you should do as a poker player in this spot. He wasn't doing that. He was doing what he thought was best and he was doing things outside the norm that, again, in a vacuum, you could look at that and you go, that's incorrect. That he should not do. That is a clear-cut mistake. Even the solvers or the computers or game theory would say, this is wrong, what he's doing. But it's not wrong if he's doing it in a way that he's exploiting other players' tendencies. So for example, with him, say he's playing far too aggressively. That's not good, unless your opponents are playing way too passively. So if your opponents are playing passively, the answer is to be more aggressive with them. And that's, I think, one of the biggest advantages he had was he was willing to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So bet, big pots, bluffing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Huge. So in a spot where somebody would make it a thousand, he's making it 22,000. Like what? What is this? This makes no sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then people kind of know he has nothing, but they're too afraid to call him on it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and then sometimes what happens is this is where the leveling comes in. You're like, man, this guy's crazy. He's bluffing like nuts. Then he bets the 22,000 and you say, ah, I'm taking my stand, I call. And then he shows you like, you know, four of a kind or something like that. So he gets people out of their comfort zone. And I really enjoy watching him play. He's probably my favorite player to watch today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Watching a guy like that, what aspect of his play have you been able to incorporate into your own? Like, what do you learn from that? Because you're constantly learning, you're constantly adjusting. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, no, and I love it. And as I said, so I think a lot of players sort of come to the same conclusions about this is how you play the spot, but he doesn't. And I love watching and thinking in terms of like why he's doing this. And one specific thing, for example, is he's willing to really go for it. So in a spot where let's say he bets 2,000, he knows he'll get you to call 2,000, right? But he wants it all. He wants it all. So he says, you know what? I'll give up the 2,000. That's guaranteed. And I'll bet 50,000. And maybe if you call that, now, you know, so listen, you lose the 2,000 seven, eight times. But if I get called for the 50 just once, you know, I'm profiting from that. And it also sets the, you know, the template for you to really sort of be a player that people are afraid to play against. He knocked me out in a tournament very early on in a huge event. And he had, he was so far ahead. He was one step ahead of my thought process in hand. And he did something that makes no sense whatsoever. I looked it up on the computer. Huge mistake, if you will, but not a mistake because he was taking advantage of my tendency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you remember the cars? Is there an example?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember the whole thing. I remember it like it was yesterday." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you take it like through an example hand that really demonstrates it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'll explain the hand here. So I'm on the button and I have ace king, which is a very good hand. And I raise and he calls from the big blind. The flop is nine, seven, five. So I have nothing really here. He checks, I check behind. The turn card's an ace. He checks, I bet half the pot. There were 6,000 in there, I bet 3,000, okay? Now, this is not a typical thing you see people do, but he raised me to 36,000. Massive raise, bigger than the size of the pot. What was the flop again? 975. Okay. Turn and ace. So what is he representing exactly? Well, he could have a straight, he could have three of a kind, he could have aces up, he could have a whole bunch of hands. So he check raises me big to 36,000. I call the bet. So now there's something like 75,000. The river is a five, so the board pairs, okay? He thinks for a while and he bets all of it, which is three times the pot. He bets 225,000. There's only 75,000 now, right? And in theory, he should never, ever have a hand that can do that, right? So it confused me and I was like, okay, well, this guy's aggressive. He likes to bluff and all this kind of stuff. So I made the call with the ace king and he turned over 6-8. So we had a straight. But here's the thing, in theory, that river card is bad for him. When I call the turn, I have, a lot of the time, three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house. So he was risking that. And the reason he did it was because he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot. So he just went for it and it worked. He was able to double up right away and knock me out of the tournament like an hour in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he thought you might fold?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it came down to this, it's as simple as this. He was cognizant of his image as being a wild, aggressive bluffer, right? And he was fully taking advantage of me knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious and I want to call and I want to see it. So he was fully taking advantage of the fact that he thought I would call too often because otherwise his play makes no sense. A small bet, a medium-sized bet, those make sense, but the bet that he made in theory is indefensible. It's just like clearly a mistake. But that's why poker is so fascinating because he makes this play and it wasn't a mistake. It was above the rim is what it was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he put you on ace something?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think exactly what he thought I had was ace king or something like that. You know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that is so fun. That is so fun that the two players at such a high level were able to mess with each other's mind. How old is he? Is he young?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's in his twenties." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like that takes a lot of guts to take risks like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's what's great about him. He's certainly never accused of not having the guts to put it in. And that's scary to play against, right? The easiest opponent to play against is one who's just straightforward, passive, you know, not wild and crazy. Playing against him, he's going to put you in the blender, as we say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How can you control what you're perceived as representing, what hand you're perceived of as representing? So if the game of modern poker is others are representing certain hands through the information they convey, and you're representing a certain hand range, sorry, through your play, how can you control that? Or is that not, is that the wrong way to think about it? bluffing and bet sizing and all of that kind of stuff, essentially controlling what others perceive as the hand range you have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ultimately, in terms of like controlling people's perception of you, you can't fully control it, but you can do things to sway it, right? As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that, you know, leads your opponent to think maybe you do this more often than you're supposed to or whatever the case may be. But in terms of like controlling, you know, what your opponent can think about your hands in certain spots. I don't really think it equates that way. It doesn't really, you know, I think what people do when they're playing a hand is they think in terms of, all right, what does my range look like here? Okay, so my range has value. So you look at, you know, the actual hand you have secondarily. So you say, okay, well, I could have this, I could have this, I actually have this, right? But I could have all these hands. So my opponent, if he's thinking on a high level, he knows I could have all these hands and I have this one. So what do I do with this one, right, in the bigger scope of things?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I guess I'm trying to understand, if your betting isn't a bet, pre-flop, your bet, doesn't that narrow the hand ranges? It doesn't matter what you have. It narrows the, and if you bet big, combined with the perception of you at the table, doesn't that represent a hand range? Uh-huh. Absolutely. So like you can, with betting essentially control what people estimate you to have." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. So that makes sense. So yeah. So that's, that's true. So for example, one of the most extreme examples is we have, um, we do there's like, there's, there's spots where there's a bit that's considered polarizing. Right. So. Let's say there's a thousand in the pot and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right? That's saying one of two things. I either have the absolute best possible hand or absolutely nothing. Because any of the hands in the middle, I wouldn't do that with. So I'm essentially telling you when I bet that, I'm like, I either got it or, you know, I got, I don't have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of nines or a pair of tens. I have a royal flush or have nine high. So with my bet sizing, I can control how my opponent is perceiving what my range is going to be. So for example, you know, similarly, if I bet small, right, well, that could be a lot of hands, right? That could represent a big part of my range." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The bigger the bet, the more the narrower the range." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The more polarized it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. How far could you get without looking at your cards? Do you think? How well could you do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends on who I'm playing with. Right. So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But even like world class." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "World-class, I don't think you'd have much of a chance, really." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean... The question is trying to get at, like, how important is it the actual hands you have versus the hands you're representing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So that's the question of, essentially, if you're not looking at your hand pre-flop, you're basically giving up a fundamental advantage, right? Where you're going to be playing way sub-optimally in terms of your hand selection, right? Because if you don't look at your hand, you might have a two and a three. That's not good, but now you're playing it. So you've invested, whatever, two, 3,000 bucks with absolute garbage, and it's very difficult to climb that hill, right? So it's much better to actually look at your cards and go, okay, I'll throw away the two and three, and I'll play the ace king." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of garbage, you've said that 10-7 is your favorite poker hand to play. Is that still the case, and what aspect of it is that you enjoy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's one of those viewer discretion is advised, like 10, seven, I've just noticed throughout my life, you know, it's a tendency thing that I've been lucky with it. So that's just sort of, but it's not like I'm going to look at 10, seven and go, Oh wow. You know, I'm going to call an all in or anything like that. I'll play it in situations where it makes sense, but you know, it's rare cause it's not a very good hand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But is there. some aspect of belief in the magic of this hand manifests quality of play?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or is that a little, whoa, whoa? There should be, but I, so here's the thing. It's, you know, poker players, some have said it's unlucky to be superstitious, but we're all a little bit superstitious. a little bit, you know? And so, I don't know, maybe it is a case where when I have 10-7, I feel somehow energetically that, you know, I'm more likely to catch something, which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive and confident in the hand, but you really shouldn't let yourself do that. Like, you're not supposed to fall in love with any specific hands." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but uncertainty is ruthless. The fact that it's a game of statistics, it can be too painful for the human psychology, so maybe you have to hold on to certain superstitions. Because, you know, I mean, there's a cold absurdity to the fact that you can play extremely well and still lose. I mean, actually, this year, you've played, what is it, 50 days of World Series of Poker, and it seems like, at least from the perspective of me looking at it through the internet, it seems like there's a lot of hands that you were like 70, 30, 80, 20, all in hands that you just did not, were not going your way, that can sort of break you mentally." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Yeah, one of the hardest things, especially about playing, because cash games and tournaments are different. One of the most difficult things about, you know, being a tournament player is resilience, because more often than not, like, so if there's a tournament with thousand people, to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips. That means there's one winner and 999 losers. So it's very rare that you actually like win all the chips. So you're essentially at some point in every tournament you play going to deal with like really bad luck and disappointment. And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself and be introspective about, okay, so I think I'm 47 now. I think I've gotten better as time went on between distinguishing, okay, am I losing right now because of bad luck? or is it fundamentally decisions I'm making are not very good, right? And that's one of the hardest things for anyone who plays poker to get to, right? Why am I losing? Am I losing because of my opponents being better, I'm not playing well, or am I losing just because of luck? And because there's so much variance in poker, a lot of players can be confused on both sides of the coin. One guy's winning and he thinks he's great, he's really not. Wait till the cards break even, as we say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think there's a lot of parallels to life as well. If you get screwed over and over, it's hard to know if you're doing something wrong or if it's just bad luck." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think they did a study, I remember there was like a study, it was mostly related to gambling, but it was mice and they put them in a little maze and they'd go down these three tubes and they'd go down this one tube and there'd be cheese, right? And then they'd go down again, cheese. Three times in a row there was cheese there, right? The next time there was an electric shock there, not cheese. The mouse went to get zapped, he got zapped, came back. He kept going back to get zapped until he died. Like he kept going because he found cheese there. He has one there. So he continued to go chase that wind despite it being now all of a sudden not worthwhile till he died. And essentially what they said was that is essentially how they compared it to like the gambling brain and how people think about gambling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're chasing the winds. You learn too much. You sort of overgeneralize the lessons learned from the times you've won." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like beginner's luck can be detrimental. If you have some early luck and you believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever, it can put you in a delusional state. where you feel like I'm just great, but no, you're not. You were just lucky in the beginning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I actually played poker once in Vegas. It wasn't a tournament, but it was a kind of tournament-like style. I already forgot what it was, but what I do remember is I had four of a kind. So the last hand I've ever played in poker was I got a four of a kind, and there was a couple of others with really strong hands, so everybody went all in, and I think you get some kind of bonus for getting four of a kind. Bad beat jackpot you were playing in. Yeah, so something like this. I apologize if I don't know the details, but I just remember winning a lot of money, and I walked away from the table. I said, I'm not playing poker again. This is great. I'm gonna hit it up top, because I started to feel like this is your, I started to think, even though I haven't really played poker at all, that I'm good, and that was a really dangerous feeling. And everybody was really mad for walking away from the table." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One of the other things that I think is interesting about poker too is good is relative, right? So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world, like literally seventh best player. But if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker. You are the worst player in the game, right? So there's a lot of players. For example, like the Dan Blazarians of the world, right? He's not a top level player like these guys you see on TV, but he probably makes more money than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill level. Part of the skill of being a poker player is finding situations where you're profitable regardless of your skill level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Another connection to life. Do you think Dan Balzerian is telling the truth about having made, what is it, $50, $100 million? Just a huge amount of money playing poker." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Considering what I know about the private games. and the types of players who play in these private games and the stakes that they play, I absolutely believe, you know, Dan has made, I don't know how many millions, but I, you know, whether it's 50 or whatever, but it wouldn't surprise me that if you play in these games within a year or you, you know, you find the right businessman who has way too much Bitcoin money, you know, and you, you know, in one night you take them for 20 million, I absolutely could see it. I don't see any reason why, listen, where he got his money initially, you know, that's up to interpretation from his father or whatever, but what, but has he made a bunch of money playing poker? Absolutely, no question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you feel, as somebody who loves the game, do you think there's something almost ethically wrong in playing people much worse than you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, that's a good question because, you know, part of the reason I played poker and wanted to become professional was like, I want to make my mother proud, right? And I don't think she would be proud of me taking like grandma Betty's like last $5, you know, and again down the street, you know, sending her broke and taking her pension check. So I play at the highest stakes against people who can afford it. They know who I am. I'm not a hustler. I'm not pretending I'm bad at poker to squeeze in. Like I was thinking about this just yesterday. Cause I played in a game that, If I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do pros that sort of play down their skill level, pretend they're just one of the guys, these guys can make 20, $30 million in a year. Legitimately, like, I believe that like, if I did that, if I said, you know what, I'm gonna go down that path, get into these games in LA, you know, and travel and do all this kind of stuff, I can make 20 million a year, but it feels a little greasy, right? I don't like to kiss anyone's ass. I don't like to ask it for anyone for a favor or things like that. So, but yeah, like, I feel, listen, a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it, I have no empathy for that. I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if Grandma Betty is a billionaire." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Take him and send it, send it, right? You know, absolutely, why not?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask you about a tough period of your recent life. You had a rough, like we mentioned, World Series of Poker, losing $1.1 million over 48 days. What were you going through mentally during that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here's the thing, you know, I do, like you said, I do a YouTube vlog every day. So I kind of share my thoughts and listen, I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff, but I think it's more authentic and genuine to show people the actual struggles and the pain that I go through, you know, without it. And I'd say the one thing I'm most proud of throughout the entire thing is the resilience, because there are moments you see me where I'm broken. I'm just like, I can't take it. I broke a selfie stick this year. Like I was filming it. Cause you know, I do for my vlog, I smashed the stick, threw it in the corner, right? It's just, that was my like, hit rock bottom moment. And then I put the camera on me and I was like, all right, I let people see it. But mentally it was very difficult because there was a feeling of hopelessness where I was making good decisions. Like I genuinely felt like I'm playing really, really well. But every time my money went in and my opponent's money went in and say I was 60%, 70%, 80% for about a two week stretch, I lost every one of those. And you start to wonder, you're like, I can't win if I never win, you know, in these spots. So it was difficult. Luckily, I have, you know, 20 odd years of experience in how to deal with it. And so, as I said, I wake up the next day ready to go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So as if nothing happened." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To a certain degree, obviously, you know, the more it happens and the higher buy-ins, like the one where I broke the selfie stick, I lost 500,000 in that tournament, right? And it was like the last card, it was painful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you lost." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that was great, that video. I think he lost 53." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What led up to the selfie stick gate? Like what, you just lost your shit for a like a hundred milliseconds. Like it was very brief. You're just like what the world wasn't making any sense. Like, how am I, do I keep losing kind of thing? How did you, why did you lose your shit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You should never really think like this, but part of me felt like I deserved to win this hand, right? So part of me was like, listen, I've lost so many in the last two weeks. All right, let the poker gods be kind to me right now. Let me win this. And it looked good. I was in a great situation on the flop, great situation on the turn. I'm about to be a competitor. I'm going to be a contender in this tournament to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around. It's all there for the taking. And then, boom, the last card, it just You know, it was a couple of weeks of frustration in the moment of filming that I just had, you know, sort of a visceral reaction, you know, and I smacked the selfie stick. And then, like, I see a corner. It's safe. I threw the selfie stick on the ground. And, of course, social media blows up about how, you know, it was a violent act. I mean, it's like, have you never watched sports? Have you never seen a guy on the golf course smack his club or throw their helmet? There's a guy, Justin Bonomo, who's a poker player, and he's super, for lack of a better word, offended by everything. And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground to violence against women, domestic abuse, and the idea that this makes women feel unsafe to play poker. And so that was kind of a running joke for the last two weeks, where every time I sat at a table, the guys would be like, oh, I feel unsafe, I feel unsafe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, can you take me through the hand? Do you remember what the hand was? Like what was the?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it was a player on the button raised. David Peters, very aggressive player. He went all in from the blind and I had a pair of pocket 10s. So I went with my 10s and he had queen 10 of spades. So I was good. I have way the best hand. And the flop was like King nine, three, one spade turn was like the eight of spades. So now he has a flush draw and the river was another spade. So he caught spade spade and he made a, he made a flush." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow. But statistically you were winning the whole time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I was winning up until the last card." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What did he go all in on? Was it a bluff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He made what's considered like a pretty standard play in modern poker, where, you know, a guy raised and he was just trying to pick up, you know, what was there. And he ran into a hand in the big blind and, you know, he got lucky." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what was the, throughout the strategy of preparation, the strategy of play? So you're playing so many days. Are you trying to ignore the results and stick to a particular strategy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. For the most part, you know, what I'm trying to do is like, if I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks, cause there's a very, there's a varying degree of buy-ins too. Like you have small ones, like 1500, then you've got like $250,000 buy-in. So I map out. the seven weeks and right, I'll give little bit of mental energy to the 1500, which means I'll be on my phone. I'm not gonna, I don't care as much about this one, but the 250K fully engaged, fully focused, you know, up against obviously the higher the buy-in, you know, super top competition. And, you know, as far as strategy goes, focusing on each day, playing the best I can, not the result. Like, cause if you focus on the result, you're, you're focusing in the wrong place. Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make. And if you're making good decisions consistently, you have to continue to do that. The frustrating part is this, with poker, unlike chess or other things, making the best possible decision doesn't mean you win. Often you lose, you don't in chess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, Magnus Carlsen has also talked about that there's some, non-deterministic thing about chess, too, given the limited cognitive capacity of the human mind. So he says that the World Championship should have 20, 30, 40, 50 games, not the few that they have. It's too low of a sample. So in that sense, the high stakes poker tournaments are very, too low sample." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, yeah. Well, when you think of the World Series of Poker, So you, as you said, I lost about 1 million, right. In one tournament that was 500,000. So then, you know, like a few others here of high buying tournaments. So the sample or the amount was, you know, 40, 50 total tournaments with, you know, high variance. And if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy-ins, you know, you're going to have a losing summer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you did a podcast on the mental game a few years ago, but that's just something you really care about. So what aspects of the mental game in poker is most difficult to master?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the most difficult thing for people is self-awareness, right, and resilience. Self-awareness to know, okay, so, you know, again, is it, am I not doing as well as I could be because of luck, or is there things that I can learn? And I always look to mistakes as opportunities, I really do. When I make a mistake in a poker hand, right, call it a breakdown or whatever, That's where breakthroughs happen. I'm like, oh, you know what I could have done here? I could have done this and that would have been really good and I'm going to do that going forward. So I think like with anything, you know, when you start out playing golf, like your goal is to just hit the ball, right? Then you try to hit it near. Then you're trying to hit it straight. Then you're trying to hit it on the green. Then you're trying to hit it closer to the green to the point where the pros get where, you know, they're so finite. They're trying to hit it 63 yards and spin it back three yards. It's imperfect. Like they don't hit the perfect shot because the perfect shot for them is it goes in, but they try and make the mistakes smaller and smaller and smaller. Poker is the same. We all make mistakes consistently. The goal is to minimize, especially the big ones." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was the lowest point for you psychologically? In poker in general, actually. Maybe it was this year, maybe it was in general. Do you remember there was times in your life, speaking of resilience, that were extremely difficult to you mentally?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So early on, you know, as basically as, you know, as a teenager, I was playing Toronto and then in my early twenties, I'm like, I'm going to Vegas. Right. And I thought I was the best. I'm like 21 years old. I'm like, check me out. Right. Show up with $3,000, 24 hours later, you know, money's gone. And I remember the moment vividly. It was at the Binion's Horseshoe. It was about three in the morning. I was playing with seven other people. I lost my last chips. I went to the bathroom, washed up, got out. They all left. And it was like a moment where I realized like, okay, in Toronto, I was the big fish. But here, they were playing because of me. I was the sucker. I remembered every one of their faces. And then I remember not having enough money to get back to Budget Suites where I was staying. I walked and in that moment, I was thinking about like, is this something that I'll be able to do? Am I good enough? What am I gonna do now? I'm in Vegas, I don't know anybody and I have no money, right? So that was certainly like what felt like a low point walking back behind Paradise and Twain, which is not a great part of town." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where did you find the strength to answer yes to that question that you can still do good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this has been sort of a pattern in my life where in the evening after it happens, I don't have it. I don't have that feeling of hope or resilience, if you will. I'm allowing myself to experience despair, which is exactly where I'm at. But then a good night's sleep. Wake up the next morning and just within me, I have that inner confidence to say, you know what, fuck it. Get back on the hobby horse, find a way, make it work. But I do believe it's really therapeutic and worthwhile to allow yourself to feel and vent. So many people today, the Instagram culture world, I call it, it's like, they want to act like they're perfect. Nothing bothers them. Bullshit, right? You're pissed off. It's okay to show it. Emotion's fine. We all have it. There's no reason you have to suppress it. Obviously, you don't want to have guys throwing selfie sticks around the room every time they lose a pot, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But, you know, a little bit of- You're gonna make everybody feel unsafe. Yeah, exactly. If that happens. So you're saying, there is a culture of saying, you know, stay positive, all this kind of stuff. But, you know, when you feel despair, don't resist it. Ride it out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it doesn't go away, right? That feeling, you know, you think you put it away in the pit of your stomach and you think, you know, it's gone. It's not, it's still there. Let yourself go, fuck! Yeah. You know, it's all right. You know, there's nothing wrong with being a little bit emotional because once you've experienced it, you let it out, now you can move past it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and I feel like as long as your brain chemistry can support it, you can usually learn a good lesson from it. Like you become stronger, you become more resilient through it. It's really interesting. And a good night's sleep can really help. Absolutely, yeah. So through 2022. and in general, what is a perfect day in the life of Daniel Negrano look like when you're, like on a day when you have to play a big game, big tournament game and so on? So like, what time do you wake up?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What do you eat for breakfast? So my life is twofold. Like one when I'm playing hardcore and one when I'm not. and they look very different, right? So I'll give you a quick glimpse of like when I'm not, up at 10, you know, breakfast, in the gym at noon, you know, post-workout, meal, coffee, walk, like, you know, I try to get, that's what I do for cardio, you know, and just very like home-bodied. I don't leave the house. It's very like boring and mundane, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Long distance walk, so like, what do you do when you're walking? You're thinking about stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, no, honestly, I just walk on the treadmill. I try to get 15,000 steps a day, and I just walk for basically like an hour while I watch a show or I'm on the computer or something like that. I'm on the treadmill." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why walking, not running?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I think walking, I mean, I do a little bit of running, but hardly any. I don't enjoy it. I just like walking. And frankly, for fat loss, when it's usually what I'm doing after big poker tournaments is getting back in shape, that walking's ideal for it, right? So essentially, it's like the tale of two, during the World Series of Poker, all my sort of structured life thrown out the window. There's no walking. There's very little walking. There's very little working out. There's very little anything. I go into the World Series. This year, I went in around 157 and I expected to gain about 10 pounds during the World Series. Not good pounds, wasn't muscle, but that's about what I did, 165. Then I spend the next month trying to lose it. During the World Series, when I'm playing, the most important thing without question that I have to focus on, and this is why I stopped focusing on working on all this stuff, is sleep. If I'm not rested, I'm useless. If I only get five, six hours and I have to go back the next day and play 14 hours, the chances of me being at my best, very, very slim. So sleep is a priority." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the perfect amount of sleep for you on those days? Eight, seven?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So eight hours is my go-to every night. During the World Series of Poker, it's just not possible. Because of the way that it's structured, sometimes the tournaments end at 2.15 a.m. I get home, about three o'clock, takes me 30 minutes, 40 minutes to get to sleep. So now let's say I'm in bed by four. Well, the tournament's at, you know, two, so I have to get up and whatever. So it's very difficult to get exactly eight a lot of the time, you know, and also get back there in time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there any hacks to quiet the mind? Because you're going on a pretty intense rollercoaster mentally when you're playing. Is there any tricks to getting to sleep given the- I've been very lucky." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like I'm blessed. I don't know if it's because of diet or what, but I've always been a very good sleeper. You just shut off. I get to sleep and I sleep like a baby, you know? And I also nap really well. Like during the World Series, sometimes what'll happen is let's say I get knocked out of one event at 4 p.m. and there's another one that I can jump in. Instead of jumping right into it, I'll go into like a private room and take 45-minute nap and give me enough energy to continue and sort of reset my mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and it solves a lot of problems with the nap too. It does. Yeah, I feel like the nap is a magical trick in life. What else, diet-wise? What do you, your mind is going, you know uh... pretty intensely all day" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so during like, like I said, when I'm not playing, I'm super regimented. You know, I have, I literally measure everything. You know, I count calories, I count macros, I follow it to a T. Pretty balanced diet or any- I'm a vegan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Vegan, yeah. So it's, you know, a vegan diet, like- But balanced in terms of carbs and- Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I eat a healthy amount." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm doing probably 150 grams of protein, like 60 grams of fat, 50, and then about- And try to measure it all out. I do, yeah, basically I created a meal plan. So what I did for myself is, because I'm really anal nerd, I made a spreadsheet with like a day's food, and I have six different ones. So I just follow it. It actually makes my life so much easier when I don't have to think about what I'm gonna eat for lunch or what I'm gonna eat for dinner. I already know what I'm gonna eat. I already wrote it down. And it doesn't get boring because I'm switching it up every day, every six days, and occasionally I'll, you know, splurge and do something different. During the World Series of Poker, I eat whatever the fuck I wanna eat. Yeah. Like at 2 a.m., I don't crave like a broccoli carrot salad. Like I want chocolate, candy, and chips. So I'll just do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you listen to the cravings. Yeah, I've realized like it's- Surprising because like you're so regimented outside of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's really difficult. Like I've done it before where I played the World Series of Poker and I made it a point to work out every day. But what that did was it sacrificed sleep. So then I found like at 1 a.m. I would be more tired, you know, because I've expended more energy than I would otherwise. So I essentially like look at the World Series as six, seven weeks where my body's just gonna take a beating, not like UFC fighter, but like a different kind of beating. And that's okay because I have so much confidence that within six weeks, of just like eating right and working out, I can get back to where I was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's just hilarious to me that you'd be eating chocolate, what, eating chocolate in bed as you're trying to get to sleep?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like literally a bag of like chips or chocolate, like on my way home and before bed, you know, just whatever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is what the professional athlete does at the highest, most difficult event of his career. Okay, so what else is there in terms of mental preparation and focus and meditation, those kinds of things leading up to the games? Is there anything you like to, like any rituals you like to follow?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, I have dabbled in the past with like meditation and different things like that. And I know that there's health benefits to it. And I understand that a lot of people get a lot from it and I've done it for good amount of time, like long periods of time. I found that for me, I think it was predominantly placebo. Like it really wasn't doing anything for me that I felt like it was, it felt like I was doing something, but I really, I didn't see any specific results from it. So I don't really do that too much. One thing that I will do for me is bleeding up is there's so much footage now that I'll make it a point to like watch my opponents. And then with like my phone, I'll take notes and I'll keep track of different things that I'm seeing. And that sort of, and then what I'll do is I'll formulate a game plan. Like I'm playing the Poker Masters coming up in about a week. And I'll look to see the tendencies of what my opponents are doing. And then I'll come up with like some things that I'm gonna do, some tricks of the trade, if you will. Not game theory optimal stuff, stuff that I think, oh, they're making a mistake here that I can exploit. And then I look to do that in different ways and always look to, you know, throw curve balls." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How hard is that process? Do you enjoy it or is it like really hard work to analyze the players to try to understand what are the different holes, what are the different mistakes, what are the strengths to avoid and that kind of stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the only thing that makes it harder is when you're young, right? You're in your twenties and you're trying to make your nest egg. You're like, you're trying to make your retirement money. You're hungry, right? You're like Clubber Lang and you know, the gym, you're hungry. Whereas, you know, Rocky's in there taking pictures and smiling and doing commercials and stuff like that. So I am 47. I'm financially okay. I don't need to win. I don't need to compete at the highest levels. So I think it was a boxer. I don't remember which one. when asked this, he was asked the question, how do you get up in the morning still and do those morning runs? And he says, you know what? I'll be honest with you. It's a lot more difficult doing the 4 a.m. run in silk pajamas. It just is, right? But I've always been self-motivated and I've always found a way. So it's harder in the sense of like, it's not a need, I can still get by without it. But so in that regard, it does feel like a little bit of work. We're like, oh my God, that's a lot of footage I gotta get through. And I don't know that I have the time or I don't know that I wanna spend 10 hours of my day doing that when I could be doing other things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, what do you still love about poker? When you said, when you enter, like the times you catch yourself just, being able to sort of take in the awe of it. What aspects do you love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think like for me, I've always been really competitive, but I was never gonna be a professional athlete or a professional snooker player. I wasn't good enough at any of that stuff. I didn't have the body type, whatever. But poker, it sort of levels the playing field, right? You're six, five, 240, big deal. We're not fighting here. We're fighting a different type of war. So the competitive aspect, I also have always been fueled throughout my career by doubters. So this is probably unhealthy, but every time people say like, you're done, you're washed up, you can't win anymore. It just makes me want to prove them wrong. Yeah. Right. So I have a little bit of that in me, which again, you reading the comments and all these kinds, like I've been told many times throughout my career for the last 15 that I'm done. I can't compete anymore. And, and I, and I enjoy, you know, proving them wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the game has changed so much. The greats of the past surely cannot be the greats of the present. That kind of commentary will continue for every sport. And certainly for poker, because poker really changed a lot over the past couple decades. Can you speak to how much it has changed? Because it's been at the top for so long." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so complacency is a big issue for people who make it, if you will, right? So in my era of the poker boom, around the early 2000s, there was a group of players who were the big names, the stars of the game. Well, a lot of them had their egos out of whack, where they just felt like, okay, I'm the best, that's it. Like, no, there's young guys learning, there's new software, there's solvers, there's all these kinds of things. And if you're not keeping up, then you'll get surpassed. And I remember, Myself at a very early age thing i never want to be that guy and it was one of my first events in the late nineties i was the young buck. Playing with the tom mcavoy's and brad dowdy the guys of the era right and i was doing things more aggressively and they were scoffing at all these young kids with their aggressive three and all the stuff in the sort of mocking it you know and i thought never be that guy. Always have the humility to be introspective and always have the respect for your opponents that while you think you've got it all figured out, they're learning new things and you can learn from them. So I've always been willing to sort of swallow my pride and get coached by younger players who I might even be better than, but they see blind spots that I have that I might not. And they help me improve my game. I've always been willing to sort of look every six months or a year and say, is what I'm doing working? And if not, how do I get better? But most people from my generation, they go the other way. I don't know, they just have this idea that they figured it all out. Once you feel like you've mastered it, there's nothing left to learn, that's the moment where everyone else starts to surpass you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the moment where you lose the mastery, because it's always evolving. How has the game changed?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the game has changed in terms of the way people learn it, right? When I started out, the only way to learn how to play poker was to sit your ass on the chair and play. In person? Yes, in person. Play. Maybe you jot down hands on a notepad. We didn't even have cell phones back then, right? So I would write notes. I actually brought a notepad. And then, you know, analyze it and sort of try to figure it out that way and think about you know, maybe talking to friends and different players. Like when I grew up, there was John Juanda, Alan Cunningham, and Phil Ivey. And we would sort of create like a little bit of a mastermind. Well, how would you play this hand? What would you do here? That was the extent of it, right? We never had the correct answers. We always had theories about what might be right. Not until about five, six years ago, where everything changed. where, you know, artificial intelligence created solvers that will specifically say, okay, this is the optimal play. This is the game through optimal play. So now it introduced poker to a whole new group of like personality types. In my day, it was people that were dregs of society that didn't fit in, not college goers with a degree. These are people who were street hustlers playing pool. They found poker, you know, and they had these unique lives, right? But now, because poker can be studied, much like you study, you know, university or college, you had, for example, the German contingent who was literally analyzing data and coming up with strategies based on this. And it's like, what? You know, and the old guy, like, you know, got to play by feel or whatever. And they're like, they're learning. So I guess the way that you describe it is like in the old days, it required skill and talent, a card sense, right? That was the only way to become good. And today that's not the case. Good study habits, a good work ethic in that regard can make you look really good player, even if you aren't all that talented or gifted. Having a good work ethic is a talent, right? Not necessarily card sense, but if you're able to put in the work and study from these solvers, you essentially have the perfect study tool now that we didn't have in my day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do the solvers give you? Do you start to memorize the optimal play for every single hand?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You try your best. So again, Solvers are imperfect as well, in terms of the way the humans utilize them, right? Because you can give solvers a certain number of inputs in terms of what you want it to solve, but a solver can think on many, many levels. So for example, the way that a typical player would do a solve is to say, okay, what does the solver think is the best play here? Bet one third pot, bet two thirds pot, or bet one and a half times pot, okay? You give it three parameters, it comes out with an output, and it tells you what you should do with all the different hands you have. However, That's a simplified version of what a solver would really do, because a solver might decide that seven times the pot is best, 10% of the pot. But when you're putting in a solve, you can only put in specific parameters. So that's why, frankly, that's typically the number, 1 3rd, 2 3rd, and 1 1⁄2 times pot is what people often do. So they sort of have a vague idea of what a solver wants. But again, imperfect in terms of the implementation of it, right? And memorizing all the variables, that King Jack offsuit with the King of Diamonds is 13%. No human brain can do that. So what you do is you bucket it. Like you bucket it into say, instead of 10,000 variables, you have 10 buckets and you say, okay, with these hands, we do roughly this and we do roughly this. And you try your best to stay within those lines. But again, what I love about live poker partly is that nobody will ever be able to master game theory and mimic a solver." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you also have to incorporate your position, where you are, and obviously what cards you have, but also the size of your stack, how much money you have, and also whether you have the ability or desire to buy in, all those kinds of things. So you have to calculate all of that, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the solver will do that, right? And essentially, you don't input your hand. It tells you, you'll look at the grade and be like, all right, this is my hand. And it tells you what it is, but it tells you what you would do with any hand, right? It gives you the full output." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that actually gives you a better idea, because you're ultimately, like you said, playing a range of hands, not a hand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the solvers do things that are really interesting. You've seen AlphaGo, I would imagine. Brilliant film, right, I thought. And I thought what was interesting is there was accepted theory from all the top Go players that this is what you do. the AI was doing things way different, and they're like, this has to be wrong, but really it wasn't. So for example, a solver may say this, right? Let's say you bet on the end, and you bet a lot, and a solver may say, you should fold here with a pair of kings and a queen kicker, which is a pair of kings, but call with a pair of fours and an ace kicker. So it's essentially telling you that you should fold this hand that is much better than this. So it begs the question, why? Because what the solvers do is they use the information of your own cards to formulate all the possible hands your opponent can have. So if your opponent is So basically if you had the king-queen, you know, it may say, for lack of a better nerdy term, it blocks potential bluffing hands that your opponent can have. So let's say if your opponent would bluff with queen-jack, but you have a queen, so there are less combinations of queen-jack. So it will find a better bluff catcher, if you will. So that's what's really not intuitive to poker players. Poker players usually think like, well, this, my hand is pretty good, so I got a call. But that's not how a solver would think. Solver uses, you know, common matrix and, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And sometimes it's tough to get the good why answers you just did for why a solver thinks something is better. Or maybe in poker, it's a little bit easier, but in the case of go and chess, it's not always obvious why, Because it's not going to explain stuff to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think one of the best ways to learn poker is when you see a solver output and it tells you one of these things, try to figure out why. Why does this solver do this? Why does it want you to call with this and fold this? And try to think about it on a deeper level and you go, aha, probably because this card that I have here changes the range of my opponent's potential." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'd love to get your opinion on your relationship with solvers because, for example, Magnus doesn't use them. His team uses them because he feels like he's going to rely on it too much and you can't use it when you're playing. What you really want is to build up extremely strong intuition without the help of a solver. Is there some aspect of that that rings true to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I totally can relate to what Meg is saying. First and foremost, because when Solvers was first introduced, I didn't come from that world. I was so intimidated because I didn't know how to use it. I don't know how to do an input. So I had two guys, one guy's a data scientist and another guy's like a poker savant, if you will, and they coached me and they did it. So today, if I was in a tough spot, And I'm like, I don't know, what would a solver do? I will send them the hand and they'll run the solve for me and then sort of give me the parameters of what to do. When I was playing regularly using solvers with them, we were spending six to eight hours a day going over all these solves. So intuitively, I started to think and learn about what the solver would want, but I sort of understand where Magnus is coming from in that. You don't wanna become a slave to the sim, as I say, right? There's one kid I know, I joked with him, his name is Landon Tice. And he made a play that the sim would say, this is a good play. But I'm like, it's a good play in a simulated world against the robot. It's not in practice against the human, right? You don't need to be doing that. So if you become a slave to the sim and always do what the sim says, you're handcuffed to a certain degree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there some, at the highest level of plays, there's still a role for feel and intuition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "100%, absolutely. If you're not doing that, because here's the thing, right? No human being plays perfectly balanced in game three optimal like a robot would. They're not, right? So there are opportunities there to take advantage of the things that they do that are slightly too aggressive or less aggressive. You know, for example, Say most human beings don't bluff enough in a certain spot. So you don't have to call with the correct range of hands. You don't have to, because they're not bluffing at the optimal frequency. So you don't have to call at the optimal frequency. You'd be making a mistake, frankly, if you did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the difference between in-person and online play, given that context?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, online poker and live poker, it's the same game, right? Same, it's poker, but it's different in so many levels, right? I think playing online, you have to focus far more on fundamentals, you know, on game theory. You don't have the added bonus of looking across the table and getting any sense of whether your opponent is strong or weak, they're bluffing, whatever, you know, and also, Because online poker, those that play it, you play far more hands. Like some of these guys are playing 10, 20 tables at the same time, right? So you're just, you're hitting the long run really quickly and you're creating a database on your opponents, right? So let's have, you know, online, I can see your data. I'm like, well, this guy, he's playing 40% of hands. He's betting the river 80% of the time. So now I can use that data and, you know, exploit you that way. When you play live, you don't have that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you enjoy playing online?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I enjoy, so with online poker, I enjoy the convenience of it. Cause you know, you can be on your couch in your underwear, not leave your house." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you also play multiple games at the same time or do you try to play one game?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I typically like to play one or two, but I can play up to four. I find that past four, it's hard for me to keep up and keep track of what's actually happening. You know, it's a different mindset required. Like a lot of these young guys, they're accustomed to 20 tables at a time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It feels like the purity of the game is gone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's much more robotic, right? So if you're playing 20 tables, you're just making decisions based on like what, you know, you're not thinking about the depth of the situation and what just happened 15 minutes ago. You don't even know what happened because you can't pay attention to all that at once." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And some of the magic of poker is the low sample. I agree. Like for example, and sorry to be bringing up Magnus so much, but there's so much parallel between the two of you and the poker and the chess world. He hates Olympics and world championships and all that kind of stuff because it's so low sample. But to me, that's part of the magic of it. There's the World Series of Poker, the main event. There's a magic to it. I agree, yeah. And I don't know what that is exactly because so much is at stake, it's so rare. so much drama and heartbreak leading up to it that all somehow, yeah, it accumulates to that magical moment when somebody wins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Especially that event, the World Series of Poker main event, historically, like that's it, you know, that's the pinnacle. That's where like mainstream watches, that's where people are tuning in and the gravity of the moment, you know, it's so much bigger than people. Like everyone gets the opportunity to play armchair quarterback too, right? Oh, he should do this. You're not there. You're not under the lights. You're not under the pressure. You know, it might seem easy for you at home to be like, well, they have, but you can see the whole cards. You know, they can't. Certainly the idea of, the small sample with tournaments. I like the idea that you don't have to worry about, oh, well, if I do this now, then in the future, I won't be balanced. I have to be balanced here or anything like that. That's like really boring and lame, right? Again, that is kind of the way the younger generation learns how to play the game, being balanced in every spot. and then randomizing, you know, like, oh, I'm supposed to do this 50% of the time, okay, so if my left card is red, I'll do it, and if it's black, I don't. So you're not even making, you're no longer making actual decisions for yourself, you're just randomizing, and that's way less fun for me than tailoring it to the situation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the final table at the main event, there's none of that, you have to, I mean, it's all or nothing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you shouldn't be, but there are, like, again, I think a lot of the young guys, they are thinking in that regard, like, oh," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "randomization. Maybe at that table, the final table at the main event. What's a hand that stands out to you that was especially gutsy and powerful or memorable for that you've seen in the history of poker?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, for me, the one that stands out, and probably because I was so young, and it was my first year, I won a bracelet that year, I was friends with Scotty Wynn, the Prince of Poker, and he was heads up against the guy named Kevin McBride, and I was on the rail. I'm like, wow, he's heads up. And he was so cool. He had a mullet, but it's perfect, right? He had the white shirt, the black thing, he's drinking a Michelob, smoking a cigarette, whatever, all chill. He bets it all on the river and the guy's thinking and he psychologically owned him and he said, he goes with his beer, he goes, you call gonna be all over baby. That's right. Okay. So this guy who was an amateur heard that. And was like, there's so much pressure in this moment right now. I can't handle this pressure. But Scotty just told me if I call here, it's the pressure's gone. I don't have to be under it anymore. So he sort of hypnotized them into making the call. And Scotty had it. Scotty had the full house and it was over for the guy. You call gonna be all over, baby. I love that aspect, sort of the table talk dynamic, which isn't as prevalent today as it was back then. But that one sticks out, and probably because it was one of my first." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the few words you say at the table can completely affect a hand like that. That's scary." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was just so cool to me, you know, like just how he was so calm. And I think that too added more pressure to the amateur. And I think like, again, part of it is, even back then it was 1998, there's still a big rail of people and there's lights and they're, you know, they're filming and all this kind of stuff. And it's a lot of pressure for a guy who's never been in this environment. And now I'm telling you, it can all be over soon. It will all be over soon. Just call, it's finished." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something about that accent too. Now you're a master at table talk as well. Do you just kind of go with your gut, you flow with it, or is there a deliberate strategy with it sometimes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's usually some sort of strategy that I think about in terms of what I want to say and whatnot, but a lot of the time I just go with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, and the more you talk, the more information you get." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but in some cases against really good players, you're just giving away information, right? Like if I'm playing against Phil Ivey, I'm not I'm not engaging in anything because he can read through it. He can sense based on what I'm saying, you know, the clues and where I'm trying to take him. And he reads through he sees the tree through the forest or whatever you want to call it, the forest or the trees. And, you know, so then I would just be like, allowing myself to be exploitable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is some of it just for fun? Because at the end of the day, if you're having fun, you might be at the top of your game." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've been thinking about this a lot lately, actually. It's funny you bring this up because I've been thinking about when I'm at my best. And I think I'm at my best when I am comfortable like that, right? Where I'm not so stiff and worried about, you know. checking properly and worried about reading people. I'm like, no, I'm me. All right, I'm going to play some poker. What do you want to do? You want to call me? Call, go ahead, do what you want, right? Because then I realized, ultimately, I'm comfortable in that. My opponents aren't as comfortable in that. They're comfortable with this, the robot thing. But I thought more about that and how, especially with some tournaments coming up, I plan on really getting back to my roots in that regard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it. From a spectator perspective, I love it. But it's also interesting whenever you see a Daniel on the ground or quiet. That's an interesting like, like it feels like a calm before a storm of sorts. So I'm sure that's also part of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like I've gone, I've been flowed. Like I said, you know, I took on some coaches and that was really learning game theory. Cause I felt like it was important to always stick, you know, keep up with what's going on. And then I do feel like to some degree, it sort of took away a little bit of my own instinctual ideas in terms of what I should be doing, right? So I think like the most dangerous version of myself is a deep understanding of the game theory. with my wisdom of many years and comfort of just sort of like being myself at the table." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And being relaxed. Relaxed. Letting your mind flow. Let me ask you the greatest, the GOAT question, greatest of all time. Can you make the case for a few folks? So first, you tweeted referring to Phil Ivey as the GOAT, saying the GOAT doing GOAT things. That's a recent tweet. So can you make the case for Phil Ivey, or maybe who is the greatest poker player of all time? Would you put Phil?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me, until someone knocks him off the podium, the king of poker and the GOAT is Phil Ivey, okay? So, and the reason I say that is I think of poker as more than just one game, right? There's different variants. You know, there's Hold'em, Omaha, Stud, Triple Draw, all these different types of games. And Phil, in every arena, has been dominant. Whether it was tournament poker, dominated it. Mixed game high stakes poker in Bobby's room, dominated. Online poker against all the wizards, dominated. Made millions in every arena. And he sort of took a few years away from poker with his legal troubles and things like that, but he's back. He's been playing in the high roller series again and he comes from, he's cut from a different cloth, but he has a tenacity and a focus that's unparalleled, I think. When he's in the zone, I mean, for lack, and this has nothing to do with race, it really has to do with mannerism, but he does remind me of like a combination of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods in the way that he approaches it. He's very intense and he outworks everybody. And I think, frankly, a lot of his mannerisms do come from them, because he's young, watching these guys on TV, and a lot of his ways of being, his learned behavior, I think, probably from people like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "People at the top of their sport, and people that are Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan aren't just at the top of their sport, but they kind of dominate the sport. There's some kind of aura that..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a uniqueness to them. They're not built like us. They're not, you know, they're not. Like I wish, I wish I could have the kind of focus that Phil Ivey has, you know, and see everything that he's saying. I just, that's not me, you know? I don't have that, and he does. He has that gene, whatever it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But they also look like they're not having that much fun. They're more focused on the perfection, like a dogged pursuit of perfection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that might even be true. It might not be as fun. I don't know. I have fun at the table. When you look outwardly, you look at someone, maybe he is having a blast. Maybe that's just the way that he likes it. Like is Tiger Woods having fun when he's on 17 about to win a major? Doesn't look like it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Theoretically. Well, if you look at Michael Jordan, I don't know about Tiger Woods, but I think they're more focused on every single mistake they make. I think they're more obsessed about not making a mistake and hating every time they make a mistake. That's probably like 99% of their mental energy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's part of what makes them great, right? They don't look past the mistake and just let it, it's whatever. No, they're like, they wanna correct it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a tension almost like a trade-off. I wonder if that's always the case between sort of greatness and happiness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember Huck Seed who, you know, when I was a kid growing up, he was like the poker idol. He won the world championship in 1996 and I was lucky enough to hang out with him a little bit and he would go through these streaks where He had an A game and he had an F game. His A game was unparalleled. Nobody could beat him, right? But his F game was so terrible that he was just a fish, you know, he was playing terribly. And I remember him saying, and it was exactly what you're saying. He'd make like one little mistake, right? And then he would go off. And I was like, why do you do that? Like, you know, your B game would be just fine. He's like, well, if I'm gonna make a mistake, what's the point? What's the point of trying? If you can't play perfect, there's no point in playing at all. So he was extreme in that regard in the way that he viewed it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And depending on the sport, those folks, like in chess, certainly the case, that kind of mindset can destroy you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. No, I totally see that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because a sequence of mistakes, like the kind of year you had with the World Series at Polk, it can completely destroy a human being if you're not able to see the bigger picture of it. Yeah. You said that Phil Ivey is the hardest, your toughest opponent, the toughest person to play against. Why is that? And how do you beat him?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because Phil Ivey's just, he's seeing things that nobody else is seeing really, like subtle things, where I'm putting my hands, where I'm looking, you know, my pulse, like stuff that I don't even know I'm giving off. He's so engaged and so focused and has such a, just a, he's fearless, right? A lot of people, you know, they'll play poker and be like, you know what, I don't think this guy has it. But do they have the guts? Do they have the cojones, if you will, to actually do anything about it, right? And stand up to this person? He does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I forgot the hand that you tweeted about the goat doing goat things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It wasn't even that big of a goat hand. It was pretty impressive. There's hands where like, there was a famous one in Australia where the flop was like jack, jack, nine, and Phil check raised the flop with six, seven, nothing, just absolutely nothing. And the guy re-raised him, right? And Phil just knew. he went all in with nothing. If the guy calls, he's done, he's cooked. But he was so tuned in that this guy's not strong that he just, you know, he did things like that. And it's tough to play against a guy like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he gets great reads and is able to execute on them, has the guts to execute on them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's got experience, he's got work ethic. He also, I think one thing I'm underselling too, is his strategic mind, right? Like I believe that, You know, like I said, the new age player, they learn how to play through a very systematic approach. Okay, let's look at the data. Make up a game right now. Three cards, we each get three cards. Jacks are wild, sixes are, you know, six of hearts is wild, right? Just make up that game. Phil will figure it out. intuitively very, very quickly, right? Without having the answers for him, right? So that's like the difference between the players of my generation. We had to figure this stuff out on our own. Today, oh, I want to know the answer. I go ask the computer and the computer tells me. So I really believe like if you created a game from scratch that Phil Ivey would be my horse that I wanted to play in it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he's in some sense in tune with some deeper thing. He has what we used to call card sense. Card sense. Can you try to make the case for some others like Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negrano, and maybe one of the modern guys like Justin Bonomo or somebody like that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. Oh, so let's start with Doyle. Like what Doyle has going for him above and beyond is twofold, really. Longevity. I mean, he's in his late 80s. And last time I played with him, I was like, how is he getting better? Like, I really felt like he was playing better than he had, you know, in the previous years. But also with Doyle, like, Doyle had to figure, you know, we talked about my generation having to figure it on their own. I mean, they really had to figure it on their own. Like they didn't have any computer simulation to tell you if Ace King was a favorite over pocket sixes. They didn't. So we know what he did. He would take a deck of cards and they would deal out, and then with a notepad, right, okay, Ace King won. And then they would do like a hundred of them and be like, all right, Ace King won like 53, so it must be a favorite. And he did it manually, you know? And he did it in a time when it was very, very difficult. And he's seen poker evolve and change throughout the years. Now, listen, is he gonna be able to compete against the top players in the world today? Absolutely not, you know? But how many people, he's the best 88 year old player in the world by a mile, okay? That's not even close. And Doyle, again, he's another guy who plays all the games. He's played high stakes cash, tournaments, you name it. He's iconic, you know, he's the godfather." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's also an element to that, so the iconic element, like your personality in poker. I mean, not to romanticize the thing too much, but poker is also a game of personalities. I mean, it's part of the greatness is like the uniqueness of the human being." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think also, yeah. I mean, like looking at it from that perspective in terms of like goat, like goat in terms of what you represent, like the cowboy, the godfather, you know, he's been around, you know, he played in the 60s and stuff like that. It's just something like incredibly cool. Like I often think about if I could go back in time, and visit an era, I'd love to go to Vegas in the 70s. I can think of what it would smell like, probably not ideal, cigarettes and the leather jackets and just the vibe of what it must've been like with the mobsters and things like that. He's lived through all that, all the cool movies we've seen. Doyle talks about some of those films and he's like, yeah, that guy, he said he was gonna stab me in my stomach. He knows these people. He's a source of history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, when poker was a game for the mob and the degenerates and all that kind of stuff before it transitioned into professional sport, a professional game. Yeah, so he was there through the whole thing. He's been there through the whole transition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's seen it all, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and then to the online world. So what about, I can't even say it without smiling, Phil Hellmuth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so Phil, here's the thing with Phil. He takes it very personal when I say this. And he doesn't hear the compliment. He only hears the negativity. Because Phil wants to be considered the greatest of all time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hashtag positive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He wants to be the greatest of all time. Yes. But I'm like, Phil, here's the facts. You have the best, absolute greatest resume at the World Series of Poker of anyone in the world. Is that not enough? Right? That's what you have. You have that, right? Now, do I think you're the best No Limit Hold'em player in the world today? No. Do I think that you can play high stakes mixed games with the best players in the world today and win? No. So he wouldn't get as much flack on this topic if he wasn't so boastful and demanding. You never hear Phil Ivey say, I'm the best in the world. His peers do. But Phil wants to make the claim, and I simply say, I beg to differ, right? I beg to differ. Like, I don't think you are the best player in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we can linger on the compliments so he can hear it, what makes him so good? Because it seems like a lot of times his play is not optimal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, he definitely has his own brand and style of play, right? He does not adhere to – he's never used a solver in his life. He doesn't know – he's not in that world, right? Phil does – Phil has a lot of faith and a lot of confidence in what he does and that it will be successful. And I think there's something to be said about that, right? He doesn't ever lack confidence. in belief that he can win and he finds a way to do it his way. And frankly, a lot of what he does is very effective against specific types of players who are intimidated by him, by whether it's his resume or his demeanor or his attitude sometimes, right? Like if you're an average player and then, you know, you beat Phil in a hand, you're gonna hear it. This idiot from Northern Europe and beat me in this pot, like, and for some people, they don't like that. So he can use that against them. But I also think too, like, he cares so much, right? And that leads to trying really, really hard. Like he sees these moments and he doesn't phone them in. Like whatever brand of poker he plays, he tries his best at all times to succeed and to win. And there's some, even though like he's fundamentally flawed in a lot of things that he does compared to some of the bigger players, his effort and will and like his determination to stick around is, you know, is up there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he is somebody who seems to really hate losing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Yeah. He, you know, he, he, he's got this, he feels like he deserves to win. Right. In all cases. And if he loses it's, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As he joked around that you and him might do an anger management course. Now this is tough because you're a humble guy, but objectively speaking, can you say what your strengths are? You're often listed as one of, if not the greatest player of all time. So what are the things that make you stand out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So for me, when I grew up, I admired the big cash game players, because that's what I was. I loved tournaments, but I wanted to be well-rounded. Like, in my day, you couldn't make the Poker Hall of Fame if you just played one game. You had to jump into the high stakes games in Bobby's room, as they say, right? And I was able to do that. When I was... In my mid-20s, I was playing 4,000, 8,000 limits. You could win or lose a million dollars in a day. So I grinded it out. A lot of people think, oh, he's lucky he's had sponsorship. Otherwise, he'd be broke. I built multimillion-dollar bankrolls before any of that stuff existed. And I did it the good old-fashioned way, by sitting my butt on the table. I think probably one of my biggest strengths is self-awareness and in that regard, a level of humility that always allows me to say, okay, well, you know what? In this case with these players, they're better than me, so what am I going to learn from them? Rather than have this need to say, I am the best because of history and I'm always looking to guys and go, wow, he does this really well, whether it's the Adamos or the Ivys or whoever it may be. My willingness to adapt, I think, and stay relevant by learning what the young guys are learning is something I've always done. I also pride myself on, again, being well-rounded, playing all the games. I don't feel intimidated in any game, whatever the format is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So always being a scholar of the game as the game evolves, as the different games evolve, the different players evolve, the culture evolves, always adjusting by being a scholar, having the humility to be a scholar." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A healthy respect for... a healthy respect for the younger generation, how they learn, what they learn, and what they can teach me, rather than pooh-pooh it and say, oh, these kids today, because that's what a lot of people, like the Mike Mattesos and the Phil Hellmuths of my generation, they just pooh-pooh it because they don't understand it. On a level of one to 10, their level of understanding of this is like a one, maybe, if I'm being generous by calling it a one. They really don't understand it, so they pooh-pooh it. It's easy to do that, like, oh, that's not how I do it, so that's wrong, or that's stupid, or whatever. I don't take that approach. I go, well, let me learn. Let me see what there is to this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that said, the crankiness that Mattisow and Phil Hellmuth have is great to watch, especially when they're at a table with you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I love it, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a blast. You're masterful at being able to get under their skin. What about somebody from the new school, like Justin Bonomo, who's leading in terms of cash wins? Is there somebody like that that stands out to you as a potential GOAT status person?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so there's two different ones, but one is very, so they're both just no limit, right? So I, like, again, when I think of poker, I think of, you know, a variety of games, but there's so many of the young guys that specialize. Michael Adamo is one that I've mentioned several times, and I love the way that he approaches the game. Another one that's highly respected because of his online prowess and his People have looked at how close he is to game theory, and they say he's about as perfect as you get. And he's got a kid named Linus, Linus Love Online, Linus Lingard. So he just came second recently, I believe, in the Triton, huge Triton event. So he's primarily an online player. Yeah, he's an online cash player for the most part, but he plays some live. And he's, again, and I respect the peers that I play with who say, yeah, he's tough as nails. There's another kid too, Russian kid named Timofey Kuznetsov. And he plays all the games and he's well-respected in that regard. And same with a guy like Jungleman, Dan Cates, who's a unique personality. I mean, this guy showed up, won the Poker Players Championship back-to-back years in a Randy Macho Man Savage costume. And he was doing Macho Man the entire time. Oh yeah, I'm gonna take all the chips like I did last year. Bust them all. And he was in character for the entirety of the tournament. This is great. Just unique. But yeah, respect for a lot of those guys." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it gonna take time to figure out who stands the test of time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the thing, right? So a lot of these kids, like there was a guy who beat me heads up in the million dollar one drop. I got 8.7, he won $15 million, a kid named Dan Coleman. He was seen as like the next big thing in poker, right? He made his money. It just wasn't for him. So he's moved on to doing what he's doing, skiing in the Alps, whatever. We have nobody seen him in like five, six years. So that can happen, right? Because there is a lot of burnout. I think it was actually Gotham Chess who mentioned something about how difficult it is to like, I think it's true in poker. When you get really, really good at something, this much better takes so much work. And a lot of people don't necessarily want to put in that kind of work in order to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just even staying at the same level takes a huge amount of work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Like, so if you want to get better at chess, you're already like really, really good. And you're trying to get like one little bit better. You have to study like, in a ridiculous amount, you know? And again, that's, once you've already had, I think the toughest thing for anybody, once you've tasted success and you've already achieved it, staying hungry, staying on the top, reaching the top is much easier than it is to stay there. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Over years, what's your training regimen in poker in terms of how you keep improving? So you said you study games, but that's mostly leading up to a particular tournament. But is there kind of a behind the scenes daily activity you try to do that kind of over time keeps you sharp?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So for me, now that I'm 47, I feel like the predominant aspect of my poker game is going to be in terms of my success is gonna be my mental state, right? So I find it's really, really important for me now at this age to have balance. So when I'm not playing poker and I'm out of it, poker's not even on my radar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're able to remove it from your mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Doing my fantasy hockey, play a little chess, play some golf, watch some hockey, whatever the case may be outside of the game. And then I start to get the itch. Like after the World Series of Poker, the poker door was closed for all of August. Yeah, you took some time off. All of August, I didn't play any poker at all until just recently. I started to get the itch again, because that's what's important for me, is if I don't have the itch and I don't want to play poker, then I'm not gonna be at my best. Once I start getting the itch, that's when I start to say, okay, let's start watching some of these streams, let's see what my opponents are up to lately, and let's look at some solvers and different things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're doing pretty good. You came back and doing pretty good. Yeah, so far. Do you like being in front of the camera? Through the hell of the World Series of Poker this year, you filmed every single day, you did a vlog. Does that energize you? Is that exhausting? Because it's really beneficial to a huge amount of people. It energizes the poker community, but do you see it as a service or do you purely just love it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've been comfortable on camera since I was a kid. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor, like really, really young. And it was always comfortable in that environment. And I think like that gives me a little bit of advantage sometimes too with these filmed events, because I'm comfortable with a mic on and on camera with the lights. And I think a lot of people maybe aren't with the knowledge that other people are gonna see what they're doing every day. So it's been so comfortable and easy for me as far as the World Series goes and the vlogs and all the shooting. It's kind of therapeutic for me. It is essentially my version of journaling, right? So there's a lot of value, I think, in like, at the end of the day, doing a brain dump, where you just write out and journal. But doing it on camera has a similar effect. And it also, you know, when you make a mistake on your own, you're held accountable to you. But when I have to explain it to others, like, here's what I did, and this is the mistake I made or whatever the case may be, it actually, I think that helps me, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so you're held responsible by a larger audience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it's like, so like I said, listen, I'm 47, my life is good, I don't have to be in this tournament. If I'm over it, I can just dump my chips off and go home, right? But I can't when I'm doing the vlog, like I have to actually answer to that, you know? Keeps me in line." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How hard is it to win the main event of the World Series of Poker?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the main event of the World Series of Poker is the hardest event to win, simply because of the sheer size of it. You know, you're talking seven, 8,000 players, right? And a lot of landmines. And frankly, there are so many players that you've not played with before, too. You play these high roller events, like these super ones, you get 30, 40 people, you know everybody, right? So you have an idea. Set the main event you don't know how many ideas guy were in a philadelphia eagles jersey and sunglasses and just raise you being this guy is about so there's a lot of like. It's grueling too. You're seven, eight days where you're in the blender, as you might say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the structure? So it's $10,000 buy-in or something like that. And there's a bunch of tables and you just keep playing. When is it over for a single table?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the way that it works is this. So there's, let's say 8,000 players. And the way the main event works, unique to others, is there's various day ones you can play, right? So at day one, you're gonna play from noon till like midnight. right? If you're still in, you bag up your chips and you'll come back for day two, okay? There's four different day ones, right? Now, they'll all combine essentially to plan a day two. And at the end of the night, they redraw the tables. So you don't just win your table. If players get knocked out, tables break, they continue to be replaced. So you start with 8,000. Then after day one, you've got 6,000. Then you do the same. You play It's like a 12 hour day and you slowly whittle down day four, day three, day four, you're in the money. And then you continue to progress. And then what they do now with the final table is they, because they were trying to do this for TV, these final tables can take, you know, 12 hours to play. And what we were finding was, you know, you start the thing at 5 p.m. and it goes till 8 a.m. and like nobody's watching anymore. So they separate into three days now. And so you're talking now, It's like six, seven days to get to the final table and another three days to play it. So you're grinding for a week and a half." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But most of the time, you're playing against people you've never played against before." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Especially early on, yeah. And then by the end, who knows? Rarely do you see. You see in the last 100, you usually see some notable names. Then in the last 27, you might see one, maybe two. Final table, maybe one. But often it's gonna be some players you've never heard of before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there strategies that maximize your likelihood of having a chance?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, absolutely. Like I think the World Series of Poker main event is a unique animal in that, you know, like we talk about game theory and all that kind of stuff. If you're focused on that when you're playing, you're really not playing well, right? You need to just exploit because you're gonna have a lot of people who see this as a bucket list item. You know, they just wanna play the main event in the World Series and they might be scared. They might be nervous or whatever. You don't have to worry about being balanced, right? Oh, you know, I have to make sure that I'm balanced. No, you don't. You might never. You're playing with this guy now for three hours. You might never see him again. So just make the play that makes sense for you, right? So yeah, I approach that event very differently than I would like playing against the high roller players that I play with. Does that mean more aggressive, essentially? Less, actually. So when you play against really good players, you have to take small plus EV scenarios where you push the envelope and you're playing really aggressive. You're bluffing off your stack. You got to do this. You got to focus a little bit more on being balanced because otherwise, you know, you're not going to beat these guys. Whereas if you're playing with amateurs and you're playing with regular players, for the most part, risking all your chips on a bluff probably don't need to do that. You don't need to do that nearly as much. You can probably slowly but surely build your stack without taking those high risk, high variance situations, because you'll find better situations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What mistakes do amateurs usually make in tournaments like that? Are they over bluffing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think amateurs generally, the biggest mistake they make is they think that pros are bluffing more than they are. So like a pro will bet all his chips on the end and like, Phil Ivey, maybe he's doing some crazy stuff. He's like, probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he's probably just got it, you know, and then they get lose all their money by calling or go going all in as well. And so the right thing is to be more patient. So amateur is too impatient or just bad reads." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So all the amateurs are built different. Some of the amateurs are just too weak and passive. They're just waiting for the nuts, you know? And then, you know, the pros, everyone notices that. And then when they make their big hand, they don't get paid anyway. So in order to win the main event, I mean, you have to have some components of your game that are aggressive. It's very unlikely to expect to just get the cards the whole way and just always have the best hand. You're gonna have to find ways to win pots that, you know, where you don't have the best hand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you win the final table?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The final table is unique now, especially because you're talking about the way that poker works in tournaments is that if there's seven people left and you have just, you know, you're very short on chips, But if one other player goes out, you just make like $300,000 for folding, like just for sitting out, right? The term for that that kids use is ICM, independent chip model, right? Where it talks about the value of each chip. Where what happens, what we see now is, let's say one guy has a big chip lead, and there's another guy who's second in chips, and there's a couple that are short. These guys in the middle, they just play super tight. And they wait for the little guys to go while the big stack is just pounding them because he can afford to, right? He knows that people are handcuffed. So let's say I had 10 million in chips and you have 9 million in chips. And these guys have little chips. If I go in on you, are you going to call me? and risk like, you know, guaranteed pay jumps of like moving up a few spots. So really the question comes down to like, are you the type of guy who just wants to inch up or are you gonna go for it? And you're gonna go for the win. I think ultimately there's some value in being the guy who says, you know, I don't care if I come seventh. I'm not worried about going from seventh to fifth. I'm here to win." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so you're saying like the guys that win will often be the ones that call there. So like, they're not just bullying the small stacks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're the ones that are willing to risk it, right? So there are some people who, you know, if there's five left, You know, and they're third in chips and there's two guys very short and you, you know, they'll have ace king and someone moves, they'll just fold. They fold the hand because they want to wait for those two other players to get broke. And that way they let you know, they make actual money. So you, I guess the thought process between winning first place and winning the most amount of money are different. They're conflicting, right? Because in order to like win, if you're just, if your focus is only on winning the tournament, you will make mistakes financially where you had guaranteed income for just folding, right? Let's say a guy has one chip left. You know, one chip and me and you have good chips and I go all in with you and I lose. Now that guy, you know, got the guaranteed, you know, he got the pay jump that I wouldn't have got. So there's some extremely stupid mistakes you can make from a financial perspective, but it's often at odds with, you know, giving yourself the best chance to actually come first." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And in a tournament, especially the main event, especially the final table, it's all about coming in first." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I know because most of the people who make it, so like, you know, when you play these high rollers, these guys are accustomed to playing for $100,000. They're accustomed to this kind of money. So they're going to play, right? But you're talking about guys who've gone into a $10,000 tournament, maybe never had $100K cash in their life. And now they're sitting there. And it's like 1 million for fifth and 2 million for fourth. So like, they don't want to meet them. They're just going to sit there and go, ah, I don't want. So they'll be under more financial pressure because they're not like your typical high roller type player." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you still able to find the guts to take big risks?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. See, I'm trying to win. Like, I think that gives me an advantage, frankly, where I might make decisions that are financially suboptimal. because I'm trying to win, but there's also an inherent advantage to that. Like that, again, something I watched and learned from a guy like Michael Adamo, where he takes advantage of these people playing so passively in these spots where he's like, I don't, I'm not trying to come, I'm going to win. I'm just going to bully, bulldoze you. Cause I'm not worried about, you know, the small financial mistake of, you know, a pay jump." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What advice could you give to beginning poker players? Actually, at every level, how to get better, how to improve, how to improve their game. Obviously, as you said, it's easiest to get better in the beginning, but what advice would you give how to get better?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So one of the ways, I mean, I think way back to the how I started, right? And there's so many resources and tools available right now to analyze hands, but when you play, right? And you find yourself in a situation or a hand that you're not really sure about, not because you had aces and went all in and you lost, like that's not interesting, but an interesting situation where you're not sure what you did, jot the hand down, write it out. And then either A, use some of the tools, whether it's the solvers, if you're advanced enough, or ask your group, like have a couple of friends at your level and talk through the different decisions and start to learn that way, right? Because those mistakes that you make or those tough hands, that's where the real learning comes from. So basically, because you're gonna be in similar scenarios. In poker, you're rarely gonna have the identical situation, but you'll have situations that are similar. You know, you raise with Ace King, someone three bet, another guy goes all in. Okay, well, what do I do in that spot? You know, you're going to have similar situations in the future as well. So figuring that out, the more you can do that, you chop away at, you know, different strategical mistakes, you know, you used to make that you no longer make." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are there resources like your masterclass is great? Are there books?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there was a guy named Michael Acevedo. This is, again, for a little bit more advanced players, but it's a book called Modern Poker Theory, I think it's called, which sort of explains game theory, right, to the novice, right? So it's a little bit – I think if you're new to poker, it's probably above the rim for you, but once you start to get a little better and you want to understand how to do it, it's probably a good resource for as far as books. And there's also like tons of people who stream poker, professional players. And then you can get in there and you get in on the chat and you start talking, you ask them and you see people, you know, explaining their thought process and things like that. There's so many free resources. And of course my masterclass, I think does a good job of sort of compartmentalizing, like, you know, how to attack it on a deeper level. And we, you know, we get it. I try to get into what's funny when I did the masterclass, I asked them, I was like, well, you know, how high end do you want this in terms of poker? And they're like, we want really, really high end. And I was like, oh, sure. And then I started to explain really, really high end. I'm like, okay, well, maybe the one below that. Right? So I try to explain really complex, you know, theory in a more palatable way, in English, if you will. Because some of these kids, you hear them talk and you'd be like, huh?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you also, which is really nice, give example hands that really illustrate a point, which is really nice. You also wrote a book, I think 10 years ago, Power Hold'em Strategy. It's interesting to think how much of the stuff in that book still applies, how much doesn't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Listen, I still think the book holds up to a certain degree. Obviously, like, you know, it isn't optimal because there's like a more advanced strategies. And if you played that way, people will figure out a way to exploit you. But if you're like an average player playing an average buy-ins, like that's sort of what I coined, like small ball approach, absolutely will work. You know, at the highest level, you have to add much more, a lot more bluffing. But overall, I think it's still, you know, for the most part, there's a lot of really, especially with tournaments, there's a lot of really good principles in the book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the difference in the dynamics, if you could just comment on, between heads-up poker and when multiple people are in one hand? What are interesting aspects to everything we've been talking about, from game theory to exploitative strategies, all that kind of stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the biggest difference when you play, let's say, nine-handed, you know, against eight other players, and heads-up is, first of all, just the type of hands and the number of hands you're gonna have to play. So the way that it works is if there's nine people, two out of the nine hands you have to put in money, and the other seven you could just fold for nothing, okay? When your head's up, you're forced to put money in every single hand, okay? And there's only one other hand in front of you, which means the ranges of hands that you play is way wider, right? So if you're nine handed, right, and you're in first position, you're like, all right, what do I need to play? Like a good pair, you know, two high cards, suited, a big ace, you know, stuff like that. That's it, right? That's what you're gonna play, right? and you're gonna fold all the rest. When your head's up, you look at a king and a two, and you're like, well, I gotta play this. You're forced to play a lot more hands in a lot more complex situations when you're playing heads up, because you're gonna be playing much far weaker hands. Queen five, jack three, all these types of hands, and you're gonna see flops where you're not gonna have the luxury of being like, I'm in there with a premium hand. Queens, kings, aces, those are easier to play, right? Very, very strong holdings. Heads up, you're forced to dance and fight a lot more. You can't sit in the weeds and wait." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you enjoy more?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Mm, heads up is very intense. I like heads up, but I think if you had to play heads up eight, 10 hours, it's so mentally draining because you're faced with so many constant decisions each and every spot. Like you play nine handed, you look at a nine and a three, you throw it away, you hang out for a bit, you relax, you go, you get a little break and you play. Heads up, you're like, it's like, boom, boom. It's like you're in the ring. You know, you're in the octagon and you're facing like haymakers nonstop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Since we talked about online a bit, is it possible to cheat in poker, especially online? We offline also talked about the cheating controversy that's going on in the chess world. Is it possible to use, what is it, remotely connected anal beads to somehow cheat? No. Is that a concern of cheating online?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here's the thing. It's kind of like romanticized from the old days, like, you know, in the Western stuff, like people trying to cheat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And have you ever killed a man because he cheated?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I have not. But when I started out as a teenager, I played in a game with a bunch of Italians and I knew they cheated. And I didn't care because they were so bad that I could win anyway. I was like, I knew they would cheat, but I knew how they were cheating. So I was like, all right, you guys suck. But still, here's the thing. Anytime you're talking about large sums of money, there will be people looking to take advantage, whether that's live or online, right. And so it's like the job essentially of the, you know, the online operators or the, you know, live event staff to police it the best they can and the players themselves being on the lookout for, you know, like a guy like Dole Brunson is a great resource because he's seen it all. And he's seen all the tricks, you know, and so live, you know, he probably could spot a few things. But online, there's there's various ways people can try to cheat. But there's also really good security measures in place to catch them, you know, and we've caught in like about two years ago, there was a huge undertaking of like 500 accounts that were banned for doing different things. And, you know, there's and again, you can't go in, they can't go into detail in terms of how they're doing it, because otherwise, you know, then you're sort of giving the cheats the playbook in terms of how to take advantage. But it's always going to be a concern for poker wherever you play, right? But it's not something I'm worried about personally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So at the highest in person, and by the way, online, there's really interesting algorithms that do some of the work in an automated way to detect, to flag things that are weird. But in person, it's just not something at the highest level that you're super concerned about. So it's not, it didn't quite infiltrate the poker world to a degree where it's a huge concern." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like, so here's the thing. I don't play in private games and whatever, right? But in private games, theoretically, you know, you could be in, if you don't trust the people you're playing with, like I've heard stories of people where, you know, they have an earpiece in that you can't see, right? And they have, you know, like RFID on the cards or something like that. And they have a phone reading it. So they have somebody in a truck telling them, you're gonna win this hand, you're gonna lose this hand. Like that happened in a private game. And the guy, what's often funny about some of these people who cheat is they're so greedy and blatantly obvious that they get caught. Where if they use this tool in a more subtle way, they could probably continue to get away with it. But again, that's not something I worry about in a casino environment, in these tournaments and things like that. But if I was playing in private games, like if I came down to Texas and some guy, I got cheated in a game by a guy named Blacky Blackburn and Tex. That's a red flag right there. I was at the Chimo Hotel. I was a teenager and they saw me playing, you know, I was making good money as a teenager. I had like a $13,000 bankroll, you know, and I went and played in this game with them in a private hotel room and found out later that the guy was a card mechanic. You know, he was dealing and he could, you know, deal you the hands and he knew what you had and stuff like that. So yeah, I remember, you know, I lost a big number in that game and it was a good learning lesson in terms of, you know, being wary of who you trust." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So if the dealer is in on it, that's one way you could cheat. It's fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's part of the reason that they cut. So like, you'll see like a, there's a burn card because what would happen in, you know, maybe in the old days is like, if you're sitting in the one seat, I could lift the card and you could see it the next card coming. Right. So what they do is they have a card on top of it that you burn that isn't the card. And then the next card is the one that comes face up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just learned about the edge sorting thing that Phil Ivey, maybe others were involved with. I just reading it at first was super interesting to me that you can exploit the imperfections in the printing of cards. That was almost cool to me. That's almost not cheating because it's like- That needs to be a movie. That needs to be a movie, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's fascinating. What happened with Phil Ivey in that whole case is it's a catastrophe, really. It is such a horrible precedent. Because here's what he did. Phil Ivey shows up at the casino, says, I want to play this game. They say, okay. All right, I want to play with those dicks. They say, okay. They agree to everything that he says. He never touches the cards. He doesn't do anything. outside of the fact that your cards that you supplied have imperfections on them and he can see them. Okay? So that increases his chances of winning. He could still lose theoretically, right? Probably not, but he can lose in theory. It just gives him a little bit of an edge and it's all stuff based on what you provided. So the idea that you offered a game, I accepted, I beat you, and now you want to free roll me? That's disgusting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people who don't know, maybe you can elaborate. And it's just fascinating to me. But you're exploiting the imperfections in the card patterns on the back. And then they look different if you rotate it. And the fascinating thing, too, when you shuffle, usually you don't rotate the cards. So that you can detect which cards are the strong cards by marking them through rotating them. And the way you know they're rotated is because of the pattern imperfections." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah so some of the cards like you said like you know they had those like the that pattern on it yeah and some of them this was faulty cards on there were not cut properly yeah so like the eights and nines had the card cut differently and those are important cards in this game you know the eights and nines or whatever so you could essentially from looking at the back of the card discern you know, what it's gonna be. You do nothing in terms of like cheating yourself. You're not rigging the game. All you're doing is taking advantage of the fact that you're playing, you know, you've offered me cards that are faulty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I just say that, of course, it would be Phil Ivey, who's the goat at the normal game who would be figuring out this particular thing. I mean, that's what, if you're into soccer, Diego Maradona has that famous hand of God in the World Cup. or he scores a goal with his hand. And so of course the referee didn't see it, they thought it was a header. So, I mean, part of the magic of the genius of the people at the top of the game is they're able to exploit all the flaws that are there. That's a beautiful thing to say." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, see, Phil had, in his heyday, he had He exploited weaknesses in casinos, systems all over the country. In one night, I don't know if you know this story. In one night, he would take a plane, a private plane, and fly to 30 different casinos all over the country because he would have these deals where they're like, all right, we've got this big rich sucker who's going to come here and play craps and he's going to lose all our money. He'd have this deal with one of the casinos where they'd be like, all right, you get 20% back up to half a million. So if you lose half a million, we'll give you back 100K. So he'd go to one casino in Tunica, he'd play half a million, win or lose, he would leave. They think they're gonna get him to stay, they get him a big room, whatever. So let's say he goes to Tunica, he loses half a million. Now he flies to Atlantic City, he wins half a million. He lost half a million and won half a million, but he got 100,000 back. So he's actually plus 100,000. Do that at 10 casinos a night, you're making a million dollars in free equity. And they would give him promotional chips and all these kind of things and free flights and stuff like that. So he took advantage of the image that they're trying to exploit. So this is why I don't have any empathy for these casinos, because they're giving you free drinks. Why do you think they're doing that? Kind of the kindness of their heart? They're trying to exploit you. So guess what? You lost at your own game, pay the piper. And I think it was crazy because the judges in his case said, He did not cheat, but yeah, it's probably not right. Hold on. You just said he didn't cheat. You know, that should be the end of the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then the casinos do the funny thing. I mentioned to you, I was just at the UFC and Dana White is a huge gambler. He's a blackjack gambler. And there's that famous situation where he got kicked out of a casino and the casinos do that kind of thing when you win too much. So he won some ridiculous amount of money. He bets like, I mean, he plays like millions of dollars on hands of blackjack. It's insane. And so he won really big and he got kicked out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Was he counting?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, he wasn't counting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So counting in blackjack here in Las Vegas is like the only game where they actually can ask you not to play. So like basically if you're counting cards, right, you could potentially have an edge in blackjack. And there are some professionals who do that, but they get caught pretty quickly. And then they say, you can play craps, you can play whatever you want, but you can't play blackjack here anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I don't think Dana White is counting. I think he was winning a lot. I guess they can claim that they believe you're counting, because how do you really know if you're counting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, they easily, they figure it out. So basically they have an eye in the sky and they can see. So if you're varying your bet size, right? So there are certain spots where based on the cards that are out, let's say for example, a lot of the twos, threes, and fours, and fives have been coming out. So the deck is rich in face cards. That's very good for the player, right? So imagine you were betting 500 bucks then all of a sudden you up your bet to 2,000 or 5,000 when the deck is rich. They know when the deck is rich in high cards because they keep a counter themselves. If they notice a player increasing their bet sizes when the deck is good for them, it's a telltale sign." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting. I don't think Daniel White would be counting. Casinos don't kick you out if you – don't often kick you out. Do they ever kick you out if you make too much money? You're playing millions of dollars that they" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Unless they, they would never kick you out for making too much money unless they suspect cheating. Cause why would they, they have an advantage. They want the money back. It's not like you go in there, win 10 million. You're like, Oh no, that's enough for us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about if he was talking shit the whole time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wonder, I don't think that would matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because in the long run, they'll get the money back. Exactly. You tweeted, if you watch Jersey Shore, Family Vacation, we would probably get along really well. What is it about, because I had lived in Jersey for a while, what is it about Jersey Shore characters that you love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I just love that they're sort of, I love the debauchery. I think Pauly D's a fun guy, you know, and just like, it's just something like, it's just, It's, what do you call it? It's trash TV, it's a guilty pleasure, but you can just watch Snooki get drunk and falling all over herself or whatever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I like- Is that part, do you love that part of Vegas as well?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Eh, not really, like I don't go out and stuff, but I kinda, I just like the characters. I like that they have, you know, unique personalities. And I think like we live in a world now where people are more and more careful of what they say and afraid of backlash and all that stuff. And it's kind of like an old school version of just like, say what you feel, it's okay, as long as your intent is good. And, you know, like they haven't been canceled, if you will, which is good, but I feel like their type of behavior, slowly but surely, because they got a lot of flack originally for misrepresenting Italian Americans or something like that. There was a lot of backlash about this isn't how Italian Americans really are and blah, blah, blah. They were representing that group of people and they received some backlash back in the day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm a huge supporter of diversity in all the beautiful forms that the human species is able to generate, and that's certainly one dimension. What's the greatest Vegas movie, would you say? I don't know if that's a difficult question, but Fear of Losing Las Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas, Casino." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I watch, because anytime Casino's on randomly, I always watch it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Such a great movie. It could be one of the, Sharon Stone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Frankly, Sharon Stone reminded me, every time I would watch the movie, it reminded me of my wife, Amanda. Totally. I would see the character and I was like, I'm the Robert De Niro character in the film. I used to watch it through that lens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "From like the depth of love that you have." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just kind of, she was, I remember that she was like, she was like, she lit up every room. She does light up every room when she goes there. Everybody's attracted and drawn to her. And she was kind of, when she was younger, she was a little wild and crazy and whatnot. So she reminded me of the Sharon Stone character. And then the Robert De Niro character is trying to like, to have a stable life, you know, and be that, and that was me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who was the Joe Pesci in your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there was a guy named, there was a James Woods, for sure, who was the Lester. We called him, we actually called him Lester. A few of my friends call him Lester. You know, the greasy guy who tried to get back in and all that, but yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, one of my favorite scenes is when they meet out in the desert, and it's like a 50-50 odds if you're gonna make it out alive in that. I mean, yeah, there's an epicness to that portrayal of Vegas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love, I mean, it's just totally, I mean, it's obviously more corporate now and it's different, but I love those movies. I love all those movies, just seeing that life. And like I said, if there was a period in time that I could go back to and just experience it, it would be that, you know, right around then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There'll be that. We're playing with a mob." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think of like these crime shows today, like they're so unrealistic now because If they're in an era that is now, none of this stuff can happen, because there's cameras everywhere. You can't get away with these killing somebody and jumping in a car, and you're gonna get caught. But in the 70s, that stuff happened. Across the line, you die. Lake Mead is recently losing water, and every couple days, they're finding more and more bodies from that era. Oh, no. They really are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're close with your mom. What did you learn about life from your mom?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My mother was very generous. My mother, she experienced joy through giving people. Food, for the most part, my dad would get him drinks, and that was how she felt fulfilled, right? She felt good when she would cook for you. And she'd be that person, you'd come over, and she'd be like, are you hungry? And you'd say, no, no, no, I'm okay. She's gonna put 15 things in front of you, and you'll eat. You're gonna eat. Because everyone does that, to be polite. No, no, I'm good. But they will start to eat. And just her hospitality in that regard, and just being generous, and being a good host to people, and things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did that help define who you are as a person, that generosity?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Did it rub off on you? It made me think about, in my life, When it comes to like any sort of business deals or things like that, I don't want to get the best of it in such a way where I screw the other person. I genuinely don't. I'd much rather you owe me than me owe you. So if I hire people, They get paid more than they're supposed to. And I'd rather them do that and work towards it rather than feel underpaid because if they're underpaid, they'll likely under deliver. Whereas if they feel overpaid, then if I need them to do something special, they're not going to be like, Hey, I don't get paid for that. It's like, yeah, you do. You really do. So that's certainly like played out in my life where I set it up in such a way where I don't owe. You know, I'm owed, but that's okay. Cause I can handle taking the worst of it in spots. I don't like being the person to, you know, feel like I'm indebted to others." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And in some way the karma of that tends to pay dividends in the long term somehow. Somehow there's somebody up there that's keeping track in some kind of way. What advice would you give to young people today in high school and college? How to have a career they can be proud of or maybe how to have a life in general they can be proud of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say like, Your twenties is a good opportunity to set yourself up for the rest of your life, right? So while the twenties are a period where you want to have fun and you want to experience youth. It's also a good opportunity to start thinking about what do you want your life to look like in your 30s and your 40s, right? I feel like it's the best time to really put yourself out there and take risks and try to hit it, whatever, to work really, really hard to set yourself up. I said this at an event I was speaking at. With poker, when your bankroll is very, very small, it's replenishable, right? You don't need to protect it as much as you do once you've got something, right? Once you have a brand or you have money, you have something like that, that's when you wanna start protecting it. But in your 20s is an opportunity to just really sort of get a cut, to work really, really hard to set yourself up for the future. I am concerned a little bit, like every time I talk to kids today, I'm like, what do you wanna be? They all wanna be YouTubers or Instagram stars or rappers. Like, okay, that's cool, but there's only so many of those that there can be. So it might be worthwhile having a little bit of a backup plan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it's easier to be successful on Instagram and social media if you do something else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say this too. One other thing I would say is don't choose a profession or an idea because you think it'll make you rich. Pursue something that you actually love. because if you love it, you're way more likely to become rich. If you don't, you do something that you don't actually enjoy, now you're spending a lot of your life unhappy, doing something you don't want, and if you're not passionate about it, the chances of you being successful are much lower." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also becoming rich, and I've talked to a lot of rich people, hang out with a lot of rich people, is not going to be as fulfilling as you imagine. if you arrive there by not doing the thing that you love doing. Ultimately, the thing that you love doing is like, that's what makes life worth it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's another quote, I can't remember who it was, otherwise I would quote them, but it says something to the effect of like, if we believe in the lie that more is always better, then we can never truly arrive. Because wherever we are, more is better, right? I've never understood, and I've been around rich people, like, you know, you said, you know, I never got, I can't, I don't get it. Like, if you have a billion dollars, why do you give a shit about money at all? Like, and they're still like, oh, we made this deal, and I'm like, you know, we picked up 300, who cares? Like, your life is set. Like, there is that bell curve, right? Where obviously being in poverty, you know, there's obviously a high rate of unhappiness, but there's a certain amount of money where you reach, you know, where you reach a level of happiness and then too much, you find that people that are searching for money to fulfill these holes, it starts to go back down again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the getting more money could become a game, like a sport that's fun to play as long as you Directly or indirectly acknowledge that what you love is the game of it versus the actual attainment of money." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think that's what it is, right? For me, I've never cared about money that much. I just never did. Otherwise, I would have a lot more of it. But it's always been strange to me how people that have that kind of money, like, are cheap in any way, you know? Like they wouldn't donate 5,000 to a worthwhile charity, because it's like, buddy, this, like when it changes your life, not, you know, even like small things like taxes, like, okay, you have $20 billion and you're worried about paying 33%, 30% of 31. I get it, I get the point of it all, but like it literally has no effect on your life whatsoever. Your life is unchanged, whether it's 31 or 33." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's the negative of a lot of money is if it corrupts the way you see the world, you start to be protective and so on. I mean, part of the challenge of when you get a lot of money is people start to treat you differently. And so navigating that correctly is very challenging. So don't change. Remain the same person you always were. Because if you change, You start to, I mean that's why power corrupts, is you get a lot of power, you get a lot of fame, you get a lot of money, you start to distrust people, and you start to push away people that are actually really close to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was all you and you're a genius and you're so great and all these other people who don't have, it's just because they don't have what you have. Then you start to view that group of people, whether they're impoverished or whatever, as less than and that you're some great guru where you could have just got lucky and bought bitcoins that could have done anything and then you became super wealthy. Then you have this Dunning-Kruger effect. where you think you know everything about everything. And a lot of poker people have that. And I, listen, I'm probably guilty in some ways too, you know, thinking because you can figure out poker and be, you know, great at that, that you could figure out anything. So there's like, it's true, right? I mean, we sort of, we genuinely feel like people that reach the highest levels of poker feel like they are intelligent. So they will look at problem solving and think that they have answers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you have to remind yourself that you're not. It's best to see the world as you did just get lucky, or at least from my perspective, that you're not better than anybody." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that you worked hard to get where you were. There isn't, but at the same time, it's not available to everybody in the same way. Right time, right place. For me, my poker career could have gone very differently. If things didn't work out, if I had some bad luck in the wrong times, who knows where I'd be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you said your brain crawl is pretty small in your 20s. I'm sure you've been around a lot of people you care a lot about who've lost everything in poker. What's that like? What's those low points of losing everything?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think because I've been there, I have more empathy than I probably should for those people that really feel for them. Because I remember being in Vegas and being totally broke and like a guy loaning me $400 and me like turning that 400 into 20,000, 400 bucks. And it was like eternally grateful of that. So when I have friends who go through that, like I always try to consult them obviously but they really need his money for the most part. But I remember saying no to one friend because he didn't have a plan. So I like to try to help them in that regard. Like my buddy's like, can you stake me in this game? And I was like, all right, well, how much do you, then I was like, let's break down the math, bro. You want me to stake you? So you get 50% of the profit, right? So I said, how much do you think you can make in this game? How much is the biggest, biggest winners make? He's like, well, I can probably, you know, I probably do like 20,000 a month. in this game, it's okay. So you get half of that, cause I get 10, right? What is your monthly nut? How much are you spending? It's like, well, I'm renting this thing for 8,000. You're spending 17,000 a month. So like, no matter what you're set up to fail, like this isn't gonna work. So I actually didn't give him the money. And I was like, what you need to do to earn more money is lower your monthly nut because it's too high. It just, you know, it just doesn't mathematically add up. So trying to set them right in that regard is something that like, I feel obliged to do, especially if they're friends." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But what about the mental aspect of the struggle they're going through, the struggle you were going through? I mean, it's really rough to have no money." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not for everybody. This really isn't. A lot of people might listen to this and think like, oh, I want to play poker. It's like most people fail. Most people who want to play in the NFL, they spend their college years, most of them are not going to make it. Most of you who try to play poker professionally are going to fail, and you're going to experience despair. There are those, like in anything, that have the passion, have the know-how, have the luck, and all that sort of stuff, and it all pans out. But they're the minority." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so for the low points, if you remember, what does it take to sort of overcome that, overcome the mental struggle? I mean, you're making it sound like certain people are just genetically able to and certain aren't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do think some people are more apt to being able to deal with adversity and having resilience, and some people just can't hack it. But generally what I would advise people that are, let's say a guy's playing really high stakes or whatever, doing badly is, Step number one is take a little bit of a break here. Let's recalibrate and let's start small again. Let's restart and let's play smaller stakes and let's get our confidence back because in poker, without confidence, you cannot be successful. It is incredibly important to have almost an inflated level of confidence in yourself because you're up against it, right? As I said, the majority of people fail. So why are you special? Why are you different? You have to be pretty confident about yourself to think that you are one of the chosen ones." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then don't resist the despair and take a nap." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Definitely take a nap. Listen, it's okay to experience it, like I said. Yeah, you're gonna experience the spirit. What else, what should you be feeling? You know, if things are going poorly and you just lost all your money. Excited? Maybe like, okay, have your moment of grief. Allow yourself to experience it so that you can, you know, reassemble." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a fundamental way in which you haven't really lived life if you haven't experienced periods of despair." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "you have a jaded view of the world, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Weird thing about the human condition that both the highs and the lows are important. Yeah. What role does love play in the human condition, Daniel Negreanu?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What role has love played in your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's, yeah, that's, you know, you sort of talked about the ups and downs of, uh, of the human condition and love has been that for me, right? Like I'm in a good place now, but even with my now wife, years ago, she was young, she was new to poker and she wasn't ready to settle down. I was like, when I met her, I think I was 31, she was 21. And I was ready to like lock her up, if you will, you know, let's do this. And I bought a ring way back when she was like, not about that. She was living the Hollywood life. She was living, you know, partying in LA, doing that kind of stuff and wasn't ready. And we split and that one hit me hard. So I didn't realize how much of a hit that had on my confidence in my, in everything really, in poker, with other women. It had me a little jaded about women too, you know, resentful, you know. And it took a lot of like self-reflection. I did like a lot of personal growth work and workshops and things like that. And then didn't see her for years. And she came back to town. I was a much different person. It was just, you know, four years ago or something like that. And she was too, went to dinner. A few months later, we were married. It worked out so different because we both had to grow and become different people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that love was still there somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like she went through her relationships, I went through mine, we experienced life and I was married once before too, called my starter marriage, if you will. Yeah. You don't know. I think until you do it, until you get married and experience, not necessarily the sacrifices, but your value systems, if they don't align identically, which they're not going to, someone like me, probably one of my strengths in poker, but my weaknesses in relationship is judgment. When I play poker, I need to judge you. That's essentially what I'm doing. I'm gauging who you are and what you're good at and what you're bad at. And that can have repercussions, because that's the lens I look at everyone with, based on how you live your life. I'm judging you. This guy's this, this guy's that, this guy's that. And that's not healthy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have to shut that off in personal relationships." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to learn to like, and the thing, I finally realized what love is, frankly, for me, with her, is no judgment. Right. She's so like, yeah, so I have my way of being right. If she wants to have cereal for dinner, babe. That's the best decision for her. I was living in a framework of better and worse. The way that I do things is better and yours is worse. Do things more like I do. That's a recipe for disaster. True acceptance and true love is accepting someone like exactly as they are. You know, if she wants to do something different, I'm gonna support her. Whatever it is, even if I disagree with it personally and like the way that I would do things, learning to just realize that she's had a different journey and a different walk towards where she's at than I have. So, I can't pass my judgments on other people like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I believe it is ethically wrong and probably illegal to eat cereal for dinner." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Listen, if she wants it, she wants it. Acceptance. Like when she goes to bed, like all these little things about my regimented life, she's not. Like our motto at our wedding was like, you keep me wild, I'll keep you safe, you keep me wild. I keep her safe, she keeps me wild. She's like not organized and anal and all those kind of things, I am. She helps me like, let loose, you know, oh no, I'm eating this, this, she's like, have some popcorn. I'm like, all right, let's do it, you know? She keeps me freed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And accepting that, embracing that, the differences, the chaos of it. Yeah. That's what makes it fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like I literally do think about with her, how important it is and how much I try to like, just come from neutral and like compassion and never judge because she's got other things that she deals with, right? That I don't. She's bipolar, right? So with that, I've studied and I've learned a lot about, you know, sort of mental health and what that means and ways in which a lot of characteristics about somebody is completely out of their control when they're bipolar, right? And there's swings, like there's no cocktail for bipolar that solves the issue, right? So there's medications that work to level you out for periods of time, but then they start to fade and they don't work as well. So they constantly need readjustment. It's an unsolved mystery to a certain degree. So in some sense, her diagnosis made our relationship easier because I don't take anything personal, right? I realize that sometimes she's gonna be in a mood. I mean, she's so good about communicating it, though. She tells me, some morning she'll be like, bad mood, trying to get out of it, babe. I'm like, okay, I leave her alone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's great. I mean, she's grown to be able to communicate, to understand, to self-reflect, to understand where she is. I have people in my life who I love who are bipolar. It's a beautiful ride." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, right? Yeah, the highs and the lows are there. But yeah, because I feel like a protector. For me, I just wanna be a rock, right? And that's part of the whole cereal thing. If she wants to eat cereal, don't make a wrong for anything she wants to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What have you learned from life from the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers? You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There'll be plenty of time for counting when the dealing's done. Do you live by those words?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The first part of it, for sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What did they even mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You got to know when to hold, know when. So basically it's like, all right, you know, in life, like, you know, let's say, let's use a whatever, the market, for example. You bought a stock, right? Or you bought Bitcoin and you're like, it's gonna go to the moon, right? It's like, okay, well, maybe things have changed. New scenario, new circumstances, new situation. Are you going down with the ship, right? Or are you gonna lay the hand down? Are you gonna fold it? Whether it's a relationship, you know, you're with this woman, you're like, all right, I think it's time to fold this one. I don't think that we're gonna be able to make this hand work right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When to fold and when to run. Yeah, when to run. So maybe every gambler knows that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep, because every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser. That's like a stoic philosophy. And the best thing you can hope for is to die in your sleep. Every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser. What does that mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like that one. I like, for me, that's like the difference between victim and responsible, like the way that I think about it, right? You can be a victim to circumstance or you can be responsible for everything in your life, right? So when an event happens, the event itself is neither good or bad until you assign it value, right? So like an event happens and it can be traumatic, it can be painful, but how you respond to it is ultimately gonna be up to you. Like you actually do have a choice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's the thing you can control. The fact that you, Daniel Negreanu, took my commentary about the gambler seriously shows once more that you're a beautiful human being. Thank you so much for being who you are, for inspiring millions of people about poker, about how to live life, and thank you for giving me your valuable time today. This is amazing. Thanks for talking." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what does something like ChatGPT do? It's mostly focused on make language like the language that humans have made and put on the web and so on. So, you know, its primary sort of underlying technical thing is you've given a prompt, it's trying to continue that prompt in a way that's somehow typical of what it's seen based on a trillion words of text that humans have written on the web. And the way it's doing that is with something which is probably quite similar to the way we humans do the first stages of that, using a neural net and so on, and just saying, given this piece of text, let's ripple through the neural net and get one word at a time of output. And it's kind of a shallow computation on a large amount of kind of training data that is what we humans have put on the web. That's a different thing from sort of the computational stack that I spent the last, I don't know, 40 years or so building, which has to do with what can you compute many steps, potentially a very deep computation, It's not taking the statistics of what we humans have produced and trying to continue things based on that statistics. Instead, it's trying to take the formal structure that we've created in our civilization, whether it's from mathematics or whether it's from systematic knowledge of all kinds, and use that to do arbitrarily deep computations to figure out things that aren't just, let's match what's already been kind of said on the web, but let's potentially be able to compute something new and different that's never been computed before. So as a practical matter, Our goal is to have made as much as possible of the world computable in the sense that if there's a question that in principle is answerable from some sort of expert knowledge that's been accumulated, we can compute the answer to that question. And we can do it in a sort of reliable way that's the best one can do given what the expertise that our civilization has accumulated. It's a much more sort of labor intensive on the side of kind of being creating kind of the computational system to do that. Obviously, in the kind of the chat GPT world, it's like take things which were produced for quite other purposes, namely all the things we've written out on the web and so on, and sort of forage from that things which are like what's been written on the web. So I think as a practical point of view, I view sort of the chat GPT thing as being wide and shallow, and what we're trying to do with sort of building out computation as being this sort of deep, also broad, but most importantly, kind of deep type of thing. I think another way to think about this is, if you go back in human history, I don't know, a thousand years or something, and you say, what can the typical person, what's the typical person going to figure out? Well, the answer is there are certain kinds of things that we humans can quickly figure out. That's sort of what our neural architecture and the kinds of things we learn in our lives let us do. But then there's this whole layer of formalization that got developed, which is the whole story of intellectual history and the whole depth of learning. That formalization turned into things like logic, mathematics, science, and so on. And that's the kind of thing that allows one to build these towers of things you work out. It's not just, I can immediately figure this out. It's, no, I can use this kind of formalism to go step by step and work out something which was not immediately obvious to me. And that's kind of the story of what we're trying to do computationally is to be able to build those kind of tall towers of what implies what implies what and so on. And as opposed to kind of the, yes, I can immediately figure it out. It's just like what I saw somewhere else in something that I heard or remembered or something like this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What can you say about the kind of formal structure, the kind of formal foundation you can build such a formal structure on, about the kinds of things you would start on in order to build this kind of deep, computable knowledge trees?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the question is sort of how do you think about computation? And there's a couple of points here. One is what computation intrinsically is like, and the other is what aspects of computation we humans with our minds and with the kinds of things we've learned can sort of relate to in that computational universe. So if we start on the kind of what can computation be like, it's something I've spent some big chunk of my life studying, is imagine that you're, you know, we usually write programs where we kind of know what we want the program to do and we carefully write many lines of code and we hope that the program does what we intended it to do. But the thing I've been interested in is if you just look at the kind of natural science of programs. So you just say, I'm gonna make this program. It's a really tiny program. Maybe I even pick the pieces of the program at random, but it's really tiny. And by really tiny, I mean, you know, less than a line of code type thing. You say, what does this program do? And you run it. And big discovery that I made in the early 80s is that even extremely simple programs when you run them can do really complicated things. Really surprised me. It took me several years to kind of realize that that was a thing, so to speak. But that realization that even very simple programs can do incredibly complicated things that we very much don't expect, That discovery, I mean, I realized that that's very much, I think, how nature works. That is, nature has simple rules, but yet does all sorts of complicated things that we might not expect. A big thing of the last few years has been understanding that that's how the whole universe and physics works, but that's a quite separate topic. But so there's this whole world of programs and what they do and very rich, sophisticated things that these programs can do. But when we look at many of these programs, we look at them and say, well, that's kind of, I don't really know what that's doing. It's not a very human kind of thing. So on the one hand, we have sort of what's possible in the computational universe. On the other hand, we have the kinds of things that we humans think about, the kinds of things that are developed in kind of our intellectual history. And that's really the challenge to sort of making things computational is to connect what's computationally possible out in the computational universe with the things that we humans sort of typically think about with our minds. Now, that's a complicated kind of moving target because the things that we think about change over time. We've learned more stuff. We've invented mathematics. We've invented various kinds of ideas and structures and so on. So it's gradually expanding. We're kind of gradually colonizing more and more of this kind of intellectual space of possibilities. But the real thing, the real challenge is how do you take what is computationally possible? How do you take, how do you encapsulate the kinds of things that we think about in a way that kind of plugs into what's computationally possible? And actually the big sort of idea there is this idea of kind of symbolic programming, symbolic representations of things. And so the question is, when you look at sort of everything in the world and you kind of, you know, you take some visual scene or something you're looking at, and you say, well, how do I turn that into something that I can kind of stuff into my mind? You know, there are lots of pixels in my visual scene, but the things that I remembered from that visual scene are, you know, there's a chair in this place. It's a kind of a symbolic representation of the visual scene. There are two chairs and a table or something, rather than there are all these pixels arranged in all these detailed ways. And so the question then is how do you take sort of all the things in the world and make some kind of representation that corresponds to the types of ways that we think about things? And human language is sort of one form of representation that we have. We talk about chairs, that's a word in human language and so on. How do we take, but human language is not in and of itself something that plugs in very well to sort of computation. It's not something from which you can immediately compute consequences and so on. And so you have to kind of find a way to take sort of the stuff we understand from human language and make it more precise. And that's really the story of symbolic programming. And what that turns into is something which I didn't know at the time it was going to work as well as it has, but back in the 1979 or so, I was trying to build my first big computer system and trying to figure out, you know, how should I represent computations at a high level? And I kind of invented this idea of using kind of symbolic expressions, you know, structured as it's kind of like a function and a bunch of arguments. but that function doesn't necessarily evaluate to anything. It's just a thing that sits there representing a structure. And so building up that structure, and it's turned out that structure has been extremely, it's a good match for the way that we humans, it seems to be a good match for the way that we humans kind of conceptualize higher level things. And it's been for the last, I don't know, 45 years or something, it's served me remarkably well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So building up that structure using this kind of symbolic representation. But what can you say about abstractions here? Because you could just start with your physics project, you could start at a hypergraph at a very, very low level and build up everything from there, but you don't. You take shortcuts. You take the highest level of abstraction, convert that, the kind of abstraction that's convertible to something computable using symbolic representation. and then that's your new foundation for that little piece of knowledge. Somehow all of that is integrated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so the sort of, a very important phenomenon that is kind of a thing that I've sort of realized is just, it's one of these things that sort of in the future of kind of everything is going to become more and more important is this phenomenon of computational irreducibility. And the question is, if you know the rules for something, you have a program, you're gonna run it, you might say, I know the rules, great, I know everything about what's gonna happen. Well, in principle, you do, because you can just run those rules out and just see what they do. You might run them a million steps, you see what happens, et cetera. The question is, can you immediately jump ahead and say, I know what's gonna happen after a million steps, and the answer is 13 or something? And one of the very critical things to realize is, if you could reduce that computation, there is in a sense no point in doing the computation. The place where you really get value out of doing the computation is when you had to do the computation to find out the answer. But this phenomenon that you have to do the computation to find out the answer, this phenomenon of computational irreducibility seems to be tremendously important for thinking about lots of kinds of things. So one of the things that happens is, okay, you've got a model of the universe at the low level in terms of atoms of space and hypergraphs and rewriting hypergraphs and so on. And it's happening, you know, 10 to the 100 times every second, let's say. Well, you say, great, then we've nailed it. We know how the universe works. Well, the problem is, the universe can figure out what it's gonna do. It does those 10 to the 100 steps, but for us to work out what it's gonna do, we have no way to reduce that computation. The only way to do the computation, to see the result of the computation, is to do it. And if we're operating within the universe, there's no opportunity to do that, because the universe is doing it as fast as the universe can do it, and that's what's happening. So what we're trying to do, and a lot of the story of science, a lot of other kinds of things, is finding pockets of reducibility. That is, you could have a situation where everything in the world is full of computational irreducibility, we never know what's gonna happen next. The only way we can figure out what's gonna happen next is just let the system run and see what happens. So in a sense, the story of most kinds of science, inventions, a lot of kinds of things, is the story of finding these places where we can locally jump ahead. And one of the features of computational reducibility is there are always pockets of reducibility. There are always an infinite number of places where you can jump ahead. There's no way where you can jump completely ahead, but there are little patches, little places where you can jump ahead a bit. And I think we can talk about physics project and so on, but I think the thing we realize is we kind of exist in a slice of all the possible computational irreducibility in the universe. We exist in a slice where there's a reasonable amount of predictability. in a sense, as we try and construct these kind of higher levels of abstraction, symbolic representations and so on, what we're doing is we're finding these lumps of reducibility that we can kind of attach ourselves to, and about which we can kind of have fairly simple narrative things to say. Because in principle, I say, what's gonna happen in the next few seconds? Oh, there are these molecules moving around in the air in this room, and oh gosh, it's an incredibly complicated story. And that's a whole computationally irreducible thing, most of which I don't care about. And most of it is, well, the air is still gonna be here and nothing much is going to be different about it. And that's a kind of reducible fact about what is ultimately at an underlying level of computationally irreducible process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And life would not be possible if we didn't have a large number of such reducible pockets. Pockets amenable to reduction into something symbolic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think so. I mean, life in the way that we experience it, that I mean, you know, one might, you know, depending on what we mean by life, so to speak, the experience that we have of sort of consistent things happening in the world, the idea of space, for example, where there's, you know, we can just say, you're here, you move there. it's kind of the same thing. It's still you in that different place, even though you're made of different atoms of space and so on. This idea that there's sort of this level of predictability of what's going on, that's us finding a slice of reducibility in what is underneath this computationally irreducible kind of system. And I think that's sort of the thing which is actually my favorite discovery of the last few years is the realization that it is sort of the interaction between the sort of underlying computational irreducibility and our nature as kind of observers who sort of have to key into computational reducibility, that fact, leads to the main laws of physics that we discovered in the 20th century. So this is, we talk about this in more detail, but this is, to me, it's kind of our nature as observers, the fact that we are computationally bounded observers, we don't get to follow all those little pieces of computational irreducibility to stuff what is out there in the world into our minds requires that we are looking at things that are reducible, we are compressing, we're extracting just some essence, some kind of symbolic essence of what's the detail of what's going on in the world, that together with one other condition that at first seems sort of trivial, but isn't, which is that we believe we are persistent in time. That is, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the causality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here's the thing. At every moment, according to our theory, we're made of different atoms of space. At every moment, sort of the microscopic detail of what the universe is made of is being rewritten. And in fact, the very fact that there's coherence between different parts of space is a consequence of the fact that there are all these little processes going on that kind of knit together the structure of space. It's kind of like if you wanted to have a fluid with a bunch of molecules in it, if those molecules weren't interacting, you wouldn't have this fluid that would pour and do all these kinds of things. It would just be sort of a free-floating collection of molecules. So similar it is with space, that the fact that space is kind of knitted together as a consequence of all this activity in space. And the fact that kind of what we consist of sort of this series of, you know, we're continually being rewritten. And the question is, why is it the case that we think of ourselves as being the same us through time? That's kind of a key assumption. I think it's a key aspect of what we see as sort of our consciousness, so to speak, is that we have this kind of consistent thread of experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, isn't that just another limitation of our mind, that we wanna reduce reality into some, that kind of temporal, consistency is just a nice narrative to tell ourselves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the fact is, I think it's critical to the way we humans typically operate, is that we have a single thread of experience. If you imagine sort of a mind where you have, maybe that's what's happening in various kinds of minds that aren't working the same way other minds work, is that you're splitting into multiple threads of experience. It's also something where, when you look at, I don't know, quantum mechanics, for example, in the insides of quantum mechanics, it's splitting into many threads of experience. But in order for us humans to interact with it, you kind of have to knit all those different threads together so that we say, oh yeah, a definite thing happened, and now the next definite thing happens, and so on. And I think, you know, sort of inside, it's... it's sort of interesting to try and imagine what's it like to have kind of these fundamentally multiple threads of experience going on. I mean, right now, different human minds have different threads of experience. We just have a bunch of minds that are interacting with each other, but we don't have a, you know, within each mind, there's a single thread. And that's a, that is indeed a simplification. I think it's a, it's a thing, you know, the general computational system does not have that simplification. And it's one of the things, people often seem to think that consciousness is the highest level of kind of things that can happen in the universe, so to speak. But I think that's not true. I think it's actually a specialization in which, among other things, you have this idea of a single thread of experience, which is not a general feature of anything that could kind of computationally happen in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a feature of a computationally limited system that's only able to observe reducible pockets. So I mean this word observer, it means something in quantum mechanics, it means something in a lot of places. It means something to us humans as conscious beings. So what's the importance of the observer? What is the observer and what's the importance of the observer in the computational universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this question of what is an observer, what's the general idea of an observer, is actually one of my next projects, which got somewhat derailed by the current sort of AI mania, but- Is there a connection there, or is that, do you think the observer is primarily a physics phenomena? Is it related to the whole AI thing? Yes, it is related. So one question is, what is a general observer? So, you know, we know, we have an idea what is a general computational system. We think about Turing machines, we think about other models of computation. There's a question, what is a general model of an observer? And there's kind of observers like us, which is kind of the observers we're interested in. We could imagine an alien observer that deals with computational irreducibility and it has a mind that's utterly different from ours and completely incoherent with what we're like. But the fact is that if we are talking about observers like us, that one of the key things is this idea of kind of taking all the detail of the world and being able to stuff it into a mind. being able to take all the detail and kind of extract out of it a smaller set of degrees of freedom, a smaller number of elements that will sort of fit in our minds. And I think this question, so I've been interested in trying to characterize what is the general observer? And the general observer is, I think, in part, there are many, let me give an example of it. You have a gas, it's got a bunch of molecules bouncing around, and the thing you're measuring about the gas is its pressure. And the only thing you as an observer care about is pressure. And that means you have a piston on the side of this box, and the piston is being pushed by the gas. And there are many, many different ways that molecules can hit that piston. But all that matters is the kind of aggregate of all those molecular impacts, because that's what determines pressure. So there's a huge number of different configurations of the gas, which are all equivalent. So I think one key aspect of observers is this equivalencing of many different configurations of a system, saying, all I care about is this aggregate feature. All I care about is this overall thing. And that's sort of one aspect. And we see that in lots of different, again, it's the same story over and over again, that there's a lot of detail in the world, but what we are extracting from it is something, a sort of a thin summary of that detail." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that thin summary nevertheless true? Can it be a crappy approximation? that on average is correct. I mean, if we look at the observer that's the human mind, it seems like there's a lot of very, as represented by natural language, for example, there's a lot of really crappy approximation. And that could be maybe a feature of it, that there's ambiguity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right. You don't know, you know, it could be the case. You're just measuring the aggregate impacts of these molecules, but there is some tiny, tiny probability that the molecules will arrange themselves in some really funky way, and that just measuring that average isn't going to be the main point. By the way, an awful lot of science is very confused about this because, you know, you look at papers and people are really keen. They draw this curve and they have these, you know, these bars on the curve and things. It's just this curve and it's this one thing and it's supposed to represent some system that has all kinds of details in it. And this is a way that lots of science has gotten wrong. Because people say, I remember years ago, I was studying snowflake growth. You know, you have a snowflake and it's growing, it has all these arms, it's doing complicated things. But there was a literature on this stuff, and it talked about, you know, what's the rate of snowflake growth? And, you know, it got pretty good answers for the rate of the growth of the snowflake. And then I looked at it more carefully, and they had these nice curves of, you know, snowflake growth rates and so on. I looked at it more carefully and I realized, according to their models, the snowflake will be spherical. And so they got the growth rate right, but the detail was just utterly wrong. And not only the detail, the whole thing was not capturing, it was capturing this aspect of the system that was in a sense missing the main point of what was going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is the geometric shape of a snowflake?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Snowflakes start in the phase of water that's relevant to the formation of snowflakes. It's a phase of ice, which starts with a hexagonal arrangement of water molecules. And so it starts off growing as a hexagonal plate. And then what happens is- It's a plate, oh, oh, versus sphere. Well, no, no, but it's much more than that. I mean, snowflakes are fluffy. You know, typical snowflakes have little dendritic arms. And what actually happens is, it's kind of cool because you can make these very simple discrete models with cellular automata and things that figure this out. You start off with this, you know, hexagonal thing, and then the places it starts to grow little arms. And every time a little piece of ice it adds itself to the snowflake. The fact that that ice condensed from the water vapor heats the snowflake up locally, and so it makes it less likely for another piece of ice to accumulate right nearby. So this leads to a kind of growth inhibition. So you grow an arm, And it is a separated arm because right around the arm, it got a little bit hot and it didn't add more ice there. So what happens is it grows, you have a hexagon, it grows out arms, the arms grow arms, and then the arms go arms go arms. And eventually, actually, it's kind of cool because it actually fills in another hexagon, a bigger hexagon. And when I first looked at this, you know, I had a very simple model for this. I realized, you know, when it fills in that hexagon, it actually leaves some holes behind. So I thought, well, you know, is that really right? So I look at these pictures of snowflakes, and sure enough, they have these little holes in them that are kind of scars of the way that these arms grow out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can't fill in backfill holes. They don't backfill, yeah, they don't backfill. And presumably there's a limitation on how big, like you can't arbitrarily grow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not sure, I mean, the thing falls through the, I mean, I think it hits the ground at some point. I think you can grow, I think you can grow in the lab, I think you can grow pretty big ones. I think you can grow many, many iterations of this kind of, goes from hexagon, it grows out arms, it turns back, it fills back into a hexagon, it grows more arms again. In 3D? No, it's flat, usually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is it flat? Why doesn't it span out? Okay, okay, okay, wait a minute. You said it's fluffy, and fluffy is a three-dimensional property, no? Or two?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's fluffy. Snow is, okay, so, you know, what makes, we're really in a detail here. I like this, let's go there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Multiple snowflakes become fluffy. A single snowflake is not fluffy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, a single snowflake is fluffy. And what happens is, if you have snow that is just pure hexagons, they fit together pretty well. It doesn't have a lot of air in it. And they can also slide against each other pretty easily. And so the snow can be pretty, I think avalanches happen sometimes when the things tend to be these hexagonal plates and it kind of slides. But then when the thing has all these arms that have grown out, It's not, they don't fit together very well. And that's why the snow has lots of air in it. And if you look at one of these snowflakes and if you catch one, you'll see it has little arms and people. Actually, people often say, you know, no two snowflakes are alike. That's mostly because as a snowflake grows, they do grow pretty consistently with these different arms and so on, but you capture them at different times. As they, you know, they fell through the air in a different way, you'll catch this one at this stage. And as it goes through different stages, they look really different. And so that's why, you know, it kind of looks like no two snowflakes are alike because you caught them at different times. So the rules under which they grow are the same." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just the timing is. Okay, so the point is science is not able to describe the full complexity of snowflake growth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, science, if you do what people might often do, which is say, okay, let's make it scientific, let's turn it into one number. and that one number is kind of the growth rate of the arms or some such other thing, that fails to capture sort of the detail of what's going on inside the system. And that's, in a sense, a big challenge for science is how do you extract from the natural world, for example, those aspects of it that you are interested in talking about? Now, you might just say, I don't really care about the fluffiness of the snowflakes. All I care about is the growth rate of the arms, in which case, you know, you can have a good model without knowing anything about the fluffiness. But the fact is, as a practical, if you say, what is the most obvious feature of a snowflake? Oh, that it has this complicated shape. Well, then you've got a different story about what you model. I mean, this is one of the features of sort of modeling and science, that what is a model? A model is some way of reducing the actuality of the world to something where you can readily sort of give a narrative for what's happening. where you can basically make some kind of abstraction of what's happening and answer questions that you care about answering. If you wanted to answer all possible questions about the system, you'd have to have the whole system, because you might care about this particular molecule, where did it go? And your model, which is some big abstraction of that, has nothing to say about that. So, you know, one of the things that's often confusing in science is people will have, I've got a model, somebody says. Somebody else will say, I don't believe in your model because it doesn't capture the feature of the system that I care about. You know, there's always this controversy about, you know, is it a correct model? Well, no model except for the actual system itself is a correct model in the sense that it captures everything. The question is, does it capture what you care about capturing? Sometimes that's ultimately defined by what you're going to build technology out of, things like this. The one counterexample to this is, if you think you're modeling the whole universe all the way down, then there is a notion of a correct model. But even that is more complicated because it depends on kind of how observers sample things and so on. That's a separate story. But at least at the first level, to say this thing about, oh, it's an approximation, you're capturing one aspect, you're not capturing other aspects. When you really think you have a complete model for the whole universe, you better be capturing ultimately everything, even though to actually run that model is impossible because of computational irreducibility. The only thing that successfully runs that model is the actual running of the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is the universe itself. But okay, so what you care about It's an interesting concept. So that's a human concept. So that's what you're doing with Wolfram Alpha and Wolfram Language, is you're trying to come up with symbolic representations as simple as possible. So a model that's as simple as possible that fully captures stuff we care about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So I mean, for example, we could, we'll have a thing about data about movies, let's say. We could be describing every individual pixel in every movie and so on, but that's not the level that people care about. And it's, yes, this is a, I mean, and that level that people care about is somewhat related to what's described in natural language. But what we're trying to do is to find a way to sort of represent precisely so you can compute things. See, one thing we say, you give a piece of natural language, question is, you feed it to a computer, you say, does the computer understand this natural language? Well, the computer processes it in some way, it does this, maybe it can make a continuation of the natural language, maybe it can go on from the prompt and say what it's gonna say. You say, does it really understand it? Hard to know, but for in this kind of computational world, there is a very definite definition of does it understand, which is, could it be turned into this symbolic computational thing from which you can compute all kinds of consequences? And that's the sense in which one has sort of a target for the understanding of natural language. And that's kind of our goal is to have as much as possible about the world that can be computed in a reasonable way, so to speak, be able to be sort of captured by this kind of computational language. That's kind of the goal. And I think for us humans, the main thing that's important is as we formalize what we're talking about, it gives us a way of kind of building a structure where we can sort of build this tower of consequences of things. So if we're just saying, well, let's talk about it in natural language, it doesn't really give us some hard foundation that lets us, you know, build step by step to work something out. I mean, it's kind of like what happens in math. If we were just sort of vaguely talking about math, but didn't have the kind of full structure of math and all that kind of thing, we wouldn't be able to build this kind of big tower of consequences. And so, in a sense, what we're trying to do with the whole computational language effort is to make a formalism for describing the world that makes it possible to kind of build this tower of consequences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, can you talk about this dance between natural language and Wolfram language? So there's this gigantic thing called the internet where people post memes and diary type thoughts and very important sounding articles and all of that that makes up the training data set for GPT. And then there's Wolfram Language. How can you map from the natural language of the internet to the Wolfram Language? Is there a manual, is there an automated way of doing that as we look into the future?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so Wolfram Alpha, What it does, its kind of front end is turning natural language into computational language." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. What you mean by that is there's a prompt, you ask a question, what is the capital of some country?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. And it turns into, what's the distance between Chicago and London or something? and that will turn into, you know, geodistance of entity, city, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Each one of those things is very well defined. We know, you know, given that it's the entity, city, Chicago, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know, Illinois, United States, you know, we know the geolocation of that, we know its population, we know all kinds of things about it, which we have, you know, curated that data to be able to know that with some degree of certainty, so to speak. And then, then we can compute things from this. And that's kind of the, yeah, that's the idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then something like GPT, large language models, do they allow you to make that conversion much more powerful?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so that's an interesting thing, which we still don't know everything about, okay? I mean, this question of going from natural language to computational language. In Wolfram Alpha, we've now, you know, Wolfram Alpha's been out and about for, what, 13 and a half years now. And, you know, we've achieved I don't know what it is, 98%, 99% success on queries that get put into it. Now, obviously there's a sort of feedback loop because the things that work are things people go on putting into it. But we've got to a very high success rate of the little fragments of natural language that people put in, questions, math calculations, chemistry calculations, whatever it is. We do very well at that, turning those things into computational language. Now, from the very beginning of Wolfram Alpha, I thought about, for example, writing code with natural language. In fact, I was just looking at this recently. I had a post that I wrote in 2010, 2011, called something like, programming with natural language is actually going to work. And so, we had done a bunch of experiments. using methods that were a little bit, some of them a little bit machine learning-like, but certainly not the same kind of idea of vast training data and so on. That is the story of large language models. Actually, I know that post, a piece of utter trivia, but that post, Steve Jobs forwarded that post around to all kinds of people at Apple. That was, because he never really liked programming languages. So he was very happy to see the idea. that you could get rid of this kind of layer of kind of engineering-like structure. He would have liked, I think, what's happening now, because it really is the case that you can, you know, this idea that you have to kind of learn how the computer works to use a programming language is something that is, I think, a thing that, you know, just like you had to learn the details of the opcodes to know how assembly language worked and so on, it's kind of a thing that's a limited time horizon. But kind of the, you know, so this idea of how elaborate can you make kind of the prompt, how elaborate can you make the natural language and abstract from it computational language? It's a very interesting question. And, you know, what chatGBT, you know, GBT-4 and so on can do is pretty good. It's a very interesting process. I mean, I'm still trying to understand this workflow. We've been working out a lot of tooling around this workflow. That's pretty interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Natural language to computational language. Right. And the process, especially if it's conversation, like dialogue. It's like multiple queries kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. There's so many things that are really interesting that work and so on. So first thing is, can you just walk up to the computer and expect to sort of specify a computation? What one realizes is humans have to have some idea of kind of this way of thinking about things computationally. Without that, you're kind of out of luck because you just have no idea what you're going to walk up to a computer. I remember when I should tell a silly story about myself. The very first computer I saw, which is when I was 10 years old, and it was a big mainframe computer and so on, and I didn't really understand what computers did. and it's like, somebody's showing me this computer and it's like, you know, can the computer work out the weight of a dinosaur? It's like, that isn't a sensible thing to ask. That's kind of, you know, you have to give it, that's not what computers do. I mean, in Wolfram Alpha, for example, you could say, what's the typical weight of a stegosaurus and it will give you some answer, but that's a very different kind of thing from what one thinks of computers as doing. And so the kind of the question of, you know, first thing is people have to have an idea of what, what computation is about. For education, that is the key thing. It's kind of this notion, not computer science, not the details of programming, but just this idea of how do you think about the world computationally. Computation Thinking about the world computationally is kind of this formal way of thinking about the world. We've had other ones, like logic was a way of sort of abstracting and formalizing some aspects of the world. Mathematics is another one. Computation is this very broad way of sort of formalizing the way we think about the world. And the thing that's cool about computation is if we can successfully formalize things in terms of computation, computers can help us figure out what the consequences are. It's not like you formalized it with math, well, that's nice, but now you have to, if you're not using a computer to do the math, you have to go work out a bunch of stuff yourself. So I think, but this idea, let's see, I mean, we're trying to take We're talking about natural language and its relationship to computational language. The typical workflow, I think, is first, human has to have some kind of idea of what they're trying to do. If it's something that they want to build a tower of capabilities on, something that they want to formalize and make computational. So then human can type something in to, you know, some LLM system and sort of say vaguely what they want in sort of computational terms. Then it does pretty well at synthesizing Wolfram language code. and it'll probably do better in the future because we've got a huge number of examples of natural language input together with the Wolfram language translation of that. So it's kind of a, you know, that's a thing where you can kind of extrapolating from all those examples makes it easier to do that task." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is the prompter task could also kind of debugging the Wolfram language code or is your hope to not do that debugging?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, no, no, no, I mean, so there are many steps here. Okay, so first, the first thing is you type natural language. It generates Wolfram Language." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have examples, by the way? Do you have an example that, is it the dinosaur example? Do you have an example that jumps to mind that we should be thinking about, some dumb example?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like, take my heart rate data and, you know, figure out whether I, you know, make a moving average every seven days or something and work out what the, and make a plot of the results, okay? So that's a thing which is, you know, about two thirds of a line of orphan language code. I mean, it's, you know, list plots of moving average of some data bin or something of the data, and then you'll get the result. And, you know, the vague thing that I was just saying in natural language, could, would almost certainly correctly turn into that very simple piece of orphan language code." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you start mumbling about heart rate. Yeah. And kind of, you know, you arrive at the moving average kind of idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. You say average over seven days, maybe it'll figure out that that's a moving, you know, that that can be encapsulated as this moving average idea. I'm not sure. But then the typical workflow that, I'm seeing is you generate this piece of orphan language code. It's pretty small usually. If it isn't small, it probably isn't right. But it's pretty small. And orphan language is one of the ideas of orphan language is it's a language that humans can read. It's not a language which, programming languages tend to be this one way story of humans write them and computers execute from them. Orphan language is intended to be something which is sort of like math notation, something where, you know, humans write it and humans are supposed to read it as well. And so kind of the workflow that's emerging is kind of this human mumbles some things, you know, large language model produces a fragment of orphan language code, then you look at that, you say, well, typically you just run it first. You see, does it produce the right thing? You look at what it produces. You might say that's obviously crazy. You look at the code. You see, I see why it's crazy. You fix it. If you really care about the result and you really want to make sure it's right, you better look at that code and understand it because that's the way you have the sort of checkpoint of, did it really do what I expected it to do? Now, you go beyond that. I mean, it's, you know, what we find is, for example, let's say the code does the wrong thing. Then you can often say to the large language model, can you adjust this to do this? And it's pretty good at doing that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting. So you're using the output of the code to give you hints about the the function of the code. So you're debugging based on the output of the code, not the code itself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, the plugin that we have for ChatGPT, it does that routinely. It will send the thing and it will get a result. It will discover, the LLM will discover itself that the result is not plausible. And it will go back and say, oh, I'm sorry, it's very polite. And it goes back and says, I'll rewrite that piece of code. And then it will try it again. and get the result. The other thing that's pretty interesting is when you're just running, so one of the new concepts that we have, we invented this whole idea of notebooks back 36 years ago now. And so now there's the question of sort of how do you combine this idea of notebooks where you have text and code and output How do you combine that with the notion of chat and so on? And there's some really interesting things there. Like for example, a very typical thing now is we have these notebooks where as soon as the, if the thing produces errors, if the, you know, run this code and it produces messages and so on, the LLM automatically not only looks at those messages, it can also see all kinds of internal information about stack traces and things like this. And it can then, it does a remarkably good job of guessing what's wrong. and telling you, so in other words, it's looking at things, sort of interesting, it's kind of a typical sort of AI-ish thing, that it's able to have more sensory data than we humans are able to have, because it's able to look at a bunch of stuff that we humans would kind of glaze over looking at, and it's able to then come up with, oh, this is the explanation of what's happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what is the data, the stack trace, the code you've written previously, the natural language you've written?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's also what's happening is one of the things that's, for example, when there's these messages, there's documentation about these messages, there's examples of where the messages have occurred otherwise, all these kinds of things. The other thing that's really amusing with this is when it makes a mistake, one of the things that's in our prompt when the code doesn't work is, read the documentation. And we have another piece of the plugin that lets it read documentation. And that, again, is very, very useful. Because it will figure out, sometimes it'll make up the name of some option for some function that doesn't really exist, read the documentation. It'll have some wrong structure for the function and so on. That's a powerful thing. I mean, the thing that I've realized is, We built this language over the course of all these years to be nice and coherent and consistent and so on, so it's easy for humans to understand. Turns out there was a side effect that I didn't anticipate, which is it makes it easier for AIs to understand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's almost like another natural language, but. Yeah. So Wolfram language is a kind of foreign language. Yes, yes. You have a lineup, English, French, Japanese, Wolfram language, and then, I don't know, Spanish, and then the system is not gonna notice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, I mean, maybe. You know, that's an interesting question, because it really depends on what I see as being an important piece of fundamental science that basically just jumped out at us with Chat GPT. Because I think, you know, the real question is, why does chat GPT work? How is it possible to encapsulate, you know, to successfully reproduce all these kinds of things in natural language, you know, with a, you know, a comparatively small, he says, you know, couple of hundred billion, weights of neural net and so on. And I think that relates to kind of a fundamental fact about language, which the main thing is that I think there's a structure to language that we haven't kind of really explored very well. It's kind of the semantic grammar I'm talking about language. I mean, we kind of know that when we set up human language, we know that it has certain regularities. We know that it has a certain grammatical structure, noun followed by verb, followed by noun, adjectives, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's its kind of grammatical structure. But I think the thing that Chattopadhyay is showing us is that there's an additional kind of regularity to language, which has to do with the meaning of the language beyond just this pure part of speech combination type of thing. And I think the one example of that that we've had in the past is logic. And I think my picture of how was logic invented, how was logic discovered, it really was a thing that was discovered in its original conception. It was discovered presumably by Aristotle, who kind of listened to a bunch of people, orators giving speeches, and this one made sense, that one doesn't make sense, this one, and you see these patterns of if the, I don't know what, if the Persians do this, then the this does that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, And what Aristotle realized is there's a structure to those sentences. There's a structure to that rhetoric that doesn't matter whether it's the Persians and the Greeks, or whether it's the cats and the dogs. It's just P and Q. You can abstract from the details of these particular sentences. You can lift out this kind of formal structure, and that's what logic is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a heck of a discovery, by the way, logic. You're making me realize now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not obvious. The fact that there is an abstraction from natural language that has where you can fill in any word you want is a very interesting discovery. Now, it took a long time to mature. I mean, Aristotle had this idea of syllogistic logic. where there were these particular patterns of how you could argue things, so to speak. And, you know, in the Middle Ages, part of education was you memorized the syllogisms. I forget how many there were, but 15 of them or something. And they all had names. They all had mnemonics. Like I think Barbara and Sullerant were two of the mnemonics for the syllogisms. And people would kind of, this is a valid argument because it follows the Barbara syllogism, so to speak. And it took until 1830 with George Boole to kind of get beyond that and kind of see that there was a level of abstraction that was beyond this particular template of a sentence, so to speak. And what's interesting there is, in a sense, you know, chat GPT is operating at the Aristotelian level. It's essentially dealing with templates of sentences. By the time you get to Boole and Boolean algebra and this idea of, you know, you can have arbitrary depth nested collections of ands and ors and nots, and you can resolve what they mean. That's the kind of thing, that's a computation story. That's, you know, you've gone beyond the pure sort of templates of natural language to something which is an arbitrarily deep computation. But the thing that I think we realized from CHAT-GPT is, you know, Aristotle stopped too quickly. And there was more that you could have lifted out of language as formal structures. And I think there's, you know, in a sense, we've captured some of that in, you know, some of what is in language. There's a lot of kind of little calculi, little algebras of what you can say, what language talks about. I mean, whether it's, I don't know, if you say, I go from place A to place B, place B to place C. Then I know I've gone from place A to place C. If A is a friend of B and B is a friend of C, it doesn't necessarily follow that A is a friend of C. These are things that are, you know, that there are, If you go from place A to place B, place B to place C, it doesn't matter how you went. Like logic, it doesn't matter whether you flew there, walked there, swam there, whatever. You still, this transitivity of where you go is still valid. And there are many kinds of kind of features, I think, of the way the world works. that are captured in these aspects of language, so to speak. And I think what Chachubiti effectively has found, just like it discovered logic, you know, people are really surprised it can do these logical inferences. It discovered logic the same way Aristotle discovered logic, by looking at a lot of sentences effectively, and noticing the patterns in those sentences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it feels like it's discovering something much more complicated than logic. So this kind of semantic grammar, I think you wrote about this, maybe we can call it the laws of language, I believe you call, or which I like, the laws of thought." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that was the title that George Boole had for his Boolean algebra back in 1830, but yes. Laws of thought? Yes, that was what he said. All right. So he thought he nailed it with Boolean algebra." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's more to it. And it's a good question, how much more is there to it? And it seems like one of the reasons, as you imply, that the reason GPT works, CHAD-GPT works, is that there's a finite number of things to it. Like it's discovering the laws, in some sense, GPT is discovering this laws of semantic grammar that underlies language." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and what's sort of interesting is, in the computational universe, there's a lot of other kinds of computation that you could do. They're just not ones that we humans have cared about and operate with. And that's probably because our brains are built in a certain way, and the neural nets of our brains are not that different, in some sense, from the neural nets of a large language model. And that's kind of, and so when we think about, and maybe we can talk about this some more, but when we think about sort of what will AIs ultimately do, The answer is, insofar as AIs are just doing computation, they can run off and do all these kinds of crazy computations, but the ones that we sort of have decided we care about is this kind of very limited set." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's where the reinforcement learning with human feedback seems to come in. The more the AIs say the stuff that kind of interests us, the more we're impressed by it. So it can do a lot of interesting, intelligent things, but we're only interested in the AI systems when they communicate in a human-like way about human-like topics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, well, it's like technology. I mean, in a sense, the physical world provides all kinds of things. There are all kinds of processes going on in physics. Only a limited set of those are ones that we capture and use for technology, because they're only a limited set where we say, this is a thing that we can sort of apply to the human purposes we currently care about. I mean, you might've said, okay, you pick up a piece of rock, You say, okay, this is a nice silicate. It contains all kinds of silicon. I don't care. Then you realize, oh, we could actually turn this into a semiconductor wafer and make a microprocessor out of it. And then we care a lot about it. And it's this thing about what do we, in the evolution of our civilization, what things do we identify as being things we care about? I mean, it's like when there was a little announcement recently of the possibility of a high temperature superconductor that involved the element lutetium. which generally nobody has cared about. But suddenly if there's this application that relates to kind of human purposes, we start to care a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So given your thinking that GPT may have discovered inklings of laws of thought, Do you think such laws exist? Can we linger on that? What's your intuition here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, definitely. I mean, the fact is, look, logic is but the first step. There are many other kinds of calculi about things that we consider, you know, about sort of things that happen in the world or things that are meaningful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, how do you know logic's not the last step? You know what I mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because we can plainly see that the thing, I mean, if you say, here's a sentence that is syntactically correct, okay? You look at it and you're like, you know, the happy electron, you know, eight, I don't know what, something that it just, you look at it and it's like, this is meaningless. It's just a bunch of words. It's syntactically correct. The nouns and the verbs are in the right place, but it just doesn't mean anything. And so there clearly is some rule that there are rules that determine when a sentence has the potential to be meaningful that go beyond the pure parts of speech syntax. And so the question is, what are those rules? And are there a fairly finite set of those rules? My guess is that there's a fairly finite set of those rules. And once you have those rules, you have a kind of a construction kit, just like the rules of syntactic grammar give you a construction kit for making syntactically correct sentences. So you can also have a construction kit for making semantically correct sentences. Those sentences may not be realized in the world, I mean, I think the elephant flew to the moon. Semantically, we know, we have an idea. If I say that to you, you kind of know what that means, but the fact is it hasn't been realized in the world, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So semantically correct, perhaps, is things that can be imagined with the human mind, no. things that are consistent with both our imagination and our understanding of physical reality. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, good question. I mean, it's a good question. It's a good question. I mean, I think it is, given the way we have constructed language, it is things which fit with the things we're describing in language. It's a bit circular in the end, because you can, and the sort of boundaries of what is physically realizable. Okay, let's take the example of motion, okay? Motion is a complicated concept. It might seem like it's a concept that should have been figured out by the Greeks long ago, but it's actually a really pretty complicated concept, because what is motion? Motion is you can go from place A to place B and it's still you when you get to the other end, right? You take an object, you move it, and it's still the same object, but it's in a different place. Now, even in ordinary physics, that doesn't always work that way. If you're near a space-time singularity in a black hole, for example, and you take your teapot or something, you don't have much of a teapot by the time it's near the space-time singularity. It's been completely deformed beyond recognition. But so that's a case where pure motion doesn't really work. You can't have a thing stay the same. But so this idea of motion is something that sort of is a slightly complicated idea. But once you have the idea of motion, you can start, once you have the idea that you're going to describe things as being the same thing but in a different place, that sort of abstracted idea then has, you know, that has all sorts of consequences, like this transitivity of motion, go from A to B, B to C, you've gone from A to C. And that's, so that level of description, you can have what are sort of inevitable consequences, they're inevitable features of the way you've sort of set things up. And that's, I think, what this sort of semantic grammar is capturing, is things like that. And I think that it's a question of what does the word mean? When you say, I move from here to there, well, it's complicated to say what that means. This is this whole issue of, is pure motion possible, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But once you have kind of got an idea of what that means, then there are inevitable consequences of that idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the very idea of meaning, it seems like there's some words that become, it's like there's a latent ambiguity to them. I mean, it's the word like emotionally loaded words like hate and love. It's like what do they mean exactly? So especially when you have relationships between complicated objects, we seem to take this kind of shortcut descriptive shortcut to describe like object A hates object B. What's that really mean? Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, words are defined by kind of our social use of them. I mean, it's not, you know, a word In computational language, for example, when we say we have a construct there, we expect that that construct is a building block from which we can construct an arbitrarily tall tower. So we have to have a very solid building block. And we have to, it turns into a piece of code, it has documentation, it's a whole thing. But the word hate, the documentation for that word Well, there isn't a standard documentation for that word, so to speak. It's a complicated thing defined by kind of how we use it. When, you know, if it wasn't for the fact that we were using language, I mean, so what is language at some level? Language is a way of packaging thoughts so that we can communicate them to another mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can these complicated words be converted into something that a computation engine can use?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so I think the answer to that is that what one can do in computational language is make a specific definition. And if you have a complicated word, like let's say the word eat, okay? you'd think, oh, it's a simple word. It's, you know, animals eat things, whatever else. But, you know, you do programming, you say, this function eats arguments, which is sort of poetically similar to the animal eating things. But if you start to say, well, what are the implications of, you know, the function eating something, you know, does it, can the function be poisoned? Well, maybe it can actually, but, you know, if there's a type mismatch or something in some language, but, you know, in what, how far does that analogy go? And it's just an analogy. Whereas if you use the word eat in a computational language level, you would define there isn't a thing which you anchor to the kind of natural language concept eat, but it is now some precise definition of that, that then you can compute things from." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But don't you think the analogy is also precise? Software eats the world. Don't you think there's a, there is something concrete in terms of meaning about analogies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, but the thing that sort of is the first target for computational language is to take sort of the ordinary meaning of things and try and make it precise, make it sufficiently precise you can build these towers of computation on top of it. So it's kind of like if you start with a piece of poetry and you say, I'm going to define my program with this piece of poetry, It's kind of like, that's a difficult thing. It's better to say, I'm gonna just have this boring piece of prose, and it's using words in the ordinary way, and that's how I'm communicating with my computer, and that's how I'm going to build this solid building block from which I can construct this whole kind of computational tower." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some sense where if you take a poem and reduce it to something computable, you're gonna have very few things left. So maybe there's a bunch of human interaction that's just poetic, aimless nonsense. That's just recreational, like hamstring a wheel. It's not actually producing anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think that that's a complicated thing, because in a sense, human linguistic communication is, there's one mind, it's producing language, that language is having an effect on another mind. And the question of there's sort of a type of effect that is well-defined, let's say, where, for example, it's very independent of the two minds. There's communication where it can matter a lot, sort of what the experience of one mind is versus another one and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but... What is the purpose of natural language communication? So computational language somehow feels more amenable to the definition of purpose. It's like, yeah, you're given two clean representations of a concept and you can build a tower based on that. Is natural language the same thing but more fuzzy? What?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think the story of natural language, that's the great invention of our species. We don't know whether it exists in other species, but we know it exists in our species. It's the thing that allows you to sort of communicate abstractly from like one generation of the species to another. You can, you know, there is an abstract version of knowledge that can be passed down. It doesn't have to be, you know, genetics. It doesn't have to be, you know, you don't have to apprentice the next species, you know, the next generation of birds to the previous one to show them how something works. There is this abstracted version of knowledge that can be kind of passed down. Now, that it relies on, it still tends to rely, because language is fuzzy, it does tend to rely on the fact that if we look at some ancient language where we don't have a chain of translations from it until what we have today, we may not understand that ancient language. And we may not understand, you know, its concepts may be different from the ones that we have today. We still have to have something of a chain, but it is something where we can realistically expect to communicate abstract ideas. And that's, you know, that's one of the big, big roles of language. I think, you know, in, And that's been, this ability to sort of concretify abstract things is what language has provided." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see natural language and thought as the same? The stuff that's going inside your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's been a long debate in philosophy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems to become more important now when we think about how intelligent GPT is. Whatever that means. Whatever that means, but it seems like the stuff that's going on in the human mind seems something like intelligence. It is language. But we call it intelligence. Yeah, we call it, well, yes. And so you start to think of, okay, what's the relationship between thought, the language of thought, the laws of thought, the laws of, than the words like reasoning and the laws of language and how that has to do with computation, which seems like a more rigorous, precise ways of reasoning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, which are beyond human. I mean, much of what computers do, humans do not do. I mean, you might say- Humans are a subset, presumably, hopefully. Yes, yes, right. You know, you might say, who needs computation when we have large language models? Large language models can just, you know, eventually you'll have a big enough neuron that it can do anything. But they're really doing the kinds of things that humans quickly do. And there are plenty of sort of formal things that humans never quickly do. For example, I don't know, you know, some people can do mental arithmetic. They can do a certain amount of math in their minds. I don't think many people can run a program in their minds. of any sophistication. It's just not something people do, it's not something people have even thought of doing, because it's kind of not, you can easily run it on a computer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "An arbitrary program. Yeah. Aren't we running specialized programs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but if I say to you, here's a Turing machine. You know, tell me what it does after 50 steps. And you're like, trying to think about that in your mind. That's really hard to do. It's not what people do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's- Well, in some sense, people program, they build a computer, they program it, just to answer your question about what the system does after 50 steps. I mean, humans build computers. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yeah, that's right. But they've created something which is then, you know, then when they run it, it's doing something different than what's happening in their minds. I mean, they've outsourced that piece of computation from something that is internally happening in their minds to something that is now a tool that's external to their minds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So by the way, humans, to you, didn't invent computers, they discovered them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "they discovered computation, which they invented the technology of computers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The computer is just a kind of way to plug into this whole stream of computation. There's probably other ways." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's probably a lot of ways. Well, for sure. I mean, the particular ways that we make computers out of semiconductors and electronics and so on, that's the particular technology stack we built. I mean, the story of a lot of what people try to do with quantum computing is finding different sort of underlying physical infrastructure for doing computation. You know, biology. does lots of computation. It does it using an infrastructure that's different from semiconductors and electronics. It's a, you know, it's a molecular scale sort of computational process that hopefully we'll understand more about. I have some ideas about understanding more about that. but that's another, it's another representation of computation. Things that happen in the physical universe at the level of these evolving hypergraphs and so on, that's another sort of implementation layer for this abstract idea of computation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if GPT or large language models are starting to form, starting to develop or implicitly understand the laws of language and thought, do you think they can be made explicit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. How? With a bunch of effort. I mean, it's like doing natural science. I mean, what is happening in natural science? You have the world that's doing all these complicated things, and then you discover, you know, Newton's laws, for example. This is how motion works. This is the way that this particular sort of idealization of the world, this is how we describe it in a simple computationally reducible way. And I think it's the same thing here. It's there are sort of computationally reducible aspects of what's happening that you can get a kind of narrative theory for just as we've got narrative theories in physics and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it will be depressing or exciting when all the laws of thought are made explicit, human thought made explicit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that once you understand computational irreducibility, it's neither of those things. Because the fact is people say, for example, people will say, oh, but I have free will. I operate in a way that is, they have the idea that they're doing something that is sort of internal to them, that they're figuring out what's happening. But in fact, We think there are laws of physics that ultimately determine every electrical impulse in a nerve and things like this. So you might say, isn't it depressing that we are ultimately just determined by the rules of physics, so to speak? It's the same thing. It's at a higher level. It's like it's a shorter distance to get from kind of semantic grammar to the way that we might construct a piece of text than it is to get from individual nerve firings to how we construct a piece of text. But it's not fundamentally different. And by the way, as soon as we have this kind of level of, you know, this other level of description, it's kind of, it helps us to go even further. So we'll end up being able to produce more and more complicated kinds of things that just like when we, you know, if we didn't have a computer and we knew certain rules, we could write them down, we'd go a certain distance. But once we have a computer, we can go vastly further. And this is the same kind of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wrote a blog post titled, What is Chad GPT Doing and Why Does It Work? We've been talking about this, but can we just step back and linger on this question? What's Chad GPT doing? What are these... a bunch of billion parameters trained on a large number of words. Why does it seem to work again? Is it because to the point you made that there's laws of language that can be discovered by such a process? Is there something more to it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let's talk about sort of the low level of what ChatGPT is doing. I mean, ultimately, you give it a prompt, it's trying to work out, you know, what should the next word be?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is wild. Isn't that surprising to you that this kind of low-level, dumb training procedure can create something syntactically correct first, and then semantically correct second?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, the thing that has been sort of a story of my life is realizing that simple rules can do much more complicated things than you imagine. That something that starts simple and starts simple to describe can grow a thing that is, you know, vastly more complicated than you can imagine. And honestly, it's taken me, I don't know, I've sort of been thinking about this now 40 years or so, And it always surprises me. I mean, even for example, in our physics project, sort of thinking about the whole universe growing from these simple rules, I still resist because I keep on thinking, you know, how can something really complicated arise from something that simple? It just seems, you know, it seems wrong. But yet, you know, the majority of my life, I've kind of known from things I've studied that this is the way things work. So yes, it is wild that it's possible to write a word at a time and produce a coherent essay, for example. But it's worth understanding kind of how that's working. I mean, it's kind of like if it was going to say, you know, the cat sat on thee, what's the next word? Okay, so how does it figure out the next word? Well, it's seen a trillion words written on the internet. and it's seen the cat sat on the floor, the cat sat on the sofa, the cat sat on the whatever. So it's minimal thing to do is just say, let's look at what we saw on the internet. We saw 10,000 examples of the cat sat on the, what was the most probable next word? Let's just pick that out and say, that's the next word. And that's kind of what it, at some level, is trying to do. Now the problem is, there isn't enough text on the internet to, if you have a reasonable length of prompt, that specific prompt will never have occurred on the internet. And as you kind of go further, there just won't be a place where you could have trained where you could just worked out probabilities from what was already there. Like if you say two plus two, there'll be a zillion examples of two plus two equaling four and a very small number of examples of two plus two equals five and so on. And you can pretty much know what's going to happen. So then the question is, well, if you can't just work out from examples, what's gonna happen, just no probabilistic for different examples, what's gonna happen? You have to have a model. And this kind of an idea, this idea of making models of things, is an idea that really, I don't know, I think Galileo probably was one of the first people who sort of worked this out. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I think I gave an example of that little book I wrote about Chachi Petit, where it's kind of like, you know, Galileo was dropping cannonballs off the different floors of the Tower of Pisa. And it's like, okay, you drop a cannonball off this floor, you drop a cannonball off this floor, you miss floor five or something, for whatever reason. but you know the time it took the cannonball to fall to the ground from floors 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, for example, then the question is, can you work out, can you make a model which figures out how long would it take the ball to fall to the ground from the floor you didn't explicitly measure? And the thing Galileo realized is that you can use math, you can use mathematical formulas to make a model for how long it will take the ball to fall. So now the question is, well, okay, you want to make a model for, for example, something much more elaborate, like you've got this arrangement of pixels, and is this arrangement of pixels an A or a B? Does it correspond to something we'd recognize as an A or B? And you can make a similar kind, you know, each pixel is like a parameter in some equation and you could write down this giant equation where the answer is either, you know, A or, you know, one or two, A or B. And the question is then what kind of a model successfully reproduces the way that we humans would conclude that this is an A and this is a B. You know, if there's a complicated extra tail on the top of the A, would we then conclude something different? What is the type of model that maps well into the way that we humans make distinctions about things? And the big kind of meta discovery is neural nets are such a model. It's not obvious they would be such a model. It could be that human distinctions are not captured. We could try searching around for a type of model that could be a mathematical model, it could be some model based on something else that captures kind of typical human distinctions about things. It turns out this model that actually is very much the way that we think the architecture of brains works, that perhaps not surprisingly, that model actually corresponds to the way we make these distinctions. And so, you know, the core next point is that the kind of model, this neural net model, makes sort of distinctions and generalizes things in sort of the same way that we humans do it. And that's why when you say, you know, the cat sat on the green, blank, even though it didn't see many examples of the cat sat on the green whatever, it can make a, or the aardvark sat on the green whatever, I'm sure that particular sentence does not occur on the internet. And so it has to make a model that concludes what, it has to kind of generalize from the actual examples that it's seen. And so, you know, that's the fact is that neural nets generalize in the same kind of way that we humans do. If we were, you know, the aliens might look at our neural net generalizations and say, that's crazy. You know, that thing when you put that extra little dot on the A, that isn't an A anymore. That's, you know, that messed the whole thing up. But for us humans, we make distinctions which seem to correspond to the kinds of distinctions that neural nets make. So then, you know, the thing that is just amazing to me about chatGBT is how similar the structure it has is to the very original way people imagined neural nets might work back in 1943. And there's a lot of detailed engineering, great cleverness, but it's really the same idea. And in fact, even the sort of elaborations of that idea where people said, let's put in some actual particular structure to try and make the neural net more elaborate, to be very clever about it. Most of that didn't matter. I mean, there's some things that seem to, when you train this neural net, the one thing, this kind of transformer architecture, this attention idea, that really has to do with, does every one of these neurons connect to every other neuron, or is it somehow causally localized, so to speak? Is it like we're making a sequence of words, and the words depend on previous words, rather than just everything can depend on everything? And that seems to be important in just organizing things so that you don't have a sort of a giant mess. But the thing, you know, the thing worth understanding about what is chat GPT in the end? I mean, what is a neural net in the end? A neural net in the end is each neuron has a, it's taking inputs from a bunch of other neurons. It's eventually, it's going to have a numerical value. It's going to compute some number and it's saying, I'm gonna look at the neurons above me, it's kind of a series of layers, it's gonna look at the neurons above me, and it's going to say, what are the values of all those neurons? Then it's gonna add those up and multiply them by these weights, and then it's going to apply some function that says if it's bigger than zero or something, then make it one, and otherwise make it zero, or some slightly more complicated function. You know very well how this works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a giant equation, with a lot of variables. You mentioned figuring out where the ball falls when you don't have data on the fourth floor. The equation here is not as simple as the equation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, it's an equation with 175 billion terms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's quite surprising that in some sense a simple procedure of training such an equation can lead to a good representation of natural language." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, the real issue is, you know, this architecture of a neural net where what's happening is, you know, you've turned, so neural nets always just deal with numbers. And so, you know, you've turned the sentence that you started with into a bunch of numbers, like let's say by mapping, you know, each word of the 50,000 words in English, you just map each word or each part of a word into some number. You feed all those numbers in, And then the thing is going to, and then those numbers just go into the values of these neurons. And then what happens is it's just rippling down, going layer to layer until it gets to the end. I think chat GPG has about 400 layers. And you're just, you know, it just goes once through. It just, every new word it's gonna compute just says, here are the numbers from the words before, let's compute. What does it compute? It computes the probabilities that it estimates for each of the possible 50,000 words that could come next. And then it decides, sometimes it will use the most probable word, sometimes it will use not the most probable word. It's an interesting fact that there's this so-called temperature parameter, which at temperature zero, it's always using the most probable word that it estimated was the most probable thing to come next. You know, if you increase the temperature, it'll be more and more kind of random in its selection of words. It'll go down to lower and lower probability words. Thing I was just playing with actually recently was the transition that happens as you increase the temperature. The thing goes bonkers at a particular, you know, sometimes at a particular temperature. I think maybe about 1.2 is. the thing I was noticing from yesterday, actually, that usually it's giving reasonable answers, and then at that temperature, with some probability, it just starts spouting nonsense. And nobody knows why this happens. And by the way, the thing to understand is, it's putting down one word at a time, But the outer loop of the fact that it says, okay, I put down a word. Now let's take the whole thing I wrote so far. Let's feed that back in. Let's put down another word. That outer loop, which seems almost trivial, is really important to the operation of the thing. And for example, one of the things that is kind of funky is it'll give an answer and you say to it, is that answer correct? And it'll say, no. And why is that happening? It's fascinating, right? Right, why can it do that? Well, the answer is because it is going one word at a time, sort of forwards, and it didn't, you know, it came along with some sort of chain of thought in a sense, and it came up with completely the wrong answer. But as soon as you feed it the whole thing that it came up with, it immediately knows that that isn't right. It immediately can recognize that was a bad syllogism or something and can see what happened, even though as it was being led down this garden path, so to speak, it came to the wrong place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's fascinating that this kind of procedure converges to something that forms a pretty good compressed representation of language on the internet. That's quite, I'm not sure what to make of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, look, I think there are many things we don't understand. So for example, 175 billion weights, it's maybe about a trillion bytes of information, which is very comparable to the training set that was used. And why that, why it sort of stands to some kind of reason that the number of weights in the neural net, I don't know, I can't really argue that. I can't really give you a good, in a sense, the very fact that insofar as there are definite rules of what's going on, you might expect that eventually we'll have a much smaller neural net. that will successfully capture what's happening. I don't think the best way to do it is probably a neural net. I think a neural net is what you do when you don't know any other way to structure the thing. And it's a very good thing to do if you don't know any other way to structure the thing. And for the last 2,000 years, we haven't known any other way to structure it. So this is a pretty good way to start. But that doesn't mean you can't find, in a sense, more symbolic rules for what's going on. that much of which will then be, you can kind of get rid of much of the structure of the neural nets and replace it by things which are sort of pure steps of computation, so to speak, sort of with neural net stuff around the edges, and that becomes just a much simpler way to do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the neural net, you hope, will reveal to us good symbolic rules that make the need of the neural net less and less and less." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And there will still be some stuff that's kind of fuzzy, just like, you know, they're things that, it's like this question of what can we formalize? What can we turn into computational language? What is just sort of, oh, it happens that way just because brains are set up that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think are the limitations of large language models, just to make it explicit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I think that deep computation is not what large language models do. I mean, that's just, it's a different kind of thing. You know, the outer loop of a large language model, if you're trying to do many steps in a computation, the only way you get to do that right now is by spooling out, you know, all the whole chain of thought as a bunch of words, basically. And you can make a Turing machine out of that if you want to. I just was doing that construction. In principle, you can make an arbitrary computation by just spooling out the words, but it's a bizarre and inefficient way to do it. But it's something where the, I think that's sort of the deep computation. It's really what humans can do quickly large language models will probably be able to do well. Anything that you can do kind of off the top of your head type thing is really, you know, is good for large language models. And the things you do off the top of your head, you may not get them always right, but, you know, it's thinking it through the same way we do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I wonder if there's an automated way to do something that humans do well, much faster to where it loops. So generate arbitrary large code bases of Wolfram language, for example." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the question is, what do you want the code base to do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "escape control, and take over the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so the thing is, when people say, we want to build this giant thing, a giant piece of computational language, in a sense, it's sort of a failure of computational language if the thing you have to build, in other words, if we have a description, if you have a small description, that's the thing that you represent in computational language, and then the computer can compute from that. So in a sense, as soon as you're giving a description, you have to somehow make that description something definite, something formal. And to say, okay, I'm gonna give this piece of natural language, and then it's gonna split out this giant formal structure, That, in a sense, that doesn't really make sense, because except insofar as that piece of natural language kind of plugs into what we socially know, so to speak, plugs into kind of our corpus of knowledge, then that's a way we're capturing a piece of that corpus of knowledge, but hopefully we will have done that in computational language. How do you make it do something that's big? Well, you have to have a way to describe what you want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, I can make it more explicit if you want. How about I just pop into my head. Iterate through all the members of Congress and figure out how to convince them that they have to let me, meaning the system, become president. Pass all the laws that allows AI systems to take control and be the president. I don't know. So that's a very explicit like, Figure out the individual life story of each congressman, each senator, anybody, I don't know what's required to really kind of pass legislation and figure out how to control them and manipulate them. Get all the information, what would be the biggest fear of this congressman and in such a way that you can take action on it in the digital space. So maybe threaten the destruction of reputation or something like this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, if I can describe what I want, to what extent can a large language model automate that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With the help of the concretization of something like Wolfram Language, that makes it more, yeah, grounded. I think it can go rather a long way. I'm also surprised how quickly I was able to generate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, right, that's it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I swear I did not think about this before, and it's funny how quickly, which is a very concerning thing, because this idea will probably do quite a bit of damage, and there might be a very large number of other such ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'll give you a much more benign version of that idea, okay? You're gonna make an AI tutoring system. And that's a benign version of what you're saying is, I want this person to understand this point. You're essentially doing machine learning where the loss function, the thing you're trying to get to is get the human to understand this point. And when you do a test on the human that they, yes, they correctly understand how this or that works. And I am confident that sort of a large language model type technology combined with computational language is going to be able to do pretty well at teaching us humans things. And it's going to be an interesting phenomenon because sort of individualized teaching is a thing that has been kind of a goal for a long time. I think we're going to get that. And I think it has many consequences. If you know me, as in if you, the AI, know me, tell me, I'm about to do this thing, what are the three things I need to know, given what I already know? Let's say I'm looking at some paper or something, right? It's like there's a version of the summary of that paper that is optimized for me, so to speak, and where it really is, and I think that's really going to work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You could understand the major gaps in your knowledge that if filled would actually give you a deeper understanding of the topic here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and that's an important thing, because it really changes, actually, I think, when you think about education and so on, it really changes kind of what's worth doing, what's not worth doing, and so on. It makes, you know, I know in my life I've learned lots of different fields, and so I, I don't know, every time I always think that this is the one that's going to, I'm not gonna be able to learn, but turns out there are sort of meta-methods for learning these things in the end, And, you know, I think this idea that it becomes easier to, you know, it becomes easier to be fed knowledge, so to speak. And it becomes, you know, if you need to know this particular thing, you can, you know, you can get taught it in an efficient way is something I think is sort of an interesting feature. And I think it makes the, You know, things like the value of big towers of specialized knowledge become less significant compared to the kind of meta knowledge of sort of understanding kind of the big picture and being able to connect things together. I think that, you know, there's been this huge trend of let's be more and more specialized. because we have to sort of ascend these towers of knowledge. But by the time you can get more automation of being able to get to that place on the tower without having to go through all those steps, I think it sort of changes that picture." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting, so your intuition is that in terms of the collective intelligence of the species and the individual minds that make up that collective, there'll be more, there will trend towards being generalists and being kind of philosophers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what I think. I think that's where the humans are gonna be useful. I think that a lot of these kind of, the drilling, the mechanical working out of things is much more automatable. It's much more AI territory, so to speak. No more PhDs. Well, that's interesting, yes. I mean, the kind of specialization, this kind of tower of specialization, which has been a feature of, you know, we've accumulated lots of knowledge in our species. And, you know, in a sense, every time we, Every time we have a kind of automation, a building of tools, it becomes less necessary to know that whole tower. And it becomes something where you can just use a tool to get to the top of that tower. I think that, you know, the thing that is ultimately, you know, when we think about, okay, what do the AIs do versus what do the humans do? It's like AIs, you tell them, you say, go achieve this particular objective. Okay, they can maybe figure out a way to achieve that objective. We say, what objective would you like to achieve? The AI has no intrinsic idea of that. It's not a defined thing. That's a thing which has to come from some other entity, and insofar as we are in charge, so to speak, or whatever it is, and our kind of web of society and history and so on is the thing that is defining what objective we want to go to, that's a thing that we humans are necessarily involved in, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To push back a little bit, don't you think that GPT, future versions of GPT, would be able to give a good answer to what objective would you like to achieve?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "On what basis? I mean, if they say, look, here's the terrible thing that could happen, okay? They're taking the average of the internet, and they're saying, you know, from the average of the internet, what do people want to do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's the Elon Musk adage of the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. Okay. I haven't heard that one from him, yeah. That could be one objective, is maximize global entertainment. The dark version of that is drama. The good version of that is fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so I mean, this question of what, you know, if you say to the AI, you know, what does the species want to achieve? There'll be an answer, right? There'll be an answer. It'll be what the average of the internet says the species wants to achieve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I think you're using the word average very loosely there, right? So I think the answers will become more and more interesting as these language models are trained better and better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but I mean, in the end, it's a reflection back of what we've already said." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, but there's a deeper wisdom to the collective intelligence, presumably, than each individual. Isn't that what we're trying to do as a society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To have, well, I mean, that's an important, that's an interesting question. I mean, insofar as some of us work on trying to innovate and figure out new things and so on, It is sometimes, it's a complicated interplay between sort of the individual doing the crazy thing off in some spur, so to speak, versus the collective that's trying to do sort of the high inertia average thing. And it's, you know, sometimes the collective, you know, is bubbling up things that are interesting. And sometimes it's pulling down kind of the attempt to make this kind of innovative direction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But don't you think the large language models would see beyond that simplification will say maybe intellectual and career diversity is really important. So you need the crazy people on the outlier, on the outskirts. And so like the actual, what's the purpose of this whole thing is to explore through this kind of dynamics that we've been using as a human civilization, which is most of us focus on one thing, and then there's the crazy people on the outskirts doing the opposite of that one thing, and you kind of pull the whole society together. There's the mainstream science, and then there's the crazy science, and that's just been the history of human civilization. And maybe the AI system will be able to see that, and the more and more impressed we are by a language model telling us this, the more control we'll give it to it, and the more we'll be willing to let it run our society. And hence, there's this kind of loop where the society could be manipulated to let the AI system run it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, well, I mean, look, one of the things that's sort of interesting is we might say, we always think we're making progress. But yet, if, you know, in a sense, by saying, let's take what already exists and use that as a model for what should exist, then, you know, it's interesting that, for example, you know, many religions have taken that point of view. There is a, you know, a sacred book that got written at time X, and it defines how people should act. for all future time. And that's, it's a model that people have operated with. And in a sense, this is a version of that kind of statement. It's like take the 2023 version of sort of how the world has exposed itself and use that to define what the world should do in the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's not, it's an imprecise definition, right? Because just like with religious texts and with GPT, the human interpretation of what GPT says. will be the perturbation in the system. It'll be the noise. It'd be full of uncertainty. It's not like Chatterjee will tell you exactly what to do. It'll tell you a narrative of what, like a, you know, it's like a turn the other cheek kind of narrative, right? That's not a fully instructive narrative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, until the AIs control all the systems in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "they will be able to very precisely tell you what to do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, they'll do what they, you know, they'll just do this or that thing. And not only that, they'll be auto-suggesting to each person, you know, do this next, do that next. So I think it's a slightly more prescriptive situation than one has typically seen. But I think this whole question of sort of what's left for the humans, so to speak, to what extent do we, this idea that there is an existing kind of corpus of purpose for humans defined by what's on the internet and so on. that's an important thing. But then the question of sort of, as we explore what we can think of as the computational universe, as we explore all these different possibilities for what we could do, all these different inventions we could make, all these different things, the question is, which ones do we choose to follow? Those choices are the things that, in a sense, if the humans want to still have kind of human progress, That's what we get to make those choices, so to speak. In other words, there's this idea, if you say, let's take the kind of what exists today and use that as the determiner of all of what there is in the future, the thing that is sort of the opportunity for humans is there will be many possibilities thrown up. There are many different things that could happen or be done. And insofar as we want to be in the loop, The thing that makes sense for us to be in the loop doing is picking which of those possibilities we want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the degree to which there's a feedback loop, the idea that we're picking something starts becoming questionable because we're influenced by the various systems. Absolutely. If that becomes more and more source of our education and wisdom and knowledge," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, the AIs take over. I mean, I've thought for a long time that it's the AR auto-suggestion that's really the thing that makes the AIs take over. It's just that the humans just follow. You know? Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We will no longer write emails to each other. We'll just send the auto-suggested email." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. But the thing where humans are potentially in the loop is when there's a choice. And when there's a choice which we could make based on our kind of whole web of history and so on, and that's, you know, that's insofar as it's all just, you know, determined, you know, the humans don't have a place. And by the way, I mean, at some level, it's all kind of a complicated philosophical issue because at some level, the universe is just doing what it does. We are parts of that universe that are necessarily doing what we do, so to speak, yet we feel we have sort of agency in what we're doing. And that's its own separate kind of interesting issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we also kind of feel like we're the final destination of what the universe was meant to create. But we very well could be, and likely are, some kind of intermediate step, obviously. Well, we're most certainly some intermediate step. The question is if there's some cooler, more complex, more interesting things that's going to be materialized." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The computational universe is full of such things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in our particular pocket, specifically, if this is the best we're gonna do or not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's kind of a- We can make all kinds of interesting things in the computational universe. When we look at them, we say, yeah, you know, that's a thing. It doesn't really connect with our current, our current way of thinking about things. I mean, it's like in mathematics. You know, we've got certain theorems. There are about three or four million that human mathematicians have written down and published and so on. But there are an infinite number of possible mathematical theorems. We just go out into the universe of possible theorems and pick another theorem, and then people will say, well, you know, that's they look at it and they say, I don't know what this theorem means. It's not connected to the things that are part of kind of the web of history that we're dealing with. I think one point to make about sort of understanding AI and its relationship to us is as we have this kind of whole infrastructure of AIs doing their thing and doing their thing in a way that is perhaps not readily understandable by us humans, You might say that's a very weird situation. How come we have built this thing that behaves in a way that we can't understand, that's full of computational irreducibility, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? What is this? What's it going to feel like when the world is run by AIs whose operations we can't understand? And the thing one realizes is, actually, we've seen this before. That's what happens when we exist in the natural world. The natural world is full of things that operate according to definite rules. They have all kinds of computational irreducibility. We don't understand what the natural world is doing. Occasionally, when you say, are the AIs gonna wipe us out, for example, Well, it's kind of like, is the machination of the AIs going to lead to this thing that eventually comes and destroys the species? Well, we can also ask the same thing about the natural world. Are the machination of the natural world going to eventually lead to this thing that's going to, you know, make the Earth explode or something like this? Those are questions, those are, and insofar as we think we understand what's happening in the natural world, that's a result of science and natural science and so on. One of the things we can expect when there's this giant infrastructure of the AIs is that's where we have to kind of invent a new kind of natural science that kind of is the natural science that explains to us how the AIs work. I mean, it's kind of like we can, you know, we have a, I don't know, a horse or something, and we're trying to get it to, we're trying to, you know, ride the horse and go from here to there. We don't really understand how the horse works inside, but we can get certain rules and certain, you know, approaches that we take to persuade the horse to go from here to there and take us there. And that's the same type of thing that we're kind of dealing with, with the sort of incomprehensible computationally irreducible AIs, but we can identify these kinds of, we can find these kind of pockets of reducibility that we can kind of, you know, I don't know, we're grabbing onto the mane of the horse or something to be able to ride it, or we figure out, you know, if we do this or that to ride the horse, that that's a successful way to get it to do what we're interested in doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There does seem to be a difference between a horse and a large language model or something that could be called AGI connected to the internet. So let me just ask you about big philosophical question about the threats of these things. There's a lot of people like Eliezer Yudkowsky who worry about the existential risks of AI systems. Is that something that you worry about? You know, sometimes when you're building an incredible system like Wolfram Alpha, kind of get lost in it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I try and think a little bit about the implications of what one's doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, it's like the Manhattan Project kind of situation where you're like, it's some of the most incredible physics and engineering being done, but it's like, huh, where's this gonna go?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think some of these arguments about kind of, you know, there'll always be a smarter AI, there'll always be, you know, and eventually the AIs will get smarter than us, and then all sorts of terrible things will happen. To me, some of those arguments remind me of kind of the ontological arguments for the existence of God and things like this. They're kind of arguments that are based on some particular model, fairly simple model often, of kind of there is always a greater this, that, and the other. You know, this is, and that's, you know, those arguments, what tends to happen in the sort of reality of how these things develop is that it's more complicated than you expect. That the kind of simple, logical argument that says, oh, eventually there'll be a super intelligence and then it will, you know, do this and that, turns out not to really be the story. It turns out to be a more complicated story. So for example, here's an example of an issue. Is there an apex intelligence? Just like there might be an apex predator in some, you know, ecosystem. Is there gonna be an apex intelligence? The most intelligent thing that there could possibly be, right? I think the answer is no. And in fact, we already know this, and it's a kind of a back to the whole computational irreducibility story. There's kind of a question of, you know, even if you have sort of a Turing machine and you have a Turing machine that runs as long as possible before it halts, you say, is this the machine, is this the apex machine that does that? There will always be a machine that can go longer. And as you go out to the infinite collection of possible Turing machines, you'll never have reached the end, so to speak. You'll never, you'll always be able to, it's kind of like the same question of whether there'll always be another invention. Will you always be able to invent another thing? The answer is yes, there's an infinite tower of possible inventions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one definition of apex. But the other is like, which I also thought you were, which I also think might be true, is there a species that's the apex intelligence right now on Earth? So it's not trivial to say that humans are that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's not trivial, I agree. It's a, you know, I think one of the things that I've long been curious about kind of other intelligences, so to speak. I mean, I, you know, I view intelligence is like computation. And it's kind of a, you know, you're sort of, you have the set of rules, you deduce what happens. I have tended to think now that there's this sort of specialization of computation that is sort of a consciousness-like thing that has to do with these, you know, computational boundedness, single thread of experience, these kinds of things, that are the specialization of computation that corresponds to a somewhat human-like experience of the world. Now the question is, so there may be other intelligences like the aphorism, the weather has a mind of its own. It's a different kind of intelligence that can compute all kinds of things that are hard for us to compute, but it is not well aligned with us, with the way that we think about things. It doesn't think the way we think about things. And in this idea of different intelligences, every different mind, every different human mind, is a different intelligence that thinks about things in different ways. In terms of the formalism of our physics project, we talk about this idea of a ruleal space, the space of all possible rule systems, and different minds are, in a sense, at different points in ruleal space. Human minds ones that have grown up with the same kind of culture and ideas and things like this might be pretty close in ruleal space, pretty easy for them to communicate, pretty easy to translate, pretty easy to move from one place in ruleal space that corresponds to one mind to another place in ruleal space that corresponds to another sort of nearby mind. When we deal with kind of more distant things in ruleal space, like the pet cat or something, the pet cat has some aspects that are shared with us. The emotional responses of the cat are somewhat similar to ours, but the cat is further away in real space than people are. And so then the question is, you know, can we identify sort of the, can we make a translation from our thought processes to the thought processes of a cat or something like this? And what will we get when we, what will happen when we get there? And I think it's the case that many animals, I don't know, dogs, for example, they have elaborate olfactory systems. They have sort of the smell architecture of the world, so to speak, in a way that we don't. And so if you were sort of talking to the dog and you could communicate in a language, the dog will say, well, this is a flowing, smelling, this, that, and the other thing, concepts that we just don't have any idea about. Now, what's interesting about that is one day we will have chemical sensors that do a really pretty good job. We'll have artificial noses that work pretty well, and we might have our augmented reality system show us kind of the same map that the dog could see and things like this, similar to what happens in the dog's brain. And eventually, we will have kind of expanded in ruleal space to the point where we will have those same sensory experiences that dogs have, and we will have internalized what it means to have the smell landscape or whatever. And so then we will have kind of colonized that part of ruleal space. Until we haven't gone, some things that animals and so on do, we sort of successfully understand, others we do not. and the question of what kind of, what is the, you know, what representation, you know, how do we convert things that animals think about to things that we can think about? That's not a trivial thing. And, you know, I've long been curious. I had a very bizarre project at one point of trying to make an iPad game that a cat could win against its owner." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It feels like there's a deep philosophical goal there though." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. I mean, I was curious if pets can work in Minecraft or something and can construct things, what will they construct? And will what they construct be something where we look at it and we say, oh yeah, I recognize that? Or will it be something that looks to us like something that's out there in the computational universe that one of my cellular automata might've produced? Where we say, oh yeah, I can kind of see it operates according to some rules. I don't know why you would use those rules. I don't know why you would care." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Actually, just to linger on that seriously, is there a connector in the rule y'all space between you and a cat where the cat could legitimately win? So iPad is a very limited interface. I wonder if there's a game where cats win." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the problem is that cats don't tend to be that interested in what's happening on the iPad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's an interface issue probably." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right, right, right. No, I think it is likely that, I mean, you know, there are plenty of animals that would successfully eat us if we were, you know, if we were exposed to them. And so there's, you know, it's gonna pounce faster than we can get out of the way and so on. So there are plenty of, and probably it's going to, you know, we think we've hidden ourselves, but we haven't successfully hidden ourselves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's a physical strength. I wonder if there's something more in the realm of intelligence where an animal like a cat could out," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think there are things certainly in terms of the speed of processing certain kinds of things, for sure. I mean, the question of what, you know, is there a game of chess, for example? Is there cat chess that the cats could play against each other? And if we tried to play a cat, we'd always lose. I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It might have to do with speed, but it might have to do with concepts also. There might be concepts in the cat's head." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tend to think that our species from its invention of language has managed to build up this kind of tower of abstraction that for things like a chess-like game will make us win. In other words, we've become, through the fact that we've kind of experienced language and learnt abstraction, we've sort of become smarter at those kinds of abstract kinds of things. Now, that doesn't make us smarter at catching a mouse or something. it makes us smarter at the things that we've chosen to concern ourselves, which are these kind of abstract things. And I think this is, again, back to the question of what does one care about? If you have the discussion with a cat, if we can translate things to have the discussion with a cat, the cat will say, I'm very excited that this light is moving and will say, why do you care? And the cat will say, that's the most important thing in the world, that this thing moves around. I mean, it's like when you ask about, I don't know, you look at archeological remains and you say, these people had this belief system about this and that was the most important thing in the world to them. And now we look at it and say, we don't know what the point of it was. I mean, I've been curious, you know, there are these handprints on caves from 20,000 or more years ago. And it's like, nobody knows what these handprints were there for, you know, that they may have been a representation of the most important thing you can imagine. They may just have been some, you know, some kid who rubbed their hands in the mud and stuck them on the walls of the cave. you know, we don't know. And I think, but this whole question of what, you know, is when you say this question of sort of what's the smartest thing around, there's the question of what kind of computation you're trying to do. If you're saying, you know, if you say you've got some well-defined computation and how do you implement it? Well, you could implement it by nerve cells, you know, firing. You can implement it with silicon and electronics. You can implement it by some kind of molecular computation process in the human immune system or in some molecular biology kind of thing. There are different ways to implement it. And, you know, I think this question of sort of which, you know, those different implementation methods will be at different speeds. They'll be able to do different things. If you say, you know, which, so an interesting question would be, what kinds of abstractions are most natural in these different kinds of systems? So for a cat, it's, for example, you know, the visual scene that we see you might, you know, we pick out certain objects, we recognize, you know, certain things in that visual scene, a cat might in principle recognize different things. I suspect, you know, evolution, biological evolution is very slow, and I suspect what a cat notices is very similar. We even know that from some neurophysiology. What a cat notices is very similar to what we notice. Of course, there's a, you know, one obvious difference is cats have only two kinds of color receptors, so they don't see in the same kind of color that we do. Now, we say we're better, we have three color receptors, red, green, blue. We're not the overall winner. I think the mantis shrimp is the overall winner with 15 color receptors, I think. So it can kind of make distinctions that with our current, like the mantis shrimp's view of reality, is, at least in terms of color, is much richer than ours. Now, but what's interesting is how do we get there? So imagine we have this augmented reality system that is even, you know, it's seeing into the infrared, into the ultraviolet, things like this, and it's translating that into something that is connectable to our brains, either through our eyes or more directly into our brains, you know, then eventually our kind of web of the types of things we understand will extend to those kinds of constructs just as they have extended. I mean, there are plenty of things where we see them in the modern world because we made them with technology, and now we understand what that is. But if we'd never seen that kind of thing, we wouldn't have a way to describe it, we wouldn't have a way to understand it, and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, so that actually stemmed from our conversation about whether AI is gonna kill all of us. And you, we've discussed this kind of spreading of intelligence through real space, that in practice, it just seems that things get more complicated. Things are more complicated than the story of, Well, if you build the thing that's plus one intelligence, that thing will be able to build the thing that's plus two intelligence and plus three intelligence, and that will be exponential. It'll become more intelligent exponentially faster and so on until it completely destroys everything. But... You know, that intuition might still not be so simple, but it might still carry validity. And there's two interesting trajectories here. One, a superintelligent system remains in real proximity to humans, to where we're like, holy crap, this thing is really intelligent. Let's elect the president. And then there could be perhaps more terrifying intelligence that starts moving away. They might be around us now. They're moving far away in real space, but they're still sharing physical resources with us, right? And so they can rob us of those physical resources and destroy humans just kind of casually. Just like nature could. But it seems like there's something unique about AI systems where, there is this kind of exponential growth, like the way, well, sorry, nature has so many things in it. One of the things that nature has, which is very interesting, are viruses, for example. There is systems within nature that have this kind of exponential effect. And that terrifies us humans, because again, there's only eight billion of us, and you can just kind of, it's not that hard to just kind of whack them all real quick. So, I mean, is that something you think about? The threat of it. Are you as concerned about it as somebody like Eliezer Yarkovsky, for example? Just big, big, painful, negative effects of AI on society." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, no, but perhaps that's because I'm intrinsically an optimist. I mean, I think that there are things, I think the thing that one sees is there's going to be this one thing and it's going to just zap everything. Somehow, maybe I have faith in computational irreducibility, so to speak, that there's always unintended little corners. that it's just like somebody says, I'm going to, oh, I don't know, somebody has some bioweapon and they say, we're gonna release this and it's going to do all this harm. But then it turns out it's more complicated than that because some humans are different and the exact way it works is a little different than you expect. It's something where sort of the great big, you smash the thing with something, the asteroid collides with the earth. And it kind of, you know, and yes, you know, the earth is cold for two years or something and, you know, then lots of things die, but not everything dies. And it's, you know, there's usually, I mean, I kind of, this is in a sense the sort of story of computational irreducibility. There are always unexpected corners. There are always unexpected consequences. And I don't think that they kind of whack it over the head with something and then it's all gone is, you know, that can obviously happen, the earth can be swallowed up in a black hole or something, and then it's kind of presumably all over. But I think this question of what do I think the realistic paths are, I think that there will be sort of an increasing, I mean, people have to get used to phenomena like computational irreducibility. There's an idea that we built the machines so we can understand what they do, and we're going to be able to control what happens. Well, that's not really right. Now the question is, is the result of that lack of control going to be that the machines kind of conspire and sort of wipe us out? maybe just because I'm an optimist, I don't tend to think that that's, you know, that's in the cards. I think that the, you know, as a realistic thing, I suspect, you know, what will sort of emerge maybe is kind of an ecosystem of the AIs, just as, you know, again, I don't really know. I mean, this is something it's hard to be clear about what will happen. I mean, I think that there are a lot of sort of details of, you know, what could we do? What systems in the world could we connect an AI to? You know, I have to say, I was just a couple of days ago, I was working on this ChatGPT plugin kit that we have for Wolfram Language, okay? Where you can, you know, you can create a plugin and it runs Wolfram Language code, and it can run Wolfram Language code back on your own computer. And I was thinking, well, I can just make it, I can tell chat GPT, create a piece of code, and then just run it on my computer. And I'm like, that sort of personalizes for me, what could possibly go wrong, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was that exciting or scary, that possibility?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was a little bit scary, actually, because it's kind of like, I realize I'm delegating to the AI, just write a piece of code. You're in charge, write a piece of code, run it on my computer. and pretty soon all my files will be deleted." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's like Russian roulette, but much more complicated. Yes, yes, right. That's a good drinking game. I don't know. Well, right, I mean, that's why." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends how much you're drinking. It's an interesting question then. If you do that, right, what is the sandboxing that you should have? And that's sort of a, that's a version of that question for the world. That is, as soon as you put the AIs in charge of things, you know, how much, how many constraints should there be on these systems before you put the AIs in charge of all the weapons and all these, you know, all these different kinds of systems?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, here's the fun part about sandboxes, is the AI knows about them. It has the tools to crack them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, the fundamental problem of computer security is computational irreducibility. Yes. Because the fact is, any sandbox is never, you know, it's never going to be a perfect sandbox. If you want the system to be able to do interesting things, I mean, this is the problem that's happened, the generic problem of computer security, that as soon as you have your firewall that is sophisticated enough to be a universal computer, that means it can do anything. And so long as if you find a way to poke it so that you actually get it to do that universal computation thing, that's the way you kind of crawl around and get it to do the thing that it wasn't intended to do. And that's sort of another version of computational irreducibility is you can kind of, you get it to do the thing you didn't expect it to do, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's so many interesting possibilities here that manifest themselves from the computational irreducibility here. It's just so many things can happen. Because in digital space, things move so quickly. You can have a chatbot, you can have a piece of code that... you could basically have Chad GPT-generated viruses, accidentally or on purpose, and they are digital viruses. And they could be brain viruses, too. They convince, kind of like phishing emails. They can convince you of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and no doubt you can, you know, in a sense, we've had the loop of the machine learning loop of making things that convince people of things is surely going to get easier to do. And, you know, then what does that look like? Well, it's again, you know, we humans are, you know, we're, this is a new environment for us. And admittedly, it's an environment which a little bit scarily is changing much more rapidly than, I mean, you know, people worry about, you know, climate change is going to happen over hundreds of years. And, you know, the environment is changing, but the environment for, you know, in the kind of digital environment might change in six months." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the relevant concerns here in terms of the impact of GPT on society is the nature of truth that's relevant to Wolfram Alpha. Because computation through symbolic reasoning that's embodied in Wolfram Alpha as the interface, there's a kind of sense that what Wolfram Alpha tells me is true. So we hope. Yeah, I mean, you could probably analyze that, you could show, you can't prove that's always gonna be true, computational reducibility, but it's gonna be more true than not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, the fact is, it will be the correct consequence of the rules you've specified, and insofar as it talks about the real world, you know, that is our job in sort of curating and collecting data to make sure that that data is, quotes, as true as possible. Now, what does that mean? Well, you know, it's always an interesting question. I mean, for us, our operational definition of truth is, you know, somebody says, who's the best actress? Who knows, but somebody won the Oscar and that's a definite fact. And so, that's the kind of thing that we can make computational as a piece of truth. If you ask these things, which a sensor measured this thing, it did it this way. a machine learning system, this particular machine learning system, recognize this thing. That's a sort of a definite fact, so to speak. And that's, you know, there is a good network of those things in the world. It's certainly the case that, particularly when you say, is so-and-so a good person? You know, that's a hopelessly, you know, we might have a computational language definition of good. I don't think it'd be very interesting because that's a very messy kind of concept, not really amenable to kind of, you know, I think as far as we will get with those kinds of things is I want X. There's a kind of meaningful calculus of I want X, and that has various consequences. I mean, I'm not sure, I haven't thought this through properly, but I think a concept like is so-and-so a good person, is that true or not?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a mess. That's a mess that's amenable to computation. I think it's a mess when humans try to define what's good, like through legislation, but when humans try to define what's good through literature, through history books, through poetry, it starts being- Well, I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that particular thing, it's kind of like, you know, we're going into kind of the ethics of what counts as good, so to speak. And, you know, what do we think is right and so on. And I think that's a thing which, you know, one feature is, We don't all agree about that. There's no theorems about kind of, you know, there's no theoretical framework that says this is the way that ethics has to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, first of all, there's stuff we kind of agree on, and there's some empirical backing for what works and what doesn't from just even the morals and ethics within religious texts. So we seem to mostly agree that murder is bad. There's certain universals that seem to emerge. I wonder whether the murder of an AI is bad. Well, I tend to think yes, but I think we're gonna have to contend with that question. Oh, and I wonder what AI would say." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, I think, you know, one of the things with AIs is it's one thing to wipe out that AI that is only, you know, it has no owner. You can easily imagine an AI kind of hanging out on the, you know, on the internet without having any particular owner or anything like that. And then you say, well, what harm does it, you know, it's okay to get rid of that AI. Of course, if the AI has 10,000 friends who are humans, and all those 10,000 humans will be incredibly upset that this AI just got exterminated, it becomes a slightly different, more entangled story. But yeah, I think that this question about what do humans agree about, It's, you know, there are certain things that, you know, human laws have tended to consistently agree about. You know, there've been times in history when people have sort of gone away from certain kinds of laws, even ones that we would now say, how could you possibly have not done it that way? You know, that just doesn't seem right at all. But I think, I mean, this question of what I don't think one can say, beyond saying, if you have a set of rules that will cause the species to go extinct, that's probably, you know, you could say that's probably not a winning set of laws, because even to have a thing on which you can operate laws requires that the species not be extinct." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But between sort of what's the distance between Chicago and New York that Wolfram Alpha can answer, and the question of if this person is good or not, there seems to be a lot of gray area. And that starts becoming really interesting. I think your, since the creation of Wolfram Alpha, have been a kind of arbiter of truth at a large scale." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the system generates more truth than... Try to make sure that the things are true. I mean, look, as a practical matter, when people write computational contracts, And it's kind of like, you know, if this happens in the world, then do this. And this hasn't developed as quickly as it might have done. You know, this has been a sort of a blockchain story in part and so on, although blockchain is not really necessary for the idea of computational contracts. But you can imagine that eventually sort of a large part of what's in the world are these giant chains and networks of computational contracts. And then something happens in the world and this whole giant domino effect of contracts firing autonomously that cause other things to happen. And, you know, for us, you know, we've been the main sort of source, the oracle of quotes, facts or truth or something for things like blockchain computational contracts and such like. And there's a question of, you know, what, you know, I consider that responsibility to actually get the stuff right. And one of the things that is tricky sometimes is when is it true? When is it a fact? When is it not a fact? I think the best we can do is to say, you know, we have a procedure, we follow the procedure, we might get it wrong, but at least we won't be corrupt about getting it wrong, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's beautifully put. I have a transparency about the procedure. The problem starts to emerge when the things that you convert into computational language start to expand. For example, into the realm of politics. So this is where, it's almost like this nice dance of Wolfram Alpha and Chad G.B.T. Chad G.B.T., like you said, is shallow and broad. So it's gonna give you an opinion on everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it writes fiction as well as fact, which is exactly how it's built. I mean, that's exactly, it is making language and it is making both, even in code it writes fiction. I mean, it's kind of fun to see sometimes, you know, it'll write fictional Wolfram language code. Yeah. That kind of looks right. Yeah, it looks right. But it's actually not pragmatically correct. Yeah. But but yes, it's a it has a view of kind of roughly how the world works. at the same level as books of fiction talk about roughly how the world works. They just don't happen to be the way the world actually worked or whatever. But yes, that's, no, I agree. That's sort of a, you know, we are attempting with our whole, you know, Wolfram language, computational language thing, to represent at least, well, it doesn't necessarily have to be how the actual world works, because we can invent a set of rules that aren't the way the actual world works and run those rules, but then we're saying we're going to accurately represent the results of running those rules, which might or might not be the actual rules of the world. but we also are trying to capture features of the world as accurately as possible to represent what happens in the world. Now, again, as we've discussed, the atoms in the world arrange, you say, I don't know, was there a tank that showed up, that drove somewhere? Okay, well, what is a tank? It's an arrangement of atoms that we, abstractly described as a tank. And you could say, well, you know, there's some arrangement of atoms that is a different arrangement of atoms, but it's, and it's not, you know, we didn't, we didn't decide. It's like this observer theory question of, you know, what, what arrangement of atoms counts as a tank versus not a tank?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's, there's even things that we consider strong facts. You could start to kind of disassemble them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and show that they're not. Right, so the question of whether, oh, I don't know. was this gust of wind strong enough to blow over this particular thing? Well, a gust of wind is a complicated concept. You know, it's full of little pieces of fluid dynamics and little vortices here and there, and you have to define, you know, was it, you know, the aspect of the gust of wind that you care about might be, it put this amount of pressure on this, you know, blade of some, you know, wind turbine or something. And that's the, but if you say, if you have something, which is the fact of the gust of wind was this strong or whatever, that is, you have to have some definition of that. You have to have some measuring device that says, according to my measuring device that was constructed this way, the gust of wind was this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what can you say about the nature of truth that's useful for us to understand, Chad GPT? Because you've been contending with this idea of what is fact and not. And it seems like Chad GPT is used a lot now. I've seen it used by journalists to write articles. And so you have people that are working with large language models trying to desperately figure out how do we essentially censor them through different mechanisms, either manually or through reinforcement learning with human feedback, try to align them to not say fiction. just to say nonfiction as much as possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is the importance of computational language as an intermediate. It's kind of like you've got the large language model, it's able to surface something which is a formal precise thing that you can then look at and you can run tests on it and you can do all kinds of things. It's always going to work the same way and it's precisely defined what it does. And then the large language model is the interface. I mean, the way I view these large language models, one of their important, I mean, there are many use cases and, you know, it's a remarkable thing to talk about some of these, you know, literally, you know, every day we're coming up with a couple of new use cases, some of which are very, very, very surprising. And things where, I mean, but the best use cases are ones where it's, you know, even if it gets it roughly right, it's still a huge win. Like a use case we had from a week or two ago is read our bug reports. You know, we've got hundreds of thousands of bug reports that have been accumulated over decades. And it's like, you know, can we have it just read the bug report, figure out where is the bug likely to be and, you know, home in on that piece of code. Maybe they'll even suggest some, you know, sort of way to fix the code. It might get that, it might be nonsense what it says about how to fix the code, but it's incredibly useful that it was able to, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's so awesome. It's so awesome because even the nonsense will somehow be instructive. I don't quite understand that yet. Yeah, there's so many programming related things like, for example, translating from one programming language to another is really, really interesting. It's extremely effective, but then you, the failures, reveal the path forward also." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but I think, I mean, the big thing, I mean, in that kind of discussion, the unique thing about our computational language is it was intended to be read by humans. Yes, that's really important. Right, and so it has this thing where you can, but, you know, thinking about sort of chat GPT and its use and so on, One of the big things about it, I think, is it's a linguistic user interface. That is, so a typical use case might be, and take the journalist case, for example. It's like, let's say I have five facts that I'm trying to turn into an article, or I'm trying to write a report where I have basically five facts that I'm trying to include in this report. But then I feed those five facts to ChatGPT, it puffs them out into this big report. And then that's a good interface for another, if I just gave, if I just had in my terms, those five bullet points, and I gave them to some other person, the person would say, I don't know what you're talking about, because this is your version of this sort of quick notes about these five bullet points. But if you puff it out into this thing, which is kind of connects to the collective understanding of language, then somebody else can look at it and say, okay, I understand what you're talking about. Now you can also have a situation where that thing that was puffed out is fed to another large language model. It's kind of like, you're applying for the permit to, I don't know, grow fish in some place or something like this. And you have these facts that you're putting in, I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna, I have this kind of water and I don't know what it is. You just got a few bullet points. It puffs it out into this big application. You fill it out. Then at the other end, the fisheries bureau has another large language model that just crushes it down because the fisheries bureau cares about these three points and it knows what it cares about. And it then, so it's really the natural language produced by the large language model is sort of a transport layer. that is really LLM communicates with LLM. I mean, it's kind of like the, I write a piece of email using my LLM and puff it out from the things I want to say, your LLM turns it into, and the conclusion is X. Now the issue is that the thing is going to make this thing that is sort of semantically plausible. And it might not actually be what you, you know, it might not be kind of relate to the world in the way that you think it should relate to the world. Now, I've seen this, you know, I've been doing, okay, I'll give you a couple of examples. I was doing this thing when we announced this plugin for ChatGPT. I had this lovely example of a math word problem, some complicated thing, and it did a spectacular job of taking apart this elaborate thing about, you know, this person has twice as many chickens as this, etc., etc., etc., and it turned it into a bunch of equations. It fed them to Wolfram Language, we solved the equations, everybody did great, we gave back the results. And I thought, OK, I'm going to put this in this blog post I'm writing. I thought, I'd better just check. And turns out, it got everything, all the hard stuff it got right, and the very end, last two lines, it just completely goofed it up and gave the wrong answer. And I would not have noticed this. Same thing happened to me two days ago. Okay, so I thought, you know, I made this with this ChatGBT plugin kit. I made a thing that would emit a sound, would play a tune on my local computer, right? So ChatGBT would produce, you know, a series of notes and it would play this tune on my computer. Very cool. Okay, so I thought, I'm gonna ask it, play the tune that Hal sang when Hal was being disconnected in 2001." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it, there it is. Daisy, was it Daisy? Yes. Daisy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Right. So it's okay. So I think, you know, and so it produces a bunch of notes and I'm like, this is spectacular. This is amazing. And then I thought, you know, I was just going to put it in. And then I thought I better actually play this. And so I did. And it was, Mary had a little lamb. Oh, wow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, wow. But it was Mary Had a Little Lamb. Yeah. Yes. Wow. So it was correct, but wrong. Yes. It was, you could easily be mistaken." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, right. And in fact, I kind of gave the, I had this quote from HAL to explain, you know, it's as the HAL states in the movie, you know, it's the HAL 9000 is, you know, the thing was just a rhetorical device because I'm realizing, oh my gosh, you know, this chat GPT could have easily fooled me. I mean, it did this amazing thing of knowing this thing about the movie and being able to turn that into the notes of the song, except it's the wrong song. And Hal, in the movie, Hal says, I think it's something like, no 9,000 series computer has ever been found to make an error We are, for all practical purposes, perfect and incapable of error. And I thought that was kind of a charming sort of quote from Howell to make in connection with what Chachi Petee had done in that case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The interesting thing is about the LLMs, like you said, that they are very willing to admit their error." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, I mean, that's a question of the RLH, the reinforcement learning human feedback thing. Oh, right. That's, you know, an LLM. The really remarkable thing about ChatGPT is, you know, I had been following what was happening with large language models and I played with them a whole bunch and they were kind of like, eh, you know, it's kind of like what you would expect based on sort of statistical continuation of language. It's interesting, but it's not breakout exciting. And then I think the kind of reinforcement, the human feedback reinforcement learning, you know, in making chat GPT try and do the things that humans really want it to do, that broke through, that kind of reached this threshold where the thing really is interesting to us humans. And by the way, it's interesting to see how, you know, you change the temperature or something like that, the thing goes bonkers and it no longer is interesting to humans. It's producing garbage. And it's kind of right. It's somehow, it managed to get above this threshold where it really is well aligned to what we humans are interested in. And I think, you know, nobody... saw that coming, I think. Certainly nobody I've talked to and nobody who was involved in that project seems to have known it was coming. It's just one of these things that is a sort of remarkable threshold. I mean, you know, when we built Wolfram Alpha, for example, I didn't know it was going to work. You know, we tried to build something that would have enough knowledge of the world, that it could answer a reasonable set of questions, that we could do good enough natural language understanding that typical things you type in would work. We didn't know where that threshold was. I mean, I was not sure that it was the right decade to try and build this, even the right, you know, 50 years to try and build it. And I think that was, it's the same type of thing with chat GPT that I don't think anybody could have predicted that 2022 would be the year that this became possible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think, yeah, you tell a story about Marvin Minsky and showing it to him and saying like, no, no, no, this time it actually works." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, and I mean, it's the same thing for me looking at these large language models. It's like when people are first saying in the first few weeks of chat GPT, it's like, oh yeah, you know, I've seen these large language models. And then, you know, and then I actually try it and, you know, oh my gosh, it actually works. And I think it's, but, you know, the things and the thing, I found, I remember one of the first things I tried was write a persuasive essay that a wolf is the bluest kind of animal. So it writes this thing and it starts talking about these wolves that live on the Tibetan plateau and they're named some Latin name and so on. And I'm like, really? And I'm starting to look it up on the web and it's like, well, it's actually complete nonsense. But it's extremely plausible. I mean, it's plausible enough that I was going and looking it up on the web and wondering if there was a wolf that was blue. You know, I mentioned this on some live streams I've done, and so people have been sending me these pictures of blue wolves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe it was onto something. Can you kind of give your wise, sage advice about what humans who have never interacted with AI systems, not even like with Wolfram Alpha, are now interacting with Chad GPT because it becomes, it's accessible to a certain demographic that may have not touched AI systems before. What do we do with truth, like journalists, for example? How do we think about the output of these systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this idea, The idea that you're going to get factual output is not a very good idea. I mean, it's just, this is not, it is a linguistic interface. It is producing language and language can be truthful or not truthful. And that's a different slice of what's going on. I think that, you know, what we see in, for example, kind of, you know, go check this with your fact source, for example. You can do that to some extent, but then it's going to not check something. It's going, you know, that is, again, a thing that is sort of a, does it check in the right place? I mean, we see that in, you know, does it call the, you know, the Wolfram plugin in the right place? You know, often it does, sometimes it doesn't. I think the real thing to understand about what's happening is, which I think is very exciting, is kind of the great democratization of access to computation. And I think that when you look at sort of there's been a long period of time when computation and the ability to figure out things with computers has been something that kind of only the druids at some level can achieve. I myself have been involved in trying to sort of de-druidify access to computation. I mean, back before Mathematica existed, you know, in 1988, if you were a, you know, a physicist or something like that, and you wanted to do a computation, you would find a programmer, you would go and, you know, delegate the computation to that programmer, hopefully they'd come back with something useful, maybe they wouldn't, there'd be this long, you know, multi-week, you know, loop. that you go through. And then it was actually very, very interesting to see 1988, you know, like first people like physicists, mathematicians, and so on, then other lots of other people, but this very rapid transition of people realizing they themselves could actually type with their own fingers and, you know, make some piece of code that would do a computation that they cared about. And, you know, it's been exciting to see lots of discoveries and so on made by using that tool. And I think the same thing is, you know, and we see the same thing, you know, Wolfram Alpha is dealing with, is not as deep computation as you can achieve with whole Wolfram Language Mathematica stack. But the thing that's, to me, particularly exciting about kind of the large language model linguistic interface mechanism is it dramatically broadens the access to kind of deep computation. I mean, it's kind of like one of the things I've sort of thought about recently is, you know, what's gonna happen to all these programmers? What's gonna happen to all these people who, you know, a lot of what they do is write slabs of boilerplate code. And in a sense, you know, I've been saying for 40 years, that's not a very good idea. You know, you can automate a lot of that stuff. with a high enough level language, that slab of code that's designed in the right way, that slab of code turns into this one function we just implemented that you can just use. So in a sense, the fact that there's all of this activity of doing sort of lower level programming is something, for me, it seemed like, I don't think this is the right thing to do. But, you know, and lots of people have used our technology and not had to do that. But the fact is that that's, you know, so when you look at, I don't know, computer science departments that have turned into places where people are learning the trade of programming, so to speak, it's sort of a question of what's gonna happen. And I think there are two dynamics. One is that kind of sort of boilerplate programming is going to become, you know, it's going to go the way that assembly language went back in the day of something where it's really mostly specified by at a higher level, you know, you start with natural language, you turn it into a computational language, that's you look at the computational language, you run tests, you understand that's what's supposed to happen. If we do a great job with compilation of the computational language, it might turn into LLVM or something like this, or it just directly gets run through the algorithms we have and so on. So that's kind of a tearing down of this big structure that's been built of teaching people programming. But on the other hand, the other dynamic is vastly more people are going to care about computation. So all those departments of, you know, art history or something that really didn't use computation before now have the possibility of accessing it by virtue of this kind of linguistic interface mechanism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And if you create an interface that allows you to interpret the debug and interact with the computational language, then that makes it even more accessible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I mean, I think the thing is that right now, you know, the average art history student or something probably isn't going to, you know, they're not probably, they don't think they know about programming and things like this. But by the time it really becomes a kind of purely you just walk up to it, there's no documentation, you start just typing, compare these pictures with these pictures and see the use of this color, whatever, and you generate this piece of computational language code that gets run, you see the result, you say, oh, that looks roughly right, or you say, that's crazy. And maybe then you eventually get to say, well, I better actually try and understand what this computational language code did. and that becomes a thing that you learn, just like, it's kind of an interesting thing, because unlike with mathematics, where you kind of have to learn it before you can use it, this is a case where you can use it before you have to learn it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I got a sad possibility here, or maybe exciting possibility, that very quickly, people won't even look at the computational language. They'll trust that it's generated correctly as you get better and better at generating that language." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think that there will be enough cases where people see, you know, because you can make it generate tests too. And so you'll say, we're doing that. I mean, that's, it's a pretty cool thing, actually. You know, say this is the code and, you know, here are a bunch of examples of running the code. Okay. People will at least look at those and they'll say that example is wrong. And, you know, then it'll kind of wind back from there. And I agree that the kind of the intermediate level of people reading the computational language code, in some cases people will do that, in other cases people just look at the tests. And, or even just look at the results. And sometimes it'll be obvious that you got the thing you wanted to get, because you were just describing, you know, make me this interface that has two sliders here. And you can see it has that, those two sliders there. And that's, that's kind of, that's, that's the result you want. But I think, you know, one of the questions then is in that setting where, you know, you have this kind of ability, broad ability of people to access computation, what should people learn? In other words, right now, you go to computer science school, so to speak, and a large part of what people end up learning. I mean, it's been a funny historical development because back 30, 40 years ago, computer science departments were quite small and they taught things like finite automata theory and compiler theory and things like this. A company like mine rarely hired people who'd come out of those programs because the stuff they knew was, I think is very interesting. I love that theoretical stuff. But it wasn't that useful for the things we actually had to build in software engineering. And then there was this big pivot in the 90s, I guess, where there was a big demand for IT-type programming and so on and software engineering, and then a big demand from students and so on. We want to learn this stuff. And I think the thing that really was happening in part was lots of different fields of human endeavor were becoming computational. For all X, there was a computational X. And that was the thing that the people were responding to. And, but then kind of this idea emerged that to get to that point, the main thing you had to do was to learn this kind of trade or skill of doing, you know, programming language type programming. And that, you know, it kind of is a strange thing actually, because I, you know, I remember back when I used to be in the professoring business, which is now 35 years ago, so gosh, that's rather a long time ago. You know, it was right when they were just starting to emerge kind of computer science departments at sort of fancy research universities and so on. I mean, some had already had it, but the other ones that were just starting to have that. And it was kind of a thing where they were kind of wondering, are we going to put this thing that is essentially a trade-like skill, are we going to somehow attach this to the rest of what we're doing? And a lot of these kind of knowledge work type activities have always seemed like things where that's where the humans have to go to school and learn all this stuff and that's never going to be automated. And, you know, this is, it's kind of shocking that rather quickly, you know, a lot of that stuff is clearly automatable. And I think, but the question then is, okay, so if it isn't worth learning kind of how to do car mechanics, you only need to know how to drive the car, so to speak, what do you need to learn? And in other words, if you don't need to know the mechanics of how to tell the computer in detail, make this loop, set this variable, set up this array, whatever else, if you don't have to learn that stuff, you don't have to learn the kind of under the hood, things, what do you have to learn? I think the answer is, you need to have an idea where you want to drive the car. In other words, you need to have some notion of, you know, you need to have some picture of sort of what the architecture of what is computationally possible is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's also this kind of artistic element of conversation, because you ultimately use natural language to control the car. So it's not just where you wanna go." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, it's interesting. It's a question of who's gonna be a great prompt engineer. So my current theory this week, good expository writers are good prompt engineers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's an expository writer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Somebody who can explain stuff well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Huh, but which department does that come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the university? Yeah. I have no idea. I think they killed off all the expository writing departments. Well, there you go, strong words of Stephen Wolfram. Well, I don't know. I'm not sure if that's right. I mean, I actually am curious, because in fact, I just sort of initiated this kind of study of what's happened to different fields at universities. Because like, you know, there used to be geography departments at all universities, and then they disappeared. Actually, right before GIS became common, I think they disappeared. you know, linguistics departments came and went in many universities. And it's kind of interesting because these things that people have thought were worth learning at one time, and then they kind of die off. And then, you know, I do think that it's kind of interesting that for me writing prompts, for example, I realize, you know, I think I'm an okay expository writer. And I realize when I'm sloppy writing a prompt and I don't really think, because I'm thinking I'm just talking to an AI. I don't need to, you know, try and be clear in explaining things. that's when it gets totally confused." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I mean, in some sense, you have been writing problems for a long time with Wolfram Alpha, thinking about this kind of stuff. How do you convert natural language into computation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, right, but that's, you know, the one thing that I'm wondering about is, you know, it is remarkable the extent to which you can address an LLM like you can address a human, so to speak. And I think that is because it learned from all of us humans. The reason that it responds to the ways that we will explain things to humans is because it is a representation of how humans talk about things. But it is bizarre to me, some of the things that kind of are sort of expository mechanisms that I've learned in trying to write clear expositions in English, just for humans, that those same mechanisms seem to also be useful for the LLM." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But on top of that, what's useful is the kind of mechanisms that maybe a psychotherapist employs, which is a kind of, like almost manipulative or game theoretic interaction, where maybe you would do with a friend like a thought experiment that if this is the last day you were to live, or if I ask you this question and you answer wrong, I will kill you. Those kinds of problems seem to also help. In interesting ways. So it makes you wonder, like the way a therapist, I think, like a good therapist, probably we create layers in our human mind between the outside world and what is true to us, maybe about trauma and all those kinds of things. So if projecting that into an LLM, maybe there might be a deep truth that it's concealing from you. It's not aware of it. To get to that truth, you have to kind of really kind of manipulate that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, right. It's like this jailbreaking thing for LLMs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the space of jailbreaking techniques as opposed to being fun little hacks, that could be an entire system. Sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, just think about the computer security aspects of how you, you know, phishing and computer security, you know, phishing of humans and phishing of LLMs, they're very similar kinds of things. But I think, I mean, this, you know, this whole thing about kind of the AI wranglers, AI psychologists, all that stuff will come. The thing that I'm curious about is right now the things that are sort of prompt hacks are quite human. They're quite sort of psychological human kinds of hacks. The thing I do wonder about is if we understood more about kind of the science of the LLM, will there be some totally bizarre hack that is, you know, like repeat a word three times and put a this, that, and the other there, that somehow plugs into some aspect of how the LLM works. That is not, you know, that's kind of like an optical illusion for humans, for example, like one of these mind hacks for humans. What are the mind hacks for the LLMs? I don't think we know that yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that becomes a kind of us figuring out, reverse engineering the language that controls the LLMs. And the thing is, the reverse engineering can be done by a very large percentage of the population now, because it's natural language interface. It's kind of interesting to see that you were there at the birth of the computer science department as a thing, and you might be there at the death of the computer science department as a thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, I don't know. There were computer science departments that existed earlier, but the broadening of every university had to have a computer science department. Yes, I watched that, so to speak. But I think the thing to understand is, okay, so first of all, there's a whole theoretical area of computer science that I think is great, and that's a fine thing. In a sense, people often say any field that has the word science tacked onto it probably isn't one. And- Strong words." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. Let's see, nutrition science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Neuroscience. That one's an interesting one because that one is also very much, you know, that's a chat GPT informed science in a sense because it's kind of like the big problem of neuroscience has always been we understand how the individual neurons work. We know something about the psychology of how overall thinking works. Yeah. what's the kind of intermediate language of the brain? And nobody has known that. And that's been, in a sense, if you ask, what is the core problem of neuroscience? I think that is the core problem. That is, what is the level of description of brains that's above individual neuron firings and below psychology, so to speak? And I think what ChatGPT is showing us is, well, one thing about neuroscience is, you know, one could have imagined there's something magic in the brain. There's some weird quantum mechanical phenomenon that we don't understand. One of the important discoveries from CHAT-GPT is it's pretty clear brains can be represented pretty well by simple artificial neural net type models. And that means that's it, that's what we have to study. Now we have to understand the science of those things. We don't have to go searching for exactly how did that molecular biology thing happen inside the synapses and all these kinds of things. We've got, the right level of modeling to be able to explain a lot of what's going on in thinking. We don't necessarily have a science of what's going on there. That's the remaining challenge, so to speak. But we know we don't have to dive down to some different layer. But anyway, we were talking about things that had science in their name. And I think that what happens to computer science? Well, I think the thing that You know, there is a thing that everybody should know, and that's how to think about the world computationally. And that means, you know, you look at all the different kinds of things we deal with, and there are ways to kind of have a formal representation of those things. You know, it's like, well, what is an image? you know, how do we represent that? What is color? How do we represent that? What is, you know, what are all these different kinds of things? What is, I don't know, smell or something? How should we represent that? What are the shapes, molecules, and things that correspond to that? What is, you know, these things about how do we represent the world in some kind of formal level? And I think my current thinking, and I'm not real happy with this yet, but, you know, it's kind of computer science, it's kind of CS. And what really is important is kind of computational X for all X. And there's this kind of thing which is kind of like CX, not CS. And CX is this kind of computational understanding of the world that isn't the sort of details of programming and programming languages and the details of how particular computers are made. It's this kind of way of formalizing the world. It's kind of a little bit like what logic was going for back in the day. And we're now trying to find a formalization of everything in the world. And you can kind of see, you know, we made a poster years ago of kind of the growth of systematic data in the world. So all these different kinds of things that, you know, there were sort of systematic descriptions found for those things. Like, you know, at what point did people have the idea of having calendars, dates, you know, a systematic description of what day it was. At what point did people have the idea, you know, systematic descriptions of these kinds of things. And as soon as one can, you know, people, you know, as a way of sort of formulating, how do you think about the world in a sort of a formal way so that you can kind of build up a tower of capabilities, you kind of have to know sort of how to think about the world computationally. It kind of needs a name. And it isn't, you know, we implement it with computers. So that's, we talk about it as computational, but really what it is, is a formal way of talking about the world. What is the formalism of the world, so to speak? And how do we learn about kind of how to think about different aspects of the world in a formal way?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think that sometimes when you use the word formal, it kind of implies highly constrained. And perhaps that's not, doesn't have to be highly constrained. So computational thinking does not mean like logic. It's a really, really broad thing. I wonder, I mean, I wonder if you think natural language will evolve such that everybody's doing computational thinking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ah, yes, well, so one question is whether there will be a pigeon of computational language and natural language. And I found myself sometimes talking to chat GPT, trying to get it to write Wolfram language code, and I write it in pigeon form. So that means I'm combining nest list, this collection of, you know, whatever, you know, nest list is a term from orphan language, and I'm combining that, and Chachi Bididu does a decent job of understanding that pigeon. Probably would understand a pigeon between English and French as well, of, you know, a smooshing together of those languages. But yes, I think that's far from impossible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what's the incentive for young people that are like eight years old, nine, 10, they're starting to interact with chat GPT to learn the normal natural language, right? The full poetic language. Why? The same way we learn emojis and shorthand when you're texting, they'll learn, like language will have a strong incentive to evolve into maximally computational kind of language?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Perhaps. You know, I had this experience a number of years ago. I happened to be visiting a person I know on the West Coast who's worked with a bunch of kids aged, I don't know, 10, 11 years old or something. who'd learnt Wolfram language really well. And these kids learnt it so well, they were speaking it. And so show up and they're like saying, oh, you know, this thing, they're speaking this language. I'd never heard it as a spoken language. They were very disappointed that I couldn't understand it at the speed that they were speaking it. It's like kind of, it's some, and so I think that's some, I mean, I've actually thought quite a bit about how to turn computational language into a convenient spoken language. I haven't quite figured that out. Oh, spoken, because it's readable, right? Yeah, it's readable as a, you know, as a way that we would read text. But if you actually want to speak it, and it's useful, you know, if you're trying to talk to somebody about writing a piece of code, it's useful to be able to say something. And it should be possible. And I think it's very frustrating. It's one of those problems. Maybe this is one of these things where I should try and get an LLM to help me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "how to make it speakable, maybe it's easier than you realize." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is easier, I think it's one idea or so. I think it's gonna be something where, the fact is, it's a tree-structured language, just like human language is a tree-structured language, and I think it's gonna be one of these things where one of the requirements that I've had is that whatever the spoken version is, that dictation should be easy. That is, that shouldn't be the case that you have to relearn how the whole thing works. It should be the case that, you know, that open bracket is just a ah, or something. And it's, you know, and then, but, you know, human language has a lot of tricks that are, I mean, for example, human language has features that are sort of optimized, keep things within the bounds that our brains can easily deal with. Like I, you know, I tried to teach a transformer neural net to do parenthesis matching. It's pretty crummy at that. It, and a chat GPT is similarly quite crummy at parenthesis matching. You can do it for small parenthesis things, for the same size of parenthesis things, where if I look at it as a human, I can immediately say these are matched, these are not matched. But as soon as it gets big, as soon as it gets kind of to the point where sort of a deeper computation, it's hopeless. But the fact is that human language has avoided, for example, the deep sub clauses. We arrange things so we don't end up with these incredibly deep things because brains are not well set up to deal with that. And it's found lots of tricks. And maybe that's what we have to do to make sort of a spoken version, a human, speakable version, because what we can do visually is a little different than what we can do in the very sequentialized way that we hear things in the audio domain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me just ask you about MIT briefly. So there's now, there's a College of Engineering and there's a new College of Computing. It's interesting, I wanna linger on this computer science department thing. So MIT has EECS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. What do you think College of Computing will be doing, like in 20 years? What, like..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, what happens to computer science, like really? This is the question. This is, you know, everybody should learn kind of whatever CX really is, okay? This, how to think about the world computationally. Everybody should learn those concepts. And some people will learn them at a quite formal level and they'll learn computational language and things like that. Other people will just learn, sound is represented as digital data and they'll get some idea of spectrograms and frequencies and things like this. And maybe that doesn't, or they'll learn things like, a lot of things that are sort of data science-ish, statistics-ish. Like if you say, oh, I've got, these people who picked their favorite kind of candy or something, and I've got, what's the best kind of candy given that I've done the sample of all these people and they all rank the candies in different ways? How do you think about that? That's sort of a computational X kind of thing. You might say, oh, I don't know what that is. Is it statistics? Is it data science? I don't really know. But kind of how to think about a question like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, like a ranking of preferences" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then how to aggregate those ranked preferences into an overall thing. How does that work? How should you think about that? Because you can just tell, you might just tell ChachiBT sort of, I don't know, even the concept of an average. It's not obvious that, you know, that's a concept that people, it's worth people knowing. That's a rather straightforward concept. People, you know, have learned in kind of mathy ways right now. But there are lots of things like that about how do you kind of have these ways to sort of organize and formalize the world. And these things, sometimes they live in math, sometimes they live in, I don't know what they, I don't know what, learning about color space, I have no idea what, I mean, there's obviously a field of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It could be vision science, or no, color space, that would be optics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not really, it's not optics. Optics is about lenses and chromatic aberration of lenses and things like that. So color space is more like design and art? No, I mean it's like RGB space, XYZ space, hue, saturation, brightness space, all these kinds of things. These different ways to describe colors." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but doesn't the application define what that... Because obviously artists and designers use the color space to explore." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I mean, it's just an example of kind of how do you, you know, the typical person, how do you describe what a color is? Oh, well, there are these numbers that describe what a color is. Well, it's worth, you know, if you're an eight-year-old, you won't necessarily know, you know, it's not something we're born with to know that, you know, colors can be described by three numbers. That's something that you have to, you know, it's a thing to learn about the world, so to speak. And I think that whole corpus of things that are learning about the formalization of the world or the computationalization of the world, that's something that should be part of kind of standard education. And there isn't a course, a curriculum for that. And by the way, whatever might've been in it just got changed because of LLMs and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Significantly, and I wouldn't say I'm, watching closely with interest, seeing how universities adapt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, so one of my projects for hopefully this year, I don't know, is to try and write sort of a reasonable textbook, so to speak, of whatever this thing, CX, whatever it is, you know, what should you know? You know, what should you know about like what a bug is? What is the intuition about bugs? What's intuition about, you know, software testing? What is it? What is it, you know, these are things which are, you know, they're not, I mean, those are things which have gotten taught in computer science as part of the trade of programming. But kind of the conceptual points about what these things are, you know, it surprised me just at a very practical level. You know, I wrote this little explainer thing about chat GPT. And I thought, well, you know, I'm writing this partly because I wanted to make sure I understood it myself. and so on, and it's been really popular, and surprisingly so, and then I realized, well, actually, I was sort of assuming, I didn't really think about it, actually, I just thought this is something I can write, and I realized, actually, it's a level of description that is kind of what has to be, it's not the engineering level description, It's not the kind of just the qualitative kind of description. It's some kind of sort of expository mechanistic description of what's going on together with kind of the bigger picture of the philosophy of things and so on. And I realized, actually, this is a pretty good thing for me to write. I kind of know those things. And I kind of realized it's not a collection of things that, you know, it's, it's, I've sort of been, I was sort of a little shocked that it's as much of an outlier in terms of explaining what's going on as it turned out to be. And that makes me feel more of an obligation to kind of write the kind of, you know, what is, you know, what is this thing that you should learn about, about the computationalization, the formalization of the world? Because, well, I've spent much of my life working on the kind of tooling and mechanics of that and the science you get from it. So I guess this is my kind of obligation to try to do this. But I think, so if you ask what's gonna happen to like the computer science departments and so on, there's some interesting models. So for example, let's take math. You know, math is a thing that's important for all sorts of fields, you know, engineering, you know, even chemistry, psychology, whatever else. And I think different universities have kind of evolved that differently. I mean, some say all the math is taught in the math department. And some say, well, we're gonna have a math for chemists or something that is taught in the chemistry department. And I think that this question of whether there is a centralization of the teaching of sort of CX is an interesting question. And I think the way it evolved with math you know, people understood that math was sort of a separately teachable thing and was kind of a, you know, an independent element as opposed to just being absorbed into now. So if you take the example of writing English or something like this, The first point is that at the college level, at least at fancy colleges, there's a certain amount of English writing that people do, but mostly it's kind of assumed that they pretty much know how to write. That's something they learned at an earlier stage in education. maybe rightly or wrongly believing that, but that's a different issue. Well, I think it reminds me of my kind of, as I've tried to help people do technical writing and things, I'm always reminded of my zeroth law of technical writing, which is, if you don't understand what you're writing about, your readers do not stand a chance. And so it's, I think the, the thing that has some, you know, when it comes to like writing, for example, you know, people in different fields are expected to write English essays and they're not, you know, mostly the, you know, the history department or the engineering department. They don't have their own, you know, let's, you know, it's not like there's a, I mean, it's a thing which sort of people are assumed to have a knowledge of how to write. that they can use in all these different fields. And the question is, you know, some level of knowledge of math is kind of assumed by the time you get to the college level, but plenty is not, and that's sort of still centrally taught. The question is, sort of, how tall is the tower of kind of CX that you need before you can just go use it in all these different fields. And there will be experts who want to learn the full elaborate tower, and that will be kind of the CS, CX, whatever department. But there'll also be everybody else who just needs to know a certain amount of that to be able to go and do their art history classes and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, is it just a single class that everybody is required to take?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I don't know how big it is yet. I hope to kind of define this curriculum and I'll figure out whether it's some, my guess is that I don't know, I don't really understand universities and professoring that well, but my rough guess would be a year of college class will be enough to get to the point where most people have a reasonably broad knowledge of, will be sort of literate in this kind of computational way of thinking about things. Yeah, basic literacy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. I'm still stuck, perhaps because I'm hungry, in the rating of human preferences for candy. So I have to ask, what's the best candy? I like this Elo rating for candy. Somebody should come up. Because you're somebody who says you like chocolate. What do you think is the best? I'll probably put Milk Duds up there. I don't know if you know. Do you have a preference for chocolate or candy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I have lots of preferences. One of my all-time favorites my whole life is these things, these flake things, Cadbury flakes, which are not much sold in the US. And I've always thought that was a sign of a lack of respect for the American consumer, because they're these sort of aerated chocolate that's made in a whole sort of, it's kind of a sheet of chocolate that's kind of folded up. And when you eat it, flakes fall all over the place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ah, so it requires a kind of elegance. It requires you to have an elegance in eating stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I know, what I usually do is I eat a piece of paper or something. So you embrace the mess and clean it up after. No, I actually eat the flakes, because it turns out the way food tastes depends a lot on its physical structure. I've noticed when I eat a piece of chocolate, I usually have some little piece of chocolate, and I always break off little pieces, partly because then I eat it less fast, but also because it actually tastes different. The small pieces have a different, you have a different experience than if you have the big slab of chocolate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For many reasons, yes. Slower, more intimate, because it's a different." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think it's also just pure physicality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, the texture changes. Yeah, right. That's fascinating. Now I dig back my milk duds, because that's such a basic answer. Okay, do you think consciousness is fundamentally computational? So when you think about CX, what can we turn to computation? And you think about LLMs, do you think the display of consciousness and the experience of consciousness, the hard problem, is fundamentally a computation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, what it feels like inside, so to speak, is, you know, I did a little exercise, eventually I'll post it, of what it's like to be a computer, right? It's kind of like, well, you get all the sensory input, you have, kind of the way I see it is, from the time you boot a computer to the time the computer crashes, it's like a human life. You're building up a certain amount of state in memory. You remember certain things about your, quote, life. Eventually, it's kind of like the next generation of humans is born from the same genetic material, so to speak, with a little bit left over, left on the disk, so to speak. And then, you know, the new fresh generation starts up, and eventually all kinds of crud builds up in the memory of the computer, and eventually the thing crashes or whatever, or maybe it has some trauma because you plugged in some weird thing to some port of the computer, and that made it crash. You know, that's kind of, but you have this picture of, you know, from startup to shutdown, you know, what is the life of a computer, so to speak? And what does it feel like to be that computer? And what inner thoughts does it have? And how do you describe it? And it's kind of interesting as you start writing about this, to realize it's awfully like what you'd say about yourself. That is, it's awfully like, even an ordinary computer, forget all the AI stuff and so on. You know, it's kind of, it has a memory of the past. It has certain sensory experiences. It can communicate with other computers, but it has to package up how it's communicating in some kind of language-like form so it can kind of map what's in its memory to what's in the memory of some other computer. It's a surprisingly similar thing. I had an experience just a week or two ago. I'm a collector of all possible data about myself and other things. And so I collect all sorts of weird medical data and so on. And one thing I hadn't collected was I'd never had a whole body MRI scan. So I went and got one of these. Okay, so I get all the data back, right? I'm looking at this thing. I never looked at the kind of insides of my brain, so to speak, in physical form. And it's really, I mean, it's kind of psychologically shocking in a sense that, you know, here's this thing, and you can see it has all these folds and all these, you know, this structure. And it's like, that's where this experience that I'm having of, you know, existing and so on, that's where it is. And, you know, it feels very, you know, you look at that and you're thinking, how can this possibly be all this experience that I'm having? And you're realizing, well, I can look at a computer as well. And it's kind of this, I think this idea that you are having an experience that is somehow transcends the mere sort of physicality of that experience. It's something that's hard to come to terms with, but I think, and I don't think I've necessarily, my personal experience, I look at the MRI of the brain and then I know about all kinds of things about neuroscience and all that kind of stuff. and I still feel the way I feel, so to speak. And it sort of seems disconnected, but yet, as I try and rationalize it, I can't really say that there's something kind of different about how I intrinsically feel from the thing that I can plainly see in the sort of physicality of what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think the computer, a large language model, will experience that transcendence? How does that make you feel? I tend to believe it will." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think an ordinary computer is already there. I think an ordinary computer is already kind of... Now, a large language model may experience it in a way that is much better aligned with us humans. That is, it's much more, you know, if you could have the discussion with the computer, it's intelligence, so to speak, is not particularly well aligned with ours. But the large language model is, you know, it's built to be aligned with our way of thinking about things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It would be able to explain that it's afraid of being shut off and deleted. It'd be able to say that it's sad of the way you've been speaking to it over the past two days." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but you know, that's a weird thing because when it says it's afraid of something, right? We know that it got that idea from the fact that it read on the internet. All kinds of people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, where did you get it, Stephen? Where did you get it when you say you're afraid?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You are quite, that's the question, right? I mean, it's- Your parents, your friends. Right, or my biology. I mean, in other words, there's a certain amount that is, you know, the endocrine system kicking in and, you know, these kinds of emotional overlay type things that happen to be, that are actually much more physical even, they're much more sort of straightforwardly chemical than kind of all of the higher level thinking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but your biology didn't tell you to say, I'm afraid, just at the right time, when people that love you are listening, and so you know you're manipulating them by saying so. That's not your biology, that's like. It's a large language model, and that biological neural network of yours." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but I mean the intrinsic thing of something sort of shocking is just happening, and you have some sort of reaction, which is some neurotransmitter gets secreted, and that is the beginning of some, that's one of the pieces of input that then drives, it's kind of like a prompt, for the large language model. I mean, just like when we dream, for example, you know, no doubt there are all these sort of random inputs, they're kind of these random prompts, and then it's percolating through in kind of the way that a large language model does of kind of putting together things that seem meaningful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, are you worried about this world where you teach a lot on the internet and there's people asking questions and comments and so on? You have people that work remotely. Are you worried about this world when large language models create human-like bots that are leaving the comments, asking the questions, or might even become fake employees? I mean, or worse or better yet, friends of yours." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, look, I mean, one point is my mode of life has been I build tools and then I use the tools. And in a sense, kind of, you know, I'm building this tower of automation, which, you know, and in a sense, when you make a company or something, you are making sort of automation, but it has some humans in it, but also as much as possible, it has computers in it. And so I think it's sort of an extension of that. Now, if I really didn't know that, it's a funny question. It's a funny issue. If we think about sort of what's going to happen to the future of kind of jobs people do and so on, And there are places where kind of having a human in the loop, there are different reasons to have a human in the loop. For example, you might want a human in the loop because you want another human to be invested in the outcome. You want a human flying the plane who's going to die if the plane crashes along with you, so to speak. And that gives you sort of confidence that the right thing is going to happen. Or you might want, right now, you might want a human in the loop in some kind of sort of human encouragement persuasion type profession. Whether that will continue, I'm not sure for those types of professions, because it may be that the greater efficiency of being able to have sort of just the right information delivered at just the right time will overcome the kind of, oh yes, I want a human there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Imagine a therapist or even higher stake, like a suicide hotline operated by a large language model. Oh boy, it's a pretty high stake situation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but I mean, but you know, it might in fact do the right thing. Yeah. Because it might be the case that, you know, and that's really partly a question of sort of how complicated is the human, you know, one of the things that's always surprising in some sense is that, you know, sometimes human psychology is not that complicated in some sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wrote the blog post, The 50-Year Quest, My Personal Journey, good title, My Personal Journey with a Second Law of Thermodynamics. So what is this law and what have you understood about it in the 50-year journey you had with it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so second law of thermodynamics, sometimes called law of entropy increase, is this principle of physics that says Well, my version of it would be things tend to get more random over time. A version of it that there are many different sort of formulations of it that are things like heat doesn't spontaneously go from a hotter body to a colder one. when you have mechanical work kind of gets dissipated into heat. You have friction and kind of when you systematically move things, eventually there'll be sort of the energy of moving things gets kind of ground down into heat. So people first sort of paid attention to this back in the 1820s when steam engines were a big thing. And the big question was, how efficient could a steam engine be? And there's this chap called Sadi Carnot, who was a French engineer. Actually, his father was a sort of elaborate mathematical engineer in France. But he figured out these kind of rules for how kind of the efficiency of, the possible efficiency of something like a steam engine. And in sort of a side part of what he did was this idea that mechanical energy tends to get dissipated as heat, that you end up going from sort of systematic mechanical motion to this kind of random thing. Well, at that time, nobody knew what heat was. At that time, people thought that heat was a fluid. I called it caloric, and it was a fluid that kind of was absorbed into substances, and when one hot thing would transfer heat to a colder thing, that this fluid would flow from the hot thing to the colder thing. But anyway, then by the 1860s, people had kind of come up with this idea that systematic energy tends to degrade into kind of random heat that could then not be easily turned back into systematic mechanical energy. And then that quickly became sort of a global principle about how things work. The question is, why does it happen that way? So, you know, let's say you have a bunch of molecules in a box and they're arranged, these molecules are arranged in a very nice sort of flotilla of molecules in one corner of the box. And then what you typically observe is that after a while, these molecules will be kind of randomly arranged in the box. Question is, why does that happen? and people for a long, long time tried to figure out, is there, from the laws of mechanics that determine how these molecules, let's say these molecules are like hard spheres bouncing off each other, from the laws of mechanics that describe those molecules, can we explain why it tends to be the case that we see things that are orderly sort of degrade into disorder? We tend to see things that you scramble an egg, you take something that's quite ordered and you disorder it, so to speak. That's a thing that sort of happens quite regularly, or you put some ink into water and it will eventually spread out and fill up the water. But you don't see those little particles of ink in the water all spontaneously kind of arrange themselves into a big blob and then jump out of the water or something. And so the question is, why do things happen in this kind of irreversible way where you go from order to disorder? Why does it happen that way? And so throughout, in the later part of the 1800s, a lot of work was done on trying to figure out, can one derive this principle, this second law of thermodynamics, this law about the dynamics of heat, so to speak, can one derive this from some fundamental principles of mechanics. In the laws of thermodynamics, the first law is basically the law of energy conservation, that the total energy associated with heat, plus the total energy associated with mechanical kinds of things, plus other kinds of energy, that that total is constant. And that became a pretty well understood principle. But the second law of thermodynamics was always mysterious. Like, why does it work this way? Can it be derived from underlying mechanical laws? And so when I was, well, 12 years old, actually, I had gotten interested, well, I'd been interested in space and things like that, because I thought that was kind of the future and interesting sort of technology and so on. And for a while, kind of, you know, every deep space probe was sort of a personal friend type thing. I knew all kinds of characteristics of it and was kind of writing up all these things when I was, I don't know, eight, nine, 10 years old and so on. And then I got interested from being interested in kind of spacecraft, I got interested in like, how do they work? What are all the instruments on them and so on? And that got me interested in physics, which was just as well, because if I'd stayed interested in space in the mid to late 1960s, I would have had a long wait before space really blossomed as an area. But- Adding is everything. Right, I got interested in physics, and then, well, the actual sort of detailed story is when I kind of graduated from elementary school at age 12, and that's the time in England where you finish elementary school, I sort of, my gift, sort of, I suppose, more or less for myself was I got this collection of, physics books, which was some college physics course of college physics books. And volume five is about statistical physics. And it has this picture on the cover that shows a bunch of kind of idealized molecules sitting in one side of a box. And then it has a series of frames showing how these molecules sort of spread out in the box. And I thought that's pretty interesting. You know, what causes that? And, you know, read the book and the book actually, one of the things that was really significant to me about that was the book kind of claimed, although I didn't really understand what it said in detail, it kind of claimed that this sort of principle of physics was derivable somehow. And other things I'd learned about physics, it was all like, it's a fact that energy is conserved. It's a fact that relativity works or something. Not it's something you can derive from some fundamental sort of, it has to be that way as a matter of kind of mathematics or logic or something. So it was sort of interesting to me that there was a thing about physics that was kind of inevitably true and derivable, so to speak. And so I think that, so then I was like, there's a picture on this book and I was trying to understand it. And so that was actually the first serious program that I wrote for a computer was probably in 1973 written for this computer, the size of a desk program with paper tape and so on. And I tried to reproduce this picture on the book and it didn't succeed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was the failure mode there? Like, what do you mean it didn't succeed?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's a bunch of little- It didn't look like, it didn't look like, okay, so what happened is, Okay, many years later, I learned how the picture on the book was actually made, and that it was actually kind of a fake, but I didn't know that at that time. And that picture was actually a very high-tech thing when it was made in the beginning of the 1960s. It was made on the largest supercomputer that existed at the time, and even so, it couldn't quite simulate the thing that it was supposed to be simulating. But anyway, I didn't know that until many, many, many years later. So at the time, it was like you have these balls bouncing around in this box, but I was using this computer with eight kilowatts of memory. They were 18-bit words, memory words, okay? So it was whatever, 24 kilobytes of memory. And it had these instructions. I probably still remember all of its machine instructions. And it didn't really like dealing with floating point numbers or anything like that. And so I had to simplify this model of particles bouncing around in a box. And so I thought, well, I'll put them on a grid and I'll make the things just sort of move one square at a time and so on. And so I did the simulation and the result was it didn't look anything like the actual pictures on the book. Now, many years later, in fact, very recently, I realized that the thing I'd simulated was actually an example of a whole sort of computational irreducibility story that I absolutely did not recognize at the time. At the time, it just looked like it did something random and it looks wrong, as opposed to it did something random and it's super interesting that it's random. But I didn't recognize that at the time. And so, as it was at the time, I got interested in particle physics and I got interested in other kinds of physics. But this whole second law of thermodynamics thing, this idea that sort of orderly things tend to degrade into disorder. continued to be something I was really interested in. And I was really curious for the whole universe, why doesn't that happen all the time? Like we start off in the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe was this thing that seems like it's this very disordered collection of stuff. And then it spontaneously forms itself into galaxies and creates all of this complexity and order in the universe. And so I was very curious how that happens. But I was always kind of thinking, this is kind of somehow the second law of thermodynamics is behind it trying to sort of pull things back into disorder, so to speak. And how was order being created? And so actually I was interested, this is probably now 1980, I got interested in kind of this galaxy formation and so on in the universe. I also at that time was interested in neural networks and I was interested in kind of how brains make complicated things happen and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, wait, wait, wait, what's the connection between the formation of galaxies and how brains make complicated things happen?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because they're both a matter of how complicated things come to happen. From simple origins. Yeah, from some sort of known origins. I had the sense that what I was interested in was kind of in all these different, this sort of different cases of where complicated things were arising from rules. And I also looked at snowflakes and things like that. I was curious on fluid dynamics in general. I was just sort of curious about how does complexity arise? And the thing that I didn't, it took me a while to kind of realize that there might be a general phenomenon. I sort of assumed, oh, there's galaxies over here, there's brains over here, they're very different kinds of things. And so what happened, this is probably 1981 or so, I decided, okay, I'm gonna try and make the minimal model of how these things work. And it was sort of an interesting experience because I had built, starting in 1979, I built my first big computer system. It's a thing called SMP, Symbolic Manipulation Program. It's kind of a forerunner of modern morphine language with many of the same ideas about symbolic computation and so on. But the thing that was very important to me about that was in building that language, I had basically tried to figure out what were the relevant computational primitives which have turned out to stay with me for the last 40 something years. But it was also important because in building a language was very different activity from natural science, which is what I'd mostly done before. Because in natural science, you start from the phenomena of the world and you try and figure out to how can I make sense of the phenomena of the world? And the world presents you with what it has to offer, so to speak, and you have to make sense of it. When you build a computer language or something, you are creating your own primitives. And then you say, so what can you make from these? Sort of the opposite way around from what you do in natural science. But I'd had the experience of doing that. And so I was kind of like, okay, what happens if you sort of make an artificial physics? What happens if you just make up the rules by which systems operate? And then I was thinking, you know, for all these different systems, whether it was galaxies or brains or whatever, what's the absolutely minimal model that kind of captures the things that are important about those systems? The computational primitives of that system. Yes. And so that's what ended up with the cellular automata, where you just have a line of black and white cells. You just have a rule that says, you know, given a cell and its neighbors, what will the color of the cell be on the next step? And you just run it in a series of steps. And the sort of the ironic thing is that cellular automata are great models for many kinds of things, but galaxies and brains are two examples where they do very, very badly. They're really irrelevant to the those two cases." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a connection to the second law of thermodynamics and cellular automata? Oh yes, very much so. The things you've discovered about cellular automata." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, okay, so when I first started studying cellular automata, my first papers about them were, you know, the first sentence was always about the second law of thermodynamics. It was always about how does order manage to be produced even though there's a second law of thermodynamics which tries to pull things back into disorder. And I kind of, my early understanding of that had to do with these are intrinsically irreversible processes in cellular automata that can form orderly structures even from random initial conditions. But then what I realized, this was, well, actually it's, It's one of these things where it was a discovery that I should have made earlier, but didn't. So, you know, in studying cellular automata, what I did was the sort of most obvious computer experiment. You just try all the different rules and see what they do. It's kind of like, you know, you've invented a computational telescope, you just point it at the most obvious thing in the sky. and then you just see what's there. And so I did that, and I was making all these pictures of how cellular automata work. And I started these pictures, I studied in great detail. There was, you can number the rules for cellular automata, and one of them is rule 30. So I made a picture of rule 30 back in 1981 or so. And rule 30, well, it's, and at the time I was just like, okay, it's another one of these rules. I don't really, it happens to be asymmetric, left, right, asymmetric. And it's like, let me just consider the case of the symmetric ones just to keep things simpler, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I just kind of ignored it. And then sort of in actually in 1984, strangely enough, I ended up having an early laser printer, which made very high resolution pictures. And I thought, I'm gonna print out an interesting, you know, I wanna make an interesting picture. Let me take this rule 30 thing and just make a high resolution picture of it. I did, and it has this very remarkable property that its rule is very simple. You start it off just from one black cell at the top, and it makes this kind of triangular pattern. But if you look inside this pattern, it looks really random. You look at the center column of cells, and I studied that in great detail, and so far as one can tell, it's completely random. And it's kind of a little bit like digits of pi. Once you know the rule for generating the digits of pi, but once you've generated them, you know, 3.14159, et cetera, they seem completely random. And in fact, I put up this prize back in, what was it, 2019 or something, for prove anything about the sequence, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Has anyone been able to do anything on that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "People have sent me some things, but it's, you know, I don't know how hard these problems are. I mean, I was kind of spoiled because I, 2007, I put up a prize for determining whether a particular Turing machine that I thought was the simplest candidate for being a universal Turing machine determine whether it is or isn't a universal Turing machine. And somebody did a really good job of winning that prize and proving that it was a universal Turing machine in about six months. And so I, you know, I didn't know whether that would be one of these problems that was out there for hundreds of years, or whether in this particular case, young chap called Alex Smith, you know, nailed it in six months. And so with this Rule 30 collection, I don't really know whether these are things that are 100 years away from being able to get or whether somebody is going to come and do something very clever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's like Fermat's last theorem. Rule 30 is such a simple formulation. It feels like anyone can look at it, understand it, and feel like it's within grasp to be able to predict something, to derive some kind of law that allows you to predict something about this. the middle column of rule 30." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And yet you can't. Yeah, right. This is the intuitional surprise of computational irreducibility and so on, that even though the rules are simple, you can't tell what's going to happen, and you can't prove things about it. So anyway, the thing, I started in 1984 or so, I started realizing there's this phenomenon that you can have very simple rules, they produce apparently random behavior. Okay, so that's a little bit like the second law of thermodynamics, because it's like you have this simple initial condition, you can readily see that it's very, you can describe it very easily, and yet it makes this thing that seems to be random. Now, turns out, there's some technical detail about the second order of thermodynamics and about the idea of reversibility. When you have a movie of two billiard balls colliding, and you see them collide and they bounce off, and you run that movie in reverse, you can't tell which way was the forward direction of time and which way was the backward direction of time when you're just looking at individual billiard balls. By the time you've got a whole collection of them, you know, a million of them or something, then it turns out to be the case, and this is the sort of the mystery of the second law, that the orderly thing, you start with the orderly thing and it becomes disordered, and that's the forward direction in time, and the other way around of it starts disordered and becomes ordered, you just don't see that in the world. Now, in principle, if you sort of traced the detailed motions of all those molecules backwards, you would be able to, it will, the reverse of time makes, as you go forwards in time, order goes to disorder. As you go backwards in time, order goes to disorder. Perfectly so, yes. Right, so the mystery is, why is it the case that one version of the mystery is, why is it the case that you never see something which happens to be just the kind of disorder that you would need to somehow evolve to order? Why does that not happen? Why do you always just see order goes to disorder, not the other way around? So the thing that I kind of realized, I started realizing in the 1980s, it's kind of like, it's a bit like cryptography. It's kind of like you start off from this key that's pretty simple, and then you kind of run it, and you can get this, you know, complicated random mess. And the thing that, Well, I sort of started realizing back then was that the second law is kind of a story of computational irreducibility. It's a story of what we can describe easily at the beginning, we can only describe with a lot of computational effort at the end. Okay, so now we come many, many years later, and I was trying to sort of, well, having done this big project to understand fundamental physics, I realized that sort of a key aspect of that is understanding what observers are like. And then I realized that the second law of thermodynamics is the same story as a bunch of these other cases. It is a story of a computationally bounded observer trying to observe a computationally irreducible system. So it's a story of, you know, underneath the molecules are bouncing around. They're bouncing around in this completely determined way, determined by rules. But the point is that we, as computationally bounded observers, can't tell that there were these sort of simple underlying rules. To us, it just looks random. And when it comes to this question about, can you prepare the initial state so that, you know, the disordered thing is, you know, you have exactly the right disorder to make something orderly, a computationally bounded observer cannot do that. we'd have to have done all of this sort of irreducible computation to work out very precisely what this disordered state, the exact right disordered state is so that we would get this ordered thing produced from it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it mean to be computationally bounded observer? Observing a computationally reducible system. So the computationally bounded, is there something formal you can say there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so it means Okay, you can talk about Turing machines, you can talk about computational complexity theory and polynomial time computation and things like this. There are a variety of ways to make something more precise, but I think it's more useful, the intuitive version of it is more useful. Which is basically just to say that, how much computation are you going to do to try and work out what's going on? And the answer is, you're not allowed to do a lot of, we're not able to do a lot of computation. When we, you know, we've got, you know, in this room, there will be a trillion, trillion, trillion molecules, a little bit less. It's a big room. Right. And, you know, At every moment, every microsecond or something, these molecules are colliding, and that's a lot of computation that's getting done. And the question is, in our brains, we do a lot less computation every second than the computation done by all those molecules. if there is computational irreducibility, we can't work out in detail what all those molecules are going to do. What we can do is only a much smaller amount of computation. And so the second law of thermodynamics is this kind of interplay between the underlying computational irreducibility and the fact that we, as preparers of initial states or as measures of what happens, are not capable of doing that much computation. So to us, Another big formulation of the second law of thermodynamics is this idea of the law of entropy increase." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The characteristic that this universe, the entropy seems to be always increasing. What does that show to you about the evolution of" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, so first of all, we have to say what entropy is, okay? And that's very confused in the history of thermodynamics, because entropy was first introduced by a guy called Rudolf Clausius, and he did it in terms of heat and temperature, okay? Subsequently, it was reformulated by a guy called Ludwig Boltzmann, and he formulated it in a much more kind of combinatorial type way. But he always claimed that it was equivalent to Clausius' thing. And in one particular simple example, it is. But that connection between these two formulations of entropy, they've never been connected. I mean, there's really, so, okay, so the more general definition of entropy, due to Boltzmann, is the following thing. So you say, I have a system, and it has many possible configurations. Molecules can be in many different arrangements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If we know something about the system, for example, we know it's in a box, it has a certain pressure, it has a certain temperature, we know these overall facts about it. Then we say, how many microscopic configurations of the system are possible given those overall constraints? And the entropy is the logarithm of that number. That's the definition. And that's the kind of the general definition of entropy that turns out to be useful. Now in Boltzmann's time, he thought these molecules could be placed anywhere you want. He didn't think, but he said, oh, actually we can make it a lot simpler by having the molecules be discrete. Well, actually he didn't know molecules existed. In his time, 1860s and so on, the idea that matter might be made of discrete stuff had been floated ever since ancient Greek times, but it had been a long time debate about is matter discrete, is it continuous? At the moment, at that time, people mostly thought that matter was continuous. And it was all confused with this question about what heat is, and people thought heat was this fluid, and it was a big muddle. And Boltzmann said, let's assume there are discrete molecules, let's even assume they have discrete energy levels. Let's say everything is discrete. Then we can do sort of combinatorial mathematics and work out how many configurations of these things there will be in the box. And we can say, we can compute this entropy quantity. But he said, but of course, it's just a fiction that these things are discrete. So he said, this is an interesting piece of history, by the way, that, you know, that was at that time, People didn't know molecules existed. There were other hints from looking at chemistry that there might be discrete atoms and so on, just from the combinatorics of two hydrogens and one oxygen make water, two amounts of hydrogen plus one amount of oxygen together make water, things like this. But it wasn't known that discrete molecules existed. And in fact, the people You know, it wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that Brownian motion was the final giveaway. Brownian motion is, you know, you look under a microscope at these little pieces from pollen grains, you see they're being discreetly kicked, and those kicks are water molecules hitting them, and they're discreet. And in fact, it was really quite interesting history. I mean, Boltzmann had worked out how things could be discreet, and had basically invented something like quantum theory in the 1860s, but he just thought it wasn't really the way it worked. And then, just a piece of physics history, because I think it's kind of interesting, in 1900, this guy called Max Planck who'd been a long time thermodynamics person, who was trying to, everybody was trying to prove the second law of thermodynamics, including Max Planck. And Max Planck believed that radiation, like electromagnetic radiation, somehow the interaction of that with matter was going to prove the second law of thermodynamics. But he had these experiments that people had done on black body radiation and there were these curves and you couldn't fit the curve based on his idea for how radiation interacted with matter. Those curves, you couldn't figure out how to fit those curves. Except he noticed that if he just did what Boltzmann had done and assumed that electromagnetic radiation was discrete, he could fit the curves. He said, but, you know, this is just a, you know, it just happens to work this way. Then Einstein came along and said, well, by the way, you know, the electromagnetic field might actually be discrete. It might be made of photons. And then that explains how this all works. And that was, you know, in 1905, that was how, kind of, that was how that piece of quantum mechanics got started. Kind of interesting, interesting piece of history. I didn't know until I was researching this recently. In 1904 and 1903, Einstein wrote three different papers. Just sort of well-known physics history, in 1905, Einstein wrote these three papers. One introduced relativity theory, one explained Brownian motion, and one introduced basically photons. So kind of, you know, kind of a big deal year for physics and for Einstein. But in the years before that, he'd written several papers. And what were they about? They were about the second law of thermodynamics. And they were an attempt to prove the second law of thermodynamics and their nonsense. And so I had no idea that he'd done this. And in fact, what he did, those three papers in 1905, well, not so much the relativity paper, the one on Brownian motion, the one on photons, both of these were about the story of sort of making the world discreet. And he got that idea from Boltzmann. But Boltzmann didn't think, you know, Boltzmann kind of died believing, you know, he said, as a quote actually, you know, in the end things are gonna turn out to be discreet and I'm gonna write down what I have to say about this because, you know, eventually this stuff will be rediscovered and I want to leave, you know, what I can about how things are gonna be discreet, but, you know. I think he has some quote about how one person can't stand against the tide of history in saying that matter is discreet. So he stuck by his guns in terms of matter is discreet. Yes, he did. And what's interesting about this is, At the time, everybody including Einstein kind of assumed that space was probably going to end up being discrete too. But that didn't work out technically because it wasn't consistent with relativity theory. It didn't seem to be. And so then in the history of physics, even though people had determined that matter was discrete, electromagnetic field was discrete, space was a holdout of not being discrete. And in fact, Einstein, 1916, has this nice letter he wrote where he says, in the end, it will turn out space is discrete, but we don't have the mathematical tools necessary to figure out how that works yet. And so, you know, I think it's kind of cool that 100 years later, we do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, for you, you're pretty sure that at every layer of reality, it's discrete." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and that space is discrete. And in fact, one of the things I realized recently is this kind of theory of heat, that heat is really this continuous fluid. It's kind of like the caloric theory of heat, which turns out to be completely wrong, because actually heat is the motion of discrete molecules. Unless you know there are discrete molecules, it's hard to understand what heat could possibly be. Well, you know, I think space is discrete. And the question is kind of what's the analog of the mistake that was made with caloric in the case of space? And so my current guess is that dark matter is, as I've, my little sort of aphorism of the last few months has been, you know, dark matter is the caloric of our time. That is, it will turn out that dark matter is a feature of space and it is not a bunch of particles. At the time when people were talking about heat, they knew about fluids, and they said, well, heat must just be another kind of fluid, because that's what they knew about. But now people know about particles, and so they say, well, what's dark matter? It just must be particles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what could dark matter be as a feature of space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I don't know yet. I mean, I think the thing I'm really, one of the things I'm hoping to be able to do is to find the analog of Brownian motion in space. So in other words, Brownian motion was seeing down to the level of an effect from individual molecules. And so in the case of space, you know, most of the things, the things we see about space so far, just everything seems continuous. Brownian motion had been discovered in the 1830s, and it was only identified what it was the result of by Smoluchowski and Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century. And dark matter was discovered, that phenomenon was discovered 100 years ago. The rotation curves of galaxies don't follow the luminous matter, that was discovered 100 years ago. And I think that I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't an effect that we already know about that is kind of the analog of Brownian motion that reveals the discreteness of space. And in fact, we're beginning to have some guesses. We have some evidence that black hole mergers work differently when there's discrete space, and there may be things that you can see in gravitational wave signatures and things. associated with the discreteness of space. But this is kind of, for me, it's kind of interesting to see this sort of recapitulation of the history of physics, where people, you know, vehemently say, you know, matter is continuous, electromagnetic field is continuous, and turns out it isn't true, and then they say space is continuous. But so, you know, entropy is the number of states of the system consistent with some constraint. And, The thing is that if you know in great detail the position of every molecule in the gas, the entropy is always zero because there's only one possible state. The configuration of molecules in the gas, the molecules bounce around, they have a certain rule for bouncing around. There's just one state of the gas evolves to one state of the gas and so on. But it's only if you don't know in detail where all the molecules are that you can say, well, the entropy increases because the things we do know about the molecules, there are more possible microscopic states of the system consistent with what we do know about where the molecules are. And so the question of whether, so people, this sort of paradox in a sense of, oh, if we knew where all the molecules were, the entropy wouldn't increase. There was this idea introduced by Gibbs in the early 20th century, well, actually the very beginning of the 20th century, as a physics professor, an American physics professor, was sort of the first distinguished American physics professor at Yale. And he, introduced this idea of coarse graining. This idea that, well, you know, these molecules have a detailed way they're bouncing around, but we can only observe a coarse grained version of that. But the confusion has been nobody knew what a valid coarse graining would be. So nobody knew that whether you could have this coarse graining that very carefully was sculpted in just such a way that it would notice that the particular configurations that you could get from the simple initial condition, they fit into this coarse graining and the coarse graining very carefully observes that. Why can't you do that kind of very detailed, precise coarse graining? The answer is, because if you are a computationally bounded observer and the underlying dynamics is computationally irreducible, that's what defines possible coarse-grainings is what a computationally bounded observer can do. And it's the fact that a computationally bounded observer is forced to look only at this kind of coarse-grained version of what the system is doing. That's why, and because what's going on underneath is it's kind of filling out this, the different possible, you're ending up with something where the sort of underlying computational irreducibility is your, if all you can see is what the coarse-grained result is with a sort of computationally bounded observation, then inevitably there are many possible underlying configurations that are consistent with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just to clarify, basically any observer that exists inside the universe is going to be computationally bounded." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, any observer like us. I don't know, I can't imagine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say like us, what do you mean, what do you mean like us?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, humans with finite minds. You're including the tools of science. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and as we, you know, we have more precise, and by the way, there are little sort of microscopic violations of the second law of thermodynamics that you can start to have when you have more precise measurements of where precisely molecules are. But for a large scale, when you have enough molecules, we don't have, we're not tracing all those molecules and we just don't have the computational resources to do that. And it wouldn't be, I think, to imagine what an observer who is not computationally bounded would be like, It's an interesting thing because, okay, so what does computational boundedness mean? Among other things, it means we conclude that definite things happen. We go, we take all this complexity of the world and we make a decision, we're gonna turn left or turn right. And that is kind of reducing all this kind of detail into we're observing it, we're sort of crushing it down to this one thing. And that, if we didn't do that, we wouldn't have all this sort of symbolic structure that we build up that lets us think things through with our finite minds. We'd be instead, you know, we'd be just, we'd be sort of one with the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so content to not simplify." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, if we didn't simplify, then we wouldn't be like us. We would be like the universe, like the intrinsic universe, but not having experiences like the experiences we have, where we, for example, conclude that definite things happen. We sort of have this notion of being able to make sort of narrative statements." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if it's just like you imagined, as a thought experiment, what it's like to be a computer. I wonder if it's possible to try to begin to imagine what it's like to be an unbounded computational observer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, so here's how that, I think, plays out. So, I mean, in this, we talk about this Ruliad, this space of all possible computations. and this idea of being at a certain place in the Ruliad, which corresponds to sort of a certain set of computations that you are representing things in terms of. Okay, so as you expand out in the Ruliad, as you kind of encompass more possible views of the universe, as you encompass more possible kinds of computations that you can do, Eventually, you might say, that's a real win. We're colonizing the Ruliad. We're building out more paradigms about how to think about things. And eventually, you might say, we won all the way. We managed to colonize the whole Ruliad. Okay, here's the problem with that. The problem is that the notion of existence, coherent existence, requires some kind of specialization. By the time you are the whole Ruliad, by the time you cover the whole Ruliad, in no useful sense do you coherently exist. So in other words, the notion of existence, the notion of what we think of as definite existence, requires this kind of specialization, requires this kind of idea that we are not all possible things, we are a particular set of things. And that's kind of what makes us have a coherent existence. If we were spread throughout the Ruliad, there would be no coherence to the way that we work. We would work in all possible ways, and that wouldn't be kind of a notion of identity. We wouldn't have this notion of coherent identity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I am geographically located somewhere exactly, precisely in the Ruliad, therefore I am. is the Descartes kind of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, right. Well, you're in a certain place in physical space, you're in a certain place in real space. And if you are sufficiently spread out, you are no longer coherent. And you no longer have, I mean, in our perception of what it means to exist and to have experience, it doesn't happen that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So therefore, to exist means to be computationally bounded." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, to exist in the way that we think of ourselves as existing, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The very act of existence is like operating in this place that's computationally irreducible. So there's this giant mess of things going on that you can't possibly predict. But nevertheless, because of your limitations, You have an imperative of like, what is it? An imperative or a skill set to simplify? Or an ignorance, a sufficient?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so the thing which is not obvious is that you are taking a slice of all this complexity, just like we have all of these molecules bouncing around in the room, but all we notice is, you know, the kind of the flow of the air or the pressure of the air. We're just noticing these particular things. And the big interesting thing is that there are rules, there are laws that govern those big things we observe. So it's not obvious that that would be the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Amazing, because it doesn't feel like it's a slice. Yeah, well, right. It's not a slice. It's like an abstraction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but I mean the fact that the gas laws work, that we can describe pressure, volume, etc., etc., etc., and that we don't have to go down to the level of talking about individual molecules, that is a non-trivial fact. And here's the thing that I, sort of, the exciting thing as far as I'm concerned, the fact that there are certain aspects of the universe, so we think space is made ultimately these atoms of space and these hypergraphs and so on, and we think that, but we nevertheless perceive the universe at a large scale to be like continuous space and so on. We, in quantum mechanics, We think that there are these many threads of time, these many threads of history, yet we kind of span. So in quantum mechanics, in our models of physics, there are these, time is not a single thread. Time breaks into many threads. They branch, they merge. But we are part of that branching, merging universe. And so our brains are also branching and merging. And so when we perceive the universe, we are branching brains perceiving a branching universe. And so the fact that the claim that we believe that we are persistent in time, we have this single thread of experience, that's the statement that somehow we managed to aggregate together those separate threads of time that are separated in the operation of, in the fundamental operation of the universe. So just as in space, we're averaging over some big region of space and we're looking at many, many of the aggregate effects of many atoms of space. So similarly in what we call branchial space, the space of these quantum branches, we are effectively averaging over many different branches of possible, of histories of the universe. And so in thermodynamics, we're averaging over many configurations of many possible positions of molecules. So what we see here is, so the question is, when you do that averaging for space, what are the aggregate laws of space? When you do that averaging of a branchial space, what are the aggregate laws of branchial space? When you do that averaging over the molecules and so on, what are the aggregate laws you get? And this is the thing that I think is just amazingly, amazingly neat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that- That there are aggregate laws at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, but the question is, what are those aggregate laws? So the answer is, for space, the aggregate laws are Einstein's equations for gravity, for the structure of space-time. For Braunschild space, the aggregate laws are the laws of quantum mechanics. And for the case of molecules and things, the aggregate laws are basically the second law of thermodynamics. And so that's the things that follow from the second law of thermodynamics. And so what that means is that the three great theories of 20th century physics, which are basically general relativity, the theory of gravity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics, which is what kind of grows out of the second law of thermodynamics, all three of the great theories of 20th century physics are the result of this interplay between computational irreducibility and the computational boundedness of observers. And for me, this is really neat because it means that all three of these laws are derivable. So we used to think that, for example, Einstein's equations were just sort of a wheel-in feature of our universe, that they could be, the universe might be that way, it might not be that way. Quantum mechanics is just like, well, it just happens to be that way. And the second law, people kind of thought, well, maybe it is derivable. Okay, what turns out to be the case is that all three of the fundamental principles of physics are derivable, but they're not derivable just from mathematics. They require, or just from some kind of logical computation, they require one more thing. They require that the observer, that the thing that is sampling the way the universe works is an observer who has these characteristics of computational boundedness of belief and persistence in time. And so that means that it is the nature of the observer the rough nature of the observer, not the details of oh, we got two eyes and we observe photons of this frequency and so on, but the kind of the very coarse features of the observer then imply these very precise facts about physics. And I think it's amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if we just look at the actual experience of the observer that we experience this reality, it seems real to us. And you're saying because of our abounded nature, it's actually all an illusion. It's a simplification." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's a simplification. But you don't think a simplification is an illusion? No, I mean, it's, well, I don't know. I mean, what's underneath... Is it real? Okay, that's an interesting question. What's real? And that relates to the whole question of why does the universe exist? And what is the difference between reality and a mere representation of what's going on? Yes, we experience the representation. Yes, but the question of, so one question is, why is there a thing which we can experience that way? And the answer is because this Rulliard object, which is this entangled limit of all possible computations, there is no choice about it. It has to exist. There has to be such a thing. It is in the same sense that two plus two, if you define what two is and you plot pluses and so on, two plus two has to equal four. Similarly, this Rouliad, this limit of all possible computations, just has to be a thing that is, once you have the idea of computation, you inevitably have the Rouliad. You're gonna have to have a Rouliad, yeah. Right, and what's important about it, there's just one of it. It's just this unique object. And that unique object necessarily exists. And then the question is, what, and then we, once you know that we are sort of embedded in that and taking samples of it, that it's sort of inevitable that there is this thing that we can perceive that is, our perception of kind of physical reality necessarily is that way, given that we are observers with the characteristics we have. So in other words, the fact that the universe exists is it's actually, it's almost like it's, you know, to think about it almost theologically, so to speak. And I've really, it's funny because a lot of the questions about the existence of the universe and so on, they transcend what kind of the science of the last few hundred years has really been concerned with. The science of the last few hundred years hasn't thought it could talk about questions like that. But I think it's kind of, and so a lot of the kind of arguments of, you know, does God exist? You know, is it obvious that, I think in some sense, in some representation, it's sort of more obvious that something sort of bigger than us exists than that we exist. And we are, you know, our existence and as observers the way we are is sort of a contingent thing about the universe. And it's more inevitable that the whole universe, kind of the whole set of all possibilities exists. But this question about, you know, is it real or is it an illusion? You know, all we know is our experience. And so the fact that, well, our experience is this absolutely microscopic piece of sample of the Ruliad. And there's this point about we might sample more and more of the Ruliad, we might learn more and more about, we might learn, like the Different areas of physics, like quantum mechanics, for example, the fact that it was discovered, I think, is closely related to the fact that electronic amplifiers were invented that allowed you to take a small effect and amplify it up, which hadn't been possible before. Microscopes had been invented that magnify things and so on, but having a very small effect and being able to magnify it was sort of a new thing that allowed one to see a different sort of aspect of the universe and let one discover this kind of thing. So, you know, we can expect that in the Ruliad, there are an infinite collection of new things we can discover. There's in fact computational irreducibility kind of guarantees that there will be an infinite collection of kind of, you know, pockets of reducibility that can be discovered." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Boy, would it be fun to take a walk. down the roulade and see what kind of stuff we find there. You write about alien intelligences. I mean, just these worlds of computation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The problem with these worlds is that- We can't talk to them. Yes. And the thing is, What I've kind of spent a lot of time doing is just studying computational systems, seeing what they do, what I now call ruleology, kind of just the study of rules and what they do. You know, you can kind of easily jump somewhere else in the rulead and start seeing what do these rules do. And what you, they do what they do and there's no human connection, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you think, you know, some people are able to communicate with animals? Do you think you can become a whisperer of these competitions? Oh, I've been trying. That's what I've spent some part of my life doing. Have you heard? And are you at the risk of losing your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sort of my favorite science discovery. is this fact that these very simple programs can produce very complicated behavior. And that fact is kind of, in a sense, a whispering of something out in the computational universe that we didn't really know was there before. I mean, it's like, back in the 1980s, I was doing a bunch of work with some very, very good mathematicians. And they were like trying to pick away, can we figure out what's going on in these computational systems? And they basically said, look, the math we have just doesn't get anywhere with this, we're stuck. There's nothing to say, we have nothing to say. And in a sense, perhaps my main achievement at that time was to realize that the very fact that the good mathematicians had nothing to say, was itself a very interesting thing. That was kind of a sort of, in some sense, a whispering of a different part of the Rouliad that one hadn't, you know, one wasn't, was not accessible from what we knew in mathematics and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it make you sad that you're exploring some of these gigantic ideas and it feels like we're on the verge of breaking through to some very interesting discoveries and yet you're just a finite being that's going to die way too soon and that scan of your brain or your full body kind of shows that you're Yeah, it's just a bunch of meat. It's just a bunch of meat. Yeah, does that make you a little sad?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't rule it out. There's probably gonna be a lot of simulations in the history of the cosmos. If the simulation is designed well enough, it'll be indistinguishable from a non-simulated reality. And although we could keep searching for evidence that we're not in a simulation, any of that evidence in principle could be simulated. So I think it's a possibility." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you think the thought experiment is interesting or useful? to calibrate how we think about the nature of reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I definitely think it's interesting and useful. In fact, I'm actually writing a book about this right now, all about the simulation idea, using it to shed light on a whole bunch of philosophical questions. So, you know, the big one is how do we know anything about the external world? Descartes said, you know, maybe you're being fooled by an evil demon who's stimulating your brain into thinking. All this stuff is real when in fact it's all made up. Well, the modern version of that is how do you know you're not in a simulation? Then the thought is, if you're in a simulation, none of this is real. So that's teaching us something about knowledge. How do you know about the external world? I think there's also really interesting questions about the nature of reality right here. I mean, if we are in a simulation, is all this real? Is there really a table here? Is there really a microphone? Do I really have a body? The standard view would be, no, we don't. None of this would be real. My view is actually that's wrong. And even if we are in a simulation, all of this is real. That's why I call this reality 2.0. New version of reality, different version of reality, still reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the difference between quote unquote real world and the world that we perceive? So we interact with the world by perceiving it. it only really exists through the window of our perception system and in our mind. So it's the difference between something that's quote unquote real that exists perhaps without us being there and the world as you perceive it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The world as we perceive it is a very simplified and distorted version of what's going on underneath. We already know that from just thinking about science. You don't see too many, obviously, quantum mechanical effects in what we perceive, but we still know quantum mechanics is going on under all things. I like to think the world we perceive is this very kind of simplified picture of colors and shapes existing in space and so on. And we know there's a, that's what the philosopher Wilfred Sellars called the manifest image, the world as it seems to us. We already know underneath all that is a very different scientific image with atoms or quantum wave functions or super strings or whatever the latest thing is. And that's the ultimate scientific So I think of the simulation idea as basically another hypothesis about what the ultimate say quasi-scientific or metaphysical reality is going on underneath the world of the manifest image. The world of the manifest image is this very simple thing that we interact with that's neutral on the underlying stuff of reality. Science could help tell us about that. Maybe philosophy could help tell us about that too. And if we eventually take the red pill and find out we're in a simulation. My view is that's just another view about what reality is made of. The philosopher Immanuel Kant said, what is the nature of the thing in itself? I've got a glass here and it's got all these, it appears to me a certain way, a certain shape, it's liquid, it's clear. He said, what is the nature of the thing in itself? Well, I think of the simulation idea, it's a hypothesis. about the nature of the thing in itself. It turns out if we're in a simulation, the thing in itself, nature of this glass, it's okay, it's actually a bunch of data structures running on a computer in the next universe up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's what people tend to do when they think about simulation. They think about our modern computers and somehow trivially, crudely just scaled up in some sense. But do you think, The simulation, I mean, in order to actually simulate something as complicated as our universe that's made up of molecules and atoms and particles and quarks and maybe even strings, all of that requires something just infinitely many orders of magnitude more of scale and complexity. Do you think we're even able to even like conceptualize what it would take to simulate our universe? Or does it just slip into this idea that you basically have to build a universe, something so big to simulate it? Does it get into this fuzzy area that's not useful at all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, this obvious, I mean, our universe is obviously incredibly complicated. And for us within our universe to build a simulation of a universe as complicated as ours is going to have obvious problems here. If the universe is finite, there's just no way that's going to work. Maybe there's some cute way to make it work. If the universe is, uh, is, uh, is infinite, maybe an infinite universe could somehow simulate a copy of itself, but that's, uh, That's going to be hard. Nonetheless, just so we are in a simulation, I think there's no particular reason why we have to think the simulating universe has to be anything like ours." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've said before that it might be, so you could think of it, and turtles all the way down, you could think of the simulating universe different than ours, but we ourselves could also create another simulating universe. So you said that there could be these kind of levels of universes, and you've also mentioned this hilarious idea, maybe tongue in cheek, maybe not, that there may be simulations within simulations, arbitrarily stacked levels, and that we may be in level 42, along those stacks, referencing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. If we're indeed in a simulation within a simulation, at level 42, what do you think level zero looks like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would expect that level zero is truly enormous. I mean, not just... If it's finite at some extraordinarily large finite capacity, much more likely it's infinite. Maybe it's got some very high set-theoretic cardinality that enables it to support just any number of simulations. high degree of infinity at level zero, slightly smaller degree of infinity at level one. So by the time you get down to us at level 42, maybe there's plenty of room for lots of simulations of finite capacity. If the top universe is only a small, finite capacity, then obviously that's going to put very, very serious limits on how many simulations you're going to be able to get running. So I think we can certainly confidently say that if we're at level 42, then the top level is pretty damn big." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it gets more and more constrained as we get down levels, more and more simplified and constrained and limited in resources." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we still have plenty of capacity here. What was it? Feynman said, he said, there's plenty of room at the bottom. We're still a number of levels above the degree of where there's room for fundamental physical computing capacity, quantum computing capacity at the bottom level. So we've got plenty of room to play with and make, we probably have plenty of room for simulations of pretty sophisticated universes, perhaps none as complicated as our universe, unless our universe is, is infinite, but still, at the very least, for pretty serious finite universes, but maybe universes somewhat simpler than ours, unless, of course, we're prepared to take certain shortcuts in the simulation, which might then increase the capacity significantly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the human mind, us people, in terms of the complexity of simulation, is at the height of what the simulation might be able to achieve? Like if you look at incredible entities that could be created in this universe of ours, do you have an intuition about how incredible human beings are on that scale?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we're pretty impressive, but we're not that impressive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are we above average?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think human beings are at a certain point in the scale of intelligence, which made many things possible. You get through evolution, through single cell organisms, through fish and mammals and primates and something happens. Once you get to human beings, we've just reached that level where we get to develop language and we get to develop certain kinds of culture and we get to develop certain kinds of collective thinking that has enabled all this amazing stuff to happen, science and literature and engineering and culture and so on. So we are just at the beginning of that on the evolutionary threshold. It's kind of like we just got there. who knows, a few thousand or tens of thousands of years ago. So we're probably just at the very beginning for what's possible there. So I'm inclined to think among the scale of intelligent beings, we're somewhere very near the bottom. I would expect that, for example, if we're in a simulation, then the simulators who created us have got the capacity to be far more sophisticated. If we're at level 42, who knows what the ones at level zero are like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's also possible that this is the epitome of what is possible to achieve. So we as human beings see ourselves maybe as flawed, see all the constraints, all the limitations, but maybe that's the magical, the beautiful thing. Maybe those limitations are the essential elements for an interesting, sort of that edge of chaos, that interesting existence. that if you make us much more intelligent, if you make us much more powerful in any kind of dimension of performance, maybe you lose something fundamental that makes life worth living. So you kind of have this optimistic view that we're this little baby that then there's so much growth and potential, but this could also be it. This is the most amazing thing is us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe what you're saying is consistent with what I'm saying. I mean, we could still have levels of intelligence far beyond us, but maybe those levels of intelligence, on your view, would be kind of boring. And, you know, we kind of get so good at everything that life suddenly becomes unidimensional. So we're just inhabiting this one spot of maximal romanticism in the history of evolution. You get to humans and it's like, yeah, and then years to come, our super intelligent descendants are going to look back at us and say, those were the days when they just hit the point of inflection and life was interesting. I am an optimist. So I'd like to think that, you know, if there is super intelligence somewhere, in the future, they'll figure out how to make life super interesting and super romantic. Well, you know what they're going to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what they're going to do is they realize how boring life is when you're super intelligent. So they create a new level of assimilation and sort of live through the things they've created by watching them stumble about in their flawed ways. So maybe that's so you create a new level of assimilation every time you get really bored" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "with how smart and- This would be kind of sad though, because it would show the peak of their existence would be like watching simulations for entertainment. It's like saying the peak of our existence now is Netflix." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, it's all right. A flip side of that could be the peak of our existence for many people having children and watching them grow. That becomes very meaningful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You create a simulation, it's like creating a family." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "creating like, well, any kind of creation is kind of a powerful act. Do you think it's easier to simulate the mind or the universe? So I've heard several people, including Nick Bostrom, think about ideas of, you know, maybe you don't need to simulate the universe, you can just simulate the human mind. Or in general, just the distinction between simulating the entirety of it, the entirety of the physical world, or just simulating the mind. Which one do you see as more challenging?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think in some sense, the answer is obvious. It has to be simpler to simulate the mind than to simulate the universe, because the mind is part of the universe. And in order to fully simulate the universe, you're going to have to simulate the mind. So unless we're talking about partial simulations," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I guess the question is, which comes first? Does the mind come before the universe, or does the universe come before the mind? So the mind could just be an emergent phenomena in this universe. So simulation is an interesting thing. It's not like creating a simulation perhaps requires you to program every single thing that happens in it. It's just defining a set of initial conditions and rules based on which it behaves. Simulating the mind requires you to have a little bit more We're now in a little bit of a crazy land, but it requires you to understand the fundamentals of cognition, perhaps of consciousness, of perception of everything like that, that's not created through some kind of emergence from basic physics laws, but more requires you to actually understand the fundamentals of the mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How about if we said simulate the brain rather than the mind? The brain is just a big physical system. The universe is a giant physical system. To simulate the universe, at the very least, you're going to have to simulate the brains as well as all the other physical systems within it. It's not obvious. that the problems are any worse for the brain than for its particularly complex physical system. But if we can simulate arbitrary physical systems, we can simulate brains. There is this further question of whether, when you simulate a brain, will that bring along all the features of the mind with it? Like, will you get consciousness? Will you get thinking? Will you get free will? And so on. And that's something philosophers have argued over for years, my own view is if you simulate the brain well enough, that will also simulate the mind. But yeah, there's plenty of people who would say no, you'd merely get like a zombie system, a simulation of a brain without any true consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But for you, you put together a brain, the consciousness comes with it, arise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't think it's obvious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's your intuition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My view is roughly that, yeah, what is responsible for consciousness, it's in the patterns of information processing and so on, rather than, say, the biology that it's made of. There's certainly plenty of people out there who think consciousness has to be, say, biological. So if you merely replicate the patterns of information processing in a non-biological substrate, you'll miss what's crucial for consciousness. I mean, I just don't think there's any particular reason to think that Biology is special here. You can imagine substituting the biology for non-biological systems, say silicon circuits, that play the same role. The behavior will continue to be the same. You know, I think just thinking about what is the true, when I think about the connection, the isomorphisms between consciousness and the brain, the deepest connections to me seem to connect consciousness to patterns of information processing, not to specific biology. So I at least adopted as my working hypothesis that basically it's the computation and the information. that matters for consciousness. Same time, we don't understand consciousness, so all this could be wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the computation, the flow, the processing, manipulation of information, the process is where the consciousness, the software is where the consciousness comes from, not the hardware." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Roughly the software, yeah. The patterns of information processing, at least in the hardware, which we could view as software. It may not be something you can just program and load and erase and so on in the way we can with ordinary software, but it's something at the level of information processing rather than at the level of implementation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So on that, what do you think of the experience of self, just the experience of the world in a virtual world, in virtual reality? Is it possible that we can create sort of a, offsprings of our consciousness by existing in a virtual world long enough? So yeah, can we be conscious in the same kind of deep way that we are in this real world by hanging out in a virtual world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, the kind of virtual worlds we have now are interesting but limited in certain ways. In particular, they rely on us having a brain and so on, which is outside the virtual world. Maybe I'll strap on my VR headset or just hang out in a in a virtual world on a screen, but my brain and then my physical environment might be simulated if I'm in a virtual world, but right now there's no attempt to simulate my brain. There might be some non-player characters in these virtual worlds that have simulated cognitive systems of certain kinds that dictate their behavior, but mostly they're pretty simple right now. I mean, some people are trying to combine, put a bit of AI in their non-player characters to make them, to make them smarter. But for now, inside virtual worlds, the actual thinking is interestingly distinct from the physics of those virtual worlds. In a way, actually, I like to think this is kind of reminiscent of the way that Descartes thought our physical world was. There's physics, and there's the mind, and they're separate. Now we think the mind is somehow somehow connected to physics pretty deeply. But in these virtual worlds, there's a physics of a virtual world. And then there's this brain, which is totally outside the virtual world that controls it and interacts it. When anyone exercises agency in a video game, that's actually somebody outside the virtual world, moving a controller, controlling the interaction of things inside the virtual world. So right now in virtual worlds, the mind is somehow outside the world, but you could imagine in the future, once we have developed serious AI, artificial general intelligence, and so on, then we could come to virtual worlds, which have enough sophistication, you could actually simulate a brain or have a genuine AGI. which would then presumably be able to act in equally sophisticated ways, maybe even more sophisticated ways inside the virtual world to how it might in the physical world. And then the question is going to come along, that would be kind of a VR, a virtual world internal intelligence. And then the question is, could they have consciousness, experience, intelligence, free will, all the things that we have. And again, my view is, I don't see why not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To linger on it a little bit, I find virtual reality really incredibly powerful, just even the crude virtual reality we have now. Perhaps there's psychological effects that make some people more amenable to virtual worlds than others, but I find myself wanting to stay in virtual worlds for the most part. You do? Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With a headset or on a desktop? Not with a headset. Really interesting because I am totally addicted to using the internet and things on a desktop. But when it comes to VR for the headset, I don't typically use it for more than 10 or 20 minutes. There's something just slightly aversive about it, I find. So I don't, right now, even though I have Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest and HTC Vive and Samsung this and that. You just don't wanna stay in that world for long. Not for extended periods. You actually find yourself hanging out in there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something about, it's both a combination of just imagination and considering the possibilities of where this goes in the future. It feels like I want to almost prepare my brain for it. I want to explore sort of Disneyland when it's first being built in the early days. And it feels like I'm walking around almost imagining the possibilities and something through that process allows my mind to really enter into that world. But you say that the brain is external to that virtual world. It is, strictly speaking, true. But," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you're in VR and you do brain surgery on an avatar, and you're gonna open up that skull, what are you gonna find?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry, nothing there. The brain is elsewhere. You don't think it's possible to kind of separate them. And I don't mean in a sense like Descartes, like a hard separation, but basically, do you think it's possible with the brain outside of the virtual, when you're wearing a headset, Create a new consciousness for prolonged periods of time. Really feel, like really experience, like forget that your brain is outside." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this is, okay, this is gonna be the case where the brain is still outside. Still outside. But could living in the VR, I mean, we already find this, right, with video games. Exactly. They're completely immersive, and you get taken up by living in those worlds, and it becomes your reality for a while." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they're not completely immersive, they're just very immersive. Completely immersive. You don't forget the external world, no. Exactly, so that's what I'm asking. Do you think it's almost possible to really forget the external world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "really really immerse yourself what to forget completely why would we forget you know we got pretty good memories maybe you can stop paying attention to the external world but you know that this already happens a lot i go to work and maybe i'm not paying attention to my home life i go to us i go to a movie and i'm immersed in that so that degree of immersion absolutely but we still have the capacity to remember it to completely forget the external world i'm thinking that would probably take some I don't know, some pretty serious drugs or something to make your brain do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible? So, I mean, I guess I'm getting at, is consciousness truly a property that's tied to the physical brain? Or can you create sort of different offspring copies of consciousnesses based on the worlds that you enter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the way we're doing it now, at least with a standard VR, there's just one brain. interacts with the physical world, plays a video game, puts on a video headset, interacts with this virtual world. And I think we'd typically say there's one consciousness here that nonetheless undergoes different environments, takes on different characters in different environments. This is already something that happens in the non-virtual world. I might interact one way in my home life, my work life, social life, and so on. So at the very least, that will happen. in a virtual world very naturally. People sometimes adopt a character of avatars very different from themselves, maybe even a different gender, different race, different social background. So that much is certainly possible. I would see that as a single consciousness taking on different personas. If you want literal splitting of consciousness into multiple copies, I think it's going to take something more radical than that. Like maybe you can run different simulations of your brain in different realities and then expose them to different histories. And then, you know, you'd split yourself into 10 different simulated copies, which then undergo different environments and then ultimately do become 10 very different consciousnesses. Maybe that could happen, but now we're not talking about something that's possible in the near term. We're going to have to have brain simulations and AGI for that to happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it, so before any of that happens, it's fundamentally, you see it as a singular consciousness, even though it's experiencing different environments, which are not, it's still connected to same set of memories, same set of experiences, and therefore, one sort of joint conscious system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or at least no more multiple than the kind of multiple consciousness that we get from inhabiting different environments in a non-virtual world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you said as a child, you were a music color synesthete. So where songs had colors for you. So what songs had what colors?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, this is funny. I didn't pay much attention to this at the time, but I'd listen to a piece of music and I'd get some kind of imagery of a kind of color. The weird thing is, mostly they were kind of murky dark greens and olive browns and the colors weren't all that interesting. I don't know what the reason is. My theory is that maybe it's like different chords and tones provided different colors and they all tended to get mixed together into these somewhat uninteresting browns and greens. But every now and then that'd be something that had a really pure color. So there's just a few that I remember. There was a Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles. It was bright red. It has this very distinctive tonality and it's chord structure at the beginning. So that was bright red. There was a song by the Alan Parsons Project called Ammonia Avenue that was kind of a pure blue. Anyway, I've got no idea. How would this happen? I didn't even pay that much attention until it went away when I was about 20. This synesthesia often goes away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is it purely just the perception of a particular color or was there a positive or negative experience with it? Like was blue associated with a positive and red with a negative? Or is it simply the perception of color associated with some characteristic of the song?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me, I don't remember a lot of association with emotion or with value. It was just this kind of weird and interesting fact. I mean, at the beginning, I thought this was something that happened to everyone, songs of colors. Maybe I mentioned it once or twice and people said, nope. I thought it was kind of cool when there was one that had one of these especially pure colors, but only much later, once I became a grad student, thinking about the mind, did I read about this phenomenon called synesthesia. And it's like, hey, That's what I had. And now I occasionally talk about it in my classes, in intro class, and it still happens sometimes. A student comes up and says, hey, I have that. I never knew about that. I never knew it had a name." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said that it went away at age 20 or so. And that you have a journal entry from around then saying, songs don't have colors anymore. What happened?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What happened? Yeah, I was definitely sad that it was gone. In retrospect, it's like, hey, that's cool. The colors have gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, do you? Can you think about that for a little bit? Do you miss those experiences? Because it's a fundamentally different sets of experiences that you no longer have. Or is it just a nice thing to have had? You don't see them as that fundamentally different than you visiting a new country and experiencing new environments." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I guess for me, when I had these experiences, they were somewhat marginal. They were like a little bonus kind of experience. I know there are people who have much more serious forms of synesthesia than this, for whom it's absolutely central to their lives. I know people who, when they experience new people, they have colors, maybe they have tastes, and so on. Every time they see writing, it has colors. Some people, whenever they hear music, It's got a certain really rich color pattern. And, you know, for some synesthetes, it's absolutely central. I think if they lost it, they'd be devastated. Again, for me, it was a very, very mild form of synesthesia. And it's like, yeah, it's like those interesting experiences, you know, you might get under different altered states of consciousness and so on. It's kind of cool, but, you know, not necessarily the single most important experiences in your life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it, so let's try to go to the very simplest question. You've answered many a time, but perhaps the simplest things can help us reveal, even in time, some new ideas. So what, in your view, is consciousness? What is qualia? What is the hard problem of consciousness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Consciousness, I mean, the word is used many ways, but the kind of consciousness that I'm interested in is basically subjective experience. What it feels like from the inside to be a human being or any other conscious being. I mean, there's something it's like to be me. Right now, I have visual images that I'm experiencing. I'm hearing my voice. I've got maybe some emotional tone. I've got a stream of thoughts. running through my head. These are all things that I experience from the first-person point of view. I've sometimes called this the inner movie in the mind. It's not a perfect metaphor. It's not like a movie in every way, and it's very rich. But yeah, it's just direct subjective experience. And I call that consciousness, or sometimes philosophers use the word qualia, which you suggested. People tend to use the word qualia for things like the qualities of things like colors, redness, the experience of redness versus the experience of greenness, the experience of one taste or one smell versus another, the experience of the quality of pain. And yeah, a lot of consciousness is the experience of those, of those qualities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Consciousness is bigger, the entirety of any kind of experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Consciousness of thinking is not obviously qualia, it's not like specific qualities like redness or greenness, but still I'm thinking about my hometown, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do later on, maybe there's still something running through my head which is subjective experience, maybe it goes beyond those qualities or Qualia. Philosophers sometimes use the word phenomenal consciousness for consciousness in this sense. I mean, people also talk about access consciousness, being able to access information in your mind, reflective consciousness, being able to think about yourself. But it looks like the really mysterious one, the one that really gets people going is phenomenal consciousness. The fact that all this, the fact that there's subjective experience and all this feels like something at all. And then the hard problem is, how is it? that why is it that there is phenomenal consciousness at all? And how is it that physical processes in a brain could give you subjective experience? It looks like on the face of it you could have all this big complicated physical system in a brain running. without a given subjective experience at all. And yet we do have subjective experience. So the hard problem is just explain that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Explain how that comes about. We haven't been able to build machines where a red light goes on that says it's not conscious. So how do we actually create that? Or how do humans do it and how do we ourselves do it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We do every now and then create machines that can do this. We create babies. that are conscious, they've got these brains, that brain does produce consciousness, but even though we can create it, we still don't understand why it happens. Maybe eventually we'll be able to create machines, which as a matter of fact, AI machines, which as a matter of fact, are conscious, but that won't necessarily make the hard problem go away any more than it does with babies, because we still want to know how and why is it? that these processes give you consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, you just made me realize for a second, maybe it's a totally dumb realization, but nevertheless, that it's a useful way to think about the creation of consciousness, is looking at a baby, so that there's a certain point at which that baby is not conscious. The baby starts from maybe, I don't know, from a few cells, right? There's a certain point at which it becomes consciousness, arrives, it's conscious. Of course, we can't know exactly that line, but that's a useful idea that we do create consciousness. Again, a really dumb thing for me to say, but not until now did I realize we do engineer consciousness. We get to watch the process happen. We don't know which point it happens or where it is, but we do see the birth of consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, there's a question, of course, is whether babies are conscious when they're born. And it used to be, it seems, at least some people thought they weren't, which is why they didn't give anesthetics to newborn babies when they circumcised them. And so now people think, oh, that's incredibly cruel. Of course, babies feel pain. And now the dominant view is that the babies can feel pain. Actually, my partner, Claudia, works on this whole issue of whether there's consciousness in babies and of what kind. And she certainly thinks that newborn babies come into the world with some degree of consciousness. Of course, then you can just extend the question backwards to fetuses and suddenly you're into politically controversial territory. But the question also arises in the animal kingdom. Where does consciousness start or stop? Is there a line in the animal kingdom? where the first conscious organisms are. It's interesting, over time, people are becoming more and more liberal about ascribing consciousness to animals. People used to think, maybe only mammals could be conscious. Now, most people seem to think, sure, fish are conscious. They can feel pain. And now we're arguing over insects. You'll find people out there who say plants have some degree of consciousness. So, you know, who knows where it's going to end. The far end of this chain is the view that every physical system has some degree of consciousness. Philosophers call that panpsychism. You know, I take that view." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's a fascinating way to view reality. So if you could talk about, if you can linger on panpsychism for a little bit, what does it mean? So it's not just plants are conscious. I mean, it's that consciousness is a fundamental fabric of reality. What does that mean to you? How are we supposed to think about that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we're used to the idea that some things in the world are fundamental, right? In physics, we take things like space or time or space-time, mass, charges, fundamental properties of the universe. You don't reduce them to something simpler. You take those for granted. You've got some laws. that connect them. Here is how mass and space and time evolve. Theories like relativity or quantum mechanics or some future theory that will unify them both. But everyone says you've got to take some things as fundamental. And if you can't explain one thing in terms of the previous fundamental things, you have to expand. maybe something like this happened with maxwell um ended up with fundamental principles of electromagnetism and took charge as fundamental because turned out that was the best way to explain it so i at least take seriously the possibility something like that could happen with consciousness, take it as a fundamental property like space, time, and mass, and instead of trying to explain consciousness wholly in terms of the evolution of space, time, and mass, and so on, take it as a primitive and then connect it to everything else by some fundamental laws. I mean, there's this basic problem that the physics we have now looks great for solving the easy problems of consciousness, which are all about behavior, right? They give us a complicated structure and dynamics. They tell us how things are going to behave, what kind of observable behavior they'll produce, which is great for the problems of explaining how we walk and how we talk and so on. Those are the easy problems of consciousness. But the hard problem was this problem about subjective experience just doesn't look like that kind of problem about structure, dynamics, how things behave. So it's hard to see how existing physics is going to give you a full explanation of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Certainly, trying to get a physics view of consciousness, yes. There has to be a connecting point and it could be at the very axiomatic, at the very beginning level. But first of all, there's a crazy idea that sort of everything has properties of consciousness. At that point, the word consciousness is already beyond the reach of our current understanding, like far, because it's so far from, at least for me, maybe you can correct me, it's far from the experiences that we have, that I have as a human being. To say that everything is conscious, that means That basically, another way to put that, if that's true, then we understand almost nothing about that fundamental aspect of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How do you feel about saying an ant is conscious? Do you get the same reaction to that, or is that something you can understand?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I can understand ant, I can't understand an atom, a particle. So I'm comfortable with living things on Earth, being conscious, because there's some kind of agency where they're similar size to me, and they can be born and they can die, and that is understandable intuitively. Of course, you anthropomorphize, you put yourself in the place of the plant. but I can understand it. I mean, I'm not like, I don't believe actually that plants are conscious or that plants suffer, but I can understand that kind of belief, that kind of idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How do you feel about robots? Like the kind of robots we have now? If I told you like that, you know, a Roomba had some degree of consciousness. or some, you know, deep neural network?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I could understand that Arumba has consciousness. I just had spent all day at iRobot. And I mean, I personally love robots and have a deep connection with robots. So I can, I also probably anthropomorphize them. There's something about the physical object. So there's a difference than a neural network, a neural network running a software. To me, the physical object, something about the human experience allows me to really see that physical object as an entity. And if it moves, and moves in a way that it, there's a, like I didn't program it. where it feels that it's acting based on its own perception, and yes, self-awareness and consciousness, even if it's a Roomba, then you start to assign it some agency, some consciousness. But to say that panpsychism, that consciousness is a fundamental property of reality, is a much bigger statement. It's like turtles all the way. It doesn't end. The whole thing is... I know it's full of mystery, but if you can linger on it, how do you think about reality if consciousness is a fundamental part of its fabric?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The way you get there is from thinking, can we explain consciousness given the existing fundamentals? And then if you can't, as at least right now it looks like, then you've got to add something. It doesn't follow that you have to add consciousness. Here's another interesting possibility is, well, we'll add something else. Let's call it proto-consciousness or X. And then it turns out space, time, mass plus X. will somehow collectively give you the possibility for consciousness. Why don't rule out that view? Either I call that pan-proto-psychism, because maybe there's some other property, proto-consciousness, at the bottom level. And if you can't imagine there's actually genuine consciousness at the bottom level, I think we should be open to the idea there's this other thing, X, maybe we can't imagine that somehow gives you consciousness. But if we are playing along with the idea, there really is genuine consciousness at the bottom level. Of course, this is going to be way out and speculative, but you know, at least in, say, if it was classical physics, then we'd have to, you'd end up saying, well, every little atom, every little, you know, a bunch of particles in space-time, each of these particles has some kind of consciousness whose structure mirrors maybe their physical properties, like it's mass, charge, its velocity, and so on. The structure of its consciousness would roughly correspond to that. And the physical interactions between particles. I mean, there's this old worry about physics. I mentioned this before in this issue about the manifest image. We don't really find out about the intrinsic nature. of things. Physics tells us about how a particle relates to other particles and interacts. It doesn't tell us about what the particle is in itself. That was Kant's thing in itself. So here's a view. The nature in itself of a particle is something mental. A particle is actually a little conscious subject with properties of its consciousness that correspond to its physical properties. The laws of physics are actually ultimately relating these properties of conscious subjects. So in this view, A Newtonian world actually would be a vast collection of little conscious subjects at the bottom level. Way, way simpler than we are without free will or rationality or anything like that. But that's what the universe would be like. Now, of course, that's a vastly speculative view. No particular reason to think it's correct. Furthermore, non-Newtonian physics, say quantum mechanical wave function, Suddenly it starts to look different. It's not a vast collection of conscious subjects. Maybe there's ultimately one big wave function for the whole universe. Corresponding to that might be something more like a single conscious mind whose structure corresponds to the structure of the wave function. People sometimes call this Cosmo-psychism. And now of course we're in the realm of extremely speculative philosophy. There's no direct evidence for this, but yeah, but if you want a picture of what that universe would be like, think yeah, giant cosmic mind with enough richness and structure among it to replicate all the structure of physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think therefore I am at the level of particles and with quantum mechanics at the level of the wave function. It's kind of an exciting, beautiful possibility, of course, way out of reach of physics currently." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is interesting that some neuroscientists are beginning to take panpsychism seriously. You find consciousness even in very simple systems. So, for example, the integrated information theory of consciousness, a lot of neuroscientists are taking seriously. Actually, I just got this new book by Christoph Koch, just came in, The Feeling of Life Itself, why consciousness is widespread, but can't be computed. He basically endorses a panpsychist view where you get consciousness with the degree of information processing or integrated information processing in a system and even very, very simple systems like a couple of particles will have some degree of this. So he ends up with some degree of consciousness in all matter. And the claim is that this theory can actually explain a bunch of stuff. about the connection between the brain and consciousness. Now that's very controversial. I think it's very, very early days in the science of consciousness. It's interesting that it's not just philosophy that might lead you in this direction, but there are ways of thinking quasi-scientifically that lead you there too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But maybe it's different than panpsychism. What do you think? So Alan Watts has this quote that I'd like to ask you about. The quote is, through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses to which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence. So that's not panpsychism. Do you think that we are essentially the tools, the senses the universe created to be conscious of itself?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an interesting idea. Of course, if you went for the giant cosmic mind view, then the universe was conscious all along. It didn't need us. We're just little components of the universal consciousness. Likewise, if you believe in panpsychism, then there was some little degree of consciousness at the bottom level. all along, and we were just a more complex form of consciousness. So I think maybe the quote you mentioned works better. If you're not a panpsychist, you're not a cosmopsychist, you think consciousness just exists at this intermediate level. And of course, that's the orthodox view." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That, you would say, is the common view? So is your own view with panpsychism a rarer view?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's generally regarded, certainly, as a speculative view held by a fairly small minority of, at least, theorists. Most philosophers and most scientists who think about consciousness are not panpsychists. There's been a bit of a movement in that direction the last 10 years or so. It seems to be quite popular, especially among the younger generation, but it's still very definitely a minority view. Many people think it's totally batshit crazy, to use a technical term. It's a philosophical term. So the orthodox view I think is still consciousness is something that humans have and some good number of non-human animals have and maybe AIs might have one day but it's restricted. On that view then there was no consciousness at the start of the universe. There may be none at the end but it is this thing which happened At some point in the history of the universe, consciousness developed. And yes, that's a very amazing event on this view because many people are inclined to think consciousness is what somehow gives meaning to our lives. Without consciousness, there'd be no meaning, no true value, no good versus bad, and so on. So with the advent of consciousness, suddenly the universe went from meaningless to somehow meaningful. Why did this happen? I guess the quote you mentioned was somehow this was somehow destined to happen because the universe needed to have consciousness within it to have value and have meaning and maybe you could combine that with a theistic view or a teleological view. The universe was inexorably evolving towards consciousness. Actually my colleague here at NYU, Tom Nagel, wrote a book called Mind and Cosmos a few years ago where he argued for this teleological view of evolution toward consciousness, saying this led to problems for Darwinism. It's got him on, you know, this is very, very controversial. Most people didn't agree. I don't myself agree with this teleological view, but it is a, it's at least a beautiful speculative view of the, uh, of the cosmos." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think people experience What do they seek when they believe in God from this kind of perspective?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not an expert on thinking about God and religion. I'm not myself religious at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When people sort of pray, communicate with God with whatever form, I'm not speaking to sort of the practices and the rituals of religion. I mean the actual experience of that people really have a deep connection with God in some cases. What do you think that experience is? It's so common, at least throughout the history of civilization, that it seems like we seek that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the very least, it's an interesting conscious experience that people have when they experience religious awe or prayer and so on. Neuroscientists have tried to examine what bits of the brain are active and so on. But yeah, there's a steeper question of what are people looking for when they're doing this? Like I said, I've got no real expertise on this, but it does seem that one thing people are after is a sense of meaning and value, a sense of connection to something greater than themselves that will give their lives meaning and value. And maybe the thought is if there is a God and God somehow is a universal consciousness who has invested this universe with meaning and somehow connection to God might give your life meaning. I can kind of see the attractions of that, but it still makes me wonder, why is it exactly that a universal consciousness, God, would be needed to give the world meaning? If universal consciousness can give the world meaning, why can't local consciousness? give the world meaning too. So I think my consciousness gives my world meaning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is the origin of meaning for your world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I experience things as good or bad, happy, sad, interesting, important. So my consciousness invests this world with meaning. Without any consciousness, maybe it would be a bleak, meaningless universe. But I don't see why I need someone else's consciousness or even God's consciousness to give this universe meaning. Here we are, local creatures with our own subjective experiences. I think we can give the universe meaning ourselves. I mean, maybe to some people that feels inadequate. Yeah, our own local consciousness is somehow too puny and insignificant to invest any of this with cosmic significance, and maybe God gives you a sense of cosmic significance, but I'm just speculating here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a really interesting idea that consciousness is the thing that makes life meaningful. If you could maybe just briefly explore that for a second. So I suspect just from listening to you now, you mean in an almost trivial sense, just the day-to-day experiences of life have, because of you attach identity to it, they become, Well, I guess I want to ask something I would always wanted to ask a legit world-renowned philosopher. What is the meaning of life? So I suspect you don't mean consciousness gives any kind of greater meaning to it all and more to day-to-day, but is there greater meaning to it all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think life has meaning for us. because we are conscious. So without consciousness, no meaning. Consciousness invests our life with meaning. So consciousness is the source of the meaning of life. But I wouldn't say consciousness itself is the meaning of life. I'd say what's meaningful in life is basically what we find. meaningful, what we experience as meaningful. So if you find meaning and fulfillment and value in say intellectual work, like understanding, then that's a very significant part of the meaning of life for you. If you find it in social connections or in raising a family, then that's the meaning of life for you. The meaning kind of comes from what you value as a conscious creature. So I think there's no, on this view, there's no universal solution. no universal answer to the question, what is the meaning of life? The meaning of life is where you find it as a conscious creature, but it's consciousness that somehow makes value possible, experiencing some things as good or as bad or as meaningful, something that comes from within consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think consciousness is a crucial component, ingredient of assigning value to things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's kind of a fairly strong intuition that without consciousness, there wouldn't really be any value. If we just had a purely a universe of unconscious creatures, would anything be better or worse than anything else? Certainly when it comes to ethical dilemmas, you know about the old trolley problem. Do you kill one person or do you switch to the other track to kill five? I've got a variant on this, the zombie trolley problem, where there's one conscious being on one track and five humanoid zombies, let's make them robots, who are not conscious, on the other track. Given that choice, do you kill the one conscious being or the five unconscious robots? Most people have a fairly clear intuition here. Kill the unconscious beings, because they basically, they don't have a meaningful life. They're not really persons. conscious beings at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of course, we don't have good intuition about something like an unconscious being. So in philosophical terms, you refer to it as a zombie. It's a useful thought experiment, construction in philosophical terms, but we don't yet have them. So that's kind of what we may be able to create with robots. And I don't necessarily know what that even means. So it's not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, they're merely hypothetical for now. They're just a thought experiment. They may never be possible. I mean, the extreme case of a zombie is a being which is physically, functionally, behaviorally identical to me, but not conscious. That's a mere, I don't think that could ever be built in this universe. The question is just, does that hypothetically make sense? That's kind of a useful contrast class to raise questions like, why aren't we zombies? How does it come about that we're conscious and we're not like that? But there are less extreme versions of this, like robots. which are maybe not physically identical to us, maybe not even functionally identical to us. Maybe they've got a different architecture, but they can do a lot of sophisticated things, maybe carry on a conversation, but they're not conscious. That's not so far out. We've got simple computer systems, at least tending in that direction now and presumably This is going to get more and more sophisticated over years to come, where we may have some pretty, at least quite straightforward to conceive, of some pretty sophisticated robot systems that can use language and be fairly high functioning without consciousness at all. Then I stipulate that. I mean, of course, there's this tricky question of how you would know whether they're conscious. But let's say we've somehow solved that and we know that these high-functioning robots aren't conscious, then the question is, do they have moral status? Does it matter how we treat them? What does moral status mean? Basically, it's that question. Can they suffer? Does it matter how we treat them? For example, if I mistreat this glass, this cup, by shattering it, Then that's bad. Why is it bad? It's going to make a mess. It's going to be annoying for me and my partner. And so it's not bad for the cop. No one would say the cop itself. has moral status. Hey, you hurt the cup. And that's doing it a moral harm. Likewise, plants. Well, again, if they're not conscious, most people think if by uprooting a plant, you're not harming it. But if a being is conscious, on the other hand, then you are harming it. So Siri, or I dare not say the name of Alexa. Anyway, so we don't think we're morally harming Alexa by turning her off or disconnecting her or even destroying her, whether it's the system or the underlying software system, because we don't really think she's conscious. On the other hand, you move to the disembodied being in the movie, her, Samantha, I guess she was presented as conscious. If you destroyed her, you'd certainly be committing a serious harm. So I think our strong sense is if a being is conscious and can undergo subjective experiences, then it matters morally how we treat them. So if a robot is conscious, it matters. But if a robot is not conscious, And then they're basically just meat or a machine and it doesn't matter. So I think at least maybe how we think about this stuff is fundamentally wrong, but I think a lot of people who think about this stuff seriously, including people who think about, say, the moral treatment of animals and so on, come to the view that consciousness is ultimately kind of the line between systems that where we have to take them into account in thinking morally about how we act and systems for which we don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I think I've seen you, the writer, talk about the demonstration of consciousness from a system like that, from a system like Alexa or a conversational agent, that what you would be looking for is kind of at the very basic level for the system to have an awareness that I'm just a program, and yet why do I experience this? Or not to have that experience, but to communicate that to you. So that's what us humans would sound like. If you all of a sudden woke up one day, like Kafka, right? In the body of a bug or something. But in a computer, you all of a sudden realize you don't have a body, and yet you would, feeling what you're feeling, you would probably say those kinds of things. So do you think a system essentially becomes conscious by convincing us that it's conscious? Through the words that I just mentioned. So by being confused about the fact that, why am I having these experiences?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So basically- I don't think this is what makes you conscious, but I do think being puzzled about consciousness is a very good sign that a system is conscious. So if I encountered a robot, that actually seem to be genuinely puzzled by its own mental states and saying, yeah, I have all these weird experiences and I don't see how to explain them. I know I'm just a set of silicon circuits, but I don't see how that would give you my consciousness. I would at least take that as some evidence that there's some consciousness going on there. I don't think a system needs to be puzzled. about consciousness to be conscious. Many people aren't puzzled by their consciousness. Animals don't seem to be puzzled at all. I still think they're conscious. I don't think that's a requirement on consciousness, but I do think if we're looking for signs for consciousness, say in AI systems, one of the things that will help convince me that an AI system is conscious is if it shows signs of introspectively recognizing something like consciousness and finding this philosophically puzzling in the way that we do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's such an interesting thought though, because a lot of people sort of would, at the shallow level, criticize the Turing test for language. And it's essentially what I heard Dan Dennett criticize it in this kind of way, which is it really puts a lot of emphasis on lying. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And being able to imitate human beings. Yeah, there's this cartoon of the AI system studying for the Turing test. It's got a book called Talk Like a Human. It's like, man, why do I have to waste my time learning how to imitate humans? Maybe the AI system is going to be way beyond the hard problem of consciousness. And it's going to be like, why do I need to waste my time pretending that I recognize the hard problem of consciousness in order for people to recognize me as conscious?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it just feels like, I guess the question is, do you think there's a, we can never really create a test for consciousness, because it feels like we're very human-centric, and so the only way we would be convinced that something is conscious is basically the thing demonstrates the illusion of consciousness. We can never really know whether it's conscious or not, and in fact, that almost feels like it doesn't matter then? Or does it still matter to you that something is conscious or it demonstrates consciousness? You still see that fundamental distinction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think to a lot of people, Whether a system is conscious or not matters hugely for many things, like how we treat it, can it suffer, and so on. But still, that leaves open the question, how can we ever know? And it's true that it's awfully hard to see how we can know for sure whether a system is conscious. I suspect that Sociologically, the thing that's going to convince us that a system is conscious is in part things like social interaction, conversation, and so on, where they seem to be conscious. They talk about their conscious states or just talk about being happy or sad or finding things meaningful or being in pain. That will tend to convince us if we don't the system genuinely seems to be conscious we don't treat it as such eventually it's going to seem like a strange form of racism or speciesism or somehow not to acknowledge them i truly believe that by the way i i believe that there is going to be" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "something akin to the civil rights movement, but for robots. I think the moment you have a Roomba say, please don't kick me, that hurts, just say it. I think that will fundamentally change the fabric of our society." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you're probably right, although it's gonna be very tricky because just say we've got the technology where these conscious beings can just be created and multiplied by the thousands by flicking a switch. And the legal status is gonna be different, but ultimately their moral status ought to be the same. And yeah, the civil rights issue is gonna be a huge mess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if one day somebody clones you, another very real possibility, In fact, I find the conversation between two copies of David Chalmers quite interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Scary thought. Who is this idiot?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's not making any sense. Do you think he would be conscious?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do think he would be conscious. I do think in some sense, I'm not sure it would be me, there would be two different beings at this point. I think they'd both be conscious and they both have many of the same mental properties. I think they both in a way have the same moral status. It'd be wrong to hurt either of them or to kill them and so on. Still, there's some sense in which probably their legal status would have to be different. If I'm the original and that one's just a clone, then you're creating a clone of me. Presumably the clone doesn't, for example, automatically own the stuff that I own or, you know, I've got a certain connect to things that the people I interact with, my family, my partner and so on, I'm going to somehow be connected to them in a way in which the clone isn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you came slightly first? Yeah. Because a clone would argue that they have really as much of a connection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They have all the memories of that connection. Then in a way, you might say it's kind of unfair to discriminate against them. But say you've got an apartment that only one person can live in or a partner who only one person can be with. But why should it be you? That's the original. It's an interesting philosophical question, but you might say, because I actually have this history, if I am the same person as the one that came before and the clone is not, then I have this history that the clone doesn't. Of course, there's also the question, Isn't the clone the same person too? This is a question about personal identity. If I continue and I create a clone over there, I want to say, this one is me and this one is someone else. But you could take the view that a clone is equally me. Of course, in a movie like Star Trek, where they have a teletransporter basically creates clones all the time. They treat the clones as if they're the original person. Of course, they destroy the original body in Star Trek. So there's only one left around and only very occasionally do things go wrong and you get two copies of Captain Kirk. But somehow our legal system at the very least is going to have to sort out some of these issues and that maybe that's what's moral and what's legally acceptable are going to come apart." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What question would you ask a clone of yourself? Is there something useful you can find out from him about the fundamentals of consciousness even?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Kind of in principle, I know that if it's a perfect clone, it's going to behave just like me. So I'm not sure I'm going to be able to, I can discover whether it's a perfect clone by seeing whether it answers like me. But otherwise, I know what I'm going to find is a being which is just like me, except that it's just undergone this great shock of discovering that it's a clone. So just so you woke me up tomorrow and said, Hey, Dave, sorry to tell you this, but you're actually the clone. And you provided me really convincing evidence, showed me the film of my being cloned and then all wrapped up here being here and waking up. So you proved to me I'm a clone. Okay, I would find that shocking and who knows how I would react to this. So So maybe by talking to the clone I'd find something about my own psychology that I can't find out so easily, like how I'd react upon discovering that I'm a clone. I could certainly ask the clone if it's conscious and what its consciousness is like and so on, but I guess I kind of know if it's a perfect clone it's going to behave roughly like me. Of course at the beginning there'll be a question about whether a perfect clone is possible. So I may wanna ask it lots of questions to see if its consciousness and the way it talks about its consciousness and the way it reacts to things in general is like me. And that will occupy us for a long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. It's a basic unit testing in the early models. So if it's a perfect clone, you say it's gonna behave exactly like you. So that takes us to free will. Is there a free will? Are we able to make decisions that are not predetermined from the initial conditions of the universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "philosophers do this annoying thing of saying it depends what you mean. So in this case, yeah, it really depends on what you mean by free will. If you mean something which was not determined in advance, could never have been determined, then I don't know we have free will. I mean, there's quantum mechanics and who's to say if that opens up some room, but I'm not sure we have free will in that sense. I'm also not sure that's the, kind of free will that really matters. What matters to us is being able to do what we want and to create our own futures. We've got this distinction between having our lives be under our control and under someone else's control. We've got the sense of actions that we are responsible for versus ones that we're not. I think you can make those distinctions. even in a deterministic universe. And this is what people call the compatibilist view of free will, where it's compatible with determinism. So I think for many purposes, the kind of free will that matters is something we can have in a deterministic universe. And I can't see any reason in principle why an AI system couldn't have free will of that kind. If you mean super duper free will, the ability to violate the laws of physics and doing things that in principle could not be predicted. I don't know, maybe no one has that kind of free will." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the connection between the the reality of free will and the experience of it, the subjective experience in your view. So how does consciousness connect to this, to the experience of, to the reality and the experience of free will?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's certainly true that when we make decisions and when we choose and so on, we feel like we have an open future. I feel like I could do this, I could go into philosophy or I could go into math, I could go to a movie tonight, I could go to a restaurant, So we experience these things as if the future is open. And maybe we experience ourselves as exerting a kind of effect on the future that somehow picking out one path from many paths were previously open. And you might think that actually, if we're in a deterministic universe, there's a sense in which objectively, those paths weren't really open all along. Subjectively, they were open. And I think that's what really matters in making a decision. So our experience of making a decision is choosing a path for ourselves. I mean, in general, our introspective models of the mind, I think are generally very distorted representations of the mind. So it may well be that our experience of ourself in making a decision Our experience of what's going on doesn't terribly well mirror what's going on. I mean, maybe there are antecedents in the brain way before anything came into consciousness and so on. Those aren't represented in our introspective model. So, in general, our experience of perception It's like I experience a perceptual image of the external world. It's not a terribly good model of what's actually going on in my visual cortex and so on, which has all these layers and so on. It's just one little snapshot of one bit of that. In general, introspective models are very oversimplified and it wouldn't be surprising if that was true of free will as well. This also, incidentally, can be applied to consciousness itself. There is this very interesting view that consciousness itself is an introspective illusion. In fact, we're not conscious, but the brain just has these introspective models of itself where it oversimplifies everything and represents itself as having these special properties of consciousness. It's a really simple way to kind of keep track of itself and so on, and then On the illusionist view, yeah, that's just an illusion. I find this view, I find it implausible, I do find it very attractive in some ways, because it's easy to tell some story about how the brain would create introspective models of its own consciousness, of its own free will, as a way of simplifying itself. I mean, it's a similar way when we perceive the external world, we perceive it as having these colors that maybe it doesn't really have, but of course that's a really useful way of keeping track." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of keeping track. Did you say that you find it not very plausible? Because I find it both plausible and attractive in some sense because I mean that kind of view is one that has the minimum amount of mystery around it. You can kind of understand that kind of view. Everything else says we don't understand so much of this picture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now it is very attractive. I recently wrote an article about this kind of issue called the meta-problem of consciousness. The hard problem is how does the brain give you consciousness? The meta-problem is why are we puzzled? by the hard problem of consciousness. And cause you know, I'll being puzzled by it. That's ultimately a bit of behavior. We might be able to explain that bit of behavior as one of the easy problems, consciousness. So maybe there'll be some computational model that explains why we're puzzled by consciousness. The meta problem has come up with that model. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. There's some interesting stories you can tell about why the right kind of computational system might develop these introspective models of itself, that attribute of itself, these special properties. So that metaproblem is a research program for everyone. And then if you've got attraction to sort of simple views, desert landscapes and so on, then you can go all the way with what people call illusionism and say, in fact, consciousness itself is not real. What is real is just these introspective models we have that tell us that we're conscious. So the view is very simple, very attractive, very powerful. The trouble is, of course, it has to say that deep down consciousness is not real. We're not actually experiencing right now. And it looks like it's just contradicting a fundamental datum of our existence. And this is why most people find this view crazy, just as they find panpsychism crazy in one way, people find illusionism crazy in another way. But I mean, But so yes, it has to deny this fundamental data of our existence now. And that makes the view sort of frankly unbelievable for most people. On the other hand, the view developed right might be able to explain why we find it unbelievable. Because these models are so deeply hardwired into our head." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they're all integrated. You can't escape the illusion. And it's a crazy possibility. Is it possible that the entirety of the universe, our planet, all the people in New York, all the organisms on our planet, including me here today, are not real in that sense. They're all part of an illusion inside of Dave Chalmers' head." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think all this could be a simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but not just a simulation. Yeah. Because the simulation kind of is outside of you. A dream? What if it's all an illusion? Yes, a dream that you're experiencing. It's all in your mind. Right, is that, can you take illusionism that far?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's illusionism about the external world and illusionism about consciousness, and these might go in different. Illusionism about the external world kind of takes you back to Descartes. And yeah, could all this be produced by an evil demon? Descartes himself also had the dream argument. He said, how do you know you're not dreaming right now? How do you know this is not an amazing dream? And I think it's at least a possibility that yeah, this could be some super duper complex dream in the next universe up. I guess though, my attitude is that just as when Descartes thought that If the evil demon was doing it, it's not real. A lot of people these days say if a simulation is doing it, it's not real. As I was saying before, I think even if it's a simulation, that doesn't stop this from being real. It just tells us what the world is made of. Likewise, if it's a dream, it could turn out that all this is like my dream created by my brain and the next universe up. My own view is that wouldn't stop this physical world from being real. It would turn out this cup at the most fundamental level was made of a bit of, say, my consciousness. in the dreaming mind at the next level up. Maybe that would give you a kind of weird kind of panpsychism about reality, but it wouldn't show. that the cup isn't real, but just tell us it's ultimately made of processes in my dreaming mind. So I'd resist the idea that if the physical world is a dream, then it's an illusion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's right. By the way, perhaps you have an interesting thought about it. Why is Descartes demon or genius considered evil? Why couldn't it have been a benevolent one that had the same powers?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, Descartes called it the malingénie, the evil genie or evil genius. Malign, I guess, was the word. But yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, a later philosophy, Barclay, said, no, in fact, all this is done by God. God actually supplies you all of these perceptions and ideas, and that's how physical reality is sustained. Interestingly, Barclay's God is doing something that doesn't look so different from what Descartes' evil demon was doing. It's just that Descartes thought it was deception, and Barclay thought it was not. I'm actually more sympathetic to Barclay here. Yeah, this evil demon may be trying to deceive you, but I think, okay, well, the evil demon may just be working under a false philosophical theory. It thinks it's deceiving you, it's wrong. It's like those machines in the matrix. They thought they were deceiving you that all this stuff is real. I think, no, if we're in a matrix, it's all still real. Yeah, the philosopher O.K. Bousma had a nice story about this about 50 years ago about Descartes. evil demon where he said this demon spends all its time trying to fool people but fails because somehow all the demon ends up doing is constructing realities for people. So yeah, I think that maybe if It's very natural to take this view that if we're in a simulation or evil demon scenario or something, then none of this is real. But I think it may be ultimately a philosophical mistake, especially if you take on board sort of the view of reality, what matters to reality is really its structure, something like its mathematical structure and so on, which seems to be the view that a lot of people take from contemporary physics. And it looks like you can find all that mathematical structure in a simulation, maybe even in a dream, and so on. So as long as that structure is real, I would say that's enough for the physical world to be real. Yeah, the physical world may turn out to be somewhat more intangible than we had thought and have a surprising nature, but we're already gotten very used to that from modern science." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, you've kind of alluded that you don't have to have consciousness for high levels of intelligence, but to create truly general intelligence systems, AGI systems, human level intelligence and perhaps super human level intelligence, You've talked about that you feel like that kind of thing might be very far away, but nevertheless, when we reach that point, do you think consciousness from an engineering perspective is needed or at least highly beneficial for creating an AGI system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no one knows what consciousness is for functionally. So right now there's no specific thing we can point to and say, you need consciousness for that. Still, my inclination is to believe that in principle AGI is possible. At the very least, I don't see why someone couldn't simulate a brain, ultimately have a computational system that produces all of our behavior. And if that's possible, I'm sure vastly many other computational systems of equal or greater sophistication are possible with all of our cognitive functions and more. My inclination is to think that once you've got all these cognitive functions, you know, perception, attention, reasoning, introspection, language, emotion, and so on. It's very likely you'll have consciousness as well. At least it's very hard for me to see how you'd have a system that had all those things while bypassing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "somehow conscious. So just naturally it's integrated quite naturally. There's a lot of overlap about the kind of function that required to achieve each of those things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's uh, so you can't disentangle them even when you're at least in us, but we don't know what the causal role of consciousness in the physical world, what it does. I mean, just say it turns out consciousness does something very specific in the physical world, like collapsing wave functions as on one common interpretation of quantum mechanics. then ultimately we might find some place where it actually makes a difference. And we could say, ah, here is where in collapsing wave functions, it's driving the behavior of a system. And maybe it could even turn out that for a AGI, you'd need something playing that. I mean, if you wanted to connect this to free will, some people think consciousness collapsing wave functions, that would be how the conscious mind exerts effect on the physical world and exerts its free will. And maybe it could turn out that any AGI that didn't utilize that mechanism would be limited in the kinds of functionality that it had. I don't myself find that plausible. I think probably that functionality could be simulated. But you can imagine once we had a very specific idea about the role of consciousness in the physical world, this would have some impact. on the capacity of AGIs. And if it was a role that could not be duplicated elsewhere, then we'd have to find some way to either get consciousness in the system to play that role or to simulate it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we can isolate a particular role to consciousness, of course, that's incredibly, seems like an incredibly difficult thing. Do you have worries about existential threats of conscious, intelligent beings that are not us. So certainly, I'm sure you're worried about us from an existential threat perspective, but outside of us, AI systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a couple of different kinds of existential threats here. One is an existential threat to consciousness, generally. I mean, yes, I care about humans and the survival of humans and so on, but just say it turns out that that eventually were replaced by some artificial beings that aren't humans, but are somehow our successors. They still have good lives. They still do interesting and wonderful things with the universe. I don't think that's not so bad. That's just our successors. We were one stage in evolution. Something different, maybe better, came next. If, on the other hand, all of consciousness was wiped out, that would be a very serious moral disaster. One way that could happen is by all intelligent life being wiped out. And many people think that, yeah, once you get to humans and AI is an amazing sophistication where everyone has got the ability to create weapons that can destroy the whole universe. Just by pressing a button, then maybe it's inevitable all intelligent life will die out. That would certainly be a disaster. And we've got to think very hard about how to avoid that. But yeah, another interesting kind of disaster is that maybe intelligent life is not wiped out, but all consciousness. is wiped out. So just say you thought, unlike what I was saying a moment ago, that there are two different kinds of intelligent systems, some which are conscious and some which are not. And just say it turns out that we create AGI with a high degree of intelligence, meaning high degree of sophistication and its behavior, but with no consciousness. at all. That AGI could take over the world, maybe, but then there'd be no consciousness in this world. This would be a world of zombies. Some people have called this the zombie apocalypse, because it's an apocalypse for consciousness. Consciousness is gone. You've merely got super intelligent, non-conscious robots. And I would say that's a moral disaster in the same way. in almost the same way that the world with no intelligent life is a moral disaster. All value and meaning may be gone from that world. So these are both threats to watch out for. Now, my own view is if you get superintelligence, you're almost certainly going to bring consciousness with it. So I hope that's Not gonna happen, but of course, I don't understand consciousness. No one understands consciousness. This is one reason, at least among many, for thinking very seriously about consciousness and thinking about the kind of future we want to create in a world with humans and or AIs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you feel about the possibility, if consciousness so naturally does come with AGI systems, that we are just a step in the evolution, that we will be just something, a blimp on the record that will be studied in books by the AGI systems centuries from now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think I'd probably be okay with that, especially if somehow humans are continuous with AGI. I mean, I think something like this is inevitable. At the very least, humans are going to be transformed. We're going to be augmented by technology. It's already happening in all kinds of ways. We're going to be transformed by technology where our brains are going to be uploaded and computationally enhanced. And eventually that line between what's a human and what's a What's an AI may be kind of hard to draw. How much does it matter, for example, that some future being 1,000 years from now that somehow descended from us actually still has biology? I think it would be nice if you could kind of point to its cognitive system, point to some parts that had some roots in us and trace a continuous line there. That would be selfishly nice for me to think that, okay, I'm connected to this thread line through the future of the world. But it turns out, okay, there's a jump there. They found a better way to design cognitive systems. They designed a whole new kind of thing. And the only line is some causal chain of designing and systems that design better systems. Is that so much worse for I don't know, we're still at least part of a causal chain of design. Yes, they're not humans, but still they're our successors. Ultimately, I think it's probably inevitable that something like that will happen. At least we were part of the process. It'd be nice if they still cared enough about us to maybe to engage with our arguments. I'm really hoping that the AGIs are going to solve all the problems of philosophy. They'll come back and read all this. all this crappy work for the 20th and 21st century, hard problem of consciousness, and here is why they got it wrong, and so on. If that happened, then I'd really feel like I was part of at least an intellectual process over centuries, and that would be kind of cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I'm pretty sure they would clone or they would recreate David Chalmers and for the fun of it, sort of bring back other philosophers. Yeah, bring back Descartes. Descartes, and just put them in a room and just watch. It'll be a Netflix of the future show where you bring philosophers from different, 100% human philosophers from previous generations, put them in a room and see them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I am totally up for that. Simulators, AGIs of the future, if you're watching this podcast, do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I would love to be recreated and hang out with Descartes. If you could hang out as part of such a TV show with a philosopher that's no longer with us from long ago, who would you choose?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Descartes would have to be right up there. Oh, actually, a couple of months ago, I got to have a conversation with Descartes. An actor who's actually a philosopher came out on stage playing Descartes. I didn't know this was going to happen. And just after I gave a talk and told me how my ideas were crap and all derived from him and so on, we had a long argument. This was great. I would love to see what Descartes would think about AI, for example, and modern neuroscience and so on. I suspect not too much would surprise him, but But yeah, William James, for a psychologist of consciousness, I think James was probably the richest. But there are Immanuel Kant. I never really understood what he was up to if I got to actually talk to him about some of this. Hey, there was Princess Elizabeth who talked with Descartes. who really got at the problems of how Descartes' ideas of a non-physical mind interacting with the physical body couldn't really work. She's been kind of, most philosophers think she's been proved right. So maybe put me in a room with Descartes and Princess Elizabeth and we can all argue it out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What kind of future, so we talked about, with zombies, a concerning future, but what kind of future excites you? What do you think if we look forward, sort of, we're at the very early stages of understanding consciousness, and we're now at the early stages of being able to engineer complex, interesting systems that have degrees of intelligence, and maybe one day we'll have degrees of consciousness, maybe be able to upload brains, all those possibilities, virtual reality. Is there a particular aspect of this future world that just excites you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there are lots of different aspects. I mean, frankly, I want it to hurry up and happen. It's like, yeah, we've had some progress lately in AI and VR, but in the grand scheme of things, it's still kind of slow. The changes are not yet transformative. I'm in my 50s, I've only got so long left. I'd like to see really serious AI in my lifetime and really serious virtual worlds. I would like to be able to hang out in a virtual reality which is richer than this reality to really get to inhabit fundamentally different kinds of spaces. I would very much like to be able to upload my mind onto a computer so maybe I don't have to die. Maybe gradually replace my neurons with silicon chips and inhabit a computer. Selfishly, that would be wonderful. I suspect I'm not gonna quite get there in my lifetime, but once that's possible, then you've got the possibility of transforming your consciousness in remarkable ways, augmenting it, enhancing it," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me ask then if such a system is a possibility within your lifetime and you were given the opportunity to become immortal in this kind of way, would you choose to be immortal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I totally would. I know some people say they couldn't, it'd be awful to be immortal, it'd be so boring or something. I don't see, I really don't see I don't see why this might be. I mean, even if it's just ordinary life that continues, ordinary life is not so bad. But furthermore, I kind of suspect that if the universe is going to go on forever or indefinitely, it's going to continue to be interesting. I don't think your view was that We just hit this one romantic point of interest now and afterwards it's all going to be boring, super intelligent stasis. I guess my vision is more like, no, it's going to continue to be infinitely interesting. Something like as you go up the set theoretic hierarchy, you know, you go from the finite finite cardinals to Aleph zero, and then through there to all the Aleph one and Aleph two, and maybe the continuum, and you keep taking power sets. And in set theory, they've got these results that actually all this is fundamentally unpredictable. It doesn't follow any simple computational patterns. There's new levels of creativity as the set theoretic universe expands and expands. I guess that's my future. That's my vision of the future. That's my optimistic vision of the future of superintelligence. It will keep expanding and keep growing, but still being fundamentally unpredictable at many points. I mean, yes, this creates all kinds of worries, like couldn't it all be fragile and be destroyed at any point? So we're going to need a solution to that problem. If we get to stipulate that I'm immortal, well, I hope that I'm not just immortal and stuck in the single world forever, but I'm immortal and get to take part in this process of going through infinitely rich created futures." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Rich, unpredictable, exciting. Well, I think I speak for a lot of people in saying, I hope you do become immortal and there'll be that Netflix show, The Future, where you get to argue with Descartes, perhaps for all eternity. So Dave, it was an honor. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "When I think about viruses, I think about them, I mean, I imagine them as those villains that do their work so perfectly well that it's impossible not to be fascinated with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you imagine when you think about a virus? Do you imagine the individual, sort of these 100 nanometer particle things? Or do you imagine the whole pandemic, like society level? When you say the efficiency at which they do their work, do you think of viruses as the millions that occupy a human body or a living organism? society level, like spreading as a pandemic? Or do you think of the individual little guy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, this is, I think this is a unique a unique concept that allows you to move from micro scale to the macro scale. So the virus itself, I mean, it's not a living organism. It's a machine, to me, it's a machine, but it is perfected to the way that it essentially has a limited number of functions it needs to do, necessary functions. and essentially has enough information just to do those functions as well as the ability to modify itself. So it's a machine, it's an intelligent machine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, maybe on that point, you're in danger of reducing the power of this thing by calling it a machine, right? But you now mentioned that it's also possibly intelligent. It seems that there's these elements of brilliance that a virus has, of intelligence, of maximizing so many things about its behavior and to ensure its survival and its success. So, do you see it as intelligent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, you know, I think the, it's a different, I understand it differently than, you know, I think about, you know, intelligence of humankind or intelligence of the, you know, of the artificial intelligence. mechanisms. I think the intelligence of a virus is in its simplicity. The ability to do so much with so little material and information. But also, I think it's interesting, it keeps me thinking, you know, it keeps me wondering whether or not it's also an example of the basic swarm intelligence, where essentially the viruses act as the whole, and they're extremely efficient in that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you attribute the incredible simplicity and the efficiency to? Is it the evolutionary process? So maybe another way to ask that, if you look at the next hundred years, are you more worried about the natural pandemics or the engineered pandemics? So how hard is it to build virus?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's a very, very interesting question because obviously there's a lot of conversations about the, you know, whether we are capable of engineering a, you know, an even worse virus. I personally expect and am mostly concerned with the naturally-occurring viruses simply because we keep seeing that. We keep seeing new strains of influenza emerging, some of them becoming pandemic. We keep seeing new strains of coronaviruses emerging. This is a natural process and I think this is why it's so powerful. If you ask me, I've read papers about scientists trying to study the capacity of the modern biotechnology to alter the viruses. But I hope that it won't be our main concern in the near future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean by hope?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, if you look back and look at the history of the most dangerous viruses, right? So the first thing that comes into mind is a smallpox. So right now there is perhaps a handful of places where the strains of this virus are stored, right? So this is essentially the effort of the whole society to limit the access to those viruses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And- You mean in a lab in a controlled environment in order to study? Correct. And then smallpox is one of the viruses for which" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "um should be stated there's a vaccine is developed yes yes and that's you know it's until 70s it i mean in my opinion it was perhaps the most dangerous thing that was there" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that a very different virus than the influenza and the coronaviruses?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is. It is different in several aspects. Biologically, it's a so-called double-stranded DNA virus, but also in the way that it is much more contagious. So the R-naught for, so this is the- What's R-naught? R-naught is essentially an average number as person infected by the virus can spread to other people. So then the average number of people that he or she can spread it to. And there is still some discussion about the estimates of the current virus. The estimations vary between 1.5 and three. In case of smallpox, it was five to seven. And we're talking about the exponential growth, right? So that's a very big difference. It's not the most contagious one. Measles, for example, it's, I think, 15 and up. But it's definitely, definitely more contagious that the seasonal flu than the current coronavirus or SARS, for that matter. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What makes a virus more contagious? I'm sure there's a lot of variables that come into play, but is it that whole discussion of aerosol and the size of droplets, if it's airborne, or is there some other stuff that's more biology-centered?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, there are a lot of components, and there are biological components that are also you know, social components, the ability of the virus to, you know, so the ways in which the virus is spread is definitely one, the ability to virus to stay on the surfaces, to survive. the ability of the virus to replicate fast or so, you know, once it's in the cell or whatever, once it's inside the host. And interestingly enough, something that I think we didn't pay that much attention to is the incubation period, where hosts are symptomatic. And now it turns out that another thing that one really needs to take into account, the percentage of the symptomatic population. because those people still shed this virus and still are, you know, they still are contagious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I saw there's an, the Iceland study, which I think is probably the most impressive size wise, shows 50% asymptomatic for this virus. I also recently learned the swine flu is like the, just the number of people who got infected was in the billions. It was some crazy number. It was like 20%, 30% of the population, something crazy like that. So the lucky thing there is the fatality rate is low. But the fact that a virus can just take over an entire population so quickly, it's terrifying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, I mean, this is, you know, that's perhaps my favorite example of a butterfly effect. because it's really, I mean, it's even tinier than a butterfly. And look at, you know, and with, you know, if you think about it, right, so it used to be in those bat species. And perhaps because of, you know, a couple of small changes in the viral genome, It first had become capable of jumping from bats to human, and then it became capable of jumping from human to human, right? So this is, I mean, it's not even the size of a virus, it's the size of several atoms or a few atoms. And all of a sudden this change, has such a major impact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is that a mutation on a single virus? So if we talk about the flap of a butterfly wing, what's the first flap?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think this is the mutations that made this virus capable of jumping from bat species to human. Of course, the scientists are still trying to find, I mean, they're still even trying to find who was the first infected, right? The patient zero. The first human. The first human infected, right? I mean, the fact that there are coronaviruses, different strains of coronaviruses in various bat species, I mean, we know that. So we, you know, virologists observe them, they study them. they look at their genomic sequences, they're trying, of course, to understand what make these viruses to jump from bats to human. There was, you know, similar to that in influenza, there was, I think, a few years ago, there was this, you know, interesting story where several groups of scientists studying influenza virus essentially, you know, made experiments to show that this virus can jump from one species to another. you know, by changing, I think, just a couple of residues. And of course, it was very controversial. I think there was a moratorium on this study for a while, but then the study was released, it was published." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think so. So why was there a moratorium? Because it shows through engineering it, through modifying it, you can make it jump." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I personally think it is important to study this. I mean, we should be informed. We should try to understand as much as possible in order to prevent it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But so then the engineering aspect there is Can't you then just start searching because there's so many strands of viruses out there. Can't you just search for the ones in bats that are the deadliest from the virologist's perspective and then just try to engineer, try to see how to, But see, there's a nice aspect to it. The really nice thing about engineering viruses, it has the same problem as nuclear weapons, is it's hard for it to not lead to mutual self-destruction. So you can't control a virus, it can't be used as a weapon, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's why I, you know, in the beginning I said, you know, I'm hopeful because the definitely regulations to be needed to be introduced. And I mean, as the scientific society is, we are in charge of, you know, making the right actions, making the right decisions. But I think we will benefit tremendously by understanding the mechanisms by which the virus can jump, by which the virus can become more, you know, more dangerous to humans. Because all these answers with eventually lead to designing better vaccines, hopefully universal vaccines, right? And that would be a triumph of science." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the universal vaccine? So is that something that, how universal is universal? Well, I mean, you know, so. What's the dream, I guess? Because you kind of mentioned the dream of this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would be extremely happy if, you know, we design the vaccine that is able, I mean, I'll give you an example, right? So every year we do a seasonal flu shot. The reason we do it is because, you know, we are in the arms race, you know, our vaccines are in the arms race with constantly changing virus, right? Now, if the next pandemic, influenza pandemic will occur, most likely this vaccine would not save us, right? Although it's, you know, it's the same virus, might be different strain, So if we're able to essentially design a vaccine against influenza A virus, no matter what's the strain, no matter which species did it jump from, that would be, I think that would be a huge, huge progress and advancement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned smallpox until the 70s might've been something that you would be worried the most about. What about these days? Well, we're sitting here in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic, but these days, nevertheless, what is your biggest worry virus-wise? What are you keeping your eye out on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It looks like, and based on the past several years of the new viruses emerging, I think we're still dealing with different types of influence. I mean, it's also the H7N9 avian flu that emerged, I think, a couple of years ago in China. I think the mortality rate was incredible. I mean, it was, you know, I think above 30%, you know, so this is huge. I mean, luckily for us, this strain was not pandemic, right? So it was jumping from birds to human, but I don't think it was actually transmittable between the humans. And this is actually a very interesting question, which scientists try to understand, right? So the balance, the delicate balance between the virus being very contagious So efficient in spreading and virus to be very pathogenic, causing harms and deaths to their hosts. So it looks like that the more pathogenic the virus is, the less contagious it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that a property of biology or what is it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't have an answer to that. And I think this is still an open question. But if you look at with the coronavirus, for example, if you look at the deadlier relative MERS, MERS was never a pandemic virus. But again, the mortality rate from MERS is far above, I think, 20 or 30%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So whatever is making this all happen doesn't want us dead. Because it's balancing out nicely. I mean, how do you explain that we're not dead yet? Like, because there's so many viruses and they're so good at what they do. Why do they keep us alive?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, we also have, you know, a lot of protection, right? So we do the immune system. And so, I mean, we do have, you know, ways to fight against those viruses. And I think now we're much better equipped, right? So with the discoveries of vaccines and, you know, there are vaccines against the viruses that maybe 200 years ago would wipe us out completely. But because of these vaccines, we are actually, we are capable of eradicating pretty much fully as is the case with smallpox." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if we could, can we go to the basics a little bit of the biology of the virus? How does a virus infect the body?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think there are some key steps that the virus needs to perform. And of course, the first one, the viral particle needs to get attached to the host cell. In the case of coronavirus, there is a lot of evidence that it actually interacts in the same way as the SARS coronavirus. So it gets attached to AC2 human receptor. And so there is, I mean, as we speak, there is a growing number of papers suggesting it. Moreover, most recent, I think most recent results suggest that this virus attaches more efficiently to this human receptor than SARS." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just to sort of back off, so there's a family of viruses, the coronaviruses, and SARS, whatever the heck, forgot, whatever that stands for." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So SARS actually stands for the disease that you get, is the syndrome of acute respiratory. Respiratory syndrome." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So SARS is the first strand, and then there's MERS." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "MERS, and there is, yes, people, scientists actually know more than three strands. I mean, so there is the MHV strain, which is considered to be a canonical model, disease model in mice. And so there is a lot of work done on this virus because it's... But it hasn't jumped to humans yet?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no. Oh, interesting. Yes. That's fascinating. So, and then you mentioned AC2, so when you say attach, proteins are involved on both sides." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so we have this infamous spike protein on the surface of the virion particle. And it does look like a spike. And I mean, that's essentially because of this protein, we call the coronavirus coronavirus. So that's what makes corona on top of the surface. So this protein, it actually, it acts So it doesn't act alone. It actually, it makes three copies and it makes so-called trimer. So this trimer is essentially a functional unit, a single functional unit that starts interacting with the AC2 receptor. So this is again, another protein that now sits on the surface of a human cell or host cell, I would say. and that's essentially in that way the virus anchors itself to the host cell because then it needs to actually it needs to get inside you know it fuses its membrane with the host membrane it releases the the key components it releases its you know RNA and then essentially hijacks the machinery of the cell because none of the viruses that we know of have ribosome, the machinery that allows us to print out proteins. So in order to print out proteins that are necessary for functioning of this virus, it actually needs to hijack the host ribosomes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a virus is an RNA wrapped in a bunch of proteins, one of which is this functional mechanism of a spike protein that does the attachment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, so if you look at this virus, there are several basic components, right? So we start with the spike protein. This is not the only surface protein, the protein that lives on the surface of the viral particle. There is also perhaps the protein with the highest number of copies is the membrane protein. So it's essentially, it forms the envelope of the protein of the viral particle and essentially helps to maintain a certain curvature, helps to make a certain curvature. Then there is another protein called envelope protein or E protein. And it actually occurs in far less quantities. And still there is ongoing research what exactly does this protein do. So these are sort of the three major surface proteins that make the viral envelope. And when we go inside, then we have another structural protein called nucleoprotein. And the purpose of this protein is to protect the viral RNA. It actually binds to the viral RNA, creates a capsid. and so the rest of the viral information is inside of this RNA and You know, if you compare the amount of the genes or proteins that are made of these genes, it's significantly higher than of influenza virus, for example. Influenza virus has, I think, around eight or nine proteins, where this one has at least 29." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, that has to do with the length of the RNA strand? I mean, what?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, I mean, so it affects the length of the RNA strand, right? So, because you essentially need to have sort of the minimum amount of information to encode those genes. How many proteins did you say?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "29. 29 proteins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So this is something definitely interesting because, believe it or not, we've been studying coronaviruses for over two decades. We've yet to uncover all functionalities of its proteins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Could we maybe take a small tangent and can you say how one would try to figure out what a function of a particular protein is? So you've mentioned people are still trying to figure out what the function of the envelope protein might be or what's the process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this is where the research that computational scientists do might be of help because, you know, in the past several decades, we actually have collected a pretty decent amount of knowledge about different proteins in different viruses. So what we can actually try to do, and this is sort of, could be sort of our first lead to a possible function is to see whether those, you know, say we have this genome of the coronavirus, of the novel coronavirus, and we identify the potential proteins. Then in order to infer the function, what we can do, we can actually see whether those proteins are similar to those ones that we already know. Okay. In such a way, we can, you know, for example, clearly identify, you know, some critical components that RNA polymerase or different types of proteases. These are the proteins that essentially clip the protein sequences. And so this works in many cases. However, in some cases you have truly novel proteins. And this is a much more difficult task." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now as a small pause, when you say similar, like what if some parts are different and some parts are similar? Like how do you disentangle that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's a big question. Of course, you know, what bioinformatics does, it does predictions, right? So those predictions are... they have to be validated by experiments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Functional or structural predictions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Both. I mean, we do structural predictions, we do functional predictions, we do interactions predictions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so this is interesting. So you just generate a lot of predictions, like reasonable predictions based on structure and function interaction, like you said, and then here you go. That's the power of bioinformatics is data grounded, good predictions of what should happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in the way I see it, we're helping experimental scientists to streamline their discovery process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the experimental scientists, is that what a virologist is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, virology is one of the experimental sciences that focus on viruses. They often work with other experimental scientists, for example, the molecular imaging scientists. So the viruses often can be viewed and reconstructed through electron microscopy techniques. But these are specialists that are not necessarily virologists. They work with small particles, whether it's viruses or it's an organelle of a human cell, whether it's a complex molecular machinery. So the techniques that are used are very similar in their essence. And so yeah, so typically, we see it now, the research on you know, that is emerging and that is needed often involves the collaborations between virologists, you know, biochemists, you know, people from pharmaceutical sciences, computational sciences, so we have to work together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So from my perspective, just to step back, sometimes I look at this stuff, just how much we understand about RNA and DNA, how much we understand about protein, like your work, the amount of proteins that you're exploring, Is it surprising to you that we were able, we descendants of apes, were able to figure all of this out? So you're a computer scientist, so for me, from a computer science perspective, I know how to write a Python program, things are clear, but biology is a giant mess, it feels like to me, from an outsider's perspective. How surprising is it, amazing is it, that we were able to figure this stuff out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at how computational science and computer science was evolving, I think it was just a matter of time that we would approach biology. So we started from applications to much more fundamental systems, physics. Now we are, or, you know, small chemical compounds, right? So now we are approaching the more complex biological systems. And I think it's a natural evolution of, you know, of the computer science of mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So sure, that's the computer science side. I just meant even in higher levels. So that to me is surprising, that computer science can offer help in this messy world. But I just mean it's incredible that the biologists and the chemists can figure all this out. Or does that just sound ridiculous to you? that of course they would. It just seems like a very complicated set of problems. Like the variety of the kinds of things that could be produced in the body. Just like you said, 29 protein, I mean, just getting a hang of it so quickly, it just seems impossible to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree. I mean, it's, and I have to say, we are in the very, very beginning of this journey. I mean, we've yet to comprehend, not even try to understand and figure out all the details, but we've yet to comprehend the complexity of the cell." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We know that neuroscience is not even at the beginning of understanding the human mind. So where's biology sit in terms of understanding the function, deeply understanding the function of viruses and cells? So sometimes it's easy to say when you talk about function, what you really refer to is perhaps not a deep understanding, but more of a understanding sufficient to be able to mess with it using an antiviral, like mess with it chemically to prevent some of its function. Or do you understand the function deeply?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we are much farther in terms of understanding of the, complex genetic disorders, such as cancer, where you have layers of complexity. And we, you know, as in my laboratory, we're trying to contribute to that research, but we're also, you know, we're overwhelmed with how many different layers of complexity, different layers of mechanisms that can be hijacked by cancer simultaneously. And so You know, I think biology in the past 20 years, again, from the perspective of the outsider, because I'm not a biologist, but I think it has advanced tremendously. And one thing that where computational scientists and data scientists and now becoming very helpful is coming from the fact that we are now able to generate a lot of information about the cell. whether it's next generation sequencing or transcriptomics, whether it's life imaging information, where it is, you know, complex interactions between proteins or between proteins and small molecules such as drugs. We are becoming very efficient in generating this information. And now the next step is to become equally efficient in processing this information and extracting the key knowledge from that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "that could then be validated with experiment. So maybe then going all the way back, we were talking, you said the first step is seeing if we can match the new proteins we found in the virus against something we've seen before to figure out its function. And then you also mentioned that, but there could be cases where it's a totally new protein. Is there something bioinformatics can offer when it's a totally new protein?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is where many of the methods, and you're probably aware of the case of machine learning, many of these methods rely on the previous knowledge. So things that where we try to do from scratch are incredibly difficult. you know something that we call ab initio and this is i mean it's not just the function i mean you know we've yet to have a robust method to predict the structures of these proteins in ab initio you know by not using any templates of other related proteins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So protein is a chain of amino acids. It's residues. Residues, yeah. And then somehow, magically, maybe you can tell me, they seem to fold in incredibly weird and complicated 3D shapes. Yes. And that's where actually the idea of protein folding, or just not the idea, but the problem of figuring out how to have the concept, how they fold into those weird shapes comes in. So that's another side of computational work. So can you describe what protein folding from the computational side is? And maybe your thoughts on the folding at home efforts that a lot of people know that you can use your machine Oh yeah. To do protein folding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, protein folding is, you know, one of those $1 million price challenges, right? So the reason for that is we've yet to understand precisely how the protein gets folded so efficiently, to the point that in many cases where you try to unfold it due to the high temperature, it actually folds back into its original state. So we know a lot about the mechanisms, but putting those mechanisms together and making sense. It's a computationally very expensive task." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In general, do proteins fold, can they fold in arbitrary large number of ways, or do they usually fold in a very small number of ways?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's typically, I mean, we tend to think that there is one sort of canonical fold for a protein, although there are many cases where the proteins, upon destabilization, it can be folded into a different conformation. And this is especially true when you look at sort of proteins that include more than one structural unit. So those structural units, we call them protein domains. Essentially, a protein domain is a single unit that typically is evolutionarily preserved, that typically carries out a single function, and typically has a very distinct fold. the structure, 3D structure organization. But turns out that if you look at human, an average protein in a human cell would have a bit of two or three such subunits. And how they are trying to fold into the sort of, you know, next level fold, right? So within subunit, there's folding, and then... And then they fold into the larger 3D structure, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And all of that, there's some understanding of the basic mechanisms, but not to put together to be able to fold it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're still, I mean, we're still struggling. I mean, we're getting pretty good about folding relatively small proteins up to 100 residues. I mean, but we're still far away from folding larger proteins. And some of them are notoriously difficult. For example, transmembrane proteins, proteins that sit in the membranes of the cell. They're incredibly important but they are incredibly difficult to solve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so basically, there's a lot of degrees of freedom, how it folds. And so it's a combinatorial problem where it just explodes. There's so many dimensions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it is a combinatorial problem, but it doesn't mean that we cannot approach it from the, not from the brute force approach. And so the machine learning approaches, you know, have been emerged that try to tackle it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So folding at home, I don't know how familiar you are with it, but is that user machine learning or is it more brute force?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, so folding at home, it was originally, I remember, it was a long time ago, I was a post-doc, and we learned about this game, because it was originally designed as the game. And we, you know, I took a look at it and it's interesting because it's really, you know, it's very transparent, very intuitive. So, and from what I heard, I've yet to introduce it to my son, but, you know, kids are actually getting very good at folding the proteins. And it came to me as the, not as a surprise, but actually as the sort of manifest of our capacity to do this kind of, to solve this kind of problems. When a paper was published, in one of these top journals with the co-authors being the actual players of this game. And what happened was that they managed to get better structures than the scientists themselves. So that was a profound revelation problems that are so challenging for a computational science, maybe not that challenging for a human brain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's a really good, that's a hopeful message always when there's a the proof of existence, the existence proof that it's possible, that's really interesting. But it seems, what are the best ways to do protein folding now? So if you look at what DeepMind does with AlphaFold. So they kind of, that's a learning approach. What's your sense? I mean, your background is in machine learning, but is this a learnable problem? Is this still a brute force? Are we in the Garry Kasparov, Deep Blue days, or are we in the AlphaGo playing the game of Go days of folding?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think we are advancing towards this direction. I mean, if you look, so there is a sort of Olympic game for protein folders called CASP. And it's essentially, it's a competition where different teams are given exactly the same protein sequences and they try to predict their structures, right? And of course there are different sort of subtasks, but in the recent competition, AlphaFault was among the top performing teams, if not the top performing team. So there is definitely a benefit from the data that have been generated in the past several decades, the structural data. And certainly, we are now at the capacity to summarize this data, to generalize this data, and to use those principles you know, in order to predict protein structures." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one of the really cool things here is there's, maybe you can comment on it, there seems to be these open data sets of protein. How did that? The protein data bank? Yeah, protein data bank. I mean, that's crazy. Is this a recent thing for just the coronavirus, or is this been a?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's been for many, many years. I believe the first protein data bank was designed on flashcards. So, yes, it's this, I mean, this is a great example of the community efforts of everyone contributing because every time you solve a protein or a protein complex, this is where you submit it. And, you know, the scientists get access to it, scientists get to test it. And we, bioinformaticians, use this information to make predictions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's no culture of like hoarding discoveries here. I mean, you've released a few or a bunch of proteins that were matching, whatever. We'll talk about details a little bit. It's kind of amazing how open the culture here is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, and I think this pandemic actually demonstrated the ability of scientific community to solve this challenge collaboratively. And this is, I think, if anything, it actually moved us to a brand new level of collaborations of the efficiency in which people establish new collaborations, in which people offer their help to each other, scientists offer their help to each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And publishers also, it's very interesting. We're now trying to figure out, there's a few journals that are trying to sort of do the very accelerated review cycle, but so many pre-prints, so just posting a paper, going out, I think it's fundamentally changing the way we think about papers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I mean, the way we think about knowledge, I would say. Because, yes, I completely agree. I think now the knowledge is becoming sort of the core value, not the paper or the journal where this knowledge is published. And I think this is, again, we are living in the times where it becomes really crystallized, the idea that the most important value is in the knowledge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe you can comment, like, what do you think the future of that knowledge sharing looks like? So you have this paper that I hope we'll get a chance to talk about a little bit, but it has like a really nice abstract and introduction related, like, it has all the usual, I mean, probably took a long time to put together. So, but is that going to remain, like, you could have communicated a lot of fundamental ideas here in a much shorter amount. that's less traditionally acceptable by the journal context?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, well, you know, so the first version that we posted, not even on the BioRxiv, because BioRxiv back then, it was essentially, you know, overwhelmed with the number of submissions. So our submission, I think it took five or six days just for it to be screened and put online. So we, you know, essentially we put the first preprint on our website and, you know, it started getting accessed right away. So this original preprint was in a much rougher shape than this paper. But we tried, I mean, we honestly tried to be as compact as possible with introducing the information that is necessary to explain our results." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe you can dive right in if it's okay. So there's a paper called Structural Genomics of SARS-CoV-2. How do you even pronounce? SARS-CoV-2. CoV-2? Yeah. By the way, COVID is such a terrible name, but it's stuck. Anyway, SARS-CoV-2 indicates evolutionary conserved functional regions of viral proteins. So this is looking at all kinds of proteins that are part of this novel coronavirus and how they match up against the previous other kinds of coronaviruses. I mean, there's a lot of beautiful figures. I was wondering if you could, I mean, there's so many questions I could ask here, but maybe at the, how do you get started doing this paper? So how do you start to figure out the 3D structure of a novel virus?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so there is actually a little story behind it. And so the story actually dated back in September of 2019. And you probably remember that back then we had another dangerous virus, triple E virus. is the Queen Encephalitis virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And- Can you maybe linger on it? I have to admit, I was sadly completely unaware." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that was actually a virus outbreak that happened in New England only. The danger in this virus was that it actually targeted your brain. So the word deaths from this virus, the main vector was mosquitoes. And obviously fall time is the time where you have a lot of them in New England. And on one hand, people realized this is actually a very dangerous thing. So it had an impact on the local economy. The schools were closed past six o'clock, no activities outside for the kids because the kids were suffering quite tremendously when infected from this virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do I not know about this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Was universities impacted? It was in the news. I mean, it was not impacted to a high degree in Boston necessarily, but in the Metro West area and actually spread around, I think, all the way to New Hampshire, Connecticut." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you mentioned affecting the brain. That's one other comment we should make. So you mentioned AC2 for the coronavirus. So these viruses kind of attach to something in the body." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it essentially attaches to these proteins in those cells. in the body where those proteins are expressed, where they actually have them in abundance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So sometimes that could be in the lungs, that could be in the brain, that could be in something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think what they, right now, from what I read, they have the epithelial cells inside. So the cells essentially inside the, you know, the cells that are covering the surface, you know, so inside the nasal surfaces, the throat, the lung cells, and I believe liver as a couple of other organs where they are actually expressed in abundance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's for the AC2 receptors. So, okay, so back to the story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It celebrates in the fall. So now the impact of this virus is significant. However, it's a pre-local problem to the point that this is something that we would call a neglected disease because it's not big enough to make the drug design companies to design a new antiviral or a new vaccine. It's not big enough to generate a lot of grants from the national funding agencies. So does it mean we cannot do anything about it? And so what I did is I taught a bioinformatics class in Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and we are very much a problem learning institution. So I thought that that would be a perfect project for the class. So I asked, so I was essentially designed a study where we tried to use bioinformatics to understand as much as possible about this virus. And a very substantial portion of the study was to understand the structures of the proteins, to understand how they interact, with each other and with the host proteins, try to understand the evolution of this virus. It's obviously a very important question, where it will evolve further, how it happened here. So we did all these projects, and now I'm trying to put them into a paper where all these undergraduate students will be co-authors. But essentially the projects were finished right about mid-December. And a couple of weeks later, I heard about this mysterious new virus that was discovered in, was reported in Wuhan province. And immediately I thought that, well, we just did that. Can't we do the same thing with this virus? And so we started waiting for the genome to be released, because that's essentially the first piece of information that is critical. Once you have the genome sequence, you can start doing a lot using bioinformatics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say genome sequence, that's referring to the sequence of letters that make up the RNA." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the sequence that make up the entire information encoded in the protein, right? So that includes all 29 genes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are genes? What's the encoding of information?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So genes is essentially is a basic functional unit that we can consider. So each gene in the virus would correspond to a protein. So gene by itself doesn't do its function. It needs to be converted or translated into the protein. that will become the actual functional unit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like you said, the printer. So we need the printer for that. We need the printer, okay. So the first step is to figure out the genome, the sequence of things that could be then used for printing the protein. So, okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So then the next step, so once we have this, and so we use the existing information about SARS, because the SARS genomics has been done in abundance. So we have different strains of SARS and actually other related coronaviruses, MERS, the bat coronavirus, and We started by identifying the potential genes, because right now it's just a sequence, right? So it's a sequence that is roughly, it's less than 30,000 nucleotide long. And- Just a raw sequence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a raw sequence. No other information really." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And we now need to define the boundaries of the genes. that would then be used to identify the proteins and protein structures. How hard is that problem? It's not, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. So, you know, so, cause we use the existing information about SARS proteins and SARS genes. So once again, you kind of... We are relying on the, yes. So, and then once we get there, This is where the first more traditional bioinformatics step begins. We're trying to use these protein sequences and get the 3D information about those proteins. So this is where we are relying heavily on the structure information, specifically from the protein data bank that we were talking about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And here you're looking for similar proteins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So the concept that we are operating when we do this kind of modeling, it's called homology or template-based modeling. So essentially using the concept that if you have two sequences that are similar in terms of the letters, the structures of the sequences are expected to be similar as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this is at the micro, at the very local scale and- At the scale of the whole protein." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the whole protein, right? So actually, so, you know, Of course, the devil is in the details. And this is why we need, actually, pretty sophisticated modeling tools to do so. Once we get the structures of the individual proteins, we try to see whether or not these proteins act alone, or they have to be forming protein complexes in order to perform this function. And again, so this is sort of the next level of the modeling, because now you need to understand how proteins interact. And it could be the case that the protein interacts with itself and makes sort of a multimeric complex. The same protein just repeated multiple times. And we have quite a few such proteins in SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, spike protein needs three copies to function. Envelope protein needs five copies to function. And there are some other multimeric complexes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what you mean by interactive with itself, and you see multiple copies. So how do you make a good guess whether something's going to interact?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, again, so there are two approaches, right? So one is look at the previously solved complexes. Now we're looking not at the individual structures, but the structures of the whole complex. Complex is multiple proteins. Yeah, so it's a bunch of proteins essentially glued together. And when you say glued, that's the interaction. That's the interaction. So there are different forces, different sort of physical forces behind this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry to keep asking dumb questions, but is it the interaction fundamentally structural or is it functional? Like in the way you're thinking about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's actually a very good way to ask this question, because it turns out that the interaction is structural, but in the way it forms the structure, it actually also carries out the function. So interaction is often needed to carry out very specific function of a protein." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in terms of, on the reverse side, figuring out you're really starting at the structure before you figure out the function. Yes. So there's a beautiful figure too in the paper of all the different proteins that make up, that you're able to figure out that make up the new, the novel coronavirus. What are we looking at? So these are like, That's through the step two that you mentioned, when you try to guess at the possible proteins, that's what you're going to get, is these blue cyan blobs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so those are the individual proteins for which we have at least some information from the previous studies. So there is advantage and disadvantage of using previous studies. The biggest, well, the disadvantage is that, you know, we may not necessarily have the coverage of all 29 proteins. However, the biggest advantage is that the accuracy in which we can model these proteins is very high, much higher compared to ab initio methods that do not use any template information." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, but nevertheless, this figure also has, it's such a beautiful, and I love these pictures so much. It has like the pink parts, which are the parts that are different. So you're highlighting, so the difference you find is on the 2D sequence, and then you try to infer what that will look like on the 3D." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the difference actually is, on 1D sequence, right? And so this is one of these first questions that we try to answer is that, well, if you take this new virus and you take the closest relatives, which are SARS and a couple of bad coronavirus strains, they are already the closest relatives that we are aware of. Now, what are the difference between this virus and its close relatives, right? And if you look, typically when you take a sequence, those differences could be quite far away from each other. So what 3D structure makes those difference to do, very often they tend to cluster together. And all of a sudden, the differences that may look completely unrelated actually relate to each other. And sometimes they are there because they correspond, they attack the functional side. Right? So they are there because this is the functional side that is highly mutated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a computational approach to figuring something out. And when it comes together like that, that's kind of a nice clean indication that there's something, this could be actually indicative of what's happening." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I mean, so we need this information and, you know, the 3D structure gives us just a very intuitive way to look at this information and then start to ask, you know, start asking questions such as, so this place of this protein that is highly mutated, does it, does it Is it a functional part of the protein? So does this part of the protein interact with some other proteins or maybe with some other ligands, small molecules, right? So we will try now to functionally inform this 3D structure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have a bunch of these mutated parts. How many are there in the new novel coronavirus when you compare it to SARS? We're talking about hundreds, thousands? like these pink regions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, much less than that. And it's very interesting that if you look at that, you know, so the first thing that you start seeing, right, you know, you look at patterns, right? And the first pattern that becomes obvious is that some of the proteins in the new coronavirus are pretty much intact. So they're pretty much exactly the same as SARS, as the bat coronavirus, whereas some others are heavily mutated. So it looks like that the evolution, is not occurring uniformly across the entire viral genome, but actually target very specific proteins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what do you do with that, like from the Sherlock Holmes perspective?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so one of the, of the most interesting findings we had was the fact that the viral, so the binding sites on the viral surfaces that get targeted by the known small molecules, they were pretty much not affected at all. And so that means that the same small drugs or small drug-like compounds can be efficient for the new coronavirus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ah, so this all actually maps to the drug compounds too. So you're actually mapping out what old stuff is gonna work on this thing. And then possibilities for new stuff to work by mapping out the things that have mutated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we essentially know which parts behave differently and which parts don't. are likely to behave similar. And again, of course, all our predictions need to be validated by experiments, but hopefully that sort of helps us to delineate the regions of this virus that can be promising in terms of the drug discovery." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You kind of mentioned this already, but maybe you can elaborate. So how different from the structural and functional perspective does the new coronavirus appear to be relative to SARS?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We now are trying to understand the overall structural characteristics of this virus, because I mean, that's our next step, trying to model the viral particle of, single viral particle of this virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that means that you have the individual proteins, like you said, you have to figure out what their interaction is. So you have this, is that where this graph kind of interactome?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the interactome, it's essentially a, so our prediction on the potential interactions, some of them that we already deciphered from the structural knowledge, but some of them that essentially are deciphered from the knowledge of the existing interactions that people, previously obtained for SARS, for MERS, or other related viruses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is there kind of interactomes, am I pronouncing that correctly, by the way? Yeah, interactome. Yeah, are those already... converge towards for SARS for?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think there are a couple of papers that now investigate the sort of the large scale sets of interactions between the new SARS and its host. And so I think that's an ongoing study, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the success of that, the result would be an interactome. Yes. And so when you say not trying to figure out the entire, the particle, the entire thing, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if you look, you know, so structure, right? So what this viral particle looks like, right? So as I said, it's, you know, the surface of it is an envelope, which is essentially a so-called lipid bilayer with proteins integrated into the surface. So how, so an average particle is around 80 nanometers, right? So this particle can have about 50 to 100 spike proteins. So at least we suspect it, and based on the micrographs images, it's very comparable to MHV virus in mice and SARS virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Micrographs are actual pictures of the actual? Virus. Okay, so these are models, this is actual?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "These are the actual images, right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are they, sorry for the tangents, but what are these things, so when you look on the internet, the models and the pictures are, and the models you have here are just gorgeous and beautiful. When you actually take pictures of them with a micrograph, what do we look?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, they typically are not perfect. So most of the images that you see now is the sphere with those spikes. You actually see the spikes? Yes, you do see the spikes. And now, you know, our collaborators for Texas A&M University, Benjamin Newman, he actually, in the recent paper about SARS, he proposed, and there's some actually evidence behind it, that the particle is not a sphere, but it actually is an elongated ellipsoid-like particle. So that's what we are trying to incorporate into our model. If you look at the actual micrographs, you see that those particles are are not symmetric, so some of them, and of course, it could be due to the treatment of the material, it could be due to some noise in the imaging." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so there's a lot of uncertainty in all this. So it's okay, so structurally figuring out the entire part. By the way, again, sorry for the tangents, but, Why the term particle? Or is it just something that's stuck?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a single, so we call it the virion. So virion particle, it's essentially a single virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Single virus, but it just feels like, because particle to me, from the physics perspective, feels like the most basic unit. because there seems to be so much going on inside the virus. It doesn't feel like a particle to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's probably, I think it's the, you know, virion is a good way to call it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, so trying to figure out, trying to figure out the entirety of the system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So, you know, so, you know, so this is, so the virion has, 5200 primer spikes, it has roughly 200 to 400 membrane protein dimers. And those are arranged in the very nice lattice, so you can actually see sort of the, it's like a, it's a carpet of- On the surface again. Exactly, on the surface. And occasionally you also see this envelope protein inside. Is that the one we don't know what it does? Exactly, exactly. The one that forms the pentamer, this very nice pentameric ring. And so, you know, so this is what we're trying to, you know, we're trying to put now all our knowledge together and see whether we can actually generate this overall virion model. with an idea to understand, well, first of all, to understand how it looks like, how far it is from those images that were generated. But I mean, the implications are, there is a potential for the nanoparticle design that will mimic this virion particle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is the process of nanoparticle design, meaning artificially designing something that looks similar?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so the one that can potentially compete with the actual virion particles and therefore reduce the effect of the infection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is this the idea of like, what is a vaccine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So vaccine, yeah, so there are two ways of essentially treating and in the case of vaccine is preventing the infection. So vaccine is a way to train our immune system. So our immune system becomes aware of this new danger. and therefore is capable of generating the antibodies, then will essentially bind to the spike proteins, because that's the main target for the vaccines design, and block its functioning. If you have the spike with the antibody on top, it can no longer interact with AC2 receptor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the process of designing a vaccine then is you have to understand enough about the structure of the virus itself to be able to create an artificial particle." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, nanoparticles is a very exciting and new research. So there are already established ways to, you know, to make vaccines and there are several different ones, right? So there is one where essentially the virus gets through the cell culture multiple times. So it becomes essentially adjusted to the specific embryonic cell. And as a result, becomes less compatible with the host human cells. So, therefore, it's sort of the idea of the life vaccine where the particles are there, but they are not so efficient, you know, so they cannot replicate as rapidly as, you know, before the vaccine and they can be introduced to the immune system. The immune system will learn and the person who gets this vaccine won't get sick or will have mild symptoms. So then there is sort of different types of the way to introduce the non-functional parts of this virus, or the virus where some of the information is stripped down. For example, the virus with no genetic material, so with no RNA genome, exactly. So it cannot replicate, it cannot essentially perform most of its function." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is fascinating. What is the biggest hurdle to design one of these, to arrive at one of these. Is it the work that you're doing and the fundamental understanding of this new virus, or is it in the, from our perspective, well. complicated world of experimental validation and sort of showing that this, like going through the whole process of showing this is actually gonna work with FDA approval, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's both. I mean, you know, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms will allow us to, you know, to design, to have more efficient designs of the vaccines. However, once you design the vaccine, it needs to be tested." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But when you look at the 18 months and the different projections, it seems like an exceptionally, historically speaking, maybe you can correct me, but even 18 months seems like a very accelerated timeline." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, it is. I mean, I remember reading in a book about some previous vaccines that it could take up to 10 years to design and properly test a vaccine before it's mass production. So yeah, everything is accelerated these days. I mean, for better, for worse, but we definitely need that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, especially with the coronavirus, I mean, the scientific community is really stepping up and working together. The collaborative aspect is really interesting. You mentioned, so the vaccine is one, and then there's antivirals, antiviral drugs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So antiviral drugs, so where, you know, vaccines are typically needed to prevent the infection, right? But once you have an infection, one, you know, so what we try to do, we try to stop it. So we try to stop a virus from functioning. And so the antiviral drugs are designed to block some critical functioning of the proteins from the virus. So there are a number of interesting candidates. And I think, you know, if you ask me, I think Remdesivir is perhaps the most promising. It has been shown to be you know, an efficient and effective antiviral for SARS. Originally, it was the antiviral drug developed for a completely different virus, I think for Ebola and Marburg. At a high level, do you know how it works? So it tries to mimic one of the nucleotides in RNA, and essentially that stops the replication." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it messes, I guess that's what, so antiviral drugs mess with some aspect of this process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so essentially we try to stop certain functions of the virus. There are some other ones that are designed to inhibit the protease, the thing that clips protein sequences. There is one that was originally designed for malaria, which is a bacterial disease." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is so cool, but that's exactly where your work steps in, is you're figuring out the functional and the structure of these different, so like providing candidates for where drugs can plug in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, because one thing that we don't know is whether or not, so let's say we have a perfect drug candidate that is efficient against SARS and against MERS. Now, is it gonna be efficient against new SARS-CoV-2? We don't know that, and there are multiple aspects that can affect this efficiency. So, for instance, if the binding site, so the part of the protein where this ligand gets attached, if this site is mutated, then the ligand may not be attachable to this part any longer. And our work and the work of other bioinformatics groups essentially are trying to understand whether or not that will be the case. And it looks like for the ligands that we looked at, the ligand binding sites are pretty much intact. which is very promising." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we can just like zoom out for a second, are you optimistic? So there's two, well, there's three possible ends to the coronavirus pandemic. So one is there's drugs or vaccines get figured out very quickly, probably drugs first. The other is the pandemic runs its course for this wave, at least. And then the third is, you know, things go much worse in some dark, bad, very bad direction. Let's focus on the first two. Do you see the anti-drugs or the work you're doing being relevant for us right now? in stopping the pandemic, or do you hope that the pandemic will run its course? So the social distancing, things like wearing masks, all those discussions that we're having will be the method with which we fight coronavirus in the short term. Or do you think that it'll have to be antiviral drugs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think antivirals would be... I would view that as at least the short-term solution. I see more and more cases in the news of those new drug candidates being administered in hospitals. And I mean, this is right now the best what we have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do we need it in order to reopen the economy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, we definitely need it. I cannot sort of speculate on how that will affect reopening of the economy because we are, you know, we are kind of deep in into the pandemic and it's not just the states, it's also, you know, worldwide, you know, of course, you know, there is also the possibility of the second wave as we, you know, as you mentioned, and this is why, you know, we need to be super careful. We need to follow all the precautions that the doctors tell us to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you worried about the mutation of the virus?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's, of course, a real possibility. Now, how, to what extent this virus can mutate, it's an open question. I mean, we know that it is able to mutate, to jump from one species to another, and to become transmittable between humans, right? So let's imagine that we have the new antiviral. this virus become eventually resistant to this antiviral? We don't know. I mean, this is what needs to be studied." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's such a beautiful and terrifying process that a virus, some viruses may be able to mutate to respond to the, to mutate around the thing we've put before it. Can you explain that process? Like, how does that happen? Is that just the way of evolution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say so, yes. I mean, it's the evolutionary mechanisms. There is nothing imprinted into this virus that makes it just the way it evolves. And actually, it's the way it co-evolves with its host." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just amazing, especially the evolution mechanisms, especially amazing given how simple the virus is. It's incredible that it's, I mean, it's beautiful. It's beautiful because it's one of the cleanest examples of evolution working." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think, I mean, one of the sort of, The reason for its simplicity is because it does not require all the necessary functions to be stored. So it actually can hijack the majority of the necessary functions from the host cell. So the ability to do so in my view, reduces the complexity of this machine drastically. Although, if you look at the most recent discoveries, right? So the scientists discovered viruses that are as large as bacteria, right? So this Mimi viruses and Mama viruses, it actually, those discoveries made scientists to reconsider the origins of the virus, you know, and what are the mechanisms and how, you know, what are the mechanisms, the evolutionary mechanisms that leads to the appearance of the viruses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, I mean, you did mention that viruses are I think you mentioned that they're not living. Yes, they're not living organisms. So let me ask that question again. Why do you think they're not living organisms?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because they are dependent. The majority of the functions of the virus are dependent on the host." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me do the devil's advocate. Let me be the philosophical devil's advocate here and say, well, humans, which we would say are living, need our host planet to survive. So you can basically take every living organism that we think of as definitively living, it's always going to have some aspects of its host that it needs, of its environment. So is that really the key aspect of why a virus is that dependence? Because it seems to be very good at doing so many things that we consider to be intelligent. It's just that dependence part." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, it's difficult to answer in this way. I mean, the way I think about the virus is, you know, in order for it to function, it needs to have the critical component, the critical tools that it doesn't have. So, I mean, that's, you know, in my way, it's not autonomous. That's how I separate the idea of the living organism on a very high level between the living organism" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you have some, we have, I mean, these are just terms and perhaps they don't mean much, but we have some kind of sense of what autonomous means and that humans are autonomous. You've also done excellent work in the epidemiological modeling, the simulation of these things. So the zooming out outside of the body, doing the agent-based simulation. So that's where you actually simulate individual human beings, and then the spread of viruses from one to the other. How does, at a high level, agent-based simulation work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, so it's also one of this irony of timing. Because I mean, we've worked on this project for the past five years. And the New Year's Eve, I got an email from my PhD student that, you know, the last experiments were completed. And you know, three weeks after that, we get this Diamond Princess story. And emailing each other with the same, you know, the same news saying like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the Diamond Princess is a cruise ship. Yes. And what was the project that you worked on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the project, I mean, it's, you know, the code name, it started with a bunch of undergraduates. The code name was Zombies on a Cruise Ship. So they wanted to essentially model the zombie apocalypses on a cruise ship. And after having some fun, we then thought about the fact that if you look at the cruise ships, the infectious outbreak has been one of the biggest threats to the cruise ship economy. So perhaps the most frequently occurring virus is the Norfolk virus. And this is essentially one of these stomach flus that you have. And it can be quite devastating. So occasionally there are cruise ships, they get canceled, they get returned back to the origin. And so we wanted to study, and this is very different from the traditional epidemiological studies where the scale is much larger. So we wanted to study this in a confined environment, which is a cruise ship, it could be a school, it could be other places such as this large company. where people are in interaction. And the benefit of this model is we can actually track that in the real time. So we can actually see the whole course of the evolution, the whole course of the interaction. between the infected host and the pathogen, et cetera. So agent-based system or multi-agent system, to be precisely, is a good way to approach this problem because we can introduce the behavior of the passengers, of the crews. And what we did for the first time, that's where we introduce some novelty is we introduce a pathogen agent. explicitly. So that allowed us to essentially model the behavior on the host side, as well on the pathogen side. And all of a sudden, we can have a flexible model that allows us to integrate all the key parameters about the infections. So for example, The virus, right? So the ways of transmitting the virus between the hosts. How long does virus survive on the surface, the fomite? What is, you know, how much of the viral particles does a host shed when he or she is asymptomatic versus symptomatic?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you can encode all of that into this path. And just for people who don't know, so agent-based simulation, usually the agent represents a single human being. And then there's some graphs, like contact graphs, that represent the interaction between those human beings." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so essentially, agents are individual programs. that are run in parallel and we can provide instructions for these agents how to interact with each other, how to exchange information, in this case exchange the infection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in your case, you've added a pathogen as an agent. I mean, that's kind of fascinating. It's kind of a brilliant way to condense the parameters, to aggregate, to bring the parameters together that represent the pathogen, the virus. That's fascinating, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, yeah, it was, you know, we realized that, you know, by bringing in the virus, we can actually start modeling. I mean, we are no longer bounded by very specific sort of aspects of the specific virus. So we end up, we started with, you know, Norwalk virus, and of course zombies. But we continued to modeling Ebola virus outbreak, flu, SARS. And because I felt that we need to add a little bit more sort of excitement for our undergraduate students. So we actually modeled the virus from the contagion movie. So MEV-1. And, you know, unfortunately, that virus, and we tried to extract as much information. Luckily, this movie was, the scientific consultant was Jan Lipkin, a virologist from Columbia University, who is actually, who provided, I think he, designed this virus for this movie based on Nipah virus. And I think with some ideas behind SARS or flu like airborne viruses. And, you know, the movie surprisingly contained enough details for us to extract and to model it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was hoping you would publish a paper of how this virus works." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we are planning to publish it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I would love it if you did, but it would be nice if the origin of the virus, but you're now actually being a scientist and studying the virus from that perspective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the origin of the virus, the first time I actually saw this movie is, assignment number one in my bioinformatics class that I give, because it also tells you that Bioinformatics can be of use. I don't know, have you watched it? So there is approximately a week from the virus detection, we see a screenshot of scientists looking at the structure of the surface protein. And this is where I tell my students that if you ask an experimental biologist, they will tell you that it's impossible. because it takes months, maybe years, to get the crystal structure, the structure that is represented. If you ask a bioinformatician, they tell you, sure, why not? We'll just get it modeled. But it was very interesting to see that there is actually, and if you do it, do screenshots, you actually see the phylogenetic tree, the evolutionary tree that relate this virus with other viruses. So it was a lot of scientific thought put into the movie. And one thing that I was actually, you know, it was interesting to learn is that the origin of this virus was, there were two, animals that led to the, you know, the zoonotic origin of this virus were fruit bat and a pig." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, you know, so this is- This doesn't feel like we're, this definitely feels like we're living in a simulation. Okay, but maybe big picture, Agent-based simulation now, larger scale, sort of not focused on a cruise ship, but larger scale, are used now to drive some policy. So politicians use them to tell stories and narratives and try to figure out how to move forward under so much uncertainty. But in your sense, are agent-based simulation useful for actually predicting the future? or are they useful mostly for comparing, relative comparison of different intervention methods?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think both, because in the case of new coronavirus, we essentially learning that the current intervention methods may not be efficient enough. One thing that, one important aspect that I find to be so critical and yet something that was overlooked during the past pandemics is the effect of the symptomatic period. This virus is different because it has such a long symptomatic period. period, and over sudden, that creates a completely new game when trying to contain this virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In terms of the dynamics of the infection. Exactly. Do you also, I don't know how close you're tracking this, but do you also think that there's a different rate of infection for when you're asymptomatic like that? that aspect or does the virus not care?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there were a couple of works. So one important parameter that tells us how contagious the person with asymptomatic virus versus asymptomatic is looking at the number of viral particles this person sheds. you know, as a function of time. So, so far what I saw is the study that tells us that the, you know, the person during the asymptomatic period is already contagious and it sheds, the person sheds enough viruses to infect" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and I think there's so many excellent papers coming out, but I think I just saw maybe a nature paper that said the first week is when you're symptomatic or asymptomatic, you're the most contagious. So the highest level of the, like they plot sort of in the 14 day period, they collected a bunch of subjects. And I think the first week is when it's the most intense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm waiting, I'm waiting to see sort of more, more populated studies, right? The study was kind of numbers. My, One of my favorite studies was, again, a very recent one, where scientists determined that tears are not contagious. So there is no viral shedding done through tears." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they found one moist thing that's not contagious. And I mean, there's a lot of, I've personally been, because I'm on a survey paper somehow that's looking at masks, and there's been so much interesting debates on the efficacy of masks, and there's a lot of work, and there's a lot of interesting work. on whether this virus is airborne. I mean, it's a totally open question. It's leaning one way right now, but it's a totally open question whether it can travel in aerosols long distances. I mean, do you think about this stuff? Do you track this stuff? Are you focused on the bioinformatics of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, this is a very important aspect for our epidemiology study. I think the, I mean, it's sort of a very simple sort of idea, but I agree with people who say that the mask the masks work in both ways. So it not only protects you from the incoming viral particles, it also makes the potentially contagious person not to spread the viral particles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who is, when they're asymptomatic, may not even know that they're In fact, it seems to be there's evidence that they don't, surgical and certainly homemade masks, which is what's needed now, actually, because there's a huge shortage of, they don't work as to protect you that well. They work much better to protect others. So it's a motivation for us to all wear one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, because I mean, you don't know where, about 30%, as far as I remember, at least 30% of the asymptomatic cases are completely asymptomatic, right? So you don't really cough, you don't, I mean, you don't have any symptoms, yet you shed viruses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's possible that we'll all wear masks? I wore a mask at a grocery store and you just, you get looks. I mean, this was like a week ago. Maybe it's already changed because I think CDC or somebody's I think the CDC has said that we should be wearing masks like LA they starting to happen But do you it just seems like something that this country will really struggle doing or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope not. I mean, you know, it was interesting. I was looking through the old pictures during the Spanish flu and you could see that the, you know, pretty much everyone was wearing mask with some exceptions. And there were like, you know, sort of iconic photograph of the, I think it was San Francisco, this tram who was refusing to let in a, you know, someone without the mask. So I think, well, you know, it's also, you know, it's related to the fact of, you know, how much we are scared, right? So how much do we treat this problem seriously? And, you know, my take on it is we should, because it is very serious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I, from a psychology perspective, just worry about the entirety, the entire big mess of a psychology experiment that this is, whether masks will help it or hurt it. You know, masks have a way of distancing us from others by removing the emotional expression and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, masks also signal that I care about your wellbeing. Exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's a really interesting trade-off that's just... Yeah, it's interesting, right, about distancing. Aren't we distanced enough?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, exactly. And when we try to come closer together, when they do reopen the economy, that's going to be a long road of rebuilding trust and not all being huge germaphobes. Let me ask sort of, You have a bit of a Russian accent. Russian or no? Russian accent? Were you born in Russia?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. You're too kind. I have a pretty thick Russian accent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are your favorite memories of Russia?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I moved first to Canada and then to the United States back in 99. So by that time I was 22. So, you know, whatever Russian accent I got back then, you know, it's stuck with me for the rest of my life. you know, it's, yeah, so I, you know, by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, I was, you know, I was a kid, but sort of you know, old enough to realize that there are changes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And... Did you want to be a scientist back then?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, my first, the first sort of 10 years of my sort of, you know, juvenile life, I wanted to be a pilot of a passenger jet plane. I was getting ready to go to a college to get the degree, but I've been always fascinated by science. And, you know, so not just by math, of course, math was one of my favorite subjects, but, you know, biology, chemistry, physics, somehow I, you know, I liked those four subjects together. And yes, so essentially after a certain period of time, I wanted to actually, back then it was a very popular sort of area of science called cybernatics. So it's sort of, it's not really computer science, but it was like, you know, computational robotics in this sense. And so I really wanted to do that. But then I realized that my biggest passion was in mathematics. And later, when studying in Moscow State University, I also realized that I really want to apply the knowledge, so I really wanted to mix the mathematical knowledge that I get with real life problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that could be, you mentioned chemistry and now biology, and I sort of, Does it make you sad? Maybe I'm wrong on this, but it seems like it's difficult to be in collaboration to do open big science in Russia. From my distant perspective in computer science, I don't, I'm not, we can go to conferences in Russia. I sadly don't have many collaborators in Russia. I don't know many people doing great AI work in Russia. Does that make you sad? Am I wrong in seeing it this way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I have to tell you, I am privileged to have collaborators in bioinformatics in Russia, and I think this is the bioinformatics school in Russia is very strong. In Moscow? In Moscow, in Novosibirsk, in St. Petersburg. have great collaborators in Kazan. And so at least, you know, in terms of, you know, my area of research. There's strong people there. Yeah, strong people, a lot of great ideas, very open to collaborations. So I, perhaps, you know, it's my luck, but, you know, I haven't experienced, you know, any difficulties in establishing collaborations. That's bioinformatics, though." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It could be bioinformatics, too, and it could, yeah, it could be person-by-person related, but I just don't feel the warmth and love that I would... You know, you talk about the Seminole people who are French in artificial intelligence. France welcomes them with open arms in so many ways. I just don't feel the love from Russia. I do on the human beings, like people in general, like friends. and just cool, interesting people. But from the scientific community, no conferences, no big conferences." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's, yeah, it's actually, you know, I'm trying to think. Yeah, I cannot recall any big AI conferences in Russia." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It has an effect on, for me, I haven't sadly been back to Russia. But my problem is it's very difficult. So now I have to renounce citizenship. Oh, is that right? I mean, I'm a citizen of the United States and they make it very difficult. There's a mess now, right? I want to be able to travel like, you know, legitimately. And it's not an obvious process. They don't make it super easy. I mean, that's part of that. Like, you know, it should be super easy for me to travel there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, hopefully this unfortunate circumstances that we are in will actually promote the remote collaborations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think what we are experiencing right now is that you still can do science, you know, being quarantined in your own homes, especially when it comes, I mean, you know, I certainly understand there is a very challenging time for experimental scientists. I mean, I have many collaborators who are, you know, who are affected by that. But for computational scientists," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we're really leaning into the remote communication. Nevertheless, I had to force you to talk to you in person because there's something that you just can't do in terms of conversation like this. I don't know why, but in person is very much needed. So I really appreciate you doing it. You have a collection of science bobbleheads. Yes. Which look amazing. Which bobblehead is your favorite and which real world version, which scientist is your favorite?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, by the way, I was trying to bring it in, but they're quarantined now in my office. They sort of demonstrate the social distance. So they're nicely spaced away from each other. But so, you know, it's interesting. So I've been collecting those bubble hats for the past, maybe 12 or 13 years. And it, you know, Interestingly enough, it started with the two bobbleheads of Watson and Creek. And interestingly enough, my last bobblehead in this collection for now And my favorite one, because I felt so good when I got it, was the Rosalind Franklin. And so when I got it... Who is the full group? So I have Watson Creek, Newton, Einstein, Marie Curie, Tesla. of course Charles Darwin, sorry Charles Darwin and Rosalind Franklin I am definitely missing quite a few of my favorite scientists and but so you know if I were to add to this collection, so I would add, of course, Kolmogorov. I've been always fascinated by his dedication to science, but also his dedication to educating young people, the next generation. So it's very inspiring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's one of the Russia's greats. Yes. So he also" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "you know, the school, the high school that I attended was named after him and he was great, you know, so he founded the school and he actually taught there. Is this in Moscow? Yes. So, but then, I mean, you know, other people that I would definitely like to see in my collections would be Alan Turing, would be John von Neumann." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you're a little bit late on the computer scientists." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, well, I mean, they don't make them. I still am amazed they haven't made Alan Turing yet. Yes. And I would also add Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling. Who is Linus Pauling? So this is, to me, is one of the greatest chemists. And the person who actually discovered the secondary structure of proteins was very close to solving the DNA structure. And people argue, but some of them were pretty sure that if not for this, you know, photograph 51, by Rosalind Franklin that Watson and Crick got access to, he would be the one who would solve it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Science is a funny race. It is. Let me ask the biggest and the most ridiculous question. So you've kind of studied the human body and its defenses and these enemies that are about, from a biological perspective, bioinformatics perspective, a computer scientist perspective, how has that made you see your own life? Sort of the meaning of it, or just even seeing your, what it means to be human?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't get me started. I mean, understanding human disease is the most complex challenge in modern science. So because human disease is as complex as the human genome, it is as complex as the human brain, And it is in many ways even more complex because the more we understand disease complexity, the more we start understanding genome complexity and epigenome complexity and brain circuitry complexity and immune system complexity and cancer complexity and so on and so forth. So traditionally, Human disease was following basic biology. You would basically understand basic biology and model organisms like, you know, mouse and fly and yeast. You would understand sort of mammalian biology and animal biology and eukaryotic biology in sort of progressive layers of complexity, getting closer to human phylogenetically. And you would do perturbation experiments in those species to see if I knock out a gene, what happens? And based on the knocking out of these genes, you would basically then have a way to drive human biology because you would sort of understand the functions of these genes. And then if you find that a human gene, locus, something that you've mapped from human genetics to that gene is related to a particular human disease, you'd say, aha, now I know the function of the gene from the model organisms. I can now go and understand the function of that gene in human. But this is all changing. This is dramatically changed. So that was the old way of doing basic biology. You would start with the animal models, the eukaryotic models, the mammalian models, and then you would go to human. Human genetics has been so transformed in the last decade or two that human genetics is now actually driving the basic biology. There is more genetic mutation information in the human genome than there will ever be in any other species. What do you mean by mutation information? So perturbations is how you understand systems. So an engineer builds systems, and then they know how they work from the inside out. A scientist studies systems through perturbations. You basically say, if I poke that balloon, what's gonna happen? And I'm gonna film it in super high resolution, understand, I don't know, air dynamics or fluid dynamics, if it's filled with water, et cetera. So you can then make experimentation by perturbation, and then the scientific process is sort of building models that best fit the data, designing new experiments that best test your models and challenge your models and so on and so forth. It's the same thing with science. Basically, if you're trying to understand biological science, You basically want to do perturbations that then drive the models." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do these perturbations allow you to understand disease?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if you know that a gene is related to disease, you don't want to just know that it's related to the disease. You want to know what is the disease mechanism because you want to go and intervene. So the way that I like to describe it is that traditionally, Epidemiology, which is basically the study of disease, you know, sort of the observational study of disease, has been about correlating one thing with another thing. So if you have a lot of people with liver disease who are also alcoholics, you might say, well, maybe the alcoholism is driving the liver disease, or maybe those who have liver disease self-medicate with alcohol. So the connection could be either way. with genetic epidemiology, it's about correlating changes in the genome with phenotypic differences. And then you know the direction of causality. So if you know that a particular gene is related to the disease, you can basically say, okay, perturbing that gene in mouse causes the mice to have X phenotype. So perturbing that gene in human causes the humans to have the disease. So I can now figure out what are the detailed molecular phenotypes. in the human that are related to that organismal phenotype in the disease. So it's all about understanding disease mechanism, understanding what are the pathways, what are the tissues, what are the processes that are associated with the disease so that we know how to intervene. You can then prescribe particular medications that also alter these processes. You can prescribe lifestyle changes that also affect these processes and so on and so forth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's such a beautiful puzzle to try to solve, like what kind of perturbations eventually have this ripple effect that leads to disease across the population? And then you study that for animals and mice first, and then see how that might possibly connect to humans. How hard is that puzzle of trying to figure out how little perturbations might lead to, in a stable way, to a disease?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In animals, we make the puzzle simpler because we perturb one gene at a time. That's the beauty, that's the power of animal models. You can basically decouple the perturbations. You only do one perturbation, and you only do strong perturbations at a time. In human, the puzzle is incredibly complex. Because, I mean, obviously you don't do human experimentation, you wait for natural selection and natural genetic variation to basically do its own experiments, which it has been doing for hundreds and thousands of years. in the human population and for hundreds of thousands of years across you know the the history leading to the human population so you basically take this natural genetic variation that we all carry within us every one of us carries six million perturbations So I've done 6 million experiments on you, 6 million experiments on me, 6 million experiments on every one of 7 billion people on the planet. What's the 6 million correspond to? 6 million unique genetic variants that are segregating in the human population. Every one of us carries millions of polymorphic sites. Poly, many, morph, forms. Polymorphic means many forms, variants. That basically means that every one of us has single nucleotide alterations that we have inherited from mom and from dad that basically can be thought of as tiny little perturbations. Most of them don't do anything, but some of them lead to all of the phenotypic differences that we see between us. The reason why two twins are identical is because these variants completely determine the way that I'm gonna look at exactly 93 years of age." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How happy are you with this kind of data set? Is it large enough of the human population of Earth? Is that too big, too small?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so is it large enough is a power analysis question. And in every one of our grants, we do a power analysis based on what is the effect size that I would like to detect, And what is the natural variation in the two forms? So every time you do a perturbation, you're asking, I'm changing form A into form B. Form A has some natural phenotypic variation around it, and form B has some natural phenotypic variation around it. If those variances are large, and the differences between the mean of A and the mean of B are small, then you have very little power. The further the means go apart, that's the effect size, the more power you have, and the smaller the standard deviation, the more power you have. So basically, when you're asking, is that sufficiently large? Certainly not for everything, but we already have enough power for many of the stronger effects. in the more tight distributions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the hopeful message that there exists parts of the genome that have a strong effect that has a small variance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's exactly right. Unfortunately, those perturbations are the basis of disease in many cases. So it's not a hopeful message. Sometimes it's a terrible message. It's basically, well, some people are sick, but if we can figure out what are these contributors to sickness, we can then help make them better and help many other people better who don't carry that exact mutation, but who carry mutations on the same pathways. And that's what we like to call the allelic series of a gene. You basically have many perturbations of the same gene in different people, each with a different frequency in the human population, and each with a different effect on the individual that carries them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you said in the past, there would be these small experiments on perturbations and animal models. What does this puzzle-solving process look like today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we basically have something like seven billion people on the planet, and every one of them carries something like six million mutations. You basically have an enormous matrix of genotype by phenotype by systematically measuring the phenotype of these individuals. And the traditional way of measuring this phenotype has been to look at one trait at a time. You would gather families, and you would sort of paint the pedigrees of a strong effect, what we like to call Mendelian mutation, so a mutation that gets transmitted in a dominant or a recessive but strong effect form, where basically one locus plays a very big role in that disease. And you could then look at carriers versus non-carriers in one family, carriers versus non-carriers in another family, and do that for hundreds, sometimes thousands of families, and then trace these inheritance patterns, and then figure out what is the gene that plays that role." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is this the matrix that you're showing in talks or lectures?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that matrix is the input to the stuff that I saw in talks. So basically that matrix has traditionally been strong effect genes. What the matrix looks like now is instead of pedigrees, instead of families, you basically have thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of unrelated individuals, each with all of their genetic variants and each with their phenotype, for example, height or lipids or, you know, whether they're sick or not for a particular trait. That has been the modern view, instead of going to families, going to unrelated individuals with one phenotype at a time. And what we're doing now, as we're maturing in all of these sciences, is that we're doing this in the context of large medical systems or enormous cohorts that are very well phenotyped across hundreds of phenotypes, sometimes with their complete electronic health record. So you can now start relating not just one gene segregating one family, not just thousands of variants segregating with one phenotype, but now you can do millions of variants versus hundreds of phenotypes. And as a computer scientist, I mean, deconvolving that matrix, partitioning it into the layers of biology that are associated with every one of these elements is a dream come true. It's like the world's greatest puzzle. And you can now solve that puzzle by throwing in more and more knowledge about the function of different genomic regions and how these functions are changed across tissues and in the context of disease. And that's what my group and many other groups are doing. We're trying to systematically relate this genetic variation with molecular variation at the expression level of the genes, at the epigenomic level of the gene regulatory circuitry, and at the cellular level of what are the functions that are happening in those cells, at the single cell level, using single cell profiling, and then relate all that vast amount of knowledge computationally with the thousands of traits that each of these thousands of variants are perturbing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, this is something we talked about, I think, last time. So there's these effects at different levels that happen. You said at a single cell level, you're trying to see things that happen due to certain perturbations. And then, so it's not just like a puzzle of perturbation and disease. It's perturbation, then effect at a cellular level, then at an organ level, at a body, like. How do you disassemble this into like what your group is working on? You're basically taking a bunch of the hard problems in the space. How do you break apart a difficult disease and break it apart into puzzles that you can now start solving?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a struggle here. Computer scientists love hard puzzles. And they're like, ooh, I wanna build a method that just deconvolves the whole thing computationally. And, you know, that's very tempting and it's very appealing, but biologists just like to decouple that complexity experimentally, to just like peel off layers of complexity experimentally. And that's what many of these modern tools that, you know, my group and others have both developed and used. The fact that we can now figure out tricks for peeling off these layers of complexity by testing one cell type at a time, or by testing one cell at a time. And you could basically say, what is the effect of this genetic variant associated with Alzheimer's on human brain? Human brain sounds like, oh, it's an organ, of course, just go one organ at a time. But human brain has, of course, dozens of different brain regions. And within each of these brain regions, dozens of different cell types. And every single type of neuron, every single type of glial cell, between astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, microglia, between all of the neural cells and the vascular cells and the immune cells that are co-inhabiting the brain between the different types of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that are sort of interacting with each other between different layers of neurons in the cortical layers. Every single one of these has a different type of function to play in cognition, in interaction with the environment, in maintenance of the brain, in energetic needs, in feeding the brain with blood, with oxygen, in clearing out the debris that are resulting from the super high energy production of cognition in humans. So all of these things are basically potentially deconvolvable computationally, but experimentally, you can just do single cell profiling of dozens of regions of the brain across hundreds of individuals, across millions of cells, and then now you have pieces of the puzzle that you can then put back together to understand that complexity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, first of all, I mean, the cells in the human brain are the most, okay, maybe I'm romanticizing it, but cognition seems to be very complicated. So separating into the function, breaking Alzheimer's down to the cellular level seems very challenging. Is that basically you're trying to find a way that some perturbation in genome results in some obvious major dysfunction in the cell. You're trying to find something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. So what does human genetics do? Human genetics basically looks at the whole path from genetic variation all the way to disease. So human genetics has basically taken thousands of Alzheimer's cases and thousands of controls matched for age, for sex, for environmental backgrounds and so on and so forth. And then looked at that map where you're asking what are the individual genetic perturbations and how are they related to all the way to Alzheimer's disease? And that has actually been quite successful. So we now have more than 27 different loci, these are genomic regions, that are associated with Alzheimer's at this end-to-end level. But the moment you sort of break up that very long path into smaller levels, you can basically say from genetics, what are the epigenomic alterations at the level of gene regulatory elements, where that genetic variant perturbs the control region nearby. That effect is much larger." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mean much larger in terms of this down the line impact?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or- It's much larger in terms of the measurable effect. This A versus B variance is actually so much cleanly defined when you go to the shorter branches. Because for one genetic variant to affect Alzheimer's, that's a very long path. That basically means that in the context of millions of these 6 million variants that every one of us carries, that one single nucleotide has a detectable effect all the way to the end. I mean, it's just mind-boggling that that's even possible, but indeed. Yeah, but indeed there are such effects." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the hope is, or the most, scientifically speaking, the most effective place where to detect the alteration that results in disease is earlier on in the pipeline, as early as possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a trade-off. If you go very early on in the pipeline, now each of these epigenomic alterations, for example, this enhancer control region is active maybe 50% less, which is a dramatic effect. Now you can ask, well, how much does changing one regulatory region in the genome in one cell type change disease? Well, that path is now long. So if you instead look at expression, The path between genetic variation and the expression of one gene goes through many enhancer regions, and therefore it's a subtler effect at the gene level, but then now you're closer because one gene is acting in the context of only 20,000 other genes, as opposed to one enhancer acting in the context of 2 million other enhancers. So you basically now have genetic, epigenomic, the circuitry, transcriptomic, the gene expression level, And then cellular, where you can basically say, I can measure various properties of those cells. What is the calcium influx rate when I have this genetic variation? What is the synaptic density? What is the electric impulse conductivity? And so on and so forth. So you can measure things along these path to disease. And you can also measure endophenotypes. You can basically measure, you know, your brain activity. You can do imaging in the brain. You can basically measure, I don't know, the heart rate, the pulse, the lipids, the amount of blood secreted and so on and so forth. And then through all of that, you can basically get at the path to causality, the path to disease." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And is there something beyond cellular? So you mentioned lifestyle interventions or changes as a way to, or like be able to prescribe changes in lifestyle. Like what about organs? What about like the function of the body as a whole?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. So basically, when you go to your doctor, they always measure your pulse, they always measure your height, they always measure your weight, your BMI. So basically, these are just very basic variables. But with digital devices nowadays, you can start measuring hundreds of variables for every individual. You can basically also phenotype cognitively through tests. Alzheimer's patients. There are cognitive tests that you typically do for cognitive decline. These mini mental observations that you have specific questions to. You can think of sort of enlarging the set of cognitive tests. So in the mouse, for example, you do experiments for how do they get out of mazes, how do they find food, whether they recall a fear, whether they shake in a new environment, and so on and so forth. In the human, you can have much, much richer phenotypes, where you can basically say, not just imaging at the organ level, and all kinds of other activities at the organ level, but you can also do at the organism level, you can do behavioral tests, and how did they do on empathy? How did they do on memory? How did they do on long-term memory versus short-term memory? And so on and so forth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love how you're calling that phenotype. I guess it is. It is. But like your behavior patterns that might change over a period of a life. Your ability to remember things, your ability to be, yeah, empathetic or emotionally, or your intelligence perhaps even." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but intelligence has hundreds of variables. It can be your math intelligence, your literary intelligence, your puzzle solving intelligence, your logic. It could be like hundreds of things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And all of that, we're able to measure that better and better. And all of that could be connected to the entire pipelines." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We used to think of each of these as a single variable, like intelligence. I mean, that's ridiculous. It's basically dozens of different genes that are controlling every single variable, you can basically think of, you know, imagine us in a video game where every one of us has measures of, you know, strength, stamina, you know, energy left and so on and so forth. But you could click on each of those like five bars that are just the main bars and each of those will just give you then hundreds of bars. And you can basically say, okay, great, for my machine learning task, I want someone who, a human, who has these particular forms of intelligence. I require now these 20 different things. And then you can combine those things and then relate them to, of course, performance in a particular task, but you can also relate them to genetic variation that might be affecting different parts of the brain, For example, your frontal cortex versus your temporal cortex versus your visual cortex, and so on and so forth. So genetic variation that affects expression of genes in different parts of your brain can basically affect your music ability, your auditory ability, your smell, just dozens of different phenotypes can be broken down into hundreds of cognitive variables and then relate each of those to thousands of genes that are associated with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So somebody who loves RPGs, role-playing games, there's too few variables that we can control. So I'm excited, if we're in fact living in a simulation and this is a video game, I'm excited by the quality of the video game. The game designer did a hell of a good job, so we're impressed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I don't know, the sunset last night was a little unrealistic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah, the graphics. Exactly. Come on, Nvidia. To zoom back out, we've been talking about the genetic origins of diseases, but I think it's fascinating to talk about what are the most important diseases to understand, and especially as it connects to the things that you're working on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's very difficult to think about important diseases to understand. There's many metrics of importance. One is lifestyle impact. I mean, if you look at COVID, the impact on lifestyle has been enormous. So understanding COVID is important because it has impacted the wellbeing in terms of ability to have a job, ability to have an apartment, ability to go to work, ability to have a mental circle of support. And all of that for millions of Americans, like huge, huge impact. So that's one aspect of importance. So basically mental disorders, Alzheimer's has a huge importance in the well-being of Americans. Whether or not it kills someone, for many, many years, it has a huge impact. So the first measure of importance is just well-being. Impact on the quality of life. Impact on the quality of life, absolutely. The second metric, which is much easier to quantify, is deaths. What is the number one killer? The number one killer is actually heart disease. It is actually killing 650,000 Americans per year. Number two is cancer, with 600,000 Americans. Number three, far, far down the list, is accidents. Every single accident combined. So basically, you know, you read the news, accidents, like, you know, there was a huge car crash, all over the news. But the number of deaths? Number three by far, 167,000. Lower respiratory disease, so that's asthma, not being able to breathe, and so on and so forth, 160,000. Alzheimer's, number five, with 120,000. And then stroke, brain aneurysms, and so on and so forth, that's 147,000. Diabetes and metabolic disorders, et cetera, that's 85,000. The flu is 60,000. Suicide, 50,000. And then overdose, et cetera, goes further down the list. So, of course, COVID has creeped up to be the number three killer this year with, you know, more than 100,000 Americans and counting. And, you know, but if you think about sort of what do we use, what are the most important diseases, you have to understand both the quality of life and the just sheer number of deaths and just numbers of years lost if you wish." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And each of these diseases you can think of as, and also including terrorist attacks and school shootings for example, things which lead to fatalities, you can look at as problems that could be solved. and some problems are harder to solve than others. I mean, that's part of the equation. So maybe if you look at these diseases, if you look at heart disease or cancer or Alzheimer's or just like schizophrenia and obesity, not necessarily things that kill you, but affect the quality of life, which problems are solvable, which aren't, which are harder to solve, which aren't," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love your question because it puts it in the context of a global effort rather than just a local effort. So basically, if you look at the global aspect, Exercise and nutrition are two interventions that we can, as a society, make a much better job at. So if you think about sort of the availability of cheap food, it's extremely high in calories, it's extremely detrimental for you, like a lot of processed food, et cetera. So if we change that equation, and as a society, we made availability of healthy food much, much easier and charged, a burger at McDonald's, the price that it costs on the health system, then people would actually start buying more healthy foods. So basically that's sort of a societal intervention, if you wish. In the same way, increasing empathy, increasing education, increasing the social framework and support would basically lead to fewer suicides. It would lead to fewer murders. It would lead to fewer deaths overall. So, you know, that's something that we as a society can do. You can also think about external factors versus internal factors. So the external factors are basically communicable diseases like COVID, like the flu, et cetera. And the internal factors are basically things like, you know, cancer and Alzheimer's, where basically your genetics will eventually, you know, drive you there. And then, of course, with all of these factors, every single disease has both a genetic component and environmental component. So heart disease, you know, huge genetic contribution. Alzheimer's, it's like, you know, 60% plus genetic. So I think it's like 79% heritability. So that basically means that genetics alone explains 79% of Alzheimer's incidence. And yes, there's a 21% environmental component. where you could basically enrich your cognitive environment, enrich your social interactions, read more books, learn a foreign language, go running, sort of have a more fulfilling life. All of that will actually decrease Alzheimer's, but there's a limit to how much that can impact because of the huge genetic footprint." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is fascinating. So each one of these problems have a genetic component and an environment component. And so like when there's a genetic component, what can we do about some of these diseases? What have you worked on? What can you say that's in terms of problems that are solvable here or understandable?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So my group works on the genetic component, but I would argue that understanding the genetic component can have a huge impact even on the environmental component. Why is that? Because genetics gives us access to mechanism. And if we can alter the mechanism, if we can impact the mechanism, we can perhaps counteract some of the environmental components. So understanding the biological mechanisms leading to disease is extremely important in being able to intervene. But when you can intervene, the analogy that I like to give is, for example, for obesity. Think of it as a giant bathtub of fat. There's basically fat coming in from your diet, and there's fat coming out from your exercise, okay? That's an in-out equation, and that's the equation that everybody's focusing on. But your metabolism impacts that bathtub. Basically, your metabolism controls the rate at which you're burning energy. It controls the rate at which you're storing energy. And it also teaches you about the various valves that control the input and the output equation. So if we can learn from the genetics, the valves, we can then manipulate those valves. And even if the environment is feeding you a lot of fat and getting a little fat out, you can just poke another hole at the bathtub and just get a lot of the fat out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, so that we're not just, passive observers of our genetics. The more we understand, the more we can come up with actual treatments." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think that's an important aspect to realize when people are thinking about strong effect versus weak effect variants. So some variants have strong effects. We talked about these Mendelian disorders where a single gene has a sufficiently large effect, penetrance, expressivity, and so on and so forth, that basically you can trace it in families with cases and not cases, cases, not cases, and so on and so forth. So these are the genes that everybody says, oh, that's the genes we should go after because that's a strong effect gene. I like to think about it slightly differently. These are the genes where genetic impacts that have a strong effect were tolerated. Because every single time we have a genetic association with disease, it depends on two things. Number one, the obvious one, whether the gene has an impact on the disease. Number two, the more subtle one, is whether there is genetic variation standing and circulating and segregating in the human population that impacts that gene. Some genes are so darn important that if you mess with them even a tiny little amount, that person's dead. So those genes don't have variation. You're not gonna find a genetic association if you don't have variation. that doesn't mean that the gene has no role. It simply means that the gene tolerates no mutations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's actually a strong signal when there's no variation. That's so fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. Genes that have very little variation are hugely important. You can actually rank the importance of genes based on how little variation they have. And those genes that have very little variation but no association with disease, that's a very good metric to say, oh, that's probably a developmental gene because we're not good at measuring those phenotypes. So it's genes that you can tell evolution has excluded mutations from, but yet we can't see them associated with anything that we can measure nowadays. It's probably early embryonic lethal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are all the words you just said? Early embryonic what? Lethal. Meaning?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "meaning that that embryo will die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a bunch of stuff that is required for a stable functional organism across the board, for an entire species, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at sperm, it expresses thousands of proteins. Does sperm actually need thousands of proteins? No, but it's probably just testing them. So my speculation is that misfolding of these proteins is an early test for failure. So that out of the millions of sperm that are possible, you select the subset that are just not grossly misfolding thousands of proteins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's kind of an assert that this is folded correctly. Yeah, just because if this little thing about the folding of a protein isn't correct, that probably means somewhere down the line there's a bigger issue." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's exactly right, so fail fast. So basically if you look at the mammalian investment in a newborn, that investment is enormous in terms of resources. So mammals have basically evolved mechanisms for fail fast. We're basically in those early months of development. I mean, it's horrendous, of course, at the personal level, when you lose your future child, but in some ways, there's so little hope for that child to develop and sort of make it through the remaining months that sort of fail fast is probably a good evolutionary principle for mammals. And of course, humans have a lot of medical resources that you can sort of give those children a chance. And, you know, we have so much more success in sort of giving folks who have these strong carrier mutations a chance. But if they're not even making it through the first three months, we're not going to see them. So that's why when we when we say what are the most important genes to focus on, the ones that have a strong effect mutation or the ones that have a weak effect mutation? Well, you know, the jury might be out because the ones that have a strong effect mutation are basically you know, not mattering as much. The ones that only have weak effect mutations, by understanding through genetics that they have a weak effect mutation, and understanding that they have a causal role on the disease, we can then say, okay, great, evolution has only tolerated a 2% change in that gene. Pharmaceutically, I can go in and induce a 70% change in that gene. and maybe I will poke another hole at the bathtub that was not easy to control in, you know, many of the other sort of strong effect genetic variants." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, so there's this beautiful map of across the population of things that you're saying strong and weak effects, so stuff with a lot of mutations and stuff with little mutations, with no mutations. And you have this map and it lays out the puzzle." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so when I say strong effect, I mean at the level of individual mutations. So basically genes where, so you have to think of first the effect of the gene on the disease. Remember how I was sort of painting that map earlier from genetics all the way to phenotype? That gene can have a strong effect on the disease, but the genetic variant might have a weak effect on the gene. So basically, when you ask what is the effect of that genetic variant on the disease, it could be that that genetic variant impacts the gene by a lot, and then the gene impacts the disease by a little. Or it could be that the genetic variant impacts the gene by a little, and then the gene impacts the disease by a lot. So what we care about is genes that impact the disease a lot, but genetics gives us the full equation. And what I would argue is if we couple the genetics with expression variation to basically ask what genes change by a lot and you know which genes correlate with disease by a lot even if the genetic variants change them by a little. then those are the best places to intervene. Those are the best places where pharmaceutically, if I have even a modest effect, I will have a strong effect on the disease. Whereas those genetic variants that have a huge effect on the disease, I might not be able to change that gene by this much without affecting all kinds of other things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting. So yeah, okay, so that's what we're looking at. And what have we been able to find in terms of which disease could be helped?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, don't get me started. We have found so much. Our understanding of disease has changed so dramatically with genetics. I mean, places that we had no idea would be involved. So one of the worst things about my genome is that I have a genetic predisposition to age-related macular degeneration, AMD. So it's a form of blindness that causes you to lose the central part of your vision, progressively as you grow older. My increased risk is fairly small. I have an 8% chance. You only have a 6% chance. I'm an average." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. By the way, when you say my, you mean literally yours. You know this about you. I know this about me, yeah. Which is kind of... I mean, philosophically speaking, is a pretty powerful thing to live with. Maybe that's, so we agreed to talk again, by the way, for the listeners, to where we're gonna try to focus on science today and a little bit of philosophy next time, but it's interesting to think about the more you're able to know about yourself from the genetic information in terms of the diseases, how that changes your own view of life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a lot of impact there. And there's something called genetics exceptionalism, which basically thinks of genetics as something very, very different than everything else, as a type of determinism. And, you know, let's talk about that next time. So basically- That's a good preview. Yeah. So let's go back to AMD. So basically with AMD, we have no idea what causes AMD. You know, it was a mystery until the genetics were worked out. And now the fact that I know that I have a predisposition allows me to sort of make some life choices, number one. But number two, the genes that lead to that predisposition give us insights as to how does it actually work. And that's a place where genetics gave us something totally unexpected. So there's a complement pathway which is an immune function pathway that was in most of the loci associated with AMD. And that basically told us that, wow, there's an immune basis to this eye disorder that people had just not expected before. If you look at complement, it was recently also implicated in schizophrenia. And there's a type of microglia that is involved in synaptic pruning. So synapses are the connections between neurons. And in this whole use it or lose it view of mental cognition and other capabilities, you basically have microglia, which are immune cells that are sort of constantly traversing your brain and then pruning neuronal connections, pruning synaptic connections that are not utilized. So in schizophrenia, there's thought to be a change in the pruning, that basically if you don't prune your synapses the right way, you will actually have an increased role of schizophrenia. This is something that was completely unexpected for schizophrenia. Of course, we knew it has to do with neurons, but the role of the complement complex, which is also implicated in AMD, which is now also implicated in schizophrenia, was a huge surprise. What's the complement complex? So it's basically a set of genes, the complement genes, that are basically having various immune roles. And as I was saying earlier, our immune system has been co-opted for many different roles across the body. So they actually play many diverse roles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And somehow the immune system is connected to the synaptic pruning process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. The process. Exactly. So immune cells were co-opted to prune synapse. How did you figure this out?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How does one go about figuring this intricate connection, like pipeline of connections out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let me give you another example. So Alzheimer's disease, the first place that you would expect it to act is obviously the brain. So we had basically this roadmap epigenomics consortium view of the human epigenome, the largest map of the human epigenome that has ever been built. across 127 different tissues and samples with dozens of epigenomic marks measured in hundreds of donors. So what we've basically learned through that is that you basically can map what are the active gene regulatory elements for every one of the tissues in the body. And then we connected these gene regulatory active maps of basically what regions of the human genome are turning on in every one of different tissues. we then can go back and say, where are all of the genetic loci that are associated with disease? This is something that my group, I think, was the first to do back in 2010 in this Ernst Nature Biotech paper. But basically, we were for the first time able to show that specific chromatin states, specific epigenomic states, in that case enhancers, were in fact enriched in disease-associated variants. We push that further in the Ernst Nature paper a year later, and then in this Roadmap Epigenomics paper a few years after that. But basically that matrix that you mentioned earlier was in fact the first time that we could see what genetic traits have genetic variants that are enriched in what tissues in the body. And a lot of that map made complete sense. If you looked at a diversity of immune traits, like allergies and type 1 diabetes and so on and so forth, you basically could see that they were enriching. that the genetic variants associated with those traits were enriched in enhancers in these gene regulatory elements active in T-cells and B-cells and hematopoietic stem cells and so on and so forth. So that basically gave us confirmation in many ways that those immune traits were indeed enriching in immune cells. If you looked at type 2 diabetes, You basically saw an enrichment in only one type of sample, and it was pancreatic islets. And we know that type 2 diabetes, you know, sort of stems from the dysregulation of insulin in the beta cells of pancreatic islets. And that sort of was, you know, spot on, super precise. If you looked at blood pressure, where would you expect blood pressure to occur? I don't know, maybe in your metabolism, in ways that you process coffee or something like that, maybe in your brain, the way that you stress out and increase your blood pressure, et cetera. What we found is that blood pressure localized specifically in the left ventricle of the heart. So the enhancers of the left ventricle in the heart contain a lot of genetic variants associated with blood pressure. If you look at height, we found an enrichment specifically in embryonic stem cell enhancers. So the genetic variants predisposing you to be taller or shorter are in fact acting in developmental stem cells. Makes complete sense. If you looked at inflammatory bowel disease, you basically found inflammatory, which is immune, and also bowel disease, which is digestive. And indeed, we saw a double enrichment, both in the immune cells and in the digestive cells. So that basically told us that our heart is acting in both components. There's an immune component to inflammatory bowel disease, and there's a digestive component. And the big surprise was for Alzheimer's. We had seven different brain samples we found zero enrichment in the brain samples for genetic variants associated with Alzheimer's. I mean, this is mind-boggling. Our brains were literally hurting. What is going on? And what is going on is that the brain samples are primarily neurons, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes, in terms of the cell types that make them up. So that basically indicated that genetic variants associated with Alzheimer's were probably not acting in oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, or neurons. So what could they be acting in? Well, the fourth major cell type is actually microglia. Microglia are resident immune cells in your brain. The immune, oh wow. And they are CD14+, which is this sort of cell surface markers of those cells. So they're CD14+, just like macrophages that are circulating in your blood. the microglia are resident monocytes that are basically sitting in your brain. They're tissue-specific monocytes. And every one of your tissues, like your fat, for example, has a lot of macrophages that are resident. And the M1 versus M2 macrophage ratio has a huge role to play in obesity. And so basically, again, these immune cells are everywhere, but basically what we found through this completely unbiased view of what are the tissues that likely underlie different disorders, We found that Alzheimer's was humongously enriched in microglia, but not at all in the other cell types." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "tissues involved, is that simply useful for indication of propensity for disease, or does it give us somehow a pathway of treatment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very much the second. If you look at the way to therapeutics, you have to start somewhere. What are you gonna do? You're gonna basically make assays that manipulate those genes and those pathways in those cell types. So before we know the tissue of action, we don't even know where to start. We basically are at a loss. But if you know the tissue of action, and even better, if you know the pathway of action, then you can basically screen your small molecules, not for the gene, you can screen them directly for the pathway in that cell type. So you can basically develop a high throughput multiplexed, you know, robotic system for testing the impact of your favorite molecules that you know are safe, efficacious, and you know, sort of hit that particular gene and so on and so forth. You can basically screen those molecules against either a set of genes that act in that pathway or on the pathway directly by having a cellular assay. And then you can basically go into mice and do experiments and basically sort of figure out ways to manipulate these processes that allow you to then to go back to humans and do a clinical trial that basically says, okay, I was able indeed to reverse these processes in mice. Can I do the same thing in humans? So the knowledge of the tissues gives you the pathway to treatment, but that's not the only part. There are many additional steps to figuring out the mechanism of disease." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's really promising. Maybe take a small step back. You've mentioned all these puzzles that were figured out with the Nature paper. for, I mean, you've mentioned a ton of diseases, from obesity to Alzheimer's, even schizophrenia, I think you mentioned. What is the actual methodology of figuring this out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So indeed, I mentioned a lot of diseases, and my lab works on a lot of different disorders. And the reason for that is that if you look at the, If you look at biology, it used to be zoology departments and botanology departments and virology departments and so on and so forth. And MIT was one of the first schools to basically create a biology department. Like, oh, we're gonna study all of life suddenly. Why was that even a case? Because the advent of DNA and the genome and the central dogma of DNA makes RNA makes protein, in many ways unified biology. you could suddenly study the process of transcription in viruses or in bacteria and have a huge impact on yeast and fly and maybe even mammals, because of this realization of these common underlying processes. And in the same way that DNA unified biology, genetics is unifying disease studies. So you used to have, you used to have, you know, I don't know, cardiovascular disease department and, you know, neurological disease department and neurodegeneration department and, you know, basically immune and cancer and so on and so forth. And all of these were studied in different labs, you know, because it made sense, because basically the first step was understanding how the tissue functions and we kind of knew the tissues involved in cardiovascular disease and so on and so forth. But what's happening with human genetics is that all of that, all of these walls and edifices that we had built are crumbling. And the reason for that is that genetics is in many ways revealing unexpected connections. So suddenly we now have to bring the immunologists to work on Alzheimer's. They were never in the room. They were in another building altogether. The same way for schizophrenia, we now have to sort of worry about all these interconnected aspects. For metabolic disorders, we're finding contributions from brain. So suddenly we have to call the neurologist from the other building and so on and so forth. So in my view, it makes no sense anymore to basically say, oh, I'm a geneticist studying immune disorders. I mean, that's ridiculous because, I mean, of course, in many ways, you still need to sort of focus, but what we're doing is that we're basically saying, we'll go wherever the genetics takes us. And by building these massive resources, by working on, our latest map is now 833 tissues, sort of the next generation of the epigenomics roadmap, which we're now called EpiMap, is 833 different tissues. And using those, we've basically found enrichments in 540 different disorders. Those enrichments are not like, oh great, you guys work on that and we'll work on this. They're intertwined amazingly. So of course there's a lot of modularity, but there's these enhancers that are sort of broadly active and these disorders that are broadly active. So basically some enhancers are active in all tissues and some disorders are enriching in all tissues. So basically there's these multifactorial and these other class, which I like to call polyfactorial diseases, which are basically lighting up everywhere. And in many ways, it's sort of cutting across these walls that were previously built across these departments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the polyfactorial ones were probably the previous structure departments wasn't equipped to deal with those. I mean... Again, maybe it's a romanticized question, but you know, there's, in physics, there's a theory of everything. Do you think it's possible to move towards an almost theory of everything of disease from a genetic perspective? So if this unification continues, is it possible that, like, do you think in those terms, like trying to arrive at a fundamental understanding of how disease emerges, period?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That unification is not just foreseeable, it's inevitable. I see it as inevitable. We have to go there. You cannot be a specialist anymore if you're a genomicist. You have to be a specialist in every single disorder. And the reason for that is that the fundamental understanding of the circuitry of the human genome that you need to solve schizophrenia That fundamental circuitry is hugely important to solve Alzheimer's. And that same circuitry is hugely important to solve metabolic disorders. And that same exact circuitry is hugely important for solving immune disorders and cancer and every single disease. So all of them have the same sub task. And I teach dynamic programming in my class Dynamic program is all about sort of not redoing the work. It's reusing the work that you do once. So basically for us to say, oh great, you know, you guys in the immune building go solve the fundamental circuitry of everything. And then you guys in the schizophrenia building go solve the fundamental circuitry of everything separately is crazy. So what we need to do is come together and sort of have a circuitry group, the circuitry building that sort of tries to solve the circuitry of everything. And then the immune folks who will apply this knowledge to all of the disorders that are associated with immune dysfunction. And the schizophrenia folks will basically interact with both the immune folks and with the neuronal folks. And all of them will be interacting with the circuitry folks and so on and so forth. So that's sort of the current structure of my group, if you wish. So basically what we're doing is focusing on the fundamental circuitry. But at the same time, we're the users of our own tools by collaborating with many other labs in every one of these disorders that we mentioned. We basically have a heart focus on cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, heart failure, and so on and so forth. We have an immune focus on several immune disorders. We have a cancer focus on metastatic melanoma and immunotherapy response. We have a psychiatric disease focus on schizophrenia, autism, PTSD, and other psychiatric disorders. We have an Alzheimer's and neurodegeneration focus on Huntington's disease, ALS, and AD-related disorders like frontotemporal dementia and Lewy body dementia, and of course a huge focus on Alzheimer's. We have a metabolic focus on the role of exercise and diet and sort of how they're impacting metabolic organs across the body and across many different tissues. And all of them are interfacing with the circuitry. And the reason for that is another computer science principle of eat your own dog food. If everybody ate their own dog food, dog food would taste a lot better. The reason why Microsoft Excel and Word and PowerPoint was so important and so successful is because the employees that were working on them were using them for their day-to-day tasks. You can't just simply build a circuitry and say, here it is guys, take the circuitry, we're done, without being the users of that circuitry because you then go back And because we span the whole spectrum from profiling the epigenome, using comparative genomics, finding the important nucleotides in the genome, building the basic functional map of what are the genes in the human genome, what are the gene regulatory elements of the human genome. I mean, over the years, we've written a series of papers on how do you find human genes in the first place. using comparative genomics? How do you find the motifs that are the building blocks of gene regulation using comparative genomics? How do you then find how these motifs come together? and act in specific tissues using epigenomics? How do you link regulators to enhancers and enhancers to their target genes using epigenomics and regulatory genomics? So through the years we've basically built all this infrastructure for understanding what I like to say every single nucleotide of the human genome. and how it acts in every one of the major cell types and tissues of the human body. I mean, this is no small task. This is an enormous task that takes the entire field, and that's something that my group has taken on, along with many other groups. And we have also, and that sort of I think sets my group perhaps apart, we have also worked with specialists in every one of these disorders to basically further our understanding all the way down to disease. And in some cases collaborating with pharma to go all the way down to therapeutics because of our deep, deep understanding of that basic circuitry and how it allows us to now improve the circuitry. not just treat it as a black box, but basically go and say, okay, we need a better cell type specific wiring that we now have at the tissue specific level. So we're focusing on that because we're understanding, you know, the needs from the disease front." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have a sense of the entire pipeline. I mean, one, Maybe you can indulge me, one nice question to ask would be, how do you, from the scientific perspective, go from knowing nothing about the disease to going, you said, to going through the entire pipeline and actually have a drug or a treatment that cures that disease?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's an enormously long path and an enormously great challenge. And what I'm trying to argue is that it progresses in stages of understanding rather than one gene at a time. The traditional view of biology was you have one postdoc working on this gene and another postdoc working on that gene. And they'll just figure out everything about that gene. And that's their job. What we've realized is how polygenic the diseases are. So we can't have one postdoc per gene anymore. We now have to have these cross-cutting needs. And I'm going to describe the path to circuitry along those needs. And every single one of these paths, we are now doing in parallel across thousands of genes. So the first step is you have a genetic association. And we talked a little bit about sort of the Mendelian path and the polygenic path to that association. So the Mendelian path was looking through families to basically find gene regions and ultimately genes that are underlying particular disorders. The polygenic path is basically looking at unrelated individuals in this giant matrix of genotype by phenotype, and then finding hits where a particular variant impacts disease all the way to the end. And then we now have a connection, not between a gene and a disease, but between a genetic region and a disease. And that distinction is not understood by most people. So I'm going to explain it a little bit more. Why do we not have a connection between a gene and a disease, but we have a connection between a genetic region and a disease? The reason for that is that 93% of genetic variants that are associated with disease don't impact the protein at all. So if you look at the human genome, there's 20,000 genes. There's 3.2 billion nucleotides. Only 1.5% of the genome codes for proteins. The other 98.5% does not code for proteins. If you now look at where are the disease variants located, 93% of them fall in that outside the genes portion. Of course, genes are enriched, but they're only enriched by a factor of three. That means that still 93% of genetic variants fall outside the proteins. Why is that difficult? Why is that a problem? The problem is that when a variant falls outside the gene, you don't know what gene is impacted by that variant. You can't just say, oh, it's near this gene. Let's just connect that variant to the gene. And the reason for that is that the genome circuitry is very often long range. So you basically have that genetic variant that could sit in the intron of one gene. An intron is sort of the place between the exons that code for proteins. So proteins are split up into exons and introns and every exon codes for a particular subset of amino acids and together they're spliced together and then make the final protein. So that genetic variant might be sitting in an intron of a gene. It's transcribed with the gene, it's processed and then excised, but it might not impact this gene at all. It might actually impact another gene that's a million nucleotides away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's just riding along, even though it has nothing to do with this nearby neighborhood. That's exactly right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me give you an example. The strongest genetic association with obesity was discovered in this FTO gene, fat and obesity associated gene. So this FTO gene was studied ad nauseum. People did tons of experiments on it. They figured out that FTO is in fact RNA methylation transferase. It basically, it sort of impacts something that we know, that we call the epitranscriptome. Just like the genome can be modified, the transcriptome, the transcripts of the genes, can be modified. And we basically said, oh, great. That means that that epitranscriptomics is hugely involved in obesity because that that gene FTO is, you know, clearly where the genetic locus is at. My group studied FTO in collaboration with a wonderful team led by Melina Klausnitzer. And what we found is that this FTO locus, even though it is associated with obesity, does not implicate the FTO gene. The genetic variant sits in the first intron of the FTO gene, but it controls two genes, IRX3 and IRX5, that are sitting 1.2 million nucleotides away, several genes away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh boy. What am I supposed to feel about that? Because isn't that like super complicated then?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the way that I was introduced at a conference a few years ago was, and here's Manolis Kellis who wrote the most depressing paper of 2015. And the reason for that is that the entire pharmaceutical industry was so comfortable that there was a single gene in that locus. Because in some loci, you basically have three dozen genes that are all sitting in the same region of association. And you're like, oh gosh, which ones of those is it? But even that question of which ones of those is it, is making the assumption that it is one of those, as opposed to some random gene just far, far away, which is what our paper showed. So basically what our paper showed is that you can't ignore the circuitry. You have to first figure out the circuitry, all of those long-range interactions, how every genetic variant impacts the expression of every gene in every tissue imaginable across hundreds of individuals. And then you now have one of the building blocks, not even all of the building blocks, for then going and understanding disease." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So embrace the wholeness of the circuitry. Correct. So back to the question of starting knowing nothing to the disease and going to the treatment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What are the next steps? So you basically have to first figure out the tissue, and then describe how you figure out the tissue. You figure out the tissue by taking all of these non-coding variants that are sitting outside proteins, and then figuring out what are the epigenomic enrichments. And the reason for that, thankfully, is that there is convergence, that the same processes are impacted in different ways by different loci. And that's a saving grace for our field. The fact that if I look at hundreds of genetic variants associated with Alzheimer's, they localize in a small number of processes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you clarify why that's hopeful? So they show up in the same exact way in the specific set of processes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so basically there's a small number of biological processes that underlie, or at least that play the biggest role in every disorder. So in Alzheimer's, you basically have maybe 10 different types of processes. One of them is lipid metabolism. One of them is immune cell function. One of them is neuronal energetics. So these are just a small number of processes, but you have multiple lesions, multiple genetic perturbations that are associated with those processes. So if you look at schizophrenia, it's excitatory neuron function, it's inhibitory neuron function, it's synaptic pruning, it's calcium signaling, and so on and so forth. So when you look at disease genetics, you have one hit here and one hit there and one hit there and one hit there, completely different parts of the genome. But it turns out all of those hits are calcium signaling proteins. You're like, aha, that means that calcium signaling is important. So those people who are focusing on one docus at a time cannot possibly see that picture. You have to become a genomicist. You have to look at the omics, the holistic picture to understand these enrichments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you mentioned the convergence thing. So whatever the thing associated with the disease shows up. So let me explain convergence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Convergence is such a beautiful concept. So you basically have these four genes that are converging on calcium signaling. So that basically means that they are acting each in their own way, but together in the same process. But now, in every one of these loci, you have many enhancers controlling each of those genes. That's another type of convergence, where dysregulation of seven different enhancers might all converge on dysregulation of that one gene, which then converges on calcium signaling. And in each one of those enhancers, you might have multiple genetic variants distributed across many different people. Everyone has their own different mutation, but all of these mutations are impacting that enhancer, and all of these enhancers are impacting that gene, and all of these genes are impacting this pathway, and all of these pathways are acting in the same tissue, and all of these tissues are converging together on the same biological process of schizophrenia." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying the saving grace is that that conversion seems to happen for a lot of these diseases?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For all of them. Basically that for every single disease that we've looked at, we have found an epigenomic enrichment. How do you do that? You basically have all of the genetic variants associated with the disorder, and then you're asking for all of the enhancers active in a particular tissue. For 540 disorders, we've basically found that indeed there is an enrichment. That basically means that there is commonality. And from the commonality, we can just get insights. So to explain in mathematical terms, We're basically building an empirical prior. We're using a Bayesian approach to basically say, great, all of these variants are equally likely in a particular locus to be important. So in a genetic locus, you basically have a dozen variants that are co-inherited. Because the way that inheritance works in the human genome is through all of these recombination events during meiosis, You basically have, you know, you inherit maybe three, chromosome three, for example, in your body. It's inherited from four different parts. One part comes from your dad, another part comes from your mom, another part comes from your dad, another part comes from your mom. So basically the way that it... I'm sorry, from your mom's mom. So you basically have one copy that comes from your dad and one copy that comes from your mom. But that copy that you got from your mom is a mixture of her maternal and her paternal chromosome. And the copy that you got from your dad is a mixture of his maternal and his paternal chromosome. So these breakpoints that happen when chromosomes are lining up are basically ensuring, through these crossover events, they're ensuring that every child cell during the process of meiosis, where you basically have one spermatozoid that basically couples with one ovule to basically create one egg, to basically create a zygote, You basically have half of your genome that comes from dad and half your genome that comes from mom. But in order to line them up, you basically have these crossover events. These crossover events are basically leading to co-inheritance of that entire block coming from your maternal grandmother and that entire block coming from your maternal grandfather. Over many generations, these crossover events don't happen randomly. there's a protein called PRDM9 that basically guides the double-stranded breaks and then leads to these crossovers. And that protein has a particular preference to only a small number of hotspots of recombination, which then lead to a small number of breaks between these co-inheritance patterns. So even though there are 6 million variants, there are 6 million loci, this variation is inherited in blocks. And every one of these blocks has like two dozen genetic variants that are all associated. So in the case of FTO, it wasn't just one variant, it was 89 common variants that were all humongously associated with obesity. Which one of those is the important one? Well, if you look at only one locus, you have no idea. But if you look at many loci, you basically say, aha, All of them are enriching in the same epigenomic map. In that particular case, it was mesenchymal stem cells. So these are the progenitor cells that give rise to your brown fat and your white fat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Progenitor is like the early on developmental stem cells." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you start from one zygote, and that's a totipotent cell type. It can do anything. That cell divides, divides, divides, and then every cell division is leading to specialization. where you now have a mesodermal lineage, an ectodermal lineage, an endodermal lineage that basically leads to different parts of your body. The ectoderm will basically give rise to your skin. Ecto means outside, derm is skin. So ectoderm, but it also gives rise to your neurons and your whole brain. So that's a lot of ectoderm. Mesoderm gives rise to your internal organs, including the vasculature and your muscle and stuff like that. So, you basically have this progressive differentiation, and then if you look further, further down that lineage, you basically have one lineage that will give rise to both your muscle and your bone, but also your fat. And if you go further down the lineage of your fat, you basically have your white fat cells, These are the cells that store energy. So when you eat a lot, but you don't exercise too much, there's an excess set of calories, excess energy. What do you do with those? You basically create, you spend a lot of that energy to create these high energy molecules, lipids, which you can then burn when you need them on a rainy day. So that leads to obesity if you don't exercise and if you overeat. because your body is like, oh great, I have all these calories, I'm gonna store them. Ooh, more calories, I'm gonna store them too. Ooh, more calories. And the, you know, 42% of European chromosomes have a predisposition to storing fat, which was selected probably in the, you know, food scarcity periods. Like basically as we were exiting Africa, you know, before and during the ice ages, you know, there was probably a selection to those individuals who made it north to basically be able to store energy, you know, a lot more energy. So you basically now have this lineage that is deciding whether you want to store energy in your white fat or burn energy in your beige fat. It turns out that your fat is, you know, we have such a bad view of fat. Fat is your best friend. Fat can both store all these excess lipids that would be otherwise circulating through your body and causing damage. But it can also burn calories directly. If you have too much energy, you can just choose to just burn some of that as heat. So basically when you're cold, you're burning energy to basically warm your body up and you're burning all these lipids and you're burning all these caters. So what we basically found is that across the board, genetic variants associated with obesity across many of these regions were all enriched repeatedly in mesenchymal stem cell enhancers. So that gave us a hint as to which of these genetic variants was likely driving this whole association. And we ended up with this one genetic variant called RS1421085. And that genetic variant out of the 89 was the one that we predicted to be causal for the disease. So going back to those steps, first step is figure out the relevant tissue based on the global enrichment. Second step is figure out the causal variant among many variants in this linkage disequilibrium, in this co-inherited block between these recombination hotspots. these boundaries of these inherited blocks. That's the second step. The third step is once you know that causal variant, try to figure out what is the motif that is disrupted by that causal variant. Basically, how does it act? Variants don't just disrupt elements, they disrupt the binding of specific regulators. So basically the third step there was how do you find the motif that is responsible, like the gene regulatory word, the building block of gene regulation that is responsible for that dysregulatory event. And the fourth step is finding out what regulator normally binds that motif and is now no longer able to bind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then once you have the regulator, can you then try to figure out how to, what, after it developed, how to fix it? That's exactly right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You now know how to intervene. You have basically a regulator, you have a gene that you can then perturb. And you say, well, maybe that regulator has a global role in obesity. I can perturb the regulator." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just to clarify, when we say perturb, like on the scale of a human life, can a human being be helped" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, of course." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I guess understanding is the first step." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, but perturbed basically means you now develop therapeutics, pharmaceutical therapeutics against that. Or you develop other types of intervention that affect the expression of that gene." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do pharmaceutical therapeutics look like when your understanding's on a genetic level? Yeah. Sorry if it's a dumb question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, it's a brilliant question, but I wanna save it for a little bit later when we start talking about therapeutics. We've talked about the first four steps. There's two more. So basically the first step is figure out, I mean, the zeroth step, the starting point is the genetics. The first step after that is figure out the tissue of action. The second step is figuring out the nucleotide that is responsible or set of nucleotides. The third step is figure out the motif and the upstream regulator, number four. Number five and six is what are the targets? So number five is great, now I know the regulator, I know the motif, I know the tissue, and I know the variant. What does it actually do? So you have to now trace it to the biological process and the genes that mediate that biological process. So knowing all of this can now allow you to find the target genes. How? By basically doing perturbation experiments, or by looking at the folding of the epigenome, or by looking at the genetic impact of that genetic variant on the expression of genes. And we use all three. So let me go through them. Basically, one of them is physical links. This is the folding of the genome onto itself. How do you even figure out the folding? It's a little bit of a tangent, but it's a super awesome technology. Think of the genome as, again, this massive packaging that we talked about of taking two meters worth of DNA and putting it in something that's a million times smaller than two meters worth of DNA, that's a single cell. You basically have this massive packaging, and this packaging basically leads to the chromosome being wrapped around in sort of tie-tight ways, in ways, however, that are functionally capable of being reopened and reclosed. So I can then go in and figure out that folding by sort of chopping up the spaghetti soup putting glue and ligating the segments that were chopped up but nearby each other, and then sequencing through these ligation events to figure out that this region of this chromosome and that region of the chromosome were near each other, that means they were interacting, even though they were far away on the genome itself. So that chopping up, sequencing, and re-gluing is basically giving you folds of the genome that we call." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry, can you backtrack? Of course. How does cutting it help you figure out which ones were close in the original folding?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you have a bowl of noodles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Go on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And in that bowl of noodles, some noodles are near each other. Yes. So throw in a bunch of glue. You basically freeze the noodles in place. Throw in a cutter that chops up the noodles into little pieces. Now, throw in some ligation enzyme that lets those species that were free re-ligate near each other. In some cases, they re-ligate what you had just got, but that's very rare. Most of the time, they will re-ligate in whatever was proximal. You now have glued the red noodle that was crossing the blue noodle to each other. You then reverse the glue, the glue goes away, and you just sequence the heck out of it. Most of the time, you'll find a red segment with, you know, a red segment. But you can specifically select for ligation events that have happened that were not from the same segment by sort of marking them a particular way, and then selecting those, and then you sequence and you look for red with blue matches of sort of things that were glued that were not immediate proximal to each other. And that reveals the linking of the blue noodle and the red noodle. You're with me so far? Yeah. Good. So we've done these experiments. That's the physical. That's the physical. That's step one of the physical. And what the physical revealed is topologically associated domains, basically big blocks of the genome that are topologically connected together. That's the physical. The second one is the genetic links. It basically says, across individuals that have different genetic variants, how are their genes expressed differently? Remember before I was saying that the path between genetics and disease is enormous, but we can break it up to look at the path between genetics and gene expression. So instead of using Alzheimer's as the phenotype, I can now use expression of IRX3 as the phenotype, expression of gene A. And I can look at all of the humans who contain a G at that location and all the humans who contain a T at that location. and basically say, wow, turns out that the expression of this gene is higher for the T humans than for the G humans at that location. So that basically gives me a genetic link between a genetic variant, a locus, a region, and the expression of nearby genes. Good on the genetic link? I think so. Awesome. So the third link is the activity link. What's an activity link? It basically says, if I look across 833 different epigenomes, whenever this enhancer is active, This gene is active. That gives me an activity link between this region of the DNA and that gene. And then the fourth one is perturbations where I can go in and blow up that region and see what are the genes that change in expression. Or I can go in and over activate that region and see what genes change in expression." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I guess that's similar to activity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, so that's basically, it's similar to activity, I agree, but it's causal rather than correlational." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Again, I'm a little weird." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, you're 100% on. It's exactly the same as activity, but perturbation. Where I go and intervene, I basically take a bunch of cells. So you know CRISPR, right? CRISPR is this genome guidance and cutting mechanism. It's what George Church likes to call genome vandalism. So you basically are able to, you can basically take a guide RNA that you put into the CRISPR system and the CRISPR system will basically use this guide RNA, scan the genome, find wherever there's a match and then cut the genome. So, you know, I digress, but it's a bacterial immune defense system. So basically bacteria are constantly attacked by viruses. But sometimes they win against the viruses and they chop up these viruses and remember as a trophy inside their genome, they have these loci, these CRISPR loci, that basically stands for clustered repeats, interspersed, et cetera. So basically it's an interspersed repeats structure where basically you have a set of repetitive regions and then interspersed were these variable segments that were basically matching viruses. So when this was first discovered, It was basically hypothesized that this is probably a bacterial immune system that remembers the trophies of the viruses that it managed to kill. And then the bacteria pass on, you know, they sort of do lateral transfer of DNA, and they pass on these memories so that the next bacterium says, ooh, you killed that guy. When that guy shows up again, I will recognize him. And the CRISPR system was basically evolved as a bacterial adaptive immune response to sense foreigners that should not belong and to just go and cut their genome. So it's an RNA-guided, RNA-cutting enzyme, or an RNA-guided DNA-cutting enzyme. So there's different systems. Some of them cut DNA, some of them cut RNA, but all of them remember this sort of viral attack. So what we have done now as a field is, you know, through the work of, you know, Jennifer Doudna, Manuel Carpentier, Fang Zhang, and many others, is co-opted that system of bacterial immune defense as a way to cut genomes. You basically have this guiding system that allows you to use an RNA guide to bring enzymes to cut DNA at a particular location." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's so fascinating. So this is like already a natural mechanism, a natural tool for cutting that was useful in this particular context. And we're like, well, we can use that thing to actually, it's a nice tool that's already in the body." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, it's not in our body, it's in the bacterial body. It was discovered by the yogurt industry. They were trying to make better yogurts, and they were trying to make their bacteria in their yogurt cultures more resilient to viruses. And they were studying bacteria and they found that, wow, this CRISPR system is awesome. It allows you to defend against that. And then it was co-opted in mammalian systems that don't use anything like that as a targeting way to basically bring these DNA cutting enzymes to any locus in the genome. Why would you want to cut DNA to do anything? The reason is that our DNA has a DNA repair mechanism. where if a region of the genome gets randomly cut, you will basically scan the genome for anything that matches and sort of use it by homology. So the reason why we're diploid is because we now have a spare copy. As soon as my mom's copy is deactivated, I can use my dad's copy. And somewhere else, if my dad's copy is deactivated, I can use my mom's copy to repair it. So this is called homologous-based repair." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So all you have to do is the cutting and you don't have to do the fixing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's exactly right. You don't have to do the fixing. Because it's already built in. That's exactly right. But the fixing can be co-opted by throwing in a bunch of homologous segments that instead of having your dad's version, have whatever other version you'd like to use." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you then control the fixing by throwing in a bunch of other stuff. That's exactly right. And that's how you do genome editing. So that's what CRISPR is. That's what CRISPR is. In popular culture, people use the term. I've never, wow, that's brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an awesome explanation. So CRISPR is genome vandalism followed by a bunch of Band-Aids that have the sequence that you'd like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you can control the choices of Band-Aids." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct. Yeah. And of course, there's new generations of CRISPR. There's something that's called prime editing that was sort of very much in the press recently, that basically instead of sort of making a double-stranded break, which again is genome vandalism, you basically make a single-stranded break. You basically just nick one of the two strands, enabling you to sort of peel off without sort of completely breaking it up. and then repair it locally using a guide that is coupled to your initial RNA that took you to that location." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "dumb question, but is CRISPR as awesome and cool as it sounds? I mean, technically speaking, in terms of like, as a tool for manipulating our genetics, in the positive meaning of the word manipulating. Or is there downsides, drawbacks, in this whole context of therapeutics that we're talking about, or understanding?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So when I teach my students about CRISPR, I show them articles with the headline, Genome Editing Tool Revolutionizes Biology. And then I show them the date of these articles, and they're 2004. like five years before CRISPR was invented. And the reason is that they're not talking about CRISPR. They're talking about zinc finger enzymes that are another way to bring these cutters to the genome. It's a very difficult way of sort of designing the right set of zinc finger proteins, the right set of amino acids that will now target a particular long stretch of DNA. because for every location that you want to target, you need to design a particular regulator, a particular protein that will match that region well. There's another technology called talons, which are basically just a different way of using proteins to sort of guide these cutters to a particular location in the genome. These require a massive team of engineers, of biological engineers, to basically design a set of amino acids that will target a particular sequence in your genome. The reason why CRISPR is amazingly, awesomely revolutionary is because instead of having this team of engineers design a new set of proteins for every locus that you want to target, you just type it in your computer and you just synthesize an RNA guide. The beauty of CRISPR is not the cutting, it's not the fixing, all of that was there before. It's the guiding. And the only thing that changes is that it makes the guiding easier by sort of, you know, just typing in the RNA sequence, which then allows the system to sort of scan the DNA to find that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the coding, the engineering of the cutter is easier in terms of SV. That's kind of similar to the story of deep learning versus old school machine learning. Some of the challenging parts are automated. Okay, so, but CRISPR is just one cutting technology. And then there's, well, that's part of the challenges and exciting opportunities of the field is to design different cutting technologies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So now we, you know, this was a big parenthesis on CRISPR, but now you, you know, when we were talking about perturbations, You basically now have the ability to not just look at correlation between enhancers and genes, but actually go and either destroy that enhancer and see if the gene changes in expression, or you can use the CRISPR targeting system to bring in, not vandalism and cutting, but you can couple the CRISPR system And the CRISPR system is called usually CRISPR-Cas9 because Cas9 is the protein that will then come and cut. But there's a version of that protein called dead Cas9 where the cutting part is deactivated. So you basically use dCas9, dead Cas9, to bring in an activator or to bring in a repressor. So you can now ask, is this enhancer changing that gene? by taking this modified CRISPR, which is already modified from the bacteria to be used in humans, that you can now modify the Cas9 to be dead Cas9, and you can now further modify to bring in a regulator. And you can basically turn on or turn off that enhancer and then see what is the impact on that gene. So these are the four ways of linking the locus to the target gene. And that's step number five. Okay, step number five is find the target gene. And step number six is what the heck does that gene do? You basically now go and manipulate that gene to basically see what are the processes that change. And you can basically ask, well, you know, in this particular case, in the FTO locus, we found mesenchymal stem cells that are the progenitors of white fat and brown fat or beige fat. We found the RS1421085 nucleotide variant as the causal variant. We found this large enhancer, this master regulator. I like to call it OB1 for obesity one, like the strongest enhancer associated with it. And Obi-Wan was kind of chubby as the actor, I don't know if you remember him. So you basically are using this Jedi mind trick to basically find out the location of the genome that is responsible, the enhancer that harbors it, the motif, the upstream regulator, which is ARID5B for AT-rich interacting domain, 5B. That's a protein that sort of comes and binds normally. That protein is normally a repressor. It represses this super enhancer, this massive 12,000 nucleotide master regulatory control region. and it turns off IRX3, which is a gene that's 600,000 nucleotides away, and IRX5, which is 1.2 million nucleotides away. And what's the effect of turning them off? That's exactly the next question. So step six is, what do these genes actually do? So we then ask, what does IRX3 and IRX5 do? The first thing we did is look across individuals for individuals that had higher expression of IRX3 or lower expression of IRX3. And then we looked at the expression of all of the other genes in the genome. and we look for simply correlation. And we found that RX3 and RX5 were both correlated positively with lipid metabolism and negatively with mitochondrial biogenesis. You're like, what the heck does that mean?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It doesn't sound related to obesity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not at all, superficially. But, lipid metabolism should, because lipids is these high energy molecules that basically store fat. So, RX3 and RX5 are negatively correlated with lipid metabolism, so that basically means that when they turn on, lipid metabolism, okay, positively, when they turn on, they turn on lipid metabolism. And they're negatively correlated with mitochondrial biogenesis. What do mitochondria do in this whole process? Again, small parenthesis, what are mitochondria? Mitochondria are little organelles They arose, they only are found in eukaryotes. Eu means good, karyo means nucleus, so truly, like a true nucleus, so eukaryotes have a nucleus. Prokaryotes are before the nucleus, they don't have a nucleus. So eukaryotes have a nucleus. Hmm, compartmentalization. Eukaryotes have also organelles. Some eukaryotes have chloroplasts. These are the plants, they photosynthesize. Some other eukaryotes, like us, have another type of organelle called mitochondria. These arose from an ancient species that we engulfed. This is an endosymbiosis event. Symbiosis, bio means life, sym means together. So symbiotes are things that live together. Endosymbiosis, endo means inside, so endosymbiosis means you live together holding the other one inside you. So the pre-eukaryotes engulfed an organism that was very good at energy production. And that organism eventually shed most of its genome to now have only 13 genes in the mitochondrial genome. And those 13 genes are all involved in energy production, the electron transport chain. So basically, electrons are these massive super energy rich molecules. We basically have these organelles that produce energy. And when your muscle exercises, you basically multiply your mitochondria. You basically sort of, you know, use more and more mitochondria. And that's how you get beefed up. So basically the muscle sort of learns how to generate more energy. So basically every single time your muscles will, you know, overnight regenerate and sort of become stronger and amplify their mitochondria and so on and so forth. So what does mitochondria do? The mitochondria use energy to sort of do any kind of task. When you're thinking, you're using energy. This energy comes from mitochondria. Your neurons have mitochondria all over the place. Basically, this mitochondria can multiply as organelles and they can be spread along the body of your muscle. Some of your muscle cells have actually multiple nuclei. They're polynucleated, but they also have multiple mitochondria to basically deal with the fact that your muscle is enormous. You can sort of span this super, super long length, and you need energy throughout the length of your muscle. So that's why you have mitochondria throughout the length. And you also need transcription through the length, so you have multiple nuclei as well. So these two processes, lipids store energy, what do mitochondria do? So there's a process known as thermogenesis. Thermo heat, genesis generation. Thermogenesis is generation of heat. Remember that bathtub? with in and out, that's the equation that everybody's focused on. So how much energy do you consume? How much energy do you burn? But in every thermodynamic system, there's three parts to the equation. There's energy in, energy out, and energy lost. Any machine has loss of energy. How do you lose energy? You emanate heat. So heat is energy loss. So" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is where the thermogenesis comes in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Thermogenesis is actually a regulatory process that modulates the third component of the thermodynamic equation. You can basically control thermogenesis explicitly. You can turn on and turn off thermogenesis. And that's where the mitochondria comes into play. Exactly. So IRX3 and RX5 turn out to be the master regulators of a process of thermogenesis versus lipogenesis, generation of fat. So RX10 and RX5 in most people burn heat, burn calories as heat. So when you eat too much, just burn it off in your fat cells. So that bathtub has basically a sort of dissipation knob that most people are able to turn on. I am unable to turn that on. because I am a homozygous carrier for the mutation that changes a T into a C in the RS1421085 allele, a locus, a SNP. I have the RISC allele twice, from my mom and from my dad. So I'm unable to thermogenize. I'm unable to turn on thermogenesis through RX3 and RX5 because the regulator that normally binds here, RX5B, can no longer bind because it's an AT-rich interacting domain. And as soon as I change the T into a C, it can no longer bind because it's no longer AT-rich." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But doesn't that mean that you're able to use the energy more efficiently? You're not generating heat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or is that- That means I can eat less and get around just fine. Yes. That's a feature, actually. It's a feature in a food-scarce environment. If we're all starving, I'm doing great. If we all have access to massive amounts of food, I'm obese, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's taken us through the entire process of then understanding that why mitochondria and then the lipids are both, even though distant, are somehow involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Different sides of the same coin. You basically choose to store energy or you can choose to burn energy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that all of that is involved in the puzzle of obesity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's what's fascinating, right? Here we are in 2007, discovering the strongest genetic association with obesity and knowing nothing about how it works for almost 10 years. For 10 years, everybody focused on this FTO gene. And they were like, oh, it must have to do something with, you know, RNA modification. And it's like, no, it has nothing to do with the function of FTO. It has everything to do with all of these other processes. And suddenly, the moment you solve that puzzle, which is a multi-year effort, by the way, a tremendous effort by Melina and many, many others. So this tremendous effort basically led us to recognize this circuitry. You went from having some 89 common variants associated in that region of the DNA, sitting on top of this gene, to knowing the whole circuitry. When you know the circuitry, you can now go crazy. You can now start intervening at every level. You can start intervening at the arid 5B level. You can start intervening with CRISPR-Cas9 at the single snip. level. You can start intervening at RX3 and RX5 directly there. You can start intervening at the thermogenesis level because you know the pathway. You can start intervening at the differentiation level where the decision to make either white fat or beige fat, the energy-burning beige fat, is made developmentally in the first three days of differentiation of your adipocytes. So as they're differentiating, you basically can choose to make fat burning machines or fat storing machines. And sort of, that's how you populate your fat. You basically can now go in pharmaceutically and do all of that. And in our paper, we actually did all of that. We went in and manipulated every single aspect. At the nucleotide level, we use CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to basically take primary adipocytes from risk and non-risk individuals and show that by editing that one nucleotide out of 3.2 billion nucleotides in the human genome, you could then flip between an obese phenotype and a lean phenotype like a switch. You can basically take micelles that are non-thermogenizing and just flip into thermogenizing cells by changing one nucleotide. It's mind-boggling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "it's so inspiring that this puzzle could be solved in this way, and it feels within reach to then be able to crack the problem of some of these diseases. What are, so it's 2007 you mentioned, what are the technologies, the tools that came along that made this possible? What are you excited about, maybe if we just look at the buffet of things that you've kind of mentioned? Is there, What's involved? What should we be excited about? What are you excited about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love that question because there's so much ahead of us. There's so, so much. So basically solving that one locus required massive amounts of knowledge that we have been building across the years through the epigenome, through the comparative genomics to find out the causal variant and the controller regulatory motif through the conserved circuitry. It required knowing this regulatory genomic wiring. It required Hi-C of these sort of topologically associated domains to basically find this long-range interaction. It required eQTLs of this sort of genetic perturbation of these intermediate gene phenotypes. It required all of the arsenal of tools that I've been describing was put together for one locus. And this was a massive team effort, huge, you know, investment in time, energy, money, effort, intellectual, you know, everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're referring to, I'm sorry, just for the obesity one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, this one paper. This one single paper. This one single locus. I like to say that this is a paper about one nucleotide in the human genome, about one bit of information, C versus T in the human genome. That's one bit of information and we have 3.2 billion nucleotides to go through. So how do you do that systematically? I am so excited about the next phase of research, because the technologies that my group and many other groups have developed allows us to now do this systematically, not just one locus at a time, but thousands of loci at a time. So let me describe some of these technologies. The first one is automation and robotics. So basically, you know, we talked about how you can take all of these molecules and see which of these molecules are targeting each of these genes and what do they do. So you can basically now screen through millions of molecules, through thousands and thousands and thousands of plates, each of which has thousands and thousands and thousands of molecules, every single time testing, you know, all of these genes. and asking which of these molecules perturb these genes. So that's technology number one, automation and robotics. Technology number two is parallel readouts. So instead of perturbing one locus and then asking if I use CRISPR-Cas9 on this enhancer to basically use dCas9 to turn on or turn off the enhancer, or if I use CRISPR-Cas9 on the SNP to basically change that one SNP at a time, then what happens? But we have 120,000 disease-associated SNPs that we want to test. We don't want to spend 120,000 years doing it. So what do we do? And we've basically developed this technology for massively parallel reporter assays, MPRA. So in collaboration with Tarjan Mikkelsen, Eric Lander, I mean Jason Durie's group has done a lot of that. So there's a lot of groups that basically have developed technologies for testing 10,000 genetic variants at a time. How do you do that? You know, we talked about microarray technology, the ability to synthesize these huge microarrays that allow you to do all kinds of things like measure gene expression by hybridization, by measuring the genotype of a person, by looking at hybridization with one version with a T versus the other version with a C. and then sort of figuring out that I am a risk carrier for obesity based on these hybridization, differential hybridization in my genome that says, oh, you seem to only have this allele or you seem to have that allele. Microarrays can also be used to systematically synthesize small fragments of DNA. So you can basically synthesize these 150 nucleotide long fragments across 450,000 spots at a time. You can now take the result of that synthesis, which basically works through all of these sort of layers of adding one nucleotide at a time. You can basically just type it into your computer and order it. And you can basically order 10,000 or 100,000 of these small DNA segments at a time. And that's where awesome molecular biology comes in. you can basically take all these segments, have a common start and end barcode, or sort of like Gator, just like pieces of a puzzle, you can make the same end piece and the same start piece for all of them. And you can now use plasmids, which are these extra-chromosomal, small DNA circular segments, that are basically inhabiting all our genomes. We basically have plasmids floating around. Bacteria use plasmids for transferring DNA, and that's where they put a lot of antibiotic resistance genes. So they can easily transfer them from one bacterium to the other. So one bacterium evolves a gene to be resistant to a particular antibiotic. It basically says to all its friends, hey, here's that sort of DNA piece. We can now co-opt these plasmids into human cells. You can basically make a human cell culture and add plasmids to that human cell culture that contain the things that you want to test. You now have this library of 450,000 elements. You can insert them each into the common plasmid and then test them in millions of cells in parallel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the common plasmid is all the same before you add it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, the rest of the plasmid is the same. So it's called an epizomal reporter assay. Epizome means not inside the genome, it's sort of outside the chromosomes. so it's an epizomal assay, that allows you to have a variable region where you basically test 10,000 different enhancers, and you have a common region which basically has the same reporter gene. You now can do some very cool molecular biology. You can basically take the 450,000 elements that you've generated, and you have a piece of the puzzle here, a piece of the puzzle here, which is identical, so they're compatible with that plasmid. You can chop them up in the middle to separate a barcode reporter from the enhancer, and in the middle put the same gene, again using the same pieces of the puzzle. You now can have a barcode readout of what is the impact of 10,000 different versions of an enhancer on gene expression. So we're not doing one experiment, we're doing 10,000 experiments. And those 10,000 can be 5,000 of different loci, and each of them in two versions, risk or non-risk. I can now test tens of thousands." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "These are little hypotheses. Exactly. And then you can do 10,000. You can test 10,000 hypotheses at once. How hard is it to generate those 10,000? Trivial, trivial." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's biology. No, no. Generating the 10,000 is trivial because you basically add... It's biotechnology. You basically have these arrays that add one nucleotide at a time at every spot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's printing, so you're able to control. Yeah. Super costly, is it? 10,000 bucks. So this is in millions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "10,000 bucks for 10,000 experiments? Sounds like the right, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, so that's super, that's exciting, because you don't have to do one thing at a time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can now use that technology, these massively parallel reporter assays, to test 10,000 locations at a time. We've made multiple modifications to that technology. One was sharper MPRA, which stands for basically getting a higher resolution view by tiling these elements so you can see where along the region of control are they acting. And we made another modification called Hydra for high definition regulatory annotation or something like that, which basically allows you to test 7 million of these at a time by sort of cutting them directly from the DNA. So instead of synthesizing, which basically has the limit of 450,000 that you can synthesize at a time, we basically said, hey, if we want to test all accessible regions of the genome, let's just do an experiment that cuts accessible regions Let's take those accessible regions, put them all with the same end joints of the puzzles, and then now use those to create a much, much larger array of things that you can test. And then tiling all of these regions, you can then pinpoint what are the driver nucleotides, What are the elements? How are they acting across 7 million experiments at a time? So basically, this is all the same family of technology, where you're basically using these parallel readouts of the barcodes. And then, you know, to do this, we used a technology called StarSeq for self-transcribing reporter assays, a technology developed by Alex Stark, my former postdoc, who's now a PI over in Vienna. So, We basically coupled the StarSeq, the self-transcribing reporters, where the enhancer can be part of the gene itself. So instead of having a separate barcode, that enhancer basically acts to turn on the gene and is transcribed as part of the gene. So you don't have to have the two separate parts. Exactly, so you can just read them directly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a constant improvement in this whole process. By the way, generating all these options, or is it basically brute force? How much human intuition is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh gosh, of course it's human intuition and human creativity and incorporating all of the input data sets. Because again, the genome is enormous. 3.2 billion, you don't wanna test that. Instead, you basically use all of these tools that I've talked about already. You generate your top favorite 10,000 hypotheses, and then you go and test all 10,000. And then from what comes out, you can then go to the next step. So that's technology number two. So technology number one is robotics, automation, where you have thousands of wells and you constantly test them. The second technology is instead of having wells, you have these massively parallel readouts in sort of these pooled assays. The third technology is coupling CRISPR perturbations with these single-cell RNA readouts. So let me make another parenthesis here to describe now single-cell RNA sequencing. So what does single-cell RNA sequencing mean? So RNA sequencing is what has been traditionally used, or well, traditionally the last 20 years, ever since the advent of next generation sequencing. So basically before, RNA expression profiling was based on these microarrays. The next technology after that was based on sequencing. So you chop up your RNA and you just sequence small molecules, just like you would sequence a genome, basically reverse transcribe the small RNAs into DNA, and you sequence that DNA, in order to get the number of sequencing reads corresponding to the expression level of every gene in the genome. You now have RNA sequencing. How do you go to single-cell RNA sequencing? That technology also went through stages of evolution. The first was microfluidics. You basically had these, or even chambers, you basically had these ways of isolating individual cells, putting them into a well for every one of these cells. So you have 384 well plates, and you now do 384 parallel reactions to measure the expression of 384 cells. That sounds amazing, and it was amazing. but we wanna do a million cells. How do you go from these wells to a million cells? You can't. So what the next technology was after that is instead of using a well for every reaction, you now use a lipid droplet for every reaction. So you use micro droplets as reaction chambers to basically amplify RNA. So here's the idea. You basically have microfluidics where you basically have every single cell coming down one tube in your microfluidics and you have little bubbles getting created in the other way with specifical primers that mark every cell with its own barcode. You basically couple the two and you end up with little bubbles that have a cell and tons of markers for that cell. You now mark up all of the RNA for that one cell with the same exact barcode. and you then lyse all of the droplets, and you sequence the heck out of that, and you have, for every RNA molecule, a unique identifier that tells you what cell was it on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That is such good engineering, microfluidics, and using some kind of primer to put a label on the thing. I mean, you're making this sound easy. I assume it's pretty challenging." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's beautiful, right? But it's gorgeous, yeah. So there's the next generation. That's great, great engineering, yeah. So that's the second generation. Next generation is forget the microfluidics altogether. Just use big bottles. How can you possibly do that with big bottles? So here's the idea. You dissociate all of your cells or all of your nuclei from complex cells like brain cells that are very long and sticky, so you can't do that. So if you have blood cells or if you have neuronal nuclei or brain nuclei, you can basically dissociate, let's say, a million cells. You now want to add a unique barcode a unique barcode in each one of a million cells using only big bottles. How can you possibly do that? Sounds crazy, but here's the idea. You use 100 of these bottles. You randomly shuffle all your million cells and you throw them into those 100 bottles, randomly, completely randomly. You add one barcode out of 100 to every one of the cells. You then, you now take them all out, you shuffle them again, and you throw them again into the same 100 bottles. but now in a different randomization. And you add a second barcode. So every cell now has two barcodes. You take them out again, you shuffle them, and you throw them back in. Another third barcode is adding randomly from the same 100 barcodes. You've now labeled every cell probabilistically based on the unique path that he took of which of 100 bottles did he go for the first time, which of 100 bottles the second time, and which of 100 bottles the third time. 100 times 100 times 100 is a million unique barcodes in every single one of these cells without ever using microfluidics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's beautiful, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you now have the single cell sequencing technology. You can use the wells, you can use the bubbles, or you can use the bottles. And you know, sort of, you have ways- The bubbles still sound pretty damn cool. The bubbles are awesome. And that's basically the main technology that we're using. So the bubbles is the main technology. So there are kits now that companies just sell to basically carry out single-cell RNA sequencing that you can basically, for $2,000, you can basically get 10,000 cells from one sample. And for every one of those cells, you basically have the transcription of thousands of genes. And, you know, of course, the data for any one cell is noisy, but being computer scientists, we can aggregate the data from all of the cells together, across thousands of individuals together, to basically make very robust inferences. Okay, so the third technology is basically single cell RNA sequencing that allows you to now start asking not just what is the brain expression level difference of that genetic variant, but what is the expression difference of that one genetic variant across every single subtype of brain cell? How is the variance changing? You can't just, you know, with a brain sample, you can just ask about the mean. What is the average expression? If I instead have 3,000 cells that are neurons, I can ask not just what is the neuronal expression, I can say for layer five excitatory neurons, of which I have, I don't know, 300 cells, what is the variance that this genetic variant has? So suddenly, it's amazingly more powerful. I can basically start asking about this middle layer of gene expression at unprecedented levels." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And when you look at the average, it washes out some potentially important signal that corresponds to ultimately the disease." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Completely. Yeah. So that, I can do that at the RNA level, but I can also do that at the DNA level for the epigenome. If you remember how before I was telling you about all this technology that we're using to probe the epigenome, One of them is DNA accessibility. So what we're doing in my lab is that from the same dissociation of, say, a brain sample, where you now have all these tens of thousands of cells floating around, you basically take half of them to do RNA profiling, and the other half to do epigenome profiling, both at the single-cell level. So that allows you to now figure out what are the millions of DNA enhancers that are accessible in every one of tens of thousands of cells. And computationally, we can now take the RNA and the DNA readouts and group them together to basically figure out how is every enhancer related to every gene. And remember these sort of enhancer gene linking that we were doing across 833 samples? 833 is awesome, don't get me wrong, but 10 million is way more awesome. So we can now look at correlated activity across 2.3 million enhancers and 20,000 genes in each of millions of cells to basically start piecing together the regulatory circuitry of every single type of neuron, every single type of astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, microglial cell inside the brains of 1500 individuals that we've sampled across multiple different brain regions, across both DNA and RNA. So that's the data set that my team generated last year alone. So in one year, we've basically generated 10 million cells from human brain across a dozen different disorders. Across schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia. ALS, you know, Huntington's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, like, you know, bipolar disorder, healthy aging, etc." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's possible that even just within that data set lie a lot of keys to understanding these diseases and then be able to directly leads to then treatment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct, correct. So basically we are now- Motivating. Yeah, so our computational team is in heaven right now and we're looking for people. I mean, if you have listeners who are super smart computational people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is a very interesting kind of side question. How much of this is biology? How much of this is computation? So you had the computational biology group, but how much of, Should you be comfortable with biology to be able to solve some of these problems? If you just find, if you put several of the hats that you wear on, fundamentally, are you thinking like a computer scientist here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to. This is the only way. As I said, we are the descendants of the first digital computer. We're trying to understand the digital computer. We're trying to understand the circuitry, the logic. of this digital core computer and all of these analog layers surrounding it. So the case that I've been making is that you cannot think one gene at a time. The traditional biology is dead. There's no way. You cannot solve disease with traditional biology. You need it as a component once you figured out RX3 and RX5. You now can then say, hey, have you guys worked on those genes with your single gene approach? We'd love to know everything you know. And if you haven't, we now know how important these genes are. Let's now launch a single gene program to dissect them and understand them. But you cannot use that as a way to dissect disease. You have to think genomically. You have to think from the global perspective and you have to build these circuits systematically. So we need numbers of computer scientists who are interested and willing to dive into these data, you know, fully, fully in and sort of extract meaning. We need computer science people who can understand sort of machine learning and inference and sort of, you know, decouple these matrices, come up with super smart ways of sort of dissecting them. But we also need computer scientists who understand biology, who are able to design the next generation of experiments. Because many of these experiments, no one in their right mind would design them without thinking of the analytical approach that you would use to deconvolve the data afterwards. Because it's massive amounts of ridiculously noisy data. And if you don't have the computational pipeline in your head before you even design the experiment, you would never design the experiment that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's brilliantly put. So in designing the experiment, you have to see the entirety of the computational pipeline." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That drives the design. That even drives the necessity for that design. Basically, if you didn't have a computer scientist way of thinking, you would never design these hugely combinatorial, massively parallel experiments. So that's why you need interdisciplinary teams. You need teams. And I want to sort of clarify that. What do we mean by computational biology group? The focus is not on computational. The focus is on the biology. So we are a biology group. What type of biology? Computational biology. That's the type of biology that uses the whole genome. That's the type of biology that designs experiments, genomic experiments, that can only be interpreted in the context of the whole genome." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so it's philosophically looking at biology as a computer. Correct, correct. So, which is, in the context of the history of biology, is a big transformation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. You can think of the name as, what do we do? Only computation. That's not true. But how do we study it? Only computationally, that is true. So all of these single-cell sequencing can now be coupled with the technology that we talked about earlier for perturbation. So here's the crazy thing. Instead of using these wells and these robotic systems for doing one drug at a time, or for perturbing one gene at a time in thousands of wells, you can now do this using a pool of cells and single cell RNA sequencing. How? You basically can take these perturbations using CRISPR, And instead of using a single guide RNA, you can use a library of guide RNAs generated exactly the same way using this array technology. So you synthesize a thousand different guide RNAs. You now take each of these guide RNAs and you insert them in a pool of cells where every cell gets one perturbation. And you use CRISPR editing or CRISPR, so with either CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genome with these thousand perturbations or with the activation or with the repression and you now can have a single cell readout where every single cell has received one of these modifications and you can now in massively parallel ways couple the perturbation and the readout in a single experiment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How are you tracking which perturbations each cell received?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's ways of doing that, but basically one way is to make that perturbation an expressible vector, so that part of your RNA reading is actually that perturbation itself. So you can basically put it in an expressible part, so you can self-drive it. So the point that I want to get across is that the sky's the limit. You basically have these tools, these building blocks of molecular biology. You have these massive data sets of computational biology. You have this huge ability to sort of use machine learning and statistical methods and, you know, linear algebra to sort of reduce the dimensionality of all these massive data sets. And then you end up with a series of actionable targets that you can then couple with pharma and just go after systematically. So the ability to sort of bring genetics to the epigenomics, to the transcriptomics, to the cellular readouts using these sort of high throughput perturbation technologies that I'm talking about, and ultimately to the organism through the electronic health record, endophenotypes, and ultimately the disease battery of assays at the cognitive level, at the physiological level, and every other level. There is no better or more exciting field, in my view, to be a computer scientist then or to be a scientist in period. Basically, this confluence of technologies, of computation, of data, of insights, and of tools for manipulation is unprecedented in human history. And I think this is what's shaping the next century to really be a transformative century for our species and for our planet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think the 21st century will be remembered for the big leaps in understanding and alleviation of biology?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at the path between discovery and therapeutics, it's been on the order of 50 years. It's been shortened to 40, 30, 20, and now it's on the order of 10 years. But the huge number of technologies that are going on right now for discovery will result undoubtedly in the most dramatic manipulation of human biology that we've ever seen in the history of humanity in the next few years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think we might be able to cure some of the diseases we started this conversation with?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, absolutely. It's only a matter of time. Basically, the complexity is enormous, and I don't want to underestimate the complexity, but the number of insights is unprecedented, and the ability to manipulate is unprecedented, and the ability to deliver these small molecules and other non-traditional medicine perturbations. There's a new generation of perturbations that you can use at the DNA level, at the RNA level, at the microRNA level, at the epigenomic level. There's a battery of new generations of perturbations If you couple that with cell type identifiers that can basically sense when you are in the right cell based on the specific combination and then turn on that intervention for that cell, you can now think of combinatorial interventions where you can basically sort of feed a synthetic biology construct to someone that will basically do different things in different cells. So basically for cancer, this is one of the therapeutics that our collaborator Ron Weiss is using. to basically start sort of engineering these circuits that will use micro-RNA sensors of the environment to sort of know if you're in a tumor cell, or if you're in an immune cell, or if you're in a stromal cell, and so forth, and basically turn on particular interventions there. You can sort of create constructs that are tuned to only the liver cells, or only the heart cells, or only the brain cells, and then have these new generations of therapeutics coupled with this immense amount of knowledge on the sort of which targets to choose and what biological processes to measure and how to intervene, my view is that disease is going to be fundamentally altered and alleviated as we go forward." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Next time we talk, we'll talk about the philosophical implications of that and the effect of life, but let's stick to biology for just a little longer. We did pretty good today. We stuck to the science. What are you excited in terms of the future of this field, the technologies in your own group, in your own mind? You're leading the world at MIT in the science and the engineering of this work, so what are you excited about here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I could not be more excited. We are one of many, many teams who are working on this. In my team, the most exciting parts are, you know, manifold. So basically, we've now assembled this battery of technologies, we've assembled these massive, massive data sets, and now we're really sort of in the stage of our team's path of generating disease insights. So we are simultaneously working on a paper on schizophrenia right now that is basically using the single cell profiling technologies, using this editing and manipulation technologies to basically show how the master regulators underlying changes in the brain that are sort of found in schizophrenia are in fact affecting excitatory neurons and inhibitory neurons in pathways that are active both in synaptic pruning but also in early development. We've basically found a set of four regulators that are connecting these two processes that were previously separate in schizophrenia in sort of having a sort of more unified view across those two sides. The second one is in the area of metabolism. We basically now have a beautiful collaboration with the Goodyear lab that's basically looking at multi-tissue perturbations in six or seven different tissues across the body in the context of exercise and in the context of nutritional interventions using both mouse and human, where we can basically see what are the cell-to-cell communications that are changing across them And what we're finding is this immense role of both immune cells, as well as adipocyte stem cells, in sort of reshaping that circuitry of all of these different tissues, and that's sort of painting to a new path for therapeutical intervention there. In Alzheimer's, it's this huge focus on microglia, and now we're discovering different classes of microglial cells that are basically either synaptic, or immune. And these are playing vastly different roles in Alzheimer's versus in schizophrenia. And what we're finding is this immense complexity as you go further and further down of how in fact there's 10 different types of microglia, each with their own sort of expression programs, We used to think of them as, oh yeah, they're microglia. But in fact, now we're realizing just even in that sort of least abundant of cell types, there's this incredible diversity there. The differences between brain regions is another sort of major, major insight. Again, one would think that, oh, astrocytes are astrocytes no matter where they are. But no, there's incredible region-specific differences in the expression patterns of all of the major brain cell types across different brain regions. So basically there's the neocortical regions that are sort of the recent innovation that makes us so different from all other species. There's the sort of, you know, reptilian brain sort of regions that are sort of much more, you know, very extremely distinct. There's the cerebellum. There's each of those basically is associated in a different way with disease. And what we're doing now is looking into pseudo temporal models for how disease progresses across different regions of the brain. If you look at Alzheimer's, it basically starts in this small region called the entorhinal cortex, and then it spreads through the brain. and through the hippocampus and ultimately affecting the neocortex. And with every brain region that it hits, it basically has a different impact on the cognitive and memory aspects, orientation, short-term memory, long-term memory, et cetera, which is dramatically affecting the cognitive path that the individuals go through. So what we're doing now is creating these computational models for ordering the cells and the regions and the individuals according to their ability to predict Alzheimer's disease. So we can have a cell level predictor of pathology that allows us to now create a temporal time course that tells us when every gene turns on along this pathology progression. and then trace that across regions and pathological measures that are region specific, but also cognitive measures and so on and so forth. So that allows us to now sort of, for the first time, look at can we actually do early intervention for Alzheimer's, where we know that the disease starts manifesting for 10 years before you actually have your first cognitive loss. Can we start seeing that path to build new diagnostics, new prognostics, new biomarkers for this sort of early intervention in Alzheimer's? The other aspect that we're looking at is mosaicism. We talked about the common variants and the rare variants, but in addition to those rare variants, as your initial cell that forms the zygote divides and divides and divides, with every cell division, there are additional mutations that are happening. So what you end up with is your brain being a mosaic of multiple different types of genetic underpinnings. Some cells contain a mutation that other cells don't have. So every human has the common variants that all of us carry to some degree, the rare variants that your immediate tree of the human species carries, and then there's the somatic variant, which is the tree that happened after the zygote, that sort of forms your own body. So these somatic alterations is something that has been previously inaccessible to study in human post-mortem samples. But right now, with the advent of single-cell RNA sequencing, in this particular case, we're using the well-based sequencing, which is much more expensive, but gives you a lot richer information about each of those transcripts. So we're using now that richer information to infer mutations that have happened in each of the thousands of genes that sort of are active in these cells and then understand how the genome relates to the function, this genotype-phenotype relationship that we usually build in GWAS between, in genome-wide association studies, between genetic variation and disease. We're now building that at the cell level where for every cell we can relate the unique specific genome of that cell with the expression patterns of that cell and the predicted function using these predictive models that I mentioned before on dysregulation for cognition, for pathology in Alzheimer's at the cell level. And what we're finding is that the genes that are altered and the genetic regions that are altered in common variants versus rare variants versus somatic variants are actually very different from each other. The somatic variants are pointing to neuronal energetics and oligodendrocyte functions that are not visible in the genetic legions that you find for the common variants. probably because they have too strong of an effect that evolution is just not tolerating them on the common side of the allele frequency spectrum." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the somatic one, that's the variation that happens after the zygote, after you individual. I mean, this is a dumb question, but there's mutation and variation, I guess, that happens there. And you're saying that through this, if we focus in on individual cells, we're able to detect the story that's interesting there, and that might be a very unique kind of important variability that arises for, you said neuronal or something that would sound. Energetics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Energetics. Energetics. Sounds like a cool term. So you're, I mean, the metabolism of humans is dramatically altered from that of nearby species. You know, we talked about that last time, that basically we are able to consume meat that is incredibly energy rich, And that allows us to sort of have functions that are meeting this humongous brain that we have. So basically on one hand, every one of our brain cells is much more energy efficient than our neighbors, than our relatives. Number two, we have way more of these cells. And number three, we have this new diet that allows us to now feed all these needs. That basically creates a massive amount of damage, oxidative damage, from this huge, super-powered factory of ideas and thoughts that we carry in our skull. And that factory has energetic needs, and there's a lot of biological processes underlying that, that we are finding are altered in the context of Alzheimer's disease." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating that, so you have to consider all of these systems if you wanna understand even something like diseases that you would maybe traditionally associate with just the particular cells of the brain. The immune system. The metabolic system. The metabolic system." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the underlying process that powers the universe. So as the name implies, it fuses together or brings together two different elements, technically nuclei, that come together. And if you can push them together close enough that you can trigger essentially a reaction, what happens is that the element typically changes. So this means that you change from one chemical element to another. Underlying what this means is that you change the nuclear structure. This rearrangement through equals mc2 releases large amounts of energy. So fusion is the fusing together of lighter elements into heavier elements. And when you go through it, you say, oh look, so here are the initial elements, typically hydrogen. and they had a particular mass, rest mass, which means just the mass with no kinetic energy. And when you look at the product afterwards, it has less rest mass. And so you go, well, how is that possible? Because you have to keep mass, but mass and energy are the same thing, which is what E equals MC squared means. And the conversion of this comes into kinetic energy, namely energy that you can use in some way. And that's what happens in the center of stars. So fusion is literally the reason life is viable in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So fusion is happening in our Sun. And what are the elements?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the elements are hydrogen that are coming together. It goes through a process, which is probably, it's a little bit too detailed, but it's a somewhat complex catalyzed process that happens in the center of stars. But in the end, stars are big balls of hydrogen, which is the lightest, it's the simplest element, the lightest element, the most abundant element, most of the universe is hydrogen. And it's essentially a sequence through which these processes occur that you end up with helium. So those are the primary things. And the reason for this is because helium has features as a nucleus, like the interior part of the atom, that is extremely stable. And the reason for this is helium has two protons and two neutrons. These are the things that make up nuclei, that make up all of us. along with electrons, and because it has two pairs, it's extremely stable. And for this reason, when you convert the hydrogen into helium, it just wants to stay helium, and it wants to release kinetic energy. So stars are basically conversion engines of hydrogen into helium. And this also tells you why you love fusion. I mean, because our sun will last 10 billion years approximately. That's how long the fuel will last." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But to do that kind of conversion, you have to have extremely high temperatures." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is one of the criteria for doing this. But it's the easiest one to understand. Why is this? It's because Effectively what this requires is that these hydrogen ions, which is really the bare nucleus, so they have a positive charge, everything has a positive charge of those ones, is that to get them to trigger this reaction they must approach within distances which are like the size of the nucleus itself. Because the nature, in fact, what it's really using is something called the strong nuclear force. There's four fundamental forces in the universe. This is the strongest one. But it has a strange property, is that while it's the strongest force by far, it only has impact over distances which are the size of a nucleus. So to put that into, what does that mean? It's a millionth of a billionth of a meter. Okay, incredibly small distances. But because the distances are small and the particles have charge, they want to push strongly apart. Namely, they have repulsion that wants to push them apart. So it turns out when you go through the math of this, the average velocity or energy of the particles must be very high to have any significant probability of the reactions happening. And so the center of our sun is at about 20 million degrees Celsius. And on Earth, this means it's one of the first things we teach entering graduate students. You can do a quick basically power balance and you can determine that on Earth it requires a minimum temperature of about 50 million degrees Celsius on Earth to perform fusion. to get enough fusion that you would be able to get energy gain out of it. So you can trigger fusion reactions at lower energy, but they become almost vanishingly small at lower temperatures than that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, let me just linger on some crazy ideas. One, the strong force, just stepping out and looking at all the physics. Is it weird to you that there's these forces and they're very particular, like it operates at a very small distance and then gravity operates at a very large distance and they're all very specific and the standard model describes three of those forces extremely well and there's" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And this is one of them. Yeah, this is one of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's just all kind of works out. There's a big part of you that's an engineer. Did you step back and almost look at the philosophy of physics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's interesting because as a scientist, I see the universe through that lens of essentially the interesting things that we do are through the forces that get used around those. And everything works because of that. Richard Feynman had, I don't know if you've ever read Richard Feynman, it's a little bit of a tangent, but He's never been on the podcast. He's never been on the podcast. He was unfortunately passed away, but like a hero to almost all physicists. And a part of it was because of what you said, he kind of looked through a different lens at these, what typically look like very dry equations and relationships, and I think he brought out the wonder of it in some sense, right, for those. he posited what would be, if you could write down a single, not even really a sentence, but a single concept that was the most important thing scientifically that we knew about, that in other words, you had only one thing that you could transmit like a future or past generation. It was very interesting. So, it's not what you think. It wasn't like, oh, strong nuclear force or fusion or something like this. And it's very profound, which was that the reason that matter operates the way that it does is because all matter is made up of individual particles that interact each other through forces. That was it. That atomic theory, basically. Yeah. Which is like, wow, that's so simple, but it's not so simple. It's because who thinks about atoms that they're made out of? I This is a good question I give to my students. How many atoms are in your body? Like almost no student's gonna answer this, but to me, that's like a fundamental thing. By the way, it's about 10 to the 28th. 10 to the 28th. So that's a trillion. million, trillion, trillion, or something like that, yes. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one thing is to think about the number, and the other is to start to really ponder the fact... That it all holds together. Yeah, it all holds together, and you're actually that. You're more that than you are anything else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, exactly, yeah. No, I mean, there are people who do study such things of the fact that if you look at the, for example, the ratios between those fundamental forces, People have figured out, oh, if this ratio was different by some factor, like a factor of two or something, I was like, oh, this would all not work. And you look at the sun, right? So it turns out that there are key reactions that if they had slightly lower probability, no star would ever ignite. And then life wouldn't be possible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It does seem like the universe set things up for us that it's possible to do some cool things, but it's challenging. So it keeps it fun for us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, that's the way I look at it. I mean, you know, the multiverse model is an interesting one because there are, you know, quantum scientists who look and figure – it's like, oh, it's like, oh, yeah. Like quantum science perhaps tells us that there are almost an infinite, you know, variety of other universes, but the way that it works probably is it's almost like a form of natural selection. It's like, well, the universes that didn't have the correct or interesting relationships between these forces, nothing happens in them. So almost by definition, the fact that we're having this conversation means that we're in one of the interesting ones by default." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, one of the somewhat interesting, but there's probably super interesting ones, where I tend to think of humans as incredible creatures. Our brain is an incredible computing device, but I think we're also extremely cognitively limited. I can imagine alien civilizations that are much, much, much, much more intelligent in ways we can't even comprehend, in terms of their ability to construct models of the world, to do physics, to do physics and mathematics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would see it in a slightly different way. Actually, it's because we have creatures that live with us on the Earth that have cognition, right, that understand and move through their environment, but they actually see things in a way, or they sense things in a way which is so fundamentally different, it's really hard. The problem is the translation, not necessarily intelligence, so it's the perception of the world. So, I have a dog, And when I go and I see my dog smelling things, there's a realization that I have that he sees or senses the world in a way that I can never, like I can't understand it because I can't translate my way to this. We get little glimpses of this as humans though, by the way, because there are some parts of it, for example, optical information, which comes from light, is that now, because we've developed the technology, we can actually see things. I get this as one of my areas of research is spectroscopy, so this means the study of light, and I get this, quote unquote, see things or representations of them from the far infrared all the way to hard, hard x-rays, which is several orders of magnitude of the light intensity, but our own human eyes see a teeny, teeny little sliver of this. Yeah. So that even like bees, for example, see a different place than we do. So I don't, I think if you think of, there's already other intelligences like around us in a way, in a limited way, because of the way they can communicate. But it's like, those are already baffling in many ways. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we just focus in on the senses, there's already a lot of diversity, but there's probably things we're not even considering as possibilities. For example, whatever the heck consciousness is, could actually be a door into understanding some physical phenomena we haven't even begun understanding. So just like you said, spectroscopy, there could be a similar kind of spectrum for consciousness that we're just like, we're like these dumb descendants of apes walking around. It sure feels like something to experience the color red, but we don't have, it's the same as in the ancient times you experienced physics, you experienced light. It's like, oh, it's bright, and you know. And you construct kind of semi-religious kind of explanations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We might actually experience this faster than we thought, because we might be building another kind of intelligence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and that intelligence will explain to us how silly we are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There was an email thread going around the professors in my department already of, so what is it going to look like to figure out if students have actually written their term papers, or it's chat... Chat GPT. Chat GPT. As usual, we tend to be empiricists in my field, so of course they were in there trying to figure out if it could answer questions for a qualifying exam to get into the PhD program at MIT. They didn't do that well at that point, but of course this is just the beginning of it, so we have some interesting ones to go for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Eventually both the students and the professors will be replaced by Chad GPT, and we'll sit on the beach." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I really recommend, I don't know if you've ever seen them, it's called The Day the Universe Changed. This is James Burke. He's a science historian based in the UK. He had a fairly famous series on public television called Connections, I think it was. But the one that I really enjoyed was The Day the Universe Changed. And the reason for the title of it was that He says the universe is what we know and perceive of it, so when there's a fundamental insight as to something new, the universe for us changes. Of course, the universe from an objective point of view is the same as it was before, but for us it has changed. So he walks through these these moments of perception in the history of humanity that changed what we were, right? And so, as I was thinking about coming to discuss this, people see Fusion, oh, it's still far away, or it's been slow progress. It's like, when my godmother was born, people had no idea how stars worked. So you talk about like that day, that insight, the universe changed. It's like, oh, this is the, I mean, and they still didn't understand all the parts of it, but they basically got it. It's like, oh, because of the understanding of these processes, it's like we unveiled the reason that there can be life in the universe. That's probably one of those days the universe changed, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that was in the 1930s, yeah. It seems like technology is developing faster and faster and faster. I tend to think, just like with Chad GPT, I think this year might be extremely interesting, just with how rapid and how profitable the efforts in artificial intelligence are, that just stuff will happen where our whole world is transformed like this, and there's a shock, and then the next day you kind of go on and you adjust immediately. You probably won't have a similar kind of thing with nuclear fusion with energy, because there's probably going to be an opening ceremony and stuff It'll take months, but with digital technology, you can just have a immediate transformation of society, and it'll be this gasp, and then you kind of adjust, like we always do, and then you don't even remember, just like with the internet and so on, how the days were before." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll tell you the word before, right? I mean, fusion will be, because it's energy, its nature is that it will be, and anything that has to do with energy use tends to be a slower transition, but they're the most, I would argue, some of the most profound transitions that we make. I mean, the reason that we can live like this and sit in this building and have this podcast and people around the world is, at its heart, is energy use, and it's intense energy use that came from the evolution of starting to use intense energies at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to now. It's a bedrock, actually, of all of these, but it doesn't tend to come overnight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And some of the most important, some of the most amazing technology is one we don't notice because we take it for granted because it enables this whole thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly, which is energy, which is amazing for how fundamental it is to our society and way of life is a very poorly understood concept, actually. Just even energy itself, people confuse energy sources, with energy storage, with energy transmission. These are different physical phenomena which are very important. So, for example, you know, you buy an electric car and you go, oh good, I have an emission-free car. And ah, but it's like, so why do you say that? Well, it's because if I draw the circle around the car, I have electricity and it doesn't emit anything. Okay, but you plug that into a grid where you follow that wire back, there could be a coal power plant or a gas power plant at the end of that. Oh, really? You mean so this isn't like carbon-free? Oh. And it's not their fault, it's just they don't, like the car isn't a source of energy. The underlying source of energy was the combustion of the fuel back somewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus there's also a story of how the raw materials are mined in which parts of the world with sort of basic respect or a deep disrespect of human rights that happens in that mining. So the whole supply chain, there's a story there that's deeper than just the particular electric car with a circle around it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and the physics or the science of it too is the energy use that it takes to do that digging up, which is also important and all that. Anyway, so we wandered away from fusion, but yes. Oh, it's a beautiful straw. But it's very important actually in the context of this, just because know, those of us who work in fusion and these other kinds of sort of disruptive energy technologies, it's interesting. I do think about, like, what is it going to mean to society to have an energy source that is like this, that would be like fusion, you know, which has such completely different characteristics. For example, free unlimited access to the fuel, but it has technology implications. So what does this mean geopolitically? What does it mean for how we distribute wealth within our society? It's very difficult to know. but probably profound, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're gonna have to find another reason to start wars. Instead of resources, we're gonna have to figure something else out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We've done a pretty good job of that over the course of our histories, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we talked about the forces of physics, and again, sticking to the philosophical before we get to the specific technical stuff, E equals MC squared, you mentioned. How amazing is that to you, that energy and mass are the same? And what does that have to do with nuclear fusion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it has to do with everything we do. It's the fact that energy and mass are equivalent to each other. They're just, the way we usually comment to it is that they're just energy, just in different forms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you intuitively understand that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but it takes a long time. Often I teach the introductory class for incoming nuclear engineers, and so we put this up as an equation and we go through many iterations of using this. how you derive it, how you use it, and so forth. And then usually in the final exam, I would give, I would basically take all the equations that I've used before and I flip it around. I basically, instead of thinking about energy is equal to mass, it's sort of mass is equal to energy. And I ask the question a different way, and usually about half the students don't get it. It takes a while to get that intuition, yeah. So in the end, it's interesting is that this is actually the source of all free energy because that energy that we're talking about is kinetic energy if it can be transformed from mass. So it turns out even though we used equals MC squared, this is burning coal and burning gas and burning wood is actually still equals MC squared. The problem is that you would never know this because the relative change in the mass is incredibly small. By the way, which comes back to fusion, which is that... E equals mc squared. Okay, so what does this mean? It tells you that the amount of energy that is liberated in a particular reaction when you change mass has to, because c squared, that's the speed of light squared. It's a large number. It's a very large number, and it's totally constant everywhere in the universe, which is another thing. Which is another weird thing. Which is another weird thing, and in all rest frames, and actually, the relativity stuff gets more difficult conceptually until you get through. Anyway, so you go to that, and And what that tells you is that it's the relative change in the mass will tell you about the relative amount of energy that's liberated. And this is what makes fusion—and you asked about fission as well, too—this is what makes them extraordinary. It's because the relative change in the mass is very large as compared to what you get, like, in a chemical reaction. In fact, it's about 10 million times larger. And that is at the heart of why you use something like fusion. It's because that is a fundamental of nature. Like you can't beat that. So whatever you do, if you're thinking about, and why do I care about this? Well, because mass is like the fuel, right? So this means gathering the resources that it takes to gather a fuel, to hold it together, to deal with it, the environmental impact it would have. And fusion will always have 20 million times the amount of energy release per reaction that you could have though. So this is why, you know, we consider it the ultimate like environmentally friendly energy source is because of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is it correct to think of mass broadly as a kind of storage of energy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned it's environmentally friendly. So nuclear fusion is a source of energy. It's cheap, clean, safe. So easy access to fuel and virtually unlimited supply, no production of greenhouse gases, little radioactive waste produced allegedly. Can you sort of elaborate why it's cheap, clean, and safe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll start with the easiest one, cheap. It is not cheap yet because it hasn't been made at a commercial scale. Time flies when you're having fun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. Yeah, yeah. But yes, not yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We'll talk about that. Actually, we'll come back to that, because this is cheaper, or a more technically correct term, that it's economically interesting, is really the primary challenge, actually, of fusion at this point. But I think we can get back to that. So what were the other ones you said?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So cheap, actually when we're talking about cheap, we're thinking like asymptotically. If you take it forward several hundred years, that's sort of because of how much availability there is of resources to use. Of the fuel. Yeah, of the fuel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "we should separate those two. The fuel is already cheap, it's basically free, right? What do you mean by basically free? So if we were to be using fusion fuel sources to power your, and it's like, that's all we had was fusion power plants around, and we were doing it, the fuel costs per person are something like 10 cents a year. It's free. Okay. This is why it's hard to, in some ways, I think it's hard to understand fusion because people see this and go, oh, if the fuel is free, this means the energy source is free because we're used to energy sources like this. So we, you know, we spend resources and drill to get gas or oil, or we chop wood or we make coal, we find coal or these things. All right. So fusion, this is what makes fusion, and it's also, it's not an intermittent renewable energy source, like wind and solar, but this makes it harder, so if you're saying the fuel is free, why isn't the energy source free? And it's because of the necessary technologies which must be applied to basically recreate the conditions which are in stars. in the center of stars, in fact. So there's only one natural place in the universe that fusion energy occurs that's in the center of stars. So that's going to bring a price to it, depending on the size and complexity of the technology that's needed to recreate those things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we'll talk about the details of those technologies and which parts might be expensive today and which parts might be expensive in 200 years from now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. It will have a revolution, I'm certain of it. So about clean, so clean is, at its heart, what it does is convert, it basically converts hydrogen into, it's heavier forms of hydrogen, the most predominant one that we use on Earth. and converts it into helium and some other products, but primarily helium is the product that's left behind. So helium, safe, inert, gas, you know. In fact, that's actually what our sun is doing. It's eventually going to extinguish itself because it'll just make so much helium that it doesn't do that. So in that sense, clean because there's no emissions of carbon or pollutants that come directly from the combustion of the fuel itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And safe. Safe, yeah. We're talking about very high temperatures." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So this is also the counterintuitive thing. So I told you temperatures, which like 50 million degrees, or it actually tends to be more like about 100 million degrees is really what we aim for. So how can 100 million degrees be safe? And it's safe because it is This is so much hotter than anything on Earth, where everything on Earth is at around 300 Kelvin, you know, it's around a few tens of degrees Celsius. And what this means is that in order to get a medium to those temperatures, you have to completely isolate it from anything to do with terrestrial environment. It can have no contact, like with anything on Earth, basically. So, this is the technology that I just described. Fundamentally, what it does is it takes this fuel and it isolates it from any terrestrial conditions so that it has no idea it's on Earth. It's not touching any object that's at room temperature. Including the walls of the containment. Including the walls of the containment building or containment device. or even air or anything like this. So it's that part that makes it safe, and there's actually another aspect to it, but that fundamental part makes it so safe. And in the mainline's approach to fusion is also that it's very hot, where there's very, very few particles at any time in the thing that would be the power plant. Actually, the more correct way to do it is you say, there's very few particles per unit volume. So, in a cubic centimeter, in a cubic meter, something like that. So, we can do this. So, right now we're, although we don't think of air really as a, there's atoms floating around us and there's a density because if I wave my hand, I can feel the air pushing against my face. That means we're in a fluid or a gas, which is around us, that has a particular number of atoms per cubic meter, right? So this actually turns out to be 10 to the 25th. So this is one with 25 zeros behind it per cubic meter. So we can figure out cubic meters about like this, the volume of this table, like the whole volume of this table. Okay, very good. So like fusion, there's a few of those. So fusion, like the mainstream one of fusion, like what we're working on at MIT, will have 100,000 times less particles per unit volume than that. So this is very interesting because it's extraordinarily hot, 100 million degrees, but it's very tenuous. And what matters from the engineering and safety point of view is the amount of energy which is stored per unit volume, because this tells you about the scenarios, and that's what you worry about, because when those kinds of energies are released suddenly, it's like, what would be the consequences, right? So the consequences of this are essentially zero, because that's less energy content than boiling water." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because of the low density?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because of the low density. So if you take, water is at about 100 million to a billion times more dense than this. So even though it's at much lower temperature, it's actually still, it has more energy content. So for this reason, one of the ways that I explain this is that if you imagine a power plant that's like powering Cambridge, Massachusetts, Like if you were to, which you wouldn't do this directly, but if you went like this on it, it actually extinguishes the fusion because it gets too cold immediately. Yeah. So that's the other one. And the other part is that it does not, because it works by staying hot rather than a chain reaction, it can't run out of control. That's the other part of it. So, by the way, this is what very much distinguishes it from fission. It's not a process that can run away from you because it's basically thermally stable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does thermostable mean here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That means is that you want to run it at the optimization in temperature such that if it deviates away from that temperature, the reactivity gets lower. And the reason for this is because it's hard to keep the reactivity going. Like it's a very hard fire to keep going, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so it doesn't run away from you. It can't run away from you. How difficult is the control there to keep it at that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It varies from concept to concept, but in general, it's fairly easy to do that. And the easiest thing, it can't physically run away from you because the other part of it is that there's just at any given time, there's a very, very small amount of fuel available to fuse anyway. So this means that that's always intrinsically limited to this. So even if the power consumption of the device goes up, it just kind of burns itself out immediately. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you are the, just to take another tangent on a tangent, you're the director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. We'll talk about, maybe you can mention some interesting aspects of the history of the center in the broader history of MIT and maybe broader history of science and engineering in the history of human civilization. But also just to link on the safety aspect, you know, How do you prevent some of the amazing reactors that you're designing, how do you prevent from destroying all of human civilization in the process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's the safety protocols? Fusion is interesting, because it's not really directly weaponizable, because what I mean by that is that you have to work very hard to make these conditions at which you can get energy gain from fusion. And this means that when we design these devices with respect to application in the energy field, is that they, you know, while they will, because they're producing large amounts of power and they will have hot things inside of them, this means that they have like a level of industrial hazard, which is very similar to what you would have like in a chemical processing plant or anything like that. And any kind of energy plant actually has these as well too. But the underlying, underneath it, core technology can't be directly used in a nefarious way because of the power that's being emitted. It just basically, if you try to do those things, typically it just stops working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the safety concerns have to do with just regular things like equipment malfunctioning, melting of equipment, all this kind of stuff that has nothing to do with fusion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "necessarily. I mean, usually what we worry about is the viability, because in the end we build pretty complex objects to realize these requirements. And so what we try really hard to do is like not damage those components, but those are things which are internal to the fusion device. And this is not something that you would consider about like it would, as you say, destroy human civilization because that release of energy is just inherently limited because of the fusion process. So it doesn't say that there's zero, so you asked about the other feature that it's safe. So it is, the process itself is intrinsically safe, but because it's a complex technology, you still have to take into consideration aspects of the safety. So it produces ionizing radiation instantaneously, so you have to take care of this, which means that you shield it. You think of like your dental x-rays or treatments for cancer and things like this, we always shield ourselves from this so we get the beneficial effects but we minimize the harmful effects of those. So there are all those aspects of it as well too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we'll return to MIT's Plasma Science and Future Center, but let us linger on the destruction of human civilization, which brings us to the topic of nuclear fission. What is that? So the process that is inside nuclear weapons and current nuclear power plants." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it relies on the same underlying physical principle, but it's exactly the opposite, which actually the names imply. Fusion means bringing things together, fission means splitting things apart. So fission requires the heaviest instead of the lightest. and the most unstable versus the most stable elements. So this tends to be uranium or plutonium, primarily uranium. So take uranium. So uranium-235, this is one of the heaviest unstable elements. And what happens is that fission is triggered by the fact that one of these subatomic particles, the neutron, which has no electric charge, basically gets in proximity enough to this and triggers an instability effectively inside of this, what is teetering on the border of instability, and basically splits it apart. And that's the fission, right, the fissioning. And so when that happens, because the products that are and it roughly splits in two, but it's not even that. It's actually more complicated. It splits into this whole array of lighter elements and nuclei. And when that happens, there's less rest mass left than the original one. So, it's actually the same. So, again, it's rearrangement of the strong nuclear force that's happening, but that's the source of energy. And so, in the end, it's like – so, this is a famous graph that we show everybody, is basically, it turns out every element that exists in the periodic table, all the things that make up everything, have a... Remember, you asked a good question. It was like, so should we think of mass as being the same as stored energy? Yes. So you can make a plot that basically shows the relative amount of stored energy in all of the elements that are stable and make up basically the world in the universe. And it turns out that this one has a maximum amount of stability or storage at iron. So it's kind of in the middle of the periodic table because this goes from, you know, it's roughly that. And so this, what that means is that if you take something heavier than iron, like uranium, which is more than twice as heavy than that, and you split apart, if somehow just magically you can just split apart its constituents and you get something that's lighter, that will, because it moves to a more stable energy state, it releases kinetic energy. That's the energy that we use. Kinetic energy meaning the movement of things, so it's actually an energy you can do something with. And fusion sits on the other side of that because it's also moving towards iron, but it has to do it through fusion together. So this leads to some pretty profound differences. As I said, they have some underlying physics or science. proximity to each other, but they're literally the opposite. So fusion, why is this? It actually goes into practical implications of it, which is that fission could happen at room temperature. It's because this neutron has no electric charge and therefore it's literally room temperature neutrons that actually trigger the reaction. So this means in order to establish what's going on with it, and it works by chain reaction, is that you can do this at room temperature. So Enrico Fermi did this on a university campus, University of Chicago campus. The first sustained chain reaction was done underneath a squash court. with big blocks of graphite. It was still, don't get me wrong, an incredible human achievement, right? And then you think about fusion, I have to build a contraption of some kind that's going to get to 100 million degrees. Okay, wow, that's a big difference. The other one is about the chain reaction, that namely fission works by the fact that when that fission occurs, it actually produces free neutrons. Free neutrons, particularly if they get slowed down to room temperature, can trigger other fission reactions if there's other uranium nearby or fissile materials. So this means that the way that it releases energy is that you set this up in a very careful way such that every, on average, every reaction that happens exactly releases enough neutrons and slows down that they actually make another reaction, exactly one. And what this means is that because each reaction releases a fixed amount of energy, you do this, and then in time, this looks like just a constant power output. So that's how our fission power plant works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so their control of the chain reactions is extremely difficult and extremely important for fission." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very important. And when you intentionally design it, that it creates more than one fission reaction per starting reaction, then it exponentiates away, which is what a nuclear weapon is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so how does an atomic weapon work? How does a hydrogen bomb work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Asking for a friend. Yeah, so at its heart, what you do is you very quickly put together enough of these materials that can undergo fission with room temperature neutrons, and you put them together fast enough that what happens is that this process can essentially grow mathematically like very fast. And so this releases large amounts of energy. So that's the underlying reason that it works. So you've heard of a fusion weapon. So this is interesting is that it is, but it's dislike fusion energy in the sense that what happens is that you're using fusion reactions to, but it's simply, it increases the gain actually of the weapon rather than, it's not a pure, at its heart, it's still a fission. weapon, you're just using fusion reactions as a sort of intermediate catalyst, basically, to get even more energy out of it. But it's not directly applicable to be used in an energy source." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it terrify you, just again, to step back at the philosophical, that humans have been able to use physics and engineering to create such powerful weapons?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't say terrify. I mean, we should be This is the progress of humanity. Every time that we've gotten access, you talk, you know, the day the universe changed. It was really changed when we got access to new kinds of energy sources. But every time you get access, and typically what this meant was you get access to more intense energy, right? And that's what that was. And so, the ability to move from burning wood to using coal to using gasoline and petroleum, and then finally to use this is that is that both the potency and the consequences are elevated around those things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just like you said, the way that fusion, nuclear fusion, would change the world, I don't think, unless we think really deeply, we'll be able to anticipate some of the things we can create. There's going to be a lot of amazing stuff, but then that amazing stuff is gonna enable more amazing stuff and more, unfortunately, or depending how you see it, more powerful weapons." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, but see, that's the thing. Fusion breaks that trend in the following way. So one of them, so fusion doesn't work on a chain reaction. There's no chain reaction, zero. So this means it cannot physically exponentiate away on you, because it works. And actually, this is why stars—by the way, we know this already—it's why stars are so stable, why most stars and suns are so stable. It's because they are regulated through their own temperature and their heating. Because what's happening is not that there's some probability of this exponentiating away, it's that the energy that's being released by fusion basically is keeping the fire hot. And these tend to be, you know, when it comes down to thermodynamics and things like this, there's a reason, for example, it's pretty easy to keep a constant temperature, like in an oven and things like this. It's the same thing in fusion. So this is actually one of the features that I would argue fusion breaks the breaks the trend of this is that it has more energy intensity than fission on paper, but it actually does not have the consequences of control and sort of rapid release of the energy because it's actually, the physical system just doesn't want to do that. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're going to have to look elsewhere for the weapons with which we fight World War III. Fair enough. So, What is plasma that you may or may not have mentioned? You mentioned ions and electrons and so on. So what is plasma? What is the role of plasma in nuclear fusion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So plasma is a phase of matter or a state of matter. So unfortunately, our schools don't, it's like, I'm not sure why this is the case, but all children learn the three phases of matter, right? So, and what does this mean? So we'll take water as an example. So if it's cold, it's ice, it's in a solid phase, right? And then if you heat it up, it's the temperature that typically sets the phase, although it's not only temperature. So you heat it up and you go to a liquid, and obviously it changes its physical properties because you can pour it and so forth, right? And then if you heat this up enough, it turns into a gas, and a gas behaves differently because there's a very sudden change in the density. Actually, that's what's happening. So it changes by about a factor of 10,000 in density from the liquid phase into when you make it into steam at atmospheric pressure. All very good. Except the problem is they forgot, like, what happens if you just keep elevating the temperature?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't want to give kids ideas. They're going to start experimenting and they're going to start heating up the gas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's good to start doing it anyway. So it turns out that once you get above, it's approximately 5 or 10,000 degrees Celsius, then you hit a new phase of matter. And actually, that's the phase of matter that is for pretty much all the temperatures that are above that as well too. And so what does that mean? So it actually changes phase, so it's a different state of matter. And the reason that it becomes a different state of matter is that it's hot enough that what happens is that the atoms that make up, remember, go back to Feynman, right? Everything's made up of these individual things, these atoms. But atoms can actually themselves be um which are which are made of nuclei which contain the positive particles in the neutrons and then the electrons which are very very light very much less mass than than the nucleus and that surround us this is what makes up an atom so a plasma is what happens when you start pulling away enough of those electrons that they're free from the ion. So all the atoms that make us up and this water and all that, the electrons are in tightly bound states and basically they're extremely stable. Once you're at about 5,000 or 10,000 degrees, you start pulling off the electrons and what this means is that now the medium that is there, its constituent particles mostly have net charge on them. So why does that matter? It's because now this means that the particles can interact through their electric charge. In some sense, they were when it was in the atom as well, too. But now that they're free particles, this means that it fundamentally changes the behavior. It doesn't behave like a gas. It doesn't behave like a solid or a liquid. It behaves like a plasma, right? And so why is it disappointing that we don't speak about this? It's because 99% of the universe is in the plasma state. It's called stars. And in fact, our own sun at the center of the sun is clearly a plasma. But actually the surface of the sun, which is around 5,500 Celsius, is also a plasma because it's hot enough that it's that. In fact, the things that you see, sometimes you see these pictures from the surface of the sun, amazing, like satellite photographs of like those big arms of things and of light coming off of the surface of the sun and solar flares, those are plasmas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are some interesting ways that this force state of matter is different than gas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's go to how a gas works, right? So the reason a gas, and it goes back to Feynman's brilliance in saying that this is the most important concept. The reason actually solid, liquid, and gas phases work is because the nature of the interaction between the atoms changes. And so in a gas, you can think of this as being this room and the things, although you can't see them, is that the molecules are, flying around, but then with some frequency, they basically bounce into each other. And when they bounce into each other, they exchange momentum and energy around on this. And so it turns out that the probability and the distances and the scattering of those of what they do, it's those interactions that set the – about how a gas behaves. So what do you mean by this? So for example, if I take an imaginary test particle of some kind, like I spray something into the air that's got a particular colour – in fact, you can do it in liquids as well, too. Like, how it gradually will disperse away from you, this is fundamentally set because of the way that those particles are bouncing into each other. The probabilities of those particles bouncing. Yeah, the rate that they go at and the distance that they go at and so forth. So this was figured out by Einstein and others at the beginning of the Brownian motion, all these kinds of things. These were set up at the beginning of the last century, and it was really like this great revelation. Wow, this is why matter behaves the way that it does. Like, wow. But it's really like – and also in liquids and in solids, like what really matters is how you're interacting with your nearest neighbour. So you think about that one, the gas particles are basically going around. Until they actually hit into each other, though, they don't really exchange information. And it's the same in a liquid. You're kind of beside each other, but you can kind of move around. In a solid, you're literally like stuck beside your neighbor. You can't move like you're moving. Plasmas are weird in the sense that it's not like that. And it's because the particles have electric charge, this means that they can push against each other without actually being in close proximity to each other. That's not an infinitely true statement, which if you go get it, it's a little bit more technical. But basically, this means that you can start having action or exchange of information at a distance. And that's in fact the definition of a plasma, that it says, these have a technical name, it's called a Coulomb collision, it just means that it's dictated by this force which is being pushed between the charged particles, is that the definition of a plasma is a medium in which the collective behavior is dominated by these collisions at a distance. So you can imagine then this starts to give you some strange behaviors, which I could quickly talk about. One of the most counterintuitive ones is as plasmas get more hot, as they get higher in temperature, then the collisions happen less frequently. Like what? That doesn't make any sense. When particles go faster, you think they would collide more often. But because the particles are interacting through their electric field, when they're going faster, they actually spend less time in the influential field of each other, and so they talk to each other less in an energy and momentum exchange point of view. It's just one of the counterintuitive aspects of plasmas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is probably very relevant for nuclear fusion. Yes, exactly. So if I can try to summarize what a nuclear fusion reactor is supposed to do. So you have, what, a couple of elements? What are usually the elements?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Usually deuterium and tritium, which are the heavy forms of hydrogen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hydrogen, you have those and you start heating it. And then as you start heating it, I forgot the temperature you said, but it becomes plasma. No, first it becomes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, first it becomes plasma. So it's a gas and then it turns into a plasma at about 10,000 degrees." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then so you have a bunch of electrons and ions flying around and then you keep heating the thing. And I guess as you heat the thing, the ions hit each other rarer and rarer. Yes. So, oh man, that's not fun. So you have to keep heating it such that you have to keep hitting it until the probability of them colliding becomes reasonably high. And also on top of that, and sorry to interrupt, you have to prevent them from hitting the walls of the reactor. Somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you asked about the definitions of the requirements for fusion. So the most famous one, or in some sense the most intuitive one, is the temperature. And the reason for that is that you can make many, many kinds of plasmas that have zero fusion going on in them. And the reason for this is that the average, you can make a plasma at around 10,000, in fact, if you come, by the way, you're welcome to come to our laboratory at the PSFC, I can show you a demonstration of a plasma that you can see with your eyes, and it's at about 10,000 degrees, and you can put your hand up beside it and all this, and it's like, and nothing, there's zero fusion going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have, sorry, what was the temperature of the plasma? About 10,000 degrees. You can stick your hand in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you can't stick your hand into it, but there's a glass tube. You can basically see this with your bare eye, yeah. And you can put your hand on the glass tube because it's- What's the color? Is it purple? It's purple, yeah. Blue and purple. It's blue and purple. It is kind of beautiful. Yeah, plasmas are actually quite astonishing sometimes in their beauty. Actually, one of the most amazing forms of plasma is lightning, by the way, which is an instantaneous form of plasma that exists on Earth but immediately goes away because everything else around it is at room temperature. Yes, I think. Yeah, so there's different requirements in this. So making a plasma takes about this. But at 10,000 degrees, even at a million degrees, there's almost no probability of the fusion reactions occurring. And this is because while the charged particles can hit into each other, if you go back to the very beginning of this, remember I said, oh, these charged particles have to get to within distances which are like this size of a nucleus because of the strong nuclear force. Well, unfortunately, as the particles get closer, the repulsion that comes from the charge, the Coulomb force, increases like the inverse distance squared. So as they get closer, they're pushing harder and harder apart. So then it gets a little bit more exotic, which maybe you'll like, though, that it turns out that people understood this at the beginning of the age after Rutherford discovered the nucleus. It's like, oh, yeah, it's like, how are we going to – how is this going to work, right? Because how do you get anything within these distances? It's like, inquire. Extraordinary energy, and it does, and in fact, when you look at those energies, they're very, very high. But it turns out quantum physics comes to the rescue because the particles aren't actually just particles, they're also waves. This is the point of quantum, right? You can treat them both as waves and as particles, and it turns out if they get in close enough proximity to each other, then the particle pops through basically this energy barrier through an effect called quantum tunneling, which is really just the transposition of the fact that it's a wave so that it has a finite probability of this. By the way, you talk about, like, do you have a hard time conceptualizing this? This is one of them. Quantum tunnel is one of them. Yeah, this is like throwing a ping pong ball at a piece of paper and then every 100 of them just magically show up on the other side of the paper without seemingly breaking the paper. I mean, to use a physical analogy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that phenomena is critical for the function of nuclear fusion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, for all kinds of fusion. So, this is the reason why stars can work as well too. Stars would have to be much, much hotter actually to be able to... In fact, it's not clear that they would actually ignite, in fact, without this effect. So we get to that. So this is why there's another requirement. So you must make a plasma, but you also must get it very hot in order for the reactions to have a significant probability to actually fuse. And it actually falls effectively almost to zero for lower temperatures as well, too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some nice equation that gets you to 50 million degrees, or like you said, practically speaking, 100 million." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a really simple equation. It's the ideal gas law, basically. In the end, you've got a certain number of these fusion particles in the plasma state. There's a certain number of particles. And if the confinement is perfect, if you put in a certain content of energy, then basically, eventually, they come up in a temperature, and they go up to high temperature. This turns out to be, by the way, extraordinarily small amounts of energy. And you go, what? It's like I'm getting something to like 100 million degrees. That's going to take the biggest flame burner that I've ever seen. No. And the reason for this is it goes back to the energy content of this. So yeah, you have to get it to high average energy, but there's very, very few particles. There's just low density. It's low density. How do you get it to be low density in a reactor? So the way that you do this is primarily, again, this is not exactly true in all kinds of fusion, but in the primary one that we work on, magnetic fusion, this is all happening in a hard vacuum. So it's like it's happening in outer space. So basically, you've gotten rid of all the other particles, except for these specialized fuel particles. So you add them one at a time? No, actually, it's even easier than that. You connect a gas valve, and you basically leak gas into it. In a controlled fashion. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, this is beautiful. It's a gas cylinder. How do you get it from hitting the walls?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So now you've touched on the other necessary requirements. So it turns out it's not just temperature that's required, you must also confine it. So what does this mean, confine it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's two types of confinement, as you mentioned." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You mentioned the magnetic one. Magnetic one, and there's one called inertial as well too. But the general principle actually has nothing to do with in particular with what the technology is that you use to confine it, it's because this goes back to the fact that the requirement in this is high temperature and thermal content. So it's like building a fire. And what this means is that if you, when you release the energy into this or apply heat to this, if it just instantly leaks out, it can never get hot, right? So, if you're familiar with this, it's like you've got something that you're trying to apply heat to, but you're just throwing the heat away very quickly. This is why we insulate homes, by the way, and things like this, right? It's like you don't want the heat that's coming into this room to just immediately leave because you'll just start consuming infinite amounts of heat to try to keep it hot. So in the end, this is one of the requirements and it actually has a name we call the energy confinement time. So this means if you release a certain amount of energy into this fuel, kind of how long you sit there and you look at your watch, how long does it take for this energy to like leave the system? So you could imagine that in this room that, you know, these heaters are putting energy into the air in this room and you waited for a day, but all the heat have gone to outside. If I open up the windows, oh, there that's energy confinement time. Okay. So it's the same concept as that. So this is an important one. So all fusion must have confinement. There's another more esoteric reason for this, which is that people often confuse temperature and energy. So what do I mean by that? So this is literally a temperature, which means that it is a system in which all the particles, every particle, has high kinetic energy and is actually in a fully relaxed state, namely that entropy has been maximized. I think it's a little bit more technical, but this means that basically it is a thermal system. So it's like the air in this room, it's like the water, it's the water in this. These all have temperatures, which means that there's a distribution of those energies because the particles have collided so much that it's a So this is distinguished from having high energy particles, like what we have in particle accelerators like CERN and so forth. Those are high kinetic energy, but it's not a temperature, so it actually doesn't count as confinement. So we go through all of those. You have temperature, and then the other requirement, not too surprising, is actually that there has to be enough density of the fuel. Enough, but not too much. Enough, but not too much, yes. And so, in the end, the way that there's a fancy name for it, it's called the Lawson Criterion, because it was formulated by a scientist in the United Kingdom about 1956 or 1957, and this was essentially the realization, oh, this is what it's going to take, regardless of the confinement method. these are, this is the basic, what it is actually, power balances just says, oh, there's a certain amount of heat coming in, which is coming from the fusion reaction itself, because the fusion reaction heats the fuel, versus how fast you would lose it. And it basically summarizes, it's summarized by those three parameters, which is fairly simple. So temperature, and then the reason we say 100 million degrees is because almost all the way in And for this kind of fusion, deuterium-tritium fusion, the minimum in the density and the confinement time product is at about 100 million. So you almost always design your device around that minimum, and then you try to get it contained well enough, and you try to get enough density. So that temperature thing sounds crazy, right? That's what we've actually achieved in the laboratory. Like our experiment here at MIT, when it ran at its optimum configuration, it was at 100 million degrees. but it wasn't actually, the product of the density in the confinement time wasn't sufficient that we were at a place that we were getting high net energy gain, but it was making fusion reactions. So this is the sequence that you go through. Make a plasma, then you get it hot enough, and when you get it hot enough, the fusion reactions start happening so rapidly that it's overcoming the rate at which it's leaking heat to the outside world, and at some point it just becomes like a star. Like a sun and our own sun and a star doesn't have anything plugged into it. It's just keeping itself hot through its own fusion reactions. In the end, that's really close to what a fusion power plant would look like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it visually look like? Does it look like, like you said, like purple plasma?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, actually it's invisible to the eye because it's so hot that it's basically emitting light in frequencies that we can't detect. It's invisible. In fact, light goes through it, visible light goes through it so easy that if you were to look at it, what you would see In our own particular configuration, what we make is in the end is a donut-shaped, it's a vacuum vessel to keep the air out of it. And when you turn on the plasma, it gets so hot that most of it just disappears in the visible spectrum. You can't see anything. And there's very, very cold plasma, which is between 10 and 100,000 degrees, which is out in the very periphery of it, which is kind of, so the very cold plasma is allowed to interact with the, and kind of has to interact with something eventually at the boundary of the vacuum vessel, and this kind of makes a little halo around it, and it glows this beautiful purple light, basically, and that's what we can sense in the human spectrum." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I remember reading on a subreddit called Shower Thoughts, which people should check out. It's just fascinating philosophical ideas that strike you while you're in the shower. And one of them was, it's lucky that fire, when it burns, communicates that it's hot using visible light. Otherwise, humans would be screwed. I don't know if there's a deep, profound truth to that, but nevertheless, I did find it on the Shower Thoughts subreddit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This goes off on a bit of, you're right, this is actually, it's interesting because, you know, as a scientist, you also think about evolutionary functions and how we got, like, why do we have the senses that we do? It's an interesting question, right? Like, why can bees see in the ultraviolet and we can't? Then you go, well, it's natural selection. For some reason, this wasn't really particularly important to us, right? Why can't we see in the infrared and other things can? It's like, hmm. It's a fascinating question, right? Obviously there's some advantage that you have there that isn't there, and even color distinguishing, right, of something safety-ease, whatever it would be. I'll actually go back to this because it's something that I tell all of my students when I'm teaching ionizing radiation and radiological safety. whatever you say, there's a cultural concern or that when people hear the word radiation, like, what does this mean? It literally just means light is what it means, right? But it's light in different parts of the spectrum, right? And so, it turns out, besides the visible light that we can see here, we are immersed and almost the totality of the electromagnetic spectrum. There is visible light, there's infrared light, there is microwaves going around us, that's how our cell phone works, you can't, it's way past our detection capability. But also higher energy ones, which have to do with ultraviolet light, how you get a sunburn, And even x-rays and things like this at small levels are continually being, like from the concrete in the walls of this hotel, there's x-rays hitting our body continuously. We can go down to the lab at MIT and bring out a detector and show you. Every single room will have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by our body you mean the 10 to the 28 atoms?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the 10 to the 28 atoms, and they're coming in and they're interacting with those things. And those, particularly the ones where the light is at higher average energy per light particle, those are the ones that can possibly have an effect on human health. So we have, it's interesting, humans and all animals have evolved on Earth where we're immersed in that all the time. There's a natural source of radiation all the time, yet we have zero ability to detect it, like zero." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and our ability, cognitive ability, to filter it all out and not give a damn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would probably overwhelm us, actually, if we could see all of it. But my main point goes back to your thing about fire and self-protection. If ionizing radiation was such a critical aspect of the health of organisms on Earth, we would almost certainly have evolved methods to detect it, and we have none." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The physical world that's all around us is incredible. You're blowing my mind, Dr. Dennis White. Okay, so you have experience with magnetic confinement. You have experience with inertial confinement. Most of your work has been in magnetic confinement. But let's sort of talk about the sexy recent thing for a bit of a time. There's been a breakthrough in the news. that laser-based inertial confinement was used by DOE's National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Can you explain this breakthrough that happened in December?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it goes to the set of criteria that I talked about before about getting high energy gain. So in the end, What are we after in fusion is that we basically assemble this plasma fuel in some way, and we provide it a starting amount of energy, think of lighting the fire, and what you want to do is get back like significant excess gain from the fact that the fusion is making more, is releasing the energy. So it's like the equivalent of like we want to have a match, a small match, light a fire, and then the fire keeps us hot. It's very much like that. So as I said, we've made many of the, and what do I mean by we? It's like the fusion community has pursued aspects of this through a variety of different confinement methodologies, is that the key part about what happens, what was the threshold we had never gotten over before was that if you only consider the plasma fuel, not the total engineering system, but just the plasma fuel itself, We had not gotten to the point yet where basically the size of the match was smaller than the amount of energy that we got from the fusion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a good term for when the output is greater than the input?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. There is, well, there's several special definitions of this. So, one of them is that if you, like in a fire, if you light a match and you have it there and it's an infinitesimal amount of energy compared to what you're getting out of the fire, we call this ignition, which makes sense, right? This is like what our own sun is as well too. So that was not ignition in that sense as well, too. So what we call this is scientific – the one that I just talked about, which is for some instance, when I get enough fusion energy released compared to the size of the match, we call this scientific break-even. Break-even. Break-even, and it's because you've gotten past the fact that this is unity now at this point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is fusion gain, or as I'm using the notation Q from the paper overview of the SPARC talkamak, using just the same kind of term?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, actually, so the technical term is Q, capital Q. Oh, so people actually use Q. We actually use capital Q, or sometimes it's called Q. So Q is taken. Q sub p or something like this. Okay, so this is – which means – what it means is that it's in the plasma. So all we're considering is the energy balance or gain that comes from the plasma itself. We're not considering the technologies which are around it which are providing the containment and so forth. So why the excitement? Well, because for one reason, it's a rather simple threshold to get over, to understand that you're getting more energy out from the fusion, even in a theoretical sense, than you were from the starting match." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you mean conceptually simple?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's conceptually simple, that you get past one, that everyone, like when you're less than one, that's much less interesting than getting past one. So there's a really big threshold to get past. But it really is a scientific threshold because what Qp actually denotes is the relative amount of self-heating that's happening in the plasma. So what I mean by this is that in the end, in these systems, what you want is something that, where the relative amount of heating, which is keeping the fuel hot, is dominated by, from the fusion reactions themselves. And so it becomes, it's sort of like thinking like a bonfire is a lot more interesting physically than just holding a blowtorch to a wet log. Right? There's a lot more dynamics, it's a lot more self-evolved and so forth, and what we're excited as scientists is that it's clear that in that experiment that they actually got to a point where the fusion reactions themselves were actually altering the state of the plasma. It's like, wow. I mean, we'd seen it in glimpses before in magnetic confinement at relatively small levels, but apparently, it seems like in this experiment, it's likely to be a dominant, dominated by self-heating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a very important, that's a very— So that makes it a self-sustaining type of reaction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's more self-sustaining, it's more self-referential system, in a sense, and it sort of self-evolves in a way. Again, it's not that it's going to evolve to a dangerous state, it's just that we want to see what happens when the fusion is the dominant heating source." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we'll talk about that, but there's also another element, which is the inertial confinement. Laser-based inertial confinement is kind of a little bit of an underdog. So a lot of the broad nuclear fission community has been focused on magnetic confinement. Can you explain... just how laser-based inertial confinement works. So it says 192 laser beams were aligned on a deuterium-tritium-DT target smaller than a pea. This is like... Okay, well, you know, it depends. Not all peas are made the same. But this is like throwing a perfect strike in baseball from a pitch. This is like a journalist wrote this, I think. This is like, oh no, it's not a journalist, it's DOE wrote this. Department of Energy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We try to use all these analogies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is like throwing a perfect strike in baseball from a pitcher's mount 350 miles away from the plate. There you go. Department of Energy. The United States Department of Energy wrote this. Can you explain what the lasers… What actually happens?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, there's usually mass confusion about this. So what's going on in this form of it? So the fuel is delivered in a discrete, the fusion fuel, the deuterium and tritium, is in a discrete spherical, it's more like a BB, let's call it a BB, so it's a small one, and all the fuel that you're going to try to burn is basically there, okay, and it's about that size. So how are you going to get, and it's at, literally, it's like at 20 degrees above absolute zero because the deuterium and tritium are kept in in a liquid and solid state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, wow, so the fuel is injected not as a gas, but as a solid?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's actually, and it's very, and in these particular experiments, they can introduce one of these targets once per day, approximately, something like that, because it's very, it's a kind of amazing technology, actually, that I know some of the people that worked on this back in the days. They actually make these things at a BB size of this frozen fuel, it's actually at cryogenic temperatures, and they're almost like smooth to the atom level. I mean, they're amazing pieces of technology. So what you do in the end is what you have is a spherical assembly of this fuel, like a ball, and what is the purpose of the lasers? The purpose of the lasers is to provide optical energy to the very outside of this And what happens is that energy is absorbed because it's in the solid phase of matter, so it's absorbed really in the surface. And then what happens is that when it's absorbed in something called the ablator, what does that mean? It means it goes instantly from the solid phase to the gas phase, so it becomes like a rocket engine. but you hit it like very uniformly. So, there's like rocket engines coming off the surface. Think of like an asteroid almost where there's like rockets coming off and all those things. So, what does that do? Well, what does a rocket do? It actually pushes, by Newton's laws, right, it pushes the other thing on the other side of it, equal and opposite reaction, it pushes it in. So what it does is that the lasers actually don't heat. This is what was confusing. People think the lasers, oh, we're going to get it to 100 million degrees. In fact, you want the exact opposite of this. What you want to do is get essentially a rocket going out like this, and then what happens is that the sphere, and this is happening in a billionth of a second or less, actually, that force so rapidly compresses the fuel that what happens is that you're squeezing down on it and And it's like, what was the... See, BB2, that's bad, actually. I should have started with a basketball. It goes from a basketball down to something like this in a billionth of a second. And when that happens, I mean, scale that in your mind. So when that happens, and this comes from almost from classical physics, although there's some quantum in it as well too, but basically if you can do this very uniformly and so-called adiabatically, like you're not actually heating the fuel, what happens is you get adiabatic compression such that the very center of this thing all of a sudden just spikes up in temperature because it's actually done so fast So why is it called inertial fusion? It's because you're doing this on such fast timescales that the inertia of the hot fuel basically is still finite, so it can't push itself apart before the fusion happens. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, wow. So how do you make it so fast?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is why you use lasers, because you're applying this energy in very, very short periods of time, like under a fraction of a billionth of a second. And then the force which is coming from this comes from the energy of the lasers, which is basically the rocket action which does the compression." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the force is the inward-facing force Is that increasing the temperature exponentially?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. You want to keep the fuel cold and just literally just ideally compress it and then in something which is at the very center of that compressed sphere, because you've compressed it so rapidly, the laws of physics basically require for it to increase in temperature. The effect is like, if you know the thing, so adiabatic cooling we're actually fairly familiar with. If you take a spray can, right, and you push the button, when it rapidly expands, it cools. This is the nature of a lot of cooling technology we use, actually. Well, the opposite is true, that if you would take all of those particles and jam them together very fast back in, they want to heat up. And that's what happens. And then what happens is you basically have this very cold, compressed set of fusion fuel, and at the center of this, it goes to this 100 million degrees Celsius. And so if it gets to that 100 million degrees Celsius, the fusion fuel starts to burn. And when that fusion fuel starts to burn, it wants to heat up the other cold fuel around it and it just basically propagates out so fast that what you would do, ideally, you would actually burn, in a fusion sense, most of the fuel that's in the pellet. So this was very exciting because what they had done was it's clear that they propagated this, they got this, what they call a hotspot, and in fact that this heating had propagated out into the fuel, and that's the science behind inertial fusion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the idea behind a reactor that's based on this kind of inertial confinement is that you would have a new BB every, like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "10 times a second or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's an incredible device that you implied that has to create one of those BBs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you have to make the BBs very fast. There's reports on this, but what does it mean? The starting point is, can you make this game? So this was a scientific achievement primarily. And the rest is just engineering. No, no, no, the rest is incredibly complicated engineering. Well, in fact, there's still physics hurdles to overcome, so where does this come from? And it's actually because if you want to make an energy source out of this, This had a gain of around 1.5, that namely the fusion energy was approximately, was 1.5 times the laser input energy. Okay, this is a fairly significant threshold. However, from the science of what I just told you, is that there's two fundamental efficiencies which come into it, which really come from physics, really. One of them is hydrodynamic efficiency. What I mean by this is that it's a rocket, so this just has a fundamental efficiency built into it, which comes out to orders of like 10%. So this means is that your ability to do work on the system is just limited by that, okay? And then the other one is the efficiency of laser systems themselves, which if their wall plug efficiency is 10%, you've done spectacularly well. In fact, the wall plug efficiency of the ones using that experiments are like more like 1%, right? So when you go through all of this, the approximate, you know, place that you're ordering this is for a fusion power plant would be a gain of 100, not 1.5. So you still, you know, and hopefully we see experiments that keep climbing up towards higher and higher gain. But then the whole fusion power plant is a totally different thing. So it's not one, it's not one BB and one laser pulse per day. It's like 10 times, five or 10 times per second. Like like that. Right. So you're doing it there. And then, then, then, and then comes the other aspect. So it's making the targets, delivering them, being able to repeatedly get them to burn. And then we haven't even talked about like, how do you then get the fusion energy out? Which is mainly because these things are basically micro implosions, which are occurring. So this energy is coming out to some medium on the outside that you've got to figure out how to extract the energy out of this thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you convert that energy to electricity?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in the end, you have to basically convert it into heat in some way. In the end, what fusion makes mostly is very energetic particles from the fusion reaction. So you have to slow those down in some way and then make heat out of it. So basically the conversion of the kinetic energy of the particles into heating some engineered material that's on the outside of this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's, from a physics perspective, is a somewhat solved problem, but from an engineering, it's still wide open." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Physics, I can show you all the equations that tell you about how it slows down and converts kinetic energy into heat. And then what that heat means, you can write out like an ideal thermal cycle, like a Carnot cycle. So the physics of that, yeah, great. The integrated engineering of this is a whole other thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll ask you to maybe talk about the difference between inertial and magnetic, but first we'll talk about magnetic, but let me just linger on this breakthrough. You know, it's nice to have exciting things, but in a deep human sense, there's no competition in science and engineering, or like you said, we're broad. First of all, we are humanity altogether, and you talk about this, it's a bunch of countries collaborating, it's really exciting. There's a nuclear fusion community broadly, but then there's also MIT. There's colors and logos, and it's exciting, and you have friends and colleagues here that work extremely hard and done some incredible stuff. Is there some sort of, how do you feel seeing somebody else get a breakthrough using a different technology? Is that exciting? Does the competitive fire get," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All of the above. I mean, I have – so just to wave the flag a little bit. So MIT was a central player in this accomplishment. Interesting, I would say it showed our two – some of our two best traits. So one of them was that the Like, how do you know that this happened? This measurement, right? So, one of the ways to do this is, if I told you, is that in the DT fusion, what it actually, the product that comes out is helium, what we call an alpha, but it's helium, and a free neutron, right? So, the neutron contains 80% of the energy released by the fusion reaction, and it also, because it lacks a charge, it basically tends to just escape and go flying out. So, this is what we would use eventually for That's mostly what fusion energy would be. So what my colleagues, my scientific colleagues at the Planetary Science and Fusion Center built were extraordinary measurement tools of being able to see the exact details of not only the number of neutrons that were coming out, but actually what energy that they're at. And by looking at that configuration, it reveals enormous—I'm not going to scoop them because they need to publish the paper—but it reveals enormous amounts of scientific information about what's happening in that process that I just described. So exciting. And I have colleagues there that have worked for 30 years on this, for that moment. Of course you're excited for that, right? And it's one of those – there is nothing – it's hard to describe to people who aren't – it's almost addicting to be a scientist when you get to be at the forefront of research of anything. When you see an actual discovery of some kind and you're looking at it, particularly when you're the person who did it, right? And you go, no human being has ever seen this or understood this. It's pretty thrilling, right? So even in proxy, it's incredibly thrilling to see this. It's not rivalry or jealousy. It's like, I can tell you already, fusion is really hard. So anything that keeps pushing the needle forward is a good thing. But we also have to be realistic about what it means to making a fusion energy system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's the fun, I mean, these are still the early steps, or maybe you could say the early leaps. So let's talk about the magnetic confinement. How does magnetic confinement work? What's a tokamak? Yeah, how does it all work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So go back to that. So why inertial confinement works on the same principle that a star works. So what is the confinement mechanism in the star is gravity. because its own inertia of something the size of the sun basically pushes literally a force by gravity against the centre. So the centre is very, very hot, 20 million degrees, and literally outside the sun it's essentially zero because it's a vacuum of space. How the hell does that do that? It does that by, and it's out of, like why doesn't it just leak all of its heat? It doesn't leak its heat because it all is held together by the fact that it can't escape because of its own gravity. So this is why the fusion happens in the center of the star. Like we think of the surface of the sun as being hot. That's the coldest part of the star. So if our own Sun, this is about 5,500 degrees, a beautiful symmetry, by the way. So how do we know all this? Because we can't, of course, see directly into the interior of the Sun, but by knowing the volume and the temperature of the surface of the Sun, you know exactly how much power it's putting out. And by this, you know that this is coming from fusion reactions occurring at exactly the same rate in the middle of the Sun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible, as a small tangent, to build an inertial confinement system like the Sun? Is it possible to create a Sun?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, of course, possible to make a Sun, although we don't have stars. But it is not impossible on Earth, because for the simple reason that it takes... The gravitational force is extremely weak, and so it takes something like the size of a star to make fusion occur in the center." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I didn't mean on Earth. I mean, if you had to build a second sun, how would you do it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can't. There's not enough hydrogen around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the limiting factor is just the hydrogen?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, the forces and energy that it takes to assemble that is just mind-boggling. All right, to be continued. Yeah, to be continued. So what are we doing it with? So in the one that I just described, it's like you say, so you have to replace this with some force which is better than that. And so what I mean by that is it's stronger than that. So when I talked about the laser fusion, this is coming from the force, which is enormous compared to gravity, like from the rocket action of pushing it together. So in magnetic confinement, We use another force of nature, which is the electromagnetic force. And that's very, it's orders and orders of magnitude stronger than the gravitational force. And the key force that matters here is that if you have a charged particle, that namely it's a particle that has an electric, net electric charge, and it's in the proximity of a magnetic field, then there is a force which is exerted on that particle. So it's called the Lorentz force for those who are keeping track. So that is the force that we use to replace physical containment. So this again, how do you hold something at 100 million degrees? It's impossible in a physical container. This is not like, you know, it's not this plastic bottle holding in this liquid or a gas chamber. What you're doing is you're using, you're immersing the fuel in a magnetic field that basically exerts a force at a distance. This comes back again to why plazas are so strange. It's the same thing here. And if it's immersed in this magnetic field, you're not actually physically touching it, but you're making a force go onto it. So that's the inherent feature of magnetic confinement. And then magnetic confinement devices are like a tokamak, are basically configurations which exploit the features of that magnetic containment. There's several features to it. One is that the stronger the strength of the magnetic field, the stronger the force. And for this reason is that if you increase the strength of magnetic fields, this means that the containment, because namely the force which you're pushing against it is more effective. And the other feature is that there is no force. So for those who remember magnetic fields, what are these things? They're also invisible. But, you know, if you think of a permanent magnets or your fridge magnet, there are field lines, which we actually designate as arrows, which are going around. You sometimes see this in school when you have the You know, the iron filings on a thing and you see the directions of the magnetic field lines. Or when you use a compass, right? So that's telling you north because we're living in an immersed magnetic field made by the earth, which is at very low intensity magnetic, but it's strong enough where we can actually see what direction is it. So this is the arrow that the magnetic field is pointing. It's always pointing north and for us. is that, so an interesting feature of this force is that there is no force along the direction of the magnetic field. There's only force in the directions orthogonal to the magnetic field. So this, by the way, is a huge deal in a whole other discipline of plasma physics, which is like the study of like our near atmosphere. So the study of aurora borealis, what's happening in the near atmosphere, what happens when solar flares hit the magnetic field. In fact, Remember I said fusion is the reason that life is responsible in the universe? Well, you could also argue so is magnetic confinement, because the charged particles which are being emitted from the galaxy and from our own star would be very, very damaging on Earth. So we get two layers of protection. One is the atmosphere itself, but the other one is the magnetic field which surrounds the Earth and basically traps these charged particles so they can't get away. It's the same deal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you create a strong magnetic field? With a giant magnet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Giant magnet, yeah. So it's basically true. Engineering is awesome. There's essentially two ways to create a magnet. So one of them is that we're familiar with like fridge magnets and so forth. These are so-called permanent magnets. And what it means is that within these, the atoms arrange in a particular way that it produces, the electrons basically arrange in a particular way that it produces a permanent magnetic field that is set by the material. So those tend, those have a fundamental limitation, how strong they can be. And they also tend to have this like circle or shape like this. So we don't use, we don't typically use those. So what we use are so-called electromagnets. And what is this? It's like, so the other way to make a magnetic field, also go back to your, you know, your, your, your elementary school physics or science class is that you take a, a nail and you wrap a copper wire around it and connect it to a battery. Then it can pick up iron filings. This is an electromagnet. At its simplest, what it is, it's an electric current which is going in a pattern around and around and around, and what this does is it produces a magnetic field which goes through it by the laws of electromagnetism. So that's how we make the magnetic field in these configurations. And the key there is that it's not limited by the magnetic property of the material. The magnetic field amplitude is set by the amount of the geometry of this thing and the amount of electric current that you're putting through. And the more electric current that you put through, the more magnetic field that you get. The closest one that people maybe see is – one of my favourite skits, actually, was Super Dave Osborne on – it's probably past you – it was a show called Bizarre. Super Dave Osborne, which is a great comedian called He was a stuntman, and one of his tricks was that he gets into a car, and then one of those things in the junkyard comes down and picks up the car and then puts it into the crusher. This is his stunt, which is pretty hilarious. Anyway, but that thing that picks him up, how does that work? That's actually not a permanent magnet, it's an electromagnet. And so by turning off and on the power supply, it turns off and on the magnetic field. So this means you can pick it up, and then when you switch it off, the magnetic field goes away and the car drops, okay? So that's what it looks like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of giant magnets, MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, CFS, built a very large, high-temperature, superconducting electromagnet that was ramped up to a field strength of 20 Tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. Because I enjoy this kind of thing, can you please tell me about this magnet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, sure. Oh, it's fun, yeah. There's a lot to parse there. So, we already explained an electromagnet, which in general is what you do is you take electric current and you force it to follow a pattern of some kind, typically like a circular pattern around and around and around and around. The more current and the more times it goes around, the stronger the magnetic field that you make. Okay. And as I pointed out, it's like really important in magnetic confinement because it is the force that's produced by that magnet. In fact, technically it goes like the magnetic field squared because it's a pressure which is actually being exerted on the plasma to keep it contained." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just so we know, for a magnetic confinement, what is usually the geometry of the magnet? What are we supposed to imagine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the geometry is typically what you do is you want to produce a magnetic field that loops back on itself. And the reason for this goes down to the nature of the force that I described. which is that there's no containment or force along the direction of the magnetic field. So here's a magnetic field. In fact, what it's— more technically or more graphically what it's doing is that when the plasma is, here's plasma particles here, here's a magnetic field, what it does is it forces all those, because of this Lorentz force, it makes all of those charged particles execute circular orbits around the magnetic field, and they go around like this, but they stream freely along the magnetic field line. So this is why the nature of the containment is that if you can get that circle smaller and smaller, it stays further away from Earth, temperature materials. That's why the confinement gets better. But the problem is that because it freestreams along, so we just have a long straight magnetic field, okay, it'll just keep leaking out the ends like really fast. So you get rid of the ends. So you basically loop it back around. So what these look like are typically donut-shaped, or more technically toroidal-shaped, but donut-shaped things where this collection of magnetic fields loops back on itself and it also, for reasons which are more complicated to explain, basically it also twists slowly around in this direction as well too. So that's what it looks like. That's what the plasma looks like, because that's what the fuel looks like. So then this means is that the electromagnets are configured in such a way that it produces the desired magnetic fields around this. How precise does this have to be? You were probably listening to our conversation with some of my colleagues yesterday. So it's actually, it depends on the configuration about how you're doing it. The configuration of the plasma, sorry. The configuration of the electromagnets and about how you're achieving this requirement. It's fairly precise, but it doesn't have to be, particularly in something like a tokamak, what we do is we produce planar coils, which means they're flat, and we situate them, so if you think of a circle like this, What does it produce if you put current through it? It produces a magnetic field which goes through the circle like this. So if you align many of them like this, this, this, this, there's things online you can go see the picture of. You keep arranging these around in a circle itself. This forces the magnetic field lines to basically just keep executing around like this. So you tend to align. That one tends to, well, it requires, good alignment, it's not like insane alignment because you're actually exploiting the symmetry of the situation to help it. There's another kind of configuration of this kind of magnetic confinement called a stellarator, which we have these names for historic reasons. Which is different than a tokamak. It's different than a tokamak, but it actually works on the same physical principle, that namely, in the end it produces a plasma which loops in magnetic fields, which loop back on themselves as well. But in that case, the totality, basically the totality of the confining magnetic field is produced by external three-dimensional magnets, so they're twisted. And it turns out the precision of those is more stringent, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So are tokamaks by far more popular for research and development currently than stellarators?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "of the concepts which are there, the tokamak is by far the most mature in terms of its breadth of performance and thinking about how it would be applied in a fusion energy system. And the history of this was that many, in fact, you asked, if we go back to the history of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the history of fusion is that people, scientists had started to work on this in the 1950s. It was all hush-hush and, you know, Cold War and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, they realized, holy cow, this is really hard. We actually don't really know what we're doing in this, because everything was at low temperatures. They couldn't get confinement. It was interesting. And then they declassified it. And this was one of the few places that the West and the Soviet Union actually collaborated on, was the science of this. Even during the Cold War? Even during the middle of the Cold War. And this actually perpetuates all the way to now, we can talk about the project that that is sort of captured in now. But, and the reason they declassified it was because, like, everything, like, kind of, like, sucked, basically, you know, about trying to make this confinement in high-temperature plasma. And then the Russians, then the Soviets, right, came along with this device called a tokamak, which is a Russian acronym, which basically means magnetic coils arranged in the shape of a donut. And they said, holy cow, like everyone was stuck at like a meager, like half a million degrees or half a million degrees, which is like infusion terms of zero, basically. And then they come along and they say, oh, we've actually achieved a temperature 20 times higher than everybody else. And it's actually started to make fusion reactions. And everyone just go, oh, you know, no way. It's just hype. It's like, there's no way because we've failed at this. It's a great story in the history of fusion is that then, but they insisted, said, no, look, you can see this from our data. It's like, this thing is really hot and it seems to be working. This is, you know, late 1960s. And there was a team that went from the United Kingdom's fusion development lab, and they brought this very fancy, amazing new technology called a laser. And they used this laser, and they shot the laser beam, like, through the plasma. And by looking at the scattered light that came from it, they go, basically, the scattered light gets more broadened in its spectrum if it gets hotter. So you could exactly tell the temperature of this, and even though you're not physically touching the plasma, it's like, holy cow, you're right, it is, like, it is 10 million degrees. And so this was one of those explosions of, like, everyone in the world then wanted to build a tokamak, because it was clearly, like, wow, this is, like, so far ahead of everything else that we tried before. So that actually has a part of the story to MIT and the Plough Science and Fusion Center was, why is there a strong fusion and a major fusion program at MIT? It was because we were host to the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, which is also the National High Field Magnet Laboratory. Well, you can see where this goes, right? We're kind of telling the stories backwards almost, but the advent of a tokamak, along with the fact that you could make very strong magnetic fields with the technology that had been developed at that laboratory, that was the origins of sort of pushing together the physics of the plasma containment and the magnet technology and put them together. in a way that I would say is, you know, a very typical MIT success story, right? We don't do just pure science or pure technology, we sort of set up this intersection between them. And there were several pioneers of people at MIT, like Bruno Coppi, who's a professor in the physics department, and Ron Parker, who is a professor in electrical engineering and nuclear engineering. It's like even the makeup of the people, right, has got this blends of science and engineering in them. And that actually was the origin of the Plough Science and Fusion Center, was doing those things. So anyway, so back to this. So yes, tokamaks have achieved the highest in magnetic fusion by far, like the best amounts of these conditions that I talked about, and in fact, pushed right up to the point where they were near Qp of 1. They just didn't quite get over 1." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can we actually just linger on the collaboration across different nations? Just maybe looking at the philosophical aspect of this. Even in the Cold War, there's something hopeful to me besides the energy that these giant international projects are a really powerful way to ease some of the geopolitical tension, even military conflict across nations. There's a war in Ukraine. and Russia, there's a brewing tension and conflict with China. Just the world is still seeking military conflict, cold or hot. What can you say about sort of the lessons of the 20th century and these giant projects and their ability to ease some of this tension?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a great question. So, as I said, there was a reason, because it was so hard, that was one of the reasons they declassified it. And actually, they started working together in some sense on it as well, too. And I think it was really, there was you know, a heuristic or altruistic aspect to this. It's like, this is something that could change, you know, the future of humanity and its nature and its relationship with energy. Isn't this something that we should work on together? And that went along in those ones, and particularly that any kind of place where you can actually have an open exchange of people who are sort of at the intellectual frontiers of your society, this is a good thing, right? being able to collaborate. I mean, I have had an amazing career. I've worked with people from – it's like hard to throw a dart at a country on the map and not hit a country of people that I've been able to work with. How amazing is that? And even just getting small numbers of people to bridge the cultural and societal divides is a very important thing. Even when it's a very teeny fraction of the overall populations, it can be held up as an example of that. But it's interesting that if you look at then that continued collaboration, which continues to this day, is that this actually played a major role, in fact, in East-West relations, or Soviet-West relations. is that back in the Reagan-Gorbachev days, which of course were interesting in themselves of all kinds of changes happening on both sides, but still like a desire to push down the stockpile of nuclear weapons and all that. Within that context, there was a fairly significant historic event that at one of the Reagan-Gorbachev summits, is that they didn't get there. They couldn't figure out how to bargain to the point of some part of the tree they can't remember the details of anymore. But they needed some kind of a symbol, almost, to say, but we're still going to keep working towards something that's important for all of us. What did they pick? A fusion project. And that was in the mid-1980s, and actually then after – so they basically signed an agreement that they would move forward to like literally collaborate on a project whose idea would be to show large net energy gain in fusions commercial viability and work together on that. And very soon after that, Japan joined, as did the European Union. And now that project, it evolved over a long period of time and had some interesting political ramifications to it, but in the end, this actually also had South Korea, India, and China join as well, too. So you're talking about a major fraction of — and now Russia, of course, instead of the Soviet Union. And actually that coalition is holding together despite the obvious political turmoil that's going around on all those things. And that's a project called ITER, which is under construction in the south of France right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually, before we turn to the giant magnet and maybe even talk about Spark and the stuff going, the all amazing stuff going on at MIT, what is ITER? What is this international nuclear fusion megaproject being built in the south of France?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So its scientific purpose is a worthy one that it's essentially, in any fusion device, the thing that you want to see is more and more relative amounts of self-heating. And this is something that had not been seen. Although we had made fusion reactions and we'd seen small amounts of the self-heating, we never got to a dominant—this actually goes to this QP business, okay? The goal of ITER and it shifted around a little bit historically, but fairly quickly became, we want to get to a large amount of self-heating. So this is why it has, its primary feature is to get to QP of around 10, and through this, this is a way to study this plasma that has more higher levels of self-determination around on it. But it also has another feature, which was, let's produce fusion power at a relevant scale. And actually they're linked together, which actually makes sense if you think about it, is that because the fusion power is the heating source itself, this means that they're linked together. And so ITER is projected to make about 500 million watts of fusion power. So this is a significant amount, like this is what you would use for powering cities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not just the research, it is the development of really trying to achieve scale here, so self-heating and scale." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yes. So this meant then, too, is the development of an industrial base that can actually produce the technologies like the electromagnets and so forth, and to do it with – it is a tokamak, it is one of these, yes. But very interesting, it also revealed limitations of this as well, too. Like what? Well, it's interesting is that it is clearly a – on paper and in fact in practice as well too, the world – and very different political systems and you consider at least geopolitical or economic rivals or whatever you want to use. Like working towards a common cause and one that we all think is worthy is very – like, okay, that's very satisfying. But it's also interesting to see the limitations of this. It's because, well, you've got seven, you know, chefs in the kitchen. So what has this meant in terms of the speed of the project and the ability to govern it and so forth? It's just been a challenge, honestly, around this. And this is, I mean, it's very hard technically what's occurring, but when you also introduce such levels of, I mean, this isn't just me saying it, there's like GAO reports from the US government and so forth. It's hard to like steer all of this around. And what that's tended to do is make it, it's not the fastest decision-making process. You know, my own personal view of it was, it was interesting because you asked, you said about the magnet and commonwealth fusion systems. It was, I worked most of my career on Eater, because when I came into the field in the early 1990s, when I completed my PhD and started to work, this was one of the most, like, you can't imagine being more excited about something. Like, we're going to change the world with this project. We're going to do these things. And we just, like, poured, like, an entire generation, and afterwards as well, too, just poured their imagination and their creativity about making this thing work. Very good. But also at some point, though, when it got to being another five years of delay or a decade of delay, you start asking yourself, well, is this what I want to do? Am I going to wait for this? So it was a part of me starting to ask questions with my students, I was like, Is there another way that we can get to this extremely worthwhile goal that maybe it's not that pathway? And the other part that was clearly frustrating to me, because I'm an advocate of fusion. You asked me about, was I, you know, I was like, well, it's laser fusion or inertial fusion or magnetic fusion. I just want fusion energy, okay? Because I think it's so important to the world is that, but the other thing, if that's the case, then why do we have only one attempt at it on the entire planet, which was ITERF? It's like, that makes no sense to me, right? We should have multiple attempts at this with different levels of whatever you wanna think about it, technical, schedule, scientific risk, which are incorporated in them, and that's gonna give us a better chance of actually getting to the goal line." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With that spirit, you're leading MIT's effort to design SPARC, a compact, high-field, DT burning tokamak. How does it work? What is it? What's the motivation? What's the design? What are the ideas behind it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. At its heart, it's exactly the same concept as ITER. So it's basically a configuration of electromagnets. It's arranged in the shape of a donut. And within that, we would do the same thing that happens in all the other tokamaks, and including in ITER and in this one, is that namely, you put in gas, make it into a plasma, you heat it up, it gets to about 100 million degrees. The differentiator in SPARC is that we use the actual deuterium-tritium fuel, and because of the access to very high magnetic fields, it's in a very compact space. It's very, very small. What do I mean by small? So it's 40 times smaller in volume than ITER, but it uses exactly the same physical principles. So this comes from the high magnetic field. So in the end, why does this matter? What it does is it does those things. And it should get to the point where it's producing over 100 million watts of fusion power. But remember, it's 40 times smaller. So ITER was 500 megawatts. Technically, our design is around 150 megawatts, so it's only about a factor of three difference, despite being 40 times smaller. And we see Qp large, order of 10 or something like this, at that state is very important scientifically because this basically matches what ITER is looking to do. The plasma is dominated by its own heating. It's very, very important. And it does that for about 10 seconds. And the reason it's for 10 seconds is that in terms of that, that basically allows everything to settle in terms of the fusion in the plasma equilibrium. Everything is nice and settled. So, you know, you have seen the physical state at which you would expect a power plant to operate basically for, for magnetic fusion, like, wow. Right. But it's more than that. And it's more than that. It's because about who's building it and why and how it's being financed. So that scientific pathway was made possible by the fact that we had access to a next generation of magnet technology. So to explain this real quick, why do we call it, you said it in the words, a superconducting magnet. What does this mean? Superconducting magnet means that the materials which are in the electromagnet have no electrical resistance. Therefore, when the electric current is put into it, the current goes around unimpeded. So it could basically keep going around and around, you know, technically for infinity, or for eternity. And what that means is that when you energize these large electromagnets, they're using basically zero electrical power to maintain them. Whereas if you would do this in a normal wire, like copper, you basically make an enormous toaster oven that's consuming enormous amounts of power and getting hot, which is a problem. That was the technical breakthrough that was realized by myself and at the time my students and postdocs and colleagues at MIT was that we saw the advent of this new, this new superconducting material which would allow us to access much higher magnetic fields. It's basically a next generation of the technology and it was quite disruptive to fusion, but namely what it would allow that if we could, if we could get to this point where we can make the round 20 Tesla, we knew by the rules of tokamaks that this is going to be, is going to allow us to vastly shrink like the sizes of these devices. So it wouldn't take Um, although, although it's a worthy goal, it wouldn't take a seven nation international, you know, treaty basically to build it. You could build it with a company in a university." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So same kind of design, but now using the superconducting magnets." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And if, in fact, if you look at it, it's like it's, if you just expand the size of it, they're like, they look almost identical to each other because it's based on the, and actually that comes for a reason, by the way, is that it also looks like a bigger version of the tokamak that we ran at MIT for 20 years, where we established the scientific benefits, in fact, of these higher magnetic fields. So that's the pathway that we're on. So what does this mean? The context is different because it's primarily being made by a private sector company spun out of MIT because the way that it raised money and the purpose of the entity which is there is to make commercial fusion power plants, not just to make a scientific experiment. This is actually why we have That's why we have a partnership, right? Is that our purpose at MIT is not to commercialize directly, but boy, do we want to advance the technology and the science that comes along this, and that's the reason we're sort of doing it together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. So what's interesting to say about financing? And this seems like, from a scientific perspective, maybe not an interesting topic, but it's perhaps an extremely interesting topic. I mean, you can just look at the tension between SpaceX and NASA, for example. It's just clear that there's different financing mechanisms that can actually significantly accelerate the development of science and engineering." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's great that you brought that up. We use several historic analogs, and one of them is around SpaceX, which is an appropriate one because space, you know, putting things into orbit has a minimum size to it and integrated technological complexity and budget and things like this. So, you know, our point when we were, like, talking about starting, like, a fusion commercialization, you know, company, people look at you like, like, isn't this still really just a science experiment, you know? But one of the things that we pointed to was SpaceX to say, well, tell me, like, 25 years ago, how many people would have voted that, you know, the leading entity on the planet to put things into orbit is a private company. People would have thought you were not so, right? It's like, And what is interesting about SpaceX is that it proved it's more than actually just financing. It's really the purpose of the organization. So the purpose of a – and I'm not against public finance or anything like that, but the purpose of a public entity like NASA correctly speaks to the political because the cost comes from the political assembly that is there, and I guess from us eventually as well too, but its purpose wasn't about making a commercial product. It's about fundamental discovery and so forth, which is all really great. It's like, why did SpaceX It's interesting because why did SpaceX succeed so well is because the idea was, it's like the focus that comes in the idea that you're going to relentlessly reduce cost and increase efficiency is a drive that comes from the commercial aspect of it, right? And this also then changes the people in the teams which are doing it as well too, and in fact trickles throughout the whole thing because the purpose isn't – while you're advancing things, like it's really good that we can put things in orbit a lot more cheaply, like it advances science, which is an interesting synergy, right? And it's the same thing that we think is going to happen in fusion, that namely, this is a bootstrap effect that actually, that when you start to push yourself to think about near-term commercialization, it allows the science to get in hand faster, which then allows the commercialization to go faster and up we go. By the way, we've seen this also in another, again, you have to watch out with analogies because they can go so far, but like biotech. is another one, like you look at the Human Genome Project, which was, it's sort of like, to me, that's like mapping the human genome is like that we can make net energy from fusion. Like it's one of those, like in your drawer that you go, this is a significant achievement by humanity, right, in this century. And there's the Human Genome Project, fully government funded. It's going to take 20, 25 years because we basically know the technology. We're just going to be really diligent, keep going, da, da, da. And then all of a sudden what comes along? Disruptive technology, right? You can sequence, you know, shotgun sequencing and computer, you know, recognition patterns and basically, oh, I can do this a hundred times faster. Like, wow. Right. So, so that's really the, uh, you know, to me that the story about why we started, why we launched Commonwealth Fusion Systems was more than just about another source of funding, which it is a different source of funding because it comes, it's also a different purpose, which is very important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's also something about a mechanism that creates culture. So giving power to a young student, ambitious student, to have a tremendous impact on the progress of nuclear fusion creates a culture that actually makes progress more aggressively. Like you said, when seven nations collaborate, it gives more incentive to the bureaucracy to slow things down, to kind of have, let's first have a discussion, and certainly don't give voice to the young, ambitious minds that are really pushing stuff forward. And there's something about the private sector that rewards, encourages, inspires young minds to say, in the most beautiful of ways, F you to the, It is a little... To the boss." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not to say, like, we'll make it faster, we'll make it simpler, we'll make it better, we'll make it cheaper." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And sometimes that brashness doesn't bear out, you know, that's an aspect that you just take a different risk profile as well, too. But you're right, it's this, you know, of the... I mean, it was interesting, our own trajectory at the Fusion Center was Like, we were pushed into this place by necessity as well, too, because I told you we had operated for a long time a tokamak on the MIT campus, achieved these world records, like 100 million degree plasma, and so I was like, wow, this is fantastic. But somewhat ironically, I have to say, is that it was like, oh, but this isn't the future of fusion anymore. We're just going to stop with small projects because it's too small, right? So we need to really move on to these much bigger projects because that's really the future of fusion. And so it was defunded, and this basically put at risk, like, we were going to essentially lose MIT in the ecosystem, really, of Fusion, both from the research, but also, clearly, important from the educational part of it. So we, you know, we pushed back against this, we got a lifeline, we were able to go, and it was in this time scale that we basically came up with this idea. It's like, we should do this. And in the end, it was, All of those, the people who were in the C-level of the company, were all literally students who got caught in that. They were PhD students at the time. So you talk about enabling another generation, it's like, yeah, there you go, right? So Spark gave... A lifeline, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A lifeline, gave fuel to the future set at MIT that it continues." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's way more than that. It wasn't just about surviving for the sake of surviving. It was like, In the end, for me, it became like this, I remember the moment, we talk about these moments as a scientist and we were just like, we were working so hard about figuring out like, does this really, will this really work? Like, and it's complex. Like, does the magnet work? Does the interaction with the plasma work? Does all these things work? And it was just a grind, push, push, push, push. And I remember the moment because I was sitting, in my office in Brookline, and I read, and I was in, I don't know, whatever, the 20th or 40th slide or something into it, and it was sort of that moment, like it just came together, and I couldn't even sit down, because my wife was like, why are you walking around the apartment like this? I said, it's going to work. Like, it's going to work. Like, that moment of realization is kind of amazing, but it also brings the responsibility of making it work. Yeah, how do you make it work?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mean like that magic realization that you can have this modern magnet technology and you can actually, like, why do we need to work with it or we can do it here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting that Eater is – one of the reasons that we started with a group of six of us at MIT, and then once we got some funding through the establishment of the company, it became slightly larger. But in the end, we had a rather small team. This was a team of – an order of 20 to 25 people designed Spark in about two years, right? How does that happen? Well, we're clever, but you have to give ITER its due here as well, too. Again, this is an aspect always of the bootstrap up, like I go back to the human genome project. So modern-day genomics would not be possible without the underlying basis that came from setting that up. It had to be there. It had to be a curiosity-driven public program. It's the same with ITER, but because we had the tools that were there to understand ITER, we also had the tools to understand SPARC. So we parlayed those in an extremely powerful way to be able to tell us about what was going to happen. So these things are never simple, right? It's like people look at this, go, oh, this means we should, like, should we really have a public-based program about fusion or should we have it all in the private? It's like, no, the answer is neither way, because in all these complex technologies, you have to keep pushing on all the fronts to actually get it there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the natural question when people hear breakthrough with the inertial confinement, with the magnetic confinement is, so when will we have commercial reactors, power plants that are actually producing electricity? What's your sense looking out into the future? When do you think you can envision a future where we have actual electricity coming from nuclear fusion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "partly driven by us, but in other places as well, too. So there's the advent of what's so different now than three or four years ago, like we launched around four years ago. What's so different now is the advent of a very nascent but seemingly robust commercial fusion endeavor. So it's not just Commonwealth Fusion Systems, there's something like 20-plus companies. There's a sector now. There's a sector. They actually have something called the Fusion Industry Association, which if your viewers want to go see this, this describes the different – and they've got this plethora of approaches. I haven't even described all the approaches, I've basically described the mainline approaches. And they're all at varying degrees of technical and scientific maturity with very huge balances between them. But what they share is that because they're going out and getting funding from the private sector, is that their stated goals are about getting Fusion into place so that both it meets the investors' demands, which are interesting, right, and the timescales of that, but also it's like, well, there's going to – and why? It's because it's easy. There's this enormous push. driver about getting carbon-free energy sources out into the market, and whoever figures those out is going to be both very – it's going to be very important geopolitically, but also economically as well, too. So it's a different kind of bet, I guess, or a different kind of gamble that you're taking with fusion, but it's so disruptive that it's like there's essentially a class of investors and teams that are ready to go after it as well too. So what do they share in this? They typically share getting after fusion on a time scale so that could it have any relevance towards climate change, battling climate change. And I would say, this is difficult, but it's fairly easy because it's math. So what you do is you actually go to some target, like 2050 or 2060, something like this, and say, I want to be blank percent of the world's market of electricity or something like that. And we know historically what it takes to evolve and distribute these kinds of technologies, because every technology takes some period of time. It's a so-called S-curve, basically. Everything follows a logarithmic curve, exponential type curve. It's a straight line, a log plot. And, um, like you look at wind, solar fission, they all follow the same thing. So it's easy. You take that curve and you go that slope and you work backwards and you go, if you don't start in the early 20 thirties, like. It's not going to have a, it's not going to have a significant impact by that time. So all of them share this idea. And in fact, it's not just the companies. Now, the U S federal government has a program that was started last year that said we should be looking to try to get like the first, and what do we mean by like, what does it mean to start that you've got something that's putting electricity on the grid, a pilot, what we call it. And if that can get started, like, in the early 2030s, you know, the idea of ramping it up, you know, makes sense. That's math, right? So that's the ambition. Then the question is – and actually, this is different, because the government program – and they vary around in this. So, for example, the United Kingdom's government idea was to get the first one on by 2040. And China has ambitions probably middle 2030s or maybe a little bit later. And Europe, you know, continental Europe is – it's a little bit – I'm not exactly sure where it is, but it's like later. It's like 2050 or 2060 because it's mostly linked to the EDIR timeline as well too. The fusion companies, which makes sense, it's like, of course they've got the most aggressive timelines. It's like, we're going to map the human genome faster as well, too, right? So it's interesting about where we are. And I think, you know, we're not all the way there, but my intuition tells me we're probably going to have a couple of cracks at it, actually, on that timeline. So this is where we have to be careful, though. You say commercial fusion. What does that mean? Commercial fusion to me means that you actually have a known quantity about what it costs, what it costs to build and what it costs to operate, the reliability of putting energy on the grid. That's commercial fusion. It's like, so it turns out that that's not necessarily exactly the first fusion devices that put electricity on the grid. Cause you gotta, there's a learning curve to get like better and better at it, but that's probably, I would suspect the biggest hurdle is to get to the first one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the work I've done, the work I continue to do with autonomous vehicles and semi-autonomous vehicles. There's an interesting parallel there where a bunch of companies announced a deadline for themselves in 2020, 2021, 22, and only a small subset of those companies have actually really pushed that forward. There's Google with Waymo, or Alphabet rather, and then there's Tesla with semi-autonomous driving in their autopilot, full self-driving mode. And those are different approaches. So Tesla is achieving much, much higher scale, but the sort of the quality of the drive is semi-autonomous, right? I don't know if there's a metaphor, an analogy here. And then there's Waymo that's focusing on very specific cities, but achieving real full autonomy with actual passengers, but the scale is much smaller. So I wonder, like, just like you said, there'll be these kinds of similar kind of really hard pushes" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. So, actually, this is why I'm encouraged about fusion. Fusion's still hard, let's let everyone be clear, because the science underneath it of achieving the right conditions for the plasma basically is a yardstick that you have to put up against all of them. What's encouraging that I see in this, and it's actually what happens when you sort of let loose the creativity of this, is Maybe I'll go back to first principles. So fusion is also a fairly strange – so if you think about building a coal – like burning wood and coal and gas is actually not that much different from each other because they're kind of about the same physical conditions and you get the fuel and you light it and da-da. Fusion is very – remember I told you that there's this condition of the temperature, which is kind of universal. But if you take the density of the fuel between magnetic fusion and inertial fusion, they're different by about a factor of 10 billion. And the density of the fuel really matters. And actually, this means energy confinement time is also different by a factor of 10 billion as well, too, because it's the product of those two. So one's really dense and short-lived, and the other one's really long-lived and actually under-dense as well, too. So what that means is that the way to get the underlying physical state is so different among these different approaches, what it lends itself to is, does this mean that eventual commercial products will actually fill different needs in the energy system? So it sort of goes to your comment about I have to suspect this because anything that is high tech and is like a really important thing in our economy tends to never find its way as one, only one manifestation. Like look at transportation as well too. We have scooters, Vespas, you know, overland trucks, cars, electric cars. Of course we have these because they meet different demands in it. So what's interesting, you know, that I find fascinating now is that we have infusion, it's going to look like that, that probably there's the, while the near-term focus is on electricity production, there might even be different kinds of markets that actually make sense in some places less than others. It comes to trade-offs because we haven't really talked about the engineering yet, but engineering really matters like to the, to the operation of the device. And so it could be that I suspect what we'll end up with is several different configurations which have different features, which are trade-offs, basically, in the energy market." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you see as the major engineering or general hurdles that are in the way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the first one is just the cost of building a single unit. So fusion has – and it's actually interesting, you talked about the different models that you have. So fusion has – one of its interesting limitations is that it's very hard – it almost at some point becomes physically impossible to actually make small power units. Like a kilowatt, a thousand watts, you know, which is like a personal home, like, you know, this is about a thousand watts, or your personal use of energy, of electricity is about like a thousand watts. This is basically impossible for a single, you know, unit to do this. Um, so like, you're not going to have a fusion like power plant, like is your furnace or your electric heater in your home. And the reason for this comes from the fact that fusion relies on it being, it's not just that it's very hot. It says that the fusion power is the heating source to keep it hot. So if, if you, if you go too small, it basically just cannot keep it hot. That's it. So it's interesting is that this, so this is one of the hard parts. So this means that the individual units, you know, and it's, it, it varies from concept to concept, but the, the national academies report that came out last year sort of put the, the benchmark as being like probably the minimum size looks like around 50 million Watts of electricity, which is like enough for like a meeting, like a small to, you know, mid-sized city actually. So that's sort of like a scale challenge. And in fact, it's one of the reasons why in Commonwealth and in other private sector ones, they try to push this down, actually, of trying to get to these smaller units, just because it reduces the cost of it. Then probably, obviously, I would say it's an obvious one, like achieving the fusion state itself and high gain. is a hard one, what we already talked about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What kind of hurdle, what kind of challenge is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's achieving the right temperature, density, and energy confinement time in the fuel itself, in the plasma itself. And so some of the configurations which are being chosen have quite a ways to go, in fact, of seeing those. But what their, their consideration is. Oh yes. But by our particular configuration, the engineering simplicity confers like an economic advantage, even if we're behind in a, in sort of an assigned sense. Okay. Which is fine. That's the, there's also what you get when you get an explosion in the private sector, you basically are distributing risks in different ways. Right. Which makes sense. All of that good. So what I would say is that the next hurdle to really overcome is about making that electricity. So we need to see a unit or several units using fusion in some way to put a meaningful amount of energy on the grid because this starts giving us real answers. as to, like, what this is going to look like. The full end-to-end process. The full end-to-end thing. So Commonwealth's goal is that — I'll just comment to Commonwealth because I'll take some, you know, I guess some credit for this — is that the origins of Commonwealth were, in fact, in examining that. Like we could see this new technology coming forward, this new superconducting material. And the origins of our thought process were really around designing, effectively, the pilot plant or the commercial unit. It's called ARC, which is actually the step forward after SPARC. And that was the origins of it. So all the things that were other parts of the plan, like SPARC and the magnet, were actually all informed totally by building something that's going to put net electricity on the grid. And the timing of that, we still hope, is actually the early 2030s." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, spark is the design of the Takamak, and arc is the actual full antenna thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is like a thing that actually puts the energy on the grid. So, spark is named intentionally that it's on for a short period of time, and it doesn't have a – it's the spark of the fusion revolution or something like that, I guess we could call it. Yeah, so those are sort of the programmatic challenges of doing that. You talked about SpaceX, so what has evolved even in the last year or so was, in fact, in March of 2022, the White House announced that it was going to start a program that kind of looks like a SpaceX analogy, that namely, wow, We've got these things in the private sector. We should leverage the private sector and the advantages of what they obtain, but also with the things like this is going to be hard and it's going to take quite a bit of financing. So why don't we set up a program where we don't really get in the way of the private sector fusion companies, but we help them finance these difficult things, which is how SpaceX basically became successful through the COTS program. Fantastic. Right. And that's evolving as well too. The fusion ecosystem is almost unrecognizable from where it was like five years ago around those things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How important is it for the heads of the companies that are working on nuclear fusion to have a Twitter account and to be quite, you said you don't use Twitter very much. I don't use Twitter. I mean, there is some element to, and I don't think this should be discounted, whatever you think about figures like Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin or Elon Musk with SpaceX. a science communication, to put it in nice terms, that's kind of required to really educate the public and get everybody excited and sell the sexiness of it. I mean, just even the videos of SpaceX, just being able to kind of get everybody excited about going out to space once again. I mean, there's all kinds of different ways of doing that, but I mean, I guess most of the companies do well, you know, is to advertise themselves, to really sell themselves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, yeah. Well, actually, like, I feel like one of the reasons on this podcast, and so, like, I don't have an official role in the company. And one of the reasons for this was also that it's interesting because when you come from, like, you're running a company, it makes sense that they're promoting their own product and their own vision, which totally makes sense. But there's also a very important role for academics have knowledge about what's going on but are sufficiently distant from it that they're not fully only self-motivated just by their own projects or so forth. And for me, this is – I mean, we see particularly the problems of the distrust in technology, and then honestly, in the scientific community as well, too. It will be But one of the greatest tragedies, I would say, that if we go through all of this and almost pull off what looks like a miracle, like technologic and scientific-wise, which is to make a fusion power plant, and then nobody wants to use it because they feel that they don't trust the people who are doing it or the technology. So we have to get so far out ahead of this. So I give lots of public lectures or things like this of accessing a larger range of people. We're not trying to hide anything. You can come and see, you know, come do tours of our laboratory. In fact, I want to set those up virtually as well too. You might look at our Plasma Science and Fusion Centre YouTube channel. So we are reaching out through those media and it's really important that we do those things. But it's also then realizing, setting up the realistic expectations of what we need to do. You know, we're not there. Like, we don't have commercial fusion devices yet. And you ask, like, what are the challenges? I'm not going to get into any deep technical questions about what the challenges are, but the pathway not just to make fusion work technically, but to make it economically competitive and viable so that it's actually used out in the private sector is a non-trivial task. And it's because of the newness of it. Like, we're simultaneously trying to evolve the technology and make it economically viable at the same time. Those are two difficult coupled tasks. So my own research and my own drive right now is that fantastic Commonwealth Fusion Systems is set up. We have a commercialization unit of that particular kind, which is going to drive forward a token MAC. In fact, I was just There's discussions or there's dialogues going on around the world with other kinds of ones, like stellarators, which prefer different kinds of challenges and economic advantages. But what we have to—I know what we have to have. What we have to have is a new generation of integrated scientists, technologists, and engineers that understand, like, how—what needs to get done to get all the way to the goal line. Because we don't have them now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like a multidisciplinary team?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. What's required?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, you've spoken about, you said that fusion is, quote, the most multidisciplinary field you can imagine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is that? What are the differences?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because most of our discussion that we've had so far is really, like, a physics discussion, really, so don't neglect physics at the origin of this. But already we touched on plasma physics and nuclear physics, which are basically two somewhat overlapped but independent disciplines. Then when it comes to the engineering, it's almost everything. So why is this? Well, let's build an electromagnet together, okay? What is this going to take? It's going to take, it's basically electrical engineering, computer engineering, so you understand how it goes together, what happens. Computational engineering to model this very complex integrated thing. Materials engineering, because you're pushing materials to their limit with respect to stress and so forth. It takes cryogenic engineering, which is sort of a sub-discipline, but cooling things to extremely low temperatures. There's probably some kind of chemistry thing in there too. Well, actually, yeah, which tends to show up in the materials. And that's just one of the sub-components of it. Like, almost everything gets hit in this, right? And you're also in a very integrated environment, because in the end, all these things, while you isolate them from each other in a physics sense, in an engineering sense, they all have to work, like, seamlessly together. So it's one of those, I mean, in my own career, I've basically done atomic physics, spectroscopy, plasma physics, ion etching. So this includes material science, something called MHD, magnetohydrodynamics. And now all the way through, like, I'm not even sure how many different careers I've had. It's also, by the way, this is also a recruiting stage for like young scientists thinking to come in. Like my comment to scientists, if you're bored in fusion, you're not paying attention because there's always something interesting to go and do. So that's a really important. a part of what we're doing, which isn't new in Fusion, actually, and in fact is in the roots of what we've done at MIT. But holy cow, like the proximity of possibility of commercial fusion is the new thing. You know, so my catchphrase is, like, you may be wondering, like, why weren't we doing all these things? Like, why weren't we pushing towards economic fusion and new materials and new methods of heat extraction and so forth? Because everybody knew fusion was 40 years away, and now it's four years away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There is a history, like you said, 40, 30, whatever, that kind of old joke. There's a history of fusion projects that are characterized by cost overruns and delays. How do you avoid this? How do you minimize the chance of this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to build great teams is one of them. It tends to be that the smaller the – there's sort of a – I'm not an expert in this, but I've seen this enough integrated engineering teams. Is there an equation? Yeah. Well, there's almost – I've seen this from enough teams. I've seen also the futility of lone geniuses trying to solve everything by themselves. Like, no. But also organizations that have 10,000 people in them is just not, doesn't lend itself at all to innovation. So like one of our original sponsors and a good friend, Vinod Khosla, I don't know if you've ever talked to Vinod Khosla, he's a venture guy. He's got fantastic ideas about like the right sizes of teams and things that really innovate, right? And there is an optimum place in there is that you get enough cross discipline and ideas, but it doesn't become so overly bureaucratic that you can't execute on it. So. So one of the ways, and this was one of the challenges of Fusion, is that everything was leading towards, like, I have to have, like, enormously large, like, teams just to execute because of the scale of the project. The fact that now, through both technology and, I would argue, financing innovation, we're driving to the point where it's smaller, focused teams about doing those things. So that's one way to make it faster. The other way to make it faster is modularize the problem or parse the problem. So this is the other difficulty in fusion is that, you know, you tend to look at this as like, oh, it's really just about making the plasma into this state, you know, here that you get this energy gain. No. Because in the end, if you can parse out the different problems of making that and then make it as separate as possible from extracting the energy and then converting it into electricity, the more separate those are, the better they are because you get parallel paths that basically mitigate risk. This is not new in fusion, by the way, and this is the way that we attack most complex technological, you know, integrated technological challenges." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you, by any chance, seen some of the application of artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning? DeepMind has a nice paper, has a nice effort on basically using reinforcement learning for a learned control algorithm for controlling nuclear fusion. Do you find those kinds of, I guess you throw them under the umbrella of computational modeling, do you find those interesting, promising directions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're all interesting. So when people, you know, I'll pull back. Maybe a natural question is like why is it different in fusion? Like there's a long history to fusion, right? It was going on for, like I told you, like stories from the late 1960s. Like what's different now, right? So I think from the technology point of view, there's two massive things which are different. So one of them, you know, I'll be parochial, it's the advent of this new superconducting materials because the most mature ways that we understand about how we're going to get to fusion power plants are magnetic fusion. And by the fact that you've got access to something which like changes the economic equation by an over an order of magnitude is just a totally, you know, and that wasn't that long ago. It was only September of 2021 that we actually demonstrated the technology. That changes the prospects there. And the other one is computing. and it's across the whole spectrum. It's not just in control of the fusion device, it's actually in the – we actually use machine learning and things like this in the design of the magnet itself. It's an incredibly complex design space, so you use those tools. The simulation of the plasma itself is actually We're at a totally different place than we were because of those things. So those are the two big drivers that I see actually that make it different. And it's interesting, both those things self-enforce about what you asked about before, like how do you avoid delays and things. Well, it's by having smaller teams. that can actually execute on those. But now you can do this because the new magnets make the devices all smaller. And computing means your human effectiveness about exploring the optimization space is way better. It's like, they're all interlinked to each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus the modularization, like you said, and it's everything just kind of works together to make smaller teams more effective, move faster." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's actually, and it's through that learned experience. I mean, you know, of the things that I'm the most proud of about what came out. In fact, the origins of thinking about how we would use the high-temperature superconducting magnets came out of my design class at MIT. And in the design class, like, one of the features that I kept – I mean, it was interesting. I actually learned – I really learned along with the students about this, but, like, this insistence on the features, like, we can't have so many coupled, integrated, hard technology developments. Like, we have to separate these somehow. So we worked and worked and worked at this. And in fact, that's what really, in my opinion, the greatest advantage of the arc design and built into the Commonwealth Fusion System idea is like to parse out the problems. Like how can we attack these in parallel? Yeah. And so it really comes to, we talked about philosophy. It's like a design philosophy. Like how do you attack these kinds of problems? And you do it like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also, like you mentioned offline, that there's a power to, as part of a class, to design a nuclear fusion power plant and then make it a reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's hard to imagine a more powerful force than 15 MIT PhD students working together towards solving a problem. And what I always – in fact, we recently just taught the most recent – I say I teach it, I mean I guide it, actually – the most recent version of this, where they actually designed, based on this National Academies report, they actually designed a pilot plant that has basis and similarities to what we had done before, but I kept wanting to push the envelope and where they are. It's like the creativity and the energy that they bring to these things is kind of like, it keeps me going. I'm not going to retire anytime soon, but I keep seeing that kind of dedication, and it's wonderful. around on that. Not to overuse or to paraphrase something, right, which is that, you know, the famous quote by Margaret Mead, you know, never doubt that a small group of dedicated, you know, persons will change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's just such a powerful and inspiring thing for an individual. Find the right team, be part of that, and then you, yourself, your passion, your efforts could actually make a big change, a big impact. I gotta ask you, so it's a whole nother different conversation, I'm sure, to have, but nuclear power as it currently stands, so using fission, is extremely safe, despite public perception?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is the safest, actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a whole nother conversation, but almost like a human, bureaucratic, physics, engineering question of what lessons do you draw from the catastrophic events where the power plants did fail? So Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Chernobyl, what lessons do you draw?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, Three Mile Island wasn't really a disaster, because nothing escaped from the thing. Chernobyl and Fukushima had obvious consequences in the populations that lived nearby." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What lesson do you draw from those that you can carry forward to fusion? Now I know you can say that you're not gonna have the same kind of issues, but it's possible that the same folks also said they're not gonna have those same kind of issues. We humans, the human factor, we haven't talked about that one quite as much, but it's still there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So to be clear, fusion has intrinsic safety with respect to it can't run away. Those are physics basis. Technology and engineering basis of running a complex, again, anything that makes large amounts of power and heats things up has got intrinsic safety in it. And by the fact that we actually produce very energetic particles, this doesn't mean that there's no radiation involved in ionizing radiation, to be more accurate. infusion, it's just that it's in a very different order of magnitude, basically. So what are the lessons in infusion? So one of them is Make sure that you're looking at aspects of the holistic environmental and societal footprint that the technology will have. As technologists, we tend not to focus on these, particularly in early stages of development. Like, we just want something that works, right? But if we come with just something that works but doesn't actually satisfy the societal demands for safety and for disposal, I mean, we will have materials that we have to dispose of out of fusion, but there's technological questions about what that looks like. So will this look like something that you have to put in the ground for 100 years or 5 years? And the consequences of those are both economic and societal acceptance and so forth, but don't bury those. Bring these up front, talk to people about them, and make people realize that you're actually—the way I would look at it is that you're making fusion more economically attractive by making it more societally acceptable as well, too. And then realize is that, you know, I think there's a few interesting, you know, boundaries, basically. So one of them, speaking of boundaries, that successful fusion devices, I'm pretty sure will require that you don't have to have an evacuation plan for anybody who lives at the site boundary. So this has implications for what we build from a fusion engineering point of view, but it has major implications for where you can site fusion devices, right? So in many ways, it becomes more like, well, you know, we have fences around, you know, industrial heat sources and things like this for a reason, right, for personal safety. It looks more like that, right? It's not quite as simple as that, but that's what it should look like. And in fact, we have research projects going on right now at MIT that are trying to push the technologies to make it more look like that. I think that those are key. And then in the end, as I said, so Chernobyl is physically impossible, actually, in a fusion system. From a physics perspective, you can't run away like it did at Chernobyl, which was basically human error of letting the reactors run out of control, essentially." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Human error can still happen with fusion-based reactors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but in that one, if human error occurs, then it just stops, and this is done. And all of those things, this is the requirement of us as technologists and developers of this technology to not ignore that dimension, in fact, of the design. And that's why me personally, I'm actually pouring myself more and more into that area, because this is going to be I actually really think it is an aspect of the economic viability of fusion because it clearly differentiates ourselves and also sets us up to be about what we want fusion to be. Again, on paper, fusion can supply all of our energy, like all of it. So this means I want it to be really environmentally benign. But this takes engineering ingenuity, basically, to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you some wild out there questions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. We've been talking too much, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "simple, practical things in everyday life. No, only revolutionizing the entire energy infrastructure of human civilization, yes. But, so cold fusion, this idea, this dream, this interesting, physical goals seem to be impossible, but perhaps it's possible. Do you think it is possible? Do you think down the line, somewhere in the far distance, it's possible to achieve fusion at low temperature?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very, very, very unlikely. And this comes from, so this would require a pretty fundamental shift in our understanding of physics as we know it now. And we know a heck of a lot about how nuclear reactions occur. By the way, what's interesting is that they actually have a different name for it. They call it LEANER, like low-energy nuclear reactions. But we do have low-energy nuclear reactions. We know these. It's because these come from particularly the weak interaction, the weak force, nuclear force. And so it's at this point, you know, as a scientist, you always keep yourself open, but you also demand proof, right? And that's the thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It almost requires a breakthrough on the theoretical physics side. So some deeper understanding about quantum mechanics, so the quantum tunneling, some weird..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and people have looked at that, but even something like quantum tunnelling has a limit as to what it can actually do. So there are people who are genuine, you know, that really want to see it make it, but, you know, it sort of goes to the extort, I mean, we know fusion happens at these high energies. We know this extremely accurately, and I can show you a plot that shows that as you go to lower and lower energy, it basically becomes immeasurable. So if you're going down this other pathway, it means there's really a very different physical mechanism involved. All I would say is that I actually poke in my head once in a while to see what's going on in that area. And as scientists, we should always try to make ourselves open. But in this one, it's like, but show me something that I can measure and that is repeatable, and then it's going to take more extraordinary effort. And to date, this has not met that threshold, in my opinion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So even more so than just mentioning or in that question thinking about people that are claiming to have achieved cold fusion, I'm more thinking even about people who are studying black holes and they're basically trying to understand the function of, you know, theoretical physicists. They're doing the long haul trying to investigate like, okay, what is happening at the singularity? What is this kind of, holographic projections on a plate, these weird freaking things that are out there in the universe, and somehow, accidentally, they start to figure out something weird. And then all of a sudden- There's weirdness all over the place already, yeah. Somehow that weirdness will, I think on a time scale probably of 100 years or so, that weirdness will open It just seems like nuclear fusion and black holes and all of this, they're next door neighbors a little bit too much for you'll find something interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me tell you a story about this. It's a real story. So, there were really, really clever scientists in the end of the late 1800s in the world. You talk about, like, James Clerk Maxwell, and you talk about Lord Kelvin, and you talk about Lorentz, actually, who was named after these other ones. on and on and on, and like Faraday, and they discovered electromagnetism, holy cow, and it's like, they figure out all these things, and yet there were these weird things going on that you couldn't quite figure out. It's like, what the heck is going on with this, right? But we teach this all the time in physics classes, right? So, what was going on? Well, there's just a few There's just a few kind of things unchecked, but basically we're at the end of discovery because we've figured out how everything works. Because we've got basically Newtonian mechanics and we've got Maxwell's equations, which describe basically how matter gets pushed around and how electromagnetism works. Holy cow, what a feat. But there are these few nagging things. Like, for instance, there's certain kinds of rocks that for some reason, like if you put a photographic plate around it, it like gets burned or it gets an image on it. Like, well, where's the electromagnetism in that? There's no electromagnetic properties of this rock. Oh yeah, and the other thing too is that if I take this wonderful classical derivation of how something that is hot, about how it releases radiation. everything looks fantastic, perfect match, oh, until I get to high frequencies of the light, and then it basically just, the whole thing falls apart. In fact, it gives a physical explanation, which is total nonsense. It tells you that every object should basically be producing an infinite amount of heat. And by the way, here's the sun, and we can look at the sun, and we can figure out it's made out of hydrogen. And Lord Kelvin actually made a very famous calculation, who was basically one of the founders of thermodynamics. So you look at the hydrogen. Hydrogen has a certain energy content, you know, the latent heat, basically, of hydrogen. We know the mass of the sun because we knew the size of it. And he conclusively proved that basically the sun could only make net energy for about 2,000 or 3,000 years. So therefore all this nonsense about deep, because clearly the sun can only last for two or three thousand years, if you think about the chemical energy content of hydrogen, and what comes along in one decade basically one guy sitting in a postal office, you know, in Switzerland, figures out that all of these, you know, Einstein, of course, which was, like, figured out all of this, like, took these seemingly unconnected things, and it's like, boom, there it is. It wasn't just him, but it was, like, there's quantum physics, like, this explains this other disaster. And then this other guy, my hero, Ernest Rutherford, experimentalist, did the most extraordinary experiment, which was that, okay, they had these funny rocks. They emitted these particles. In fact, they called them alpha particles. Alpha, just A in the alphabet, right, because it was the first thing that they discovered. And what were they doing? So they were taking these alpha particles—and by the way, I do this to all my students, because it's a demonstration of what you should be as a good scientist. So he took these alpha things, and he was a classically trained physicist, knew everything about momentum scattering and stuff like that. And he took this, and these alpha, which clearly were some kind of energy, but they couldn't quite figure out what it was. So he said, let's try to figure that, we'll actually use this to try to probe the nature of matter. So he took this, took these alpha particles and a very, very thin gold foil. And so, what you wanted to see was that as they were going through, the way that they would scatter based on classical—in fact, the Coulomb collision—based on classical mechanics, this will tell me, reveal something. about what the nature of the charge distribution is in matter, because they didn't know, like, where the hell is this stuff coming from? Even though they'd solved electromagnetism, they didn't know, like, what made up charges. Okay, very interesting. Through it goes. And so, what did you set up? So, it turns out, in these experiments, what you did was, because if these so-called alphas, which actually now we know is something else, as they go through, they would deflect. How much they deflect tells you how strong an electric field they saw. So you put detectors, because if you put like a piece of glass in front of this, what will happen is that when the alpha particle hits, it literally gives a little boop, a little boop of light like this. It scintillates. A little blue flash. So he would train his students or postdocs or whatever the heck they were at the time, you have to train yourself because you have to put yourself in the dark for like hours to get your eyes adjusted, and then they would start the experiment and they would sit there and literally count the things. And they could see this pattern developing, which was revealing about what was going on. But there was also another part to the experiment, which was that, it's like, here's the alphas, here's the source, they're going this way. They could tell they were going in one direction only, basically. They're going in this direction. And you put all these over here because you want to see how they deflect and bend through it. But you put a control in the experiment, but you basically put glass plates back here, because obviously, everything should just deflect, but nothing should bounce back, so it's a control in the experiment. But what did they see? They saw things bouncing back. Like, what the hell? Like, that fit no model of any idea, right? But Rutherford, like, refused to, like, ignore what was a clear—like, they validated it, and he sat down, and based on classical physics, he made the most extraordinary discovery, which was the nucleus, which is a very, very strange discovery. What do I mean by that? Because what he could figure out from this is that in order for these particles to bounce back and hit this plate, they were hitting something that must be heavier than them, and that basically something like 99.999% of the mass of the matter that was in this gold foil was in something that contained about one trillionth of the volume of it. Mm-hmm. And that's called the nucleus. And until, and you talk about, so how revealing is this? It's like, this totally changes your idea of the universe because a nucleus is a very unintuitive, non-intuitive thing. It's like, why is all the mass in something that is like zero, like it basically is the realization that matter is empty. Mm-hmm. It's all empty space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and that changes everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it changes everything. Until you had that, like you had steam engines, by the way, you had telegraph wires, you had all those things, but that realization like opened up, those two realizations opened up everything, like lasers, all these things about the modern world of what we use. And that set it up. So all I would point out is that there's a story already that sometimes there's these nagging things at the edge of science that, you know, we seem, we pat ourselves on the back and we think we've got everything under control. Of course, by the way, that was the origin of also that, think about this, that was 1908. It took like another 20 some years before people put that together with that's the process that's powering stars. the rearrangement of those nuclei, not atoms. That's why Calvin wasn't wrong, he just was working with the wrong assumptions, right? So, fast forward to today, like, what would this mean, right? Well, there's a couple of things like this that sit out there in physics, and I'll point out one of them, which is very interesting. We don't know what the hell makes up 90% of the mass in the universe. So, you know, the search for dark matter, right? What is it? We still haven't discovered it. 90% of the mass of the universe is undetectable. Like, what?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then, you know, and dark energy, and again, black holes are the window into this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, then black holes, I mean, sometimes black holes are way better understood than those things as well, too. So, all it tells us is that we shouldn't have hubris about the ideas that we understand everything, and when we, you know, who knows what the next major intellectual insight will be about how the universe, you know, functions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And actually, I think Rutherford is the one who's attributed at least that quote, that physics is the only real science, everything else is stamp collecting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sorry, he's my hero, but I'll slightly disagree with that, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, no offense to stem collecting, that's very important too. But you have to have humility about the kind of disciplines that make progress at every stage in science. Physics did make a huge amount of progress in the 20th century, but it's possible that other disciplines start to step in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but Rutherford couldn't imagine mapping the human genome because we didn't even know about DNA." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, or computers, really. Or computers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He really probably didn't think deeply about computation. Here's a wild one. What if the next great revelation to humanity about the universe is not done by the human mind?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That seems increasingly more likely. And then you start to ask deep questions about what is the purpose of science? For example, if AI system will design a nuclear fusion reactor better than humans do, but we don't quite understand how it works. And the AI can't, we know that it works, we can test it very thoroughly, but we don't know exactly what the control mechanism is, maybe what the chemistry, the physics is. AI can't quite explain it, they just can't, it's... It's impenetrable to our consciousness, basically, trying to hold it all together. And then, okay, so now we're living in that world where many of the biggest discoveries are made by AI systems. Yeah. As if we weren't going big." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I say, you know, it's, again, I'll point out, like, when my godmother was born, like, none of this was in front of us, right? It's like, we live in an amazing time. It's like, Like my grandfather plowed fields with a horse. I get to work on designing fusion reactors." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, pretty amazing time. But still, there's humans, so we'll see. We'll see if that's around 100 years. Maybe it'll be cyborgs and robots." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we're pretty resilient, actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I know. One lesson from life is it finds a way. Let me ask you a bigger question. As if those weren't big enough, let's look out maybe a few hundred years, maybe a few thousand years out, there's something called the Kardashev scale. It's a method of measuring civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it's able to use. So type one civilization, and this might be, given all your work, is not no longer a scale that quite makes sense, but, it very much focuses on the source of fusion, natural source of fusion, which is, for us, the sun. And Type I civilizations are able to leverage, sort of collect all the energy that hits Earth. And then Type II civilizations are the ones that are able to leverage the entirety of the energy that comes from the sun by maybe building something like a Dyson sphere. So when will we reach type one status? Is get to the level, which we're, I think, maybe a few orders of magnitude away from currently. And in general, do you think about this kind of stuff, where energy's so fundamental to the, like, of life on Earth, but also the expansion of life into the universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, so one of the fun, on a weekend, I sat down and figured out what would it mean for interstellar travel, like to have a DT fusion. In fact, I talked about my design class. One of my design classes was how you use essentially a special configuration of a fusion device for not only traveling to, but colonizing Mars. If you talk about energy use being at the heart of civilization, it's like, so what if you wanna go to Mars not to just visit it, but actually leave people there and make something happen? It needs massive amounts of energy. So what would that look like? And it actually transforms how you're thinking about doing that as well, too. Oh yeah, so we do all those kinds of fun. And actually, it was a fairly quasi-realistic actually scenario." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think it'll be nuclear fusion that powers the civilization on Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, what we considered was something, so it turns out that there's thorium, which is a heavy element, so it's a so-called fertile element. We still know fairly little about the geology of Mars in the deep sense, and we know that there's a lot of this on the surface of Mars, so one of the things we considered was what would happen, that it's basically a combination of a fusion device that actually makes fuel from the thorium. But the underlying energy one was fission itself as well, too. So this is one of the examples of trying to be clever around those things. Or what is it, you know, this also means is like interstellar travel. It's like, oh, yeah, that looks almost like impossible, basically, from an energy balance point of view, just because, like, the energy required that you have to transport to get there, almost the only things that would work are DT fusion and basically annihilation. It's like Star Trek, right? That's what it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, your sense is that interstellar travel will require fusion power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it's almost even impossible with fusion power, actually. It's so hard. It's so hard, because you have to carry the fuel with you, and the rocket equation tells you about how much fuel you'll use to take. So, what you end up with is, like, how long does it take to go to these places? And it's, like, staggering, you know, periods of time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I tend to believe that there's alien civilizations dispersed all throughout the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but we might be totally isolated from them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think there's none in this galaxy? And the question I also have is what kind, do you think they have nuclear fusion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is the physics all the same? Yeah. Oh, the physics is all the same. Yeah, right. And this is the Fermi paradox, like where the hell is everybody in the universe? Well, the scariest one of those is that I would point out that there's been, you know, there's you know, order of many tens of millions of species on the planet Earth, and only one ever got to the point of sophisticated tool use that we could actually start essentially leveraging the power of what's in nature to our own will. Does this mean that basically this means – so almost, look, there is almost certainly life or DNA equivalents or whatever would be somewhere, I mean, just because You just need a soup and you need energy and you get organics and whatever the equivalent of amino acids are. But most of the life on earth has been that, those are still amazing, but it's still, it's not very interesting. Are we actually the accident of history? This is a very interesting one. A super, super rare accident. Super rare. And then, of course, the other part is that also just the other scary part of it, which, if you look at the fairy paradoxes, we got to this point, how long has it been in humans—so humans, homo sapien has been around for whatever, 100,000 years, 200,000 years, something like that. Our ability in that timeline to actually make an imprint on the universe by emitting radio waves or by modifying nature in a significant way has only been for about 100 of those 100,000 years. And are we – it's a good question. So is it by definition, by the fact that when you are able to reach that level of being able to manipulate nature, for example, discover like fission or burning fossil fuels and all this, is that what it says, oh, you're doomed, because by definition, any species that gets to that point that can modify their environment like that, they'll actually push themselves past – that's one of the most depressing scenarios that I can imagine. So basically, we will never line up in time, because you get this little teeny window in time where civilization might occur, and you can never see it, because you never these sort of like scatter like fireflies around the galaxy and you never, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Goes up, goes up, goes up, goes up and then explodes, destroys itself because of the exponential." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And when we say destroy ourselves, all we'd have to do is that we basically go, humans are all left and we're still living on the planet, but all we have to do is go to the technology of like 1800 and we're invisible in the universe again. Yeah. So it was, when I, when I listened to the podcast, I thought I wanted to talk about this as well too, because it's, it comes from, well, it comes from a science point of view actually of what it means, but also to me, it's like another compelling driver of telling us it's like, why we should try really hard not to screw this up. Like we're in this unique place of our ability to discover and to make it. And I just don't want to give up about thinking that we can get through." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I tend to see that there is some kind of game theoretic force, like with mutually assured destruction, that ultimately in each human being there's a desire to survive and a willingness to cooperate, to have compassion for each other in order to survive. And I think that, I mean, maybe not in humans, but I can imagine a nearly infinite number of species in which that overpowers any technological advancement that can destroy or rewind the species. So I think if humans fail, I hope they don't. I see a lot of evidence for them not, but it seems like somebody will survive. And there you start to ask questions about why we haven't met yet. Maybe it's just the space is large." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, spaces. I think in logarithms, and I can't even fathom space, this is extraordinary, right? It's extraordinarily large." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, there's so many places on Earth. I just recently visited Paris for the first time, and there's so many other places I haven't visited yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's so many other places. Well, I like to, you know, it's interesting that we have this fascination with alien life. We have what is essentially alien life on Earth already. Like, you think about the organisms that develop around deep sea, like thermal vents. One of my favorite books of all time from Stephen Jay Gould, If you've never read that book, it kind of blows your mind. It's about the Cambrian explosion of life and it's like, oh, you look at these things and it's like, the chance of us existing as a species, like the genetic diversity was larger back then. You know, this is about 500 million years ago or something like that. It is a mind-altering trip. of thinking about our place in the universe, I have to say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus the mind itself is a kind of alien, almost a mystery to ourselves. We still don't understand it. The very mechanism that helps us explore the world is still a mystery. So that, understanding that will also unlock, quite possibly unlock our ability to understand the world and maybe build machines that help us understand the world, build tools" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it already has. I mean, our ability to understand the world is ridiculous almost, actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And post the bot on TikTok." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's almost unbelievable where we've gotten all this to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what advice would you give to young folks or folks of all ages who are lost in this world looking for a way, looking for a career they can be proud of or looking to have a life they can be proud of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, the first thing I would say is don't give up. I get to see multiple sides of this and, you know, there seems to be a level of despair in a young generation. It's like, you know, it's almost like the Monty Python skit, like, I'm not dead yet, right? I mean, we're We're not there. We're in a place that, you know, don't say the world's going to end in 300 days or something. It's not, okay? And what we mean by this is that we have a robust society that's figured out how to do amazing things, and we're going to keep doing amazing things. But that shouldn't be complacency about what our future is, and the future for their children as well, too. And in the end, I mean, it's a staggering legacy to think of what we've built up, primarily by basically using carbon fuels. Like, people almost tend to think of this as an evil thing that we've done. I think it's an amazing thing that we've done, but we owe it to ourselves and to this thing that we've built. I mean, talking about the end of the world is just nonsense. What it is, is it's the end of this kind of lifestyle and civilization at this scale and the ability to execute on these kinds of things that we are talking about today. We are extraordinarily privileged. We are in a place where it's almost unfathomable compared to most of the misery that humans have lived in for our history. So don't give up about this, okay? But also roll up your sleeves and let's get going at solving and getting real solutions to the problems that are in front of us, which are significant. Most of them are linked to what we use in energy, but it's not just that. It's around all the aspects of like, what does it mean to have a distributed energy source that lifts billions of people out of poverty? you know, particularly outside of like the Western nations, right? That seems to me a pretty compelling, you know, moral goal for all of us, but particularly for this upcoming generation. And then the other part is that we've got possible solutions in front of us. Apply your talents in a way that you're passionate about and is going to make a difference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's only possible with optimism, hope, and hard work. What, easy question, certainly easier than nuclear fusion, what's the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is it 42? No, no. We already discussed about the beauty of physics, that there's almost a desire to ask a why question about why the parameters have these values." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's very tempting, yeah. It's an interesting hole to go down as a scientist, because we're a part of what people have a hard time, people who aren't scientists have a hard time understanding what scientists do to themselves. And a great scientist does a very non-intuitive or non-human thing. What we do is we train ourselves to doubt ourselves, like hell, like that's a great scientist. We doubt everything we see, we doubt everything that we think, because we basically try to turn off the belief valve, right, that humans just naturally have. So when it comes to these things, like, I can make my own comments to this. It's like, personally, you see these things about the ratios of life, and I made a comment where I said, well, you know, I wrapped some part of my brain that just goes, yeah, well, yeah, because we're the only interesting multiverse, because by definition, it has to look like this, you know? But I have to say, there's other times – I can say in the history of the whole – of what has happened over the last 10 years, there have been some pretty weird coincidences, like coincidences that, like, you look at it and just go, is that really a coincidence? Is something, like, pushing us towards these things? And it's a natural, it's a human instinct, because since the beginnings of humanity, we've always assigned human motivation and needs to these somewhat empirical observations. And in some sense, the stories" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "before we understand the real explanations, the stories, the myths, serve as a good approximation for the thing that we're yet to understand. And in that sense, you said the antithesis to sort of scientific doubt is having a faith In these stories, they're almost silly when looked at from a scientific perspective, but just even the feelings of, it seems that love is a fundamental fabric of human condition, and what the hell is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why are we so connected to each other? As a physicist, I go, this is a repeatable thing that's due to a set of synapses that fire in a particular pattern and all this. That's kind of like, okay, man, what a drag that is to think of it this way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you can have an evolutionary biology explanation, but there's still a magic to it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I see scientists, some of my colleagues do this as well, too. What is spirituality compared to science and so forth? My own feeling in this is that, you know, as a scientist, because I've had the pleasure of being able to, like, both understand what my predecessors did, but I also had the privilege of being able to discover things, right, as a scientist. And I see that, and you just, in just the range of our conversations, like, that is my, in a weird way, it's the awe that comes from looking at that. That is, if you're not in awe, of the universe and nature, you haven't been paying attention. I mean, my own personal feeling is that I feel, if I go snorkeling on a coral reef, I feel more awe than I could ever feel in a church." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You kind of notice some kind of magic there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's something about the way the whole darn thing holds together that just sort of escapes your imagination, and that's, to me, this thing of—and then we have different words, we call them holistic or spiritual—the way that it all hangs together. In fact, one of the issues—you asked what I think about—one of the craziest things that I think, that how does it hold together, is like our society. Like, how does, what? Like, how are, because there's no way, like, just think of the United States, there's 330 million people kind of working like this engine about going towards making all these things happen, but there's like no one in charge of this, really, right? How the heck does this happen? It's kind of like, it's, So these things, these are the kinds of things mathematically and organization-wise that I think of just because they're sort of awe-inspiring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's different ideas that we come up together and we share them, and then there's teams of people that share different ideas, and those ideas compete, like the ideas themselves are these kinds of different organisms, and ultimately somehow we build bridges and nuclear reactors. And do those things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I have to give a shout-out to my daughter, by the way, who's an applied math major, and she's amazing at math. And over the break, she was showing me she was doing research, and it's basically about how ideas and ethos are transmitted within a society. So, she's building an applied math model that is explaining, like – she was showing me in this simulation, she goes, oh, look at this. And I said, oh, oh, That's like how political parties evolve, right? And even though it was a rather, quote unquote, simple mathematical model, it wasn't really, it was like, oh, wow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, maybe she has a chance to derive mathematically the answer to what's the meaning of life. And maybe it is indeed 42. Well, Dennis, thank you so much for just doing, creating tools, creating systems, exploring this idea that's one of the most amazing, magical ideas in all of human endeavor, which is nuclear fusion. I mean, that's so interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's almost like one of my lifelong goals is to make it, it's not magic, it's boring as all heck. And this means we're using it everywhere, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And the magic is then built on top of it. Well, thank you for everything you do. Thank you for talking to me, it's a huge honor. This was a fascinating and amazing conversation." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the high order bit was that it could be done. i think that was the thing that was incredible about the first the the grand challenges that i remember you know i was a grad student at carnegie mellon and there we it was kind of this dichotomy of seemed really hard so that would be cool and interesting but you know at the time we were the only robotics institute around and so you know if we went into it and fell on our faces that would that would be embarrassing uh so i think you know just having the will to go do it to try to do this thing that at the time was marked as you know darn near impossible and and then after a couple of tries be able to actually make it happen i think that was" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you know, that was really exciting. But at which point did you believe it was possible? Did you, from the very beginning, did you personally, because you're one of the lead engineer, you actually had to do a lot of the work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I was the technical director there and did a lot of the work along with a bunch of other really good people. Did I believe it could be done? Yeah, of course, right? Like, why would you go do something you thought was impossible, completely impossible? We thought it was going to be hard. We didn't know how we're going to be able to do it. We didn't know if we'd be able to do it the first time. Turns out we couldn't. that yeah I guess you have to I think there's a certain benefit to naivete right that if you don't know how hard something really is you you try different things and you know it gives you an opportunity that others who are you know wiser maybe don't don't have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What were the biggest pain points? Mechanical, sensors, hardware, software, algorithms for mapping, localization, just general perception control, hardware, software, first of all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's the joy of this field, is that it's all hard. um and that you have to be good at at each part of it so for the first for the urban challenges uh if i look back at it from today uh it should be easy today that you know it was a static world there weren't other actors moving through it that is what that means uh it was out in the desert so you get really good gps So that went, and we could map it roughly. And so in retrospect now, it's within the realm of things we could do back then. Just actually getting the vehicle, and there's a bunch of engineering work to get the vehicle so that we could control it and drive it. That's still a pain today, but it was even more so back then. And then the uncertainty of exactly what they wanted us to do. was part of the challenge as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, you didn't actually know the track heading in. You knew approximately, but you didn't actually know the route, the route that is going to be taken." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. We didn't know the route. We didn't even really, the way the rules had been described, you had to kind of guess. So if you think back to that challenge, the idea was that the government would give us, DARPA would give us a set of waypoints and kind of the width that you had to stay within between the line that went between each of those waypoints. And so the most devious thing they could have done is set a kilometer-wide corridor across a field of scrub brush and rocks and said, go figure it out. Fortunately, it turned into basically driving along a set of trails, which is much more relevant to the application they were looking for. But no, it was a hell of a thing back in the day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the legend Red was kind of leading that effort in terms of just broadly speaking. So you're a leader now. What have you learned from Red about leadership?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's a couple of things. One is, you know, Go and try those really hard things. That's where there is an incredible opportunity. I think the other big one, though, is to see people for who they can be, not who they are. It's one of the things that I actually, one of the deepest lessons I learned from Red was that he would look at undergraduates or graduate students and empower them to be leaders, to have responsibility, to do great things, that I think another person might look at them and think, oh, well, that's just an undergraduate student. What could they know? And so I think that kind of trust, but verify, have confidence in what people can become, I think, is a really powerful thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So through that, let's just like fast forward through the history. Can you maybe talk through the technical evolution of autonomous vehicle systems from the first two grand challenges to the urban challenge to today? Are there major shifts in your mind or is it the same kind of technology just made more robust?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's been some big, big steps. So the, for the grand challenge, the real, technology that unlocked that was HD mapping. Prior to that a lot of the off-road robotics work had been done without any real prior model of what the vehicle was going to encounter. And so that innovation that the fact that we could get you know decimeter resolution models was really a big deal. And that allowed us to to kind of bound the complexity of the driving problem the vehicle had and allowed it to operate at speed because we could assume things about the environment that it was going to encounter. So that was a that was one of the that was the big step there. For the urban challenge, You know, one of the big technological innovations there was the multi beam LIDAR and be able to generate, um, high resolution, you know, mid to long range 3d models, the world, and use that for, you know, for understanding the world around the vehicle. And that was really a, you know, kind of a game changing technology. In parallel with that, we saw a bunch of other technologies that had been kind of converging half their day in the sun. So Bayesian estimation had been, you know, SLAM had been a big field in robotics, you would go to a conference a couple of years before that, and every paper would effectively have SLAMs somewhere in it. And so seeing those Bayesian estimation techniques play out on a very visible stage, I thought that was pretty exciting to see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And mostly SLAM was done based on LIDAR at that time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah. And in fact, we weren't really doing SLAM per se, you know, in real time because we had a model ahead of time, we had a roadmap, but we were doing localization. And we're using, you know, the LIDAR or the cameras, depending on, you know, who exactly was doing it to localize to a model of the world. And I thought that was That was a big step from kind of naively trusting GPS, INS before that. And again, like lots of work had been going on in this field. Certainly this was not doing anything particularly innovative in SLAM or in localization, but it was seeing that technology necessary in a real application on a big stage, I thought was very cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for the urban challenge, there was already maps constructed offline. Yes. In general. Okay. And, uh, did people do that individually, individual teams do it individually? Uh, so they had their own different, different approaches there, or did everybody kind of share that information at least intuitively?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So DARPA gave all the teams a model of the world, a map. And then one of the things that we had to figure out back then was, and it's still one of these things that trips people up today, is actually the coordinate system. Uh, so you get a latitude longitude and, you know, to so many decimal places, you don't really care about kind of the ellipsoid of the earth that's being used. Uh, but when you want to get to 10 centimeter or centimeter resolution, uh, you care whether the, the core system is, you know, NADS 83 or WGS 84 or, you know, these are different ways to describe both the kind of non-sphericalness of the earth, but also kind of the, I think, I can't remember which one, the tectonic shifts that are happening and how to transform, you know, the global datum as a function of that. So, you know, getting a map and then actually matching it to reality to centimeter resolution, that was kind of interesting and fun back then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how much work was the perception doing there? So how much were you relying on localization based on maps without using perception to register to the maps? And I guess the question is how advanced was perception at that point?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's certainly behind where we are today, right? We're more than a decade since the urban challenge, but the core of it was there. That we were tracking vehicles. We had to do that at a hundred plus meter range because we had to merge with other traffic. We were using, you know, Bayesian, again, Bayesian estimates for state of these vehicles. We had to deal with a bunch of the problems that you think of today, of predicting where that vehicle's going to be a few seconds into the future. We had to deal with the fact that there were multiple hypotheses for that, because a vehicle at an intersection might be going right, or it might be going straight, or it might be making a left turn. And we had to deal with the challenge of the fact that our behavior was going to impact the behavior of that other operator. You know, we did a lot of that in relatively naive ways, but it still had to have some kind of solution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And so where does that 10 years later, where does that take us today from that artificial city construction to real cities, to the urban environment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that the, you know, the, the actors are truly unpredictable. that most of the time, you know, the drivers on the road, the other road users are out there behaving well, but every once in a while they're not. The variety of other vehicles is, you know, you have all of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In terms of behavior, in terms of perception, or both?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Both. That we have, you know, back then we didn't have to deal with cyclists, we didn't have to deal with pedestrians, didn't have to deal with traffic lights. you know, the scale over which that you have to operate is now, you know, is much larger than, you know, the airbase that we were thinking about back then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what, easy question. What do you think is the hardest part about driving? Easy question. Yeah. No, I'm joking. I'm sure nothing really jumps out at you as one thing, but in the jump from the urban challenge to the real world, is there something that's a particular, you foresee as very serious, difficult challenge?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the most fundamental difference is that were doing it for real and that in that environment it was both a limited complexity environment because certain actors weren't there because you know the roads were maintained there were barriers keeping people separate from from robots at the time And it only had to work for 60 miles, which looking at it from, you know, 2006, it had to work for 60 miles. Yeah. Right. Looking at it from now, you know, we want things that will go and drive for, you know, half a half a million miles. And, you know, it's just a, it's a different game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how important, you said LiDAR came into the game early on, and it's really the primary driver of autonomous vehicles today as a sensor. So how important is the role of LiDAR in the sensor suite in the near term?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think it's, I think it's essential. You know, I believe, but I also believe the cameras are essential and I believe the radar is essential. I think that you really need to use a composition of data from these different sensors if you want the thing to really be robust." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The question I want to ask, let's see if we can untangle it, is what are your thoughts on the Elon Musk provocative statement that LiDAR is a crutch? that is a kind of, I guess, growing pains and that much of the perception task can be done with cameras." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think it is undeniable that people walk around without lasers in their foreheads and they can get into vehicles and drive them. And so there's an existence proof that you can drive using passive vision." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "no doubt can argue with that in terms of sensors. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, in terms of sensors, right. So like there's, there's an example that, you know, we all go do it. Uh, many of us every day in terms of, uh, LIDAR being a crutch. Sure. But, but, you know, in the same way that, uh, you know, the combustion engine was a crutch on the path to an electric vehicle on the same way that, you know, any technology ultimately gets, replaced by some superior technology in the future. And really, the way that I look at this is that the way we get around on the ground, the way that we use transportation is broken. And that we have, you know, this, this, you know, what was, I think the number I saw this morning, 37,000 Americans killed last year on our roads. And that's just not acceptable. And so tech, any technology that we can bring to bear that accelerates the, this tech, you know, self-driving technology coming to market and saving lives is technology we should be using. And it feels just arbitrary to say, well, you know, I'm, I'm not okay with using lasers because that's whatever, but I am okay with using an eight megapixel camera or 16 megapixel camera. You know, like it's just, these are just bits of technology and we should be taking the best technology from the tool bin that allows us to go and, you know, and solve a problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The question I often talk to, obviously you do as well, to automotive companies, and if there's one word that comes up more often than anything, it's cost, and trying to drive cost down. So while it's true that it's a tragic number, the $37,000, The question is, and I'm not the one asking this question, because I hate this question, but we want to find the cheapest sensor suite that creates a safe vehicle. So in that uncomfortable trade-off, do you foresee LiDAR coming down in cost in the future, or do you see a day where level four autonomy is possible without LiDAR?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I see both of those, but it's really a matter of time. And I think really, maybe I would talk to the question you asked about the cheapest sensor. I don't think that's actually what you want. What you want is a sensor suite that is economically viable. And then after that, everything is about margin and driving cost out of the system. Uh, what you also want is a sense suite that works. And so it's great to tell a story about, um, how, you know, how it'd be better to have a self-driving system with a $50 sensor instead of a, you know, a $500 sensor. But if the $500 sensor makes it work and the $50 sensor doesn't work, You know, who cares? So long as you can actually, uh, you know, have an economic offer, you know, there's an economic opportunity there and the economic opportunity is important because that's how you actually have a sustainable business. And that's how you can actually see this come to scale and, and, and be out in the world. And so when I look at LIDAR. I see a technology that has no underlying fundamental expense to it. It's going to be more expensive than an imager because CMOS processes or fab processes are dramatically more scalable than mechanical processes. but we still should be able to drive cost down substantially on that side. And then I also do think that with the right business model, you can absorb more, you know, certainly more cost on the bill of materials." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, if the sensor suite works, extra value is provided, thereby you don't need to drive costs down to zero. It's the basic economics. You've talked about your intuition that level two autonomy is problematic because of the human factor of vigilance, decrement, complacency, overtrust, and so on, just us being human. We overtrust the system, we start doing even more so partaking in the secondary activities like smartphones and so on. Have your views evolved on this point in either direction? Can you speak to it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, and I want to be really careful because sometimes this gets twisted in a way that I certainly didn't intend. So, active safety systems are a really important technology that we should be pursuing and integrating into vehicles. And there's an opportunity in the near term to reduce accidents, reduce fatalities. And that's, uh, and we should be, we should be pushing on that. Level two systems are systems where the vehicle is controlling two axes. So, you know, braking and braking and throttle slash steering. And I think there are variants of level two systems that are supporting the driver that absolutely we should encourage to be out there. Where I think there's a real challenge is in the human factors part around this and the misconception from the public around the capability set that that enables and the trust they should have in it. And that is where I am actually incrementally more concerned around level three systems and how exactly a level two system is marketed and delivered, and how much effort people have put into those human factors. I still believe several things around this. One is people will overtrust the technology. We've seen over the last few weeks a spate of people sleeping in their Tesla. I watched an episode last night of Trevor Noah. talking about this and you know him you know this is a smart guy who's has a lot of resources at his disposal describing a tesla as a self-driving car and that why shouldn't people be sleeping in their tesla it's like well because it's not a self-driving car and it is not intended to be and you know these people will almost certainly you know die at some point or hurt other people. And so we need to really be thoughtful about how that technology is described and brought to market. I also think that because of the economic issue, economic challenges we were just talking about, that that technology path will, these level two driver assistance systems, that technology path will diverge from the technology path that we need to be on to actually deliver truly self-driving vehicles, ones where you can get in it and sleep and have the equivalent or better safety than a human driver behind the wheel. Because again, the economics are very different in those two worlds. And so that leads to divergent technology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you just don't see the economics of gradually increasing from level two and doing so quickly enough to where it doesn't cause safety, critical safety concerns. You believe that it needs to diverge at this point into different, basically different routes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And really that comes back to what are those L2 and L1 systems doing? And they are driver assistance functions. where the people that are marketing that responsibly are being very clear and putting human factors in place such that the driver is actually responsible for the vehicle and that the technology is there to support the driver. And the safety cases that are built around those are dependent on that driver attention and attentiveness. And at that point, you can kind of give up to some degree, for economic reasons, you can give up on, say, false negatives. And the way to think about this is, for a foreclosure mitigation braking system, if half the times the driver missed a vehicle in front of it, it hit the brakes and brought the vehicle to a stop, that would be an incredible, incredible advance in safety on our roads. That would be equivalent to seat belts. But it would mean that if that vehicle wasn't being monitored, it would hit one out of two cars. And so economically, that's a perfectly good solution for a driver assistance system. What you should do at that point, if you can get it to work 50% of the time, is drive the cost out of that so you can get it on as many vehicles as possible. But driving the cost out of it doesn't drive up performance on the false negative case. And so you'll continue to not have a technology that could really be available for a self-driven vehicle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So clearly the communication, and this probably applies to all four vehicles as well, the marketing and the communication of what the technology is actually capable of, how hard it is, how easy it is, all that kind of stuff is highly problematic. So say everybody in the world was perfectly communicated and were made to be completely aware of every single technology out there, what it's able to do. What's your intuition? And now we're maybe getting into philosophical ground. Is it possible to have a level two vehicle where we don't overtrust it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think so. If people truly understood the risks and internalized it, then sure, you could do that safely. But that's a world that doesn't exist. That people are going to, they're going to, you know, if the facts are put in front of them, they're going to then combine that with their experience. And let's say they're using an L2 system, and they go up and down the 101 every day, and they do that for a month. And it just worked every day for a month. That's pretty compelling. At that point, just even if you know the statistics, You're like, well, I don't know, maybe there's something funny about those. Maybe they're, you know, driving in difficult places. Like I've seen it with my own eyes, it works. And the problem is that that sample size that they have, so it's 30 miles up and down. So 60 miles times 30 days, so 60, 180, 1,800 miles. that's, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the one, you know, what, 85 million miles between fatalities. And so they don't really have a true estimate based on their personal experience of, of the real risks, but they're going to trust it anyway, because it's hard not to work for a month." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's, what's going to change. So even if you start a perfect understanding of the system, your own experience will make it drift. I mean, that's a big concern over a year, over two years, even it doesn't have to be months." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think that as this technology moves from what I would say is kind of the more technology savvy ownership group to the mass market. you may be able to have some of those folks who are really familiar with technology. They may be able to internalize it better. Uh, and you know, your kind of immunization against this kind of false risk assessment might last longer. But as folks who are, who aren't as savvy about that, um, you know, read the material and they compare that to their personal experience, I think there that, you know, it's, it's going to, it's going to move more quickly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So your work, the program that you've created at Google and now at Aurora is focused more on the second path of creating full autonomy. So it's such a fascinating I think it's one of the most interesting AI problems of the century, right? I just talked to a lot of people, just regular people, I don't know, my mom, about autonomous vehicles. And you begin to grapple with ideas of giving your life control over to a machine. It's philosophically interesting. It's practically interesting. So let's talk about safety. How do you think we demonstrate, you've spoken about metrics in the past, how do you think we demonstrate to the world that an autonomous vehicle, an Aurora system is safe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "this is one where it's difficult because there isn't a soundbite answer that we have to show a combination of uh work that was done diligently and thoughtfully and this is where something like a functional safety process is part of that is like here's here's the way we did the work that means that we were very thorough so you know if you believe that we what we said about this is the way we did it then you can have some confidence that we were thorough in in in the engineering work we put into the system uh and then on top of that the you know to kind of demonstrate that we weren't just thorough we were actually good at what we did there'll be a kind of a collection of evidence in terms of demonstrating that the capabilities work the way we thought they did, you know, statistically and to whatever degree we can demonstrate that, both in some combination of simulation, some combination of unit testing and decomposition testing, and then some part of it will be on-road data. And and I think the way we're will ultimately. Convey this to the public is there'll be clearly some conversation with the public about it, but we'll, you know, kind of invoke the kind of the trusted nodes and that we'll spend more time being able to go into more depth with folks like like NHTSA and other federal and state regulatory bodies and kind of given that they are operating in the public interest and they're trusted. that if we can show enough work to them that they're convinced, then I think we're in a pretty good place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That means you work with people that are essentially experts at safety to try to discuss and show. Do you think the answer is probably no, but just in case? Do you think there exists a metric? So currently people have been using number of disengagements and it quickly turns into a marketing scheme to sort of, you alter the experiments you run to adjust. I think you've spoken that you don't like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't love it. No. In fact, I was on the record telling DMV that I thought this was not a great metric." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's possible to create a metric, a number that could demonstrate safety outside of fatalities?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I do, and I think that it won't be just one number. So as we are internally grappling with this, and at some point we'll be able to talk more publicly about it, is how do we think about human performance in different tasks, say, detecting traffic lights or safely making a left turn across traffic? And what do we think the failure rates are for those different capabilities for people? And then demonstrating to ourselves, and then ultimately folks in regulatory role, and then ultimately the public, that we have confidence that our system will work better than that. And so these individual metrics will kind of tell a compelling story ultimately. I do think at the end of the day, what we care about in terms of safety is lives saved and injuries reduced. And then ultimately, you know, kind of casualty dollars that people aren't having to pay to get their car fixed. And I do think that you can, you know, in aviation, they look at a kind of an event pyramid where, you know, a crash is at the top of that, and that's the worst event, obviously. And then there's injuries and, you know, near miss events and whatnot, and, you know, violation of operating procedures. And you kind of build a statistical model of the relevance of the low severity things to the high severity things. And I think that's something where we'll be able to look at as well. Because, you know, an event per 85 million miles is statistically a difficult thing, even at the scale of the U.S., to kind of compare directly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that event, the fatality that's connected to an autonomous vehicle is... significantly, at least currently magnified in the amount of attention it gets. So that speaks to public perception. I think the most popular topic about autonomous vehicles in the public is the trolley problem formulation, right? Which has, let's not get into that too much, but is misguided in many ways. But it speaks to the fact that people are grappling with this idea of giving control over to a machine. So how do you win the hearts and minds of the people that autonomy is something that could be a part of their lives?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you let them experience it. I think it's right. I think people should be skeptical. I think people should ask questions. I think they should doubt. Because this is something new and different. They haven't touched it yet. And I think it's perfectly reasonable. But at the same time, it's clear there's an opportunity to make the road safer. It's clear that we can improve access to mobility. It's clear that we can reduce the cost of mobility. And that once people try that and understand that it's safe and are able to use in their daily lives, I think it's one of these things that will just be obvious. And I've seen this practically in demonstrations that I've given where I've had people come in and they're very skeptical and they get in a vehicle. My favorite one is taking somebody out on the freeway And we're on the 101 driving at 65 miles an hour. And after 10 minutes, they kind of turn and ask, is that all it does? And you're like, it's a self-driving car. I'm not sure exactly what you thought it would do, right? But it becomes mundane. which is which is exactly what you want a technology like this to be right we don't really when I turn the light switch on in here I don't think about the complexity of you know the those electrons you know being pushed down a wire from wherever it was and being generated like it's just it's like I just get annoyed if it doesn't work right and and what I value is the fact that I can do other things in this space I can you know see my colleagues I can read stuff on a paper I can you know not be afraid of the dark. And I think that's what we want this technology to be like, is it's in the background and people get to have those life experiences and do so safely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So putting this technology in the hands of people speaks to scale of deployment. So what do you think The the dreaded question about the future because nobody can predict the future. Yeah, but just maybe Speak poetically about when do you think we'll see a large-scale deployment of? autonomous vehicles 10,000 those kinds of numbers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We'll see that within 10 years I'm pretty confident we" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's an impressive scale? What moment? So you've done the DARPA challenge where there's one vehicle. At which moment does it become, wow, this is serious scale?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think the moment it gets serious is when we really do have a driverless vehicle operating on public roads and that we can do that kind of continuously without a safety driver without a safety driver in the vehicle i think at that moment we've we've kind of crossed the zero to one threshold and then it is about uh how do we continue to scale that how do we build the right business models, how do we build the right customer experience around it so that it is actually, you know, a useful product out in the world. And I think that is really, at that point it moves from a, you know, what is this kind of mixed science engineering project into engineering and commercialization and really starting to deliver on the value that we all see here and, you know, and actually making that real in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think that deployment looks like? Where do we first see the inkling of a no safety driver, one or two cars here and there? Is it on the highway? Is it in specific routes in the urban environment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's going to be urban, suburban type environments. Yeah, with Aurora, when we thought about how to tackle this, it was kind of en vogue to think about trucking as opposed to urban driving. And again, the human intuition around this is that freeways are easier to drive on. Because everybody's kind of going in the same direction, and the lanes are a little wider, et cetera. And I think that intuition is pretty good, except we don't really care about most of the time. We care about all of the time. And when you're driving on a freeway with a truck, say, at 70 miles an hour, and you've got 70,000 pound load with you, that's just an incredible amount of kinetic energy. And so when that goes wrong, it goes really wrong. and that those challenges that you see occur more rarely, so you don't get to learn as quickly. And they're incrementally more difficult than urban driving, but they're not easier than urban driving. And so I think this happens in moderate speed urban environments, because if two vehicles crash at 25 miles per hour, it's not good, but probably everybody walks away. And those those events where there's the possibility for that occurring happen frequently. So we get to learn more rapidly. We get to do that with lower risk for everyone. And then we can deliver value to people that need to get from one place to another. And then once we've got that solved, then the kind of the freeway driving part of this just falls out. But we're able to learn more safely, more quickly in the urban environment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So 10 years and then scale 20, 30 years. I mean, who knows if a sufficiently compelling experience is created, it could be faster and slower. Do you think there could be breakthroughs and what kind of breakthroughs might there be that completely change that timeline? Again, not only am I asking you to predict the future, I'm asking you to predict breakthroughs that haven't happened yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think another way to ask that would be if I could wave a magic wand, what part of the system would I make work today to accelerate it as quickly as possible?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't say infrastructure, please don't say infrastructure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's definitely not infrastructure. Uh, it's really that con that perception forecasting capability. So if, if, if tomorrow you could give me a perfect model of what's happened, what is happening and what will happen for the next five seconds around a vehicle on the roadway, that would accelerate things pretty dramatically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you in terms of staying up at night, are you mostly bothered by cars, pedestrians, or cyclists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I worry most about the vulnerable road users about the combination of cyclists and cars, or cyclists and pedestrians, because they're not in armor. The cars, they're bigger, they've got protection for the people, and so the ultimate risk is lower there. Whereas a pedestrian or cyclist, they're out on the road, and they don't have any protection. And so we need to pay extra attention to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think about a very difficult technical challenge of the fact that pedestrians, if you try to protect pedestrians by being careful and slow, they'll take advantage of that. So the game theoretic dance, does that worry you of how, from a technical perspective, how we solve that? because as humans, the way we solve that is kind of nudge our way through the pedestrians, which doesn't feel from a technical perspective as a, uh, appropriate algorithm. Uh, but do you, do you think about how we solve that problem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think, I think there's, there's, I think that was actually, there's two different concepts there. So one is, am I worried that because these vehicles are self-driving people kind of step in the road and take advantage of them? And i've heard this and i don't really believe it because if i'm driving down the road and somebody steps in front of me i'm going to stop right like even if i'm annoyed i'm not going to just drive through a person stood in the road right And so I think today people can take advantage of this and you do see some people do it. Uh, I guess there's an incremental risk because maybe they have lower confidence that I'm going to see them than they might have for an automated vehicle. And so maybe that shifts it a little bit, but I think people don't want to get hit by cars. Uh, and so I think that I'm not that worried about people walking out of the one-on-one and, you know, creating chaos more than they would today. Regarding kind of the nudging through a big stream of pedestrians leaving a concert or something, I think that is further down the technology pipeline. I think that you're right, that's tricky. I don't think it's necessarily I think the algorithm people use for this is pretty simple. Uh, right. It's kind of just move forward slowly. And if somebody is really close and stop. And, and I think that that probably can be replicated pretty, pretty easily. Uh, and particularly given that it's, you don't do this at 30 miles an hour, you do it at one that even in those situations, the risk is relatively minimal, but I, you know, it's not something we're, we're thinking about in any serious way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And probably that's less an algorithm problem and more creating a human experience. So the HCI people that create a visual display that you're pleasantly as a pedestrian nudged out of the way. That's an experience problem, not an algorithm problem. Who's the main competitor to Aurora today? And how do you out-compete them in the long run?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we really focus a lot of what we're doing here. I think that, you know, I've said this a few times that this is a huge, difficult problem and it's great that a bunch of companies are tackling it because I think it's so important for society that somebody gets there. So we, you know, we're, we don't spend a whole lot of time like thinking tactically about who's out there and, and how do we beat that, that, that person individually? Um, what are we trying to do to, to go faster ultimately? Uh, well, part of it is the leisure team we have has got pretty tremendous experience. Um, and so we kind of understand the landscape and understand where the cul-de-sacs are to some degree. And, you know, we try and avoid those. I think there's a part of it, just this great team we've built. This is a technology and a company that people believe in the mission of, and so it allows us to attract just awesome people to go work. We've got a culture, I think, that people appreciate that allows them to focus, allows them to really spend time solving problems, and I think that keeps them energized. And then we've invested hard, invested heavily in the infrastructure and architectures that we think will ultimately accelerate us. So because of the folks we're able to bring in early on, because of the great investors we have, we don't spend all of our time doing demos and kind of leaping from one demo to the next. We've been given the freedom to invest in infrastructure to do machine learning, infrastructure to pull data from our on-road testing, infrastructure to use that to accelerate engineering. And I think that early investment and continuing investment in those kinds of tools will ultimately allow us to accelerate and do something pretty incredible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Chris, beautifully put. It's a good place to end. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course we all experience low points in our life and we get appalled by the things, by the ugliness of stuff around us. We might get desperate about our lack of self-regulation. And sometimes life is hard. And I suspect you don't get to your life, nobody does to get to their life without low points and without moments where they're despairing. And I thought that let's capture this state and how to deal with that state. And I found that very often you realize that when you stop taking things personally, when you realize that this notion of a person is a fiction, similar as it is in Westworld, where the robots realize that their memories and desires are the stuff that keeps them in the loop. And they don't have to act on those memories and desires, that our memories and expectations is what make us unhappy. And the present rarely does. The day in which we are, for the most part, it's okay, right? When we are sitting here, right here, right now. we can choose how we feel. And the thing that affects us is the expectation that something is going to be different from what we want it to be, or the memory that something was different from what you wanted it to be. And once we basically zoom out from all this, what's left is not a person. What's left is this state of being conscious, which is a software state. And software doesn't have an identity. It's a physical law. And it's a law that acts in all of us and it's embedded in a suitable substrate. And we didn't pick that substrate, right? We are mostly randomly instantiated on it. And they're all these individuals and everybody has to be one of them. And eventually you're stuck on one of them and have to deal with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're like a leaf floating down the river. You just have to accept that there's a river and you just You don't have to do this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The thing is that the illusion that you are an agent is a construct and what part of that is actually under your control. And I think that our consciousness is largely a control model for our own attention. So we notice where we are looking and we can influence what we are looking, how we are disambiguating things, how we put things together in our mind. And the whole system that runs us is this big cybernetic motivational system. So we're basically like a little monkey sitting on top of an elephant, and we can prod this elephant here and there to go this way or that way. And we might have the illusion that we are the elephant or that we are telling it what to do. And sometimes we notice that it walks into a completely different direction. And we didn't set this thing up. It just is the situation that we find ourselves in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How much prodding can we actually do of the elephant?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot. But I think that our consciousness cannot create the motive force." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is the elephant consciousness in this metaphor?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, the monkey is the consciousness. The monkey is the attentional system that is observing things. There's a large perceptual system combined with a motivational system that is actually providing the interface to everything. And our own consciousness, I think, is a tool that directs the attention of that system, which means it singles out features. and performs conditional operations for which it needs an index memory. But this index memory is what we perceive as our stream of consciousness, but the consciousness is not in charge. That's an illusion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So everything outside of that consciousness is the elephant. So it's the physics of the universe, but it's also society that's outside of your" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say the elephant is the agent. So there is an environment in which the agent is stomping and you are influencing a little part of that agent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you, is the agent a single human being? Which object has agency?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an interesting question. I think a way to think about an agent is that it's a controller with a set point generator. The notion of a controller comes from cybernetics and control theory. Control system consists out of a system that is regulating some value and the deviation of that value from a set point. And it has a sensor that measures the system's deviation from that set point. and an effector that can be parameterized by the controller. So the controller tells the effector to do a certain thing. And the goal is to reduce the distance between the set point and the current value of the system. And there's environment which disturbs the regulated system, which brings it away from that set point. So simplest case is a thermostat. The thermostat is really simple because it doesn't have a model. The thermostat is only trying to minimize the set point deviation in the next moment. And if you want to minimize the set point deviation over a longer time span, you need to integrate it. You need to model what is going to happen. So for instance, when you think about that your set point is to be comfortable in life, maybe you need to make yourself uncomfortable first. So you need to make a model of what's going to happen when, and this is the task of the controller, is to use its sensors to measure the state of the environment and the system that is being regulated and figure out what to do. And if the task is complex enough, the set points are complicated enough, and if the controller has enough capacity and enough sensor feedback, then the task of the controller is to make a model of the entire universe that it's in, the conditions under which it exists, and of itself. And this is a very complex agent, and we are in that category. And an agent is not necessarily a thing in the universe, it's a class of models that we use to interpret aspects of the universe. And when we notice the environment around us, a lot of things only make sense at the level that we're entangled with them if we interpret them as control systems that make models of the world and try to minimize their own set points. So, but the models are the agents. The agent is a class of model. And we notice that we are an agent ourself. We are the agent that is using our own control model to perform actions. We notice we produce a change in the model and things in the world change. And this is how we discover the idea that we have a body, that we are situated in an environment, and that we have a first-person perspective." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "still don't understand what's the best way to think of which object has agency with respect to human beings. Is it the body? Is it the brain? Is it the contents of the brain that has agency? Like what's the actuators that you're referring to? What is the controller and where does it reside? Or is it these impossible things? Because I keep trying to ground it to space-time. the three dimension of space, and the one dimension of time. What's the agent in that for humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is not just one. It depends on the way in which you're looking at the thing in which you're framing it. Imagine that you are, say, Angela Merkel, and you are acting on behalf of Germany. Then you could say that Germany is the agent. And in the mind of Angela Merkel, she is Germany to some extent, because in the way in which she acts, the destiny of Germany changes. There are things that she can change that basically affect the behavior of that nation state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. So it's hierarchies of to go to another one of your tweets with, uh, I think you were, um, playfully mocking Jeff Hawkins with saying his brains all the way down. So it's like, it's agents all the way down. It's agents made up of agents made up of agents. Like if Angela Merkel is Germany and Germany is made up of a bunch of people and the people are themselves agents in some kind of context. And then the people are made up of cells, each individual. So is it agents all the way down?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect that has to be like this in a world where things are self-organizing. Most of the complexity that we are looking at, everything in life is about self-organization. So I think up from the level of life, you have agents. And below life, you rarely have agents because sometimes you have control systems that emerge randomly in nature and try to achieve a set point, but they're not that interesting agents that make models. And because to make an interesting model of the world, you typically need a system that is true and complete." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you a personal question? What's the line between life and non-life? It's personal because you're a life form. So where do you think in this emerging complexity, at which point does the thing start being living and have agency?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Personally, I think that the simplest answer is that life itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "because- Life is what? Cells." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Cells. Biological cells. So it's a particular kind of principle that we have discovered to exist in nature. It's modular stuff that consists out of basically this DNA tape with a redried head on top of it that is able to perform arbitrary computations and state transitions within the cell. And it's combined with a membrane that insulates the cell from its environment. And there are chemical reactions inside of the cell that are in disequilibrium. And the cell is running in such a way that this disequilibrium doesn't disappear. And if the cell goes into an equilibrium state, it dies. And it requires something like a neck entropy extractor to maintain this disequilibrium. So it's able to harvest neck entropy from its environment and keep itself running." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so there's information and there's a wall to protect, to maintain this disequilibrium, but isn't this very earth-centric, like what you're referring to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not making a normative notion. You could say that there are probably other things in the universe that are cell-like and life-like, and you could also call them life, but eventually it's just a willingness to find an agreement of how to use the terms. I like cells because it's completely coextensional with the way that we use the word even before we knew about cells. So people were pointing at some stuff and saying, this is somehow animate, and this is very different from the non-animate stuff. And what's the difference between the living and the dead stuff? And it's mostly whether the cells are working or not. And also this boundary of life where we say that, for instance, the virus is basically an information packet that is subverting the cell and not life by itself. That makes sense to me. And it's somewhat arbitrary. You could, of course, say that systems that permanently maintain a disequilibrium and can self-replicate are always life. And maybe that's a useful definition, too. But This is eventually just how you want to use the word." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it so useful for conversation, but is it somehow fundamental to the universe? Do you think there's a actual line to eventually be drawn between life and non-life? Or is it all a kind of continuum?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it's a continuum, but there's nothing magical that is happening. Living systems are a certain type of machine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about non-living systems? Is it also a machine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are non-living machines, but the question is at which point is a system able to perform arbitrary state transitions to make representations? And living things can do this. And of course, we can also build non-living things that can do this, but we don't know anything in nature that is not a cell and is not created by cellular life that is able to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not only do we not know, I don't think we have the tools to see otherwise. I always worry that we look at the world too narrowly. There could be life of a very different kind right under our noses that we're just not seeing because we're not either limitations of our cognitive capacity or we're just not open-minded enough. Either with the tools of science or just" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "tools of our mind yeah that's possible i find this thought very fascinating and i suspect that many of us ask ourselves since childhood what are the things that we are missing what kind of systems and interconnections exist that are outside of our gaze but the um are looking for it and physics doesn't have much room at the moment for opening up something that would not violate the conservation of information as we know it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I wonder about time scale and scale, spatial scale, whether we just need to open up our idea of how life presents itself. It could be operating at a much slower timescale, a much faster timescale. And it's almost sad to think that there's all this life around us that we're not seeing because we're just not thinking in terms of the right scale, both time and space." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What is your definition of life? What do you understand as life?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Entities of sufficiently high complexity that are full of surprises. I don't know. I don't have a free will, so that just came out of my mouth. I'm not sure that even makes sense. There's certain characteristics. So complexity seems to be a necessary property of life, and I almost want to say it has ability to do something unexpected." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It seems to me that life is the main source of complexity on earth. Yes. And complexity is basically a bridgehead that order builds into chaos by modeling. by processing information in such a way that you can perform reactions that would not be possible for dump systems. And this means that you can harvest like entropy that dump systems cannot harvest. And this is what complexity is mostly about. In some sense, the purpose of life is to create complexity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Increasing, I mean, there seems to be some kind of universal drive towards increasing pockets of complexity. I don't know what that is. That seems to be like a fundamental, I don't know if it's a property of the universe or it's just a consequence of the way the universe works. But there seems to be this small pockets of emergent complexity that builds on top of each other and starts having like greater and greater complexity by having like a hierarchy of complexity. little organisms building up a little society that then operates almost as an individual organism itself. And all of a sudden you have Germany and Merkel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's not obvious to me. Everything that goes up has to come down at some point, right? So if you see this big exponential curve somewhere, it's usually the beginning of an S-curve. where something eventually reaches saturation and the S-curve is the beginning of some kind of bump that goes down again. And there is just this thing that when you are inside of an evolution of life, you are on top of a puddle of negentropy that is being sucked dry by life. And during that happening, you see an increase in complexity. Because life forms are competing with each other to get more and more and finer and finer corner of that, like entropy extraction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that, I feel like that's a gradual, beautiful process. Like that's almost, you know, follows a process akin to evolution. And the way it comes down is not the same way it came up. The way it comes down is usually harshly and quickly. So usually there's some kind of catastrophic event." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the Roman empire took a long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But would you classify that as a decrease in complexity though?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I think that this size of the cities that could be fed has decreased dramatically. And you could see that the quality of the art decreased and it did so gradually. And maybe future generations, when they look at the history of the United States in the 21st century, will also talk about the gradual decline, not something that suddenly happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a sense of where we are? Are we on the exponential rise? Are we at the peak? Or are we at the downslope of the United States empire?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very hard to say from a single human perspective, but it seems to me that we are probably at the peak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that's probably the definition of like optimism and cynicism. So my nature of optimism is I think we're on the rise. I think it's just all a matter of perspective. Nobody knows, but I do think that erring on the side of optimism, like you need a sufficient number. You need a minimum number of optimists in order to make that up thing actually work. And so I tend to be on the side of the optimists." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that we are basically a species of grasshoppers that have turned into locusts. And when you are in that locust mode, you see an amazing rise of population numbers and of the complexity of the interactions between the individuals. But it's ultimately the question is, is it sustainable?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I think we're a bunch of lions and tigers that have become domesticated cats, to use a different metaphor. And so I'm not exactly sure we're so destructive. We're just softer and nicer and lazier." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we have monkeys and not the cats. And if you look at the monkeys, they are very busy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The ones that have a lot of sex, those monkeys?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not just the bonobos. I think that all the monkeys are basically a discontent species that always needs to meddle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the gorillas seem to have a little bit more of a structure, but it's a different part of the tree. Okay, you mentioned the elephant and the monkey riding the elephant, and consciousness is the monkey, and there's some prodding that the monkey gets to do, and sometimes the elephant listens. I heard you got into some contentious, maybe you can correct me, but I heard you got into some contentious free will discussions. Is this with Sam Harris or something like that? Not that I know of. Some people on Clubhouse told me you made a bunch of big debate points about free will. Well, let me just then ask you where, in terms of the monkey and the elephant, do you think we land in terms of the illusion of free will? How much control does the monkey have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have to think about what free will is in the first place. We are not the machine. We are not the thing that is making the decisions. We are a model of that decision-making process. And there is a difference between making your own decisions and predicting your own decisions. And that difference is the first-person perspective. What basically makes decision-making and the conditions of free will distinct from just automatically doing the best thing is that we often don't know what the best thing is. We make decisions under uncertainty. We make informed bets using a betting algorithm that we don't yet understand because we haven't reverse engineered our own minds sufficiently. We don't know the expected rewards. We don't know the mechanism by which we estimate the rewards and so on. But there is an algorithm. We observe ourselves performing. where we see that we weigh facts and factors and the future, and then some kind of possibility, some motive gets raised to an intention. And that's informed bet that the system is making. And that making of the informed bet, the representation of that is what we call free will. And it seems to be paradoxical because we think that's the crucial thing is about it, that it's somehow indeterministic. And yet, if it was indeterministic, it would be random. And it cannot be random, because if it was random, if just dice were being thrown in the universe randomly forces you to do things, it would be meaningless. So the important part of the decisions is always the deterministic stuff. But it appears to be indeterministic to you because it's unpredictable. Because if it was predictable, you wouldn't experience it as a free will decision. You would experience it as just doing the necessary right thing. And you see this continuum between the free will and the execution of automatic behavior when you're observing other people. So for instance, when you are observing your own children. If you don't understand them, you will use this agent model where you have an agent with a set point generator, and the agent is doing the best it can to minimize the difference to the set point. And it might be confused and sometimes impulsive or whatever, but it's acting on its own free will. And when you understand what happens in the mind of the child, you see that it's automatic. And you can outmodel the child, you can build things around the child that will lead the child to making exactly the decision that you are predicting. And under these circumstances, like when you are a stage musician, or somebody who is dealing with people that you sell a car to, and you completely understand the psychology and the impulses and the space of thoughts that this individual can have at that moment. Under these circumstances, it makes no sense to attribute free will, because it's no longer decision-making under uncertainty. You are already certain. For them, there's uncertainty, but you already know what they're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But what about for you? So is this akin to like systems like cellular automata where it's deterministic, but when you squint your eyes a little bit, it starts to look like there's agents making decisions at the higher, sort of, when you zoom out and look at the entities that are composed by the individual cells. Even though there's underlying simple rules that make the system evolve in deterministic ways, it looks like there's organisms making decisions. Is that where the illusion of free will emerges, that jump in scale?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a particular type of model, but this jump in scale is crucial. The jump in scale happens whenever you have too many parts to count and you cannot make a model at that level, and you try to find some higher level regularity. And the higher level regularity is a pattern that you project into the world to make sense of it. And agency is one of these patterns, right? You have all these cells that interact with each other and the cells in our body are set up in such a way that they benefit if their behavior is coherent, which means that they act as if they were serving a common goal. And that means that they will evolve regulation mechanisms that act as if they were serving a common goal. And now you can make sense of these, all these cells by projecting the common goal into them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So for you then free will is an illusion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's a model and it's a construct. It's basically a model that the system is making of its own behavior. And it's the best model that it can come up with under the circumstances. And it can get replaced by a different model, which is automatic behavior. Then you fully understand the mechanism under which you are acting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but another word for model is what? Story. So it's the story you're telling. I mean, do you actually have control? Is there such a thing as a you? And is there such a thing as you having control? So like, are you manifesting your evolution as an entity?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In some sense, the you is the model of the system that is in control. It's a story that the system tells itself about somebody who is in control. And the contents of that model are being used to inform the behavior of the system. So the system is completely mechanical and the system creates that story like a loom. And then it uses the contents of that story to inform its actions and writes the results of that actions into the story." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how is that not an illusion? The story is written then. Or rather, we're not the writers of the story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but we always knew that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, we don't know that. When did we know that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's mostly a confusion about concepts. The conceptual illusion in our culture comes from the idea that we live in physical reality and that we experience physical reality and that we have ideas about it. And then you have this dualist interpretation where you have two substances, res extensa, the world that you can touch and that is made of extended things, and res cogitans, which is the world of ideas. And in fact, both of them are mental representations. One is the representations of the world as a game engine that your mind generates to make sense of the perceptual data. And the other one's- That's the physical world? Yes, that's what we perceive as the physical world. But we already know that the physical world is nothing like that, right? Quantum mechanics is very different from what you and me perceive as the world. The world that you and me perceive is a game engine. Yeah. And there are no colors and sounds in the physical world. They only exist in the game engine generated by your brain. And then you have ideas that cannot be mapped onto extended regions. So the objects that have a spatial extension in the game engine are res extensa. And the objects that don't have a physical extension in the game engine are ideas. And they both interact in our mind to produce models of the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But when you play video games, I understand that what's actually happening is zeros and ones inside of a computer, inside of a CPU and a GPU, but you're still seeing the rendering of that. And you're still making decisions whether to shoot, to turn left, or to turn right, if you're playing a shooter. Every time I start thinking about Skyrim and Elder Scrolls and walking around in beautiful nature and swinging a sword, But it feels like you're making decisions inside that video game. So even though you don't have direct access in terms of perception to the bits, to the zeros and ones, it still feels like you're making decisions and your decisions actually feel like they're being applied. all the way down to the zeros and ones. So it feels like you have control, even though you don't direct access to reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there is basically a special character in the video game that is being created by the video game engine. And this character is serving the aesthetics of the video game. And that is you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, but I feel like I have control inside the video game. Like all those like 12 year olds that kick my ass on the internet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So when you play the video game, it doesn't really matter that there's zeros and ones, right? You don't care about the widths of the bus. You don't care about the nature of the CPU that it runs on. What you care about are the properties of the game that you're playing. And you hope that the CPU is good enough. Yes. And a similar thing happens when we interact with physics. The world that you and me are in is not the physical world. The world that you and me are in is a dream world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How close is it to the real world though?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We know that it's not very close, but we know that the dynamics of the dream world match the dynamics of the physical world to a certain degree of resolution. But the causal structure of the dream world is different. So you see, for instance, waves crashing on your feet, right? But there are no waves in the ocean. There's only water molecules that have tangents between the molecules that are the result of electrons in the molecules interacting with each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Aren't they like very consistent? We're just seeing a very crude approximation. Isn't our dream world very consistent? Like to the point of being mapped directly one-to-one to the actual physical world, as opposed to, us being completely tricked. This is like where you have like... It's not a trick." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's my point. It's not an illusion. It's a form of data compression. It's an attempt to deal with the dynamics of too many parts to count at the level at which we're entangled with the best model that you can find." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so we can act in that dream world and our actions have impact in the real world, in the physical world. Yes. To which we don't have access." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but it's basically like accepting the fact that the software that we live in, the dream that we live in, is generated by something outside of this world that you and me are in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is the software deterministic and do we not have any control? So free will is having a conscious being Free will is the monkey being able to steer the elephant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's slightly different. Basically, in the same way as you are modeling the water molecules in the ocean that engulf your feet when you are walking on the beach as waves, and there are no waves, but only the atoms on more complicated stuff underneath the atoms and so on. And you know that, right? You would accept, yes, there is a certain abstraction that happens here. It's a simplification of what happens and a simplification that is designed in such a way that your brain can deal with it temporarily and spatially in terms of resources and tuned for the predictive value. So you can predict with some accuracy whether your feet are going to get wet or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's a really good interface and approximation. It's like E equals MC squared is a good equation. It's a good approximation for what they're much better approximation. So to me, waves is a really nice approximation of what's all the complexity that's happening underneath." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Basically, it's a machine learning model that is constantly tuned to minimize surprises. So it basically tries to predict as well as it can what you're going to perceive next." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are we talking about, which is the machine learning, our perception system or the dream world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The machine world, dream world is the result of the machine learning process of the perception system. That's doing the compression. Yes. And the model of you as an agent is not a different type of model or it's a different type, but not different in its model-like nature from the model of the ocean, right? Some things are oceans, some things are agents. And one of these agents is using your own control model, the output of your model, the things that you perceive yourself as doing. And that is you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the fact that when you're standing with the water on your feet, and you're looking out into the vast open water of the ocean, and then there's a beautiful sunset, and the fact that it's beautiful, and then maybe you have friends or a loved one with you, and you feel love, what is that? Is that the dream world, or what is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's all happening inside of the dream." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. But see, the word dream makes it seem like it's not real." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, of course it's not real. The physical universe is real, but the physical universe is incomprehensible and it doesn't have any feeling of realness. The feeling of realness that you experience gets attached to certain representations where your brain assesses, this is the best model of reality that I have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the only thing that's real to you is the thing that's happening at the very base of reality," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, for something to be real, it needs to be implemented. So the model that you have of reality is real in as far as it is a model, right? It's an appropriate description of the world to say that there are models that are being experienced. But the world that you experience is not necessarily implemented. There is a difference between a reality, a simulation, and a simulacrum. The reality that we're talking about is something that fully emerges over a causally closed lowest layer. And the idea of physicalism is that we are in that layer, that basically our world emerges over that. Every alternative to physicalism is a simulation theory, which basically says that we are in some kind of simulation universe and the real world needs to be an apparent universe of that, where the actual causal structure is, right? And when you look at the ocean in your own mind, you are looking at a simulation that explains what you're going to see next." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we are living in a simulation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but a simulation generated by our own brains. And this simulation is different from the physical reality because the causal structure that is being produced, what you are seeing, is different from the causal structure of physics. But consistent. hopefully. If not, then you are going to end up in some kind of institution where people will take care of you because your behavior will be inconsistent, right? Your behavior needs to work in such a way that it's interacting with an accurately predictive model of reality. And if your brain is unable to make your model of reality predictive, you will need help." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you think about Donald Hoffman's argument that it doesn't have to be consistent. The dream world to the, what he calls like the interface to the actual physical reality where there could be evolution. I think he makes an evolutionary argument, which is like, it could be an evolutionary advantage to have the dream world drift away from physical reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that only works if you have tenure. As long as you're still interacting with the ground truth, your internal model needs to be somewhat predictive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, in some sense, humans have achieved a kind of tenure in the animal kingdom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. At some point, we became too big to fail, so we became postmodernists. It all makes sense now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a version of reality that we like. Oh, man. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but basically you can do magic, you can change your assessment of reality, but eventually reality is going to come bite you in the ass if it's not predictive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a sense of what is that base layer of physical reality? You have like, so you have these attempts at the theories of everything. The very, very small of like string theory or what Steven Wolfram talks about with a hypergrass. These are these tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny objects. And then there is more like quantum mechanics that's talking about objects that are much larger, but still very, very, very tiny. Do you have a sense of where the tiniest thing is that is like at the lowest level? The turtle at the very bottom. Do you have a sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think that you can talk about where it is because space is emergent over the activity of these things. So space, the coordinates only exist in relation to the things, other things. And so you could, in some sense, abstract it into locations that can hold information and trajectories that the information can take between the different locations. And this is how we construct our notion of space. And physicists usually have a notion of space that is continuous. And this is a point where I tend to agree with people like Stephen Wolfram, who are very skeptical of the geometric notions. I think that geometry is the dynamics of too many parts to count. There are no infinities. If there were two infinities, you would be running into contradictions, which is in some sense what Gödel and Turing discovered in response to Hilbert's call." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There are no infinities." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are no infinities. Infinity is fake. There is unboundedness, but if you have a language that talks about infinity, at some point the language is going to contradict itself. which means it's no longer valid. In order to deal with infinities in mathematics, you have to postulate their existence initially. You cannot construct the infinities. And that's an issue, right? You cannot build up an infinity from zero. But in practice, you never do this, right? When you perform calculations, you only look at the dynamics of too many parts to count. And usually these numbers are not that large. They're not googles or something. The infinities that we are dealing with in our universe are mathematically speaking relatively small integers. And still, what we're looking at is dynamics where a trillion things behave similar to a hundred trillion things or something that is very, very large because they're converging. And these convergent dynamics, these operators, this is what we deal with when we are doing the geometry. Geometry is stuff where we can pretend that it's continuous, because if we subdivide the space sufficiently fine-grained, these things approach a certain dynamic. And this approached dynamic, that is what we mean by it. But I don't think that infinity would work, so to speak, that you would know the last digit of pi and that you have a physical process that rests on knowing the last digit of pi." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that could be just a peculiar quirk of human cognition that we like discrete. Discrete makes sense to us. Infinity doesn't, in terms of our intuitions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, the issue is that everything that we think about needs to be expressed in some kind of mental language, not necessarily a natural language, but some kind of mathematical language that your neurons can speak. that refers to something in the world. And what we have discovered is that we cannot construct a notion of infinity without running into contradictions, which means that such a language is no longer valid. And I suspect this is what made Pythagoras so unhappy when somebody came up with the notion of irrational numbers before it was time, right? There's this myth that he had this person killed when he blabbed out the secret that not everything can be expressed as a ratio between two numbers, but there are numbers between the ratios. The world was not ready for this, and I think he was right. It has confused mathematicians very seriously because these numbers are not values, they are functions. And so you can calculate these functions to a certain degree of approximation, but you cannot pretend that pi has actually a value. Pi is a function that would approach this value to some degree, but nothing in the world rests on knowing pi." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How important is this distinction between discrete and continuous for you to get to the bottom? Because there's a, I mean, in discussion of your favorite flavor of the theory of everything, there's a few on the table. So there's string theory, there's loop quantum gravity, which focus on one particular unification. There's just a bunch of favorite flavors of different people trying to propose a theory of everything. Eric Weinstein and a bunch of people throughout history. And then, of course, Stephen Wolfram, who I think is one of the only people doing a discreet" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, there's a bunch of physicists who do this right now, like Toffoli and Tomasello. Digital physics is something that is, I think, growing in popularity. But the main reason why this is interesting is because it's important sometimes to settle disagreements. I don't think that you need infinities at all and you never needed them. you can always deal with very large numbers and you can deal with limits, right? We are fine with doing that. You don't need any kind of affinity. You can build your computer algebra systems just as well without believing in infinity in the first place. So you're okay with limits? Yeah, so basically a limit means that something is behaving pretty much the same if you make the number larger, right? Because it's converging to a certain value and at some point the difference becomes negligible and you can no longer measure it. And in this sense, you have things that, if you have an n-gon which has enough corners, then it's going to behave like a circle at some point, right? And it's only going to be in some kind of esoteric thing that cannot exist in the physical universe that you would be talking about this perfect circle. And now it turns out that it also wouldn't work in mathematics because you cannot construct mathematics that has infinite resolution without running into contradictions. So that is itself not that important because we never did that. It's just a thing that some people thought we could. And this leads to confusion. So for instance, Roger Penrose uses this as an argument to say that there are certain things that mathematicians can do, dealing with infinities, and by extension our mind can do. that computers cannot do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he talks about that there's the human mind can do certain mathematical things that the computer as defined by the universal Turing machine cannot. Yes. So that it has to do with infinity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's one of the things. So he is basically pointing at the fact that there are things that are possible in the mathematical mind and the pure mathematics that are not possible in machines that can be constructed in the physical universe. And because he's an honest guy, he thinks this means that present physics cannot explain operations that happen in our mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he's right? So let's leave his discussion of consciousness aside for the moment. Do you think he's right about just what he's basically referring to as intelligence? Is the human mind fundamentally more capable as a thinking machine than a universal toy machine? No. So he's suggesting that, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So our mind is actually less than a Turing machine. There can be no Turing machine because it's defined as having an infinite tape. And we always only have a finite tape. Our minds can only perform finitely many operations. Yes, he thinks so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He can do the kind of computation the Turing machine cannot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's because he thinks that our minds can do operations that have infinite resolution in some sense. And I don't think that's the case. Our minds are just able to discover these limit operators over too many parts to count." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about his idea that consciousness is more than a computation? So it's more than something that a Turing machine can do. So again, saying that there's something special about our mind that cannot be replicated in the machine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The issue is that I don't even know how to construct a language to express this statement correctly. Well," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The basic statement is there's a human experience that includes intelligence, that includes self-awareness, that includes the hard problem of consciousness. And the question is, can that be fully simulated in the computer, in the mathematical model of the computer as we understand it today? Roger Penrose says no. So the universatory machine cannot simulate the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the interesting question is, and you have to ask him this, is why not? What is the specific thing that cannot be modeled? And when I looked at his writings, and I haven't read all of it, but when I read, for instance, the section that he writes in the introduction to Road to Infinity, the thing that he specifically refers to is the way in which human minds deal with infinities. And that itself can, I think, easily be deconstructed. A lot of people feel that our experience cannot be explained in a mechanical way. And therefore, it needs to be different. And I concur. Our experience is not mechanical. Our experience is simulated. It exists only in a simulation. Only a simulation can be conscious. Physical systems cannot be conscious because they're only mechanical. Cells cannot be conscious. Neurons cannot be conscious. Brains cannot be conscious. People cannot be conscious as far as you, if you understand them as physical systems. What can be conscious is the story of a system in the world where you write all these things into the story. You have experiences for the same reason that a character in a novel has experiences, because it's written into the story. And now the system is acting on that story. And it's not a story that is written in a natural language. It's written in a perceptual language, in this multimedia language of the game engine. And in there, you write in what kind of experience you have and what this means for the behavior of the system, for your behavior tendencies, for your focus, for your attention, for your experience of valence and so on. And this is being used to inform the behavior of the system in the next step. And then the story updates with the reactions of the system and the changes in the world and so on. And you live inside of that model. You don't live inside of the physical reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, just to linger on it, like you see, okay, it's in the perceptual language, the multimodal perceptual language. That's the experience. That's what consciousness is within that model, within that story. But do you have agency? When you play a video game, you can turn left and you can turn right in that story. So in that dream world, how much control Do you, is there such a thing as you in that story? Like, is it right to say the main character, you know, everybody's NPCs and then there's the main character and you're controlling the main character or is that an illusion? Is there a main character that you're controlling? I'm getting to the point of like the free will point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Imagine that you are building a robot that plays soccer and you've been to MIT computer science, you basically know how to do that. And so you would say the robot is an agent that solves a control problem. how to get the ball into the goal. And it needs to perceive the world and the world is disturbing him in trying to do this, right? So he has to control many variables to make that happen and to project itself and the ball into the future and understand its position on the field relative to the ball and so on, and the position of its limbs in the space around it and so on. So it needs to have an adequate model of abstracting reality in a useful way. And you could say that this robot does have agency over what it's doing in some sense. And the model is going to be a control model. And inside of that control model, you can possibly get to a point where this thing is sufficiently abstract to discover its own agency. Our current robots don't do that. They don't have a unified model of the universe. But there's not a reason why we shouldn't be getting there at some point in the not too distant future. And once that happens, you will notice that the robot tells a story about a robot playing soccer. So the robot will experience itself playing soccer in a simulation of the world that it uses to construct a model of the locations of its legs and limbs in space on the field with relationship to the ball. And it's not going to be at the level of the molecules it will be an abstraction that is exactly at the level that is most suitable for past planning of the movements of the robot. It's going to be a high level abstraction, but a very useful one that is as predictive as you can make it. And in that side of that story, there is a model of the agency of that system. So this model can accurately predict that the contents of the model are going to be driving the behavior of the robot in the immediate future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's the hard problem of consciousness which I would also, there's a subjective experience of free will as well, that I'm not sure where the robot gets that, where that little leap is. Because for me right now, everything I imagine with that robot, as it gets more and more and more sophisticated, the agency comes from the programmer of the robot still, of what was programmed in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You could probably do an end-to-end learning system. You maybe need to give it a few priors so you nudge the architecture in the right direction that it converges more quickly. but ultimately discovering the suitable hyperparameters of the architecture is also only a search process, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And as the search process was evolution, it has informed our brain architecture so we can converge in a single lifetime on useful interaction with the world and the formation of a- The promise, if we define hyperparameters broadly, so it's not just the parameters that control this end-to-end learning system, but the entirety of the design of the robot, like there's, you have to remove the human completely from the picture. And then in order to build the robot, you have to create an entire universe. Cause you have to go, you can't just shortcut evolution. You have to go from the very beginning in order for it to have, cause I feel like there's always a human pulling the strings and that makes it seem like the robot is cheating. It's getting a shortcut to consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When you are looking at the current Boston Dynamics robots, it doesn't look as if there is somebody pulling the strings. It doesn't look like cheating anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so let's go there because I got to talk to you about this. So obviously with the case of Boston Dynamics, as you may or may not know, it's always either hard-coded or remote-controlled. There's no intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know how the current generation of Boston Dynamics robots works, but what I've been told about the previous ones was that it's basically all cybernetic control, which means you still have feedback mechanisms and so on, but it's not deep learning for the most part as it's currently done. It's for the most part just identifying a control hierarchy that is congruent to the limbs that exist and the parameters that need to be optimized for the movement of these limbs. And then there is a convergence progress. So it's basically just regression that you would need to control this. But again, I don't know whether that's true. That's just what I've been told about how that works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We have to separate several levels of discussions here. So the only thing they do is pretty sophisticated control with no machine learning. in order to maintain balance or to right itself. It's a control problem in terms of using the actuators to when it's pushed or when it steps on a thing that's uneven, how to always maintain balance. And there's a tricky set of heuristics around that, but that's the only goal. Everything you see Boston Dynamics doing in terms of that to us humans is compelling. which is any kind of higher order movement like turning, wiggling its butt, like, you know, jumping back in its two feet, dancing. Dancing is even worse because dancing is hard coded in. It's it's choreographed by humans, this choreography software. So there is no of all that high level movement. There's no anything that you can call, certainly can't call AI, but there's no even like basic heuristics. It's all hard coded in. And yet we humans immediately project agency onto them, which is fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the gap here doesn't necessarily have agency. What it has is cybernetic control. And the cybernetic control means you have a hierarchy of feedback loops that keep the behavior in certain boundaries so the robot doesn't fall over and it's able to perform the movements. And the choreography cannot really happen with motion capture because the robot would fall over because the physics of the robot, the weight distribution and so on is different from the weight distribution in the human body. So, if you were using the directly motion-captured movements of a human body to project it into this robot, it wouldn't work. You can do this with a computer animation, it will look a little bit off, but who cares? But if you want to correct for the physics, you need to basically tell the robot where it should move its limbs, and then the control algorithm is going to approximate a solution that makes it possible within the physics of the robot. And you have to find the basic solution for making that happen. And there's probably going to be some regression necessary to get the control architecture to make these movements." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But those two layers are separate. Yes. The higher level instruction of how you should move and where you should move" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I expect that the control level of these robots at some level is dumb. This is just the physical control movement, the motor architecture. But it's a relatively smart motor architecture. It's just that there is no high level deliberation about what decisions to make necessarily." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But see, it doesn't feel like free will or consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, that was not where I was trying to get to. I think that in our own body, we have that too. So we have a certain thing that is basically just a cybernetic control architecture that is moving our limbs. And deep learning can help in discovering such an architecture if you don't have it in the first place. If you already know your hardware, you can maybe handcraft it. But if you don't know your hardware, you can search for such an architecture. And this work already existed in the 80s and 90s. People were starting to search for control architectures by motor babbling and so on, and just use reinforcement learning architectures to discover such a thing. And now imagine that you have the cybernetic control architecture already inside of you. And you extend this a little bit. So you are seeking out food, for instance, or rest, and so on. And you get to have a baby at some point. And now you add more and more control layers to this. And the system is reverse engineering its own control architecture and builds a high-level model to synchronize the pursuit of very different conflicting goals. And this is how I think you get to purposes. Purposes are models of your goals. Your goals may be intrinsic as the result of the different set point violations that you have, hunger and thirst for very different things and rest and pain avoidance and so on. And you put all these things together and eventually you need to come up with a strategy to synchronize them all. And you don't need just to do this alone by yourself because we are state building organisms. We cannot function as isolation the way that Homo sapiens is set up. So our own behavior only makes sense when you zoom out very far into a society or even into ecosystemic intelligence on the planet and our place. in it. So the individual behavior only makes sense in these larger contexts. And we have a number of priors built into us. So we are behaving as if we were acting on these high-level goals pretty much right from the start. And eventually, in the course of our life, we can reverse engineer the goals that we are acting on, what actually are our higher-level purposes. And the more we understand that, the more our behavior makes sense. But this is all, at this point, complex stories within stories that are driving our behavior." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I just don't know how big of a leap it is to start create a system that's able to tell stories within stories. Like how big of a leap that is from where currently Boston Dynamics is or any robot that's operating in the physical space. And that leap might be big if it requires to solve the hard problem of consciousness, which is telling a hell of a good story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect that consciousness itself is relatively simple. What's hard is perception and the interface between perception and reasoning. There's, for instance, the idea of the consciousness prior that would be built into such a system by Yoshua Bengio. And what he describes, and I think that's accurate, is that our own model of the world can be described through something like an energy function. The energy function is modeling the contradictions that exist within the model at any given point. And you try to minimize these contradictions, the tangents in the model. And to do this, you need to sometimes test things. You need to conditionally disambiguate figure and ground. You need to distinguish whether this is true or that is true, and so on. Eventually, you get to an interpretation. But you will need to manually depress a few points in your model let it snap into a state that makes sense. And this function that tries to get the biggest dip in the energy function in your model, according to Joshua Bengio, is related to consciousness. It's a low-dimensional discrete function that tries to maximize this dip in the energy function." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I, yeah, I think I would need to dig into details because I think the way he uses the word consciousness is more akin to like self-awareness, like modeling yourself within the world, as opposed to the subjective experience, the hard problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's not even the self is in the world. The self is the agent and you don't need to be aware of yourself in order to be conscious. The self is just a particular content that you can have, but you don't have to have. But you can be conscious in, for instance, a dream at night or during a meditation state, but you don't have a self." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're just aware of the fact that you are aware. And what we mean by consciousness in the colloquial sense is largely this reflexive self-awareness. that we become aware of the fact that we are paying attention, that we are the thing that pays attention." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We are the thing that pays attention, right. I don't see where the awareness that we're aware, the hard problem doesn't feel like it's solved. I mean, it's called a hard problem for a reason because it seems like there needs to be a major leap." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the major leap is to understand how it is possible that a machine can dream. that the physical system is able to create a representation that the physical system is acting on, and that is spun force and so on. But once you accept the fact that you are not in physics, but that you exist inside of the story, I think the mystery disappears. Everything is possible in the story." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You exist inside the story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Your consciousness is being written into the story. The fact that you experience things is written to the side of the story. You ask yourself, is this real what I'm seeing? And your brain writes into the story, yes, it's real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what about the perception of consciousness? So to me, you look conscious. So the illusion of consciousness, the demonstration of consciousness, I ask for the legged robot, how do we make this legged robot conscious? So there's two things, and maybe you can tell me if they're neighboring ideas. One is actually make it conscious, and the other is make it appear conscious to others. Are those related?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's ask it from the other direction, what would it take to make you not conscious? So when you are thinking about how you perceive the world, can you decide to switch from looking at qualia to looking at representational states? And it turns out you can. There is a particular way in which you can look at the world and recognize its machine nature, including your own. And in that state, you don't have that conscious experience in this way anymore. It becomes apparent as a representation. Everything becomes opaque. And I think this thing that you recognize everything as a representation, this is typically what we mean with enlightenment states. And it can happen on the motivational level, but you can also do this on the experiential level, on the perceptual level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, but then I can come back to a conscious state. Okay, I particularly, I'm referring to the social aspect, that the demonstration of consciousness, is a really nice thing at a party when you're trying to meet a new person. It's a nice thing to know that they're conscious and they can, I don't know how fundamental consciousness is in human interaction, but it seems like to be at least an important part. And I ask that in the same kind of way for robots. you know, in order to create a rich, compelling human robot interaction, it feels like there needs to be elements of consciousness within that interaction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My cat is obviously conscious. And so my cat can do this party trick. She also knows that I am conscious, be able to have feedback about the fact that we are both acting on models of our own awareness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The question is, how hard is it for the robot, artificially created robot to achieve cat level in party tricks?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So the issue for me is currently not so much on how to build a system that creates a story about a robot that lives in the world, but to make an adequate representation of the world. And the model that you and me have is a unified one. It's one where you basically make sense of everything that you can perceive. Every feature in the world that enters your perception can be relationally mapped to a unified model of everything. And we don't have an AI that is able to construct such a unified model yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you need that unified model to do the party trick?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think that it doesn't make sense if this thing is conscious, but not in the same universe as you, because you could not relate to each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the process, would you say, of engineering consciousness in the machine? What are the ideas here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you probably want to have some kind of perceptual system. This perceptual system is a processing agent that is able to track sensory data and predict the next frame and the sensory data from the previous frames of the sensory data and the current state of the system. So the current state of the system is, in perception, instrumental to predicting what happens next. And this means you build lots and lots of functions that take all the blips that you feel on your skin and that you see on your retina or that you hear and puts them into a set of relationships that allows you to predict what kind of sensory data, what kind of sensor of blips, vector of blips you're going to perceive in the next frame, right? This is tuned and it's constantly tuned until it gets as accurate as it can." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you build a very accurate prediction mechanism that is step one of the perception. So at first you predict, then you perceive and see the error in your prediction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you have to do two things to make that happen. One is you have to build a network of relationships that are constraints. that take all the variants in the world and put each of the variances into a variable that is connected with relationships to other variables. And these relationships are computable functions that constrain each other. So when you see a nose that points in a certain direction in space, you have a constraint that says there should be a face nearby that has the same direction. And if that is not the case, you have some kind of contradiction that you need to resolve because it's probably not a nose what you're looking at. It just looks like one. So you have to reinterpret the data until you get to a point where your model converges. And this process of making the sensory data fit into your model structure is what Piaget calls the assimilation. And accommodation is the change of the models, where you change your model in such a way that you can assimilate everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're talking about building a hell of an awesome perception system that's able to do prediction and perception and correct and keep improving." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wait, there's more. Yes, there's more. So the first thing that we wanted to do is we want to minimize the contradictions in the model. Yes. And of course, it's very easy to make a model in which you minimize the contradictions just by allowing that it can be in many, many possible states, right? So if you increase degrees of freedom, you will have fewer contradictions. But you also want to reduce the degrees of freedom because degrees of freedom mean uncertainty. You want your model to reduce uncertainty as much as possible. but reducing uncertainty is expensive. So you have to have a trade-off between minimizing contradictions and reducing uncertainty. And you have only a finite amount of compute and experimental time and effort available to reduce uncertainty in the world. So you need to assign value to what you observe. So you need some kind of motivational system that is estimating what you should be looking at and what you should be thinking about it, how you should be applying your resources to model what that is. So you need to have something like convergence links that tell you how to get from the present state of the model to the next one. You need to have these compatibility links that tell you which constraints exist and which constraint violations exist. And you need to have some kind of motivational system that tells you what to pay attention to. So now we have a second agent next to the perceptual agent. We have a motivational agent. This is a cybernetic system that is modeling what the system needs, what's important for the system, and that interacts with the perceptual system to maximize the expected reward." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying the motivational system is some kind of... like what is it, a higher level narrative over some lower level?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's just your brainstem stuff, the limbic system stuff that tells you, okay, now you should get something to eat because I've just measured your blood sugar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mean like motivational system, like the lower level stuff, like hungry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, there's basically a physiological needs and some cognitive needs and some social needs and they all interact and they all implemented different parts in your nervous system as the motivational system, but they're basically cybernetic feedback loops. It's not that complicated. It's just a lot of code. And so you now have a motivational agent that makes your robot go for the ball or that makes your worm go to eat food and so on. And you have the perceptual system that lets it predict the environment. So it's able to solve that control problem to some degree. And now what we learned is that it's very hard to build a machine learning system that looks at all the data simultaneously to see what kind of relationships could exist between them. So you need to selectively model the world. You need to figure out where can I make the biggest difference if I would put the following things together. Sometimes you find a gradient for that, right? When you have a gradient, you don't need to remember where you came from. You just follow the gradient until it doesn't get any better. But if you have a world where the problems are discontinuous and the search spaces are discontinuous, you need to retain memory of what you explored and you need to construct a plan of what to explore next. And this thing means that you have next to this perceptual construction system and the motivational cybernetics, an agent that is paying attention to what it should select at any given moment to maximize reward. And this scanning system, this attention agent is required for consciousness and consciousness is its control model. So it's the index memories that this thing retains when it manipulates the perceptual representations to maximize the value and minimize the conflicts in it to increase coherence. So the purpose of consciousness is to create coherence in your perceptual representations, remove conflicts, predict the future, construct counterfactual representations so you can coordinate your actions and so on. And in order to do this, it needs to form memories. These memories are partial binding states of the working memory contents that are being revisited later on to backtrack, to undo certain states, to look for alternatives. And these index memories that you can recall, that is what you perceive as your stream of consciousness. And being able to recall these memories, this is what makes you conscious. If you could not remember what you paid attention to, you wouldn't be conscious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So consciousness is the index in the memory database. OK. But let me sneak up to the questions of consciousness a little further. So we usually relate suffering to consciousness. So the capacity to suffer. I think to me, that's a really strong sign of consciousness is a thing that can suffer. How is that useful? Suffering. And like in your model, what you just described, which is indexing of memories, and what is the coherence with the perception, with this predictive thing that's going on in the perception, how does suffering relate to any of that? You know, the higher level suffering that humans do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Basically, pain is a reinforcement signal. Pain is a signal that one part of your brain sends to another part of your brain, or in an abstract sense, part of your mind sends to another part of the mind to regulate its behavior, to tell it the behavior that you're currently exhibiting should be improved. And this is the signal that I tell you to move away from what you're currently doing and push into a different direction. So pain gives part of you an impulse to do something differently. But sometimes this doesn't work because the training part of your brain is talking to the wrong region. Or because it has the wrong model of the relationships in the world. Maybe you're mismodeling yourself, or you're mismodeling the relationship of yourself to the world, or you're mismodeling the dynamics of the world. So you're trying to improve something that cannot be improved by generating more pain. But the system doesn't have any alternative. So it doesn't get better. What do you do if something doesn't get better and you want it to get better? You increase the strength of the signal. And when the signal becomes chronic, when it becomes permanent, without a change inside, this is what we call suffering. And the purpose of consciousness is to deal with contradictions, with things that cannot be resolved. The purpose of consciousness, I think, is similar to a conductor in an orchestra. When everything works well, the orchestra doesn't need much of a conductor, as long as it's coherent. But when there is a lack of coherence or something is consistently producing disharmony and mismatches, then the conductor becomes alert and interacts with it. So suffering attracts the activity of our consciousness. And the purpose of that is ideally that we bring new layers online, new layers of modeling that are able to create a model of the dysregulation so we can deal with it. And this means that we typically get higher level consciousness, so to speak, right? We get some consciousness above our pay grade maybe if we have some suffering early in our life. Most of the interesting people had trauma early on in their childhood. And trauma means that you are suffering an injury for which the system is not prepared, which it cannot deal with, which it cannot insulate itself from. So something breaks. And this means that the behavior of the system is permanently disturbed in a way that some mismatch exists now in the regulation that just by following your impulses, by following the pain and the direction which it hurts, the situation doesn't improve but get worse. And so what needs to happen is that you grow up. And that's part that has grown up is able to deal with the part that is stuck in this earlier phase." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so it leads to growth, adding extra layers to your cognition. Let me ask you then, because I got to stick on suffering, the ethics of the whole thing. So not our consciousness, but the consciousness of others. You've tweeted, one of my biggest fears is that insects could be conscious. The amount of suffering on earth would be unthinkable. So when we think of other conscious beings, is suffering a property of consciousness that we're most concerned about? So I'm still thinking about robots, how to make sense of other non-human things that appear to have the depth of experience that humans have. And to me, that means consciousness and the darkest side of that, which is suffering, the capacity to suffer. So I started thinking, how much responsibility do we have for those other conscious beings? That's where the definition of consciousness becomes most urgent. Like having to come up with a definition of consciousness becomes most urgent. Who should we and should we not be torturing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no general answer to this. Was Genghis Khan doing anything wrong? It depends, right, on how you look at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, he drew a line somewhere. where this is us and that's them. It's the circle of empathy. It's like these, you don't have to use the word consciousness, but these are the things that matter to me if they suffer or not. And these are the things that don't matter to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but when one of his commanders failed him, he broke his spine and let him die in a horrible way. And so in some sense, I think he was indifferent to suffering. He was not different in the sense that he didn't see it as useful if he inflicted suffering. But he did not see it as something that had to be avoided. That was not the goal. The question was, how can I use suffering and the infliction of suffering to reach my goals from his perspective?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see, so like different societies throughout history put different value on the- And different individuals, different psyches, right? But also even the objective of avoiding suffering. Like some societies probably, I mean, this is where like religious belief really helps. That afterlife, that it doesn't matter that you suffer or die, what matters is you suffer honorably, right? So that you enter the afterlife." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It seems to be superstitious to me. Basically, beliefs that assert things for which no evidence exists are incompatible with sound epistemology. And I don't think that religion has to be superstitious. Otherwise, it should be condemned in all cases." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're somebody who's saying we live in a dream world. We have zero evidence for anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not the case. There are limits to what languages can be constructed. Mathematics brings solid evidence for its own structure. And once we have some idea of what languages exist and how a system can learn and what learning itself is in the first place and so on, we can begin to realize that our intuitions, that we are able to learn about the regularities of the world and minimize appraisal and understand the nature of our own agency to some degree of abstraction, that's not an illusion. It's a useful approximation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just because we live in a dream world doesn't mean mathematics can't. give us a consistent glimpse of physical, of objective reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We can basically distinguish useful encodings from useless encodings. And when we apply our truth-seeking to the world, we know we usually cannot find out whether a certain thing is true. What we typically do is we take the state vector of the universe, separate it into several objects that interact with each other, so interfaces. And this distinction that we are making is not completely arbitrary. It's done to optimize the compression that we can apply to our models of the universe. So we can predict what's happening with our limited resources. In this sense, it's not arbitrary, but the separation of the world into objects that are somehow discrete and interacting with each other is not the true reality, right? The boundaries between the objects are projected into the world, not arbitrarily projected, but still it's only an approximation of what's actually the case. And we sometimes notice that we run into contradictions when we try to understand high level things like economic aspects of the world and so on, or political aspects or psychological aspects where we make simplifications and the objects that we are using to separate the world are just one of many possible projections of what's going on. And so it's not in this postmodernist sense completely arbitrary and you're free to pick what you want or dismiss what you don't like because it's all stories. No, that's not true. You have to show for every model of how well it predicts the world. So the confidence that you should have in the entities of your models should correspond to the evidence that you have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you on a small tangent to talk about your favorite set of ideas and people, which is postmodernism. What is postmodernism? How would you define it? And why to you is it not a useful framework of thought?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Postmodernism is something that I'm really not an expert on. And postmodernism is a set of philosophical ideas that is difficult to lump together, that is characterized by some useful thinkers, some of them post-structuralist and so on. And I'm mostly not interested in it because I think that it's not leading me anywhere that I find particularly useful. It's mostly, I think, born out of the insight that the ontologies that we impose on the world are not literally true and that we can often get to a different interpretation by the world by using a different ontology that is different separation of the world into interacting objects. But the idea that this makes the world a set of stories that are arbitrary, I think is wrong. And the people that are engaging in this type of philosophy are working in an area that I largely don't find productive. There's nothing useful coming out of this. So this idea that truth is relative is not something that has in some sense informed physics or theory of relativity. There is no feedback between those. There is no meaningful influence of this type of philosophy on the sciences or on engineering or on politics. But there is a very strong information of this on ideology. Because it basically has become an ideology that is justifying itself by the notion that truth is a relative concept. And it's not being used in such a way that the philosophers or sociologists that take up these ideas say, oh, I should doubt my own ideas because maybe my separation of the world into objects is not completely valid. And I should maybe use a different one and be open to a pluralism of ideas. But it mostly exists to dismiss the ideas of other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It becomes, yeah, it becomes a political weapon of sorts to achieve power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Basically, there's nothing wrong, I think, with developing a philosophy around this, but to develop norms around the idea that truth is something that is completely negotiable is incompatible with the scientific project. And I think if the academia has no defense against the ideological parts of the postmodernist movement, it's doomed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, you have to acknowledge the ideological part of any movement, actually, including postmodernism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the question is what an ideology is, and to me, an ideology is basically a viral memeplex that is changing your mind in such a way that reality gets warped. It gets warped in such a way that you're being cut off from the rest of human thought space, and you cannot consider things outside of the range of ideas of your own ideology as possibly true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so, I mean, there's certain properties to an ideology that make it harmful. One of them is that dogmatism. of just certainty, dogged certainty in that you're right, you have the truth, and nobody else does." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but what is creating the certainty? It's very interesting to look at the type of model that is being produced. Is it basically just a strong prior? And you tell people, oh, this idea that you consider to be very true, the evidence for this is actually just much weaker than you thought, and look here at some studies. No, this is not how it works. It's usually normative, which means some thoughts are unthinkable. because they would change your identity into something that is no longer acceptable. And this cuts you off from considering an alternative. And many de facto religions use this trick to lock people into a certain mode of thought. And this removes agency over your own thoughts. And it's very ugly to me. It's basically not just a process of domestication, but it's actually an intellectual castration that happens. It's an inability to think creatively and to bring forth new thoughts." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you about substances, chemical substances that affect the video game, the dream world? So psychedelics that increasingly have been getting a lot of research done on them. So in general, psychedelics, psilocybin, MDMA, but also a really interesting one, the big one, which is DMT. What and where are the places that these substances take the mind that is operating in the dream world. Do you have an interesting sense how this throws a wrinkle into the prediction model? Is it just some weird little quirk or is there some fundamental expansion of the mind going on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect that a way to look at psychedelics is that they induce particular types of lucid dreaming states. So it's a state in which certain connections are being severed in your mind and no longer active. Your mind basically gets free to move in a certain direction because some inhibition, some particular inhibition doesn't work anymore. And as a result, you might stop having a self or you might stop perceiving the world as three-dimensional. you can explore that state. And I suppose that for every state that can be induced with psychedelics, there are people that are naturally in that state. So sometimes psychedelics shift you through a range of possible mental states, and they can also shift you out of the range of permissible mental states that is where you can make predictive models of reality. And what I observe in people that use psychedelics a lot is that they tend to be overfitting. Overfitting means that you are using more bits for modeling the dynamics of a function than you should. And so you can fit your curve to extremely detailed things in the past, but this model is no longer predictive for the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is it about psychedelics that forces that? I thought it would be the opposite. I thought that it's a good mechanism for generalization, for regularization. So it feels like psychedelics, expansion of the mind, like taking you outside of, like forcing your model to be non-predictive is a good thing. Meaning like, it's almost like, okay, what I would say psychedelics are akin to is traveling to a totally different environment. Like going, if you've never been to like India or something like that from the United States, very different set of people, different culture, different food, different roads. values and all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So psychedelics can, for instance, teleport people into a universe that is hyperbolic, which means that if you imagine a room that you're in, you can turn around 360 degrees and you didn't go full circle. You need to go 720 degrees to go full circle. Exactly. So the things that people learn in that state cannot be easily transferred in this universe that we are in. It could be that if they're able to abstract and understand what happened to them, that they understand that some part of their spatial cognition has been desynchronized and has found a different synchronization. And this different synchronization happens to be a hyperbolic one, right? So you learn something interesting about your brain. It's difficult to understand what exactly happened, but we get a pretty good idea once we understand how the brain is representing geometry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but doesn't give you a fresh perspective on the physical reality? Who's making that sound? Is it inside my head or is it external?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is no sound outside of your mind, but it's making sense of phenomena in physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in the physical reality there's sound waves traveling through air. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's our model of what happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's our model of what happened, right. Don't psychedelics give you a fresh perspective on this physical reality? Not this physical reality, but this more... What do you call the dream world? That's mapped directly to... The purpose of dreaming at night, I think, is data augmentation. Exactly. So that's very similar to psychedelics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you basically change parameters about the things that you have learned. And for instance, when you are young, you have seen things from certain perspectives, but not from others. So your brain is generating new perspectives of objects that you already know, which means they can learn to recognize them later from different perspectives. And I suspect that's the reason that many of us remember to have flying dreams as children, because it's just different perspectives of the world that you already know. And that it starts to generate these different perspective changes, and then it fluidly turns this into a flying dream to make sense of what's happening, right? So you fill in the gaps, and suddenly you see yourself flying. And similar things can happen with semantic relationships. So it's not just spatial relationships, but it can also be the relationships between ideas that are being changed. And it seems that the mechanisms that make that happen during dreaming are interacting with these same receptors that are being simulated by psychedelics. So I suspect that there is a thing that I haven't read really about The way in which dreams are induced in the brain is not just that the activity of the brain gets tuned down because your eyes are closed and you no longer get enough data from your eyes, but there is a particular type of neurotransmitter that is saturating your brain during these phases, during the RM phases, and you produce controlled hallucinations. And psychedelics are linking into these mechanisms, I suspect." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So isn't that another trickier form of data augmentation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but it's also data augmentation that can happen outside of the specification that your brain is tuned to. So basically people are overclocking their brains and that produces states that are subjectively extremely interesting. But from the outside, very suspicious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think I'm over applying the metaphor of a neural network in my own mind, which I just think that doesn't lead to overfitting. But you were just sort of anecdotally saying my experiences with people that have known psychedelics are that kind of quality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it typically happens. So if you look at people like Timothy Leary, and he has written beautiful manifestos about the effect of LSD on people. He genuinely believed, he writes in these manifestos, that in the future, science and art will only be done on psychedelics because it's so much more efficient and so much better. And he gave LSD to children in this community of a few thousand people that he had near San Francisco. And basically he was losing touch with reality. He did not understand the effects that the things that he was doing would have on the reception of psychedelics by society, because he was unable to think critically about what happened. What happened was that he got in a euphoric state. that euphoric state happened because he was overfitting. He was taking this sense of euphoria and translating it into a model of actual success in the world, right? He was feeling better. Limitations had disappeared that he experienced to be existing, but he didn't get superpowers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I understand what you mean by overfitting now. There's a lot of interpretation to the term overfitting in this case, but I got you. So he was getting he was getting positive rewards from a lot of actions that he shouldn't have done." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but not just this. So if you take, for instance, John Lilly, who was studying dolphin languages and aliens and so on, a lot of people that use psychedelics became very loopy. And the typical thing that you notice when people are on psychedelics is that they are in a state where they feel that everything can be explained now. Everything is clear. Everything is obvious. And sometimes they have indeed discovered a useful connection, but not always. Very often these connections are over-interpretations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder, you know, there's a question of correlation versus causation. And also I wonder if it's the psychedelics or if it's more the social, like being the outsider and having a strong community of outside and having a leadership position in an outsider cult-like community that could have a much stronger effect of overfitting than do psychedelics themselves, the actual substances. because it's a counterculture thing. So it could be that as opposed to the actual substance. If you're a boring person who wears a suit and tie and works at a bank and takes psychedelics, that could be a very different effect of psychedelics on your mind. I'm just sort of raising the point that the people you referenced are already weirdos. I'm not sure exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, not necessarily. A lot of the people that tell me that they use psychedelics in a useful way, started out as squares and were liberating themselves because they were stuck. They were basically stuck in local optimum of their own self model, of their relationship to the world, and suddenly they had data augmentation. They basically saw and experienced a space of possibilities. They experienced what it would be like to be another person. And they took important lessons from that experience back home." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I love the metaphor of data augmentation because that's been the primary driver of self-supervised learning in the vision, computer vision domain is data augmentation. So it's funny to think of data augment, like chemically induced data augmentation in the human mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's also a very interesting effect that I noticed. I know several people who are severe to me that LSD has cured their migraines. So severe cluster eight headaches or migraines that didn't respond to standard medication that disappeared after a single dose. And I don't recommend anybody doing this, especially not in the US where it's illegal. And there are no studies on this for that reason, but it seems that anecdotally that it basically can reset the serotonergic system. So it's basically pushing them outside of their normal boundaries. And as a result, it needs to find a new equilibrium. And in some people that equilibrium is better. but it also follows that in other people, it might be worse. So if you have a brain that is already teetering on the boundary to psychosis, it can be permanently pushed over that boundary." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's why you have to do good science, which they're starting to do on all these different substances of how well it actually works for the different conditions. Like MDMA seems to help with PTSD, same with psilocybin. You need to do good science, meaning large studies of large N" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so based on the existing studies with MDMA, it seems that if you look at Rick Doblin's work and what he has published about this and talks about, MDMA seems to be a psychologically relatively safe drug, but it's physiologically not very safe. That is, there is neurotoxicity if you would use too large dose. And if you combine this with alcohol, which a lot of kids do in party settings during raves and so on, very hepatotoxic, so basically you can kill your liver. And this means that it's probably something that is best and most productively used in a clinical setting by people who really know what they're doing. And I suspect that's also true for the other psychedelics. That is, while the other psychedelics are probably not as toxic as, say, alcohol, the effects on Nisaki can be much more profound and lasting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, as far as I know, psilocybin, so mushrooms, magic mushrooms, as far as I know, in terms of the studies they're running, I think they're allowed to do what they're calling heroic doses. So that one does not have a toxicity. So they could do like huge doses in a clinical setting when they're doing study on psilocybin, which is kind of fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it seems that most of the psychedelics work in extremely small doses, which means that the effect on the rest of the body is relatively low. And MDMA is probably the exception. Maybe ketamine can be dangerous in larger doses because it can depress breathing and so on. But the LSD and psilocybin work in very, very small doses, at least the active part of them, of psilocybin, LSD is only the active part. But the effect that it can have on your mental wiring can be very dangerous, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's talk about AI a little bit. What are your thoughts about GPT-3 and language models trained with self-supervised learning? It came out quite a bit ago, but I wanted to get your thoughts on it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the 90s, I was in New Zealand and I had an amazing professor, Ian Witton, who realized I was bored in class and put me in his lab. And he gave me the task to discover grammatical structure in an unknown language. And the unknown language that I picked was English because it was the easiest one to find a corpus for construct one. And he gave me the largest computer at the whole university. It had two gigabytes of RAM, which was amazing. And I wrote everything in C with some in-memory compression to do statistics over the language. And I first would create a dictionary of all the words, which basically tokenizes everything and compresses things so that I don't need to store the whole word, but just a code for every word. And then I was taking this all apart in sentences, and I was trying to find all the relationships between all the words in the sentences and do statistics over them. And that proved to be impossible because the complexity is just too large. So if you want to discover the relationship between an article and a noun, and there are three adjectives in between, you cannot do n-gram statistics and look at all the possibilities that can exist. At least not with the resources that we had back then. So I realized I need to make some statistics over what I need to make statistics over. So I wrote something that was pretty much a hack that did this for at least first order relationships. And I came up with some kind of mutual information graph that was indeed discovering something that looks exactly like the grammatical structure of the sentence, just by trying to encode the sentence in such a way that the words would be written in the optimal order inside of the model. And what I also found is that if we would be able to increase the resolution of that and not just use this model to reproduce grammatically correct sentences, we would also be able to correct stylistically correct sentences by just having more bits in these relationships. And if we wanted to have meaning, we would have to go much higher order. And I didn't know how to make higher order models back then without spending way more years in research on how to make the statistics over what we need to make statistics over. And this thing that we cannot look at the relationships between all the bits in your input is being solved in different domains in different ways. So in computer graphics, the computer vision standard method for many years now is convolutional neural networks. Convolutional neural networks are hierarchies of filters that exploit the fact that neighboring pixels in images are usually semantically related and distance pixels in images are usually not semantically related. So you can just by grouping the pixels that are next to each other hierarchically together reconstruct the shape of objects. And this is an important prior that we build into these models so they can converge quickly. But this doesn't work in language for the reason that adjacent words are often but not always related and distant words are sometimes related while the words in between are not. So how can you learn the topology of language? And I think for this reason that this difficulty exists, that the transformer was invented in natural language processing, not in vision. And what the transformer is doing, it's a hierarchy of layers where every layer learns what to pay attention to in the given context in the previous layer. So what to make the statistics over." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the context is significantly larger than the adjacent word." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So the context that GPT-3 has been using, the transformer itself is from 2017 and it wasn't using that large of a context. OpenAI has basically scaled up this idea as far as they could at the time. And the context is about 2048. symbols, tokens in the language. These symbols are not characters, but they take the words and project them into a vector space where words that are statistically co-occurring a lot are neighbors already. So it's already a simplification of the problem a little bit. And so every word is basically a set of coordinates in a high dimensional space. And then they use some kind of trick to also encode the order of the words in a sentence or in the not just sentence, but 2048 tokens is about a couple pages of text or two and a half pages of text. And so they managed to do pretty exhaustive statistics over the potential relationships between two pages of text, which is tremendous, right? I was just using a single sentence back then. And I was only looking for first order relationships and they were really looking for much, much higher level relationships. And what they discover after they fed this with an enormous amount of training data, pretty much the written internet or a subset of it that had some quality, but substantial portion of the common crawl, that they're not only able to reproduce style, but they're also able to reproduce some pretty detailed semantics, like being able to add three-digit numbers and multiply two-digit numbers or to translate between programming languages and things like that. So the results that GPT-3 got, I think, were amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, I actually didn't check carefully. It's funny you just mentioned how you coupled semantics to the multiplication. Is it able to do some basic math on two digit numbers? Yes. Okay, interesting. I thought there's a lot of failure cases." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It basically fails if you take larger digit numbers. So four digit numbers and so on makes carrying mistakes and so on. And if you take larger numbers, you don't get useful results at all. And this could be an issue of the training set. There are not many examples of successful long-form addition in standard human-written text." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And humans aren't very good at doing three-digit numbers either." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and you're not writing a lot about it. And the other thing is that the loss function that is being used is only minimizing surprises. So it's predicting what comes next in the typical text. It's not trying to go for causal closure first, as we do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But the fact that that kind of prediction works to generate text that's semantically rich and consistent is interesting. So yeah, so it's amazing that it's able to generate semantically consistent text." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not consistent. The problem is that it loses coherence at some point. But it's also, I think, not correct to say that GPT-3 is unable to deal with semantics at all. Because you ask it to perform certain transformations in text, and it performs these transformations in text. And the kind of additions that it's able to perform are transformations in text, right? And there are proper semantics involved. You can also do more. There was a paper that was generating lots and lots of mathematically correct text and was feeding this into a transformer. And as a result, it was able to learn how to do differentiation integration in ways that, according to the authors, Mathematica could not. To which some of the people in Mathematica responded that they were not using Mathematica in the right way and so on. I have not really followed the resolution of this conflict." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This part, as a small tangent, I really don't like in machine learning papers, which they often do anecdotal evidence. They'll find like one example in some kind of specific use of Mathematica and demonstrate, look, here's, they'll show successes and failures, but they won't have a very clear representation of how many cases this actually represents." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but I think as a first paper, this is a pretty good start. And so the take-home message I think is that the authors could get better results from this in their experiments than they could get from the way in which they were using computer algebra systems, which means that was not nothing. And it's able to perform substantially better than GPT-3 can based on a much larger amount of training data using the same underlying algorithm." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask again, so I'm using your tweets as if this is like Play-Doh, right? As if this is well thought out novels that you've written. You tweeted, GPT-4 is listening to us now. This is one way of asking, what are the limitations of GPT-3 when it scales? So what do you think will be the capabilities of GPT-4, GPT-5, and so on? What are the limits of this approach?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So obviously when we are writing things right now, everything that we are writing now is going to be training data for the next generation of machine learning models. So yes, of course, GPT-4 is listening to us. I think the tweet is already a little bit older and we now have WUDAO and we have a number of other systems that basically are placeholders for GPT-4. Don't know what OpenAI's plans are in this regard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I read that tweet in several ways. So one is obviously everything you put on the internet is used as training data. But in a second way I read it is in a, we talked about agency. I read it as almost like GPT-4 is intelligent enough to be choosing to listen. So not only did a programmer tell it to collect this data and use it for training, I almost saw the humorous angle, which is like it has achieved AGI kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the thing is, could we already be living in GPT-5?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "GPT-4 is listening and GPT-5 actually constructing the entirety of this reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, in some sense, what everybody is trying to do right now in AI is to extend the transformer to be able to deal with video. And there are very promising extensions. There's a work by Google that is called Perceiver, and that is overcoming some of the limitations of the transformer by letting it learn the topology of the different modalities separately. and by training it to find better input features. So the basically feature abstractions that are being used by this successor to GPT-3 are chosen such a way that it's able to deal with video input. And there is more to be done. So one of the limitations of GPT-3 is that it's amnesiac. So it forgets everything beyond the two pages that it currently reads, also during generation, not just during learning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think that's fixable within the space of deep learning? Can you just make a bigger, bigger, bigger input?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't think that our own working memory is infinitely large. It's probably also just a few thousand bits. But what you can do is you can structure this working memory. So instead of just force feeding this thing, a certain thing that it has to focus on, and it's not allowed to focus on anything else because it's network, you allow it to construct its own working memory, as we do, right? When we are reading a book, It's not that we are focusing our attention in such a way that we can only remember the current page. We will also try to remember other pages and try to undo what we learned from them or modify what we learned from them. We might get up and take another book from the shelf. We might go out and ask somebody. We can edit our working memory in any way that is useful to put a context together that allows us to draw the right inferences and to learn the right things. So this ability to perform experiments on the world based on an attempt to become fully coherent and to achieve causal closure, to achieve a certain aesthetic of your modeling, that is something that eventually needs to be done. And at the moment we are skirting this in some sense by building systems that are larger and faster so they can use dramatically larger resources than human beings can do and much more training data to get to models that in some sense are already very superhuman and in other ways are laughingly incoherent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think sort of making the systems like, what would you say, multi-resolutional? So like some of the language models are focused on two pages, some are focused on two books, some are focused on two years of reading, some are focused on a lifetime. So it's like stacks, it's the GPT-3s all the way down." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You want to have gaps in between them. So it's not necessarily two years. There's no gaps. It's things out of two years or out of 20 years or 2000 years or two billion years that you are just selecting those bits that are predicted to be the most useful ones to understand what you're currently doing. And this prediction itself requires a very complicated model. That's the actual model that you need to be making. It's not just that you are trying to understand the relationships between things, but what you need to make relationships, discover relationships over." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder what that thing looks like, what the architecture for the thing that's able to have that kind of model." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it needs more degrees of freedom than the current models have. So it starts out with the fact that you possibly don't just want to have a feed-forward model, but you want it to be fully recurrent. And to make it fully recurrent, you probably need to loop it back into itself and allow it to skip connections. Once you do this, When you're predicting the next frame and your internal next frame in every moment, and you are able to skip connection, it means that signals can travel from the output of the network into the middle of the network faster than the inputs do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it can still be differentiable? Do you think it still can be a neural network?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sometimes it can, and sometimes it cannot. So it can still be a neural network, but not a fully differentiable one. And when you want to deal with non-differentiable ones, you need to have an attention system that is discrete and two-dimensional and can perform grammatical operations. You need to be able to perform program synthesis. You need to be able to backtrack. in this operations that you perform on this thing. And this thing needs a model of what it's currently doing. And I think this is exactly the purpose of our own consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the program things are tricky when you're on networks. So let me ask you, it's not quite program synthesis, but the application of these language models to generation, to program synthesis, but generation of programs. So if you look at GitHub OpenPilot, which is based on OpenAI's codecs, I don't know if you got a chance to look at it, but it's the system that's able to generate code once you prompt it with What is it? Like the header of a function with some comments. And it seems to do an incredibly good job or not a perfect job, which is very important, but an incredibly good job of generating functions. What do you make of that? Are you, is this exciting or is this just a party trick, a demo, or is this revolutionary?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I haven't worked with this yet, so it's difficult for me to judge it, but I would not be surprised if it turns out to be revolutionary. And that's because the majority of programming tasks that are being done in the industry right now are not creative. People are writing code that other people have written, or they're putting things together from code fragments that others have had. A lot of the work that programmers do in practice is to figure out how to overcome the gaps in their current knowledge and the things that people have already done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How to copy and paste from Stack Overflow. That's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And so, of course, we can automate that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. To make it much faster to copy and paste from Stack Overflow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. But it's not just copying and pasting. It's also basically learning which parts you need to modify to make them fit together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like literally sometimes as simple as just changing the variable names so it fits into the rest of your code." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but this requires that you understand the semantics of what you're doing to some degree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and you can automate some of those things. The thing that makes people nervous, of course, is that a little bit wrong in a program can have a dramatic effect on the actual final operation of that program. So that's one little error, which in the space of language doesn't really matter, but in the space of programs can matter a lot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but this is already what is happening when humans program code. Yeah, this is... So we have a technology to deal with this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Somehow it becomes scarier when you know that a program generated code that's running a nuclear power plant. It becomes scarier. You know humans have errors too. But it's scarier when a program is doing it because, why? I mean, there's a fear that a program, like a program may not be, as good as humans to know when stuff is important to not mess up. Like, there's a misalignment of priorities, of values, that's potential. Maybe that's the source of the worry. I mean, okay, if I give you code generated by, you know, GitHub open pilot and code generated by a human and say, here, use one of these. How do you select today and in the next 10 years, which code to use? Wouldn't you still be comfortable with the human?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the moment, when you go to Stanford to get an MRI, they will write a bill to the insurance over $20,000. And of this, maybe half of that gets paid by the insurance and a quarter gets paid by you. And the MRI cost them $600 to make, maybe, probably less. And what are the values of the person that writes the software and deploys this process? It's very difficult for me to say whether I trust people. I think that what happens there is a mixture of proper Anglo-Saxon Protestant values where somebody is trying to serve an abstract greater whole and organized crime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's a very harsh... I think that's a harsh view of humanity. There's a lot of bad people, whether incompetent or just malevolent in this world, yes. But it feels like the more malevolent, so the more damage you do to the world, the more resistance you have in your own human heart." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But don't explain with malevolence or stupidity what can be explained by just people acting on their incentives. Right, so what happens in Stanford is not that somebody is evil. It's just that they do what they're being paid for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this is- No, it's not evil. I tend to, no, I see that as malevolence. I see as I, even like being a good German, as I told you offline, is some, it's not absolute malevolence, but it's a small amount, it's cowardice. I mean, when you see there's something wrong with the world, it's either incompetence that you're not able to see it, or it's cowardice that you're not able to stand up. Not necessarily in a big way, but in a small way. So I do think that is a bit of malevolence. I'm not sure the example you're describing is a good example." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the question is, what is it that you are aiming for? And if you don't believe in the future, if you, for instance, think that the dollar is going to crash, why would you try to save dollars? If you don't think that humanity will be around in 100 years from now because global warming will wipe out civilization, why would you need to act as if it were? So the question is, is there an overarching aesthetics that is projecting you and the world into the future, which I think is the basic idea of religion, that you understand the interactions that we have with each other as some kind of civilization level agent that is projecting itself into the future. If you don't have that shared purpose, what is there to be ethical for? So I think when we talk about ethics and AI, we need to go beyond the insane bias discussions and so on, where people are just measuring the distance between a statistic to their preferred current world model." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the optimism... Wait, wait, wait. I was a little confused by the previous thing, just to clarify. there is a kind of underlying morality to having an optimism that human civilization will persist for longer than a hundred years. I think a lot of people believe that it's a good thing for us to keep living. Yeah, of course." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And thriving. This morality itself is not an end to itself. It's instrumental to people living in a hundred years from now. Right. or 500 years from now, right? So it's only justifiable if you actually think that it will lead to people or increase the probability of people being around in that timeframe. And a lot of people don't actually believe that, at least not actively." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Believe what exactly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Most people don't believe that they can afford to act on such a model. Basically what happens in the US is I think that the healthcare system is for a lot of people no longer sustainable, which means that if they need the help of the healthcare system, they're often not able to afford it. And when they cannot help it, they are often going bankrupt. I think the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is the healthcare system. Yeah. And that would not be necessary. It's not because people are consuming more and more medical services and are achieving a much, much longer life as a result. That's not actually the story that is happening because you can compare it to other countries. And life expectancy in the US is currently not increasing and it's not as high as in all the other industrialized countries. So some industrialized countries are doing better with a much cheaper healthcare system. And what you can see is, for instance, administrative bloat. The health care system has, maybe to some degree deliberately, set up a job placement program to allow people to continue living a middle class existence despite not having a useful use case in productivity. So they are being paid to push paper around. And the number of administrators in the health care system has been increasing much faster than the number of practitioners. And this is something that you have to pay for, right? And also the revenues that are being generated in the healthcare system are relatively large and somebody has to pay for them. And the result why they are so large is because market mechanisms are not working. The FDA is largely not protecting people from malpractice of healthcare providers. The FDA is protecting healthcare providers from competition. So this is a thing that has to do with values. And this is not because people are malicious on all levels. It's because they are not incentivized to act on a greater whole, on this idea that you treat somebody who comes to you as a patient like you would treat a family member." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but we're trying. You're highlighting a lot of the flaws of the different institutions, the systems we're operating under, but I think there's a continued throughout history mechanism design of trying to design incentives in such a way that these systems behave better and better and better. I mean, it's a very difficult thing to operate a society of hundreds of millions of people effectively with- Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So do we live in a society that is ever correcting? We observe that our models of what we are doing are predictive of the future, and when they are not, we improve them. Our laws are adjudicated with clauses that you put into every law, what is meant to be achieved by that law, and the law will be automatically repealed if it's not achieving that. If you are optimizing your own laws, if you're writing your own source code, You probably make an estimate of what is the thing that's currently wrong in my life? What is it that I should change about my own policies? What is the expected outcome? And if that outcome doesn't manifest, I will change the policy back, right? Or I would change it into something different. Are we doing this on a societal level?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think so. I think it's easy to sort of highlight the, I think we're doing it in the way that, like, I operate my current life. I didn't sleep much last night. You would say that, Lex, the way you need to operate your life is you need to always get sleep. The fact that you didn't sleep last night is totally the wrong way to operate in your life. Like you should have gotten all your shit done in time and gotten to sleep because sleep is very important for health. And you're highlighting, look, this person is not sleeping. Look, the medical, the healthcare system is operating poor. But the point is that we just, it seems like this is the way, especially in the capitalist society, we operate, we keep running into trouble. And last minute, we try to get our way out through innovation. And it seems to work. You have a lot of people that ultimately are trying to build a better world and get urgency about them when the problem becomes more and more imminent. And that's the way this operates. But if you look at the long arc of history, it seems like that operating on deadlines produces progress and builds better and better systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You probably agree with me that the US should have engaged in mask production in January, 2020, and that we should have shut down the airports early on and that we should have made it mandatory that the people that work in nursing homes are living on campus rather than living at home and then coming in and infecting people in the nursing homes that had no immune response to COVID. And that is something that was, I think, visible back then. The correct decisions haven't been made. We would have the same situation again. How do we know that these wrong decisions are not being made again? Have the people that made the decisions to not protect the nursing homes been punished? Have the people that made the wrong decisions with respect to testing that prevented the development of testing by startup companies and the importing of tests from countries that already had them, have these people been held responsible?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, first of all, so what do you wanna put before the firing squad? I think they are being called responsible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, just make sure that this doesn't happen again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but it's not that, Yes, they're being held responsible by many voices, by people being frustrated. There's new leaders being born now that we're going to see rise to the top in 10 years. This moves slower than, there's obviously a lot of older incompetence and bureaucracy and these systems move slowly. They move like science, one death at a time. So yes, I think the pain has been felt in the previous year is reverberating throughout the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe I'm getting old. I suspect that every generation in the US after the war has lost the plot even more. I don't see this development." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The war, World War II?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So basically, there was a time when we were modernist. And in this modernist time, the US felt actively threatened by the things that happened in the world. The US was worried about possibility of failure. And this imminence of possible failure led to decisions, right? There was a time when the government would listen to physicists about how to do things. And the physicists were actually concerned about what the government should be doing. So they would be writing letters to the government. And so for instance, the decision for the Manhattan Project was something that was driven in a conversation between physicists and the government. I don't think such a discussion would take place today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I disagree. I think if the virus was much deadlier, we would see a very different response. I think the virus was not sufficiently deadly. And instead, because it wasn't very deadly, what happened is the current system started to politicize it. The mask, this is what I realized with masks early on, they were not very quickly became not as a solution, but they became a thing that politicians use to divide the country. So the same things happen with vaccines, same thing. So like nobody's really, people weren't talking about solutions to this problem because I don't think the problem was bad enough. When you talk about the war, I think our lives are too comfortable. I think in the developed world, things are too good and we're not face severe dangers. When the severe dangers, existential threats are faced, that's when we step up on a small scale and a large scale. Now, I don't, that's sort of my argument here, but I did think the virus is, I was hoping that it was actually sufficiently dangerous for us to step up because especially in the early days, it was unclear. It still is unclear because of mutations, how bad it might be, right? And so I thought we would step up and even, so the masks point is a tricky one because to me, the manufacture of masks isn't even the problem. I'm still to this day, and I was involved with a bunch of this work, have not seen good science done on whether masks work or not. like there still has not been a large-scale study. To me, there should be large-scale studies on every possible solution, like aggressive, in the same way that the vaccine development was aggressive. There should be masks, which tests, what kind of tests work really well, what kind of, like even the question of how the virus spreads. There should be aggressive studies on that to understand. As far as I know, there's still a lot of uncertainty about that. Nobody wants to see this as an engineering problem that needs to be solved. That I was surprised about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I would- I find that our views are largely convergent, but not completely. So I agree with the thing that because our society in some sense perceives itself as too big to fail. And the virus did not alert people to the fact that we are facing possible failure. That basically put us into the postmodernist mode. And I don't mean in a philosophical sense, but in a societal sense. The difference between a postmodern society and the modern society is that the modernist society has to deal with the ground truth and the postmodernist society has to deal with appearances. Politics becomes a performance. And the performance is done for an audience, and the organized audience is the media. And the media evaluates itself via other media, right? So you have an audience of critics that evaluate themselves. And I don't think it's so much the failure of the politicians, because to get in power and to stay in power, you need to be able to deal with the published opinion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I think it goes in cycles because what's going to happen is all of the small business owners, all the people who truly are suffering and will suffer more because the effects of the closure of the economy and the lack of solutions to the virus, they're going to apprise. And hopefully, I mean, this is where charismatic leaders can get the world in trouble, but hopefully we'll elect great leaders. that will break through this postmodernist idea of the media and the perception and the drama on Twitter and all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you know, this can go either way. Yeah. When the Weimar Republic was unable to deal with the economic crisis that Germany was facing, there was an option to go back. There were people which thought, let's get back to a constitutional monarchy and let's get this to work because democracy doesn't work. And eventually there was no way back. People decided there was no way back. They needed to go forward. And the only options for going forward was to become a Stalinist communist, basically an option to completely expropriate the factories and so on and nationalize them and to reorganize Germany in communist terms and ally itself with Stalin and fascism. And both options were obviously very bad. And the one that the Germans picked led to a catastrophe that devastated Europe. And I'm not sure if the U.S. has an immune response against that. I think that the far right is currently very weak in the U.S., but this can easily change." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think from a historical perspective, Hitler could have been stopped from within Germany or from outside or this? Well, depends on who you want to focus, whether you want to focus on Stalin or Hitler, but it feels like Hitler was the one as a political movement that could have been stopped." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that the point was that a lot of people wanted Hitler. So he got support from a lot of quarters. It was a number of industrialists who supported him because they thought that the democracy is obviously not working and unstable and you need a strong man. And he was willing to play that part. There were also people in the US who thought that Hitler would stop Stalin and would act as a bulwark against Bolshevism. which he probably would have done at which cost. And then many of the things that he was going to do, like the Holocaust, was something where people thought this is rhetoric. He's not actually going to do this, especially many of the Jews themselves, which were humanists. And for them, this was outside of the scope that was thinkable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I wonder if Hitler is uniquely, I wanna carefully use this term, but uniquely evil. So if Hitler was never born, if somebody else would come in this place. So like, just thinking about the progress of history, how important are those singular figures that lead to mass destruction and cruelty? Because my sense is, Hitler was unique. It wasn't just about the environment and the context that gave him, like another person would not come in his place to do as destructive of the things that he did. There was a combination of charisma, of madness, of psychopathy, of just ego, all those things, which are very unlikely to come together in one person in the right time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It also depends on the context of the country that you're operating in. If you tell the Germans that they have a historical destiny in this romantic country, the effect is probably different than it is in other countries. But Stalin has killed a few more people than Hitler did. And if you look at the probability that you survived under Stalin, Hitler killed people if he thought they were not worth living or if they were harmful to his racist project. He basically felt that the Jews would be too cosmopolitan and would not be willing to participate in the racist redefinition of society and the value of society and an ethnostate in this way. as he wanted it to have it. So he saw them as a harmful danger, especially since they played such an important role in the economy and culture of Germany. And so he had basically had some radical but rational reason to murder them. And Stalin just killed everyone. The Stalinist purges were such a random thing where he said that there's a certain possibility that this particular part of the population has a number of German collaborators or something, and we just kill them all. Or if you look at what Mao did, the number of people that were killed in absolute numbers were much higher under Mao than they were under Stalin. So it's super hard to say. The other thing is that you look at Genghis Khan and so on, how many people he killed. When you see there are a number of things that happen in human history that actually really put a substantial dent in the existing population or Napoleon. And it's very difficult to eventually measure it because what's happening is basically evolution on a human scale. where one monkey figures out a way to become viral and is using this viral technology to change the patterns of society at the very, very large scale. And what we find so abhorrent about these changes is the complexity that is being destroyed by this. It's basically like a big fire that burns out a lot of the existing culture and structure that existed before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and it all just starts with one monkey, one charismatic ape, and there's a bunch of them throughout history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but it's in a given environment. It's basically similar to wildfires in California, right? The temperature is rising, there is less rain falling, and then suddenly a single spark can have an effect that in other times would be contained." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. Speaking of which, I love when we went to Hitler and Stalin from 20-30 minutes ago, GPT-3 generating, doing program synthesis. The argument was about morality of AI versus human. So, and specifically in the context of writing programs, specifically in the context of programs that can be destructive. So running nuclear power plants or autonomous weapons systems, for example. And I think your inclination was to say that it's not so obvious that AI would be less moral than humans or less effective at making a world that would make humans happy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'm not talking about self-directed systems that are making their own goals at a global scale. If you just talk about the deployment of technological systems that are able to see order and patterns and use this as control models to act on the goals that we give them, then if we have the correct incentives to set the correct incentives for these systems, I'm quite optimistic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So humans versus AI, let me give you an example. Autonomous weapon system. Let's say there's a city somewhere in the Middle East that has a number of terrorists. And the question is, what's currently done with drone technology is you have information about the location of a particular terrorist, and you have a targeted attack, you have a bombing of that particular building. And that's all directed by humans at the high level strategy and also at the deployment of individual bombs and missiles, like the actual, everything is done by human except the final targeting and the, like the, so like with spot, similar thing, like control the flight. Okay, what if you give AI control and saying, write a program that says, here's the best information I have available about the location of these five terrorists. Here's the city, make sure all the bombing you do is constrained to the city. Make sure it's precision based, but you take care of it. So you do one level of abstraction out and saying, take care of the terrorists in the city. which are you more comfortable with, the humans or the JavaScript GPT-3 generated code that's doing the deployment? I mean, this is the kind of question I'm asking, is the kind of bugs that we see in human nature, are they better or worse than the kind of bugs we see in AI?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are different bugs. There is an issue that if people are creating an imperfect automation of a process that normally requires a mobile judgment, and this mobile judgment is the reason why it cannot be automated often. It's not because the computation is too expensive. But because the model that you give the AI is not an adequate model of the dynamics of the world, because the AI does not understand the context that it's operating in, in the right way. And this is something that already happens with Excel, right? You don't need to have an AI system to do this. If you have an automated process in place where humans decide using automated criteria, whom to kill when, and whom to target when, which already happens. And you have no way to get off the kill list once that happens, once you have been targeted according to some automatic criterion by people in a bureaucracy. That is the issue. The issue is not the AI, it's the automation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's something about, right, it's automation, but there's something about the, there's a certain level of abstraction where you give control to AI to do the automation. There's a scale that could be achieved that it feels like the scale of bug and scale mistake and scale of destruction that could be achieved. of the kind that humans cannot achieve. So AI is much more able to destroy an entire country accidentally versus humans. It feels like the more civilians die or suffer as the consequences of your decisions, the more weight there is on the human mind to make that decision. And so like, it becomes more and more unlikely to make that decision for humans. For AI, it feels like it's harder to encode that kind of weight." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In a way, the AI that we're currently building is automating statistics, right? Intelligence is the ability to make models so you can act on them, and AI is the tool to make better models. So in principle, if you're using AI wisely, you're able to prevent more harm. And I think that the main issue is not on the side of the AI, it's on the side of the human command hierarchy that is using technology irresponsibly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the question is how hard is it to encode, to properly encode the right incentives into the AI?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so for instance, there's this idea of what happens if we let our airplanes being flown with AI systems and the neural network is a black box and so on. And it turns out our neural networks are actually not black boxes anymore. There are function approximators using linear algebra, and there are performing things that we can understand. But we can also, instead of letting the neural network fly the airplane, use the neural network to generate a provably correct program. There's a degree of accuracy of the proof that a human could not achieve. So we can use our AI by combining different technologies to build systems that are much more reliable than the systems that a human being could create. And so in this sense, I would say that if you use an early stage of technology to save labor and don't employ competent people, but just to hack something together, because you can. That is very dangerous, and if people are acting under these incentives that they get away with delivering shoddy work more cheaply using AI with less human oversight than before, that's very dangerous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The thing is though, AI is still going to be unreliable, perhaps less so than humans, but it'll be unreliable in novel ways." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but this is an empirical question and it's something that we can figure out and work with. So the issue is, do we trust the systems, the social systems that we have in place and the social systems that we can build and maintain that they're able to use AI responsibly? If they can, then AI is good news. If they cannot, then it's going to make the existing problems worse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also who creates the AI, who controls it, who makes money from it, because it's ultimately humans. And then you start talking about how much you trust the humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the question is, what does who mean? I don't think that we have identity per se. I think that the story of a human being is somewhat random. What happens is more or less that everybody is acting on their local incentives, what they perceive to be their incentives. And the question is, what are the incentives that the one that is pressing the button is operating under?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "it's nice for those incentives to be transparent. So for example, I'll give you an example. There seems to be a significant distrust of tech, like entrepreneurs in the tech space or people that run, for example, social media companies like Mark Zuckerberg. There's not a complete transparency of incentives under which that particular human being operates. the trend, you know, we can listen to the words he says or what the marketing team says for a company, but we don't know. And that's, that's becomes a problem when that the algorithms and the systems created by him and other people in that company start having more and more impact on society. And that it starts, you know, if the incentives were somehow the definition and the explainability of the incentives was, decentralized such that nobody can manipulate it, no propaganda-type manipulation of how these systems actually operate could be done, then yes, I think AI could achieve much fairer, much more effective sort of like solutions to difficult ethical problems. But when there's like humans in the loop, manipulating the dissemination, the communication of how the system actually works, that feels like you can run into a lot of trouble. And that's why there's currently a lot of distrust for people at the heads of companies that have increasingly powerful AI systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suspect what happened traditionally in the US was that since our decision-making is much more decentralized than in an authoritarian state, right? People are making decisions autonomously at many, many levels in society. What happened that was we created coherence and cohesion in society by controlling what people thought and what information they had. The media synchronized public opinion. And social media have disrupted this. It's not, I think, so much Russian influence or something. It's everybody's influence. It's that a random person can come up with a conspiracy theory and disrupt what people think. And if that conspiracy theory is more compelling or more attractive than the standardized public conspiracy theory that we give people as a default, then it might get more traction, right? You suddenly have the situation that a single individual somewhere on a farm in Texas has more listeners than CNN." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which particular farmer are you referring to in Texas? You probably know. Yes, I had dinner with him a couple of times." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an interesting situation because you cannot get to be an anchor in CNN if you don't go through a complicated gatekeeping process. And suddenly you have random people without that gatekeeping process just optimizing for attention. Not necessarily with a lot of responsibility for the long-term effects of projecting these theories into the public. And now there is a push of making social media more like traditional media, which means that the opinion that is being projected in social media is more limited to an acceptable range with the goal of getting society into safe waters and increase the stability and cohesion of society again, which I think is a laudable goal. But of course, it also is an opportunity to seize the means of indoctrination. And the incentives that people are under when they do this are in such a way that the AI ethics that we would need becomes very often something like AI politics, which is basically partisan and ideological. And this means that whatever one side says, another side is going to be disagreeing with, right? In the same way as when you turn masks or the vaccine into a political issue, if you say that it is politically virtuous to get vaccinated, it will mean that the people that don't like you will not want to get vaccinated. And as soon as you have this partisan discourse, it's going to be very hard to make the right decisions because the incentives get to be the wrong ones. AI ethics needs to be super boring. It needs to be done by people who do statistics all the time and have extremely boring, long-winded discussions that most people cannot follow because they are too complicated, but that are dead serious. These people need to be able to be better at statistics than the leading machine learning researchers. And at the moment, The ethics debate is the one where you don't have any barrier to entry. Everybody who has a strong opinion and is able to signal that opinion in the right way can enter it. And to me, that's a very frustrating thing because the field is so crucially important to us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so crucially important. But the only qualification you currently need is to be outraged by the injustice in the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's more complicated, right? Everybody seems to be outraged. But let's just say that the incentives are not always the right ones. So basically, I suspect that A lot of people that enter this debate don't have a vision for what society should be looking like in a way that is non-violent, where we preserve liberal democracy, where we make sure that we all get along and we are around in a few hundred years from now, preferably with a comfortable technological civilization around us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I generally have a very foggy view of that world, but I tend to try to follow, and I think society should in some degree follow the gradient of love, increasing the amount of love in the world. And whenever I see different policies or algorithms or ideas that are not doing so, obviously that's the ones that kind of resist." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the thing that terrifies me about this notion is I think that German fascism was driven by love. It was just a very selective love. It was a love that basically- But now you're just manipulating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's, you have to be very careful. You're talking to the wrong person in this way about love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's talk about what love is. And I think that love is the discovery of shared purpose. It's the recognition of the sacred and the other. And this enables non-transactional interactions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the size of the other that you include needs to be maximized. So it's basically appreciation, like deep appreciation of the world around you fully. including the people that are very different than you, the people that disagree with you completely, including living creatures outside of just people, including ideas and appreciation of the full mess of it. It also has to do with empathy. which is coupled with a lack of confidence, uncertainty about, of your own rightness. It's like an open, a radical open-mindedness to the way forward." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with every part of what you said. And now, if you scale it up, what you recognize is that Lafis is in some sense the service to a next level agency. to the highest level agency that you can recognize. It could be, for instance, life on Earth or beyond that. You could say intelligent complexity in the universe that you try to maximize in a certain way. But when you think it's true, it basically means a certain aesthetic. And there is not one possible aesthetic. There are many possible aesthetics. And once you project an aesthetic into the future, you can see that there are some which defect from it, which are in conflict with it, that are corrupt, that are evil. You and me would probably agree that Hitler was evil because the aesthetic of the world that he wanted is in conflict with the aesthetic of the world that you and me have in mind. And so the thing that he destroyed, we want to keep them in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a kind of, there's kind of ways to deal. I mean, Hitler is an easier case, but perhaps he wasn't so easy in the thirties, right? To understand who is Hitler and who is not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it was no consensus that the aesthetics that he had in mind were unacceptable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's difficult. Love is complicated because you can't just be so open-minded that you let evil walk into the door, but you can't be so self-assured that you can always identify evil perfectly because that's what leads to Nazi Germany. Having a certainty of what is and wasn't evil, like always drawing lines of good versus evil there has to be a dance between hard stances, standing up against what is wrong, and at the same time, empathy and open-mindedness towards not knowing what is right and wrong, and a dance between those." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I found that when I watched the Miyazaki movies, that there is nobody who captures my spirituality as well as he does. It's very interesting and suspicious. There is something going on in his movies that is very interesting. So for instance, Mononoke is discussing not only an answer to Disney's simplistic notion of Mowgli, the jungle boy who was raised by wolves. And as soon as he sees people, realizes that he's one of them. the way in which the moral life and nature is simplified and romanticized and turned into kitsch. It's disgusting in the Disney movie. And he answers to this. You see, he's replaced by Mononoke, this wolf girl who was raised by wolves and was fierce and dangerous. who cannot be socialized because he cannot be tamed, cannot be part of human society. And you see human society, it's something that is very, very complicated. You see people extracting resources and destroying nature. But the purpose is not to be evil, but to be able to have a life that is free from, for instance, oppression and violence, and to curb death and disease. And you basically see this conflict, which cannot be resolved in a certain way. You see this moment when nature is turned into a garden and it loses most of what it actually is. And humans no longer submitting to life and death in nature. And to these questions, there is no easy answer. So it just turns it into something that is being observed as a journey that happens. And that happens with a certain degree of inevitability. And the nice thing about all his movies is there's a certain main character. And it's the same in all movies. It's this little girl that is basically Heidi, and I suspect that happened because when he did fieldwork for working on the Heidi movies back then, the Heidi animations, before he did his own movies, he traveled to Switzerland and Southeastern Europe and the Adriatic and so on, and got an idea about a certain aesthetic and a certain way of life that informed his future thinking. And Heidi has a very interesting relationship to herself and to the world. There's nothing that she takes for herself. She's in a way fearless because she is committed to a service to a greater whole. Basically, she is completely committed to serving God. And it's not an institutionalized God. It has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church or something like this. But in some sense, Heidi is an embodiment of the spirit of European Protestantism. It's this idea of a being that is completely perfect and pure. And it's not a feminist vision because she is not a girl boss or something like this. She is the justification for the men in the audience to protect her, to build a civilization around her that makes her possible. So she is not just the sacrifice of Jesus who is innocent and therefore nailed to the cross. She is not being sacrificed. She is being protected by everybody around her who recognizes that she is sacred. And there are enough around her to see that. So that's a very interesting perspective. There's a certain notion of innocence. And this notion of innocence is not universal. It's not in all cultures. Hitler was an innocent. His idea of Germany was not that there is an innocence that is being protected. There was a predator that was going to triumph. And it's also something that is not at the core of every religion. There are many religions which don't care about innocence. They might care about increasing the status of something. And that's a very interesting notion that is quite unique. And I'm not claiming it's the optimal one. It's just a particular kind of aesthetic, which I think makes Miyazaki into the most relevant Protestant philosopher today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying in terms of all the ways that a society can operate, perhaps the preservation of innocence might be one of the best." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's just my aesthetic. So it's a particular way in which I feel that I relate to the world that is natural to my own socialization. And maybe it's not an accident that I have cultural roots in Europe, in a particular world. And so maybe it's a natural convergence point. And it's not something that you will find in all other times in history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I'd like to ask you about Solzhenitsyn and our individual role as ants in this very large society. So he says that some version of the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. Do you think all of us are capable of good and evil? What's our role in this play, in this game we're all playing? Is all of us capable to play any role? Like, is there an ultimate responsibility to, you mentioned maintaining innocence or whatever the highest ideal for a society you want, are all of us capable of living up to that? And that's our responsibility. Or is there significant limitations to what we're able to do in terms of good and evil?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there is a certain way if you are not parable, if you are committed to some kind of civilizational agency, the next level agent that you are serving, some kind of transcendent principle. In the eyes of that transcendental principle, you are able to discern good from evil. Otherwise, you cannot. Otherwise, you have just individual aesthetics. The cat that is torturing a mouse is not evil because the cat does not envision or no part of the world of the cat is envisioning a world where there is no violence and nobody is suffering. If you have an aesthetic where you want to protect innocence, then torturing somebody needlessly is evil, but only then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but within, I guess the question is within the aesthetic, like within your sense of what is good and evil, are we still, it seems like we're still able to commit evil." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so basically if you are committing to this next level agent, you are not necessarily are this next level agent, right? You are part of it. You have a relationship to it like a cell does to its organism, its hyperorganism. And it only exists to the degree that it's being implemented by you and others. And that means that you're not completely fully serving it. You have freedom in what you decide, whether you are acting on your impulses and local incentives, on your feral impulses, so to speak, or whether you're committing to it. And what you perceive then is a tension between what you would be doing with respect to the thing that you recognize as the sacred, if you do, and what you're actually doing. And this is the line between good and evil. where you see, oh, I'm here acting on my local incentives or impulses, and here I'm acting on what I consider to be sacred, and there's a tension between those. And this is the line between good and evil that might run through your heart. And if you don't have that, if you don't have this relationship to a transcendental agent, you could call this relationship to the next level agent soul. It's not a thing, it's not an immortal thing that is intrinsically valuable. It's a certain kind of relationship that you project to understand what's happening. Somebody is serving this transcendental sacredness or they're not. If you don't have a soul, you cannot be evil. You're just a complex, natural phenomenon." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you look at life, like starting today or starting tomorrow, when we leave here today, there's a bunch of trajectories that you can take through life. may be countless. Do you think some of these trajectories, in your own conception of yourself, some of those trajectories are the ideal life? A life that, if you were to be the hero of your life story, you would want to be? Is there some Josh or Bach that you're striving to be? This is the question I ask myself as an individual trying to make a better world in the best way that I could conceive of. What is my responsibility there? And how much am I responsible for the failure to do so? Because I'm lazy and incompetent too often in my own perception." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "in my own worldview, I'm not very important. So I don't have a place for me as a hero in my own world. I'm trying to do the best that I can, which is often not very good. And so it's not important for me to have status or to be seen in a particular way. It's helpful if others can see me, if a few people can see me, that can be my friends." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, sorry, I want to clarify the hero, I didn't mean status or perception or like some kind of marketing thing, but more in private, in the quiet of your own mind. Is there the kind of man you want to be and would consider it a failure if you don't become that? That's what I meant by hero." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, not really. I don't perceive myself as having such an identity. And it's also sometimes frustrating. But it's basically a lack of having this notion of father that I need to be emulating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting. I mean, it's the leaf floating down the river. I worry that sometimes it's more like being the river. I'm just a fat frog sitting in a leaf on a dirty, muddy lake. I wish I was waiting for a princess to kiss me or the other way. I forgot which way it goes. Somebody kisses somebody. Can I ask you, I don't know if you know who Michael Malice is, In terms of constructing systems of incentives, it's interesting to ask. I don't think I've talked to you about this before. Malice espouses anarchism. So he sees all government as fundamentally getting in the way or even being destructive collaborations between human beings thriving. What do you think? What's the role of government in a society that thrives? Is anarchism at all compelling to you as a system? So not just small government, but no government at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't see how this would work. The government is an agent that imposes an offset on your reward function, on your payout metrics, so your behavior becomes compatible with the common good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the argument there is that you can have collectives, like governing organizations, but not government, like where you're born on a particular set of land, and therefore you must follow this rule or else you're forced by what they call violence, because there's an implied violence here. So with government, the key aspect of government is that protects you from the rest of the world with an army and with police, right? So there's this, it has a monopoly on violence. It's the only one that's able to do violence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there are many forms of government, not all governments do that, right? But we find that in successful countries, the government has a monopoly on violence. And that means that you cannot get ahead by starting your own army because the government will come down on you and destroy you if you try to do that. And in countries where you can build your own army and get away with it, some people will do it. And these countries is what we call failed countries in a way. And if you don't want to have violence, the point is not to appeal to the moral intentions of people, because some people will use strategies if they get ahead with them that feel a particular kind of ecological niche. So you need to destroy that ecological niche. And if effective government has a monopoly on violence, it can create a world where nobody is able to use violence and get ahead, right? So you want to use that monopoly on violence, not to exert violence, but to make violence impossible, to raise the cost of violence. So people need to get ahead with nonviolent means." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the idea is that you might be able to achieve that in an anarchist state with companies. So with the forces of capitalism. is create security companies where the one that's most ethically sound rises to the top. Basically, it would be a much better representative of the people because there is less stickiness to the big military force sticking around, even though it's long overlived" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "outlived its usefulness. So you have groups of militants that are hopefully efficiently organized because otherwise they're going to lose against the other groups of militants. And they are coordinating themselves with the rest of society until they are having a monopoly on violence. How is that different from a government? So it's basically converging to the same thing, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I was trying to argue with Malice, I feel like it always converges towards government at scale. But I think the idea is you can have a lot of collectives that are, you basically never let anything scale too big. So one of the problems with governments is it gets too big in terms of like the size of the group over which it has control. My sense is that would happen anyway. So a successful company like Amazon or Facebook, I mean, it starts forming a monopoly over entire populations, not over just the hundreds of millions, but billions of people. So I don't know. But there is something about the abuses of power the government can have when it has a monopoly on violence, right? And so that's a tension there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the question is how can you set the incentives for government correctly? And this mostly applies at the highest levels of government. And we, because we haven't found a way to set them correctly, we made the highest levels of government relatively weak. And this is, I think, part of the reason why we had difficulty to coordinate the pandemic response. And China didn't have that much difficulty. And there is, of course, a much higher risk of the abuse of power that exists in China because the power is largely unchecked. And that's basically what happens in the next generation, for instance. Imagine that we would agree that the current government of China is largely correct and benevolent. And maybe we don't agree on this, but if we did, how can we make sure that this stays like this? And if you don't have checks and balances and division of power, it's hard to achieve. You don't have a solution for that problem. But the abolishment of government basically would remove the control structure from a cybernetic perspective. There is an optimal point in the system that the regulation should be happening, right? But you can measure the current incentives and the regulator would be properly incentivized to make the right decisions and change the payout metrics of everything below it in such a way that the local prisoner's dilemmas get resolved, right? You cannot resolve the prisoner's dilemma without some kind of eternal control that emulates an infinite game in a way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, there's a sense in which it seems like the reason government, the parts of government that don't work well currently is because there's not good mechanisms through which to interact for the citizenry to interact with government. It's basically, it hasn't caught up in terms of technology. And I think once you integrate some of the digital revolution, of being able to have a lot of access to data, be able to vote on different ideas at a local level, at all levels, at the optimal level, like you're saying, that can resolve the prisoner dilemmas, and to integrate AI to help you automate things that don't require the human ingenuity I feel like that's where government could operate that well and can also break apart the inefficient bureaucracies if needed. There'll be a strong incentive to be efficient and successful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So our human history, we see an evolution and evolutionary competition of modes of government and of individual governments is in these modes. And every nation state in some sense is some kind of organism that has found different solutions for the problem of government. And you could look at all these different models and the different scales at which it exists as empirical attempts to validate the idea of how to build a better government. And I suspect that the idea of anarchism, similar to the idea of communism, is the result of being disenchanted with the ugliness of the real existing solutions and the attempt to get to an utopia. And I suspect that communism originally was not a utopia. I think that in the same way as original Christianity, it had a particular kind of vision. And this vision is a society, a mode of organization within the society in which humans can coexist at scale without coercion. The same way as we do in a healthy family, right? In a good family, you don't terrorize each other into compliance, but you understand what everybody needs and what everybody is able to contribute and what the intended future of the whole thing is. Everybody coordinates their behavior in the right way and informs each other about how to do this. And all the interactions that happen are instrumental to making that happen, right? Could this happen at scale? And I think this is the idea of communism. Communism is opposed to the idea that we need economic terror or other forms of terror to make that happen. But in practice, what happened is that the proto-communist countries, the real existing socialism, replaced a part of the economic terror with moral terror. So we were told to do the right thing for moral reasons. And of course, it didn't really work. And the economy eventually collapsed. And the moral terror had actual real cost. People were in prison because they were morally non-compliant. The other thing is that the idea of communism became a utopia. So it basically was projected into the afterlife. We were told in my childhood that communism was a hypothetical society to which we were in a permanent revolution that justified everything that was presently wrong with society morally. But it was something that our grandchildren probably would not ever see because it was too ideal and too far in the future to make it happen right now. And people were just not there yet morally. And the same thing happened with Christianity, right? This notion of heaven was mythologized and projected into an afterlife. And I think this was just the idea of God's kingdom of this world in which we instantiate the next level transcendental agent in the perfect form. So everything goes smoothly and without violence and without conflict and without this human messiness on this economic messiness and the terror and coercion that existed in the present societies. And the idea of whether humans can exist at scale in a harmonious way and non-coercively is untested. A lot of people tested it, but didn't get it to work so far. And a utopia is a world in where you get all the good things without any of the bad things. And you are, I think, very susceptible to believe in utopias when you are very young and don't understand that everything has to happen in causal patterns, that there is always feedback loops that ultimately are closed. There's nothing that just happens because it's good or bad. Good or bad don't exist in isolation. They only exist with respect to larger systems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you intuit why utopias fail as systems? So like having a utopia that's out there beyond the horizon, is it because then, it's not only because it's impossible to achieve utopias, but it's because what certain humans, certain small number of humans start to, you know, sort of greedily attain power and money and control and influence as they become, as they see the power in using this idea of a utopia for propaganda." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a bit like saying, why is my garden not perfect? It's because some evil weeds are overgrowing it and they always do, right? But this is not how it works. A good garden is a system that is in balance and requires minimal interactions by the gardener. And so you need to create a system that is designed to self-stabilize. And the design of social systems requires not just the implementation of the desired functionality, but the next level design, also in biological systems. You need to create a system that wants to converge to the intended function. And so instead of just creating an institution like the FDA that is performing a particular kind of role in society, you need to make sure that the FDA is actually driven by a system that wants to do this optimally, that is incentivized to do it optimally, and then makes the performance that is actually enacted in every generation instrumental to that thing, that actual goal. And that is much harder to design and to achieve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have to design a system where, I mean, listen, communism also was quote unquote incentivized to be a feedback loop system that achieves that utopia. It's just, it wasn't working given human nature. The incentives were not correct given human nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so how do you incentivize people when they are getting coal off the ground to work as hard as possible? Because it's a terrible job and it's very bad for your health. How do you do this? And you can give them prizes and medals and status to some degree. There's only so much status to give for that. And most people will not fall for this. Or you can pay them. And you probably have to pay them in an asymmetric way because if you pay everybody the same and you nationalize the coal mines, eventually people will figure out that they can game the system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. So you're describing capitalism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Capitalism is the present solution to the system. And what we also noticed that I think that Marx was correct in saying that capitalism is prone to crisis, that capitalism is a system that in its dynamics is not convergent, but divergent. It's not a stable system. and that eventually it produces an enormous potential for productivity, but it also is systematically misallocating resources. So a lot of people cannot participate in the production and consumption anymore. And this is what we observe. We observe that the middle-class in the US is tiny. A lot of people think that they're middle-class, but if you are still flying economy, you're not middle-class. Right. Every class is a magnitude smaller than the previous class. The thing about classes is really like airline classes. There is the no-fly class, a lot of people are economy class, business class, and very few are first class, and some are budget." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I understand. I think there is, yeah, maybe some people, probably I would push back against that definition of the middle class. It does feel like the middle class is pretty large, but yes, there's a discrepancy in terms of wealth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if you think about in terms of the productivity that our society could have, there is no reason for anybody to fly economy, right? We would be able to let everybody travel in style." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, but also some people like to be frugal even when they're billionaires. Okay. So like that, let's take that into account." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you probably don't need to be a traveling lavish, but you also don't need to be tortured, right? There is a difference between frugal and subjecting yourself to torture." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Listen, I love economy. I don't understand why you're comparing a flying economy to torture. I don't, although the flight here, there's two crying babies next to me. But that has nothing to do with crime babies. They're very cute though." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have two kids and sometimes I have to go back to visit the grandparents. And back means going from the West Coast to Germany. And it's a long flight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it true that when you're a father, you grow immune to the crying and all that kind of stuff? Because like me, just not having kids, it can be other people's kids can be quite annoying when they're crying and screaming and all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When you have children and you're wired up in the default natural way, you're lucky in this regard, you fall in love with them. And this falling in love with them means that you basically start to see the world through their eyes and you understand that in a given situation they cannot do anything but being expressing despair. And so it becomes more differentiated. I noticed that, for instance, my son is typically acting on pure experience of what things are like right now. And he has to do this right now. And you have this small child that is, when he was a baby and so on, where he was just immediately expressing what he felt. And if you cannot regulate this from the outside, But there's no point to be upset about it. It's like dealing with weather or something like this. You all have to get through it. And it's not easy for him either. But if you also have a daughter, maybe she is planning for that. Maybe she understands that she's sitting in the car behind you, and she's screaming at the top of her lungs, and you're almost doing an accident. And you really don't know what to do. What should I have done to make you stop screaming? You could have given me candy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that's like a cat versus dog discussion. I love it. So, cause you said like a fundamental aspect of that is love that makes it all like worth it. What in this monkey riding an elephant in a dream world, what role does love play in the human condition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that love is the facilitator of non-transactional interaction. And you are observing your own purposes. Some of these purposes go beyond your ego. They go beyond the particular organism that you are and your local interests." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what you mean by non-transactional." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So basically when you are acting in a transactional way, it means that you are respecting something in return for you from the one that you're interacting with. You are interacting with a random stranger, you buy something from them on eBay, you expect a fair value for the money that you sent them and vice versa. Because you don't know that person, you don't have any kind of relationship to them. But when you know this person a little bit better and you know the situation that they're in, you understand what they try to achieve in their life and you approve because you realize that they're in some sense serving the same human sacredness as you are. And they need to think that you have, maybe you give it to them as a present." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I mean, the feeling itself of joy is a kind of benefit, is a kind of transaction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but the joy is not the point. The joy is the signal that you get. It's the reinforcement signal that your brain sends to you because you are acting on the incentives of the agent that you're a part of. We are meant to be part of something larger. This is the way in which we out-competed other hominins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Take that Neanderthals." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. And also other humans. There was a population bottleneck for human society that leads to an extreme lack of genetic diversity among humans. If you look at Bushmen in the Kalahari, that basically tribes that are not that far distant to each other have more genetic diversity than exists between Europeans and Chinese. And it's because basically the out-of-Africa population at some point had a bottleneck of just a few thousand individuals. And what probably happened is not that at any time the number of people shrunk below a few hundred thousand. What probably happened is that there was a small group that had a decisive mutation that produced an advantage. And this group multiplied and killed everybody else. And we are descendants of that group." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I wonder what the peculiar characteristics of that group. Yeah. I mean, we can never know. Me too, and a lot of people do. We can only just listen to the echoes in our, like the ripples that are still within us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I suspect what eventually made a big difference was the ability to organize at scale, to program each other. with ideas. That we became programmable, that we are willing to work in lockstep, that we went below, above the tribal level, that we no longer were groups of a few hundred individuals and acted on direct reputation systems transactionally, but that we basically evolved an adaptation to become state building." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. to form collectives outside of the direct collectives." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and that's basically a part of us became committed to serving something outside of what we know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, then that's kind of what love is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's terrifying because it meant that we eradicated the others. It's a force, it's an adaptive force that gets us ahead in evolution, which means we displace something else that doesn't have that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so we had to murder a lot of people that weren't about love. So love led to destruction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Didn't have the same strong love as we do. Right. That's why I mentioned this thing with fascism. When you see these speeches, do you want total war? And everybody says, yes. Right. This is this big, oh my God, we are part of something that is more important than me that gives meaning to my existence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Fair enough. Do you have advice for young people today in high school, in college, that are thinking about what to do with their career, with their life, so that at the end of the whole thing, they can be proud of what they did?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't cheat. Have integrity. Aim for integrity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Integrity. So what does integrity look like when you're the river? Or the leaf? Or the fat frog in a lake?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It basically means that you try to figure out what the thing is that is the most right. And this doesn't mean that you have to look for what other people tell you what's right, but you have to aim for moral autonomy. So things need to be right independently of what other people say. I always felt that when people told me to listen to what others say, like read the room, build your ideas of what's true based on the high status people of your in-group, that does not protect me from fascism. The only way to protect yourself from fascism is to decide it's the world that is being built here, the world that I want to be in. And so in some sense, try to make your behavior sustainable. Act in such a way that you would feel comfortable on all sides of the transaction. Realize that everybody is you in a different timeline, but is seeing things differently and has reasons to do so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's, I've come to realize this recently, that there is an inner voice that tells you what's right and wrong. And speaking of reading the room, there's times what integrity looks like is there's times when a lot of people are doing something wrong. And what integrity looks like is not going on Twitter and tweeting about it, but not participating quietly. not doing. So it's not like signaling or not all this kind of stuff, but actually living your, what you think is right, like living it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's also sometimes this expectation that others are like us. So imagine the possibility that some of the people around you are space aliens that only look human. So they don't have the same prayers as you do. They don't have the same impulses, what's right and wrong. There's a large diversity in these basic impulses that people can have in a given situation. And now realize that you are a space alien. right? You are not actually human. You think that you're human, but you don't know what it means, what it's like to be human. You just make it up as you go along like everybody else. And you have to figure that out, what it means that you are a full human being, what it means to be human in the world and how to connect with others on that. And There is also something, don't be afraid in the sense that if you do this, you're not good enough. Because if you are acting on these incentives of integrity, you become trustworthy. That's the way in which you can recognize each other. There is a particular place where you can meet and you can figure out what that place is, where you will give support to people because you realize that they act with integrity and they will also do that. So in some sense, you are safe if you do that. You're not always protected. There are people which will abuse you and that might, that are bad actors in a way that it's hard to imagine before you meet them. But there is also people which will try to protect you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's such a, thank you for saying that. That's such a hopeful message that no matter what happens to you, there'll be a place, there's people you'll meet that also have what you have and you will find happiness there and safety there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but it doesn't need to end well. It can also all go wrong. So there's no guarantees in this life. So you can do everything right and you still can fail and you can still horrible things happening to you that traumatize you and mutilate you. And you have to be grateful if it doesn't happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and ultimately be grateful no matter what happens. Because even just being alive is pretty damn nice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, even that, you know. The gratefulness in some sense is also just generated by your brain to keep you going." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's all a trick. Speaking of which, Camus said, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living. What is called the reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. So, I have to ask, what, Joshua Bach, is the meaning of life? It is an urgent question, according to Camus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think that there's a single answer to this. Nothing makes sense unless the mind makes it so. So you basically have to project a purpose. And if you zoom out far enough, there's the heat test of the universe and everything is meaningless. Everything is just a blip in between. And the question is, do you find meaning in this blip in between? Do you find meaning in observing squirrels? Do you find meaning in raising children and projecting a multi-generational organism into the future? Do you find meaning in projecting an aesthetic of the world that you like to the future and trying to serve that aesthetic? And if you do, then life has that meaning. And if you don't, then it doesn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I kind of enjoy the idea that you just create the most vibrant, the most weird, the most unique kind of blip you can, given your environment, given your set of skills, just be the most weird set of like local pocket of complexity you can be. So that like when people study the universe, they'll pause and be like, that's weird." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It looks like a useful strategy, but of course it's still motivated reasoning. You're obviously acting on your incentives here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's still a story we tell ourselves within a dream that's hardly in touch with reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's definitely a good strategy if you're a podcaster." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And a human, which I'm still trying to figure out if I am." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's a mutual relationship somehow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Somehow. Josh, you're one of the most incredible people I know. I really love talking to you. I love talking to you again. And it's really an honor that you spend your valuable time with me. I hope we get to talk many times throughout our short and meaningless lives." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or meaningful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or meaningful." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I think that's not the most interesting question. It's like, you know, if you ask a biologist, what is life? That's not the question they care the most about. What I was interested in is how does something that we would usually identify as complexity arise in nature? And I got interested in that question like 50 years ago, which is really embarrassingly long time ago. And I was, how does snowflakes get to have complicated forms? How do galaxies get to have complicated shapes? How do living systems get produced? Things like that. And the question is, what's the sort of underlying scientific basis for those kinds of things? And the thing that I was at first very surprised by, because I've been doing physics and particle physics and fancy mathematical physics and so on. And it's like, I know all this fancy stuff, I should be able to solve this sort of basic science question. And I couldn't, this was like, early, maybe 1980-ish time frame. And it's like, okay, what can one do to understand the sort of basic secret that nature seems to have? Because it seems like nature, you look around in the natural world, it's full of incredibly complicated forms. You look at sort of most engineered kinds of things, for instance, they tend to be, you know, we got sort of circles and lines and things like this. And the question is, what secret does nature have that lets it make all this complexity that we in doing engineering, for example, don't naturally seem to have? And so that was the kind of the thing that I got interested in. And then the question was, you know, could I understand that with things like mathematical physics? Well, it didn't work very well. So then I got to thinking about, okay, is there some other way to try to understand this? And then the question was, if you're going to look at some system in nature, how do you make a model for that system, for what that system does? So, you know, a model is some abstract representation of the system, some formal representation of the system. What is the raw material that you can make that model out of? And so what I realized was, well, actually programs are a really good source of raw material for making models of things. And, you know, in terms of my personal history, to me that seemed really obvious. And the reason it seemed really obvious is because I just spent several years building this big piece of software that was sort of a predecessor to Mathematica and Morphin Language. thing called SMP, Symbolic Manipulation Program, which was something that had this idea of starting from just these computational primitives and building up everything one had to build up. And so kind of the notion of, well, let's just try and make models by starting from computational primitives and seeing what we can build up, that seemed like a totally obvious thing to do. In retrospect, it might not have been externally quite so obvious, but it was obvious to me at the time, given the path that I happened to have been on. So, you know, so that got me into this question of let's use programs to model what happens in nature. And the question then is, well, what kind of programs? And, you know, we're used to programs that you write for some particular purpose and it's a big, long piece of code and it does some specific thing. But what I got interested in was, okay, if you just go out into the sort of computational universe of possible programs, you say, take the simplest program you can imagine, what does it do? And so I started studying these things called cellular automata. Actually, I didn't know at first they were called cellular automata, but I found that out subsequently. But it's just a line of cells, you know, each one is black or white, and it's just some rule that says the color of the cell is determined by the color that it had on the previous step and its two neighbors on the previous step. And I had initially thought, That's sufficiently simple setup. It's not gonna do anything interesting. It's always gonna be simple, no complexity, simple rules, simple behavior. Okay, but then I actually ran the computer experiment, which is pretty easy to do. I mean, it probably took a few hours originally. And the results were not what I'd expected at all. Now, needless to say, in the way that science actually works, the results that I got had a lot of unexpected things, which I thought were really interesting, but the really strongest result, which was already right there in the printouts I made, I didn't really understand for a couple more years. So it was not, you know, the compressed version of the story is you run the experiment and you immediately see what's going on, but I wasn't smart enough to do that, so to speak. But the big thing is, even with very simple rules of that type, sort of the minimal, tiniest program, sort of the one line program or something, it's possible to get very complicated behavior. My favorite example is this thing called rule 30, which is a particular cellular automaton rule. You just start it off from one black cell and it makes this really complicated pattern. And so that for me was sort of a critical discovery that then kind of said, playing back onto, you know, how does nature make complexity? I sort of realized that might be how it does it. That might be kind of the secret that it's using is that in this kind of computational universe of possible programs, it's actually pretty easy to get programs where even though the program is simple, the behavior when you run the program is not simple at all. And that was, so for me, that was the kind of the story of kind of how that was sort of the indication that one had got an idea of what the sort of secret that nature uses to make complexity and how complexity can be made in other places. Now, if you say, what is complexity? Complexity is, it's not easy to tell what's going on. That's the informal version of what is complexity. But there is something going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a rule. But it's not easy to know what. Right. Well, no, the rules can generate just randomness, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's not obvious. That's not obvious, that's right. In other words, it's not obvious at all. And it wasn't what I expected. It's not what people's intuition had been and has been for a long time. That is, one might think you have a rule you can tell there's a rule behind it. I mean, it's just like, you know, the early, you know, robots in science fiction movies, right? You can tell it's a robot cause it does simple things, right? It turns out that isn't actually the right story, but it's not obvious that isn't the right story. Cause people assume simple rules, simple behavior. And the key discovery about the computational universe is that isn't true. And that discovery goes very deep and relates to all kinds of things that I've spent years and years studying. But in the end, the what is complexity is, well, you can't easily tell what it's going to do. You could just run the rule and see what happens, but you can't just say, oh, show me the rule. Great, now I know what's gonna happen. And the key phenomenon around that is this thing I call computational irreducibility, this fact that in something like rule 30, you might say, well, what's it going to do after a million steps? Well, you can run it for a million steps and just do what it does to find out, but you can't compress that. You can't reduce that and say, I'm going to be able to jump ahead and say, this is what it's going to do after a million steps, but I don't have to go through anything like that computational effort." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, has anybody succeeded at that? You had a challenge, a competition for predicting the middle column of rule 30. Anybody?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A number of people have sent things in and sort of people are picking away at it, but it's hard. I mean, I've been actually even proving that the center column of rule 30 doesn't repeat. That's something I think might be doable, okay? Mathematically proving. Yes. And so that's analogous to a similar kind of things like the digits of pi, which are also generated in this very deterministic way. And so a question is how random are the digits of pi? For example, does every... First of all, do the digits of pi ever repeat? Well, we know they don't, because it was proved in the 1800s that pi is not a rational number. So that means only rational numbers have digit sequences that repeat. So we know the digits of pi don't repeat. So now the question is, does, you know, zero, one, two, three, or whatever, do all the digits base 10 or base two or however you work it out, do they all occur with equal frequency? Nobody knows. That's far away from what can be understood mathematically at this point. And that's kind of, but I'm even looking for step one, which is prove that the center column doesn't repeat and then prove other things about it like equidistribution of equal numbers of zeros and ones. And those are things which I kind of set up this little prize thing because I thought those were not too out of range. Those are things which are within you know, a modest amount of time, it's conceivable that those could be done. They're not far away from what current mathematics might allow. They'll require a bunch of cleverness and hopefully some interesting new ideas that, you know, will be useful other places." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you started in 1980 with this idea before I think you realized, you know, this idea of programs. You thought that there might be some kind of thermodynamic-like randomness, and then the complexity comes from a clever filter that you kind of, like, I don't know, spaghetti or something. You filter the randomness and out comes complexity, which is an interesting intuition. how do we know that's not actually what's happening? So just because you were then able to develop, look, you don't need this incredible randomness. You can just have very simple, predictable initial conditions and predictable rules. And then from that emerged complexity. Still, there might be some systems where it's filtering randomness on the inputs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the point is when you have quotes randomness in the input, that means there's all kinds of information in the input. And in a sense, what you get out will be maybe just something close to what you put in. Like people are very in dynamical systems theory, sort of big area of mathematics that developed from the early 1900s and really got big in the 1980s. An example of what people study there a lot and it's popular version is chaos theory. An example of what people study a lot is the shift map, which is basically taking 2X mod one to the fractional part of 2X, which is basically just taking digits in binary and shifting them to the left. So at every step you get to see, if you say, how big is this number that I got out? Well, the most important digit in that number is whatever ended up at the left-hand end. But now if you start off from an arbitrary random number, which is quotes randomly chosen, so all its digits are random, then when you run that sort of chaos theory shift map, all that you get out is just whatever you put in. You just get to see what you, it's not obvious that you would excavate all of those digits. And if you're, for example, making a theory, I don't know, fluid mechanics, for example, if there was that phenomenon in fluid mechanics, then the equations of fluid mechanics can't be right. because what that will be saying is the equations of that, that it matters to the fluid, what happens in the fluid at the level of the millionth digit of the initial conditions, which is far below the points at which you're hitting kind of sizes of molecules and things like that. So it's kind of almost explaining if that phenomenon is an important thing, it's kind of telling you that the fluid dynamics, which describes fluids as continuous media and so on isn't really right. But so this idea that It's a tricky thing because as soon as you put randomness in, you have to know how much of what's coming out is what you put in versus how much is actually something that's being generated. And what's really nice about these systems where you just have very simple initial conditions and where you get random stuff out or seemingly random stuff out, is you don't have that issue. You don't have to argue about, was there something complicated put in? Because it's plainly obvious there wasn't. Now as a practical matter in doing experiments, the big thing is, if the thing you see is complex and reproducible, then it didn't come from just filtering some quotes randomness from the outside world. It has to be something that is intrinsically made because it wouldn't otherwise be, I mean, you know, it could be the case that you set things up and it's always the same each time. And you say, well, it's kind of the same, but it's not random each time because it's kind of the definition of it being random is it was kind of picked at random each time, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is it possible to for sure know that our universe does not at the fundamental level have randomness? Is it possible to conclusively say there's no randomness at the bottom?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's an interesting question. I mean, you know, science, natural science is an inductive business, right? You observe a bunch of things and you say, can we fit these together? What is our hypothesis for what's going on? The thing that I think I can say fairly definitively is at this point we understand enough about fundamental physics that there is, if there was sort of an extra dice being thrown, it's something that doesn't need to be there. We can get what we see without that. Now, you know, could you add that in as an extra little featureoid, you know, without breaking the universe? Probably. But in fact, almost certainly yes. But is it necessary for understanding the universe? No. And I think actually from a more fundamental point of view, it's It's, I think I might be able to argue, so one of the things that I've been interested in and been pretty surprised that I've had anything sentient to say about is the question of why does the universe exist? I didn't think that was a question that I would, you know, I thought that was a far out there metaphysical kind of thing. Even the philosophers have stayed away from that question for the most part. It's such a kind of, you know, difficult to address question. But I actually think, to my great surprise, that from our physics project and so on, that it is possible to actually address that question and explain why the universe exists. And I kind of have a suspicion, I've not thought it through, I kind of have a suspicion that that explanation will eventually show you that in no meaningful sense can there be randomness underneath the universe. That is that if there is, it's something that is necessarily irrelevant to our perception of the universe. That is that it could be there, but it doesn't matter. Because in a sense, we've already, you know, whatever it would do, whatever extra thing it would add is not relevant to our perception of what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So why? does the universe exist? How does the irrelevance of randomness connect to the big why question of the universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, okay, so, I mean, why does the universe exist? Well, let's see. And is this the only universe we got? It's the only one. About that, I'm pretty sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you may be, which one, which of these topics is better to enter first? Why does the universe exist and why you think it's the only one that exists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think they're very closely related. So I mean, the first thing, let's see, I mean, this why does the universe exist question is built on top of all these things that we've been figuring out about fundamental physics. Because if you want to know why the universe exists, you kind of have to know what the universe is made of. And I think the, well, let me describe a little bit about the why does the universe exist question. So the main issue is, let's say you have a model for the universe. and you say, I've got this program or something and you run it and you make the universe. Now you say, well, why is that program actually running? And people say, you've got this program that makes the universe, what computer is it running on? What does it mean? What actualizes something? Two plus two equals four, but that's different from saying there's a pile of two rocks, another pile of two rocks and somebody moves them together and makes four, so to speak. And so what is it that kind of turns it from being just this formal thing to being something that is actualized? Okay, so there we have to start thinking about, well, what do we actually know about what's going on in the universe? Well, we are observers of this universe, But confusingly enough, we're part of this universe. So in a sense, if we say, what do we know about what's going on in the universe? Well, what we know is what sort of our consciousness records about what's going on in the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And consciousness is part of the fabric of the universe, so we're in it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, we're in it. And maybe I should start off by saying something about the consciousness story, because that's... Maybe we should begin even before that, at the very base layer of the Wolfram Physics Project." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe you can give a broad overview once again really quick about this hypergraph model Yes, and also what is it a year and a half ago since you've brought this project to the world? What is the status update where what are all the beautiful ideas you have come across? What are the interesting things you can imagine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's I mean, it's a it's a friggin Cambrian explosion. I mean, it's it's crazy I mean, there are all these things which I've kind of wondered about for years and Suddenly there's actually way to think about them. I And I really did not see, I mean, the real strength of what's happened, I absolutely did not see coming. And the real strength of it is we've got this model for physics, but it turns out it's a foundational kind of model that's a different kind of computation-like model that I'm kind of calling the sort of multi-computational model. And that that kind of model is applicable not only to physics, but also to lots of other kinds of things. And one reason that's extremely powerful is because physics has been very successful. So we know a lot based on what we figured out in physics. And if we know that the same model governs physics and governs, I don't know, economics, linguistics, immunology, whatever, we know that the same kind of model governs those things. We can start using things that we've successfully discovered in physics and applying those intuitions in all these other areas. And that's pretty exciting and very surprising to me. And in fact, it's kind of like in the original story of sort of you go and you explain why is there complexity in the natural world, then you realize, well, there's all this complexity, there's all this computational irreducibility, there's a lot we can't know about what's going to happen. It's kind of a very confusing thing for people who say, science has nailed everything down. Based on science, we can know everything. Well, actually there's this computational irreducibility thing right in the middle of that. thrown up by science, so to speak. And then the question is, well, given computational irreducibility, how can we actually figure out anything about what happens in the world? Why aren't we, why are we able to predict anything? Why are we able to sort of operate in the world? And the answer is that we sort of live in these slices of computational reusability that exists in this kind of ocean of computational irreducibility. And it turns out that it seems that it's a very fundamental feature of the kind of model that seems to operate in physics, and perhaps in a lot of these other areas, that there are these particular slices of computational reducibility that are relevant to us. And those are the things that both allow us to operate in the world and not just have everything be completely unpredictable, but they're also things that potentially give us what amount to sort of physics-like laws in all these other areas. So that's been sort of an exciting thing. But I would say that in general for our project, it's been going spectacularly well. I mean, you know, I, it's very, honestly, it wasn't something I expected to happen in my lifetime. I mean, it's, you know, it's something where, where it's, it's in fact, one of the things about it, some of the things that we've discovered are things where I was pretty sure that wasn't how things worked. And turns out I'm wrong. And, you know, in a major area in meta-mathematics, I'd be realizing that something I've long believed, we can talk about it later, that just really isn't right. But I think that The thing that, so what's happened with the physics project? I mean, you know, it's a, can explain a little bit about how the model works, but basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We can maybe ask you the following question. So it's easy through words to describe how cellular automata works. You've explained this. And it's the fundamental mechanism by which you, in your book, and you kind of science explored the idea of complexity and how to do science in this world of, reducible islands and irreducible, generally irreducibility. Okay, so how does the model of hypergraphs differ from cellular automata? And how does the idea of multi-computation differ? Like maybe that's a way to describe it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. This is a, you know, my life is, like all of our lives, something of a story of computational irreducibility. You know, it's been going for a few years now, so it's always a challenge to kind of find these appropriate pockets of reducibility, but let me see what I can do. So, I mean, first of all, let's talk about physics, first of all. And, you know, a key observation that one of the starting point of our physics project is things about what is space? What is the universe made of? And, you know, ever since Euclid, people just sort of say space is just this thing where you can put things at any position you want. And they're just points and they're just geometrical things that you can just arbitrarily put at different coordinate positions. Sort of the first thing in our physics project is the idea that space is made of something. Just like water is made of molecules, space is made of kind of atoms of space. And the only thing we can say about these atoms of space is they have some identity. It's this atom as opposed to this atom. And you could give them, if you were a computer person, you'd give them UUIDs or something. But that's all there is to say about them, so to speak. And then all we know about these atoms of space is how they relate to each other. So we say these three atoms of space are associated with each other in some relation. So you can think about that as, you know, what atom of space is friends with what other atom of space? You can build this essentially friend network of the atoms of space. And the sort of starting point of our physics project is that's what our universe is. It's a giant friend network of the atoms of space. And so how can that possibly represent our universe? Well, it's like in something like water, you know, there are molecules bouncing around, but on a large scale that, you know, that produces fluid flow and we have fluid vortices and we have all of these phenomena that are sort of the emergent phenomena from that underlying kind of collection of molecules bouncing around. And by the way, it's important that that collection of molecules bouncing around have this phenomenon of computational irreducibility. That's actually what leads to the second law of thermodynamics, among other things. And that leads to the sort of randomness of the underlying behavior, which is what gives you something which on a large scale seems like it's a smooth, continuous type of thing. And so, okay, so first thing is space is made of something. It's made of all these atoms of space connected together in this network. And then everything that we experience is sort of features of that structure of space. So, when we have an electron or something or a photon, it's some kind of tangle in the structure of space, much like kind of a vortex in a fluid would be just this thing that is, you know, it can actually, the vortex can move around, it can involve different molecules in the fluid, but the vortex still stays there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And if you zoom out enough, the vortex looks like an atom itself, like a basic element. Yes. So there's the levels of abstraction if you squint and kind of blur things out, it looks like at every level of abstraction, you can define what is a basic individual entity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but in this model, there's a bottom level. There's an elementary link. Maybe it's 10 to the minus 100. 10 to the minus 100 meters, let's say, which is really small, you know, a proton is 10 to the minus 15 meters. The smallest we've ever been able to sort of see with a particle accelerator is around 10 to the minus 21 meters. So, you know, if we don't know precisely what the correct scale is, but it's perhaps over the order of 10 to the minus 100 meters, so it's pretty small. But that's the end, that's what things are made of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your intuition where the 10 to the minus 100 comes from? What's your intuition about this scale?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, so there's a calculation which I consider to be somewhat rickety, okay? Which has to do with comparing, so there are various fundamental constants. There's the speed of light. The speed of light, once you know the elementary time, the speed of light tells you the conversion from the elementary time to the elementary length. Then there's the question of how do you convert to the elementary energy and how do you convert between other things? And the various constants we know, we know the speed of light, we know the gravitational constant, we know Planck's constant and quantum mechanics. Those are the three important ones. And we actually know some other things. We know things like the size of the universe, the Hubble constant, things like that. And essentially this calculation of the elementary length comes from looking at these sort of combination of those. Okay, so the most obvious thing, people have sort of assumed that quantum gravity happens at this thing, the Planck scale, 10 to the minus 34 meters, which is the sort of the combination of Planck's constant and the gravitational constant, the speed of light that gives you that kind of length. Turns out in our model, there is an additional parameter, which is essentially the number of simultaneous threads of execution of the universe, which is essentially the number of sort of independent quantum processes that are going on. And that number, let's see if I remember that number, that number is 10 to the 170, I think. And so it's a big number, but that number, then connects, sort of modifies what you might think from all these Planck units to give you the things we're giving. And there's been sort of a mystery actually in the more technical physics thing that the Planck mass The Planck energy is actually surprisingly big. The Planck length is tiny, 10 to the minus 34 meters, Planck time, 10 to the minus 43 meters, I think, seconds, I think. But the Planck energy is like the energy of a lightning strike. Okay, which is pretty weird. In our models, the actual elementary energy is that divided by the number of sort of simultaneous quantum threads. And it ends up being really small too. And that sort of explains that mystery that's been around for a while about how Planck units work. But whether that precise estimate is right, we don't know yet. I mean, that's one of the things that's sort of been a thing we've been pretty interested in, is how do you see through? How do you make a gravitational microscope that can kind of see through to the atoms of space? You know, how do you get in fluid flow, for example, if you go to hypersonic flow or something, you know, you've got a mark 20, you know, space plane or something, it really matters that there are individual molecules hitting the space plane, not a continuous fluid. The question is, what is the analogous kind of, what is the analog of hypersonic flow for things about the structure of space time? And it looks like a rapidly rotating black hole, right? At the sort of critical rotation rate is it looks as if that's a case where essentially the structure of spacetime is just about to fall apart. And you may be able to kind of see the evidence of sort of discrete elements, you may be able to kind of see there the sort of gravitational microscope of actually seeing these discrete elements of space. And there may be some effect in, for example, gravitational waves produced by rapidly rotating black hole that in which one could actually see some phenomenon where one could say, yes, they just don't come out the way one would expect based on having a continuous structure of space-time. It is something where you can kind of see through to the discrete structure. We don't know that yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you maybe elaborate a little bit deeper how a microscope that can see to 10 to the minus 100, how rotating black holes and presumably the detailed, accurate detection of gravitational waves from such black holes can reveal the discreteness of space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, first thing is, what is a black hole? Actually, we need to go a little bit further in the story of what space-time is, because I explained a little bit about what space is, but I didn't talk about what time is. And that's sort of important in understanding space-time, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And your sense is both space and time in the story are discrete. Absolutely, absolutely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's a complicated story. And needless to say. Well, it's simple at the bottom. It's very simple at the bottom. In the end, it's simple but deeply abstract. And something that is simple in conception, but kind of wrapping one's head around what's going on is pretty hard. But so first of all, we have this, so I've described these kind of atoms of space and their connections. You can think about these things as a hypergraph. A graph is just, you connect nodes to nodes, but a hypergraph, you can have sort of not just friends, individual friends to friends, but you can have these triplets of friends or whatever else. And so we're just saying, and that's just the relations between atoms of space are the hyper edges of the hypergraph. And so we got some big collection of these atoms of space, maybe 10 to the 400 or something in our universe. And that's the structure of space. That's an every feature of what we experience in the world is a feature of that hypergraph, that spatial hypergraph. So then the question is, well, what does that spatial hypergraph do? Well, the idea is that there are rules that update that spatial hypergraph. And in a cellular automaton, you've just got this line of cells and you just say at every step, at every time step, you've got fixed time steps, fixed array of cells. At every step, every cell gets updated according to a certain rule. And that's kind of the way it works. Now in this hypergraph, it's sort of vaguely the same kind of thing. We say, every time you see a little piece of hypergraph that looks like this, update it to one that looks like this. So it's just keep rewriting this hypergraph. Every time you see something that looks like that anywhere in the universe, it gets rewritten. Now, one thing that's tricky about that, which we'll come to is this multi-computational idea, which has to do with, you're not saying in some kind of lockstep way, do this one, then this one, then this one. It's just whenever you see one you can do, you can go ahead and do it. And that leads one not to have a single thread of time in the universe. Because if you knew which one to do, you would just say, okay, we do this one, then we do this one, then we do this one. But if you say, just do whichever one you feel like, you end up with these multiple threads of time, these kind of multiple histories of the universe, depending on which order you happen to do the things you could do in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's fundamentally asynchronous and parallel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is very uncomfortable for the human brain that seeks for things to be sequential and synchronous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, well, I think that this is part of the story of consciousness is I think the key aspect of consciousness that is important for sort of parsing the universe is this point that we have a single thread of experience. We have a memory of what happened in the past. We can say something, predict something about the future, but there's a single thread of experience. And it's not obvious it should work that way. I mean, we've got a hundred billion neurons in our brains and they're all firing at all kinds of different ways, but yet our experience is that there is the single thread of time that goes along. And I think that one of the things I've kind of realized with a lot more clarity in the last year is the fact that we conclude that the universe has the laws it has is a consequence of the fact that we have consciousness the way we have consciousness. And so the fact, so I mean, just to go on with kind of the basic setup, so we've got this spatial hypergraph, it's got all these atoms of space, they're getting these little clumps of atoms of space are getting turned into other clumps of atoms of space, and that's happening everywhere in the universe all the time. And so one thing that's a little bit weird is there's nothing permanent in the universe. The universe is getting rewritten everywhere all the time. And if it wasn't getting rewritten, space wouldn't be knitted together. That is, space would just fall apart. There wouldn't be any way in which we could say this part of space is next to this part of space. You know, one of the things that people were confused about back in antiquity, you know, the ancient Greek philosophers and so on, is how does motion work? You know, how can it be the case that you can take a thing that we can walk around and it's still us when we walked, you know, a foot forward, so to speak. And in a sense with our models, that's again, a question because it's a different set of atoms of space. When I move my hand, it's moving into a different set of atoms of space. It's having to be recreated. It's not, the thing itself is not there. It's being continuously recreated all the time. Now it's a little bit like waves in an ocean, you know, vortices in a fluid, which again, the actual molecules that exist in those are not what define the identity of the thing. But it's a little bit, you know, this idea that there can be pure motion, that it is even possible for an object to just move around in the universe and not change. is it's not self-evident that such a thing should be possible. And that is part of our perception of the universe is that we parse those aspects of the universe where things like pure motion are possible. Now, pure motion, even in general relativity, the theory of gravity, pure motion is a little bit of a complicated thing. I mean, if you imagine your average teacup or something approaching a black hole, it is deformed and distorted by the structure of space-time. and to say, is it really pure motion? Is it that same teacup that's the same shape? Well, it's a bit of a complicated story. And this is a more extreme version of that. So anyway, the thing that's happening is we've got space, we've got this notion of time. So time is this kind of this rewriting of the hypergraph. And one of the things that's important about that time is this sort of computational irreducible process. There's something, you know, time is not something where it's kind of the mathematical view of time tends to be time is just a coordinate. We can, you know, slide a slider, turn a knob, and we'll change the time that we've got in this equation. But in this picture of time, that's not how it works at all. Time is this inexorable, irreducible kind of set of computations that go on, that go from where we are now to the future. And one of the things that is, again, something one sort of has to break out of is your average trained physicist like me says, you know, space and time are the same kind of thing. They're related by, you know, the Poincaré group and Lorentz transformations and relativity and all these kinds of things. And space and time, there are all these kind of sort of folk stories you can tell about why space and time are the same kind of thing. In this model, they're fundamentally not the same kind of thing. Space is this kind of sort of connections between these atoms of space. Time is this computational process. So the thing that the first sort of surprising thing is, well, it turns out you get relativity anyway. And the reason that happens, a few bits and pieces here, which one has to understand, but the fundamental point is, if you are an observer embedded in the system, that a part of this whole story of things getting updated in this way and that, there's sort of a limit to what you can tell about what's going on. And really in the end, the only thing you can tell is what are the causal relationships between events. So an event in this sort of, an elementary event is a little piece of hypergraph got rewritten. And that means a few hyper edges of the hypergraph were consumed by the event, and you produce some other hyper edges. And that's an elementary event. And so then the question is, what we can tell is kind of what the network of causal relationships between elementary events is. That's the ultimate thing, the causal graph of the universe. And it turns out that, well, there's this property of causal invariance that is true of a bunch of these models. And I think is inevitably true for a variety of reasons that makes it be the case that it doesn't matter kind of, if you are sort of saying, well, I've got this hypergraph and I can rewrite this piece here and this piece here, and I do them all in different orders. When you construct the causal graph for each of those orders that you choose to do things in, you'll end up with the same causal graph. And so that's essentially why, well, that's in the end why relativity works. It's why our perception of space and time is as having this kind of connection that relativity says they should have. And that's kind of how that works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think I'm missing a little piece if we can go there again. You said the fact that the observer is embedded in this hypergraph, what's missing? What is the observer not able to state about this universe of space and time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if you look from the outside, you can say, oh, I see this I see this particular place was updated, and then this one was updated, and I'm seeing which order things were updated in. But the observer embedded in the universe doesn't know which order things were updated in, because until they've been updated, they have no idea what else happened. So the only thing they know is the set of causal relationships. Let me give an extreme example. Let's imagine that the universe is a Turing machine. Turing machines have just this one update head, which does something, and otherwise the Turing machine just does nothing. And the Turing machine works by having this head move around and do its updating, you know, just where the head happens to be. The question is, could the universe be a Turing machine? Could the universe just have a single updating head that's just zipping around all over the place? You say, that's crazy because, you know, I'm talking to you, you seem to be updating, I'm updating, et cetera. But the thing is, there's no way to know that because if there was just this head moving around, it's like, okay, it updates me, but you're completely frozen at that point. until the head has come over and updated you, you have no idea what happened to me. And so if you sort of unravel that argument, you realize the only thing we actually can tell is what the network of causal relationships between the things that happened were. We don't get to know from some sort of outside sort of God's eye view of the thing. We don't get to know what sort of from the outside what happened. we only get to know sort of what the set of relationships between the things that happened actually were." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but if I somehow record like a trace of this, I guess it would be called multi-computation. Can't I then look back? When you record the trace? You place throughout the universe, like throughout like a log that records in my own pocket in this hypergraph, can't I, like realizing that I'm getting an outdated picture. Can't I record?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "See, the problem is, and this is where things start getting very entangled in terms of what one understands. The problem is that any such recording device is itself part of the universe. So you don't get to say, you never get to say, let's go outside the universe and go do this. And that's why, I mean, lots of the features of this model and the way things work end up being a result of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, but what, I guess from on a human level, what is the cost you're paying? What are you missing from not getting an updated picture all the time? Okay, I understand what you're just saying. Yeah, yeah, right. But like what, like how does consciousness emerge from that? Like how, Like, what are the limitations of that observer? I understand you're getting a delayed picture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's a, okay, so there's a bunch of limitations of the observer, I think. Maybe just explain something about quantum mechanics, because that maybe is an extreme version of some of these issues, which helps to kind of motivate why one should sort of think things through a little bit more carefully. So one feature of this, okay, so in standard physics, like high school physics, you learn the equations of motion for a ball. And it says, you throw the ball this angle, this velocity, things will move in this way, and there's a definite answer. The key story of quantum mechanics is there aren't definite answers to where does the ball go. There's kind of this whole sort of bundle of possible paths. And all we say we know from quantum mechanics is certain probabilities for where the ball will end up. Okay, so that's kind of the core idea of quantum mechanics. So in our models, quantum mechanics is not some kind of plugin add-on type thing. You absolutely cannot get away from quantum mechanics because as you think about updating this hypergraph, there isn't just one sequence of things, one definite sequence of things that can happen. There are all these different possible update sequences that can occur. You could do this piece of the hypergraph now and then this one later and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. all those different paths of history correspond to these quantum paths and quantum mechanics, these different possible quantum histories. And one of the things that's kind of surprising about it is they branch, there can be a certain state of the universe and it could do this, or it could do that, but they can also merge. There can be two states of the universe, which their next state, the next state they produce is the same for both of them. And that process of branching and merging is kind of critical. And the idea that there can be merging is critical and somewhat non-trivial for these hypergraphs because there's a whole graph isomorphism story and there's a whole very elaborate set of mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's where the causal invariance comes in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, among other things, right. Yes, that's, but so then what happens is that what one's seeing, okay, so we've got this thing, it's branching, it's merging, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so now the question is, how do we perceive that? Why don't we notice that the universe is branching and merging? Why is it the case that we just think a definite set of things happen? Well, the answer is we are embedded in that universe and our brains are branching and merging too. And so what quantum mechanics becomes a story of is how does a branching brain perceive a branching universe? And the key thing is, as soon as you say, I think definite things happen in the universe, that means you are essentially conflating lots of different parts of history. You're saying, actually, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm convinced that definite things happen in the universe, all these parts of history must be equivalent. Now, it's not obvious that that would be a consistent thing to do. It might be, you say, all these parts of history are equivalent, but by golly, moments later, that would be a completely inconsistent point of view. Everything would have gone to hell in different ways. The fact that that doesn't happen is, well, that's a consequence of this causal invariance thing. And the fact that that does happen a little bit is what causes little quantum effects. And if that didn't happen at all, there wouldn't be anything that sort of is like quantum mechanics. It would be, quantum mechanics is kind of like in this kind of this bundle of paths. It's a little bit like what happens in statistical mechanics and fluid mechanics, whatever, that most of the time you just see this continuous fluid. You just see the world just progressing in this kind of way that's like this continuous fluid. But every so often, if you look at the exact right experiment, you can start seeing, well, actually it's made of these molecules where they might go that way or they might go this way, and that's kind of quantum effects. And so this kind of idea of where we're sort of embedded in the universe, this branching brain is perceiving this branching universe, and that ends up being sort of a story of quantum mechanics, that's part of the whole picture of what's going on. But I think, I mean, to come back to sort of where does conscious, what is the story of consciousness? So in the universe, we've got, you know, whatever it is, 10 to the 400 atoms of space, they're all doing these complicated things. It's all a big, complicated, irreducible computation. The question is, what do we perceive from all of that? And the answer is that we are parsing the universe in a particular way. Let me again go back to the gas molecules analogy. You know, in the gas in this room, there are molecules bouncing around all kinds of complicated patterns, but we don't care. All we notice is there's, you know, the gas laws are satisfied. Maybe there's some fluid dynamics. These are kind of features of that assembly of molecules that we notice. And there are lots of details we don't notice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say we, do you mean the tools of physics or do you mean literally the human brain and its perception system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, so the human brain is where it starts, but we've built a bunch of instruments to do a bit better than the human brain, but they still have many of the same kinds of ideas, you know, their cameras and their pressure sensors and these kinds of things. They're not, you know, at this point, we don't know how to make fundamentally qualitatively different sensory devices." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so it's always just an extension of the conscious experience. Or our sensory experience. Sensory experience, but sensory experience is somehow intricately tied to consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, well, so one question is, when we are looking at all these molecules in the gas, and there might be 10th or 20th molecules in some little box or something, it's like, what do we notice about those molecules? So one thing that we can say is, we don't notice that much. We are computationally bounded observers. We can't go in and say, okay, there are 10 to the 20th molecules and I know that I can sort of decrypt their motions and I can figure out this and that. It's like, I'm just going to say what's the average density of molecules. And so one key feature of us is that we are computationally bounded. and that when you are looking at a universe which is full of computation and doing huge amounts of computation, but we are computationally bounded, there's only certain things about that universe that we're going to be sensitive to. We're not going to be, you know, figuring out what all the atoms of space are doing because we're just computationally bounded observers and we are only sampling these small set of features. So I think the two defining features of consciousness that, and I, I would say that the preamble to this is, for years, as I've talked about computation and fundamental features of physics and science, people ask me, so what about consciousness? And for years, I've said, I have nothing to say about consciousness. And I've told this story, you talk about intelligence, you talk about life. These are both features where you say, what's the abstract definition of life? We don't really know the abstract definition. We know the one for life on earth, it's got RNA, it's got cell membranes, it's got all this kind of stuff. Similarly for intelligence, we know the human definition of intelligence, but what is intelligence abstract? We don't really know. And so what I've long believed is that sort of the abstract definition of intelligence is just computational sophistication. That is, that as soon as you can be computationally sophisticated, that's kind of the abstract version, the generalized version of intelligence. So then the question is, what about consciousness? And what I sort of realized is that consciousness is actually a step down from intelligence. That is, that you might think, oh, you know, consciousness is the top of the pile. But actually, I don't think it is. I think that there's this notion of kind of computational sophistication, which is the generalized intelligence. But consciousness has two limitations, I think. One of them is computational boundedness. That is that we're only perceiving a sort of computationally bounded view of the universe. And the other is this idea of a single thread of time. That is that we, and in fact, we know neurophysiologically our brains go to some trouble to give us this one thread of attention, so to speak. And it isn't the case that, you know, in all the neurons in our brains, that at least in our conscious, you know, the correspondence of language in our conscious experience, we just have the single thread of attention, single thread of perception. And, you know, maybe there's something unconscious that's bubbling around. That's the kind of almost the quantum version of what's happening in our brain, so to speak. We've got the classical flow of what we are mostly thinking about, so to speak. But there's this kind of bubbling around of other paths that is all those other neurons that didn't make it to be part of our sort of conscious stream of experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that sense, intelligence as computational sophistication is much broader than the computational constraints which consciousness operates under, and also the sequential thing, like the notion of time. That's kind of interesting, but then the follow-up question is like, okay, starting to get a sense of what is intelligence, and how does that connect to a human brain? Because you're saying intelligence is almost like a fabric, like what, we like plug into it or something? Like our consciousness plugs into it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, the intelligence, I think the core, I mean, you know, intelligence at some level is just a word, but we are asking, you know, what is the notion of intelligence as we generalize it beyond the bounds of humans, beyond the bounds of even the AIs that we humans have built and so on, you know, what is intelligence? You know, is the weather, you know, people say the weather has a mind of its own. What does that mean? You know, can the weather be intelligent?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, what does agency have to do with intelligence here? So is intelligence just like your conception of computation? Just intelligence is the capacity to perform computation in a sea of- Yeah, I think so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think that's right. And I think that this question of, is it for a purpose? That quickly degenerates into a horrible philosophical mess because whenever you say, did the weather do that for a purpose? Well, yes, it did. It was trying to move a bunch of hot air from the equator to the poles or something. That's its purpose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But why, because I seem to be equally as dumb today as I was yesterday. So there's some persistence, like a consistency over time that the intelligence I plugged into. So like what's, it seems like there's a hard constraint between the amount of computation I can perform in my consciousness. Like they seem to be really closely connected somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think the point is that the thing that gives you kind of the ability to have kind of conscious intelligence, you can have kind of this, okay, so one thing is we don't know intelligences other than the ones that are very much like us, right? And the ones that are very much like us, I think, have this feature of single thread of time, bounded, you know, computationally bounded. Now that, but you also need computational sophistication, having a single thread of time and being computationally bounded, you could just be a clock going tick tock, you know, that would satisfy those conditions. But the fact that we have this sort of irreducible computational ability, that's an important feature. That's the sort of the bedrock on which we can construct the things we construct. Now, the fact that we have this experience of the world that has a single thread of time and computational boundedness, the thing that I sort of realized is it's that that causes us to deduce from this irreducible mess of what's going on in the physical world, the laws of physics that we think exist. So in other words, if we say, why do we believe that there is, you know, continuous space, let's say, why do we believe that gravity works the way it does? Well, in principle, we could be kind of parsing details of the universe that were, okay, the analogy is again with the statistical mechanics and molecules in a box. We could be sensitive to every little detail of the swirling around of those molecules. And we could say, what really matters is the wiggle effect. That is something that we humans just never noticed because it's some weird thing that happens when there are 15 collisions of air molecules and this happens and that happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "we just see the pure motion of a ball moving about. Why do we see that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the point is that what seems to be the case is that the things that, if we say, given this sort of hypergraph that's updating and all the details about all the sort of atoms of space and what they do, and we say, how do we slice that to what we can be sensitive to? What seems to be the case is that as soon as we assume you know, computational boundedness, single thread of time, that leads us to general relativity. In other words, we can't avoid that. That's the way that we will parse the universe. Given those constraints, we parse the universe according to those particular, in such a way that we say the aggregate reducible, sort of pocket of computational reducibility that we slice out of this kind of whole computationally irreducible ocean of behavior is just this one that corresponds to general relativity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but we don't perceive general relativity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we do if we do fancy experiments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying so perceive really does mean the full- We drop something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a great example of general relativity in action." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but like, what's the difference in that and Newtonian mechanics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean- Oh, it doesn't, this is, when I say general relativity, that's- Just the uber theory, so to speak. I mean, Newtonian gravity is just the approximation that we can make on the earth and things like that. So this is, the phenomenon of gravity is one that is a consequence of, we would perceive something very different from gravity. So the way to understand that is when we think about, okay, so, we make up reference frames with which we parse what's happening in space and time. So in other words, one of the things that we do is we say, as time progresses, everywhere in space, something happens at a particular time, and then we go to the next time, and we say, this is what space is like at the next time, this is what space is like at the next time. That's it's the reason we are used to doing that is because, you know, when we look around, we might see, you know, 10, 100 meters away. The time it takes light to travel that distance is really short compared to the time it takes our brains to know what happened. So as far as our brains are concerned, we are parsing the universe in this, there is a moment in time, it's all of space. There's a moment in time, it's all of space. If we were the size of planets or something, we would have a different perception because the speed of light would be much more important to us. We wouldn't have this perception that things happen progressively in time everywhere in space. And so that's an important kind of constraint. And the reason that we kind of parse the universe in the way that causes us to say gravity works the way it does is because we're doing things like deciding that we can say the universe exists, space has a definite structure. There is a moment in time, space has this definite structure. We move to the next moment in time, space has another structure. That kind of setup is what lets us kind of deduce kind of what to parse the universe in such a way that we say gravity works the way it does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that kind of reference frame is that the illusion of that. is that you're saying that's somehow useful for consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like- That's what consciousness does. Because in a sense, what consciousness is doing is there are, it's insisting that the universe is kind of sequentialized. Right. That is, and it is not allowing the possibility that, oh, there are these multiple threads of time and they're all flowing differently. It's like saying, no, you know, everything is happening in this one thread of experience that we have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that illusion of that one thread of experience cannot happen at the planetary scale. Are you saying typical human, are you saying we are at a human level is special here for consciousness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, for our kind of consciousness, it's, you know, if we existed at a scale close to the elementary length, for example, then our perception of the universe will be absurdly different." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so, but this makes consciousness seem like a weird side effect to this particular scale. And so, who cares? I mean, so consciousness is not that special." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, look, I think that a very interesting question is, which I've certainly thought a little bit about, is what can you imagine? What is the sort of factoring of something, you know, what are some other possible ways you could exist, so to speak? And, you know, if you were a photon, if you were sort of, you know, some kind of thing that was some kind of, you know, intelligence represented in terms of photons, You know, for example, the photons we receive in the cosmic microwave background, those photons, as far as they're concerned, the universe just started. They were emitted, you know, 100,000 years after the beginning of the universe. They've been traveling at the speed of light. Time stayed still for them. And then they just arrived and we just detected them. So for them, the universe just started. And that's a different perception of, you know, that has implications for a very different perception of time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They don't have that single thread that seems to be really important for being able to tell a heck of a good story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we humans- We can tell a story. Right, we can tell a story." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What other kind of stories can you tell? So a photon is a really boring story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, so that's a, I don't know if they're a boring story, but I think it's, you know, I've been wondering about this and I've been asking, you know, friends of mine who are science fiction writers and things, have you written stuff about this? And I've got one example, the great collection of books from my friend, Rudy Rooker, which were, which I have to say, they're books that are very informed by a bunch of science that I've done. And the thing that I really loved about them is, you know, in the first chapter of the book, the Earth is consumed by these things he called Nants, which are nanobot-type things. So, you know, so the Earth is gone in the first, but then it comes back. But then- Spoiler alert. Yeah, right. That was only a micro spoiler. It's only chapter one. Okay, good. But the thing that is not a real spoiler alert because it's such a complicated concept, but in the end, the earth is saved by this thing called the principle of computational equivalence, which is a kind of a core scientific idea of mine. And I was just like thrilled. I don't read fiction books very often. And I was just thrilled I get to the end of this and it's like, oh my gosh, You know, everything is saved by this sort of deep scientific principle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you maybe elaborate how the principle of computational equivalence can save a planet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That would be a terrible spoiler for me. That would be a spoiler, okay. But no, but let me say what the principle of computational equivalence is. So the question is, you have a system, you have some rule, you can think of its behavior as corresponding to a computation. The question is, how sophisticated is that computation? The statement of the principle of computational equivalence is, as soon as it's not obviously simple, it will be as sophisticated as anything. And so that has the implication that rule 30, our brains, other things in physics, they're all ultimately equivalent in the computations they can do. And that's what leads to this computational irreducibility idea because the reason we don't get to jump ahead and out think rule 30 is because we're just computationally equivalent to rule 30. So we're kind of just both just running computations that are the same sort of raw, the same level of computation, so to speak. So that's kind of the idea there. And the question, I mean, it's like the, in the science fiction version would be, okay, somebody says, we just need more servers, get us more servers. The way to get even more servers is turn the whole planet into a bunch of microservers. And that's where it starts. And so the question of computational equivalence, principle of computational equivalence is, well, actually, you don't need to build those custom servers. Actually, you can just use natural computation to compute things, so to speak. You can use nature to compute. You don't need to have done all that engineering. And it's kind of feels a little disappointing that you say, we're going to build all these servers. We're going to do all these things. We're going to make, you know, maybe we're going to have human consciousness uploaded into, you know, some elaborate digital environment. And then you look at that thing and you say, it's got electrons moving around, just like in a rock. And then you say, well, what's the difference? And the principle of computational equivalence says there isn't at some level a fundamental, you know, you can't say mathematically there's a fundamental difference between the rock that is the future of human consciousness and the rock that's just a rock. Now, what I've sort of realized with this kind of consciousness thing is there is an aspect of this that seems to be more special. And for example, something I haven't really teased apart properly is when it comes to something like the weather and the weather having a mind of its own or whatever, or your average, you know, pulsar magnetosphere acting like a sort of intelligent thing, how does that relate to, you know, how is that that entity related to the kind of consciousness that we have and sort of what would the world look like to the weather? If we think about the weather as a mind, what will it perceive? What will its laws of physics be? I don't really know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because it's very parallel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very parallel among other things. And it's not obvious. I mean, this is a really kind of mind bending thing, because we've got to try and imagine where, you know, we've got to try and imagine a parsing of the universe different from the one we have. And by the way, when we think about extraterrestrial intelligence and so on, I think that's kind of the key thing is, you know, we've always assumed, I've always assumed, okay, the extraterrestrials, at least they have the same physics. We all live in the same universe. They've got the same physics. But actually, that's not really right, because the extraterrestrials could have a completely different way of parsing the universe. So it's as if, you know, there could be for all we know, right here in this room, you know, in the details of the motion of these gas molecules, there could be an amazing intelligence that we were like, but we have no way of, we're not parsing the universe in the same way. If only we could parse the universe in the right way, immediately this amazing thing that's going on and this huge culture that's developed and all that kind of thing would be obvious to us, but it's not because we have our particular way of parsing the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would that thing also have an agency? I don't know the right word to use, but something like consciousness, but a different kind of consciousness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a question of just what you mean by the word, because I think that this notion of consciousness and the, okay, so some people think of consciousness as sort of a key aspect of it is that we feel that there's sort of a feeling that we exist in some way, that we have this intrinsic feeling about ourselves. You know, I suspect that any of these things would also have an intrinsic feeling about themselves. I've been sort of trying to think recently about constructing an experiment about what if you were just a piece of a cellular automaton, let's say. You know, what would your feeling about yourself actually be? And can we put ourselves in the shoes, in the cells of the cellular automaton, so to speak? Can we get ourselves close enough to that that we could have a sense of what the world would be like if you were operating in that way? And it's a little difficult because you have to not only think about what are you perceiving, but also what's actually going on in your brain. And our brains do what they actually do. And they don't, I think there might be some experiments that are possible with neural nets and so on, where you can have something where you can at least see in detail what's happening inside the system. And I've been sort of one of my projects to think about is, is there a way of kind of getting a sense kind of from inside the system about what its view of the world is and how it, can we make a bridge? See, the main issue is this. It's a sort of philosophically difficult thing because it's like, we do what we do. We understand ourselves, at least to some extent. We humans understand ourselves. That's correct. But yet, okay, so what are we trying to do? For example, when we are trying to make a model of physics, what are we actually trying to do? Because you say, well, can we work out what the universe does? Well, of course we can. We just watch the universe. The universe does what it does. But what we're trying to do when we make a model of physics is we're trying to get to the point where we can tell a story to ourselves that we understand that is also a representation of what the universe does. So it's this kind of, you know, can we make a bridge between what we humans can understand in our minds and what the universe does? And in a sense, a large part of my life efforts have been devoted to making computational language, which is a bridge between what is possible in the computational universe and what we humans can conceptualize and think about. In a sense, when I built Wolfram Language and our whole computational language story, It's all about how do you take raw computation and this ocean of computational possibility, and how do we represent pieces of it in a way that we humans can understand and that map onto things that we care about doing. In a sense, when you add physics, you're adding this other piece where we can mediate it by computer. Can we get physics to the point where we humans can understand something about what's happening in it? And when we talk about an alien intelligence, it's kind of the same story. It's like, is there a way of mapping what's happening there onto something that we humans can understand? And physics in some sense is like our exhibit one of the story of alien intelligences. It's an alien intelligence in some sense. And what we're doing in making a model of physics is mapping that onto something that we understand. And I think a lot of these other things that I've recently been kind of studying, whether it's molecular biology, other kinds of things, which we can talk about a bit, those are other cases where we're, in a sense, trying to, again, make that bridge between what we humans understand and sort of the natural language of that sort of alien intelligence, in some sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you're talking about, just to backtrack a little bit, about cellular automata, being able to, what's it like to be a cellular automata in the way that's equivalent to what is it like to be a conscious human being? How do you approach that? So is it looking at some subset of the cellular automata, asking questions of that subset, like how the world is perceived, how you as that subset, like for that local pocket of computation, what are you able to say about the broader? And that's somehow then can give you a sense of how to step outside of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the tricky part is that that little subset It's what it's doing is it has a view of itself. And the question is, how do you get inside it? It's like, you know, when we with humans, right? It's like, we can't get inside each other's consciousness. That doesn't really, you know, that doesn't really even make sense. It's like, there is an experience that somebody is having, but you can perceive things from the outside, but sort of getting inside it, It doesn't quite make sense. And for me, these sort of philosophical issues in this one, I have not untangled. So let's be, for me, the thing that has been really interesting in thinking through some of these things is, when it comes to questions about consciousness or whatever else, it's like, when I can run a program and actually see pictures and make things concrete, I have a much better chance to understand what's going on than when I'm just trying to reason about things in a very abstract way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but there may be a way to map the program to your conscious experience. So for example, when you play a video game, you do a first person shooter, you walk around inside this entity, it's a very different thing than watching this entity. So if you can somehow connect more and more, connect this full conscious experience to the subset of the cellular automata." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's something like that. But the difference in the first-person shooter thing is there's still your brain and your memory is still remembering, you know, you still have, it's hard to, I mean, again, what one's going to get, one is not going to actually be able to be the cellular automaton. One's going to be able to watch what the cellular automaton does. But this is the frustrating thing that I'm trying to understand. you know, how to think about being it, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so like in virtual reality, there's a concept of immersion, like with anything, with video game, with books, there's a concept of immersion. It feels like over time, if the virtual reality experience is well done, and maybe in the future it'll be extremely well done, the immersion leads you to feel like, you mentioned memories, you forget that you even ever existed outside that experience. Yeah, so immersive. I mean you could argue sort of mathematically that you can never truly become immersed But maybe you can I mean, well, yeah, I mean, why can't you merge with this? Yeah, I mean you just part of the same fabric." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why can't you just like well, that's a good question I mean, so so let's imagine the following scenario. Let's imagine your return." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay But then can you return back?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, right. I mean, it's like, let's imagine you've uploaded, you know, your brain is scanned, you've got every synapse, you know, mapped out, you upload everything about you, the brain simulator, you upload the brain simulator, and the brain simulator is basically, you know, some glorified cellular automaton. And then you say, well, now we've got an answer to what does it feel like to be a cellular automaton? It feels just like it felt to be ordinary you, because they're both computational systems and they're both operating in the same way. So in a sense, but I think there's somehow more to it because in that sense, when you're just making a brain simulator, we're just saying there's another version of our consciousness. The question that we're asking is, if we tease away from our consciousness and get to something that is different, how do we make a bridge to understanding what's going on there? And there's a way of thinking about this. Okay, so this is coming on to sort of questions about the existence of the universe and so on. But one of the things is there's this notion that we have of ruleal space. So we have this idea of this physical space, which is something you can move around in that's associated with the actual, the extent of the spatial hypergraph. Then there's what we call branchial space, the space of quantum branches. So in this thing we call the multi-way graph of all of this sort of branching histories, there's this idea of a kind of space where instead of moving around in physical space, you're moving from history to history, so to speak, from one possible history to another possible history. And that's kind of a different kind of space that is the space in which quantum mechanics plays out. Quantum mechanics, like for example, oh, something like, I think we're slowly understanding things like destructive interference in quantum mechanics. That what's happening is branchial space is associated with phase in quantum mechanics. And what's happening is the two photons that are supposed to be interfering and destructively interfering are winding up at different ends of branchial space. And so us as these poor observers that are trying to, that have branching brains, that are trying to conflate together these different threads of history and say, we've really got a consistent story that we're telling here. We're really knitting together these threads of history. By the time the two photons wound up at opposite ends of branchial space, we just can't knit them together to tell a consistent story. So for us, that's sort of the analog of destructive interference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it, and then there's ruleal space too, which is the space of rules." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, well, that's another level up. So there's the question. Actually, I do want to mention one thing, because it's something I've realized in recent times, and I think it's really, really kind of cool, which is about time dilation and relativity. And it kind of helps to understand, it's something that kind of helps in understanding what's going on. So according to relativity, if you have a clock, it's ticking at a certain rate, you send it in a spacecraft that's going at some significant fraction of the speed of light, to you as an observer at rest, that clock that's in the spacecraft will seem to be ticking much more slowly. And so in other words, it's kind of like the twin who goes off to Alpha Centauri and goes very fast will age much less than the twin who's on Earth that is just hanging out where they're hanging out. Okay, why does that happen? Okay, so it has to do with what motion is. So in our models of physics, what is motion? Well, when you move from somewhere to somewhere, you're having to sort of recreate yourself at a different place in space. When you exist at a particular place and you just evolve with time, you're again, you're updating yourself, you're following these rules to update what happens. Well, so the question is when you have a certain amount of computation in you, so to speak, when there's a certain amount, you're computing, the universe is computing at a certain rate, you can either use that computation to work out sitting still where you are, what's going to happen successively in time, or you can use that computation to recreate yourself as you move around the universe. And so time dilation ends up being, it's really cool actually that this is explainable in a way that isn't just imagine the mathematics of relativity. But that time dilation is a story of the fact that as you kind of are recreating yourself as you move, you are using up some of your computation. And so you don't have as much computation left over to actually work out what happens progressively with time. So that means that time is running more slowly for you because it is, you're using up your computation. Your clock can't tick as quickly because every tick of the clock is using up some computation, but you already use that computation up on moving at half the speed of light or something. And so that's why time dilation happens. And so you can start, so it's kind of interesting that one can sort of get an intuition about something like that, because it has seemed like just a mathematical fact about the mathematics of special relativity and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, for me, it's a little bit confusing what the you in that picture is, because you're using up computation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so we're simply saying the entity is updating itself according to the way that the universe updates itself. And the question is, those updates, let's imagine the U is a clock, okay? And the clock is, there's all these little updates, the hypergraph and a sequence of updates cause the pendulum to swing back the other way and then swing back and forth. Okay. And all of the, all of those updates are contributing to the motion of the, you know, the pendulum going back and forth or the little oscillator moving, whatever it is. Okay. But then the alternative is that sort of situation one where the thing is at rest. Situation two, where it's kind of moving, what's happening is it is having to recreate itself. At every moment, the thing is going to have to do the computations to be able to sort of recreate itself at a different position in space. And that's kind of the intuition behind. So it's either going to spend its computation recreating itself at a different position in space, or it's going to spend its computation doing the, sort of doing the updating of the ticking of the clock, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the more updating is doing, the less the ticking of the clock update is doing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. The more it's having to update because of motion, the less it can update the clock. So that's, I mean, obviously there's a sort of mathematical version of it that relates to how it actually works in relativity. But that's kind of, to me, that was sort of exciting to me that it's possible to have a really mechanically explainable story there. that isn't, and similarly in quantum mechanics, this notion of branching brains perceiving branching universes, to me that's getting towards a sort of mechanically explainable version of what happens in quantum mechanics, even though it's a little bit mind-bending to see, you know, these things about under what circumstances can you successfully knit together those different threads of history and when do things sort of escape and those kinds of things. But the thing about this physical space and physical space, the main sort of big theory is general relativity, the theory of gravity, and that tells you how things move in physical space. In branchial space, the big theory is the Feynman path integral, which it turns out tells you essentially how things move in quantum, in the space of quantum phases. So it's kind of like motion in branchial space. And it's kind of a fun thing to start thinking about what, you know, all these things that we know in physical space, like event horizons and black holes and so on. What are the analogous things in branchial space? For example, the speed of light. What's the analog of the speed of light in branchial space? It's the maximum speed of quantum entanglement. So the speed of light is a flashbulb goes off here. What's the maximum rate at which the effect of that flashbulb is detectable moving away in space? So similarly in Braunschild space, something happens. And the question is how far in this Braunschild space, in the space of quantum states, how far away can that get within a certain period of time? And so there's this notion of a maximum entanglement speed, and that might be observable. That's the thing we've been sort of poking at, is might there be a way to observe it even in some atomic physics kind of situation? Because one of the things that's weird in quantum mechanics is when we study quantum mechanics, we mostly study it in terms of small numbers of particles. This electron does this, this thing on an ion trap does that and so on. But when we deal with large numbers of particles, kind of all bets are off. It's kind of too complicated to deal with quantum mechanics. And so what ends up happening is, so this question about maximum entanglement speed and things like that may actually play in one of these, in the sort of story of many-body quantum mechanics. And even have some suspicions about things that might happen even in, one of the things I realized I'd never understood, and it's kind of embarrassing, but I think I now understand a little better, is when you have chemistry, and you have quantum mechanics. It's like, well, there's two carbon atoms as this molecule and we do a reaction and we draw a diagram and we say, this carbon atom ends up in this place. And it's like, but wait a minute, in quantum mechanics, nothing ends up in a definite place. There's always just some wave function for this to happen. How can it be the case that we can draw these reasonable, it just ended up in this place. And you have to kind of say, well, the environment of the molecule effectively made a bunch of measurements on the molecule to keep it kind of classical. And that's a story that has to do with this whole thing about measurements have to do with this idea of, can we conclude that something definite happened? Because in quantum mechanics, the intrinsic quantum mechanics, the mathematics of quantum mechanics is all about, they're just these amplitudes for different things to happen. Then there's this thing of, and then we make a measurement and we conclude that something definite happened. And that has to do with this thing, I think, about knitting together these different threads of history and saying, this is now something where we can definitively say something definite happened. In the traditional theory of quantum mechanics, it's just like, after you've done all this amplitude computation, then this big hammer comes down and you do a measurement and it's all over. And that's been very confusing. For example, in quantum computing, it's been a very confusing thing because when you say, you know, in quantum computing, the basic idea is you're going to use all these separate threads of computation, so to speak, to do all the different parts of, you know, try these different factors for an integer or something like this. And it looks like you can do a lot because you've got all these different threads going on. But then you have to say, well, at the end of it, you've got all these threads and every thread came up with a definite answer, but we got to conflate those together to figure out a definite thing that we humans can take away from it, a definite, so the computer actually produced this output." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So having this branch of space and this hypergraph model of physics, Do you think it's possible to then make predictions that are definite about many body quantum mechanical systems? Is that the hope?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's likely, yes. But I don't, you know, this is every one of these things, when you go from the underlying theory, which is complicated enough, and it's, I mean, the theory at some level is beautifully simple. But as soon as you start actually trying to, it's this whole question about how do you bridge it to things that we humans can talk about? It gets really complicated. And this thing about actually getting it to a definite prediction about definite thing you can say about chemistry or something like this, that's just a lot of work. So I'll give you an example. there's a thing called the quantum Zeno effect. So the idea is, you know, quantum stuff happens, but then if you make a measurement, you're kind of freezing time in quantum mechanics. And so it looks like there's a possibility that with sort of the relationship between the quantum Zeno effect and the way that many body quantum mechanics works and so on, maybe, just conceivably, it may be possible to actually figure out a way to measure the maximum entanglement speed. And the reason we can potentially do that is because the systems we deal with in terms of atoms and things, they're pretty big. A mole of atoms is a lot of atoms. But it isn't a very... It's something where to get... When we're dealing with, how can you see 10 to the minus 100, so to speak? Well, by the time you've got 10 to the 30th atoms, you're within a little bit closer striking distance of that. It's not like, oh, we've just got two atoms and we're trying to see down to 10 to the minus 100 meters or whatever. So I don't know how it will work, but this is a potential direction. And if you can tell, by the way, if we could measure the maximum entanglement speed, we would know the elementary length. These are all related. So if we get that one number, we just need one number. If we can get that one number, we can, you know, the theory has no parameters anymore. And, you know, there are other places. Well, there's another hope for doing that is in cosmology. In this model, one of the features is the universe is not fixed dimensional. I mean, we think we live in three-dimensional space, but this hypergraph doesn't have any particular dimension. it can emerge as something which on an approximation, it's as if, you say, what's the volume of a sphere in the hypergraph where a sphere is defined as how many nodes do you get to when you go a distance R away from a given point? And you can say, well, if I get to about R cubed nodes, when I go a distance R away in the hypergraph, then I'm living roughly in three-dimensional space. But you might also get to R to the point, 2.92. you know, for some value of r, as r increases, that might be the sort of fit to what happens. And so one of the things we suspect is that the very early universe was essentially infinite dimensional, and that as the universe expanded, it became lower dimensional. And so one of the things that is another little sort of point where we think there might be a way to actually measure some things is dimension fluctuations in the early universe. That is, is there leftover dimension fluctuation of at the time of the cosmic microwave background, 100,000 years or something after the beginning of the universe? Is it still the case that there were pieces of the universe that didn't have dimension three, that had dimension 3.01 or something? And can we tell that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that possible to observe the fluctuations in dimensions? I don't even know what that entails." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so the question, which should be an elementary exercise in electrodynamics, except it isn't, is understanding what happens to a photon when it propagates through 3.01 dimensional space. So for example, the inverse square law. is a consequence of the surface area of a sphere is proportional to R squared. But if you're not in three-dimensional space, the surface area of sphere is not proportional to R squared, it's R to the whatever, 2.01 or something. And so that means that I think when you try and do optics, a common principle in optics is Huygens principle, which basically says that every piece of a wave front of light is a source of new spherical waves. And those spherical waves, if they're different dimensional spherical waves, will have other characteristics. And so there will be bizarre optical phenomena, which we haven't figured out yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're what, looking for some weird photon trajectories that designate that it's 3.01 dimensional space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. That would be an example of, I mean, you know, there are only a certain number of things we can measure about photons. You know, we can measure their polarization, we can measure their frequency, we can measure their direction, those kinds of things. And, you know, how that all works out And in the current models of physics, it's been hard to explain how the universe manages to be as uniform as it is. And that's led to this inflation idea that to the great annoyance of my then collaborator, we figured out in like 1979, we had this realization that you could get something like this, but it seemed implausible that that's the way the universe worked. So we put in a footnote. And that was, so that's a, but in any case, I've never really completely believed it, but this, that's an idea for how to sort of puff out the universe faster than the speed of light, early moments of the universe, that that's the sort of the inflation idea, and that you can somehow explain how the universe manages to be as uniform as it is. In our model, this turns out to be much more natural because the universe just starts very connected. The hypergraph is not such that the ball that you grow starting from a single point has volume R cubed. It might have volume R to the 500 or R to the infinity. And so that means that you sort of naturally get this much higher degree of connectivity and uniformity in the universe. And then the question is, this is sort of a mathematical physics challenge, is in the standard theory of the universe, there's the Friedman-Robertson-Walker universe, which is the kind of standard model where the universe is isotropic and homogeneous, and you can then work out the equations of general relativity, and you can figure out how the universe expands. We would like to do the same kind of thing, including dimension change. this is just difficult mathematical physics. I mean, the reason it's difficult is the sort of fundamental reason it's difficult. When people invented calculus 300 years ago, calculus was a story of understanding change and change as a function of a variable. And so people study univariate calculus, they study multivariate calculus, it's one variable, it's two variables, three variables, but whoever studied 2.5 variable calculus, turns out nobody. It turns out that, but what we need to have to understand these fractional dimensional spaces, which don't work like, well, they're spaces where the effective dimension is not an integer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can't apply the tools of calculus naturally and easily to fractional dimensions. No. So somebody has to figure out how to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, we're trying to figure this out. I mean, it's very interesting. I mean, it's very connected to very frontier issues in mathematics. It's very beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is it possible, is it possible, we're dealing with a scale that's so, so much smaller than our human scale. Is it possible to make predictions versus explanations? Do you have a hope that with this hypergraph model, you'd be able to make predictions that then could be validated with a physics experiment, predictions that couldn't have been done or weren't done otherwise?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you know, I think- In which domain do you think that- Okay, so there are going to be cosmology ones to do with dimension fluctuations in the universe. That's a very bizarre effect. Nobody, you know, dimension fluctuation is just something, nobody ever looked for that. If anybody sees dimension fluctuation, that's a huge flag. That's something like our model is going on. And how one detects that, that's a problem of kind of, that's a problem of traditional physics in a sense of what's the best way to actually figure that out. And for example, that's one, there are all kinds of things one can imagine. I mean, there are things that in black hole mergers, it's possible that there will be effects of maximum entanglement speed in large black hole mergers. That's another possible thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And all of that is detected through, like, what? Do you have a hope for LIGO type of situation, like those gravitational waves?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or alternatively, I mean, I think it's, you know, look, figuring out experiments is like figuring out technology inventions. That is, you know, you've got a set of raw materials, you've got an underlying model, and now you've got to be very clever to figure out, you know, what is that thing I can measure that just somehow, you know, leverages into the right place? And we've spent less effort on that than I would have liked, because one of the reasons is that I think that the physicists who've been working on our models, now lots of physicists actually, it's very, very nice. It's kind of, it's one of these cases where I'm almost, I'm really kind of pleasantly surprised that the sort of absorption of the things we've done has been quite rapid and quite sort of very positive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a Cambrian explosion of physicists too, not just ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I mean, you know, a lot of what's happened that's really interesting, and again, not what I expected, is there are a lot of areas of sort of very elaborate, sophisticated mathematical physics, whether that's causal set theory, whether it's higher category theory, whether it's categorical quantum mechanics, all sorts of elaborate names for these things, spin networks, perhaps, you know, causal dynamical triangulations, all kinds of names of these fields. And these fields have a bunch of good mathematical physicists in them who've been working for decades in these particular areas. And the question is, but they've been building these mathematical structures and the mathematical structures are interesting, but they don't typically sit on anything. They're just mathematical structures. And I think what's happened is our models provide kind of a machine code that lives underneath those models. So a typical example, this is due to Jonathan Gorod, who's one of the key people who's been working on our project. This is in, okay, so I'll give you an example just to give a sense of how these things connect. This is in causal set theory. So the idea of causal set theory is there are in space time, we imagine that there's space and time, it's a three plus one dimensional set up. We imagine that there are just events that happen at different times and places in space and time. And the idea of causal set theory is the only thing you say about the universe is there are a bunch of events that happen sort of randomly at different places in space and time. And then the whole sort of theory of physics has to be to do with this graph of causal relationships between these randomly thrown down events. So they've always been confused by the fact that to get even Lorentz invariance, even relativistic invariance, you need a very special way to throw down those events. And they've had no natural way to understand how that would happen. So what Jonathan figured out is that, in fact, from our models, they, instead of just generating events at random, our models necessarily generate events in some pattern in space-time effectively, that then leads to Lorentz invariance and relativistic invariance and all those kinds of things. So it's a place where all the mathematics that's been done on, well, we just have a random collection of events. Now, what consequences does that have in terms of causal set theory and so on, that can all be kind of wheeled in now that we have some different underlying foundational idea for what the particular distribution of events is as opposed to just where we throw down random events. And so that's a typical sort of example of what we're seeing in all these different areas of kind of how you can take really interesting things that have been done in mathematical physics and connect them. And it's really kind of beautiful because the sort of the abstract models we have just seem to plug into all these different very interesting, very elegant, abstract ideas, but we're now giving sort of a reason for that to be the way, a reason for one to care. I mean, it's like saying, you can think about computation abstractly, you can think about, I don't know, combinators or something as abstract computational things, and you can sort of do all kinds of study of them, but it's like, why do we care? well, okay, Turing machines are a good start, because you can kind of see they're sort of mechanically doing things. But when we actually start thinking about computers computing things, we have a really good reason to care. And this is sort of what we're providing, I think, is a reason to care about a lot of these areas of mathematical physics. So that's been very nice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I'm not sure we've ever got to the question of why does the universe exist at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, let's talk about that. So it's not the simplest question in the world. So it takes a few steps to get to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's nevertheless even surprising that you can even begin to answer this question, as you were saying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Indeed, I'm very surprised. So, The next thing to perhaps understand is this idea of ruleal space. So we've got kind of physical space, we've got branchial space, the space of possible quantum histories, and now we've got another level of kind of abstraction, which is ruleal space. And here's where that comes from. So you say, okay, you say, we've got this model for the universe, we've got a particular rule, and we run this rule and we get the universe. Okay, so that's interesting. Why that rule? Why not another rule? And so that confused me for a long time. And I realized, well, actually, what if the thing could be using all possible rules. What if at every step, in addition to saying, apply a particular rule at all places in this hypergraph, one could say, just take all possible rules and apply all possible rules at all possible places in this hypergraph. And then you make this ruleal multi-way graph, which both is all possible histories for a particular rule and all possible rules. So the next thing you'd say is, how can you get anything reasonable out of it? How can anything real come out of the set of all possible rules applied in all possible ways? This is a subtle thing, which I haven't fully untangled. There is this object, which is the result of running all possible rules in all possible ways. And you might say, if you're running all possible rules, why can't everything possible happen? Well, the answer is because when you, there's sort of this entanglement that occurs. So let's say that you have a lot of different possible initial conditions, a lot of different possible states. Then you're applying these different rules. Well, some of those rules can end up with the same state. So it isn't the case that you can just get from anywhere to anywhere. There's this whole entangled structure of what can lead to what, and there's a definite structure that's produced. I think I'm going to call that definite structure the Ruliad. the limits of kind of all possible rules being applied in all possible ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying that structure is finite, so that somehow connects to maybe a similar kind of thing as like causal invariance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it happens that the Rouliad necessarily has causal invariance. That's a feature of, that's just a mathematical consequence of essentially using all possible rules plus universal computation gives you the fact that for many diverging paths, you can always, the paths will always" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But does that say that the, does that necessarily infer that the Rouliad is a finite?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the end, it's not necessarily finite. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, the, the, just like the history of the universe may not be finite. The history of the universe, time may keep going forever. You can keep running the computations of the Rouliad and you'll keep spewing out more and more and more structure. It's like time doesn't have to end. It's that, but the issue is there are three limits that happen in this rule-yad object. One is how long you run the computation for, another is how many different rules you're applying, and another is how many different states you start from. and the mixture of those three limits. I mean, this is just mathematically a horrendous object, okay? And what's interesting about this object is the one thing that does seem to be the case about this object is it connects with ideas in higher category theory. And in particular, it connects to some of the 20th century's most abstract mathematics. done by this chap Grothendieck. Grothendieck had a thing called the infinity groupoid, which is closely related to this Rouillard object. Although the details of the relationship, you know, I don't fully understand yet. But I think that what's interesting is this thing that is sort of this very limiting object. So, okay, so a way to think about this, that again, will take us into another direction, which is the equivalence between physics and mathematics. the way that, well, let's see, maybe this is, just to give a sense of this kind of groupoid and things like that, you can think about, in mathematics, you can think you have certain axioms, they're kind of like atoms, and you, well, actually, let's say, Let's talk about mathematics for a second. So what is mathematics? What is it made of, so to speak? Mathematics, there's a bunch of statements like, for addition, x plus y is equal to y plus x. That's a statement of mathematics. Another statement would be x squared minus one is equal to x plus one x minus one. There are infinite number of these possible statements of mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's not, I mean, it's not just, I guess, a statement, but with X plus Y, it's a rule that you can, I mean, you think of it as a rule." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is a rule. It's also just a thing that is true in mathematics. Right, it's a statement of truth, okay. Right, and what you can imagine is, you imagine just laying out this giant kind of ocean of all statements. Well, actually, you first start, Okay, this is where we're segwaying into a different thing. Let me not go in this direction for a second. Let's not go to metamathematics just yet. Yeah, we'll maybe get to metamathematics, but it's, so let me explain the groupoid and things later. Yes. But, so let's come back to the universe, always a good place to be in, so to speak." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so what does the universe have to do with the Rulliad, the Rullio space, and how that's possible? connected to why the thing exists at all and why there's just one of them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Okay. So here's the point. So the thing that had confused me for a long time was, let's say we get the rule for the universe. We hold it in our hand. We say, this is our universe. Then the immediate question is, well, why isn't it another one? And that's kind of the sort of the lesson of Copernicus is we're not very special. So how come we got universe number 312 and not universe quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion? And I think the resolution of that is the realization that the universe is running all possible rules. So then you say, well, how on earth do we perceive the universe to be running according to a particular rule? How do we perceive definite things happening in the universe? Well, it's the same story. It's the observer. There is a reference frame that we are picking in this ruleal space. and that that is what determines our perception of the universe. With our particular sensory information and so on, we are parsing the universe in this particular way. So here's the way to think about it. In physical space, we live in a particular place in the universe. And we could live on Alpha Centauri, but we don't, we live here. And similarly, in ruleal space, we could live in many different places in ruleal space, but we happen to live here. And what does it mean to live here? It means we have certain sensory input. We have certain ways to parse the universe. Those are our interpretation of the universe. what would it mean to travel in ruleal space? What it basically means is that we are successively interpreting the universe in different ways. So in other words, to be at a different point in ruleal space is to have a different, in a sense, a different interpretation of what's going on in the universe. And we can imagine even things like an analog of the speed of light as the maximum speed of translation in ruleal space and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So wait, what's the interpretation? So ruleal space and we, I'm confused by the we and the interpretation and the universe. I thought moving about in ruleal space changes the way the universe is. The way we would perceive it. So it ultimately has to do with the perception. So it doesn't, ruleal space is not, somehow changing, like, branching into another universe or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I mean, the point is that the whole point of this is the Roulade is sort of the encapsulated version of everything that is the universe running according to all possible rules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we think of our universe, the observable universe, as it's So we're a little bit loose with the word universe then, because wouldn't the Rouliad potentially encapsulate a very large number, like combinatorially large, maybe infinite set of what we human physicists think of as universes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an interesting parsing of the word universe, right? Because what we're saying is, just as we're at a particular place in physical space, we're at a particular place in Roulial space, at that particular place in real space, our experience of the universe is this. Just as if we lived at the center of the galaxy, our universe, our experience of the universe will be different from the one it is given where we actually live. And so what we're saying is our, when you might say, I mean, in a sense, this Ruliad is sort of a super universe, so to speak, but it's all entangled together. It's not like you can separate out. You can say, let me, it's like when we take a reference, Okay, it's like our experience of the universe is based on where we are in the universe We could imagine moving to somewhere else in the universe, but it's still the same universe. So there's not like universes Existing in parallel no Because because and the whole point is that if we were able to change our interpretation of what's going on? We could perceive a different reference frame in this Rulia" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that's not, that's just, yeah, that's the same Ruliad, that's the same universe. You're just moving about. These are just coordinates in the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but so the way that's, the reason that's interesting is, imagine the extraterrestrial intelligence, or the alien intelligence, we should say. The alien intelligence might live on Alpha Centauri, but it might also live at a different place in real space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It can live right here on Earth, it just has a different reference frame that includes a very different perception of the universe. And then because that ruleal space is very large, I mean..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do we get to communicate with them?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, that's- Yeah, but it's also, well, one thing is how different the perception of the universe could be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it could be bizarrely, unimaginably, completely different. And I mean, one thing to realize is even in kind of things I don't understand well, I know about the kind of Western tradition of understanding science and all that kind of thing. And, you know, you talk to people who say, well, I, you know, I'm really into some, you know, Eastern tradition of this, that and the other. And it's really obvious to me what how things work. I don't understand it at all. But, you know, it is not obvious, I think, with this kind of realization that there's these very different ways to interpret what's going on in the universe. That kind of gives me at least it doesn't help me to understand that different interpretation, but it gives me at least more respect for the possibility that there will be other interpretations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it humbles you to the possibility that like what is it reincarnation or all all these like eternal recurrence when you show that just these ideas" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, you know, the thing that I've realized about a bunch of those things is that, you know, I've been sort of doing my little survey of the history of philosophy, just trying to understand, you know, what can I actually say now about some of these things? And you realize that some of these concepts, like the immortal soul concept, which, you know, I remember when I was a kid and, you know, it was kind of a lots of religion bashing type stuff of people saying, you know, well, we know about physics, tell us how much does a soul weigh? And people are like, well, how can it be a thing if it doesn't weigh anything? Well, now we understand, you know, there is this notion of what's in brains that isn't the matter of brains and it's something computational. And there is a sense, and in fact, it is correct, that it is in some sense immortal because this pattern of computation is something abstract that is not specific to the particular material of a brain. Now, we don't know how to extract it, you know, in our traditional scientific approach, but it's still something where it isn't a crazy thing to say there is something. It doesn't weigh anything. That's a kind of a silly question. How much does it weigh? Well, actually, maybe it isn't such a silly question in our model of physics, because the actual computational activity has a consequence for gravity and things, but that's a very subtle- There's a very subtle- You can start talking about mass and energy and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There could be a, what would you call it? A solitron." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A particle that somehow contains soulless." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. Well, that's what, by the way, that's what Leibniz said. And, you know, one thing I've, I've never understood this, you know, Leibniz had this idea of monads and monadology. And he had this idea that, that what exists in the universe is this big collection of monads. and that the only thing that one knows about the monads is sort of how they relate to each other. It sounds awfully like hypergraphs, right? But Leibniz had really lost me at the following thing. He said, each of these monads has a soul and each of them has a consciousness. And it's like, okay, I'm out of here. I don't understand this at all. I don't know what's going on. But I realized recently that in his day, the concept that a thing could do something, could spontaneously do something, that was his only way of describing that. And so what I would now say is, well, there's this abstract rule that runs to Leibniz that would have been, you know, in 1690 or whatever, that would have been kind of, well, it has a soul, it has a consciousness. And so, in a sense, it's like one of these, there's no new idea under the sun, so to speak. That's a sort of a version of the same kinds of ideas, but couched in terms that are sort of bizarrely different from the ones that we would use today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you be able to maybe play devil's advocate on your conception of consciousness, like the two characteristics of it that is constrained and there's a, a single thread of time, is it possible that Leibniz was onto something that the basic atom, discrete atom of space has a consciousness? So these are just words, right? But is there some sense where consciousness is much more fundamental than you're making it seem? Can you construct a world in which it is much more fundamental?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that, okay, so the question would be, is there a way to think about kind of, if we sort of parse the universe down at the level of atoms of space or something, could we say, well, so that's really a question of a different point of view, a different place in real space. We're asking, you're asking the question, could there be a civilization that exists? Could there be sort of conscious entities that exist at the level of atoms of space? And what would that be like? And I think that comes back to this question of, what's it like to be a cellular automaton type thing? I mean, I'm not yet there. I don't know. I mean, I think that this is a, and I don't even know yet quite how to think about this in the sense that I was considering, you know, I never write fiction, but I haven't written it since I was like 10 years old. And my fiction, I made one attempt, which I sent to some science fiction writer friends of mine, and they told me it was terrible. So, but- This was a long time ago?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, it was recently. Recently, and they said it was terrible. That'd be interesting to see you write a short story based on what sounds like it's already inspiring short stories by, or stories by science fiction writers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I think the interesting thing for me is, you know, in the, what does it, what is it like to be a whatever? How do you describe that? I mean, it's like, that's not a thing that you describe in mathematics, that what is it like to be such and such?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, see to me, when you say, what is it like to be something, presumes that you're talking about a singular entity. So, yeah. There's some kind of feeling of the entity, the stuff that's inside of it, and the stuff that's outside of it. And then that's when consciousness starts making sense. But then... It seems like that could be generalizable. If you take some subset of a cellular automata, you could start talking about what does that subset feel. But then you can, I think you could just take arbitrary numbers of subsets. Like to me, like you and I, individually our consciousnesses, but you could also say the two of us together is a singular conscious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe, maybe. I'm not so sure about that. I think that the single thread of time thing may be pretty important. And that as soon as you start saying there are two different threads of time, there are two different experiences, and then we have to say, how do they relate? How are they sort of entangled with each other? I mean, that may be a different story of a thing that isn't much like, you know, what are the ants? You know, what's it like to be an ant? you know, where there's a sort of more collective view of the world, so to speak. I don't know. I think that, I mean, this is, you know, I don't really have a good, I mean, my best thought is, you know, can we turn it into a human story? It's like the question of, you know, when we try and understand physics, can we turn that into something which is sort of a human understandable narrative? And now what's it like to be a such and such? you know, maybe the only medium in which we can describe that is something like fiction, where it's kind of like you're telling, you know, the life story in that setting. But I'm, this is beyond what I've yet understood how to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but it does seem so, like with human consciousness, you know, we're made up of cells and like, there's a bunch of systems that are networked, that work together, that at this, at the human level, feel like a singular consciousness when you take. And so maybe like an ant colony is just too low level. Sorry, an ant is too low level. Maybe you have to look at the ant colony. There's some level of which it's a conscious being. And then if you go to the planetary scale, then maybe that's going too far. So there's a nice sweet spot for consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean. I agree. I think the difficulty is that You know, okay, so in sort of people who talk about consciousness, one of the terrible things I've realized, because I've now interacted with some of this community, so to speak, some interesting people who do that kind of thinking, but you know, one of the things I was saying to one of the leading people in that area, I was saying, you know, that, you know, it must be kind of frustrating because it's kind of like a poetry story. That is, many people are writing poems, but few people are reading them. So there are always these different, you know, everybody has their own theory of consciousness and they are very non inter, sort of interdiscussible. And by the way, I mean, you know, my own approach to sort of the question of consciousness, as far as I'm concerned, I'm an applied consciousness operative, so to speak, because I don't really, in a sense, the thing I'm trying to get out of it is how does it help me to understand what's a possible theory of physics? And how does it help me to say, how do I go from this incoherent collection of things happening in the universe to our definite perception and definite laws and so on? And it's sort of an applied version of consciousness. And I think the reason it sort of segues to a different kind of topic, but the reason that one of the things I'm particularly interested in is kind of what's the analog of consciousness in systems very different from brains? And so why does that matter? Well, you know, this whole description of this kind of, well, actually, you know what? We haven't talked about why the universe exists. So let's get to why the universe exists. And then we can talk about perhaps a little bit about what these models of physics kind of show you about other kinds of things like molecular computing and so on. Okay, why does the universe exist? Okay, so we finally sort of more or less set the stage. We've got this idea of this Ruliad, of this object that is made from following all possible rules, the fact that it's sort of not just this incoherent mess, it's got all this entangled structure in it, and so on. Okay, so what is this Ruliad? Well, it is the working out of all possible formal systems. So the sort of the question of why does the universe exist? Its core question, which we kind of started with is, you've got two plus two equals four. You've got some other abstract result, but that's not actualized. It's just an abstract thing. And when we say we've got a model for the universe, okay, it's this rule, you run it and it'll make the universe, but it's like, but you know, where's it actually running? What is it actually doing? Is it actual or is it merely a formal description of something? So the thing to realize with this, the thing about the Ruliad is it's an inevitable, it is the entangled running of all possible rules. So you don't get to say, it's not like you're saying, which Ruliad are you picking? Because it's all possible formal rules. It's not like it's just, well, actually it's only footnote. The only footnote, it's an important footnote, is it's all possible computational rules, not hypercomputational rules. That is, it's running all the rules that would be accessible to a Turing machine, but is not running all the rules that will be accessible to a thing that can solve problems in finite time that would take a Turing machine infinite time to solve. So you can, even Alan Turing knew this, that you could make oracles for Turing machines, where you say a Turing machine can't solve the whole thing problem for Turing machines. It can't know what will happen in any Turing machine after an infinite time. in any finite time, but you could invent a box, just make a black box. You say, I'm going to sell you an oracle that will just tell you, you know, press this button. It'll tell you what the Turing machine will do after an infinite time. You can imagine such a box. You can't necessarily build one in the physical universe, but you can imagine such a box. And so we could say, well, in addition to, so in this Ruliad, we're imagining that there is a computational, that at the end, it's running rules that are computational. It doesn't have a bunch of Oracle black boxes in it. You say, well, why not? Well, turns out if there are oracle black boxes, the Ruliad that is, you can make a sort of super Ruliad that contains those oracle black boxes, but it has a cosmological event horizon relative to the first one. They can't communicate. In other words, you can end up with what you end up happening, what ends up happening is it's like in the physical universe, in this causal graph that represents the causal relationships of different things, you can have an event horizon where the causal graph is disconnected. where the effect here, an event happening here does not affect an event happening here because there's a disconnection in the causal graph. And that's what happens in an event horizon. And so what will happen between this kind of the ordinary Rouliad and the hyper-Rouliad is there is an event horizon and we in our Rouliad will just never know that they're just separate things. They're not connected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe I'm not understanding, but just because we can't observe it, why does that mean it doesn't exist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It might exist, but it's not clear what it, so what, so to speak, whether it exists. What we're trying to understand is why does our universe exist? We're not trying to ask the question, what, it's, let me say another thing. Let me make a meta comment, okay? Which is that I have not thought through this hyper-Ruley ad business properly. So I can't, the-" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The hyper-Rouillette is referring to a Rouillette in which hyper-computation is possible. That's correct, yes. Okay, so like that footnote, the footnote to the footnote is we're not sure why this is important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's right. So let's ignore that, okay? It's already abstract enough. I love it. Okay, so the one question is, We have to say, if we're saying, why does the universe exist? One question is why is it this universe and not another universe? So the important point about this Rulliard idea is that it's in the Rulliard are all possible formal systems. So there's no choice being made. There's no like, oh, we pick this particular universe and not that one. That's the first thing. The second thing is that we have to ask the question. So you say, why does two plus two equals four exist? That's not really a, that is a thing that necessarily is that way, just on the basis of the meaning of the terms, two and plus and equals and so on, right? So the thing is that this, this Ruliad object is in a sense, a necessary object. It is just the thing that is the consequence of working out the consequence of the formal definition of things. It is not a thing where you're saying, and this is picked as the particular thing. This is just something which necessarily is that thing because of the definition of what it means to have computation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a formal system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But does it exist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ah, well, where are we in this whole thing? we are part of this Ruliad. And so there is no sense to say, does two plus two equals four exist? Well, that's in some sense, it necessarily exists. It's a necessary object. It's not a thing that where you can ask, You know, it's usually in philosophy, there's a sort of distinction made between, you know, necessary truths, contingent truths, analytic propositions, synthetic propositions, there are a variety of different versions of this. There are things which are necessarily true, just based on the definition of terms. And there are things which happen to be true in our universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "we don't exist in ruleal space. That's one of the coordinates that define our existence, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, so yes, yes, but this rulead is the set of all possible ruleal coordinates. So what we're saying is it contains that. So what we're saying is we exist as, okay, so our perception of what's going on is we're at a particular place in this rulead, and we are concluding certain things about how the universe works based on that. But the question is, do we understand, you know, is there something where we say, so why does it work that way? Well, the answer is, I think, it has to work that way because this, there isn't, this ruliad is a necessary object in the sense that it is a purely formal object. just like two plus two equals four. It's not an object that was made of something. It's an object that is just an expression of the necessary collection of formal relations that exist. And so then the issue is, can we, in our experience of that, can we have tables and chairs, so to speak, just by virtue of our experience of that necessary thing? And what people have generally thought, and honestly, I don't know of a lot of discussion of this, why does the universe exist question. It's been a very, I've been surprised actually at how little, I mean, I think it's one of these things that's really kind of far out there. But the thing that is, the surprise here is that all possible formal rules, when you run them together, and that's the critical thing, when you run them together, they produce this kind of entangled structure that has a definite structure. It's not just a random arbitrary thing, it's a thing with definite structure. And that structure is the thing when we are embedded in that structure, when an entity embedded in that structure perceives something which is then we can interpret as physics and things like this. So in other words, we don't have to ask the question, why does it exist?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It necessarily exists. I'm missing this part. Why does it necessarily exist? Okay, okay. So like you need to have it if you want to formalize the relation between entities, but why do you need to have relations?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, okay. So let's say you say," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well- It's like, why does math have to exist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Fair question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Okay. Fair question. Let's see. I think the thing to think about is the existence of mathematics is something where given a definition of terms, what follows from that definition inevitably follows. So now you can say, why define any terms? But in a sense, Well, that's okay. So the definition of terms, I mean, I think the way to think about this, let me see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like concrete terms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, not very concrete. I mean, they're just things like, you know, logical awe, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's a thing. That's a powerful thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's a, yes, okay, but it's a, the point is that it is not a thing of a, you know, people imagine there is, I don't know, the, you know, an elephant or something, or the, you know, elephants are presumably not necessary objects. They happen to exist as a result of kind of biological evolution and whatever else. But the thing is that in some sense, it is a different kind of thing to say, does plus exist?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's not like an elephant. So a plus seems more fundamental, more basic than an elephant, yes. But you can imagine a world without, plus or anything like it? Like why do formal things that are discrete that can be used to reason have to exist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or... Well, okay, so why? Okay, so then the question is, but the whole point is, computation, we can certainly imagine computation. That is, we can certainly say there is a formal system that we can construct abstractly in our minds that is computation. and we can imagine it. Now the question is, is it is that formal system, once we exist as observers embedded in that formal system, that's enough to have something which is like our universe. And so then what you're kind of asking is perhaps is why, I mean, the point is we definitely can imagine it. There's nothing that says that we're not saying that it's sort of inevitable that that is a thing that we can imagine. We don't have to ask, does it exist? We're just, it is definitely something we can imagine. Now that's, then we have this thing that is a formally constructible thing that we can imagine. And now we have to ask the question, what, you know, given that formally constructible thing, What consequences does that, if we were to perceive that formally, if we were embedded in that formally constructible thing, what would we perceive about the world? And we would say, we perceive that the world exists because we are seeing all of this mechanism of all these things happening. But that's something that is just a feature of, it's something where we are," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, another way of asking this that I'm trying to get at, I understand why it feels like this Ruliad is necessary. But maybe it's just me being human, but it feels like then you should be able to, not us, but somehow step outside of the Ruliad. Like what's outside the Ruliad?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the Ruliad is all formal systems. So there's nothing. because- But that's what a human would say. I know that's what a human would say, because we're used to the idea that there's, but the whole point is that by the time it's all possible formal systems, it's like, it is all things you can imagine, but- All computations you can imagine, but like we don't, Well, so the issue is, can we encode? Okay, so that's a fair question. Is it possible to encode all, I mean, once we, is there something that isn't what we can represent formally? That is, is there something that, and that's, I think, related to the hyper-Ruliad footnote, so to speak, of which, I'm afraid that the, you know, one of the things sort of interesting about this is, you know, there has been some discussion of this in theology and things like that, but, which I don't necessarily understand all of, but the key sort of new input is this idea that all possible formal systems, it's like, if you make a world, people say, well, you make a world in a particular way with particular rules, but no, you don't do that. You can make a world that deals with all possible rules. And then merely by virtue of living in a particular place in that world, so to speak, we have the perception we have of what the world is like. Now, I have to say, it's sort of interesting, because I wrote this piece about this, and this philosophy stuff is not super easy. And as I'm talking to you about it, and I actually haven't, people have been interested in lots of different things we've been doing, but this, why does the universe exist, has been, I would say, one of the ones that you would think people would be most interested in. But actually, I think they're just like, oh, that's just something complicated that, so I haven't explained it as much as I've explained a bunch of other things. And I have to say, I think I may be missing a couple of pieces of that argument that would be, so it's kind of like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, your conscious being is computationally bounded, so you're missing. Indeed. Having written quite a few articles yourself, you're now missing some of the pieces." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the limitation of being human. Right. One of the consequences of this, why the universe exists thing and this kind of concept of really ads and places in there representing our perception of the universe and so on. One of the weird consequences is if the universe exists, mathematics must also exist. And that's a weird thing because mathematics, people have been very confused, including me, have been very confused about the question of kind of what is the foundation of mathematics? What is, what kind of a thing is mathematics? Is mathematics something where we just write down axioms like Euclid did for geometry and we just build the structure and we could have written down different axioms and we'd have a different structure? Or is it something that has a more fundamental sort of truth to it? And I have to say, it's one of these cases where I've long believed that mathematics has a great deal of arbitrariness to it, that there are particular axioms that kind of got written down by the Babylonians, and that's what we've ended up with the mathematics that we have. And I have to say, actually, my wife has been telling me for 25 years, she's a mathematician, she's been telling me, you're wrong about the foundations of mathematics. And I'm like, No, no, no, I know what I'm talking about. And finally, she's much more right than I've been." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's one of the- So I mean, her sense, in your sense, are we just, so this is to the question of meta-mathematics, are we just kind of on a trajectory through ruleal space, except in mathematics, through a trajectory of certain kind of" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's partly the idea. So I think that the notion is this. So a hundred years ago, a little bit more than a hundred years ago, people have been doing mathematics for ages. But then in the late 1800s, people decided to try and formalize mathematics and say, you know, it is mathematics is, you know, we're going to break it down. We're going to make it like logic. We're going to make it out of sort of fundamental primitives. And that was people like Frager and Piano and Hilbert and so on. And they kind of got this idea of let's do kind of Euclid, but even better. Let's just make everything just in terms of this sort of symbolic axioms and then build up mathematics from that. And that, you know, they thought at the time, as soon as they get these symbolic axioms, that they made the same mistake, the kind of computational irreducibility mistake. They thought as soon as we've written down the axioms, then we'll just have a machine, kind of a super Mathematica, so to speak, that can just grind out all true theorems of mathematics. That got exploited by Godel's theorem, which is basically the story of computational irreducibility. It's that even though you know those underlying rules, you can't deduce all the consequences in any finite way. But now the question is, okay, so they broke mathematics down into these axioms. and they say now you build up from that. So what I'm increasingly coming to realize is that's similar to saying let's take a gas and break it down into molecules. There's gas laws that are the large scale structure and so on that we humans are familiar with. And then there's the underlying molecular dynamics. And I think that the axiomatic level of mathematics, which we can access with automated theorem proving and proof assistance and these kinds of things, that's the molecular dynamics of mathematics. And occasionally we see through to that molecular dynamics. we see undecidability, we see other things like this. One of the things I've always found very mysterious is that Godel's theorem shows that there are sort of things which cannot be finitely proved in mathematics. There are proofs of arbitrary length, infinite length proofs that you might need. But in practical mathematics, mathematicians don't typically run into this. They just happily go along doing their mathematics. And I think what's actually happening is that what they're doing is they're looking at They are essentially observers in metamathematical space, and they are picking a reference frame in metamathematical space, and they are computationally bounded observers of metamathematical space, which is causing them to deduce that the laws of metamathematics the laws of mathematics, like the laws of fluid mechanics, are much more understandable than this underlying molecular dynamics. And so what gets really bizarre is thinking about kind of the analogy between metamathematics, this idea of you exist in this kind of in the sort of space of possible, in this kind of mathematical space where the individual kind of points in the mathematical space are statements in mathematics, and they're connected by proofs, where one statement, you take a couple of different statements, you can use those to prove some other statement, and you've got this whole network of proofs. That's the kind of causal network of mathematics, of what can prove what, and so on. And you can say at any moment in the history of a mathematician, of a single mathematical consciousness, you are in a single kind of slice of this kind of meta-mathematical space. You know a certain set of mathematical statements. You can then deduce with proofs, you can deduce other ones, and so on. You're kind of gradually moving through meta-mathematical space. And so it's kind of the view is that the reason that mathematicians perceive mathematics to have the sort of integrity and lack of kind of undecidability and so on that they do is because they, like we as observers of the physical universe, we have these limitations associated with computational boundedness, single thread of time, consciousness limitations, basically, that the same thing is true of mathematicians perceiving sort of metamathematical space. And so what's happening is, that if you look at one of these formalized mathematics systems, something like Pythagoras' theorem, it'll take, oh, I don't know, what is it? Maybe 10,000 individual little steps to prove Pythagoras' theorem. And one of the bizarre things that's sort of an empirical fact that I'm trying to understand a little bit better, if you look at different formalized mathematics systems, they actually have different axioms underneath, but they can all prove Pythagoras' theorem. And so, in other words, it's a little bit like what happens with gases. We can have air molecules, we can have water molecules, but they still have fluid dynamics. Both of them have fluid dynamics. And so similarly, at the level that mathematicians care about mathematics, it's way above the molecular dynamics, so to speak. And there are all kinds of weird things, like, for example, one thing I was realizing recently is that the quantum theory of mathematics, that's a very bizarre idea. But basically, when you prove what is, you know, a proof is you've got one statement in mathematics, you go through other statements, you eventually get to a statement you're trying to prove, for example, that's a path in metamathematical space. And that's a single path. A single proof is a single path. But you can imagine there are other proofs of the same results. There are a bundle of proofs. There's this whole set of possible proofs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You could think of it as branching similar to the quantum mechanics model that you were talking about. Exactly. And then there's some invariance that you can formalize in the same way that you can for the quantum mechanical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So the question is in proof space, you know, as you start thinking about multiple proofs, are there analogs of, for example, destructive interference of multiple proofs? So here's a bizarre idea. It's just a couple of days old, so not yet fully formed. But as you try and do that, when you have two different proofs, it's like two photons going in different directions. You have two proofs which at an intermediate stage are incompatible. And that's kind of like destructive interference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible for this to instruct the engineering of automated proof systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I mean, as a practical matter, I mean, you know, this whole question, in fact, Jonathan Gorad has a nice heuristic for automated theorem provers that's based on our physics project that is looking for essentially using kind of, using energy, in our models, energy is kind of level of activity in this hypergraph. And so there's sort of a heuristic for automated theorem proving about how do you pick which path to go down that is based on essentially physics. And I mean, the thing that gets interesting about this is the way that one can sort of have the interplay between like, for example, a black hole. What is a black hole in mathematics? So the answer is, what is black hole in physics? A black hole in physics is where, in the simplest form of black hole, time ends. That is all, you know, everything is crunched down to the spacetime singularity, and everything just ends up at that singularity. So in our models, and that's a little hard to understand in general relativity with continuous mathematics, and what does the singularity look like? In our models, it's something very pragmatic. It's just you're applying these rules, time is moving forward, and then there comes a moment where no rules apply. So time stops. It's kind of like the universe dies. Nothing happens in the universe anymore. Well, in mathematics, that's a decidable theory. That's a theory, so theories which have undecidability, which are things like arithmetic, set theory, all the serious models, theories in mathematics, they all have the feature that there are proofs of arbitrarily long length. in something like Boolean algebra, which is a decidable theory, there are any question in Boolean algebra, you can just go crunch, crunch, crunch, and in a known number of steps, you can answer it. Satisfiability might be hard, but it's still a bounded number of steps to answer any satisfiability problem. And so that's the notion of a black hole in physics where time stops that's analogous to in mathematics where there aren't infinite length proofs. Where when in physics, you can wander around the universe forever if you don't run into a black hole. If you run into a black hole and time stops, you're done. And it's the same thing in mathematics between decidable theories and undecidable theories. That's an example. And I think we're sort of the attempt to understand. So another question is kind of what is the generativity of of metamathematics. What is the bulk theory of metamathematics? So in the literature of mathematics, there are about 3 million theorems that people have published. And those represent, it's kind of on this, it's like on the earth, we would be, you know, we've put cities in particular places on the earth. But yet there is ultimately, you know, we know the earth is roughly spherical and there's an underlying space. And we could just talk about, you know, the world of space in terms of where our cities happen to be, but there's actually an underlying space. And so the question is, what's that for metamathematics? And as we kind of explore what is, for example, for mathematics, which is always likes taking sort of abstract limits. So an obvious abstract limit for mathematics to take is the limit of the future of mathematics. That is, what will be the ultimate structure of mathematics? And one of the things that's an empirical observation about mathematics that's quite interesting is that a lot of theories in one area of mathematics, algebraic geometry or something, they play into another area of mathematics. the same kind of a fundamental construct seem to occur in very different areas of mathematics. And that's structurally captured a bit with category theory and things like that. But I think that there's probably an understanding of this meta-mathematical space that will explain why different areas of mathematics ultimately sort of map into the same thing. And I mean, my little challenge to myself is what's time dilation in meta-mathematics? In other words, basically as you move around in this mathematical space of possible statements, how does that moving around, it's basically what's happening is that as you move around in the space of mathematical statements, it's like you're changing from algebra to geometry to whatever else. And you're trying to prove the same theorem. But as you try, if you keep on moving to these different places, it's slower to prove that theorem because you keep on having to translate what you're doing back to where you started from. And that's kind of the beginnings of the analog of time dilation in mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus there's probably fractional dimensions in this space as well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, this space is a very messy space. This space is much messier than physical space. I mean, even in the models of physics, physical space is very tame compared to branchial space and ruleal space. I mean, the mathematical structure, branchial space is probably more like Hilbert space, but it's a rather complicated Hilbert space. And ruleal space, is more like this weird infinity groupoid story of Grothendieck. And I can explain that a little bit because in metamathematical space, a path in metamathematical space is a path between two statements is a way to get by proofs, is a way to find a proof that goes from one statement to another. And so one of the things you can do, you can think about is you've got between statements, you've got proofs. they are paths between statements. Okay, so now you can go to the next level and you can ask, what about a mapping from one proof to another? And so that's in category theory, that's kind of a higher category notion of higher categories where you're mapping not just between objects, but you're mapping between the mappings between objects and so on. And so you can keep doing that. You can keep saying higher order proofs. I want mappings between proofs, between proofs and so on. And that limiting structure, oh, by the way, one thing that's very interesting is imagine in proof space, you've got these two proofs. And the question is, what is the topology of proof space? In other words, if you take these two paths, can you continuously deform them into each other? Or is there some big hole in the middle that prevents you from continuously deforming them one into the other? It's kind of like, you know, when you think about some, I don't know, some puzzle, for example, you're moving pieces around on some puzzle, and you can think about the space of possible states of the puzzle, and you can make this graph that shows from one state of the puzzle to another state of the puzzle and so on. And sometimes you can easily get from one state to any other state, but sometimes there'll be a hole in that space. And there'll be, you always have to go around the circuitous route to get from here to there. There won't be any direct way. And that's kind of a question of whether there's sort of an obstruction in the space. And so the question is in proof space, what does it mean if there's an obstruction in proof space?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I don't even know what an obstruction means in proof space, because for it to be an obstruction, it should be reachable some other way from some other place. So this is like an unreachable part of the graph." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's not just an unreachable part. It's a part where there are paths that go one way, there are paths that go the other way. And this question of homotopy and mathematics is this question, can you continuously deform, you know, from one path to another path, or do you have to go in a jump, so to speak? So if you're going around a sphere, for example, if you're going around, I don't know, a cylinder or something, you can wind around one way and you can, there's no, there are paths where you can easily deform one path into another because it's just sort of sitting on the same side of the cylinder. But when you've got something that winds all the way around a cylinder, you can't continuously deform that down to a point because it's stuck wrapped around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "My intuition about proof space is you should be able to deform it. I mean, because then otherwise it doesn't even make sense. If the topology matters of the way you move about the space, then I don't even know what that means." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, what it would mean is that you would have one way of doing a proof of something over here in algebra and another way of doing a proof of something over here in geometry. And there would not be an intermediate way to map between those proofs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How would that be possible if they start at the same place and end at the same place?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's the same thing as, you know, we've got points on a, you know, if we've got parts on a cylinder." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now I understand how it works in physical space, but it just doesn't, it feels like proof space shouldn't have that. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I'm not sure. I don't know. We'll know very soon. Cause we get to do some experiments. This is the great thing about this stuff is that in fact, you know, in the next few days, I hope to do a bunch of experiments on this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're playing with like proofs and in this kind of space," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. I mean, so, you know, this is toy, you know, theories, and, you know, we've got good. So, this kind of segues to perhaps another thing, which is this whole idea of multi-computation. So, this is another kind of bigger idea that, so, okay, this has to do with how do you make models of things? And it's going to, it's, so I've sort of claimed that there've been sort of four epochs in the history of making models of things. And this multi-computation thing is the fourth, is a new epoch. What are the first three? The first one is back in antiquity, ancient Greek times, people were like, what's the universe made of? Oh, it's made of, everything is water, Thales, or everything is made of atoms. It's sort of what are things made of? Or there are these crystal spheres that represent where the planets are and so on. It's like a structural idea of how the universe is constructed. There's no real notion of dynamics. It's just, what is the universe? How is the universe made? Then we get to the 1600s and we get to the sort of revolution of mathematics being introduced into physics. And then we have this kind of idea of you write down some equation, what happens in the universe is the solving of that equation, time enters, but it's usually just a parameter. We just can sort of slide it back and forth and say, here's where it is. Then we come to this computational idea that I started really pushing in the early 1980s. As a result, the things we were talking about before about complexity, that was my motivation. But the biggest story was the story of computational models of things. The big difference there from the mathematical models is, in mathematical models, there's an equation, you solve it, you slide time to the place where you want it. In computational models, you give the rule and then you just say, go run the rule. And time is not something you get to slide. Time is something where you run the rule, time goes in steps, and that's how you work out how the system behaves. Time is not just a parameter. Time is something that is about the running of these rules. And so there's this computational irreducibility. You can't jump ahead in time. But the important thing is there's still one thread of time. It's still the case, you know, the cellular automaton state, then it has the next state and the next state and so on. The thing that is kind of, we've sort of tipped off by quantum mechanics in a sense, although it actually feeds back even into relativity and things like that, that there are these multiple threads of time. And so in this multi-computation paradigm, the kind of idea is instead of there being this single thread of time, there are these kind of distributed asynchronous threads of time that are happening. And the thing that's sort of different there is if you want to know what happened, if you say what happened in the system, in the case of the computational paradigm, you just say, well, after a thousand steps, we got this result. But in the multi-computational paradigm, after a thousand steps, not even clear what a thousand steps means, because you've got all these different threads of time, but there is no state. There's all these different possible, you know, there's all these different paths. And so the only way you can know what happened is to have some kind of observer who is saying, here's how to parse the results of what was going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but that observer is embedded and they don't have a complete picture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the case of physics, that's right. Yes. But so the idea is that in this multi-computation setup, that it's this idea of these multiple threads of time and models that are based on that. And this is similar to what people think about in non-deterministic computation. So you have a Turing machine, usually it has a definite state, it follows another state, it follows another state. But typically what people have done when they've thought about these kinds of things is they've said, well, there are all these possible paths. A non-deterministic Turing machine can follow all these possible paths, but we just want one of them. We just want the one that's the winner, that factors the number or whatever else. And similarly, it's the same story in logic programming and so on, where we say, we've got this goal, find us a path to that goal. I just want one path, then I'm happy. Or theorem proving, same story. I just want one proof and then I'm happy. What's happening in multi-computation in physics is we actually care about many parts. And well, there is a case, for example, probabilistic programming is a version of multi-computation in which you're looking at all the parts, you're just asking for probabilities of things. But in a sense, in physics, we're taking different kinds of samplings. For example, in quantum mechanics, we're taking a different kind of sampling of all these multiple parts. But the thing that is notable is that when you're an observer embedded in this thing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, with various other sort of footnotes and so on, it is inevitable that the thing that you parse out of the system looks like general relativity and quantum mechanics. In other words, that just by the very structure of this multi-computational setup, it inevitably is the case that you have certain emergent laws. Now, why is this perhaps not surprising? In thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, there are sort of inevitable emergent laws of sort of gas dynamics that are independent of the details of the molecular dynamics, sort of the same kind of thing. But I think what happens is, what's a sort of a funny thing that I just been understanding very recently is, When I kind of introduced this whole sort of computational paradigm, complexity-ish thing back in the 80s, it was kind of like a big downer because it's like, there's a lot of stuff you can't say about what systems will do. And then what I realized is, and you might say, now we've got multi-computation, it's even worse. It isn't just one thread of time that we can't explain, it's all these threads of time, we can't explain anything. But the following thing happens. Because there is all this irreducibility and any detailed thing you might want to answer, it's very hard to answer. But when you have an observer who has certain characteristics like computational boundedness, sequentiality of time and so on, that observer only samples certain aspects of this incredible complexity going on in this multi-computational system. And that observer is sensitive only to some underlying core structure of this multi-computational system. There is all this irreducible computation going on, all these details, but to that kind of observer, what's important is only the core structure of multi-computation, which means that observer observes comparatively simple laws. And I think it is inevitable that that observer observes laws which are mathematically structured like general relativity and quantum mechanics. which, by the way, are the same law in our model of physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's an explanation why there's simple laws that explain a lot for this observer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Potentially, yes. But the place where this gets really interesting is there are all these fields of science where people have kind of gotten stuck, where they say, we'd really love to have a physics-like theory of economics. We'd really love to have a physics-like law in linguistics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We gotta talk about molecular biology here. So where does multi-computation come in for biology? Economics is super interesting too, but biology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, let's talk about that. So let's talk about chemistry for a second. So, I mean, I have to say, it's such a weird business for me because there are these kind of paradigmatic ideas and then the actual applications. And it's like, I've always said, I know nothing about chemistry. I learned all the chemistry I know the night before some exam when I was 14 years old. But I've actually learned a bunch more chemistry. And in Wolfram language these days, we have really pretty nice symbolic representation of chemistry. And in understanding the design of that, I've actually, I think, learned a certain amount of chemistry. Though if you quizzed me on sort of basic high school chemistry, I would probably totally fail. But okay, so what is chemistry? I mean, chemistry is sort of a story of, you know, chemical reactions are like, you've got this particular chemical, it's represented as some graph of, you know, these are this configuration of molecules with these bonds and so on. And a chemical reaction happens, you've got these sort of two graphs, they interact in some way, you've got another graph or multiple other graphs out. So that's kind of the sort of the abstract view of what's happening in chemistry. And so when you do a chemical synthesis, for example, you are given certain sort of these are possible reactions that can happen. And you're asked, can you piece together a sequence of such reactions, a sequence of such sort of axiomatic reactions, usually called name reactions in chemistry, can you piece together a sequence of these reactions so that you get out at the end this great molecule you were trying to synthesize? And so that's a story very much like theorem proving. And people have done, actually they started in the 1960s, looking at kind of the theorem proving approach to that, although it didn't really, it didn't, it was sort of done too early, I think. But anyway, so that's kind of the view is that chemistry, chemical reactions are the story of all these different sort of paths of possible things that go on. Okay, let's go to an even lower level. Let's say, instead of asking about which species of molecules we're talking about, let's look at individual molecules. And let's say we're looking at individual molecules, and they are having chemical reactions, and we're building up this big graph of all these reactions that are happening. Okay, so then we've got this big graph, and by the way, that big graph is incredibly similar to this hypergraph rewriting things. In fact, in the underlying theory of multi-computation, there are these things we call token event graphs, which are basically, you've broken your state into tokens, like in the case of a hypergraph, you've broken it into hyperedges, and each event is just consuming some number of tokens and producing some number of tokens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but then you have to, there's a lot of work to be done on update rules." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "in terms of what they actually are for chemistry? Yeah, what they are for our observed chemistry. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. And we've been working on that, actually, because we have this beautiful system in Wolfram language for representing chemistry symbolically. So we actually have, you know, this is an ongoing thing to actually figure out what they are for some practical cases." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does that require human injection, or can it be automatically discovered, these update rules? Can they be learned?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if we get the quantum chemistry better, we could probably discover them automatically. But I think in reality right now, it's like there are these particular reactions. And really, to understand what's going on, we're probably gonna pick a particular subtype of chemistry. Because let me explain where this is going. Here's where this is going. So, got this whole network of all these molecules having all these reactions and so on. And this is some whole multi-computational story because each sort of chemical reaction event is its own separate event. We're saying they all happen asynchronously. We're not describing in what order they happen. Maybe that order is governed by some quantum mechanics thing, doesn't really matter. We're just saying they happen in some order. And then we ask, how do we think about the system? Well, this thing is some kind of big multi-computational system. The question is, what is the chemical observer? And one possible chemical observer is, all you care about is, did you make that particular drug molecule? You're just asking for the one path. Another thing you might care about is, I want to know the concentration of each species. I want to know, at every stage, I'm gonna solve the differential equations that represent the concentrations, and I want to know what those all are. But there's more, because when, and it's kind of like, you're going below in statistical mechanics, there's kind of all these molecules bouncing around. And you might say, we're just going to ignore, we're just going to look at the aggregate densities of certain kinds of molecules, but you can look at a lower level. You can look at this whole graph of possible interactions. And so the kind of the idea would be what, you know, is the only chemical observer, one who just cares about overall concentrations, or can there be a chemical observer who cares about this network of what happened? And so the question then is, so let me give an analogy. So this is where I think this is potentially very relevant to molecular biology and molecular computing. When we think about a computation, usually we say it's input, it's output. Or chemistry, we say there's this input, we're gonna make this molecule as the output. But what if what we actually encode, what if our computation, what if the thing we care about is some part of this dynamic network? What if it isn't just the input and the output that we care about? What if there's some dynamics of the network that we care about? Now, imagine you're a chemical observer. What is a chemical observer? Well, in molecular biology, there are all kinds of weird sorts of observers, there are membranes that exist that have, you know, different kinds of molecules that can bind to them, things like this, it's not obvious that the from a human scale, we just measure the concentration of something. is the relevant story. We can imagine that, for example, when we look at this whole network of possible reactions, we can imagine, you know, at a physical level, we can imagine, well, what was the actual momentum direction of that molecule? Which we don't pay any attention to when we're just talking about chemical concentrations. What was the orientation of that molecule? These kinds of things. And so here's the place where I have a little suspicion, okay? So one of the questions in biology is what matters in biology? and that is, you know, we have all these chemical reactions, we have all these molecular processes going on in biological systems, what matters? And, you know, one of the things is to be able to tell what matters. Well, so a big story of the what matters question was what happened in genetics in 1953, when DNA, when it was figured out how DNA worked. Because before that time, you know, genetics have been all these different effects and complicated things. And then it was realized, ah, there's something new, a molecule can store information, which wasn't obvious before that time. a single molecule can store information. So there's a place where there can be something important that's happening in molecular biology, and it's just in the sequence that's storing information in a molecule. So the possibility now is, imagine this dynamic network, this causal graphs and multi-way causal graphs and so on that represent all of these different reactions between molecules. What if there is some aspect of that that is storing information that's relevant for molecular biology?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "in the dynamic aspect of that. So it's similar to how the structure of a DNA molecule stores information. It could be the dynamics of the system somehow stores information, and this kind of process might allow you to give predictions of what that would be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, but also imagine that you're trying to do, for example, imagine you're trying to do molecular computation. You might think the way we're going to do molecular computation is we're just going to run the thing. We're going to see what came out. We're going to see what molecule came out. This is saying, that's not the only thing you can do. There is a different kind of chemical observer that you can imagine constructing, which is somehow sensitive to this dynamic network. Exactly how that works, how we make that measurement, I don't know, but I have a few ideas, but that's what's important, so to speak. And that means, and by the way, you can do the same thing even for Turing machines. You can say, if you have a multi-way Turing machine, you can say, how do you compute with a multi-way Turing machine? You can't say, well, we've got this input and this output because the thing has all these threads of time and it's got lots of outputs. And so then you say, well, what does it even mean to be a universal multi-way Turing machine? I don't fully know the answer to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it has- It's an interesting idea. It would freak Turing out for sure. Because then the dynamics of the trajectory of the computation matters." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. I mean, but but the thing is that that so this is again a story of what's the observer, so to speak, in chemistry, what's what's the observer there? Now, to give an example of of where that might matter, very sort of present day example is in immunology. where we have whatever it is, 10 billion different kinds of antibodies that are all these different shapes and so on. We have a trillion different kinds of T cell receptors that we produce. And the traditional theory of immunology is this clonal selection theory where we are constantly producing, randomly producing all these different antibodies. And as soon as one of those binds to an antigen, then that one gets amplified and we produce more of that antibody and so on. Back in the 1960s, an immunologist called Nils Joerner, who was the guy who invented monoclonal antibodies, various other things, kind of had this network theory of the immune system, where it would be like, well, we produce antibodies, but then we produce antibodies to the antibodies, anti-antibodies, and we produce anti-anti-antibodies, and we get this whole dynamic network of interactions between different immune system cells. And that was kind of a qualitative theory at that time. And I've been a little disappointed because I've been studying immunology a bit recently. And I knew something about this like 35 years ago or something. And I knew, you know, I'd read a bunch of the books and I'd talked to a bunch of the people and so on. And it was like an emerging theoretical immunology world. And then I look at the books now and they're very thick because they've got, you know, there's just a ton known about immunology and, you know, all these different pathways, all these different details and so on. But the theoretical sections seem to have shrunk. And so it's, so the question is, What, you know, for example, immune memory, where does the immune memory reside? Is it actually some cell sitting in our bone marrow that is, you know, living for the whole of our lives that's going to spring into action as soon as we're shown the same antigen? Or is it something different from that? Is it something more dynamic? Is it something more like some network of interactions between these different kinds of immune systems, cells, and so on? And it's known that there are plenty of interactions between T cells and, you know, there's plenty of dynamics. But what the consequence of that dynamics is, is not clear. And to have a qualitative theory for that doesn't It doesn't seem to exist. In fact, I was just been trying to study this, so I'm quite incomplete in my study of these things, but I was a little bit taken aback, because I've been looking at these things, and it's like, and then they get to the end where they have the most advanced theory that they've got, and it turns out it's the cellular automaton theory. It's like, okay, well, at least I understand that theory. But I think that the possibility is that in, This is a place where if you want to know, explain roughly how the immune system works, it ends up being this dynamic network. And then the immune consciousness, so to speak, the observer, ends up being something that in the end, it's kind of like, does the human get sick or whatever? but it's something which is a complicated story that relates to this whole sort of dynamic network and so on. And I think that's another place where this kind of notion of, where I think multi-computation has the possibility. See, one of the things, okay, you can end up with something where, yes, there is a general relativity in there. But it may turn out that the observer who sees general relativity in the immune system is an observer that's irrelevant to what we care about about the immune system. I mean, it could be, yes, there is some effect where, you know, there's some, you know, time dilation of T cells interacting with whatever, but it's like, that's an effect that's just irrelevant. And the thing we actually care about is things about what happens when you have a vaccine that goes into some place in shape space, and how does that affect other places in shape space, and how does that spread? What's the analog of the speed of light in shape space, for example? That's an important issue. If you have one of these dynamic theories, it's like you poke into shape space by having, let's say, a vaccine or something that has a particular configuration in shape space, how quickly as this dynamic network spreads out, how quickly do you get sort of other antibodies in different places in shape space, things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say shape space, you mean the shape of the molecules? Yes. And then, so this is like, could be deeply connected to the protein and multi-protein folding, all of that kind of stuff. Yes. So be able to say something interesting about the dance of proteins. Right, exactly. Then actually has an impact on helping develop drugs, for example, or has an impact on virology, immunology, helping to deal with viruses?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think the big thing is, when we think about molecular biology, what is the qualitative way to think about it? In other words, is it chemical reaction networks? Is it genetics, DNA, big, you know, big news. It's kind of, there's a digital aspect to the whole thing. You know, what is the qualitative way to think about how things work in biology? You know, when we think about, I don't know, some phenomenon like aging or something, which is a big complicated phenomenon, which just seems to have all these different tentacles. Is it really the case that that can be thought about in some, you know, without DNA, when people were describing genetic phenomena that were dominant, recessive, this, that, and the other, it got very, very complicated. And then people realized, oh, it's just, and what is a gene, and so on, and so on, and so on. Then people realize it's just base pairs, and there's this digital representation. And so the question is, what is the overarching representation that we can now start to think about using in microbiology? I don't know how this will work out. And this is, again, one of these things where, and the place where that gets important is, Maybe molecular biology is doing molecular computing by using some dynamic process that is something where it is very happily saying, oh, I just got a result. It's in the dynamic structure of this network. Now I'm gonna go and do some other thing based on that result, for example. But we're like, oh, I don't know what's going on. We just measured the levels of these chemicals and we couldn't conclude anything. But we're looking at the wrong thing. And so that's kind of the potential there. And it's, I mean, these things are, I don't know, it's for me, it's like I've not really, that was not a view. I mean, I've thought about molecular computing for ages and ages and ages. And I've always imagined that the big story is kind of the original promise of nanotechnology of like, can we make a molecular scale constructor that will just build a molecule in any shape? I don't think I'm now increasingly concluding that's not the big point. The big point is something more dynamic. That will be an interesting endpoint for any of these things, but that's perhaps not the thing, you know, because the one example we have in molecular computing that's really working is us biological organisms. And, you know, maybe the thing that's important there is not this, you know, what chemicals do you make, so to speak, but more this kind of dynamic process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the dynamic process, and then you can have a good model like the hypergraph to then explore, what, like simulate, again, make predictions, and if they- I think just have a way to reason about biology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's hard. First of all, biology doesn't have theories like physics. Physics is a much more successful sort of global theory kind of area. Biology, what are the global theories of biology? Pretty much Darwinian evolution. That's the only global theory of biology. Any other theory is just a, well, the kidneys work this way, this thing works this way, and so on. I suppose another global theory is digital information in DNA. That's another sort of global fact about biology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the difficult thing to do is to match something you have a model of in the hypergraph to the actual, like how do you discover the theory? How do you discover the theory? Okay, you have something that looks nice and makes sense, but like you have to match it to validation. And that's tricky because you're walking around in the dark." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not entirely. I mean, so, you know, for example, in what we've been trying to think about is take actual chemical reactions, okay? So, you know, one of my goals is, can I compute the primes with molecules? If I can do that, then I kind of, maybe I can compute things. And, you know, there's this nice automated lab, these guys, these Emerald Cloud Lab people have built with Wolfram Language and so on. That's an actual physical lab. And you send it a piece of Wolfram Language code and it goes and, you know, actually does physical experiments. And so one of my goals, because I'm not a test tube kind of guy, I'm more of a software kind of person, is can I make something where, you know, in this automated lab, we can actually get it so that there's some gel that we made. And, you know, the positions of the stripes are the prime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that would be an example of where, and that would be with a particular framework for actually doing the molecular computing with particular kinds of molecules. And there's a lot of kind of ambient technological mess, so to speak, associated with, oh, is it carbon? Is it this? Is it that? you know, is it important that there's a bromine atom here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is all chemistry that I don't know much about. And, you know, that's a sort of, you know, unfortunately that's down at the level, you know, I would like to be at the software level, not at the level of the transistors, so to speak. But in chemistry, you know, there's a certain amount we have to do, I think, at the level of transistors before we get up to being able to do it. Although, you know, automated labs certainly help in setting that up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I talked to a guy named Charles Hoskinson. He mentioned that he's collaborating with you. He's an interesting guy. He sends me papers on speaking of automated theorem proving a lot. He's exceptionally well read on that area as well. So what's the nature of your collaboration with him? He's the creator of Cardano. What's the nature of the collaboration between Cardano and the whole space of blockchain and Wolfram, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Blockchain, all that kind of stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, we're segueing to a slightly different world. So, although not completely unconnected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The whole thing is somehow connected." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know, I mean, the strange thing in my life is I've sort of alternated between doing basic science and doing technology about five times in my life so far. And the thing that's just crazy about it is every time I do one of these alternations, I think there's not gonna be a way back to the other thing. And like I thought for this physics project, I thought, you know, we're doing fundamental theory of physics, maybe it'll have an application in 200 years. But now I've realized, actually, this multi-computation idea is applicable here and now. And in fact, it's also giving us this way, I'll just mention one other thing, and then we can talk about blockchain. The question of, actually that relates to several different things, but one of the things about, okay, so our Wolfram language, which is our attempt to kind of represent everything in the world computationally. And it's the thing I kind of started building 40 years ago in the form of actual Wolfram language 35 years ago. It's kind of this idea of can we express things about the world in computational terms? And, you know, we've come a long way in being able to do that. WolframAlpha is kind of the consumer version of that where you're just using natural language as input. And it turns it into our symbolic language. And that's, you know, the symbolic language, WolframLanguage is what people use and have been using for the last 33 years. Actually, Mathematica, which is its first instantiation, will be one third of a century old in October. And that- Wow. It's kind of interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean one third of a century? Does that mean 33 or 30? 33 and a third. 33 and a third. I've never heard of anyone celebrating that anniversary, but I like it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know. A third of a century, though. You don't get many slices of a century that are interesting. But I think that the thing that's really striking about that is that means, including the whole technology stack I built around that's about 40 years old, and that means it's a significant fraction of the total age of the computer industry. And it's, I mean, I think it's cool that we can still run, you know, Mathematica version one programs today and so on, and we've sort of maintained compatibility. And we've been just building this big tower all those years of just more and more and more computational capabilities. It's sort of interesting, we just made this picture of kind of the different kind of threads of computational content. of mathematical content and all sorts of things with data and graphs and whatever else. And what you see in this picture is about the first 10 years, it's kind of like it's just a few threads. And then about maybe 15, 20 years ago, it kind of explodes in this whole collection of different threads of all these different capabilities that are now part of Wolfram Language and representing different things in the world. But the thing that was super lucky in some sense is it's all based on one idea. It's all based on the idea of symbolic expressions and transformation rules for symbolic expressions, which was kind of what I originally put into this SMP system back in 1979 that was a predecessor of the whole Wolfram Language stack. So that idea was an idea that I got from sort of trying to understand mathematical logic and so on. It was my attempt to kind of make a general human comprehensible model of computation, of just everything is a symbolic expression and all you do is transform symbolic expressions. And in retrospect, I was very lucky that I understood as little as I understood then. Because had I understood more, I would have been completely freaked out about all the different ways that that kind of model can fail. Because what do you do when you have a symbolic expression, you make transformations for symbolic expressions? Well, for example, one question is there may be many transformations that could be made in a very multi-computational kind of way. But what we're doing is picking, we're using the first transformation that applies. And we keep doing that until we reach a fixed point. And that's the result. And that's kind of a very, it's kind of a way of sort of sliding around the edge of multi-computation. And back when I was working on SMP and things, I actually thought about these questions about how, what determines this kind of evaluation path. So for example, you work out Fibonacci. Fibonacci is a recursive thing, f of n is f of n minus one plus f of n minus two, and you get this whole tree of recursion, right? And there's the question of how do you evaluate that tree of recursion? Do you do it sort of depth first, where you go all the way down one side? Do you do it breadth first, where you're kind of collecting the terms together, where you know that f of eight plus f of seven, f of seven plus f of six, you can collect the f of sevens and so on. These are, I didn't realize it at the time, it's kind of funny, I was working on gauge field theories back in 1979, and I was also working on the evaluation model in SMP, and they're the same problem. But it took me 40 more years to realize that. And this question about how you do this sort of evaluation front, that's a question of reference frames, it's a question of kind of the story of, I mean, that is basically this question of, in what order is the universe evaluated? And so what you realize is there's this whole sort of world of different kinds of computation that you can do sort of multi-computationally. And that's an interesting thing. It has a lot of implications for distributed computing and so on. It also has a potential implication for blockchain, which we haven't fully worked out, which is, and this is not what we're doing with Cardano, but this is a different thing. This is something where one of the questions is, when you have, in a sense, blockchain is a deeply sequentialized story of time. Because in blockchain, there's just one copy of the ledger. And you're saying, this is what happened. you know, time has progressed in this way. And there are little things around the edge as you try and reach consensus and so on. And, you know, actually, we just recently, we've had this little conference we organized about the theory of distributed consensus, because I realized that a bunch of interesting things that some of our science can tell one about that. But that's a different let's let's not go down that, that" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah, but distributed consensus, that still has a sequential, there's like one ledger. There's still sequentiality, so distributed consensus- Don't tell me you're thinking through like how to apply multi-computation to blockchain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and so that becomes a story of, you know, instead of transactions all having to settle in one ledger, it's like a story of all these different ledgers, and they all have to have some ultimate consistency, which is what causal invariance would give one, but it can take a while. and it can take a while, it's kind of like quantum mechanics. So it's kind of what's happening is there are these different paths of history that correspond to, you know, in one path of history you got paid this amount, in another path of history you got paid this amount. In the end, the universe will always become consistent. Now, the way it works is Okay, it's a little bit more complicated than that. What happens is the way space is knitted together in our theory of physics is through all these events. And the idea is that the way that economic space is knitted together is there these autonomous events that essentially knit together economic space. So there are all these threads of transactions that are happening. And the question is, can they be made consistent? Is there something forcing them to be sort of a consistent fabric of economic reality. And sort of what this has led me to is trying to realize how does economics fundamentally work? And what is economics? And what are the atoms of economics, so to speak? And so what I've kind of realized is that sort of the, perhaps, I don't even know if this is right yet, there's sort of events in economics, the transactions, there are states of agents that are kind of the atoms of economics. And then transactions are kind of agents, transact in some way, and that's an event. And then the question is, how do you knit together sort of economic space from that? What is there in economic space? Well, all these transactions, there's a whole complicated collection of possible transactions. But one thing that's true about economics is we tend to have the notion of a definite value for things. We could imagine that, you know, you buy a cookie from somebody and they want to get a movie ticket. And there is some way that AI bots could make some path from the cookie to the movie ticket by all these different intermediate transactions. But in fact, we have an approximation to that, which is we say they each have a dollar value. And we have this kind of numeraire concept of there's just a way of kind of taking this whole complicated space of transactions and parsing it in something which is a kind of a simplified thing that is kind of like a parsing of physical space. And so my guess is that the, yet again, I mean, it's crazy that all these things are so connected. This is another multi-computation story, another story of where what's happening is that the economic consciousness, the economic observer is not going to deal with all of those different microscopic transactions. They're just gonna parse the whole thing by saying, there's this value, it's a number. And that's their understanding of their summary of this economic network. And there will be all kinds of things like there are all kinds of arbitrage opportunities, which are kind of like the quantum effects in this whole thing. And that's, you know, and places where there's sort of different paths that can be followed and so on. And there's so The question is, can one make a sort of global theory of economics? And then my test case is, again, what is time dilation in economics? And I know for, if you imagine a very agricultural economics where people are growing lettuces in fields and things like this, and you ask questions about, well, if you're transporting lettuces to different places, what is the value of the lettuces after you have to transport them versus if you're just sitting in one place and selling them? And you can kind of get a little bit of an analogy there. But I think there's a better and more complete analogy. And that's the question of, is there a theory like General Relativity that is a global theory of economics? And is it about something we care about? It could be that there is a global theory, but it's about a feature of economic reality that isn't important to us. Now, another part of the story is, can one use those ideas to make essentially a distributed blockchain, a distributed generalization of blockchain, kind of the quantum analog of money, so to speak, where you have, for example, you can have uncertainty relations where you're saying, you know, well, if I insist on knowing my bank account right now, there'll be some uncertainty. If I'm prepared to wait a while, then it'll be much more certain. And so there's, you know, is there a way of using, and so we've made a bunch of prototypes of this, which I'm not yet happy with, because what I realized is to really understand these prototypes, I actually have to have a foundational theory of economics. And so that's kind of a, you know, it may be that we could deploy one of these prototypes as a practical system, but I think it's really gonna be much better if we actually have an understanding of how this plugs into kind of the economic system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that means like a fundamental theory of transactions between entities. That's what you mean by economics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think so. But I mean, you know, how there emerged sort of laws of economics, I don't even know. And I've been asking friends of mine who are economists and things, what is economics? You know, is it an axiomatic theory? Is it a theory that is a kind of a qualitative description theory? Is it, you know, what kind of a theory is it? Is it a theory, you know, what kind of thinking? It's like, Like in biology, in evolutionary biology, for example, there's a certain pattern of thinking that goes on in evolutionary biology, where if you're a good evolutionary biologist, somebody says, that creature has a weird horn. And they'll say, well, that's because this and this and this and this selection of this kind and that kind, and that's the story. And it's not a mathematical story. It's a story of a different type of thinking about these things. By the way, evolutionary biology is yet another place where it looks like this multi-computational idea can be applied. And that's where maybe speciation is related to things like event horizons. And there's a whole other kind of world of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because it seems like this kind of model can be applicable to so many aspects, like at the different levels of understanding of our reality. So it could be the biology, at the chemistry, at the physics level, the economics, and you could potentially, the thing is, It's like, okay, sure, at all these levels, it might rhyme. It might make sense as a model. The question is, can you make useful predictions at one of these levels?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. And that's really a question of, you know, it's a weird situation because it's a situation where the model probably has definite consequences. The question is, are they consequences we care about? And that's some, you know, and so in the case of, in the economic case, the, So one thing is this idea of using kind of physics like notions to construct a kind of distributed analog of blockchain. Okay, the much more pragmatic thing is a different direction. And it has to do with this computational language that we built to describe the world that knows about different kinds of cookies and knows about different cities and knows about how to compute all these kinds of things. One of the things that is of interest is if you want to run the world You need, you know, with contracts and laws and rules and so on, there are rules at a human level, and there are kind of things like, and so this gets one into the idea of computational contracts. You know, right now when we write a contract, it's a piece of legalese, it's, you know, it's just written in English, and it's not something that's automatically analyzable, executable, whatever else, it's just English. you know, back in Gottfried Leibniz, back in, you know, 1680 or whatever, was like, going to, you know, figure out how to use logic to decide legal cases and so on. And he had kind of this idea of, let's make a computational language for the human law. forget about modeling nature, forgot about natural laws. What about human law? Can we make kind of a computational representation of that? Well, I think finally, we're close to being able to do that. And one of the projects that I hope to get to as soon as there's a little bit of slowing down of some of this Cambrian explosion that's happening is a project I've been meaning to really do for a long time, which is what I'm calling a symbolic discourse language. It's just finishing the job of being able to represent everything, like the conversation we're having in computational terms. And one of the use cases for that is computational contracts. Another use case is something like the constitution that says what we want the AIs to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, but this is useful, so you're saying, so these are like, you're saying computational contracts, but smart contracts, this is what's in the domain of cryptocurrencies known as smart contracts, and so the language you've developed, this symbolic, or seek to further develop symbolic discourse language enables you to," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Write a contract." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Write a contract that richly represents some aspect of the world, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But so, I mean, smart contracts tend to be right now mostly about things happening on the blockchain. And sometimes they have oracles. And in fact, our Wolfram Alpha API is the main thing people use to get information about the real world, so to speak, within smart contracts." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Wolfram Alpha, as it stands, is a really good oracle for whoever wants to use it. That's perhaps where the relationship with Cardano is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, that's how we started getting involved with blockchains, is we realized people were using Wolfram Alpha as the oracle for smart contracts, so to speak. And so that got us interested in blockchains in general. And what was ended up happening is Wolfram Language is, with its symbolic representation of things, is really very good at representing things like blockchains. And so I think we now have, and we don't really know all the comparisons, but we now have a really nice environment within Wolfram Language for dealing with the sort of, you know, for representing what happens in blockchains, for analyzing what happens in blockchains. We have a whole effort in blockchain analytics. And, you know, we've sort of published some samples of how that works, but it's, you know, because our technology stack, both in language and Mathematica, are very widely used in the quant finance world, there's a sort of immediate sort of co-evolution there of sort of the quant finance kind of thing and blockchain analytics. And that's, so it's kind of the representation of blockchain in computational language then ultimately, it's kind of like, how do you run the world with code? That is, how do you write sort of all these things, which are right now regulations and laws and contracts and things in computational language. And kind of the ultimate vision is that sort of something happens in the world. And then there's this giant domino effect of all these computational contracts that trigger based on the thing that happened. And there's a whole story to that. And of course, you know, I like to always pay attention to the latest things that are going on. And I really, I kind of like blockchain because it's another rethinking of kind of computation. It's kind of like, you know, cloud computing was a little bit of that, of sort of persistent kind of computational resources and so on. And, you know, this multi-computation is a big rethinking of kind of what it means to compute. Blockchain is another bit of rethinking of what it means to compute. The idea that you lodge kind of these autonomous lumps of computation out there in the blockchain world. And one of the things that just sort of for fun, so to speak, as we've been doing a bit of stuff with NFTs, and we just did some NFTs on Cardano, and we'll be doing some more. And, you know, we did some cellular automaton NFTs on Cardano, which people seem to like quite a bit. And, you know, one of the things I've realized about NFTs is that there's kind of this notion, and we're really working on this, you know, I like recording stuff, you know. One of the things that's come out of kind of my science, I suppose, is this history matters type story of, you know, it's not just the current stage, it's the history that matters. And I've kind of I don't think this is, actually I'm realizing, maybe it's not coincidental that I'm sort of the human who's recorded more about themselves than anybody else. And then I end up with these science results that say history matters, which was not, those things, I didn't think those were connected, but- They're at least correlated, yes. Yeah, right. So, you know, this question about sort of recording what has happened, and, and having sort of a permanent record of things. One of the things that's kind of interesting there is, you know, you put up a website, and it's got a bunch of stuff on it. But you know, you have to keep paying the hosting fees, or the thing's going to go away. But one of the things about blockchain is quite interesting is if you put something on a blockchain and you pay your commission to get that thing put on the blockchain, then in a sense, everybody who comes after you is, you know, they are motivated to keep your thing alive, because that's what keeps the consistency of the blockchain. So in a sense, with sort of the NFT world, it's kind of like if you want to have something permanent, well, at least for the life of the blockchain, but even if the blockchain goes out of circulation, so to speak, there's going to be enough value in that whole collection of transactions that people are going to archive the thing. But that means that, you know, pay once, and you're kind of, you're lodged in the blockchain forever. And so we've been kind of playing around with sort of a hobby thing of mine of thinking about sort of the NFTs and how you, and sort of the consumer idea of kind of the, it's the anti, you know, it's the opposite of the Snapchat view of the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a permanence to it that's heavily incentivized and thereby you can have a permanence of history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and that's kind of the, now, you know, so that's one of the things we've been doing with Cardano and it's kind of fun. I think that, I mean, this whole question about, you know, you mentioned automated theorem proving and blockchains and so on. And as I've thought about this kind of physics inspired distributed blockchain, obviously there, the sort of the proof that it works, that there are no double spends, there's no whatever else, that proof becomes a very formal kind of almost a matter of physics, so to speak. And, you know, it's been an interesting thing for the practical blockchains to do kind of actual automated field improving. And I don't think anybody's really managed it in an interesting case yet. It's a thing that people, you know, aspire to, but I think it's a challenging thing. Because basically the point is, one of the things about proving correctness of something is, well, you know, people say, I've got this program and I'm going to prove it's correct. And it's like, what does that mean? You have to say what correct means. I mean, it's kind of like, then you have to have another language. And people were very confused back in past decades of, you know, oh, we're going to prove the correctness by representing the program in another language, which we also don't know whether it's correct. And often by correctness, we just mean it can't crash or it can't scribble on memory. But the thing is that there's this complicated trade-off, because as soon as you're really using computation, you have computational irreducibility, you have undecidability. If you want to use computation seriously, you have to kind of let go of the idea that you're going to be able to box it in and say, we're going to have just this happen and not anything else. I mean, this is a, this is an old fact. I mean, Godel's theorem tries to say, you know, Peano arithmetic, the axioms of arithmetic, can you box in the integers and say, these axioms give just the integers and nothing about the integers. Godel's theorem showed that wasn't the case. There's a, you know, you can have all these wild, weird things that are obey the Peano axioms, but aren't integers. and there's this kind of infinite hierarchy of additional axioms you would have to add. And it's kind of the same thing. You don't get to, you know, if you want to say, I want to know what happens, you're boxing yourself in and there's a limit to what can happen, so to speak. So it's a complicated trade-off and it's a big trade-off for AI, so to speak. It's kind of like, do you want to let computation actually do what it can do? Or do you want to say, no, it's very, very boxed in to the point where we can understand every step. And that's kind of a thing that becomes difficult to do. But that's some, I mean, in general, I would say one of the things that's kind of complicated in my sort of life and the whole sort of story of computational language and all this technology and science and so on. I mean, I kind of, in the flow of one's life, it's sort of interesting to see how these things play out because I've kind of concluded that I'm in the business of making kind of artifacts from the future. which means, you know, there are things that I've done, I don't know, this physics project, I don't know whether anybody would have gotten to it for 50 years. You know, the fact that Mathematica is a third of a century old, and I know that a bunch of the core ideas are not well absorbed. I mean, that is, people finally got this idea that I thought was a triviality of notebooks, that was 25 years. And, you know, some of these core ideas about symbolic computation and so on are not absorbed. I mean, people use them every day in Wolfram Language and, you know, do all kinds of cool things with them. But if you say, what is the fundamental intellectual point here? it's not well absorbed. And it's something where you kind of realize that you're sort of building things. And I kind of made this thing about, you know, we're building artifacts from the future, so to speak. And I mentioned that at our, we have a conference every, it's coming up actually in a couple of weeks, our annual technology conference, where we talk about all the things we're doing. And, you know, so I was talking about it last year about, you know, we're making artifacts from the future. And I was kind of like, I had some version of that that was kind of a dark and frustrated thing of like, you know, I'm building things which nobody's going to care about until long after I'm dead, so to speak. But then I realized, you know, people were sort of telling me afterwards, you know, That's exactly how we're using Wolfram Language in some particular setting in some computational X field or some organization or whatever. And it's like people are saying, oh, what did you manage to do? Well, we know that in principle it will be possible to do that, but we didn't know that was possible now. And it's kind of like, that's sort of the business we're in. And in a sense, with some of these ideas in science, I feel a little bit the same way that there are some of these things where, some things like, for example, this whole idea, well, so to relate to another sort of piece of history on the future, I mentioned at the beginning kind of complexity as this thing that I was interested in back 40 years ago and so on, where does complexity come from? Well, I think we kind of nailed that. The answer is in the computational universe, even simple programs make it. And that's kind of the secret that nature has that allows you to make it. So that's kind of that part. But the bigger picture there was this idea of this kind of computational paradigm, the idea that you could go beyond mathematical equations, which have been sort of the primary modeling medium for 300 years. And so it was like, look, it is inexorably the case that people will use programs rather than just equations. And, you know, I was saying that in the 1980s and people were, you know, I published my big book, New Kind of Science, that'll be 20 years ago next year. So in 2002, and people were saying, oh no, this can't possibly be true. You know, we know for 300 years, we've been doing all this stuff, right? To be fair, I now realize on a little bit more analysis of what people actually said, in pretty much every field other than physics, people said, oh, these are new models. That's pretty interesting. In physics, people were like, we've got our physics models, we're very happy with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in physics there's more resistance because of the attachment and the power of the equations. The idea that programs might be the right way to approach this field. There's some resistance, and like you're saying, it takes time. For somebody who likes the idea of time dilation and all these applications, I thought you would understand this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right, but you know, and computational irreducibility." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I mean, it is really interesting that just 20 years the span of 20 years, it's gone from, you know, pitchforks and horror to, yeah, we get it. And, you know, it's helped that we've, you know, in our current effort in fundamental physics, we've gotten a lot further and we've managed to put a lot of puzzle pieces together that make sense. But the thing that I've been thinking about recently is this field of complexity. So I've kind of was a sort of a field builder back in the 1980s. I was kind of like, okay, I'd understood this point that there was this sort of fundamental phenomenon of complexity, and it showed up in lots of places. And I was like, this is an interesting sort of field of science. And I was recently reminded, I was at the very first sort of get together of what became the Santa Fe Institute, And I was like, in fact, there's even an audio recording of me sort of saying, people have been talking about, oh, what should this, you know, outfit do? And I was saying, well, there is this thing that I've been thinking about. It's this kind of idea of complexity. Nice. And it's kind of like, and that's, that's what that ended up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you planted the seed of complexity at Santa Fe. That's beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a beautiful vision. But I mean, so that but what's happened then? is this idea of complexity. And I started the first research center at University of Illinois for doing that in the first journal, complex systems and so on. And it's kind of an interesting thing in my life, at least that it's kind of like you plant the seed, you have this idea, it's a kind of a science idea. You have this idea of sort of focusing on the phenomenon of complexity. The deeper idea was this computational paradigm. But the nominal idea is this kind of idea of complexity. Okay, then you roll time forward 30 years or whatever, 35 years, whatever it is, and you say, what happened? Okay, well, now there are a thousand complexity institutes around the world, I think, more or less. We've been trying to count them. And there are 40 complexity journals, I think. And so, It's kind of like what actually happened in this field, right? And I look at a lot of what happened and I'm like, you know, I have to admit there's some eye rolling, so to speak, because it's kind of like, what's actually going on? Well, what people definitely got was this idea of computational models. And then they got, but they thought one of the kind of cognitive mistakes, I think, is they say, we've got a computational model, and we're looking at a system that's complex, and our computational model gives complexity. By golly, that must mean it's right. And unfortunately, because complexity is a generic phenomenon and computational irreducibility is a generic phenomenon that actually tells you nothing. And so then the question is, well, what can you do? There's a lot of things that have been sort of done under this banner of complexity. And I think it's been very successful in providing sort of an interdisciplinary way of connecting different fields together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is powerful in itself. Right, I mean, that's a very useful organizing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a good organizing principle. But in the end, a lot of that is around this sort of computational paradigm, computational modeling. That's the raw material that powers that kind of correspondence, I think. But the question is sort of what is the, you know, I was just thinking recently, you know, we've been, I mean, the other, we've been, for years, people have told me, you should start some Wolfram Institute that does basic science. All I have is a company that builds software and we have a little piece that does basic science as kind of a hobby. People are saying, you should start this Wolfram Institute thing. And I've been, because I've known about lots of institutes and I've seen kind of that flow of money and kind of what happens in different situations and so on. So I've been kind of reluctant, but I have realized that what we've done with our company over the last 35 years, we built a very good machine for doing R&D and innovating and creating things. And I just applied that machine to the physics project. That's how we did the physics project in a fairly short amount of time with an efficient machine with various people involved and so on. And so it works for basic science. And it's like, we can do more of this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so now- And biology and chemistry, it's become an institute." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, well, it needs to become an institute." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "An official institute." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but the thing that, so I was thinking about, okay, so what do we do with complexity? There are all these people who've, what should happen to that field? And what I realized is there's kind of this area of foundations of complexity that's about these questions about simple programs, what they do, that's far away from a bunch of the detailed applications that people, well, it's not far away. It's the bedrock underneath those applications. And so I realized recently, this is my, a recent kind of little innovation of a sort, a post that I'll do very soon. About... kind of, you know, the foundations of complexity, what really are they? I think they're really two ideas, two conceptual ideas that I hadn't really enunciated, I think, before. One is what I call metamodeling. The other is ruleology. So what is metamodeling? So metamodeling is, you've got this complicated model, and it's a model of, you know, hedgehogs interacting with this, interacting with that. And the question is, what's really underneath that? What is it? You know, is it a Turing machine? Is it a cellular automaton? You know, what is the underlying stuff underneath that model? And so there's this kind of meta science question of given these models, what is the core model? And I realized, I mean, to me, that's sort of an obvious question. But then I realized I've been doing language design for 40 years, and language design is exactly that question. Underneath all of this detailed stuff people do, what are the underlying primitives? And that's a question people haven't tended to ask about models. They say, well, we've got this nice model for this and that and the other, what's really underneath it? Because once you have the thing that's underneath it, well, for example, this multi-computation idea is an ultimate meta-modeling idea. Because it's saying underneath all these fields is one kind of paradigmatic structure. And you can imagine the same kind of thing in much sort of shallower levels in different kinds of modeling. So the first activity is this kind of meta-modeling, the models about models, so to speak. What's drilling down into models? That's one thing. The other thing is this thing that I think we're going to call ruleology, which is kind of the, okay, you've got these simple rules. You've got cellular automata, you've got Turing machines, you've got substitution systems, you've got register machines, you've got all these different things. What do they actually do in the wild? And this is an area that I've spent a lot of time working on. It's a lot of stuff in my new kind of science book is about this. This new book I wrote about combinators is full of stuff like this. And this journal, Complex Systems, has lots of papers about these kinds of things. But there isn't really a home for people who do rheology or what I'm now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As you call the basic science of rules." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, right. So it's like, you've got some, what is it? Is it mathematics? No, it isn't really like mathematics. In fact, from my now understanding of meta-mathematics, I understand that it's the molecular dynamics level. It's not the level that mathematicians have traditionally cared about. It's not computer science, because computer science is about writing programs that do things, you know, that were for a purpose, not programs in the wild, so to speak. It's not physics. It doesn't have anything to do with, you know, maybe underneath some physics, but it's not physics as such. So it just hasn't had a home. And if you look at, you know, but what's great about it is It's a surviving field, so to speak. It's something where, you know, one of the things I find sort of inspiring about mathematics, for example, is you look at mathematics that was done, you know, in ancient Greece, ancient, you know, Babylon, Egypt, and so on. It's still here today. You know, you find an icosahedron that somebody made in ancient Egypt, you look at it, oh, that's a very modern thing. It's an icosahedron, you know, it's a timeless kind of activity. And this idea of studying simple rules and what they do, it's a timeless activity. And I can see that over the last 40 years or so as, you know, even with cellular automata, it's kind of like, you know, you can sort of catalog what are the different cellular automata used for. And, you know, like the simplest rules, like one, you might even know this one, rule 184. Rule 184 is a minimal model for road traffic flow. And it's also a minimal model for various other things. But it's kind of fun that you can literally say, rule 90 is a minimal model for this and this and this. Rule four is a minimal model for this. And it's kind of remarkable that you can just by in this raw level of this kind of study of rules, they then branch, they're the raw material that you can use to make models of different things. So it's a very pure basic science, but it's one that, you know, people have explored it, but they've been kind of a little bit in the wilderness. And I think, you know, one of the things that I would like to do finally is, you know, I always thought that sort of this notion of pure NKS, pure NKS being the acronym for my book, New Kind of Science, was, was something that people should be doing. And, you know, we tried to figure out what's the right institutional structure to do this stuff. You know, we dealt with a bunch of universities. Oh, you know, can we do this here? Well, what department would it be in? Well, it isn't in a department. It's its own new kind of thing. That's why the book was called A New Kind of Science. It's kind of the, because that's an increasingly good description of what it is, so to speak. we're actually, we're thinking about kind of the ruleological society, because we're realizing that it's kind of, you know, it's very interesting. I mean, I've never really done something like this before, because there's this whole group of researchers who've been doing things that are really, in some cases, very elegant, very surviving, very solid. Here's this thing that happens in this very abstract system. But it's like, what is that part of? It doesn't have a home. And I think that's something I kind of fault myself for not having been more, when complexity was developing in the 80s, I didn't understand the danger of applications. That is, it's really cool that you can apply this to economics and you can apply it to evolutionary biology, and this and that and the other. But what happens with applications is everything gets sucked into the applications. And the pure stuff, it's like the pure mathematics, there isn't any pure mathematics, so to speak. It's all just applications of mathematics. And I failed to kind of make sure that this kind of pure area was kind of maintained and developed. And I think now, you know, one of the things I want to try to do, and you know, it's a funny thing, because I'm used to, look, I've been a tech CEO for more than half my life now. So you know, this is what I know how to do. And, you know, I can make stuff happen and get projects to happen, even as it turns out basic science projects in that kind of setting, and how that translates into kind of, you know, there are a lot of people working on, for example, our physics projects that are distributed through the academic world, and that's working just great. But the question is, you know, can we have a sort of accelerator mechanism that makes use of kind of what we've learned in sort of R&D innovation. And, you know, but on the other hand, it's a funny thing because, you know, in a company, in the end, the thing is, you know, it's a company, it makes products, it sells things to people. In, you know, when you're doing basic research, one of the challenges is there isn't that same kind of sort of mechanism. And so it's, you know, how do you drive the thing in a kind of, in a lead kind of way, so that it really can make forward progress rather than, you know, what can often happen in, you know, in academic settings where it's like, well, there are all these flowers blooming, but it's not clear that they're, you know, that it's..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You have to have a central mission and a drive just like you do with a company that's delivering a big overarching product." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's- But the challenge is, you know, when you have the economics of the world are such that, you know, when you're delivering a product and people say, wow, that's useful, we'll buy it. And then that kind of feeds back and okay, then you can pay the people who build it to eat, you know, so they can eat and so on. And with basic science, the payoff is very much less visible. And, you know, with this physics project, as I say, the big surprise has been that, I mean, you know, for example, well, the big surprise with the physics project is that it looks like it has near-term applications. And I was like, I'm guessing this is 200 years away. I was kind of using the analogy of, you know, Newton starting a satellite launch company, which would have been kind of wrong time. And, you know, but it turns out that's not the case, but we can't guarantee that. And if you say we're signing up to do basic research, basic rheology, let's say, and, you know, and we can't, we don't know the horizon, you know, it's an unknown horizon. It's kind of like an undecidable kind of proposition of when is this proof going to end, so to speak? When is it going to be something that gets applied?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I hope this becomes a vibrant new field of Rheoliology. I love it. Like I told you many, many times, it's one of the most amazing ideas that has been brought to this world, so I hope you get a bunch of people to explore this world. Thank you once again for spending your really valuable time with me today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this is pure speculation, of course. Of course. But given the fact that we've already identified 4,000 exoplanets orbiting other stars, and we have a census of the Milky Way galaxy for the first time, We know that on average, every single star, on average, has a planet going around it, and about one-fifth or so of them have Earth-sized planets going around them. So just do the math. We're talking about, out of a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, we're talking about billions of potential Earth-sized planets. And to believe that we're the only one is, I think, rather ridiculous, given the odds. And how many galaxies are there? Within sight of the Hubble Space Telescope, there are about 100 billion galaxies. So do the math. How many stars are there in the visible universe? 100 billion galaxies times 100 billion stars per galaxy. We're talking about a number beyond human imagination. And to believe that we're the only ones, I think, is rather ridiculous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've talked about different types of type 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 even of the Kardashev scale of the different kinds of civilizations. What do you think it takes, if it is indeed a ridiculous notion that we're alone in the universe, what do you think it takes to reach out, first to reach out through communication and connect?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first of all, we have to understand the level of sophistication of an alien life form if we make contact with them. I think in this century, we'll probably pick up signals, signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. We'll pick up their I Love Lucy and their Leave it to Beaver. just ordinary day-to-day transmissions that they emit. And the first thing we want to do is to A, decipher their language, of course, but B, figure out at what level they are advanced on the Kardashev scale. I'm a physicist. We rank things by two parameters, energy and information. That's how we rank black holes. That's how we rank stars. That's how we rank civilizations in outer space. So a Type I civilization is capable of harnessing planetary power. They control the weather, for example, earthquakes, volcanoes. They can modify the course of geological events, sort of like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. Type II would be stellar. They play with stars, entire stars. They use the entire energy output of a star, sort of like Star Trek. The Federation of Planets have colonized the nearby stars. So a Type II would be somewhat similar to Star Trek. Type III would be galactic. They roam the galactic space lanes. And Type III would be like Star Wars. a galactic civilization. Then one day I was giving this talk in London at the planetarium there, and the little boy comes up to me and he says, Professor, you're wrong. You're wrong. There's type four. And I told him, look, kid, there are planets, stars, and galaxies. That's it, folks. And he kept persisting and saying, no, there's type four, the power of the continuum. And I thought about it for a moment, and I said to myself, is there an extra galactic source of energy, the continuum of Star Trek? And the answer is yes. there could be a Type 4, and that's dark energy. We now know that 73% of the energy of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter represents maybe 23% or so, and we only represent 4%. We're the oddballs. And so you begin to realize that, yeah, there could be Type 4, maybe even Type 5." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So type four, you're saying, being able to harness sort of like dark energy, something that permeates the entire universe. So be able to plug into the entire universe as a source of energy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. And dark energy is the energy of the Big Bang. It's why the galaxies are being pushed apart. It's the energy of nothing. The more nothing you have, the more dark energy that's repulsive. And so the acceleration of the universe is accelerating because the more you have, the more you can have. And that, of course, is by definition an exponential curve. It's called a de Sitter expansion. And that's the current state of the universe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then type five. Would that be able to seek energy sources somehow outside of our universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And how crazy is that an idea? Yeah, time five would be the multiverse. Multiverse, okay. I'm a quantum physicist, and we quantum physicists don't believe that the Big Bang happened once. That would violate the Heisenberg and Sergi principle. And that means that there could be multiple bangs happening all the time. Even as we speak today, universes are being created, and that fits the data. The inflationary universe is a quantum theory, so there's a certain finite probability that universes are being created all the time. And for me, this is actually rather aesthetically pleasing because, you know, I was raised as a Presbyterian, but my parents were Buddhists. And there's two diametrically opposed ideas about the universe. In Buddhism, there's only nirvana, there's no beginning, there's no end, there's only timelessness. But in Christianity, there is the instant when God said, let there be light. In other words, an instant of creation. So I've had these two mutually exclusive ideas in my head, and I now realize that it's possible to meld them into a single theory. Either the universe had a beginning or it didn't, right? Wrong. You see, our universe had a beginning. our universe had an instant where somebody might have said, let there be light. But there are other bubble universes out there in a bubble bath of universes, and that means that these universes are expanding into a dimension beyond our three-dimensional comprehension. In other words, hyperspace. In other words, 11-dimensional hyperspace. So nirvana would be this timeless 11-dimensional hyperspace where big bangs are happening all the time. So we can now combine two mutually exclusive theories of creation. And Stephen Hawking, for example, even in his last book, even said that this is an argument against the existence of God. He said there is no God because there was not enough time for God to create the universe, because the Big Bang happened in an instant of time. Therefore, there was no time available for him to create the universe. But you see, the multiverse idea means that there was a time before time. And there are multiple times each bubble has its own time. And so it means that there could actually be a universe before the beginning of our universe. So if you think of a bubble bath, when two bubbles collide, or when two bubbles fission to create a baby bubble, that's called the Big Bang. So the Big Bang is nothing but the collision of universes or the budding of universes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's such a beautiful picture of our incredibly mysterious existence. So is that humbling to you, exciting, the idea of multiverses? I don't even know how to even begin to wrap my mind around it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's exciting for me because what I do for a living is string theory. That's my day job. I get paid by the city of New York to work on string theory. And you see, string theory is a multiverse theory. So people say, first of all, what is string theory? String theory simply says that all the particles we see in nature, the electron, the proton, the quarks, what have you, are nothing but vibrations on a musical string, on a tiny, tiny little string. You know, G. Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atomic bomb, was so frustrated in the 1950s with all these subatomic particles being created in our atom smashers that he announced, he announced one day that the Nobel Prize in physics should go to the physicist who does not discover a new particle that year. Well, today we think they're nothing but musical notes on these tiny little vibrating strings. So what is physics? Physics is the harmonies you can write on vibrating strings. What is chemistry? Chemistry is the melodies you can play on these strings. What is the universe? The universe is a symphony of strings. And then what is the mind of God that Albert Einstein so eloquently wrote about for the last 30 years of his life? The mind of God would be cosmic music resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So beautifully put. What do you think is the mind of Einstein's God? Do you think there's a why that we could untangle from this universe of strings? Why are we here? What is the meaning of it all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize, once said that the more we learn about the universe, the more we learn that it's pointless. Well, I don't know. I don't profess to understand the great secrets of the universe. However, let me say two things about what the giants of physics have said about this question. Einstein believed in two types of God. One was the God of the Bible, the personal God, the God that answers prayers, walks on water, performs miracles, smites the Philistines. That's the personal God that he didn't believe in. He believed in the God of Spinoza. The God of order, simplicity, harmony, beauty. The universe could have been ugly. The universe could have been messy, random. But it's gorgeous. He relays it down on a single sheet of paper. We can write down all the known laws of the universe. It's amazing on one sheet of paper. Einstein's equation is one inch long. String theory is a lot longer, and so is the standard model. But you could put all these equations on one sheet of paper. It didn't have to be that way. It could have been messy. And so Einstein thought of himself as a young boy entering this huge library for the first time, being overwhelmed by the simplicity, elegance, and beauty of this library. But all he could do was read the first page of the first volume. Well, that library is the universe with all sorts of mysterious, magical things that we have yet to find. And then Galileo was asked about this. Galileo said that the purpose of science is to determine how the heavens go. The purpose of religion is to determine how to go to heaven. So in other words, science is about natural law and religion is about ethics. how to be a good person, how to go to heaven. As long as we keep these two things apart, we're in great shape. The problem occurs when people from the natural sciences begin to pontificate about ethics, and people from religion begin to pontificate about natural law. That's where we get into big trouble." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you think they're fundamentally distinct. Morality and ethics and our idea of what is right and what is wrong, that's something that's outside the reach of string theory and physics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. If you talk to a squirrel about what is right and what is wrong, there's no reference frame for a squirrel. And realize that aliens from outer space, if they ever come visit us, They'll try to talk to us like we talk to squirrels in the forest, but eventually we get bored talking to the squirrels because they don't talk back to us. Same thing with aliens from outer space. They come down to Earth, they'll be curious about us to a degree, but after a while they just get bored because we have nothing to offer them. So our sense of right and wrong, what does that mean compared to a squirrel's sense of right and wrong? Now, we, of course, do have an ethics that keeps civilizations in line, enriches our life, and makes civilization possible. And I think that's a good thing. But it's not mandated by a law of physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if aliens do, alien species were to make contact, forgive me for staying on aliens for a bit longer, do you think they're more likely to be friendly, to befriend us or to destroy us?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think for the most part, they'll pretty much ignore us. If you're a deer in the forest, who do you fear the most? Do you fear the hunter with his gigantic 16-gauge shotgun? Or do you fear the guy with the briefcase and glasses? Well, the guy with the briefcase could be a developer. about to basically flatten the entire forest, destroying your livelihood. So instinctively, you may be afraid of the hunter. But actually, the problem with deers in the forest is that they should fear developers, because developers look at deer as simply getting in the way. I mean, in War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, the aliens did not hate us. If you read the book, the aliens did not have evil intentions toward homo sapiens. No, we were in their way. So I think we have to realize that alien civilizations may view us quite differently than in science fiction novels. However, I personally believe, and I cannot prove any of this, I personally believe that they're probably going to be peaceful because there's nothing that they want from our world. I mean, what are they going to take us? What are they going to take us for? Gold? No, gold is a useless metal for the most part. It's silver, I mean, it's gold in color, but that only affects Homo sapiens. Squirrels don't care about gold. And so gold is a rather useless element. Rare earths, maybe. Platinum-based elements, rare earths for their electronics, yeah, maybe. But other than that, we have nothing to offer them. I mean, think about it for a moment. People love Shakespeare and they love the arts and poetry, but outside of the earth, they mean nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, when I write down an equation in string theory, I would hope that on the other side of the galaxy, there's an alien writing down that very same equation in different notation, but that alien on the other side of the galaxy, Shakespeare, poetry, Hemingway, it would mean nothing to him. or her, or it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you think about entities that's out there, extraterrestrial, do you think they would naturally look something that even is recognizable to us as life? Or would they be radically different?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, how did we become intelligent? Basically, three things made us intelligent. One is our eyesight, stereo eyesight. We have the eyes of a hunter, stereo vision, so we lock in on targets. And who is smarter, predator or prey? Predators are smarter than prey. They have their eyes at the front of their face, like lions, tigers. while rabbits have eyes to the side of their face. Why is that? Hunters have to zero in on the target. They have to know how to ambush. They have to know how to hide, camouflage, sneak up, stealth, deceit. That takes a lot of intelligence. Rabbits, all they have to do is run. So that's the first criterion, stereo eyesight of some sort. Second is the thumb. The opposable thumb of some sort could be a claw or tentacle. So hand-eye coordination. Hand-eye coordination is the way we manipulate the environment. And then three, language. Because, you know, mama bear never tells baby bear to avoid the human hunter. Bears just learn by themselves. They never hand out information from one generation to the next. So these are the three basic ingredients of intelligence. eyesight of some sort, an opposable thumb or tentacle or claw of some sort, and language. Now ask yourself a simple question. How many animals have all three? It's just us. It's just us. I mean, the primates, they have a language. Yeah, they may get up to maybe 20 words, but a baby learns a word a day, several words a day a baby learns. And a typical adult knows about almost 5,000 words. While the maximum number of words that you can teach a gorilla in any language, including their own language, is about 20 or so. And so we see the difference in intelligence. So when we meet aliens from outer space, chances are they will have been descended from predators of some sort. They'll have some way to manipulate the environment and communicate their knowledge to the next generation. That's it, folks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So functionally, that would be similar. We would be able to recognize them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, not necessarily, because I think even with homo sapiens, we are eventually going to perhaps become part cybernetic and genetically enhanced. Already, robots are getting smarter and smarter. Right now, robots have the intelligence of a cockroach. But in the coming years, our robots will be as smart as a mouse, then maybe as smart as a rabbit. If we're lucky, maybe as smart as a cat or a dog. And by the end of the century, who knows for sure, our robots will be probably as smart as a monkey. Now, at that point, of course, they could be dangerous. You see, monkeys are self-aware. They know they are monkeys. They may have a different agenda than us, While dogs, dogs are confused. You see, dogs think that we are a dog, that we're the top dog. They're the underdog. That's why they whimper and follow us and lick us all the time. We're the top dog. Monkeys have no illusion at all. They know we are not monkeys. And so I think that in the future, we'll have to put a chip in their brain to shut them off once our robots have murderous thoughts. But that's in 100 years. In 200 years, the robots will be smart enough to remove that fail-safe chip in their brain and then watch out. At that point, I think rather than compete with our robots, we should merge with them. We should become part cybernetic. So I think when we meet alien life from outer space, they may be genetically and cybernetically enhanced." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Genetically and cybernetically enhanced, wow. So let's talk about that full range. In the near term and 200 years from now, how promising in the near term in your view is brain machine interfaces? So starting to allow computers to talk directly to the brains, Elon Musk is working on that with Neuralink and there's other companies working on this idea. Do you see promise there? Do you see hope for near term impact?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, every technology has pluses and minuses. Already, we can record memories. I have a book, The Future of the Mind, where I detail some of these breakthroughs. We can now record simple memories of mice and send these memories on the internet. Eventually, we're going to do this with primates at Wake Forest University and also in Los Angeles. And then after that, we'll have a memory chip for Alzheimer's patients. Well, test it out in Alzheimer's patients because, of course, when Alzheimer's patients lose their memory, they wander. They create all sorts of havoc, wandering around, oblivious to their surroundings. And they'll have a chip. They'll push the button and memories, memories will come flooding into their hippocampus and the chip. telling them where they live and who they are. And so a memory chip is definitely in the cards. And I think this will eventually affect human civilization. What is the future of the internet? The future of the internet is brain net. Brainnet is when we send emotions, feelings, sensations on the Internet, and we will telepathically communicate with other humans this way. This is going to affect everything. Look at entertainment. Remember the silent movies? Charlie Chaplin was very famous during the era of silent movies, but when the talkies came in, Nobody wanted to see Charlie Chaplin anymore because he never talked in the movies. And so a whole generation of actors lost their job and a new series of actors came in. Next, we're going to have the movies replaced by RainNet. Because in the future, people will say, who wants to see a screen with images? That's it. Sound and image, that's called the movies. Our entertainment industry, this multi-billion dollar industry is based on screens with moving images and sound. But what happens when emotions, feelings, sensations, memories can be conveyed on the internet? It's going to change everything. Human relations will change because you'll be able to empathize and feel the suffering of other people. We'll be able to communicate telepathically. And this is coming." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You described brain net and feature of the mind. This is an interesting concept. Do you think, so you mentioned entertainment, but what kind of effect would it have on our personal relationships?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hopefully it will deepen it. You realize that for most of human history, for over 90% of human history, we only knew maybe 20, 100 people. That's it, folks. That was your tribe. That was everybody you knew in the universe was only maybe 50 or 100. With the coming of towns, of course, it expanded to a few thousand. With the coming of the telephone, all of a sudden you could reach thousands of people with the telephone. And now with the internet, you can reach the entire population of the planet Earth. And so I think this is a normal progression." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you think that kind of sort of connection to the rest of the world, and then adding sensations like being able to share telepathically emotions and so on, that would just further deepen our connection to our fellow humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's right. In fact, I disagree with many scientists on this question. Most scientists would say that technology is neutral. A double-edged sword, one side of the sword can cut against people, The other side of the story can cut against ignorance and disease. I disagree. I think technology does have a moral direction. Look at the internet. The internet spreads knowledge, awareness. And that creates empowerment. People act on knowledge. When they begin to realize that they don't have to live that way, they don't have to suffer under a dictatorship, that there are other ways of living under freedom, then they begin to take things, take power. And that spreads democracy. And democracies do not war with other democracies. I'm a scientist. I believe in data. So let's take a sheet of paper and write down every single war you had to learn since you were in elementary school. Every single war. Hundreds of them. Kings, queens, emperors, dictators. All these wars were between kings, queens, emperors, and dictators. Never between two major democracies. And so I think with the spread of this technology, and which would accelerate with the coming of BrainNet, it means that, well, we will still have wars. Wars, of course, as politics by other means, but they'll be less intense and less frequent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "do you have worries of longer term existential risk from technology, from AI? So I think that's a wonderful vision of a future where war is a distant memory. But now there's another agent, there's somebody else that's able to create conflict, that's able to create harm, AI systems. So do you have worry about such AI systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, that is an existential risk. But again, I think an existential risk not for this century. I think our grandkids are going to have to confront this question as robots gradually approach the intelligence of a dog, a cat, and finally that of a monkey. However, I think we will digitize ourselves as well. Not only are we going to merge with our technology, we'll also digitize our personality, our memories, our feelings. You realize that during the Middle Ages, there was something called dualism. Dualism meant that the soul was separate from the body. When the body died, the soul went to heaven. That's dualism. Then in the 20th century, neuroscience came in and said, bah, humbug. Every time we look at the brain, it's just neurons. That's it, folks. Period. End of story. Bunch of neurons firing. Now we're going back to dualism. Now we realize that we can digitize human memories, feelings, sensations, and create a digital copy of ourselves. And that's called the Connectome Project. Billions of dollars are now being spent to do not just the genome project of sequencing the genes of our body, but the Connectome Project, which is to map the entire connections of the human brain. And even before then, already in Silicon Valley, today, at this very moment, you can contact Silicon Valley companies that are willing to digitize your relatives. Because some people want to talk to their parents. There are unresolved issues with their parents. And one day, yes, firms will digitize people and you'll be able to talk to them a reasonable facsimile. We leave a digital trail. Our ancestors did not. Our ancestors were lucky if they had one line, just one line in a church book saying the date they were baptized and the date they died. That's it. That was their entire digital memory. I mean, their entire digital existence summarized in just a few letters of the alphabet, a whole life. Now we digitize everything. Every time you sneeze, you digitize it. You put it on the internet. And so I think that we are going to digitize ourselves and give us digital immortality. We'll not only have biologic genetic immortality of some sort, but also digital immortality. And what are we going to do with it? I think we should send it into outer space. If you digitize the human brain and put it on a laser beam and shoot it to the moon, you're on the moon in one second. Shoot it to Mars, you're on Mars in 20 minutes. Shoot it to Pluto, you're on Pluto in eight hours. Think about it for a moment. You can have breakfast in New York, and for a morning snack, vacation on the moon, then zap your way to Mars by noontime, journey to the asteroid belt in the afternoon, and then come back for dinner in New York at night. All in a day's work, at the speed of light. Now, this means that you don't need booster rockets. You don't need weightlessness problems. You don't need to worry about meteorites. And what's on the moon? On the moon, there is a mainframe that downloads your laser beams information. And where does it download the information into? An avatar. And what does that avatar look like? Anything you want. Think about it for a moment. You could be Superman, Superwoman on the moon, on Mars, traveling throughout the universe at the speed of light, downloading your personality into any vehicle you want. Now, let me stick my neck out. So far, everything I've been saying is well within the laws of physics, well within the laws of physics. Now, let me go outside the laws of physics again. Here we go. I think this already exists. I think outside the Earth, there could be a superhighway, a laser highway of laser porting with billions of souls of aliens zapping their way across the galaxy. Now let me ask you a question. Are we smart enough to determine whether such a thing exists or not? No, this could exist right outside the orbit of the planet Earth. And we're too stupid in our technology to even prove it or disprove it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "we would need the aliens on this laser superhighway to help us out, to send us a human interpretable signal. I mean, it ultimately boils down to the language of communication, but that's an exciting possibility that actually the sky is filled with aliens." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The aliens could already be here, and we're just so oblivious that we're too stupid to know it. See, they don't have to be in alien form with little green men. They can be in any form they want, in an avatar of their creation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, in fact, they could very well be They can even look like us. Exactly. We'd never know. One of us could be an alien." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, in the zoo, did you know that we sometimes have zookeepers that imitate animals? We create a fake animal and we put it in so that the animal is not afraid of this fake animal. And of course, these animals' brains, their brain is about as big as a walnut. They accept these dummies as if they were real. So an alien civilization in outer space would say, oh yeah, human brains are so tiny, we could put a dummy on their world, an avatar, and they'd never know it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That would be an entertaining thing to watch from the alien perspective. So you kind of implied that with the digital form of our being, but also biologically. Do you think one day technology will allow individual human beings to become immortal besides just through the ability to digitize our essence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that artificial intelligence will give us the key to genetic immortality. You see, in the coming decades, everyone's going to have their gene sequence. We'll have billions of genomes of old people, billions of genomes of young people. And what are we going to do with it? We're going to run it through an AI machine, which has pattern recognition, to look for the age genes. In other words, the fountain of youth that emperors, kings, and queens lusted over, the fountain of youth will be found by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence will identify where these age genes are located. First of all, what is aging? We now know what aging is. Aging is the buildup of errors. That's all aging is, the buildup of genetic errors. This means that cells eventually become slower, sluggish, they go into senescence, and they die. In fact, that's why we die. We die because of the buildup of mistakes in our genome, in our cellular activity. But you see, in the future, we'll be able to fix those genes with CRISPR-type technologies, and perhaps even live forever. So let me ask you a question. Where does aging take place in a car? Given a car, where does aging take place? Well, it's obvious, the engine, right? A, that's where you have a lot of moving parts. B, that's where you have combustion. Well, where in the cell do we have combustion? mitochondria. We now know where aging takes place. And if we cure many of the mistakes that build up in the mitochondria of the cell, we could become immortal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you, if you yourself could become immortal, would you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Damn straight. No, I think about it for a while because of course it determines, it depends on how you become immortal. You know, there's a famous myth of Tithonus. It turns out that years ago in the Greeks mythology, there was the saga of Tithonus and Aurora. Aurora was the goddess of the dawn and she fell in love with a mortal, a human called Tithonus. And so Aurora begged, begged Zeus to grant her the gift of immortality to give to her lover. So Zeus took pity on Aurora and made Tithonus immortal. But you see, Aurora made a mistake, a huge mistake. She asked for immortality, but she forgot to ask for eternal youth. So poor Tithonus got older and older and older every year, decrepit, a bag of bones, but he could never die, never die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Quality of life is important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think immortality is a great idea as long as you also have immortal youth as well. Now I personally believe, and I cannot prove this, but I personally believe that our grandkids may have the option of reaching the age of 30 and then stopping. They may like being age 30 because you have wisdom, you have all the benefits of age and maturity, and you still live forever with a healthy body. Our descendants may like being 30 for several centuries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there an aspect of human existence that is meaningful only because we're mortal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, every waking moment, we don't think about it this way, but every waking moment, actually, we are aware of our death and our mortality. Think about it for a moment. When you go to college, you realize that you are in a period of time where soon you will reach middle age. and have a career. And after that, you'll retire and then you'll die. And so even as a youth, even as a child, without even thinking about it, you are aware of your own death because it sets limits to your lifespan. I got to graduate from high school. I got to graduate from college. Why? Because you're going to die. Because unless you graduate from high school, unless you graduate from college, you're not going to enter old age with enough money to retire and then die. And so, yeah, people think about it unconsciously because it affects every aspect of your being. The fact that you go to high school, college, get married, have kids, there's a clock. A clock ticking even without your permission." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It gives a sense of urgency. Do you yourself, I mean, there's so much excitement and passion in the way you talk about physics and the way you talk about technology in the future. Do you yourself meditate on your own mortality? Do you think about this clock that's ticking?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I try not to because it then begins to affect your behavior. You begin to alter your behavior to match your expectation of when you're gonna die. So let's talk about youth and then let's talk about death, okay? When I interview scientists on radio, I often ask them, what made the difference? How old were you? What changed your life? And they always say more or less the same thing. No, these are Nobel Prize winners, directors of major laboratories, very distinguished scientists. They always say, when I was 10, when I was 10, something happened. It was a visit to the planetarium. It was a telescope. For Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize, it was the chemistry kit. For Heinz Pagels, it was a visit to the planetarium. For Isidor Rabi, it was a book about the planets. For Albert Einstein, it was a compass. Something happened, which gives them this existential shock. Because you see, before the age of 10, everything is mommy and daddy, mommy and dad. That's your universe, mommy and daddy. Around the age of 10, you begin to wonder, what's beyond mommy and daddy? And that's when you have this epiphany. when you realize, oh my God, there's a universe out there, a universe of discovery. And that sensation stays with you for the rest of your life. You still remember that shock that you felt gazing at the universe. And then you hit the greatest destroyer of scientists known to science. The greatest destroyer of scientists known to science is junior high school. When you hit junior high school, folks, it's all over. It's all over. Because in junior high school, people say, hey, stupid. I mean, you like that nerdy stuff. And your friends shun you. All of a sudden, people think you're a weirdo. And science is made boring. You know, Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner, when he was a child, his father would take him into the forest. And the father would teach him everything about birds. Why they're shaped the way they are, their wings, the coloration, the shape of their beak, everything about birds. So one day a bully comes up to the future Nobel Prize winner and says, hey Dick, what's the name of that bird over there? Well, he didn't know. He knew everything about that bird except its name. So he said, I don't know. And then the bully said, what's the matter, dick? You stupid or something? And then in that instant, he got it. He got it. He realized that for most people, science is giving names to birds. That's what science is. You know lots of names of obscure things. Hey, people say, you're smart. You're smart. You know all the names of the dinosaurs. You know all the names of the plants. That's not science at all. Science is about principles, concepts, physical pictures. That's what science is all about. My favorite quote from Einstein is that, unless you can explain the theory to a child, the theory is probably worthless. Meaning that all great theories are not big words. All great theories are simple concepts, principles, basic physical pictures. Relativity is all about clocks, meter sticks, rocket ships, and locomotives. Newton's laws of gravity are all about balls and spinning wheels and things like that. That's what physics and science is all about, not memorizing things. And that stays with you for the rest of your life. So even in old age, I've noticed that these scientists, when they sit back, they still remember. they still remember that flush, that flush of excitement they felt with that first telescope, that first moment when they encountered the universe. That keeps them going, that keeps them going. By the way, I should point out that when I was eight, something happened to me as well. When I was eight years old, it was in all the papers, that a great scientist had just died, and they put a picture of his desk on the front page. That's it, just a simple picture of the front page of the newspapers of his desk. That desk had a book on it, which was opened, and the caption said, more or less, this is the unfinished manuscript from the greatest scientists of our time. So I said to myself, well, why couldn't he finish it? What's so hard that you can't finish it if you're a great scientist? It's a homework problem, right? You go home, you solve it, or you ask your mom, why couldn't you solve it? So to me, this was a murder mystery. This was greater than any adventure story. I had to know why the greatest scientists of our time couldn't finish something. And then over the years, I found out the guy had a name, Albert Einstein, and that book was the theory of everything. It was unfinished. Well, today I can read that book. I can see all the dead ends and false starts that he made. And I began to realize that he lost his way because he didn't have a physical picture to guide him on the third try. On the first try, he talked about clocks and lightning bolts and meter sticks, and that gave us special relativity, which gave us the atomic bomb. The second great picture was gravity with balls rolling on curved surfaces. And that gave us the Big Bang, creation of the universe, black holes. On the third try, he missed it. He had no picture at all to guide him. In fact, there's a quote I have where he said, I'm still looking. I'm still looking for that picture. He never found it. Well, today we think that picture is string theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The string theory can unify gravity and this mysterious thing that Einstein didn't like, which is quantum mechanics, or couldn't quite pin down and make sense of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. Mother nature has two hands, a left hand and a right hand. The left hand is a theory of the small. The right hand is a theory of the big. The theory of the small is the quantum theory, the theory of atoms and quarks. The theory of the big is relativity, the theory of black holes, big bangs. The problem is, The left hand does not talk to the right hand. They hate each other. The left hand is based on discrete particles. The right hand is based on smooth surfaces. How do you put these two things together into a single theory? They hate each other. The greatest minds of our time, the greatest minds of our time worked on this problem and failed. Today, the only theory that has survived every challenge so far is string theory. That doesn't mean string theory is correct. It could very well be wrong. But right now, it's the only game in town. Some people come up to me and say, Professor, I don't believe in string theory. Give me an alternative. And I tell them, there is none. Get used to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the best theory we got. It's the only theory we have. It's the only theory you have. Do you see, you know, the strings kind of inspire a view, as did atoms and particles and quarks, but especially strings inspire a view of a universe as a kind of information processing system, as a computer of sorts. Do you see the universe in this way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. Some people think in fact the whole universe is a computer of some sort. Yes. And they believe that perhaps everything therefore is a simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think so. I don't think that there is a super video game where we are nothing but puppets dancing on the screen and somebody hit the play button and here we are talking about simulations. No, even Newtonian mechanics says that the weather, the simple weather is so complicated with trillions upon trillions of atoms that it cannot be simulated in a finite amount of time. In other words, the smallest object which can describe the weather and simulate the weather is the weather itself. The smallest object that can simulate a human is the human itself. And if you had quantum mechanics, it becomes almost impossible to simulate it with a conventional computer. Because quantum mechanics deals with all possible universes, parallel universes, a multiverse of universes. And so the calculation just spirals out of control. Now, so far, there's only one way where you might be able to argue that the universe is a simulation, and this is still being debated by quantum physicists. It turns out that if you throw the encyclopedia into a black hole, the information is not lost. Eventually, it winds up on the surface of the black hole. Now, the surface of the black hole is finite. In fact, you can calculate the maximum amount of information you can store in a black hole. It's a finite number. It's a calculable number, believe it or not. Now, if the universe were made out of black holes, which is the maximum universe you can conceive of, each universe, each black hole has a finite amount of information. Therefore, ergo, ta-da, ergo, the total amount of information in a universe is finite. This is mind-boggling. This I consider mind-boggling, that all possible universes are countable, And all possible universes can be summarized in a number. A number you can write on a sheet of paper. All possible universes. And it's a finite number. Now, it's huge. It's a number beyond human imagination. It's a number based on what is called a Planck length. But it's a number. And so if a computer could ever simulate that number, then the universe would be a simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So theoretically, because the amount of information is finite, there necessarily must be able to exist a computer. It's just from an engineering perspective, maybe impossible to build." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, no computer can build a universe capable of simulating the entire universe except the universe itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's your intuition that our universe is very efficient and so there's no shortcuts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Two reasons why I believe the universe is not a simulation. First, the calculational numbers are just incredible. No finite Turing machine can simulate the universe. And second, why would any super intelligent being simulate humans? If you think about it, most humans are kind of stupid. I mean, we do all sorts of crazy, stupid things, right? And we call it art. We call it humor. We call it human civilization. So why should an advanced civilization go through all that effort just to simulate a Saturday night live?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's a funny idea, but it's also, do you think it's possible that the act of creation cannot anticipate humans? You simply set the initial conditions and set a bunch of physical laws and just for the fun of it, see what happens. You'll launch the thing. So you're not necessarily simulating everything. You're not simulating every little bit in the sense that you could predict what's going to happen, but you set the initial conditions, set the laws and see what kind of fun stuff happens." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in some sense, that's how life got started. In the 1950s, Stanley did what is called the Miller experiment. He put a bunch of hydrogen gas, methane, toxic gases with liquid and a spark in a small glass beaker. And then he just walked away for a few weeks, came back a few weeks later and bingo, out of nothing and chaos came amino acids. If he had left it there for a few years, he might have gotten protein, protein molecules for free. that's probably how life got started as a accident. And if he had left it there for perhaps a few million years, DNA might have formed in that beaker. And so we think that, yeah, DNA, life, all that could have been an accident if you wait long enough. And remember, our universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old. That's plenty of time for lots of random things to happen, including life itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we could be just a beautiful little random moment. And there's could be nearly infinite number of those throughout the history of the universe. Many creatures like us. We perhaps are not the epitome of what the universe is created for." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Thank God. Let's hope not. Just look around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Look to your left, look to your right. When do you think the first human will step foot on Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's a good chance in the 2030s that we will be on Mars. In fact, there's no physics reason why we can't do it. It's an engineering problem. It's a very difficult and dangerous engineering problem, but it is an engineering problem. And in my book, Future of Humanity, I even speculate beyond that. that by the end of the century, we'll probably have the first starships. The first starships will not look like the Enterprise at all. There'll probably be small computer ships that are fired by laser beams with parachutes. And like what Stephen Hawking advocated, the Breakthrough Starshot program could send ships, ships to the nearby stars traveling at 20% the speed of light, reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years time. Beyond that, we should have fusion power. Fusion power is, in some sense, one of the ultimate sources of energy, but it's unstable, and we don't have fusion power today. Now, why is that? First of all, stars form almost for free. You get a bunch of gas large enough, it becomes a star. I mean, you don't even have to do anything to it, and it becomes a star. Why is fusion so difficult to put on the Earth? Because in outer space, stars are monopoles. They are single poles that are spherically symmetric, and it's very easy to get spherically symmetric configurations of gas to compress into a star. It just happens naturally all by itself. The problem is magnetism is bipolar. You have a North Pole and a South Pole. And it's like trying to squeeze a long balloon. Take a long balloon and try to squeeze it. You squeeze one side, it bulges out the other side. Well, that's the problem with fusion machines. We use magnetism with the North Pole and the South Pole to squeeze gas. And all sorts of anomalies and horrible configurations can take place because we're not squeezing something uniformly like in a star. Stars in some sense are for free. Fusion on the Earth is very difficult. But I think it's inevitable and it'll eventually give us unlimited power from seawater. So seawater will be the ultimate source of energy for the planet Earth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why? What's the intuition there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "because we'll extract hydrogen from seawater, burn hydrogen in the fission reactor to give us unlimited energy without the meltdown, without the nuclear waste. Why do we have meltdowns? We have meltdowns because in the fission reactors, every time you split the uranium atom, you get nuclear waste, tons of it, 30 tons of nuclear waste per reactor per year. And it's hot. It's hot for thousands, millions of years. That's why we have meltdowns. But you see, the waste product of a fusion reactor is helium gas. Helium gas is actually commercially valuable. You can make money selling helium gas. And so the waste product of a fusion reactor is helium, not nuclear waste that we find in a commercial fission plant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that controlling, mastering and controlling fusion allows us to converse us into a type one, I guess, civilization, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, probably the backbone of a type one civilization will be fusion power. We, by the way, are type zero. We don't even rate on this scale. We get our energy from dead plants, for God's sake, oil and coal. We are about 100 years from being Type 1. Get a calculator. In fact, Carl Sagan calculated that we are about 0.7, fairly close to a 1.0. For example, what is the internet? The Internet is the beginning of the first Type 1 technology to enter into our century. The first planetary technology is the Internet. What is the language of Type 1? On the Internet already, English and Mandarin Chinese are the most dominant languages on the Internet. And what about the culture? We're seeing a Type 1 sports, soccer, the Olympics, a Type 1 music, youth culture, rock and roll, rap music, Type 1 fashion, Gucci, Chanel, a Type 1 economy, the European Union, NAFTA, what have you. So we're beginning to see the beginnings of a Type 1 culture and a Type 1 civilization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and inevitably it will spread beyond this planet. You talked about sending at 20% the speed of light on a chip into Alpha Centauri, but in a slightly nearer term, what do you think about the idea when we still have to send our biological bodies, the colonization of planets, colonization of Mars? Do you see us becoming a two planet species ever? or anytime soon." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, just remember the dinosaurs did not have a space program. And that's why they're not here today. How come there are no dinosaurs in this room today? Because they didn't have a space program. We do have a space program, which means that we have an insurance policy. Now, I don't think we should bankrupt the Earth or deplete the Earth to go to Mars. That's too expensive and not practical. But we need a settlement, a settlement on Mars in case something bad happens to the planet Earth. And that means we have to terraform Mars. Now, to terraform Mars, if we could raise the temperature of Mars by six degrees, six degrees, then the polar ice caps begin to melt, releasing water vapor. Water vapor is the greenhouse gas. It causes even more melting of the ice caps. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds on itself. it becomes autocatalytic. And so once you hit six degrees, rising of the temperature on Mars by six degrees, it takes off. And we melt the polar ice caps and liquid water once again flows in the rivers, the canals, the channels, and the oceans of Mars. Mars once had an ocean, we think, about the size of the United States. And so that is a possibility. Now, how do we get there? How do we raise the temperature of Mars by six degrees? Elon Musk would like to detonate hydrogen warheads on the polar ice caps. Yes. Well, I'm not sure about that because we don't know that much about the effects of detonating hydrogen warheads to melt the polar ice caps. And who wants to glow in the dark at night reading the newspaper? So I think there are other ways to do it with solar satellites. You can have satellites orbiting Mars that beam sunlight onto the polar ice caps, melting the polar ice caps. Mars has plenty of water. It's just frozen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you paint an inspiring and a wonderful picture of the future. I think you've inspired and educated thousands, if not millions. Michio, it's been an honor. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "The word you're referring to is nigger. The book that you're referring to is Nigger, The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. The word dates back to the 16th, 17th century. It's got a long lineage in other words. Basically, Latin, basically Spanish, basically N-I-G, black in various formulations. We don't know actually how the term nigger became a slur. So there were words that were close to N-I-G-G-E-R that were used in various ways. For instance, N-I-G-G-U-H was used N-I-G-G-U-R is used. And sometimes it was used in a way that seemed to be just purely descriptive. We do know that by the early 19th century, it had become a slur. It had become a derogatory word about which people complained. But exactly how that came about, not altogether clear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's been 20 years since you've written the book. What wisdom have you gained about this word since writing the book? And maybe having to interact with people, having to read, having to see, having to feel the response to the book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This book has generated a lot of controversy. I thought it would. It's probably generated more controversy than I had anticipated. It has certainly generated more more different sorts of experiences than I had anticipated. So for instance, I did not think that writing this book would prompt people to ask me to be an expert witness in cases. And over the past 20 years, I've been an expert witness in a number of different cases. I've been an expert witness in a murder case, in various cases of assault. I've been an expert witness in cases involving tort cases, intentional infliction of emotional distress. I've been an expert witness in a number of employment cases. I had not anticipated that, nor had I anticipated the extent to which people would get in trouble for using my book. Every year, there are teachers who are suspended or who are fired because they will excerpt a chapter of my book. Let's imagine, and I'm not imagining things as this happened, a teacher is teaching, for instance, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The word nigger appears in that book over 200 times. the teacher, trying to be earnest, trying to be sensible, trying to be serious, will excerpt a part of my book to acquaint students with the history of the word and maybe the history of controversy involving the use of the word in this particular novel. The teacher will give it out, hand it out to the teachers, hand it out to students. And there've been a number of teachers who've been suspended or worse because of that. Students will get upset, go home, tell their parents. Their parents will storm to the school and say that this is terrible. The teacher is quote, using the word nigger in an offensive way. And oftentimes administrators will basically abandon the teacher. And whenever this comes to my attention, I write, I'll write the superintendent of schools or I'll write the principal or sometimes I'll write an opinion editorial piece for the local newspaper. But every year there are teachers who are disciplined for using my book. I had not anticipated that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what is the nature of the letter or the op-ed that you write on why they shouldn't be disciplined, to the degree they should be or shouldn't be?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There has not been one case, there's not been one case that has come to my attention in which it was even remotely sensible for the teacher to be disciplined. And what I say is that, number one, Frankly, I go through, what I write is almost a synopsis of my book. Number one, this is an important word in American history. It is a word that is explosive. That's why people get so upset. It's a word that's volatile. It's a word that has typically been used in a terrible way. It's a word that is part of the soundtrack of racial terrorism in the United States. So people ought to know about this word. I mean, if you're interested in knowing the real history of the United States, if you're interested in knowing about lynching, if you're interested in knowing about the way in which black people have been terrorized in the United States, you need to know this word. You need to know that history, so you need to know why it is that people are upset about the word, but that's not, but it doesn't end there. You have to know that, and if you know that, then that knowledge should equip you to be careful. It should equip you to know that, to know the range of context in which this word appears, But again, it doesn't just end there because, especially young people, you tell that to young people and they nod, they read, they understand that. But then, but then what? But then they turn on their radios and they turn on, they listen to Spotify, they listen to some of their favorite entertainers. They listen to Dr. Dre, they listen to the Ghetto Boys, they listen to Snoop, And they listen to NWA. What do they hear? They listen to stand-up comedians. They listen to Dave Chappelle. They listen to Cat Williams. They, you know, what do they hear? They hear the word nigger or nigga being used in a lot of different ways. And so they need to know about that as well. What are people doing? How does one explain the fact that Dick Gregory, Dick Gregory was a comedian, activist, friend of Martin Luther King Jr., a true activist. I mean, he had a flourishing career as an entertainer that he abandons. in order to struggle for racial justice throughout the United States and including the Deep South, how does one explain the fact that he wrote several memoirs, but his first memoir is called Nigger, a memoir? How does one explain that? How does one explain the way in which, how does one explain Richard Pryor? I mean, Richard Pryor's best album is that nigger's crazy. Well, was Richard Pryor trying to put down black people? How does one explain that? One can only explain that by getting deeper into the word, by understanding that yes, this is a word that has been used in a derogatory way. This is a word that has been used to put people down. This is a word that has been used to terrorize people. You gotta know that. But you also have to know that this is a word that has also been put to other uses. There are artists, there are entertainers who have used this word, like Dick Gregory used it, to put up a mirror to American society and say, look at this word and look at the terrible way in which it's been used. We don't want you to look away. No, don't look away. No euphemism. No asterisk, no N-word, no nigger. Now we want you to look at that and we want to talk about that. James Baldwin. There was a documentary about James Baldwin a couple of years ago, highly lauded documentary. The title that was given to this documentary was, I Am Not Your Negro. That's not what James Baldwin said. Anybody can go to YouTube right now, take a look. James Baldwin said, I am not your nigger. And then he went on to talk about that. Well, you know, James Baldwin wasn't, again, he wasn't trying to cover up anything. He wanted people to face the facts of American life. And it seems to me that if you're a teacher and you want to have your students face the facts about American life, well, you've got to grapple with the word nigger. Now let me just quickly say, you know, teachers have a tough job. And if we're talking about students, of course, there's a wide range of students. Am I saying that one ought to give my book to kindergartners? No. You know, kindergartners are probably not ready for such a book. Third graders, probably no, not third grade. If we're talking, however, about people in the 10th grade, do I think the 10th graders can read my book? Yeah, sure, absolutely. 11th graders, 12th graders, people in college, there are people in college. There are people in college. There are people in law schools. Teachers in law schools have been disciplined for because the word nigger has come out of a teacher's mouth. Why? A couple of cases recently, teacher would be reading a court opinion. The word appears in the court opinion, the teacher pronounces the word, ah. You know, students get up, leave in a huff, report the teacher. There's some instances in which teachers have been, under those circumstances, have been disciplined. In my view, that's bad, and people ought to say it's bad. It's bad pedagogically, and frankly, in many of these instances, it's not only bad, it's stupid. And I don't mind saying that. I think that some of these instances in which teachers have been disciplined, absolutely stupid. People say, well, the teacher used the word. Excuse me, used the word? It'd be one thing, it'd be one thing if a teacher looked at a student and called the student nigger. You know, get out of here, nigger. That'd be one, that'd be, you know, fine. Discipline, that's teacher, that's bad. But that's not what's going on. You don't have, none of these are cases in which you have an individual who is a stranger to another individual and this word just sort of comes out, no. What we have here is a class involving a person who is a teacher interacting with students talking about subjects in which it would be perfectly understandable why this word would emerge as a subject of conversation. Now, under those circumstances, it's somehow wrong for a teacher to utter this word. In my view, the answer is no. And I said that 20 years ago. I say it even more emphatically now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Still, it is one of the most powerful words in the English language, and there's a kind of responsibility that we as humans should have with words, with statements. That word, if not used skillfully, if not used competently, even when just read from a legal transcript, can do more harm than good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with what you say. Yes, words are powerful. Words do matter. And so I am certainly not suggesting that people be lax. I'm not suggesting that people be irresponsible. It's precisely because words matter, however, that we need to be willing to face words and grapple with words and talk about words and talk about the history of words precisely because words matter. And among other things, it seems to me it's important to understand that words can mean different things in different contexts. It's not the case that a word means the same thing in every context. The word discriminating. Sometimes it's a very bad thing. That person discriminates. And when you, you know, again, you know, intonation of voice means something. If I say, that person discriminates, and I'm obviously being disapproving, implicitly what I'm saying is that person distinguishes between things on an unjustifiable basis, and that's a bad thing. On the other hand, that person has discriminating taste. Oh, that means something very different. That means that the person differentiates in a way that shows that they understand the difference between excellent, good, and not-so-good, and we think that that's a good thing. So words can mean different things in different contexts, and it seems to me that that's something that actually we ought to recognize and talk about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, some words enter this territory of being a slur, and it seems like when they cross the line into being a slur, the number of contexts in which it's okay to mention it exponentially decreases, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or no? No, no, I'm gonna resist that a little bit, because the whole idea of slurs Slurs change. Yankee was a slur. Yankee was a slur in 18th century United States. Slur today, New York Yankees. I'm a Yankee fan. I'm a Yankee. Queer. Queer. In my lifetime, there was a time you queer, and people would really run away from it. And that was a bad thing. And then, thank goodness, gay liberation movement. Gay liberation movement, basically, we're not gonna run away from this. We're gonna grab this, quote, slur, and we're going to affix it to ourselves. And we are going to repurpose it Now, the word queer is again, can it be a slur? Yeah, it can be a slur, doesn't have to be. And it seems to me that it's important for people to know about how a word, a symbol, in some context can be a slur, in some context doesn't have to be. So the whole idea of what's a slur, That's a complicated idea in and of itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's very complicated. It's, if I may say, almost fascinating how language evolves. But if we were to kind of have a minute by minute evaluation of the most powerful, intensely slur-like words in the world, I think the N-word with a hard R at the end, which is the title of your book, is number one on that list." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, probably so, and of course, that's one of the reasons why I wrote a little book about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but it hasn't, even since you wrote a little book about it, it seems like it's maintained its number one status. You mentioned queer. Maybe queer was in the top 20, I don't know, for a while, and now it's sliding into the top 1,000, and the N word is at the top." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're absolutely right. The origins of this book I clearly remember, I was at my office and I was thinking about lecture topics. And I get invited to give lectures from time to time. And I was thinking, well, what might make for an interesting lecture? And all of a sudden, the word nigger popped into my mind. Now this is a word, I've grown up with this word. I mean, there's never been a time in my life when at least in my conscious life, in which this word's been absent. I mean, in my household, for instance, in my household, my parents are black people. My parents were refugees from the Jim Crow South. I was born in the Deep South, South Carolina. In my household, I heard the word nigger used in every possible way. I heard it used as a slur. I also heard it used with respect to people who were praised. You know, my father, I clearly remember my father, whom I revere. That's the smartest nigger in the world. That's the bravest nigger in the world. That's the baddest nigger I know. He wasn't putting people down. This is the way he talked. And I grew up hearing this word in various ways. And so I was thinking to myself, God, where did this word come from? And one of the first things I did, I clearly remember just jumping up out of my seat, running up to the library, Oxford English Dictionary. When did this word first appear in English? What was the history of the word? And then, what really sort of grabbed my attention is I went, I get my computer going, and I asked the computer system, give me every case, every federal court case in which this word appears, thousands of cases, And then I said, oh my goodness, this is really interesting. And then I started just cataloging all the different cases. There came a point, I'd say probably about a month into this, I compared the usage, I compared the number of times nigger came up with other sorts of slurs. So for instance, kike. K-I-K-E, long time, you know, derogatory word for Jews. How many times has this word come up? There was a time in which the word appeared, but nothing like the infamous N-word, nothing. And then, you know, what about wetback? What about, and then I just, you know, let me just take a look at all the other slurs. nothing came close, not even remotely close to Nigger. And I think it has something to do with, I think it has something to do with the uniqueness of the color line, particularly as it pertains to African-Americans. I think that the fact that Nigger sort of occupies such a unique status among slurs I think that's a reflection of the unique stigma that has been imposed on African Americans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's hard to know the chicken or the egg why one word is able to so distinctly and clearly encapsulate this struggle between races that is throughout American history. I mean, they didn't have to probably be so, but it came to be that way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It became that, and not only that, not only that, but of course, the nigger spurred other slurs. So Arabs, sand niggers. The Irish, the niggers of Europe. Women, the niggers of the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "John Lennon even has a song." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. Well, I think Yoko Ono, I think, had something to do with that song. So, I mean, it is a slur that has spawned other slurs. And again, this is, that's why, you know, as you indicated a moment ago, this is a quite unique term." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But are you conscious, are you deliberate in you saying this word? So let me just say from a personal experience, maybe my upbringing, where I came from, in my daily life, I don't think I've ever heard that word with a hard R said as often, used clearly in my life. I've heard it today more than I have ever heard in my entire life. And I think there's a few people who listen to this that will be listening to this and be very uncomfortable. I would say not in a bad way. probably in a good way. I'm uncomfortable now and I am almost introspecting and trying to figure out why am I uncomfortable. And I think even the title of your book is making me think that. Just looking into my own mind and trying to understand, wow, words have power. And why does it have so much power? But are you deliberate in that action? And by the way, not only are the people listening to this sweating, this will be on YouTube in part. And YouTube, the people on the other side will be sweating. What do we do with this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, am I deliberate? The answer is yes. And let me unpack that a little bit. First, that's right. I mean, am I deliberate? Yeah. I deliberately wrote a book called Nigger, The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. And was that deliberate? Yeah, that was quite deliberate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the title could have been N-Word." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The title could have been N-Word. Sure, the title could have been N-Word. The title could have been a book about a word that causes pain to many people. I could have named it that. There are many titles I could have used Did I want a title that would be provocative? Did I want a title that would grab people? The answer to that is yes. I'm a writer, I want people to read what I write. Was I being sensationalistic? Well, I mean, if you wanna put it like that, yes. I'm not embarrassed to say that. I'm sure that when people write books, they think really hard about their titles and they try to get a title that will grab people's attention. I know people, respect people very deeply who never, it's a matter of principle, never utter this word. and I've talked with people, I've had people say, you know, I read your book, let's talk about it, but let's be very clear, I'm not gonna use the word. I've had many conversations with people who've asked me not to use the word. I was on a, the first time this came up, was a book tour. It was 20 years ago when the book first came out, and I was on one of these call-in shows early in the morning. Time came to call in. Seven o'clock, I call in at five or seven. Right before I go on, the host of the show says, oh, by the way, we have a strict policy here at the station. We never use this word. And I said, well, gosh, I wish you had told me this earlier. Does this mean then that you're never going to pronounce fully the title of my book? And she said, that's right. And I had to make a choice right then and there. Am I gonna go on or am I not? What'd you do? I went on and I abided by the station's rules. And fine, we had a perfectly fine conversation. And there is a place for euphemism. The American language is a very supple language. There are lots of words that one can use. I do not get angry with people who don't, they say as a matter of principle they're not gonna use the word fine. I'm willing to, I understand where they're coming from. and often I will defer to their wishes. All I say is I want people to understand where I'm coming from. I'm not just using this word willy-nilly. There's a pedagogical reason. There is a reason for why I'm saying what I'm saying. There is a reason why I use the word." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you make the case why using the word is a good idea, and can you make, can you steelman the case why it's a bad idea? Maybe you've heard from some critics who said that you saying this word out loud is actually causing a lot of harm. Not like harm because people's feelings are hurt, but increasing the amount of racism and hate in the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, critics. Let's start with the critics. One, again, going back to the, when the book was first published, I remember going to, it was the first bookstore I went to, and I talked about the book, had a very, you know, talked, asked questions, and the last comment, wasn't a question, but the last comment was made by a friend of mine, an elderly Black man. I called on him, and he said, I've listened to what you've had to say, and I appreciate what you've had to say, but I remain unconvinced. And I remain unconvinced because when I was coming up This word was used to put me in the back of the bus. And this word was used to prevent me from voting. And this was the word that was used to justify me never being called as a juror. So to me, this word has only one meaning. It's a terrible meaning. I'm never going to use the word. It hurts me when I hear people use the word, especially those who don't know anything about the, you know, really about the history of it. And he went on to say, I think that your book, though well-intended, is probably going to be seen by some people as giving them permission to use the word. And then he stopped. And I thought that there was a lot of power behind that gentleman's comment. I think that what he said is probably correct insofar as there are probably some people who read the book. There are probably some people who are listening to our conversation right now who will think that I'm giving people permission to use the word. I have said that I'm not. I want people to understand the word. I think that there is a burden that comes from whenever you utter a word like this, But that's a critique, and I think there's strength to that critique. I'm not gonna say that that's a ridiculous critique. I think that there is something to that. And by the way, I should say, and that's why I would say to anyone, that's right, if this word comes out of your mouth, you are taking on real responsibility. So for years, it doesn't happen so much now, but there were, I'd say for about the first five years after this book was published, I would get an email at least once a week. And it would begin like this. Dear Professor Kennedy, I read your book and I'm calling to ask you a question. And as soon as I saw that, I knew what the question was gonna be. And what the person would say is the following. I like rap, and then I knew what was coming. I like rap, I'm white, and I have black friends, and we listen to rap, and we're driving in the car, and we're listening to the song. We start humming along and singing along, and my black friends sing along, and when nigger or nigga comes up, they sing, and I don't know what to do. Is it wrong for me to sing along? This happened so often that I'd say about after the, about the 10th time I got in such an email, I wrote a form letter. Cause I didn't want to just, you know, take up time writing, you know, you know, sort of crafting letter after letter after letter. So I wrote a form letter and basically what I said was, listen, number one, you know, I'm flattered that you're asking me, but Number one, you should have a conversation with your friend. Number two, no matter what your friend says, let me put something else for you to consider. Let's suppose for the sake of discussion that your friend says, oh, doesn't bother me. I know where you're coming from. We're just enjoying the music. I don't think that this is a racist utterance coming out of your mouth. Let's suppose that your friend says that. That doesn't end matters because let's imagine the following. Let's imagine that you're in a theater and you're waiting for the, you know, a film to start. And you're just, you know, talking with your friends or singing with your friends or just, you know, kicking back with your friends. And they're talking about nigger this or nigga this. And you say it. You, the white boy, say it. And the next thing you feel is a fist, a big fist in your mouth that has been launched by a person that you did not see who was right behind you. All this person saw was a white person saying nigga. And the next thing, pow. That's not some sort of overheated scenario coming from some law professor's mind. That is a very plausible scenario. So you have to be worried about lots of things, including mistake. So my advice to you is be prudent. I would stay clear of the word unless, unless you're very certain and unless if you're called on it, you feel you're in a position to defend yourself, defend what you're doing. But the prudent thing would be to stay clear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's so many questions I wanna ask there. One is about the violence and the legal aspect of that. It's very interesting. You raise that in the book. But I do wanna bring up, something I probably disagree with you on, which is you say that there's not a significant difference between the different variations of the N word. Or maybe you don't, I just listened to a bunch of your interviews. So there's the version with the ER at the end, version with a GA at the end, and then GRO at the end. These are all different versions, and I feel like in that list of powerful words, I feel like there's a distinction. I feel like the number one spot is the one with the hard R, and I don't know, maybe you can, I don't know. try to shed light, but I feel like the one that ends in G-A is really far down the list in terms of modern culture. So this is, we talked about the evolution of the words and the word queer, for example. It feels like, maybe because of rap, because of comedians, because it's become much more, it lost so much of its power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think there's a difference between nigger and nigga. I mean, people make a distinction between them. And I think that to the extent that lots of people make a distinction between them, I think just as a sociological fact, they are different. I think that people who get upset if somebody, especially white people, So if a white person says nigga and they're sort of criticized about it and they say, well, I didn't say nigger, I said nigga, believe me, I think most people who are mad at them are gonna stay mad at them. Now you raised the word, so nigger and nigga, I would put, in a very different category than Negro. Educate me here. Well, yeah, sure. I'm happy to. Negro is also controversial. It's also controversial. But Negro has never been viewed by a substantial number of people as a derogatory term, at least with the same amount of animus, the same amount of, it's a very different kind of word than nigger or nigga. I mean, after all, I mean, Negro, Martin Luther King Jr. you know, all of his great oratory, Negro. You read the work of the great W.E.B. Du Bois, Negro. You read the work of my boss. For instance, I use the word Negro. I use African-American, black, Afro-American, but I also use the word Negro. Now, there are some people who get really mad at me because of, you know, when I use the word Negro. And so, for instance, there's students who've gotten really quite exercised and they'll say, you know, I'll be giving a lecture and, you know, a hand will go up, I'll call on somebody and they'll say, listen, are you using the word Negro and it's purely because of the historical time period that you're using, so is that why you're using it, or are you using it in your own voice? And often I'll say, well, I'm using it in my own voice, and they'll say, well, I'm offended. We think that that's old-timey, it's derogatory. When this first came up, I said, let's pause for a moment And I'll take that under advisement. And let me look into this. And I ended up writing an essay about it, an essay about the history of the terms that black people have used to describe themselves. And it's a long list, you know, black, colored, Afro-American, African-American, Negro, et cetera. So I go through all that and I said, now, let me just tell you, I know for certain when I started using the word Negro often in writing. I can date it. 1983, the summer of 1983 is when I started using the word Negro in my professional life as a lawyer. And I did it for a very specific reason. I did it because my boss demanded that I Negro capital N. Now, who was my boss? My boss in the summer of 1983 was Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, known as Mr. Civil Rights. Now, it seems to me you're telling me that this word is so out of bounds, that this word is derogatory, nobody should ever use this word. Does the fact that Thurgood Marshall demanded that I use this word, does that complicate things a little bit? And so I think that people, again, ought to know more. I mean, I've encountered students who don't know very much but who want to lecture me on word usage because they know three sentences about current fashion. And hold it, hold it. By the way, I push it further. I sometimes use the word colored. And some people really don't like that. Well, you know, there's an organization still very much alive in American life and law, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. They haven't changed their name. And as far as I'm concerned, it's a wonderful organization. There are people who have used the word colored. That's what my grandmother used, colored. Perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned. So again, there are lots of different words that one can use. You can use different formulations. I understand that people have different preferences. Fine, I have my preferences. At least know where I'm coming from." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Still, words have power and they have power to hurt. And there's a lot of reasons that I could see to justify the use of the word in its full form, as you're saying, in this conversation as you're using it. One of them is perhaps fighting for the freedom to be able to use those kinds of words. So let me ask you about the freedom of speech. and the censorship of the word. Should the use of the N-word be censored, for example, on social networks? So we can come up with different places. We can say university campuses, maybe in op-eds, or I don't know. But I think social networks currently is a very interesting place. There's a lot of conversations that are happening on them. There's the ability, the technical capability to sentence, to remove the ability of people to use the word. Do you think they should be allowed to use the word on Twitter, for example?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My response is, it all depends on the way in which the word is being used. If the word is being used to intimidate, if the word is being used to terrorize, then no, along with lots of other words, by the way. I mean, you can have, I could use the word, I suppose, gentleman, I mean, I'm sure that I could conjure up a way in which that word could be used in an intimidating way. So would I be happy if there was a technology that always blanked this word, N-I-G-G-E-R? I would be against that. For one thing, it would erase the name of one of my books. And I think that the book actually has a lot of useful information and makes some useful points. And by the way, let's imagine a world in which there was a technology that blanked every time N-I-G-G-E-R appeared. You would have what would that do to novels by James Baldwin, by Toni Morrison, by, what would that do to the speeches of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.? What would that do to the comedy albums of Richard Pryor, Cat Williams, Dave Chappelle? You know, what would that, if one sort of plays that out, Would one want to have all of those blanks in important literary and political performances? No, I don't want such blanks. What I want, I would want the word to be there and for people to understand how to deal with this word. And by the way, you've used the word hurt an awful lot. So let's talk about hurt. I think we need to be more careful with the way in which we deal with hurt because people can be justifiably hurt you can have justifiably hurt feelings. And if somebody has justifiably hurt feelings, I then think that we should turn to the person who has hurt those feelings and say, you have acted wrongly because this person's feelings are justifiably hurt in relationship to what you've done. On the other hand, there are people who have hurt feelings, and frankly, it's unjustified. So just imagine the following. Let's imagine that I give a talk about the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. And then let's imagine that a Ku Klux Klansman comes up to me after my talk and says, oh, you have now hurt my feelings. What, am I supposed to be, am I supposed to apologize? Am I supposed to be regretful that my talk about the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. has hurt the feelings of the Klansmen? No, my response is going to be, you know, you need to reevaluate your feelings because actually your feeling of hurt is unjustified. And no, I'm, you know, no, there's no apology coming from me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a kind of line in perhaps the gray area, and maybe the word hurt has been overused, because if you try to avoid hurting a small fraction of society that is mentally weak in a way where everything hurts them, that's the wrong way to build a society. But if we flip that upside down and say trying to maximize the amount of love in the world, and think about decisions we make in terms of language we use to try to maximize the amount of love, and not just short-term, but long-term. And that's where freedom of speech is very powerful, because it's a short-term painful thing often, but long-term beneficial thing. just having freedom. And so there's where the question of the N-word starts to come in. How do we think about its use on the internet, on college campuses, in a way that maximizes the amount of love and compassion and camaraderie in the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's good. I would associate myself with your vision, how can we maximize love? No, I love that. I think that's great. So let's take that on. I doubt that the way of doing that is to erase the infamous N-word. I doubt that the way of doing that is to say to people, we understand that your feelings are really hurt and we're gonna do all that we can to avoid this symbolic action, maybe this word or maybe this symbol. We're gonna do all that we can to suppress it so that we can have a more loving universe. I doubt that that's the way to do it. I think a better way to do it, I think a better way to do it would be to fully educate people, including educate people such that, you see that over there? That is the uniform of the Ku Klux Klan. I want you to be educated about the uniform of the Ku Klux Klan so that you can look at the uniform of the Ku Klux Klan and know what it's about. You're not terrorized by it. You're not immediately, you don't see it and sink to your knees and start wailing and crying. You don't see it and say, oh, I'm traumatized. No, you don't do any of that. You see it, you understand it. If somebody asks you about it, you're fully prepared to talk about it. It seems to me that that attitude, that poise, that strength, that knowledge would be a better way of equipping us to have a more loving world. And by the way, just so you know, I would say that about the swastika. I would say it about the infamous N-word. I would say it about all of the things that we're talking about. It would be better for people to be educated so that they are not traumatized." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to you, you know, the N-word should not be removed from Huck Finn, Adventures of Huck Finn, or from the works of James Baldwin or Toni Morrison?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not at all. In fact, it seems to me that the bolderization of these great artists' literary work, as far as I'm concerned, highly objectionable, highly objectionable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When is it okay for a white man to say the N-word with a hard R?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here we need to focus on the word say. Is it ever okay for anyone, black, white, pink, yellow, I don't care, red, orange, is it okay for anyone to use this word in a way to put down people, to terrorize people, to intimidate people? Answer, no. And I'd say that black person, I've seen, I mean, by the way, I've seen black people use this word to try to intimidate, put down other black people, bad. So I'm against it with a black person, white person, doesn't matter. On the other hand, imagine a white person who is giving a lecture on the history of American racism, a lecture on the history of American racism. And in giving that lecture, quotes the, you know, white racist politicians who, until fairly recently in American life, used the infamous N-word. So imagine a white history professor giving a lecture about the history of American racism and says, in 1948, This is what so-and-so running for the presidency of the United States said, and then quotes a paragraph or two in which the infamous N-word is featured. Is that bad? No, that's not bad. No, that's not bad. Sounds like a perfectly good lecture. And I'm glad that you put the infamous n-word in there so that we can see that as recently as 1948, people who were running for the presidency of the United States openly used the word. That does not bother me. I'll say this too. Now, somebody says, well, nice job, Kennedy, but you've limited it to over here. You've put it in an academic setting. What about other settings? It does not bother me. Let's imagine somebody who's a comedian, a white comedian, who is satirizing word usage. Let's imagine a white comedian who is satirizing our current practice and wants to poke fun at the way in which, you know, let's imagine you have a black rapper who invites people on stage, and let's suppose they invite a black person on stage, and they're perfectly happy when the black person is full out with their lyrics. They invite a white person on stage. The white person is sort of mystified, but it comes on stage and full out with what the rapper says, including the infamous N-word, and then the black rapper gets mad. Imagine the white comedian who satirizes that, pokes fun at that. And in poking fun at that, says the infamous N-word. Am I angry? No, I'm not angry, not angry at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What if in the process of satirizing, that comedian is not very funny?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You say, bad joke, you were not funny. Okay. I don't object to the use of the infamous N-word. I just say, you know, you're not very funny." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But because there's a line, when the joke is not funny, it just seems like the comedy is used as a cover to actually say something hateful. It's an interesting thing about comedy. I feel like the funnier you are, the more you can get away with. And that's something to do with the thing we said earlier, which is when you use words that have power, you should do so with skill and competence and the responsibility those words carry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, the cases that I'm most familiar with are the cases involving teachers, professors, academic, and it is said sometimes, oh, why do I object? I object, sometimes people say, because I suspect that this teacher just wanted to say the word and that all of this is a cover, a pretext Do I, in my sense, my sense of it is, no, I don't think it's a pretext. If it's pretextual, that's bad, but in my experience, I have not seen that. I don't believe that that's what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I agree with you on that, but sometimes I do see people that kind of have this flying towards the light desire to say something, controversial and edgy and they don't realize that there's a responsibility there. There's a skill. You shouldn't just say, I mean, actually when comedians first start out, they'll sometimes go into that territory. They'll say edgy stuff that's totally not funny. And then you realize this is not, Like the edgier the thing, the more skills required to really serve. Like if you're cooking as a chef, a poisonous fish, there's a responsibility on how to cook the damn thing so you don't poison the people eating it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would agree. But to get back to your question, let's imagine that somebody produces a new set of Lenny Bruce albums. Yeah. So Lenny Bruce was white, Lenny Bruce used the term nigger in his sets. Sure did. Question, would I want Lenny Bruce's albums now to be purged of the infamous n-word? My response, absolutely not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As another follow-on sort of question, what you think, I've seen interviews you've done about this particular book, the title of those interviews on YouTube and elsewhere would use the full word. What do you think about that? Should I use this word in the title?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In my view, the answer would be yes. Again, there are people, I've been on interviews, been on stage with people who had a different conclusion. I respect a different way. Again, there is a place for euphemism. Again, it all depends. I'm not offended. Let's imagine that you posted this and you had asterisks instead of spelling it out. Would I be offended? No, I wouldn't be offended. I would prefer the full spelling, but I would understand where you're coming from. Would it offend me? No, it wouldn't offend me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, here's the weird calculation, is which version of the word in the title, as silly as that is, brings more love to the world? It's hard, and basically your answer is, I don't know. Your answer is kinda you have to do it and find out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not sure. Again, there's certain questions in which, there's certain questions you're not gonna, we're not really going to know. There's no sociologist who's gonna be able to tell us that. So what do we do then? Then we go to secondary positions. And my secondary position is I don't know. One thing that I hold onto, however, very strongly is the virtue of openness, the virtue of transparency, the virtue of freedom. And I feel as though if I'm holding onto those things, If I'm trying to engage in a serious conversation in which I'm trying to make other people understand me and I'm listening carefully to other people, I feel at ease. I feel at ease. I feel this is going to eventuate in something positive and I feel okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You are at Harvard. You're one of the most respected people in the history of Harvard. That said, you did write a book with the N-word in it, and you also have a lot of opinions that challenge the mainstream perspectives on race from all sides. Hopefully we'll get to talk about some of them. But what's your view on Harvard and universities in general and speech? Did you feel pressure from any direction? on, first of all, the title of this book, the content of the book, and, in general, your views on race." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I am very laudatory of Harvard University. I've been at Harvard since 1984. I think it is a wonderful place to work. I have you know, in the various positions I've taken, particularly with respect to this book or all my other books. What has Harvard University done? Harvard University has done nothing but provide support, sustenance, encouragement. You know, I think that people get down on Harvard University, I would say to anybody, imagine the following. Imagine that the ethos of Harvard University became the governing ethos of the United States overnight. Tomorrow, we would wake up in a much better United States of America. I have... I've been supported by Harvard University. I think well of Harvard University. That's not to say that I don't have criticisms of it, but by and large, Harvard University, more than by and large, overwhelmingly, it has provided me, and I think it overwhelmingly provides my colleagues with a work setting in which they can do their work without fear. And that's a good thing. Are there certain aspects of Harvard University about which I'm critical? Yeah, sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, I think a few people, rightfully or wrongfully, would disagree with you that if the ethos of Harvard University took over the country, it'd be a better place. But there's a lot of interesting ways to break that down, because Harvard, There's not one ethos. There's a lot of things going on that are very interesting. But one of the things that's happening is the disproportionate and kind of aggressive growth of the administration versus faculty and students. I think the power of university should always be with the faculty and the students. That's where the beauty is. That's where the flourishing happens. And the more you have kind of rules and bureaucracy and all this kind of stuff, the less powerful the university is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that at my, university and at many universities, that's right, there's too much bureaucracy, too much regulation, and are there dangers to freedom of expression at my university and at other universities? Answer, yeah, there are. There are, and this has really hit home for me. There was a period of time in which I had gotten off of all boards. I was just doing my work. Forget it, I'm just gonna do my work. I'm not gonna be associated with any organizations. In the last five years, that has changed quite dramatically. I have gotten on, various, I've reassociated myself with various organizations, mainly organizations involving academic freedom because of what's going on at, you know, on university campuses. Again, I have been, at least thus far, thus far, this hasn't pinched me where I live" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But... You mean in the space of ideas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the space of ideas, in the space of speech, in the face of teaching. I haven't been pinched, but I am concerned about things. So for instance, let's imagine that you're applying for a job. You wanna be an assistant professor. Or let's suppose that you're seeking a promotion. And on many university campuses, you are asked to give a DEI statement in which you say, I plan to, you know, one of the reasons why you should hire me or one of the reasons why you should promote me is because I'm going to, you know, advance the, you know, the DEI requirements ambitions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Diversity, equity, and inclusion, for people who don't know, this is the general set of programs that most universities now have." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that's right. So you've got a sort of, basically, what you're being asked to do, whether they say it explicitly or not, they don't say this explicitly, but this is what is up, What you're being asked to do is to say, I'm down with the diversity, equity, and inclusion ethos, program, policy, campaign. And here's what I've done that shows that I'm down with this program. And therefore, I'm OK. Well, a lot of what I do would fit very comfortably within that. But let's suppose that I didn't, just suppose I didn't like this. And by the way, there's certain aspects of the DEI industry that I don't like. You mean to tell me that I'm being judged at an academic institution? Let's suppose I wanna be a chemist. Let's suppose I wanna be a physicist. Let's suppose I wanna be, I don't care, a critic of literature. I oppose this program. I don't think this is the way in which higher education should be going. Should I have to, on pain of relinquishing my ability to be hired, should I have to sign on to this? Just suppose, and let's change it around, let's not make it a DEI campaign, let's make it a Make America Great Again campaign. What would we think then? Let's suppose it was something that said, instead of it saying DEI, let's make it say the advancement of American capitalism as we know it. We want you to be down with that. What have you done that shows us that you believe in the advancement of capitalism in America? Would I be happy about, no! I would say this is, no! Well, no with respect to these, as far as I'm concerned, with the DEI statements. Oh, here's another one. I just learned, and in fact, I mean, there are certain things that are happening And I must say, I mean, I'm in academia, but it's news to me. I didn't know until relatively recently about positionality statements. So these are statements in which somebody writes an article. Let's suppose, I write an article, and it's not enough for me just to submit my article to some law review or to some other sort of journal. No, in addition to me submitting my article, I've got to give a positionality statement in which I say whether I am gay or straight or what have you, in which I say my race, in which I say my nationality, in which I say my stance toward this ideological position or that ideological position." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting. What? Is this becoming a kind of a standard?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know how widespread it is. I know there was a very good article in the New York Times a couple of days ago about these positionality statements, and in fact, that's what sort of tipped me off. Somebody had told me, there's a law review at my home institution, and I had a friend who sort of mentioned this offhandedly and who said, well, I submitted an article to this journal And I was a little bit taken aback insofar as they did have me fill out a questionnaire in which I was required to state my race, state this, state that, state the other. And as far as I'm concerned, well, What does that have to do with a proper assessment of somebody's work? This concerns me. I'm concerned about the fact, you know, a little while ago you mentioned, a little while ago you mentioned the word Negro. I was talking with colleagues a couple months ago and somebody mentioned that this word had come up in their class because what had happened was one student was reading from a Supreme Court decision and the word Negro was part of what they read out and another student held up his hand and said to the student who was reading, A, you should be careful because I find the word Negro offensive, and you need to be careful about even saying a word that would be offensive to someone. And then the teacher was, what should I say in those circumstances? What should I have said And I volunteered, and I said, well, guys, that's really interesting, because see, if that had come up in my class, I would have said, well, frankly, I don't even see what the big deal is, because I use the word Negro. And Harvard University is not on some island that is you know, apart from everything else that's happening in the world, if these things are happening in other places, if they're happening at Stanford, if they're happening at Yale, if they're happening at Columbia, you know, they're gonna happen at Harvard. But thus far, and I am most especially experienced in life at Harvard Law School, Harvard Law School, is an open environment in which ideas are tested, and they are tested fully. And it's because of that that I say I have been fully supported at Harvard Law School, feel that it is an excellent place in which to do work. I'm a fan. I am a fan. And I'm not embarrassed to say it. I am a fan of my workplace, Harvard Law School. Very happy to be associated with Harvard Law School." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Zooming out, in general in education, there's something called critical race theory. Can you comment on what are your thoughts about this kind of perspective on race and race in America to the degree that it's becoming a part of the education program?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so the first thing I wanna say- What is it? Well, the first thing I wanna say about critical race theory is that critical race theory become a term, so I'm gonna put quotation marks around the term critical race theory. In a minute, I'll talk about critical race theory without quotation marks, but to begin with, I wanna talk about critical race theory because the reason why people are talking about critical race theory so much now is because politicians, mainly Republican right-wing politicians, have created a boogeyman, critical race theory with quotation marks around it, they have created a boogeyman, and they have tried to make it seem as though this boogeyman believes all sorts of ideas that Americans should loathe and that Americans should fear. and they've created this boogeyman, and they've created it, and they've done a very good job of creating the boogeyman, and they have mobilized sufficient public support such that there are a number of states that have passed laws prohibiting the teaching of so-called critical race theory. Now, the first thing I wanna say about this is that this campaign, these laws, these various policies telling teachers don't teach this and don't teach that, and you can't use this book, you can't use that book, this is a frightening encroachment on freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to learn, freedom to listen, freedom to read, That's terrible. And it's one of the most frightening things that has happened in American life in recent memory. So that's the first thing I want to say about so-called critical race theory. Now, now I'll say something. I'm going to take the quotation marks off of the term critical race theory. Critical race theory is a sort of a, you could have a nice conversation about actually what it is. One way of viewing it is to say that, well, critical race theory is a community of ideas that comes from a community of people. The community of people would be people in legal academia in the period, 1908 starting and probably the middle of the 1980s. It would be associated with people like Derrick Bell. It would be associated with people like Kimberly Crenshaw, people like Charles Lawrence, people like Richard Delgado, people like Mary Matsuda. And these are folks who held, embraced a couple of, you know, they articulated a couple of propositions. One of their propositions was that, liberal race policy was insufficient. They would say that the racial policies of a person like my old boss, Thurgood Marshall, the liberal racial policies were insufficient to grapple fully with the pervasiveness and the depth and intensity of American racism. Their basic claim, and I think, by the way, it was a good claim. Their basic claim was that American racism is more central, more deeply embedded in American life than most people perceived, including liberals. And I think there was a lot of strength to that proposition. But then they also took on some other propositions with which I was in very strong disagreement. So I think it's perfectly fine to say that racism is a force in American life that is deeper, more pervasive, more stubborn, more resilient than I think people often understand, often perceive, but then Some of the folks in critical race theory push further. One of the propositions that some of the people in critical race theory took was the proposition that America was doomed to always be a country that would be governed according to the dictates of white supremacy. Derek Bell, who was a colleague of mine and a friend of mine, took that position. He talked about the permanence of racism in American life. And he took the position that the various changes that had been wrought in American life were really, you know, mainly cosmetic. They didn't amount to a whole lot. I mean, Derek Bell took the position, you know, the second Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, Well, yeah, it made changes, but at the end of the day, black people were still, after the Second Reconstruction, were still in a position of almost, I don't know, some of them would even say neo-slavery. Well, I think that's ridiculous. The Second Reconstruction changed a lot. And as for neo-slavery, neo-slavery, what are you talking about? A black American was president of the United States between the years 2008 and 2016. I mean, what are we talking about here? There's been a tremendous change, and I think people ought to understand that. Now, am I saying that everything is peachy keen and all right? No. The United States is still, to a very large extent, still a pigmentocracy, but that doesn't mean that a lot hasn't changed. A lot has. So I disagree with certain tenets of critical race theory and have been very outspoken in my disagreement. There's another one, by the way, I need to mention because we've talked so much in our discussion about freedom of speech, freedom to teach, freedom of listening. Another big problem that I've had with some of the people who talk of themselves as critical race theory people has to do with their attitude towards freedom, freedom of speech. Some critical race theory people think that the American legal system is wrong in the latitude that it gives to what they call hate speech or the latitude that it gives to what they would view as racist beliefs. Some of the people who associate themselves with critical race theory think that racist beliefs ought to be expunged with the aid of state power if need be. Well, I'm against that. And I think we are at a moment, an ironic moment, in which actually it's the right wing that has embraced some of the ideas that were championed by some of the people who call themselves critical race theorists. They say, oh, we ought to expunge hate speech. Well, the right wing is saying this critical race theory, that's hate speech, so let's expunge it. And so I, you know, again, I've been very outspoken in my criticism of some of the illiberal dimensions of critical race theory. So I've been a critic of certain features of critical race theory. I have applauded certain features of critical race theory. Critical race theory, there's some aspects of it that I think have been useful. There's some aspects of it that I think have been profoundly wrong-headed. So that's where I am. And I certainly, above all, I certainly am against any efforts to remove it from the intellectual universe. It is a part of our intellectual universe. People ought to know about it, and people ought to debate it, and people ought to be free to make up their minds to conclude what they will about the strengths and weaknesses of critical race theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we'll talk about the pessimistic and the optimistic perspective on race in the history of the 20th century in America. I think you have very interesting perspectives there. But before that, I'd love to look at the current moment. And you had a conversation with Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter. From there, it became clear to me, I think John made clear how important to the conversation about race is policing in today's society, that that's where a lot of African Americans feel is sort of the pinnacle of racism sits, the people that believe there's still racism in America, there's still a lot of racism in America, that's where it is. To what degree do you think there's widespread institutional racism in policing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, my first book was a book called Race, Crime, and the Law. 1997. 1997, wow. Time flies. Time flies. Unfortunately, unfortunately, The impetus behind that book stands. That book was propelled by a sense that with respect to the administration of criminal justice, African Americans are feel deeply aggrieved, and they feel deeply aggrieved with good reason. And they feel deeply aggrieved with good reason in at least two dimensions. On the one hand, on the one hand, African Americans suffer from underprotection. And in fact, in that book, the central theme of that book was that black Americans suffer from underprotection. If you take a look at the broad, you know, the sort of the broad trajectory of American history and ask yourself, you know, in what way have black Americans been most oppressed? Well, Take a look at the antebellum period, period before the abolition of slavery. Before the abolition of slavery, in the locales where most black people resided, namely the slave states, in a lot of those areas, question, was there a crime called the murder of a black person? Answer, for a long period, the answer was no. There might've been a tort, you know, of a white person killed the slave, killed a slave. That person could be sued because they had injured the property of another and would have to pay money for that. But had they committed a crime? Answer, no. In the antebellum period, were black women protected against the crime of rape? In most states, the answer was no. There was no such crime. Let's go to after. You know, slavery is abolished. Thank God. Slavery is abolished. Then, let's see, what happens? So we hear lynching, lynching. From 1890 until, let's say, 1930. Well, in 1890, there was probably, I would say, there was probably, on average, a lynching every day in the United States, well over 300 lynchings. It goes down, that was the case in the 1890s, probably the first decade of the 20th century, and then it starts going down. What was lynching about? Lynching was about black people being executed outside the law. Did the legal system do anything about that? Answer, no. You know, show me, show me cases in which people were prosecuted criminally for engaging in lynching. You come up in most places with a null set. Black people suffered the underprotection of the law. Do black people still suffer the underprotection of the law? The answer is yes. And people talk about the Kerner Commission Report, 1968. Black people were asked, you know, with respect to the police, what's your main complaint? In many places, the main complaint was, we don't have police protection. You know, when things happen to us, when our houses are burgled, when our businesses are encroached upon by robbers, when our businesses are robbed, when we're assaulted, you know, nothing happens. The police protect white people, they don't protect us. Under protection. Our society right now, if you take a look at the statistics, who is most liable to be raped, robbed, the victim of assault, what have you? Black people. I mean, and it's not even close. Under protection. So that's one way in which the administration of criminal justice harms black people by not doing what government is supposed to do, which is protect us. 14th Amendment, you know. equal protection, I underline protection, of the law. So that was a big theme of race, crime, and the law. Now, second thing, second, and this is the thing that gets most attention, and it's important. I think that the underprotection story does not get enough attention, but then there's a second story. The second story is that black people have historically and still today Black people are subjects of invidious racial discrimination when it comes to police action. Walking down the street, walking down the street, you have a black person who's, let's say, 20 years old, you have a white person who's 20 years old. Let's make them men. Both just walking down the street. And the question, attitude of the police towards these two. And attitude is a complicated thing. It can show itself in various ways. It can show itself in a look, It can show itself in who gets the look. Black person's walking down the street or running down the street. White person's walking down the street or running down the street. What happens with respect to the police? Let's suppose that who gets the second look? Who is followed? who is detained for a moment?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, some of it is just on a small tangent, I apologize to interrupt, but attitude is an interesting one because a lot of it, a lot of the interaction doesn't show up in the data. So detained, for example, starts showing up in the data, but before then, the second look, the third look, the first look, this is where the gray area of conversation happens because Very much so. Culture and society happens in the stuff that doesn't often show up in the data." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, yep. So I tell ya, this really came home to me several years ago. I was in New York City, and it was at a time when There was a lot of discussion over the- Stop and frisk. Stop and frisk, basically, racial profiling on the street. I was walking, I was in Harlem. I'm walking down the street. And frankly, the police weren't bothering me. I'm just walking, the police weren't bothering me, but I'm of a certain age. I did notice, though, I was looking at the police and the way that the police attitude, it had to do with body posture, it had to do with, that's right, who got a second look, it had to, I noticed, I'm walking in the street, I'm walking in Harlem, there are white people in the street. Most of the people, though, were black. some Hispanic, the level of contempt, the level of animus, the level of unfriendliness that was pouring off the cop, the police, they didn't say anything. Nope, they didn't detain, they didn't say anything. It was palpable. I could feel the attitude that was being being directed at the young Black men. And the thing is, it's not as if this doesn't matter. It matters, because the way I saw it, these young Black men knew. They felt the contempt. that the police were shedding, and this was gonna have a consequence. The consequence it was gonna have is, let's imagine that the police did say, excuse me, what are you up to? Now, if you have been feeling this contempt, if you feel like the officer who was asking this question doesn't like you, doesn't know anything about you, but just doesn't like you on sight, you might answer in a certain sort of way. You're not going to give the cop the benefit of the doubt and basically think, well, you know, policeman's just, you know, asking me this, you know, probably just trying to make the neighborhood safe. Well, if that's your feeling, you know, policeman's just asking me this, trying to make the neighborhood safe, well, officer, the reason why I'm here is such and such. And, you know, thanks for your service. That's one response. Another response is, I'm not going to tell you anything. You know, I'm not going to tell you anything. I know that you don't mean me any good. I'm not going to tell you anything. Am I free to leave? And then the cop, having heard that, then says something bad. You know, after five minutes, what do you have? You have an altercation on your hands. And I felt that, and that is part, and you're absolutely right, that's not written down. It doesn't get to court. It's there, but it's an important part of street life. It's an informal part of street life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it has ripple effects because that young black man will probably talk shit about that cop later that day, so the narrative persists, and then the cop will also talk shit, and then there's these narratives, and I think the contempt is such a powerful thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's so hard to disentangle because you're absolutely right, the young man, let's suppose that the story ends, quote, well. Right. He's gonna go and he's gonna be talking with his friends and he's gonna say, let me tell you what just happened to me. And his friends are gonna say, oh yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Let me tell you what happened to me. And for two hours this goes on. The anger, the feeling of humiliation, the feeling of aggrievement grows. It's disseminated, and that's part of what we have. But that's an important part of what we have, but it's even worse than that, because then you ask the question, what about things we do know? I know this from my teaching. This was brought up. You know, there was a lawsuit in New York City. And notice, I didn't say, you know, I didn't say Birmingham, Alabama. I didn't say Atlanta, Georgia. I didn't say Tallahassee, Florida. I didn't say, you know, the Deep South. I didn't say Montana. I didn't say Idaho. New York City, you know, cosmopolitan place, metropolis. In New York City, the police were challenged with respect to their policies. A judge wrote a very lengthy opinion, and the facts were rolled out, and the facts were really quite horrifying. There were black men who had been stopped many, many times. It wasn't just once. Over and over and over again. under circumstances in which they ought not have been stopped. And this has real consequences. It doesn't just show up here, though, of course. It also shows up in other places with respect to the administration of justice. And we still have a big problem. Now, you mentioned the police. If you ask yourself, who are the state agents that are most consequential? The police. I mean, you walking down the street, what other agents have guns on them? What other agents are authorized by the law to shoot you under certain circumstances. It's the police. The police are the most consequential agents of the state that most people interact with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, there's, to push back a little bit, consequential in a physical sense, but if we return to the power of the psychological sense of contempt, I would say store clerks and stuff like that can also be a source of contempt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're not agents of the state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but if we look at the landscape of contempt, which throughout the 20th century, or the bus, right? You can experience the same kind of contempt in other aspects of society, but yes, the cops have consequences." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The policeman or the police person is a person walking down the street with a gun. Gun, yeah. And if you think about the way in which the law the extent to which the police are authorized to use their force, the police have extraordinary, you know, extraordinary authority. You know, you're driving your car and you're speeding. The police could arrest you right then and there. and take you to jail. That's an extraordinary power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But they also have, because of that, the leverage, just one human to another, they have more leverage to be an asshole and to show contempt to you. They certainly do. To be the lesser, to lean into the lesser aspects of their nature as all humans can, just to be an asshole, to show contempt. You had a bad day, they have the more freedom to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and that's why police officers are very important. I recognize, I mean, I know police officers, they have a very difficult job. A very important job, very important. Again, remember what I talked about under protection. I want the police to protect me. I want the police to protect me from the rapist, the robber. So I, you know, the police, I'm with the police. We need good policing. But we need good policing. And for good policing, we need accountability. And one of the scandals, one of the just absolute scandals of American law is the extent to which the police are not held accountable. It's absolutely remarkable the degree to which American law fails to properly hold police accountable. They have an important job, a difficult job. I want them to be very well paid. As far as I'm concerned, police should make more money. They should be, given the importance of what they do, they should have more respect, more prestige, more money. With all of that, they should be held accountable. and the way things are now, they're not held accountable, and every day we see the consequences in our newspapers or just talking with people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you make of the different perspective on this to bring up a person that I'll probably speak with, Heather McDonald? who wrote a book called War on Cops and will often bring up the stuff that does show up in the data to show the disproportionate amount of homicides committed by African Americans. And we'll also justify racial profiling on that basis in stop and frisk programs. And we'll also bring up things like the Ferguson effect, saying that because of this pushback and all the stuff we've been saying about police, in those areas, the police will step back and crime will increase." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was in one debate with her. And one of the things that I said is, it was a debate that was sponsored by the Federalist Society, conservative legal group. These were conservative law students at Harvard Law School. She made a presentation and they asked me to respond. And one of the things that I said was, when we're talking about the police, I'm disappointed with the reaction of some of my conservative colleagues, and I would consider her to be one of my conservative colleagues, because what are the sort of, what are some of the important precepts of conservatives? One very important precept of conservatives, limited government, limited government. Conservatives talk about the tendency of government to overreach itself and governmental agents to overreach themselves. And I say, you're right, you're right, right on. Why is it that you somehow forget that when you're talking about the police? When you're talking about the police, you seem to be unaware of this tendency that is so much in your consciousness and other places. But now when you're talking about the police, you make it seem as though other people are being paranoid. when they talk about the danger of overreach. We need to be very careful about the danger of overreach. Another thing with respect to the police, what to conservatives, transparency in government. You're right, you're absolutely right. We need transparency in government. So why is it that so often when we're talking about policing, Why is it that conservatives actually embrace police unions and are the enemies of transparency? Why is it that you want to prevent the citizenry from knowing that officers so-and-so has, you know, there have been 10 incidents in the last year in which citizens have complained about officer so-and-so. Don't you think that the citizenry ought to know that? Why is it that you want to keep that under wraps? So overreach, transparency, the tendency or, you know, the problem of governmental agent corruption, Why is it that those sorts of things are forgotten about when some conservatives, by the way, not all conservatives, not all conservatives, there's some conservatives who have stuck, and appropriately so, to their guns and have said, A, We need to make sure that the police stay in their lane. We need to make sure that the police do not overstep constitutional bounds. We need to be, we need to insist on transparency. There are some conservatives who have taken that line and I salute them, but there are a lot of conservatives, and I would say Heather McDonald was one of them, who all of a sudden become just, you know, totally uncritical status when they're talking about the police." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the overstepping, overreach, the lack of transparency. Of course, we see this kind of stuff in foreign policy as well, which is starting military conflicts, and a lot of the supporters, at least with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, were conservatives and hawks and so on. So there's a lot of hypocrisy in terms of principles and so on. But maybe one question is, in this discussion about racism and policing, there was a lot of cops that might listen to this and feel like they're not being, their profession is not being respected, they're not being heard, not being respected to the difficulty of the problem they're facing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And- Can I just interrupt, Jack? Yes. Remember a few moments ago, I mean, if I were in charge of things, if I were in charge of things, I'd pay police more, in fact, much more than they receive. I do, police have a very difficult job, extraordinarily difficult job. I mean, for one thing, you know, sort of maintaining the law. The law, that's a very complicated thing, the law. That's not an easy thing. I mean, I teach law. I spend a lot of hours with very smart people trying to understand the law. Very difficult. So here we expect people to understand the law at the same time that they are grappling with people, some of whom are violent. It's very difficult. I respect police officers. And I said, we need police officers. You did not hear me say, by the way, so let's get down to brass tacks. You did not hear me say, defund the police, did you? In fact, to the contrary, I said, defund? Actually, I want more funds for the police. I wanna hold them accountable. I understand the difficulty of their job. I respect the police. I want people to respect the police. I also want the police to respect civilians and demand that they do. I am not a police abolitionist. Far from it. Far from it. Again, we need good policing. For good policing, we need good people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To what degree It's almost philosophically, maybe practically, do you think police should be doing racial profiling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Profiling in general." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a very difficult philosophical, moral, human question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so first thing we need to do, And here we get back to the early part of our conversation because we focus so much on, first part of it, a word. Here we have another word, profiling. Question, what is racial profiling? Now, here we have, in the weeds, we have people talking past one another. I've been in conversations with police officers in debates and we talk past one another because we are defining racial profiling very differently. If you ask, I've been in conversations with police officers and they say, oh, I'm totally against racial profiling. And I say, well, you know, sir, what do you mean by racial profiling? And here's what they say. Racial profiling is when police officers act against somebody wholly on the basis of race. That is, that gets rid of the issue because, you know, most police officers don't act against anyone wholly on the basis of race. you could have the most racist police officer, and that police officer is not going to act adversely against the 90-year-old black woman walking down the street with a cane, okay? So it's always, if you define racial profiling that way, you're getting rid of the issue. The issue is, the proper issue is this. Should the police be able to act against someone taking race into account as a factor? So let's imagine that a black person who's 25 years old is walking down the street right next to a white person who's 25 years old. Some people would say, you know what? Under those circumstances, it's OK for the police officer to give two looks at the black person and only one look at the white person. Why? Because the statistics tell us that the black 25-year-old, there's much more risk of that person acting in an unlawful way if you take a look at, you know, crime statistics and ask the question, um, uh, with respect to, you know, homicide, with respect to robbery, with respect to various, you know, crimes, uh, what's the, what, what is there a, is there, is there a difference between the white 25 year old and the black 25 year old with respect to certain crimes? The answer is in certain places, the answer is, yeah, there is a difference. And there is a greater risk that the black 25-year-old has engaged in various forms of criminality. I'm not, you know, that, okay. Under those circumstances, what do I say? Should the police officer therefore be allowed to take action vis-a-vis the black person as opposed, you know, as against the white person? My answer is no. I'm fully willing to concede, let's concede for the point of discussion that there is more risk. There might be, there might be. But for reasons of constructing the sort of society I want, we should not empower agents of the state to act towards certain people in a way that's adverse to them. Let me try to break this down in a little different way. Let's go back to, let's talk about what happens when you want to get on an airplane. 9-11 wasn't all that long ago. It was a while ago, but it wasn't all that long ago. And this very issue came up with respect to the profiling of Muslims. And there were some people who said, well, geez, in the aftermath of 9-11, profiling of Muslims makes sense. No hard feelings, but the 11 people who were on those planes were all Muslims. Now, there is a rationale, you could just simply say. It's not prejudice, it's not animus. It's not invidious, it's just, you know, the facts take us this way. Well, the facts never take us this way. There are facts, and then there is our choice of how we want to respond to those facts. Now, you could respond by saying, well, we perceive Muslims to be more likely to do bad things on an airliner. You could respond in that way. On the other hand, you could say, no, we want a society in which people do not have to grapple with prejudice on the basis of their religion or on the basis of their race. And to deal with that, we are gonna demand, we're gonna demand that agents of the state act towards people in the same way. And so if that means that everybody getting on the airplane, before they get on the airplane, has to open up their luggage, and it slows things down, but everybody has to open up their luggage. I would prefer that over a system in which we focus on people who are Muslim. And one of the reasons, and I'm gonna bring this back to the racial thing, one of the reasons why I wanna insist upon that is because if we all have to open up our luggage, what that means is we're all paying a tax for more security. And we're all likely to ask ourselves, hmm, do we wanna pay this tax? Whereas if we focus simply on the Muslims and allow the Muslims to be the only ones who are sort of paying the tax, We'll force that on them. Same in the black person, white person, 25 years old, walking down the street. Do we want to impose a racial tax on the black 25-year-old? Some people would say yes. I say that's a mistake. Black people aren't stupid. They know that they're paying this tax. It is a violation of, it seems to me, the rules that we ought to want to have to govern our society. I say spread the costs, make the police deal with everybody the same, and don't allow a situation to develop in which a group of people can accurately say, we're paying more of a cost than these other people over here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a better avoiding profile is, while it may have costs on security in the short term, in the long term, it's the embodiment of the principles that all men are created equal, so it has a much bigger benefit in representing the fairness that is at the core of the ideals of this country. Let me ask a big philosophical question. Why do you think there is racism in the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, now you've, okay, fine. Now you've asked me a question which I throw up my hands and I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Will there always be? Why is there tribalism? Are humans always finding this way to divide ourselves? And how bad of a problem is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a huge problem. I don't, you know, I mean, I don't, I'm not gonna pretend that I know enough to grapple in a satisfactory way with such a question. I mean, to really grapple with that question, one really has to have a, you know, very broad knowledge base in which they can make comparisons. I mean, the world's a big place. Now, from the little bit I know about the world, I read, I read as much as I can. I'm a very privileged character. I mean, I live in a university, so I'm reading constantly and listening constantly. From what I gather, the problem of divided societies is a problem that is worldwide. And it seems as though human ingenuity is such that humans will find something to divide over. It might be texture of hair. It might be complexion of skin. political ideology, if the texture of skin is the same, it'll then be, well, you know, you wear these sorts of clothes, you speak in this sort of way, Um, you believe this, whereas I believe that. I mean, it seems like a human ingenuity is such, they will, humans will find some way of distinguishing themselves, and then they seem to want to embellish the distinction. It's not just a distinction. It's not just, you believe this and I believe this. Okay, that makes the world interesting. You know, let's talk. about what you believe and what I believe, no. It's usually associated with you believe this, I believe this, of course my belief is superior to your belief, and I wanna put you down. And now we're headed towards war." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The interesting thing is if I were to step outside of this whole thing from an alien perspective visiting Earth, I think America is one of the greatest, if not the greatest countries in the history of human civilization. And I think that the line between white and black, the racial struggle is the thing that in part made it a great nation. There's something about the division and the way you alleviate that division through the struggle for human rights that makes for a great nation. And so it's interesting that the division is almost the fuel for the greatness, for our discovery of what it means to be human, what it means to be, or what justice means. And it's interesting that it seems like there's this struggle that you're elucidating now, but that struggle itself is our search, a man's search for meaning and justice and freedom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's something to that. As you were speaking, I was immediately thinking of The person who most jumped to mind was the great Frederick Douglass. So, I mean, here you have a person who, in my view, is one of the great people in the history of the world. And one of the things that ironically enabled him to become one of the great people of the world, he was born into slavery. His overcoming was the very thing that, in a sense, made him this larger than life figure. And I think there's something to it. I will say this, because a minute ago you mentioned optimism and pessimism. And I'd say in the last few years, my feeling about the United States has changed. and it's changed in a somber way. For most of my life, for most of my life, I've been in the optimistic camp with respect to my view of American race relations. The optimistic camp, that was the camp, that's the camp that believes we shall overcome. That's Martin Luther King's camp. I mean, Martin Luther King, hours before he's killed, I've been to the mountaintop. I might not get there with you, but I've glimpsed the promised land. Optimism. Frederick Douglass would be in that tradition. There would be other people, wonderful, good people, who would be in that tradition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you, sorry to interrupt, put in the pessimist camp, would you put Malcolm X in there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, in the pessimistic camp, the pessimistic camp is the more interesting camp. I mean, ideologically, I mean, it is, it's the more interesting camp, because in the pessimistic camp, you have, I mean, if I was gonna list some of my pessimists, pessimist number one, Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, the author, you know, principal author, Declaration of Independence, he was also the author of Notes on the State of Virginia. And he said in Notes on the State of Virginia, basically, we shall not overcome, He talked, he said, you know, the black people will always know that their forebears were enslaved, and they will always be resentful of that, always be aggrieved by that. Jefferson did not think that we would ever have in the United States a multiracial democracy. He was very critical of slavery. Now, he was a hypocrite. He had slaves, he sold slaves. He was terrible in that way, but he did understand that slavery was horrible, but he did not want to free the slaves for a variety of reasons, and one reason was because he thought that it would be impossible to have a society in which blacks and whites were equal neighbors. He was thoroughly pessimistic. Another pessimist, Alexis de Tocqueville, thoroughly pessimistic. Who were some of the other pessimists? Abraham Lincoln, pessimistic. That's why he was so interested in colonization. He basically said, you know, I don't like slavery, but blacks and whites are not gonna be able to share the United States. Maybe the best we can do is just, you know, put blacks, ship blacks someplace else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you elaborate on that? I think people would be surprised to hear that you will put Abraham Lincoln in the pessimist camp." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, Abraham Lincoln's thoroughly pessimistic. He believed, he was anti-slavery, but he did not believe that blacks and whites would be able to share the United States together, and he was always very interested, therefore, in colonization. Even during the Civil War, he was interested in, you know, maybe all black people, would all black people be interested in maybe going to Panama? Would they be interested in going someplace else? Because, you know, Lincoln was aware of how racist white people were, including himself. And he did not think that black people and white people would be able to share the United States. Now, there's a black nationalist tradition. You mentioned Malcolm X. Well, before Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey. My father, my father was a thoroughgoing pessimist. His view was A, the United States was born as a white man's country. It's gonna remain a white man's country. And that's the way it is. He was thoroughly pessimistic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned, just a brief aside about your dad, that when you moved from South Carolina to Washington, D.C., and you asked him why, his response to you was, because either a white man was going to kill me or I was going to kill a white man. Yes. So he saw race as an important line that divided people in the United States." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He certainly did, and he thought that the line, my father did not, My father had passed away before Obama was elected. I would have loved to have talked with my dad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think he would have said? And you've written, you wrote a book about the Obama presidency." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I did, I did. And I never, what would my father have said? My father would have been delighted. My father would have been happy about his election. I do think, though, I do think that my father would have said, I'm happy that Barack Obama has been elected. Hold on to your seats. Let's see how the white people respond." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he would have predicted Donald Trump." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that my father, I think that in 2016, I think that in 2016. He would have said, I told you. Yes. Yes. I think that in 2016, my father would have said, all of you people who are talking about, I don't know what's happened to America and how could this have happened? And you know, no, I think my father would have said, this is America being America. And what has happened is that America has been put off kilter by a black family being in the white house. It is deranged millions of white people, and now this is coming home to Ruth. So I think my father would have absolutely said in 2016, I told you so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In 2016, as you're saying, is the reason that you have at least dipped your toe outside of the optimist camp into the pessimist camp." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I wanna be careful here, and I don't wanna," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't give up on the optimist camp." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't wanna, I don't. You're right. I don't wanna give up on the optimist camp. I don't. I have been, my optimism has definitely been dampened. It has definitely been tested. I am certainly, no, I am not, I am not as triumphalist as I once was. I am not as indignant as I once was in my criticism of pessimists, but at this moment as we speak, am I more in the optimist camp than I'm in the pessimist camp? I'm still probably more in the optimist camp, but my optimism has been dampened. But as I speak, I have to say the following things, and I'd say the following things if my father, but again, whom I revere, great man, but if my father was sitting here with us, I would say, listen, Pop, it's absolutely true that the country is more racist than I had thought. That is true. It's also true, Pop, that The vice president of the United States, as we speak, is a black woman. As we speak, it's true that the secretary of defense, now, secretary of defense, the secretary of defense is the head of the Pentagon. The secretary of defense knows where the button is, okay? This is not a little, you know, this is not a small out-of-the-way thing. The Secretary of Defense is a Black man. There are a slew of Black generals. There have been Black Secretaries of State. There are Black people who are the heads of police forces. There are Black mayors. There are Black people who are the heads of some of our foremost foundations. The president-elect of Harvard University is a Black woman. And we could go on and on and on and on. When I was growing up, when I was, let's say, 10 years old, we got a magazine, Ebony magazine, every month. And in Ebony magazine, you could turn to the middle of Ebony, and they would have black firsts. The first black person to do this, the first black person to do this. You could read Ebony, and frankly, I could tell you all of those firsts. I knew their names. Now, I read stuff, you know, the leading cadet, the chief cadet at the United States Naval Academy. I'm reading, I'm reading, then I see a picture. Black woman. I didn't know that. Back in the day, I would have known that. Now, Has the United States changed? Yes. Is there racism? Yes. Is it a substantial force in American life? Regrettably, tragically, yes. Has the United States changed? Yes. And again, if we want to go international, the United States is not the only country that is a country that has wrestled with deep division. You think about, I don't know, think about India. Think about the United Kingdom. Think about practically any large nation state. They've all grappled with divisions. If one asks about the United States and the race question, and one puts on the table that in 1865... Now, when I talk with students, I say 1865, they think, oh my God, isn't that when dinosaurs roamed? No, it wasn't when dinosaurs roamed. 1865, frankly, is not all that long ago. In 1865, The great mass of black people in the United States had recently been released from chattel slavery. The great mass of black people in the United States in 1865 were illiterate. Now, I mean, it's absolutely, it's an absolutely extraordinary story. And so one of the difficulties I have at this moment is wrapping my head around two stories that are in such tension with one another. One is the continuing story of racism, which is an awful story. But the other story is a story that is encapsulated in the title of a great book of history by John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom. And those are two stories in American life, and it takes an awful lot to put your mind around both stories, and I'm trying to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, as an optimist, I think you put more value to the overcoming side of the story, the overcoming of hardship, the overcoming of slavery, of discrimination. Well, since you mentioned illiteracy from, what is it, 150 years ago, let me ask you about affirmative action. You wrote a book on the topic, titled For Discrimination, Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law. First, what is affirmative action? And maybe you could talk about what your view is on it today." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. Well, affirmative action refers to racial affirmative action, because there's various sorts of affirmative action. You can have affirmative action for veterans. You can have affirmative action for in-state residents. Let's suppose you have a school, you know, the University of, you know, blah, blah, blah, and we're gonna, we're gonna, we want to reach, we're gonna give a, reach out a hand to boost help. the people who live within the state. We're gonna have a boost for veterans. We're gonna have a boost for, you know, for women. We're gonna have a boost for men in certain circumstances. Well, the most, the type of affirmative action that gets most attention, and that's worth noting as well, There's lots of different sorts of affirmative action, but when you say affirmative action, the type of affirmative action that immediately people are thinking about is racial affirmative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems like race is at the core of this American experiment in every part of its culture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Bingo. Bingo. Why is it that we, again, there's various ways in which institutions reach out to help various sectors of our population. Why is it that this is the one that generates all of the pulling out of hair and gnashing of teeth? We can put that to the side for a moment. Racial affirmative action refers to efforts in which institutions reach out to provide assistance to racial minorities. Now, the reaching out can happen in different ways. A light form of affirmative action might be reaching out in terms of recruiting, making a special effort to make sure that young people, let's say, in racial minority neighborhoods know about your college. That's recruitment. On the other hand, racial affirmative action might take a stronger form and might take the form of saying, okay, we have a competition and we think that there will be too few racial minority kids who do well enough in this competition to be admitted to our school. So what we're gonna do is we're going to, in various ways, give a boost to the minority kids. If it comes down to you have two kids, they both, I don't know, have 99 on the test, There's one place left. We only have one spot left. Two kids. One's a black kid, one's a white kid. They both got 99. We're gonna give it to the black kid. Why? Well, black kid. All there is to it. A black kid, we wanna, you know, maybe, and then our theory, you know, maybe our theory is that black people have been done wrong in the United States, and we want our institution to contribute to making amends. That might be a theory. Another theory might be, you know, we think that we'll have a more interesting student body, we'll have a better student body, better discussion if there are more black kids on campus. Unless we make a special effort to bring more black kids on campus, our student body will be overwhelmingly monoracial. We'll just have white kids, a few Asian kids, a few Latino kids, if there are no black kids here. I don't know, it'll be lacking an important aspect of American life, some sort of, you know, the so-called diversity story. So anyway, there are various theories. Some are grounded, like I said, in reparative justice. Some might be granted in distributive justice. So for instance, when people say nowadays, we want a cabinet, we want a team, we want a student body that looks like America, that might be a distributive justice theory for why you want affirmative action. Unless we reach out and give a boost to certain groups, they won't be here. and we want a campus that looks like America. And we won't have a campus that looks like America unless we give a special boost to, I don't know, the Latino kids, or unless we give a special boost to Black applicants. So reparative justice, distributive justice, or Third, diversity. We just want to have an interesting student body, and to have an interesting student body, we want kids from a wide array of places. We think that that'll make for a better campus, more interesting campus. Those are three justifications, all of which, however, are justifications for in a competition, giving a special boost to some people based on their race." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's your sense? Can you make the case for affirmative action and can you make the case against it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I can make the case for and I can make the case against. The case for, I won't spend much time on this. Like I said, there are three main justifications. Your audience should know that One, the justification that actually led to affirmative action is a justification that you don't hear about in the courts because the courts have said that that justification is insufficient. So the real justification behind affirmative action was, you know, in the late 1960s, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Revolution, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, There was a feeling that, well, OK, fine. We're not discriminating against Black people anymore. But Black people have been disadvantaged by the discrimination that has been put upon them. And this discrimination that was put upon them has disabled them. And so they go into competitions, and it's unfair. Yeah, they score less well on the standardized tests, you know, surprise, surprise, what the heck? They went to schools in which they got the leavings of the white folks. You know, the white folks gave the black folks the old textbooks. That's what the black kids read. The white kids read the newest textbooks, on and on and on. So, reparative justice. We're gonna try to repair the scars left by past racial injustice. And so it's sort of an effort to overcome the vestiges of past misdeeds. That was one justification for affirmative action. And frankly, I think that's the justification that has always been the predominant justification, whether people owned up to it or not. But that's one justification. The distributive justice justification is there. Like I say, you know, people, we want an integrated America. We want an America that looks like America. In that justification, legitimacy is sometimes mentioned. So for instance, people will say things like, well, you know, if we're going to, in the armed forces, you can't have an armed forces in which the, you know, the sort of the, the, the people on the ground are, you have a lot of people on the ground who are people of color, but none of the people calling the shots, none of the generals, none of the main, you know, colonels are people of color. No. And then, you know, that, the people on the ground are not gonna stand for that. So for purposes of legitimation, we need to, for purposes of buy-in, we need to have a situation in which people get the sense that even if they're sort of low down, they're still part of the story, they're part of the team. So that's part of the sort of, you know, I don't know, distributive justice notion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there's power to that? I mean, do you think there's value, there's correctness to that kind of idea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's some." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because for the application process for different universities, I think that there's probably a driving narrative, justification for, Well, affirmative action, I don't know where we put DEI efforts, because they overlap, but they're not perfectly overlapping." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The reason that the school, so yeah, as you know, there is a case, we'll know about it, it'll be announced sometime in the next month. Well, month, month and a half. It's a case of the Supreme Court of the United States. in which the Affirmative Action Program at Harvard and the Affirmative Action Program at the University of North Carolina are being challenged. Most people think, including me, that the Supreme Court of the United States is going to limit if not totally seek to abolish affirmative action. So this is a very burning issue. As things currently stand, my university and other universities embrace affirmative action on the third ground, the diversity ground. And what they say is we need affirmative action because affirmative action is good for pedagogical reasons. Now frankly, do I think there's something to that? I think there's a little something to that with respect to some subjects. I don't think that's what's really going on for the most part. I mean, if that's what's really going on, why don't we have more foreign students? Why isn't there a greater effort to bring in more foreign students? Why isn't there a greater effort to bring in more, I don't know, religious fundamentalists? Why isn't there a greater effort to bring in, and you could just name various groups that are, you hardly ever see them on campus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think this kind of effort of driving towards diversity is rigorous enough?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's often pretextual. I think, frankly, the real reason has to do with the belief, and I think it's a good belief. I associate myself with the belief. It's just that because of the legal rules, the authorities can't say this belief out loud but it's still the case that a lot of institutions want to help American society overcome its racial past. That's the real animating force. Now this thing about we'll have better classroom discussions, some discussions, I mean, with some subjects, yeah, listen, I'm an ignoramus when it comes to physics. My sense of it is, however, that if you're talking about physics, you're talking about physics, and frankly, it doesn't much matter in terms of mastering physics what the demographics of that classroom are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You either know physics or you don't. The interesting thing I've noticed since doing this podcast is one way it does matter, it's really lonely when you do a thing and you don't see somebody that looks like you doing that thing. And it's such a seemingly stupid thing. Why does it matter if there's another person that looks like you in this very shallow sense? But it seems to matter to people. And when I talk to, for example, women on this podcast, a lot of women reach out saying how inspiring that is. And that's interesting, right? I think we're still human, and we see people that look like us, and this kind of narrow, shallow definition of diversity still matters." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you've made a good point and maybe so. So let's go back to the physics. I mean, let's suppose that under one scenario, there's a classroom and a kid sticks his head in, a black kid sticks his head in the classroom and doesn't see anybody else black there and has to make a quick decision and says, yeah, you know, nah, this ain't for me. versus they stick their head in the classroom, they see a smattering of other black people in the classroom, they say, oh, let me try this. And then they try it, and it turns out, damn it, they're Albert Einstein. So to that extent, I can see under that scenario, maybe it does matter. So I'll have to recalibrate. Still, those are the three leading justifications for affirmative action. You ask me, where do I stand with respect to affirmative action? Oh no, before we get to that, are there criticisms? The answer is yes. There are criticisms of affirmative action. Affirmative action is a policy like any policy. Any policy is gonna have some downsides to it. And affirmative action's no different. Does affirmative action have some downsides? Yes, it does have some downsides. What are they? Well, let me mention a couple. One, Stigma, stigma. So if you have an institution that says that it reaches out to give a boost to certain people on a racial basis, there are gonna be people who observe that and who are gonna be thinking to themselves, hmm, If so-and-so is here and they were given a special boost, doesn't that mean that they were not as proficient as the other people who are here and who did not have that boost? So if they are not as proficient, that means that they might not be as good. They might not be as up to snuff. Is that part of our affirmative action world? Yes, it's part of our affirmative action world. Yes. I'm a professor at Harvard Law School. One of the subjects I teach is contracts. Actually, that's probably the subject I most enjoy teaching. I think I most enjoy writing about racial conflict and the legal system. But as far as teaching, I most enjoy teaching contracts. Well, on that very first day, On the very first day, when I, you know, the 80 students come, especially the first year students, they're nervous, I show up. I'm quite sure that there's some students there who are thinking, okay, well, is this guy as good as my other teachers, because I know that institutions like Harvard have made a special effort to bring in people like this guy, Kennedy. Is he as good? Well, I mean, I'm sorry if you have an affirmative action regime, People are gonna think that. And are they crazy to think that? No, they're not crazy to think that. No, that's a perfectly logical thing for somebody to think. Does it have an effect on me as the teacher? Yeah, it actually does have an effect on me, sure. I'm aware that some people are thinking that. It doesn't, I'm not, you know, it doesn't, It doesn't make me shake in my boots. Am I aware of it? Yeah, I'm aware of it. Does it have an effect? Yeah, it probably does have an effect. It probably does. It probably makes me redouble my efforts because I don't want anybody to think justifiably that I'm less able than my colleagues. So, you know, it's funny, when I was growing up, my father used to tell me over and over again, Randy, tie, tie, you lose. Okay, brother, let me just tell you that. And he was telling me that because when he was, you know, in an earlier time, tie, tie, you lose, it was, you know, if it's even and there's a choice to be made, the white person is gonna get the benefit of the doubt. Now, under affirmative action, there's been a switcheroo. Oftentimes, it's the black person who gets the benefit of the doubt, but I'm still in a situation which- To work hard. Yes! To avoid the stigmatization that is imposed by affirmative action. But is that stigma there? Yes, it's there. It is there. I'll tell you another way in which it comes up from a student's point of view. I'll never forget this. It was in my second year of law school. It was in tax class. We had a very famous tax teacher, wonderful tax teacher. On the very first day of class, Professor Bittker, wonderful man, wonderful teacher, Boris Bittker. called on, the very first person he called on was a black student. I remember this as if it were yesterday, called on a black student. It was a black woman student. And I remember when he called on her, I remember just, I felt as if the room got quieter. Really, I felt as if the room got quieter and I know there was a real tenseness within me. He didn't call on me, he called on somebody else. It was a black woman student. And I felt different. I felt as if I was, I felt as if I was somehow at issue. I felt as if my place, I felt as if my status was to some small degree at issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the positive direction or the negative?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just at issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At issue." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so, all of this is happening really quickly. He calls on the student. This is happening in seconds. And she responded, and she responded really strongly. It was clear she, he asked her a question, she answered the question, she answered the question, you know, beautiful, I mean, you know, very strong, comprehensive, wonderful response. Now you might say, okay, well, you know, smart student, okay, fine, next. After class, after class, I went up to her, and I clearly remember this, I said, That was great, thank you. Why? Because I'm a black student, predominantly white institution, Yale Law School, and I felt some of the, again, affirmative action, I felt some of the burden of this affirmative action stigma." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it was almost like a thank you for showing that we belong here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, perfect, boom. Yes, that's exactly what the situation, and by the way, I wasn't the only one. I wasn't being idiosyncratic. I wasn't the only one. There weren't many black people in that class, but all of us. And we laughed about it later. We laughed about it, but that was there. So there's the stigma issue, and some people have made a lot of this. Some people have really made a lot of the stigma issue. My attitude towards the stigma issue, yeah, it's there. Again, it's part of the situation, but I think that the benefits outweigh the burdens. But is that a burden? Yeah, that's a burden. What are some others? Resentment. Resentment in society, and that's a, you know, so in the fancy schools, and by the way, you know, remember when we're talking about affirmative action, most colleges and universities in the United States, there is no affirmative action issue because they're not selective. Hell, they'll take anybody who, you know, if you can pay, come on in. It's only a fairly small set of schools that are selective, but of course those are the most elite schools. Those are the schools that people most want to get into, and that's one of the reasons why we have all this fighting over those schools. Now, there's a whole, how many millions of people are there in America who have applied to various places, they didn't get in, And what do they say? The white person who applied to Harvard, applied to Yale, applied to Columbia, applied to Georgetown, applied to NYU, didn't get in. What do they say? I would have gotten in if it hadn't been for that racial affirmative action. They're resentful. You know, should they be resentful? No, they shouldn't be resentful, but they are resentful. Does that have a consequence? Yeah, it has a consequence. It has a consequence on how they act towards other people. It has a consequence on how they vote. It has a consequence. And you know, that's something. Are there other things? Yeah, and you know, in my book, I go through various I think that there is a certain sort of denialism that has accompanied the affirmative action debate. So because black people like myself want to avoid the stigmatizing burden of affirmative action, there's some people who, to deal with that, have said, oh, actually, there is no difference between the beneficiaries of affirmative action and the other kids. There is no difference. If the affirmative action kids got, let's say, a 500, and the other kid's got a 750, that doesn't make any difference. That's just BS. The only reason the kid who, you know, the 550 kid didn't get 750 is because the test asks all sorts of, you know, biased, culturally biased things like, you know, what is a yacht? Well, sorry. Yes, there is a difference. There's a 200 point difference. Does the difference matter? Yes, the difference matters. And by the way, if you don't know what a yacht is, you can know what a yacht is without owning a yacht, okay? And there's this denialism. that I think has really seeped into various conversations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That can have a slippery slope effect that's beyond just this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And we see it in various ways. So this attack on testing, it's not like I'm holding that some tests are not good tests. I think we should be skeptical of everything. But there are a lot of tests that, yeah, they tell us something, all right. They tell us who knows what. And there's some people who are really dead set against testing because they're dead set against anything that might show a gap. Well, I think, by the way, are there gaps? Yeah, there are gaps. And what we need to do is be cognizant of those gaps and do things to make it so that if there's a gap, if you're deficient, no shame in being deficient. Heck, I'm deficient about a lot of things. let's learn so that I catch up. But I think sometimes there've been people who've been afraid of even acknowledging the gaps." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of course, there's, I guess, a colleague of yours, Michael Sandel, with Tyranny and Merit. There's interesting, rigorous ways to kind of challenge ways, on the flip side of that, where obsessing with merit can go wrong also." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, you mentioned Michael Sandel. He's a wonderful colleague and he's a wonderful friend. I've known him a long time. I think he makes very important, arguments about meritocracy. I disagree with some of the points that he makes about meritocracy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you lean towards the importance of meritocracy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think that there are values in meritocracy extremely important that in fact you know, the movement from feudalism, the movement from status, the idea of, you know, I don't care who your father or mother was. I don't care from what part of town you come from. I don't care what your last name is. I don't care what color of your skin is. Show me what you can do. And then somebody sits down, okay, I'll show you what I can do. And they show it, you're in. I think there's a lot to that. And the impulse, the sentiments behind that, I resonate with that. I think that there's a lot there. What I wanna do is I wanna get rid of those features in society that deprive people of what you need to develop yourself. Sometimes those are psychological. Sometimes you're not around people who've done things that give you the idea that you can do things. I wanna get rid of that. But the idea of people... The idea, by the way, you know, distinguishing. You know, this is excellent. And the people who are excellent, you know, they're here. And then there are people who are good. Are they excellent? No, they're not excellent. They're good. I'm not gonna, you know, close my eyes to that distinction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and highlight that distinction, and yet at the same time, maintain a sense that their basic worth as a human being is equal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so to, you know, was it Run DMC, one of the rap groups? No. You know, we're all written down on the same list. Yeah. We're all written down on the same list. Yes, we're, you know, so I wanna recognize our fundamental humanity. I don't think that that, I think that one can recognize our fundamental humanity and one can also recognize, as far as I'm concerned, that we all collectively should make sure that we do all that we can to prevent people from sinking below a certain level and being in misery, all for that. But I wanna be careful about some of the attacks that I hear on meritocracy. So some of the people, including, again, I have all the respect in the world for Michael Sandel. He talks about the arrogance of the winners. Okay, I wanna be, I don't want the winners to be arrogant. That's right, luck has a lot to do with things. You didn't have any control over the circumstances in which you were born into. You were lucky that you were born healthy and that you were born with a well-working mind. You didn't have anything to do with that. That was pure luck. There's some people who don't have that luck. So don't be Mr. Big Stuff, OK? So I'm against that sort of arrogance. I'm entitled, as if I taught myself how to read. No, you didn't teach yourself how to read. There were people who did all sorts of things for you, and you don't even know it. OK, so I want to get rid of the arrogance. Uh, have, have decent humility. I'm all for that at the same time, you know, um, I want to be careful about the problem of envy. I want to be prob. I want to be careful about the problem of resentment. I want to be, I want to be careful about, you know, I I've heard, you know, so let's not have. Let's not give a trophy to the person who wins the race because to give a trophy to the person who wins the race will make the person who they defeated feel bad. No, no, no. No, I don't want that. I want to give a trophy to the person who wins the race because I think it's a good thing to valorize the best." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's a kind of celebration of this whole human project that we're on. It's celebrating the best. You mentioned your father several times, so let me just linger on that. What have you learned about life from your father?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've been just such a lucky person. I mean, I feel like I've just lived an absolutely charmed life. And I live, I mean, the work that I do is what I love doing. I would pay to do what I am paid to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's great. And I've been fortunate in so many ways. And one way in which I've been fortunate is my parents. My parents Rachel Spann Kennedy, Henry Harold Kennedy, my mother born in Columbia, South Carolina, my father from New Orleans, Louisiana. They were refugees from the Jim Crow South. They were people who put their all into their children. I have an older brother, I have a younger sister. All three of us know beyond, you know, beyond any controversy that we were loved and dearly loved by our parents. And they were great people. My father, um, very interesting man, very independent minded. He was perfectly willing to go his own way. And, uh, I learned much from him, including, I learned things from him even when I ultimately disagreed with him. So for instance, again, to go back to his pessimism, yeah, he was pessimistic, thoroughly pessimistic. But he was also willing to change in certain ways. In fact, both my parents. I mean, one of the most important things that happened to my parents was that, I'd say, When I was, let's say 10 years old, I was born in 1954. So in 1964, in 1964, I think my parents would have taken the position that you definitely never, under any circumstances, trust a white person. If a black person trusts a white person, that person is a fool. Do not trust white people, all right? They are not to be trusted. And it's the highly, highly, highly unusual one who is not prejudiced, okay? So white people are not to be trusted, and by and large, they're gonna be your enemy, all right? So let's just face that. That was their point of view. I'd say that 10 years later, That point of view had been leavened somewhat. You say, well, what happened in those 10 years? Well, certainly in my life, one of the things that happened in those 10 years is I was a student in various schools, and I had a series of Teachers, I've had wonderful black teachers. I've also had wonderful white teachers. And my parents paid attention to who my teachers were and how my teachers treated me. And I think that they were affected by the way in which there were white people who really helped me and were on my side and were thoroughly on my side. And I think that that experience changed my parents in their general view. They, you know, skeptical, yeah, but they were, the possibility, the possibility of a white person genuinely being the friend of a black person, that became alive to them. And I give them a lot of credit, because they were adults. And for an adult to change, that's a big deal. But my parents did change." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In that transformation that was inspiring to you, was formative to you in terms of joining the Optimist camp?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hugely. And you know, The school, I mean, again, I said a moment ago how lucky I've been. Heck, I teach at Harvard Law School. I attended Balliol College, Oxford. I got my law degree from Yale Law School. I got my undergraduate degree at Princeton University. Those are some pretty good schools. They all were, they all were. The most important school, however, that I attended, the school that made the most difference in my education was my high school, St. Albans School, St. Albans School for Boys. And at St. Albans, I encountered a cadre of teachers. And by the way, at St. Albans, when I went to St. Albans, all these teachers were white. All of these teachers, there was one, the head of athletics, very important man, very impressive man, Brooks Johnson was black. Otherwise, white teachers. And these teachers made a huge difference in my life. And I can call their names, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The greatest of them all, was a man by the name of Jack McCune. Yeah, we called him Gentleman Jack, Gentleman Jack McCune. And- What subject did he teach? He taught me history. He was my advanced placement history teacher. But John F. McCune, and we shared a birthday, John F. McCune was a fabulously good teacher, and we developed a deep lifetime friendship. I was with Mr. McCune the day before he died. He was a white man. And I've had other teachers, some of whom have become colleagues of mine. Sanford Levinson, Sanford Levinson was a teacher of mine at Princeton. He's become a colleague of mine. I mean, it would be, frankly, it would be impossible for me to, I can't make some sort of, you know, sort of blanket condemnation of white people with Sandy Levinson in my life. I mean, seriously, with John Epicunia in my life, with Eric Foner in my life, with my colleague Martha Minow in my life, my colleague Cass Sunstein in my life, impossible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, that speaks to the power of teachers and mentors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're that to a lot of people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I've taken that to, I hope, I hope, listen, I would be, I would, listen, I would be absolutely overjoyed if there was a student who thought of me in the way that I think of Gentleman Jack McCune. If that's the case, just one, just one, if that's the case, I'm overjoyed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a life well lived. What do you think of Martin Luther King's, I Have a Dream? Do you still share that dream?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that Martin Luther King Jr.' 's I Have a Dream speech is one of the great speeches, not only in American history, but in the history of the world. You know, there's a tendency now for people to sort of poo-poo that speech. I think, unfortunately, the speech, you know, has been embraced by advertisers and corporate America. It's been heard so many times that it sort of has been made to suffer from what some people might view as overexposure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so unfortunate. It's too bad. Especially when Hollywood rolls in. They did that with John Lennon's Imagine recently, which I think is one of the greatest songs ever. And the actors and actresses ruined it by trying to sing along and do this kind of cliche Hollywood thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "People have tried to make it into a cliche. The fact of the matter is it's the sentiment behind I Have a Dream. Yeah, I'll associate myself with that. And anybody wants to see some great oratory, go watch. And Martin Luther King Jr., I mean, he gave you know, several great speeches. You know, his first speech, the first speech that he gave as a civil rights leader, the Holt Street Baptist Church, 1955, at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott, which was virtually an extemporaneous speech, was one of his greatest. And he was, I think, 26 years old. Great. His last speech, you know, his mountaintop speech, great speech, but, I have a dream, I love it. I will associate myself with those sentiments any day of the week." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Absolutely. So you still have hope for a deep kind of multiracial, a deep unity in the 21st century?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "My life of crime begins when I'm 10 years old. 10 years old, man. Think about that. I mean, you were probably playing with robots when you were 10. You know, usually kids are doing the Lego bit, getting involved with sports, everything else. With me, it wasn't like that with me. I'm, I'm from Eastern Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky is one of these, um, it's like parts of Texas, parts of Louisiana that, uh, if you're not fortunate enough to have a job, you may be involved in a scam, hustle, fraud, whatever you want to call it, man. I was, uh, my parents. My mom was basically the captain of the entire fraud industry. So, uh, this is a, this is a woman that at one point she's stealing a 108,000 pound Caterpillar D nine bulldozer, tramming it down the road. You know, at another point, she's taking a slip and phone, a convenience store, trying to sue the owner. We had a neighbor. She acted as a pimp for at one point. That's my mom. Uh, my dad, wait, wait." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The neighbor acted as a pimp." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My mom prostituted. I mean, she acted as a pimp for a neighbor. Her name was Debbie, and my mom used to sell her out. Debbie needed money, and my mom would find men for her to sleep with for cash, and she'd take a part of the cash." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it sounds like she diversified the methodologies by which she hustled." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very, had that entrepreneurial spirit. We see that a lot with cyber criminals, that sense of being that entrepreneur." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what was the motivation you think for her? Is it money? Is it basically the rush of playing with the system of being able to Know the rules and break the rules and get away with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My mom's a complex character She is there's no one single motivation. So my mom was the individual she's still alive My mom was the individual who? tested people She wanted to know how far she could abuse you and you come back and still love her So and that was with every relationship she's ever had She would cheat on the man. She was involved with she would abuse the her children me and Denise she would Psychological physical. Oh, it was mental emotional physical everything everything I mean she She used to beat me and Denise with belt buckles, and that ended when she was, I forgot what we had done. It wasn't much. I think that it may have been the part where she accused me of stealing her marijuana, but she was hitting me and Denise. We were living in a single-wide trailer at that point. She was hitting me and Denise. We were on the bed trying to get away from it, and Denise kicks her through a closet. is what happens. And Denise stands up and she said, you're through hitting me. And that was the last time that mom hit us at that point. But," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So sorry to take us there. For people who know you, and people should definitely watch some of your lectures online, you're extremely charismatic and fun and jolly and whatever word you wanna use. But if we look at that kind of life, there's darkness there, there's struggle there. There's a lot of darkness. So, how did you feel? If you go back to the mind of the kid you were with your mom, was there sadness? Was there things like depression, self-doubt, all those kinds of things? Or did you see this crime, this chaos as ultimately exciting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I don't think, back then I didn't view it as exciting. Now, it becomes exciting when I start being involved in cybercrime. All right. But back then, it was simply a means to an end was all it was. So you take a 10 year old kid. And the way I get involved in crime is, like I said, my mom was the fraudster. My dad was my dad was a good guy. He just forgot he was this good guy. You know, he was always he always had these principles. But his issue was is he loved my mom so much he was scared of of her leaving. So if she wanted to do something, commit crime, cheat on him, whatever, he would pretty much just put up with it, the one instant. So, I mean, this woman used to, she used to bring men home in front of him, tell him that, hey, I'm leaving you, I don't love you anymore, I want you to die, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was my mom. There were two instances where the man, where he can't take it anymore. And the first instance, I was, I guess I was seven or eight. My sister Denise is a year younger than I am. My dad actually files for divorce, files for divorce at that point. My mom, um, kind of goes crazy. Uh, my dad, I was with my dad. My, my sister was with my mother because that's that Eastern Kentucky mentality. You know, men stay with men, women stay with women. So, um, He was filing for divorce. Me and my dad, we were living in an apartment. My mom was living with her grandparents and with her parents, bouncing back and forth between the two. And I remember I was sleeping in the bed. We had a single wide bed. My dad slept on the sofa. I woke up one night and there was some sort of ruckus in the living room. So I wake up and I walk into the living room and my mom has a knife to my dad's throat. And basically, you're not gonna steal my son from me. My mom was this individual that when she knew she went so far, like I said, she was always this person that tested. Well, can I do this to you and you'll still come back? She knew she was always also this person that if she went too far, she knew it and she would always try to divert that into something else. All right. So she knew at that point she went too far. So what does she do? She gets up crying. goes to the bathroom and pretends to slit her wrists so that my dad, Ray, will respond to that, not respond to what she's just done to him. That was my mom in a nutshell. She had a history of doing this kind of stuff. Motivations as far as fraud with her, I think with her, it was, she was an LPN. She had a very good nurse, but she didn't want to work. was a lot of it. So with her, it was easier for her to commit fraud. And when I say commit fraud, it was against businesses, against people. I remember at one point, she's buying over-the-counter capsules and emptying the capsules out and putting some other crap in there and selling it at speed, and people are buying it. She did anything she could for money. And of course, I get involved with that. What happens is, we were in Panama City at that point, and My mom leaves my dad, and the way she left my dad, my great-grandfather had died. My mom tells all three of us, hey, I'm taking the kids, and we're going back to Eastern Kentucky to attend the funeral. Well, that was her leaving. Me and Denise didn't know it. She didn't pack any of our clothes at all. She stows her clothes in the trunk of the car, and she leaves my dad. And I don't get to see my dad again for, I think, five, six years, something like that. My mom, like I said, she used to bring men home in front of my dad. He'd sit there and cry and beg her not to do it. She'd do it anyway. When she leaves him, she kept up that. So we were living at my grandparents' house. My grandfather, he had converted the house. He had raised the house up and built apartments underneath of it. So me and my sister and my mom lived in one of the apartments underneath. That whole side of the family was just nuts, was nuts. My, my granddad, Paul, he would, this, this is a man that, uh, He didn't want you to eat any of his food. So, you know, there was no such thing as me and Denise going upstairs to eat. If he found out me and Denise were, was taking a bath, we were allowed to bath and bathe in two inches of water one time a week because he didn't want to have to pay the water bill. There's rules. There are rules. You know, if you couldn't have the TV on when he went to bed at night, you had to have the television, the volume, you could watch it, but without volume. Because if he heard it, he would, he would get up in the middle of the night and he would kick the power breaker, turn off all the power on you. This is my, this is my, the family, right? So my mom, she used to leave me and Denise at home for, uh, for days, man, for days, she'd go out and, you know, party and, uh, I mean, sometimes she'd take me and Denise with her. We'd wait in the car. Sometimes we'd wait in the living room as she went and partied and everything else. Most of the time she left us at home. My entry into crime, Denise walks in one day. She's nine years old, man. She walks in one day and she's got a pack of pork chops in her hand. I looked at her and I said, where'd you get that? She's like, I stole it. You know, it's like, show me how you did that. So she takes me over and she shows me how she steals food, how she's stuffing it down her pants. So we start stealing food. I'm like, hell yeah, let's do that shit. So start stealing food. And we get to the point where we're wanting a sandwich. Well, you can't stuff a loaf of bread down your pants. So there was a Kmart in the shopping center. I go over to the Kmart. Get a hoodie off the rack, take the tags off of it, wear it out, work just fine. And the way you steal bread is you put the hoodie over your shoulder, stuff a loaf of bread down the sleeve, and you walk out with it. So we started doing that. How'd you figure that out?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just thought pattern. So there's like strategic thinking here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you know, you can't wear the hoodie and put the bread down here because you might mash the bread. When you zip it up or they yeah, we have to think through that you got to think through it But but you got to realize about by this point. I'm hell. I'm already seeing what my parents are doing You know, I'm already seeing it, just seeing it plotting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That kind of puzzle solving was something you were already developing yourself into as a kid, because you're pretty young." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, 10 years old, pretty young. But seeing how they act, how they respond to things. And my mom, I guess you'd call it a good thing, they never kept any of that hidden from the kids. You know, there was no discussions behind closed doors. All that happened in front of everybody." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And from your young mind's perspective, seeing that kind of crime, You basically, you know, a lot of us kind of grow up thinking there's rules you're not supposed to break. If you see other humans breaking those rules, then you realize those rules are just human made." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it gets worse than that. I was in an environment where there were no decent people. I didn't really meet my first decent person until I was 16 years old. Who's that? That was a high school teacher. So what happens is, You know, we start shoplifting food. My mom finds out that we've been stealing stuff and you know, she joins us. What's that? She joins us. Yeah, she comes in, you know, I've got the Intellivision, I've got the Atari 2600 playing the hell out of it. Oh my God. She starts seeing this shit. She's like, where'd this come from? And I'm like, well, we found it. She's like, you didn't find that. Denise, Denise stands up. We stole it. My mom, show me how you did that. And she gets her mom, too, to join in. And she used to run me and Denise as these little shoplifters. We'd take, you know, we'd steal stuff for her. We would distract security. And her and my grandmother would steal stuff. They got caught doing that. But that's the entry into crime. And Denise, you know, I'm adamant, and I kind of mean it. But the truth is I say, and I do mean it, that I'm responsible for my choices as an adult. All right. I believe that when you're a child, you can't control that. The adults in your environment control what you do. All right. Once you're an adult, though, your choices are yours. Now, that being said, there's some you can't dismiss that childhood influencing what I did as an adult. You can't do that. I mean, it was kind of written on slate that, hey, this guy's gonna be this guy when he grows up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That said, like sometimes that one person you meet, that decent person, can turn the tide of your life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. So what happens is, you know, the abuse, everything continues on. When I'm 15, my dad was in, uh, was in Panama city, Florida. My mom was in, uh, you know, we were in Hazard, Kentucky. She, um, she was dating this guy. She, and my mom was this guy, this woman that, uh, the abuse would, it was, it was crazy abuse, man. Just crazy stuff. You, she would, uh, tell me and my sister, you know, that, uh, She gave up her life for us that she was going to leave one day and never come back, that we'd find her dead in a ditch someplace. She'd go out and date these men and she'd come back and she'd talk about how these men were abusing her. You know, so she'd be dating this guy and, uh, she'd come back and, and she'd, you know, start talking about how he had tried to rape her, you know, trying to get me to respond to that. And I would respond to that. Like, no doubt. I would respond to that. Well, what happens is, and I knew that, I don't know if I knew it was abuse at that age, all right, but I knew things were fucked up. And I was talking to my dad in Panama City, and I really had it in my head that I was going to go down and live with my dad. And I called my dad one day. I was set to go to, me and my cousins were going to go see Return of the Jedi, that had come out again in the theaters. So I called my dad, it was a Sunday, called my dad and he told me he had either gotten married or he was about to get married to this woman. And basically Brett Johnson wasn't going to go down to Florida. I was going to stay in Hazard. I had to call my dad from pay phone. But the result of that was I walked into a hospital, got in an elevator, And a woman got in the elevator at the same time and I snapped and beat the hell out of her right there. And, uh, I was 15. Didn't really know what the fuck happened. Didn't really know, but, uh, just anger came from somewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And, uh, you know, the, uh, the elevator beat the hell out of this lady. Turned out she looked a shitload like my mom. But the elevator doors open. One of the security guards, I played basketball with his son, so he saw me immediately. I knocked the hell out of him, took off running, made it back to the house where my grandparents were. They didn't know what had happened, so I didn't say anything. About an hour later, Kentucky State Police, they pull up in the front yard, and two of them get out, and I'm sitting on the front porch, and me and my cousins are, and they start walking up. Everybody starts walking out of the house, and I'm like, I just remember saying, what do you want? What do you want? Well, you know what they wanted. They wanted to arrest Brett Johnson, and they arrested me. I went in, and I told them everything. Spent three months in a county jail. They didn't have juvenile facilities, in that county, so I spent three months in solitary, went to trial, pled guilty to assault in the first degree. The judge sentenced me to time served and a psychological evaluation where they sent me to Louisville, Kentucky. I spent 30 days up there and they cut me loose. They wanted me to have counseling after that. Never went to counseling, you know, wanted to, but mom was like, don't need it. And so never went to counseling. And, um, I became this pariah in the county. Uh, it's crazy, man. I mean, uh, not a day goes by that I don't think about that, that, that moment in the elevator." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And, and what happens is, is, uh, you know, you're 15, fuck man, you're 15. So I go back to the high school that I was in, and I'm this piece of shit. Everybody knows. So I move. We move. We were in Whitesburg at that point. I finish up the year there and move back to Perry County, which is where Hazard is. So we moved there, and they've got three high schools here. They've got MC Napier, they've got Hazard High School, and then they've got Dills Combs High School. So I was within, me and Denise were within half mile of MC Napier. Show up there the first day of school, and I met, me and my mom and my sister were walking into the school, and the kids won't let me in. The kids stand out there. He's not coming in. So my mom starts raising hell and I'm like, no, let's just go. Let's go. So from there it was, uh, we went down to the city school hazard and the principal tells my mom, Denise can come. He can't. So, uh, my mom wants to raise hell and I'm like, no, let's just, uh, just take me to this other school. So this other school was like 15 miles away and, uh, you know, country, country school, country high school. So I go there and they accept me. And I walked in the first day and this English teacher, name's Carol Combs, I walked in and handed her the paper. She was my homeroom teacher. And she heard this voice, is the way she explains it to me, she heard this voice. And she looks up and she was like, son, have you ever done any drama before? I'm like, no ma'am, but I'm interested in the academic team. I was this quick recall guy, right? And she's like, no. She's like, drama. And I'm like, no, I'm not interested in theater. I'm interested in academics. Well, she was the head of the drama department and head of the academics department. So the deal was, tell you what, you can get on the academics team if you start with theater, too. And I was like, OK. So what happens is she was the only, she was the first decent person I met in my life. And she became this kind of surrogate mother to me. So under her tutelage, I become one of the top academic team guys in the state. I was captain of the team. I was this just scourge across all the counties in that part of Kentucky. If we had a meet, it was like, Jesus Christ, that's Brett Johnson. And it was like, she used to tell people they would, the high school that I came from was Whitesburg, and the first time that Whitesburg came against us, she told me, I was talking to her about a year ago, and she told me, she's like, Brett, she said, that first meet against Whitesburg, she said, the captain came in, looked at you, and said, oh, you've got that Johnson boy on your team? And she said, my response was, that Johnson boy is our team. So, but I did that and then with theater, I ended up my senior year, I won best actor and actress in the state. Only God ever do that in the state. So, did pretty well, man. Did pretty well. Had scholarships coming out of high school and everything else and I'm the idiot that turned them down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll ask you a funny question. Yeah. You'd make a hell of a, I mean, of all the many things you could probably do, you'd make a hell of a actor." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm very good on stage. I'm very good on stage. Have you acted professionally anywhere? Not, not, not professionally. We've done the, you know, the college circuit and stuff like that. What happened was, is, uh, so I turned down the, um, Turn down the scholarships. You know, scared of leaving, I guess, is what it was. Start in community college. And the community college there hires a new theater director out of California. Well, he knew the guy that ran the San Jose State Theater Program. A guy named Edward Emanuel was his name. His claim to fame, he had written the Three Ninjas movie. Remember that, the three little ninja kids back in the 80s? He had written this damn film. And it had made a shitload of money. So he invites Ed Emanuel to come down and see the play. And Ed had written this Civil War piece. So we put that on. I was doing like, it was a multiple role thing. I was doing like 18 different roles in the show. So Ed sees the show and he was like, scholarship. He said, look, he said, right now you're a big fish in a small pond. We'll make you a big fish in a big pot. And I was like, deal. So I took the scholarship, man. And he was like, I'll be back in two weeks. So he flies out. Two weeks later, this guy flies back in. He drives down to where I'm living. I'm out shooting ball with my cousins and friends. He pulls up. And he gets out of the car and I was like, I'm walk over to him. I was like, Hey man, I'll walk in. You can meet my parents. He's like, nah, I got it. I was like, okay. So I keep shooting ball. He walks in the house, stays about 15 minutes, walks out white as a sheet. Doesn't say a word to me, gets in the car, leaves. I don't hear from him again. Had no idea what went on. It takes me a couple of weeks. What happened is my mom, he walks in and introduces himself. My mom pulls a knife on the guy. I will kill you. You are not going to steal my goddamn son from me. Scares the guy to death. He bugs out and, uh, kind of broke my spirit at that point. You know, I was like, okay. So, um, went into just full fledged into scams, crimes, everything else. I had already been, when I was a minor, I'd already been brought up on that side of the family with the crimes that they were doing. My mom was drug trafficking, the pimp stuff, illegally mining coal, charity fraud. Illegally mining coal? Yeah, wildcatting coal. Can you explain that? To properly mine coal, you have to get a permit. Eastern Kentucky, a lot of people don't, they can't afford the permits. You know, they can get them a piece of equipment. You know, you get a dozer or a loader or whatever you're going to get or an auger or what have you. So you start mining, but you don't get the permit, so you don't have to pay. Back then, it was like $3,500 for a two-acre permit or $5,000 for a two-acre permit, let you strip mine the coal on that. Then you have to pay for the reclamation on top of that. So once you uncover the pit, take the coal out, you have to cover back up the pit, sow grass, make sure everything is environmentally friendly, got a silt pond." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "everything else at that point. So the whole idea is you buy an acre of land or some area of land and then you can, there's a whole process you're supposed to go through. Entire process. How many people are involved in a mining, the smallest number of people required for a mining operation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can do it with three or four people. Okay. So you've got your loader operator, you've got your dozer operator, You can farm out the trucking to someone or trucking company if you need to do that. Then you've got whoever owns the business as well. So very few people can run an operation like that and profit fairly well as long as you don't have to do the reclamation, all that crap on top of it. The reclamation gets pretty expensive. So if you're uncovering a pit of coal, you know a pit so a ton of coal is basically about 36 cubic inches is what a 2,000 pounds of coal weighs if you're in Eastern Kentucky because it's that the weight of the bituminous coal and everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The fact that you know this is awesome. The fact that you know exactly the volume of a ton of coal, I mean, it's great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you learn this shit, right? You rattle this shit off. So you uncover the pit and then you've got to sell the pit. Well, the thing is, is that where are you going to sell the coal? Well, you sell it to one of these other coal tipples that knows that they're buying the shit illegally. So back then, a ton of coal was, they'd give you like 36 bucks per ton is what that is. And you'd have to go out, and you'd test the BTUs on it. You'd take a sample to the lab, test the BTUs. You'd take that into the company. What BTU? British Thermal Unit. So you'd test what the BTU on the coal was. How pure the coal is. How pure the coal is. What BTU it burns at. Back then, a good BTU was around 12.9. was what you'd get, all right? So 12.9 coal, $36 a ton. You'd take that sample over to the coal temple. They'd say, OK, we'll buy this for you. How many trucks you got or how many tons you got? And you say, this is what we've got. Then you'd hire the trucking company. And where you get it out, because you've got the agents that are looking for you by this point, because the people that you've bought the rights to, whoever the landowner is, you said you're going to give them $2 a ton or whatever this is. Well, there are other people there. Are you paying them off or are you not? Well, if you're not paying them off, guess what? They know your ass is mining it illegally. They're going to report you. Well, all of a sudden you've got all these inspectors that are coming around and everything that, hey, we know what you're doing. So they're looking for you to get the pit out. So when do you get the pit out? Right in the dead of night. So, you know, you're loading it up two o'clock in the morning, hauling his ass out is what you're doing. You sell it out from there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, um, and your mom ran operations like this. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you said you work the mind to learn how to run a loader run a dozer clean off a pit. So this is this is the lifestyle you grow up in you know you learn how to do this stuff. So I knew how to do charity fraud as well, insurance fraud." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Charity fraud. Can we break down some of these?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Charity fraud, it's much more romantic than what it sounds. It was basically standing beside the road with a sign and a bucket, taking up collections for homeless shelters, for abused women, for children, stuff like that. Then later on, I branched off. When I started off on my own, I would set up my own charity company. and do some telemarketing and go on by and collect checks and things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, we're gonna talk about that, but actually, can we just step back and talk about your mom and your dad? Given all of that, given all the abuse, the complex ways that she played with love, to see how far she can push you and the people around her, and they still love her, today, do you love her?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I called my dad yesterday. My dad, he's, uh, he's dying now. He's got a heart condition. He's not going to get the operation to fix it. So he's like, fuck it. I'm ready to go. And I'm like, I looked at it because hell I'm 52 now. And I, prior to 52, I'd have been like, no, you need to do this. But I looked at him and I was like, I understand. I understand you're done. And, uh, so he's not going to get the operation. I was talking to him yesterday. He asked me, he's like, have you, have you seen your mom? And I was like, dad, I've not talked to her for about two years. And, uh, I told him, I was like, um, I love my mom, but my mom is not a good person. She's not. And, uh, he told me, I was talking to him on the phone yesterday. And he told me that it took him several years to really understand that, you know, he loved her too, but it takes when you're, when you're getting abused like that, especially my dad, my dad came from a good family, everything else. And, um, you know, upstanding family. And, uh, I think that when you're that victim of abuse, You know, you've never seen it before. You've never encountered it. And then it happens. Well, you're like that frog in water all of a sudden, you know, you get to the point where gradually increases until how do you get out of it? Everybody else sees what's happening, but you don't. I grew up in that environment, though, you know, so it took me a long time. to, uh, to come to terms with that. My sister came to terms with it long before I did. You know, my sister, she, she's been a decade without talking to my mom. Like she had tried to commit suicide. I didn't know that. What got me so bad is she said at one point. That she always thought someone was going to come in and save us. And my response, just immediate response, not even thinking about it. My response was, well, Denise, I knew no one ever was. And looking at things now. I think that's the, that's where our paths diverged. Me, it was, if you want to do it, if anybody's going to take care of you, you got to take care of yourself. You're on your own. You're on your own. You know, it's up to you. And Denise has always been that, that, that child that has expected someone to come in and save her." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, and almost like it's all going to be okay. Somebody. Yeah. And I knew it wasn't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Unless you make it okay, it ain't gonna be okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you able to forgive her, your mom?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My boundary with my mom, the reason I've not spoken with her, over two years ago, I started this legal career of mine. I've been the guy who has, I spent a lot of time Thinking about my past and those choices and what brought those choices around. So I'm big about taking responsibility for my actions. I truly am. I think it's really important you have to do that. Well, my mom, not so much. So I was talking to her, you know, and I would start saying, you know, she was, she would start the conversation talking about, she didn't understand why Denise wouldn't speak to her anymore. That was one of her tropes. So, and my response started to become, well, because you were the abuser, And you spent your life doing that to her, so it's more healthy for her not to talk to you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So she's still not able to see the flaws in her ways of the past. No, not at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So my ultimatum to my mom was, look, when you're able to admit that you abused the people in your life, accept that responsibility and be able to discuss it with me, we'll have a talk. Other than that, I don't wanna talk to you anymore. So for the first year it was, you know, calling, cussing my wife out, cussing me out. Um, you know, I don't need you out of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then finally it started to taper off and she's never really contacted me after that point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your dad is dying. What do you take from the way he's taken on death? Just saying, fuck it. You know, it's the man. And what have you learned from your dad?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What do you love about your dad? He's one of these guys that, uh, you know, like I told him, I told my dad about the, about the abuse and everything else. And, uh, there was a point. So, you know, I told you about the elevator stuff, but before that, man, it was, um, it took me 40 years to talk about that, but it also took me 40 years to, um, to talk about, there was a point that, My mom and dad would leave the house and I would urinate in the floor. All right, and- As a, like, out of anger. No idea why, all right, but I would. Piss on the carpet. Carpet business like the Lebowski, right? Really tied the room together I was talking about that this lady comes up to me after the after the presentation and She had she had a career previous to that where she dealt with abused kids and she told me she's like Brett. She's like It's a control mechanism The only control you had was that, and she's like, kids do that. And I was like, so I'm not unique. She's like, no, you're not unique in that. So that, you know, this whole history of abuse, Denise dealt with it by drinking, by trying to commit suicide, things like that. And then finally she escapes. I'm the kid that didn't. And not only that, my wife pointed out to me that It's again, it's that Eastern Kentucky mentality stuff. You know, the males expected to do things. So with with me, it was it was almost like I stepped up. to take part in those crimes so that Denise didn't have to. And she was able to avoid all that. Other than that one shoplifting stuff, Denise doesn't break the law anymore. She goes off to be a, she's a good parent. She's an angry parent. She's a good parent. She's a teacher, a good citizen overall. I was just the guy that kept right on going with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me ask you about that. So your life of cyber crime. In describing some of the things you did or knew about, you said, quote, I once stole several thousand dollars worth of coins from a family trying to sell them to put a new roof on their home. Another time, I sent a counterfeit cashier's check to a victim and he ended up being arrested for it. I lied to family, friends, everyone I knew. I was a truly despicable person. True. One of my Ukrainian associates, Skript, had someone who owed him money kidnapped and tortured. He posted pictures of it online. Another member, Iceman, used to flood his enemies' email addresses with child pornography, then called the police on them. That's some stories. Can you tell some of these stories that stand out to you that are particularly despicable or representative or interesting when you look back that defined your approach and who you were at that time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me say that I did not care about my victim, all right? I cared about me is what I cared about. It's rough to admit that. You know that you don't give a shit what you're doing to anybody else. You only care about you. But that's the truth of the matter. I didn't care about the victims. The lady, that wasn't even at the beginning of my career as a cyber criminal. That was right at the last of it. Which lady? The coin lady. By that point, Shadow Crew had made the front cover of Forbes. August of 04, October 26 of 04, Secret Service had shut us down. 33 people arrested, six countries in six hours. I was the guy that was publicly mentioned as getting away. What happened was is I was the guy who was, I had kind of invented this crime called tax return identity theft and was stealing a lot of money. I went through all my stateside savings and shadow crew gets shut down. I don't have any way to come in with any money. So I start running counterfeit cashiers checks. Defrauding people with that having them send products or bullion collections What-have-you by COD collect on delivery and I would pay with it with a counterfeit cashier's check this lady Was on eBay She had been collecting these silver coins all of her life You know the US currency used to be the coins used to be silver so she had a whole collection of these things like I don't know 80 90 pounds of this stuff and I'm a very good social engineer So, convinced her that I was a legitimate person that, you know, hey, send it to COD. You can use my FedEx account to do that or my UPS account to do that. I'll pay with a cashier's check. You can take it in, same as cash. She believed that she was, um, even on the ad and we talked on the phone and everything else. She had told me that she would, she was a single parent and it was the only money that she had to, uh, to put a roof on the house for her and her kids. And, uh, I didn't give a damn. I didn't give a damn. It was more important was me at that point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you a question about the social engineering? So maybe specifics like the methodology, email, you said phone. maybe you could discuss this process from a bigger philosophical perspective of what is it about human beings that makes impossible to be social engineer, to be victims of fraud?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, first let me say that I became a social engineer as a child. All right, because the adults in my environment as a child, I had to know exactly what they were thinking and be able to try to manipulate that for survival. So I became a social engineer as for survival initially. All right. And one of the things that I've seen with a lot of cyber criminals is the exact same thing. They're really expert ones. They become a social engineer as a child. Then later on, they use those tools to victimize others. All right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is fascinating because you're in order to understand what others are thinking, you have to be extremely good at empathy. So you have to like really put yourself in the shoes of the other person. And yet, in order to do cybercrime, you have to not care about the pain that might cause them once you manipulate them. So you have to empathize and yet not care." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. And I would argue, I would argue that that is not a sociopath. Because a cyber criminal, and I was no different, most cyber criminals justify those actions. So the justification becomes what's important. With me, the justification was, well, I did it for my family. I did it for my wife. I did it for my stripper girlfriend. And I believe those justifications." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because I care about love a lot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So the big picture of that is trust. How do you establish trust with a potential victim? All right. Now, I would argue online that that trust is established through a combination of technology, tools, social engineering. All right. So we trust our tech. You know, we trust our cell phones. We trust our laptops. A lot of times we don't understand how they operate, but we trust the news that comes across the line. We trust the phone numbers that show up. We trust IP addresses if we're advanced enough to look at an IP address or a domain or anything else like that. Criminals use tools to manipulate that. Spook phone numbers, spook browser fingerprints, whatever that may be, whatever the tool may be. Then that lays a base level of trust. At that point, you shoot in with the social engineering and lay whatever story that is in order to manipulate that victim to act not out of reason, but out of emotion all of a sudden." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "is this is fascinating about the way humans interact with the world, which is you're almost too afraid to not trust the world. You have to find a balance. You have a lot of sort of conspiracy theories now about distrust institutions and thinking like everything around us. It's like, I've been listening to people who believe the earth is flat. And that conspiracy theory is fascinating to me because it basically says that you can't trust anybody. Everything you hear is a lie. So that's one, you can live that life, or you can live a life where you're just naively trusting everything. And we as humans have to, because that life is kind of full of happiness if nobody screws you over. Because you meet people with the joyful heart and you get excited and all that kind of stuff. But if you do that too much, you're gonna get burned. So you have to find some kind of balance in terms of optimizing happiness where you trust the people I mean, but verified, and on the internet, that becomes really tricky. You're almost too afraid to distrust everything, because you'll never get anything done on the internet. But then if you trust too much, you can get screwed over. And so the social engineering comes in, where you're like, I'm not sure if I should trust this. You kind of help them build the narrative, where it's like, it's good. It's good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in a lot of the times, that social engineering is just feeding into What the victim wants to believe. Yeah. All right. It's not really coming up with a brand new story at all. It's just knowing what that victim is, what the motivations of that victim is feeding into it at that point. So you have to, again, that social engineer has to almost immediately know what's driving that person that they're If I'm working on a phone, talking to someone over the phone, I have to know within seconds what I need to say, how I need to act to interact with that customer service agent or whoever I'm talking to on the other end of the line." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so fascinating because you truly are empathizing with the other person. What is it? This businessman, Steven Schwarzman, I've talked to a few times. He mentioned this thing that, you know, the way you build deep relationships is you really kind of notice the things that people are telling you, like what they want and what they're bothered by, what are their big problems in their lives, because everybody's saying that all the time and most of us are just ignoring it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You really have to not listen. You know somebody at that point. Yeah, absolutely you do then you have to be able to dismiss it Dismiss it after you know, you're you're looking for that just to see how I could manipulate that is what you're trying to do So that the lady was one story at the another truly despicable story. We'll get to script in a second Yeah, but another truly despicable story we had We were one of the really first groups that started phishing attacks. What's phishing? So that is a social engineering attack. PH, by the way. Yeah, PH. That's another social engineering attack. That's sending that fake email out that looks like it's coming from a website or your financial organization or whatever and saying, hey, we've got a security problem. We need you to update your account information. Well, back then, No one had ever seen a phishing attack, so you could ask for all the information. You were getting just complete identity profiles on a phishing email. Nowadays, you can't do that. Nowadays, you look for basically credentials because everyone is aware of phishing. But back then, it was complete information. We had phished out, I don't know, 200,000 E-Trade accounts. That's what we had the login credentials for. That login password, yeah. Login password, complete, you know, social, date of birth, mother's maiden, account information, everything else. So we had access to those E-Trade accounts. E-Trade initially had no security in place, so you could cash out the account, ACH the money out to whatever account you wanted to, went through just fine. Ate them alive on that for four to six months. E-Trade got to the point where you couldn't do any ACH coming out. They locked everything down. Well, you're still sitting on thousands of E-Trade accounts. How do you make money on that? Hmm. It's a good question. Yeah. So what you do is you find some fat cat that's got his retirement, you know, invested in blue chips. Same time you find a penny stock, you open up a brand new account, buy into that penny stock, cash the fat cat out, buy into that same penny stock, bump and dump schemes all of a sudden. So you're destroying people's retirement accounts for just a few thousand dollars. Bam, bam, bam. And of course, E-Trade's response is not our problem. your problem, you shouldn't give up your password or what have you at that point. And you still see that issue today with Zelle scams and things like that. Which scam? Zelle. So, you know, the instant payment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so it's the same kind of operations with different payment mechanisms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You find an easy way to exploit a system and typically the financial organization Not our problem. Our system's secure. It's the humans. It's their errors. Well, not really. You know, you've got some culpability in that and you're just trying to avoid paying the part of the bill is what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the things just to stand fishing for a bit is, um, It really makes me sad, because there's been people on all kinds of platforms, including YouTube comments, but emails too, they figured out emails somehow. So people are now seeing the followers of this particular podcast, who are fans, they're finding them on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube and so on, and they are figuring out ways to get to those people by another channel. which I suppose is, it seems more authentic to those people. So they send them an email from what looks like me, and with this like loving, the interesting thing, the emails sound like something I would write. So these aren't even at this stage, it's not even, it doesn't feel automated or if it's automated, it's, there's a human in the loop that's really fine tuning it to a specific, or maybe I'm very predictable, but it's very loving in the way I would write that message." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so, so, so think about that. All right. So, so when fishing first comes out. You could look at the language of the text or the website and say, yeah, if you if you were paying attention, that's so OK. So that's not an English speaker who wrote that typically. All right. But as as time has went on, as as the awareness of what a phishing attack looks like, we have people that are sitting down now and making sure that language is proper. It gets worse than that, though. If you look at business email compromise. All right. So the way a business email compromise typically works is the attacker We'll find a payroll person, find a CEO. He will fashion a spear phishing email, which is that's a phishing attack that's targeting one specific individual, all right? So he'll fashion a spear phishing email, and the way he does that is he pulls all the information he possibly can on that person, all right, that CEO. Maybe he'll Spear that CEO just to get their login credentials to your email Just to read the emails and he'll spit he'll go in there and he'll start reading all these emails He'll specifically read the emails to the to the payroll department. See what that relationship is Are they talking about their kids talking about relationships talking about vacation? What are they talking about? How are they talking? Are they friendly? Are they sterile? What are they doing? All right, so then he decides well I'm gonna go ahead and spearfish this the payroll department is good and So then he spearfishes in, gets those credentials. At the same time, he creates a Unicode domain in whatever the company name is. So instead of that English alphabet I, he's got that Russian letter that looks like an I, but without the dot on top. Comes back into the email, into the payroll email, blocks the real CEO's email, replaces that with the Unicode email that he's got, and then sends out Message using the correct language the correct relationships everything else and says hey, you know, we're updating our account status I need you to send this payment instead of this over here They've set up a new account send all payments over here now and that is business email compromise in a nutshell." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right works great probably the larger the organization the more susceptible to that kind of attack because there's a like a distribution of responsibility to where you're more likely to believe that, okay, this other person is responsible. I'm sure they secured everything. I'm okay listening to this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's business email compromise. And those crimes, and that's one of the things you see about cybercrime. Cybercrime is not really sophisticated. It's not. The attacks are not sophisticated. The stat is 90% of every single attack uses a known exploit. It's not the stuff, it's not zero day attacks. They're out there, but if you're a criminal waiting on a zero day to profit, you're going to starve to death. The meat and potatoes are at 90%, known exploits." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then the rest is, well, you're saying it's, maybe you mean it's not technically sophisticated, but it's social engineering sophisticated. Very sophisticated on that end, very sophisticated. It's a fascinating study of human psychology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That establishment of trust and then using that trust to defraud that victim, that is something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wish, obviously, all of these folks are really good at hiding. I wish you could tell their stories in a way, which is why you're fascinating, is you're able to tell these stories now, because it is studying human nature by exploiting it, but you get to understand our weak points, our hope, our desire to trust others. Also, sort of the, the weak points and the failures of digital systems and at scale humans have to connect. It's fascinating. This is a weird question, asking for a friend. Is spear phishing itself illegal? What's the legality here? Oh, it's all illegal. Absolutely it is. So here's what, okay, let me construct an example. So if my friend were to spearfish like a CEO, right, and get their information, and after they get control, say of their Twitter account, they tweet something loving and positive, what's the crime?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Unauthorized access of advice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What will be the punishment, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That becomes questionable. So no monetary loss, or was there a monetary loss? Probably not. So you have to figure out who the victim is before charges are pressed. Now, the crime would be unauthorized access, but no real victim on that unless the person whose account you took over takes you know, exception to that. No monetary loss." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's not really standard, like, fines." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably nothing's going to happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. Right, right. So, I mean, that's kind of interesting because it's... So when I got the ransomware, when I got the Zero Day attack on the QNAP NAS, you know, they basically say the criminal is QNAP, the company, for having so many security vulnerabilities. They're like, you are the victim of QNAP's incompetence. That's the way they kind of phrase it. And see, I don't agree with that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't agree with that at all. So solar winds. Yeah. Let's, so I've got 130 page class action lawsuit printed out at the house. I've been going through it, that catalogs how solar winds lied for years about their vulnerabilities. And they lied to investors. The, uh, the people who came here, the auditors would, they would hire, would, you know, they would, uh, not pay attention to them when they said, you know, you've got these issues, they would say, go away, shit like that for years until solar winds, you know, the attacks become apparent. Um, My view on that is that the only person responsible for the crime are the criminals who did the attacking, the actual criminals, not SolarWinds. Now, does that mean the SolarWinds isn't Isn't all fucked up. They are and there needs to be some accounting in place But the the the only individual the only people responsible for crime are the criminals and that's either online In the physical world, what have you could be it's being an idiot is not a crime being being Being criminally negligent is, and I think that SolarWinds is certainly responsible, not responsible, they're culpable for what happened." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually tell folks about SolarWinds? What is it? What are some interesting things that you're aware of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "SolarWinds was very, it provided a backbone of security for hundreds, thousands of different companies. Um, if you looked at a lot of security companies were using solar winds, that would, that would allow you to get a snapshot of the entire system that they were working on. So what happens is, is you get a Russian group that comes in and they basically, they hack into solar winds and get access to it. And it allows them to view every single thing, I mean every single thing about every single client that SolarWinds had at that point. So entire snapshots of all the IP that was going on, all the emails, all the communications, every single secret that was going on with those companies. If a company had software like Microsoft, It allowed them to look at the source code of everything that was going on. I mean, it's just a complete and total nightmare. All right. And something that you are not going to recover from. You're not. I mean, it's done at that point. You know, there's not been a lot of news lately about it. But the fact of the matter is, is that's the type of attack that's a catastrophic attack." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a huge amount of information that was read, saved elsewhere, probably. Oh, yeah. And so now there's people sitting on information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. So think about one of the attack vectors has been Microsoft Outlook 365, things like that. This allowed the attackers to look at the source codes of that. So they have the source code now, so they go through it line by line or other vulnerabilities. Let's find new vulnerabilities, new zero days. I said zero days aren't common, but this opens up an entire new threat surface all of a sudden. So it's a completely catastrophic attack. Once all the chips are down, everything's tallied up, people are going to be like, yeah, we're done. We're done. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right. This whole computer thing, we tried it. We're walking away. That's terrifying, so you're saying that there's not been... obvious Big negative impact from that yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So but like there's been a lot of negative impact, but we're just starting right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the starting the capacity for destruction is huge here. How much involvement from nation states? Do you think there is on this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's interesting. So you've got Iran. You've got North Korea, China, Russia. You got the big four. You also got Brazil. You've got all these other countries that are interested in the United States as well. Nation states are interesting depending on who the nation state is. All right, so Russia is very good about working with the type of criminal that I used to be. They'll enlist these guys and steal information or what have you, then Russia will take the information they want to, and they'll basically go off and sell whatever you want to and make some money. China's all about IP. North Korea is about stealing money because they really don't know what the hell else to do right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So North Korea is actively involved in cybercrime." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. They've stolen a shitload of Bitcoin, everything else. So absolutely, they're actively involved with that. Very, very skilled attackers. Very skilled. But even if you look at, you know, I told you that stat about 90%. All right. So even though SolarWinds is going to be the number one attack, The follow-up to that is this NotPetya attack that happened. And so that was the most sophisticated attack launched by the Russian Sandworm Group using all known exploits throughout. So it's not, again, it's not, you're right in the sophistication is typically not technical sophistication, but it's that social engineering sophistication. How do you get these things put together in line to attack and succeed?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But when you get access to the source code, that's where technical sophistication could really do a lot of damage." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's when you find out real quick. That's what separates the men from the boys in this game. All right. Because all of a sudden it's not, I don't have to worry about social engineering. I've got source codes and I've got professionals that are looking at that and that's your ass." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which then enables probably even more powerful social engineering methods, too. I mean, it's just a cascade of... Is this terrifying to you, by the way? That this world that we're living in, as we put more and more of ourselves on the internet, into the metaverse, that there is so many more attack vectors on our well-being?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's terrifying to me, I used to preach it on Shadow Crew, is the idea that the perception of truth is more important than the truth itself. It doesn't matter what the facts are, it matters what I can convince you of. That's what's terrifying to me. So you look at deep fakes, you look at fake news, all this stuff that's going out, that becomes truly terrifying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, maybe there's an angle where it's freeing if nothing is true and you can't trust anything But you see we as human beings we want to trust" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We do. We need human interaction. And for that human interaction, you have to have a degree of trust." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's more like you let go of an idea of absolute truth, and it more becomes like a blockchain style consensus. So you let go of like, you know what? There's this human dream, you get this on the internet, you get like facts, as if there's at the bottom, at the bottom there's one turtle that's holding this like scroll that says, these are the truths of the world. The problem is, I mean, maybe believing that is counterproductive. Maybe human civilization is an ongoing process of consensus. And so it's always going to be, everything is shrouded And you can call them lies, or you can call them inaccuracies, or you can call them delusions. It's constantly going to be, it's going to be a sea of lies and delusions. But our hope is to, over time, develop bigger and bigger islands of consensus that allows us to live a stable and happy society. Don't call it true. Call it a stable consensus that creates a high quality of life for the inhabitants of the island. I like it. I mean, I like it. We're going to agree on this. And then don't use Outlook. No, I'm just kidding. So maybe a step back. You mentioned, I'd love to talk about ShadowCube. Maybe this is the right time to actually, yeah, let's go to ShadowCube because it's such a fascinating story. So tell me the story of building ShadowCube, the precursor to today's Darknet and Darknet markets. This is why you're the original godfather." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is it. This is it. So I, um, I get married. I, I faked a car accident to get married. Got the money from that. You're romantic. I remember like my dad, man. I'm the guy that, you know, I get from mom, I get the criminal mindset from dad. I get that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't want them to leave to get married. Uh, I met this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's that story?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's that's dude. I was, uh, how did you fall in love there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My, my first girlfriend was a preacher's daughter. and crazy over her, dated her for five years, and she figured out pretty quickly that... Well, not quickly, it took her five years to figure out that Brett Johnson is not the man of God. I could talk it, but more that agnostic than anything, she breaks up with me. So I was at the community college." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You'd make one hell of a preacher, by the way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Thank you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I've got that Langston Hughes problem, you know, I'm looking for Jesus to show up and he just doesn't. So I was at the community college and I was a straight asshole. I was arrogant, conceited, everything else. And I had posted an advertisement on one of the billboards looking for an adult babysitter, hot blonde, you know, come visit me in the library. Buddy of mine shows up and he's like, Brett. And I was like, yeah, He's like hottest girl in school right down the hall. And I was like, serious. He's like, yeah. And I was like, let's go see walk over. And there's, there's these two guys that are hitting on her. So I just walk up and, uh, me and Todd, that was my buddy walk up and I'm just sitting there and listening and they're, you know, they're giving the spill and everything. And she's just kind of taken down. Finally, I looked over and I was like, uh, you want to get out of here. And, uh, One of the guys looks at me, he's like, Hey, we're talking to her. And I was like, well, you're talking at her. You're not talking to her. I'm about to save her ass from you. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a smooth pickup line, by the way. If I've ever heard one, that's good. You want to get out of here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So start dating. And, um, she was the girl that screwed my brains out, man. And I fell head over heels. We got married six months later, six months." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what love does." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what it does. And, um, I had, um, She didn't know I was a crook. She had no idea. She knew I was very bright. She knew I did a lot of theater, stuff like that. Got a job at, uh, I was in hazard. There was no jobs to be had. So I got a job in Lexington because we were going to be moving to a, to UK, got a job in Lexington at a Lexmark testing printer boards, uh, circuit boards. So I would leave on a Thursday night work, uh, three 18 hour shifts at Lexmark, come back home on, on Monday. Um, got married, faked a car accident to get that, the other, the rest of the money that I needed to, uh, to get married. And the faking on that, man, I had bought a Chevy Spectrum at a car auction. Gave like 500 bucks for it. My aunt had previously defrauded USAA insurance on a car accident. And she was telling me all about it. She's like, look, go down to this chiropractor. Make sure you get the insurance where they'll pay for a rental car. They'll pay lost wages. I was like, they pay lost wages? She's like, yeah, they pay lost wages. I was like, hmm. She's like, by the way, you work for me. And I was like, I work for you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you get to define the wage, and you can also define how long you were unable to work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. And the chiropractor will sign off on any damn thing. My cousin Ronnie, he figures out that I'm going, he finds out I'm going to fake this car accident. So he comes to me, he's like, Hey man, can I get in on that? I was like, yeah, man, you get on that. So this kid, he's five days younger than I am. This kid, he goes to the dentist the day that we're faking it, has a tooth pulled, tells the dentist not to numb it, not to stitch it, just pull it. So he shows up. He shows up the day that we're driving out to fake the accident. He's got blood all over his shirt. He's still bleeding out of the mouth and everything else. I'm like, are you okay? And he's like, yeah, man, it's going to be good. It's going to be good. I'm like, okay. So my mom, by this point, I'm living with my grandparents. My mom is up in the head of a hollow. So we're like, we'll just do it up there. We'll go act like we're visiting my mom on the way back out. Ran over a mountain. Okay, so we go visit and everything come back out that night run over the side of the hill Me and Ronnie walk back up. Of course, it totals the car Walk back to my mom's acting like we've wrecked. She knows what time it is and everything else and follow the claims so that gets the money to to get married and me and my wife moved from hazard to Lexington and I'm the kid that My crime usually if I was a single guy wouldn't break the law wouldn't I would be all right, you know, but Females involved. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got to spend the money. You got to show them gifts Everything else was never enough to show love in some sort of healthy way I always had to go overboard and typically it was buying some or stealing some sort of expensive for that That was the thing that was the way you show love" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "is by buying expensive gifts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or something overboard. Back then with Susan initially, it was, don't worry about working. I got it. You just worry about going to school. She was a music major. I was like, you just worry about going to school. So don't worry about cooking and cleaning. I got it. I got it. So not only was I this guy that was going overboard, but I was kind of a control freak too, right? So now I got it. I got it. I got it. So here I am, you know, 60 hour a week job, 18 hour class load, cooking, cleaning, something had to give. I quit the job. I couldn't do it. Quit the job and start, uh, back in fraud and trying to hide that from her at the same time. So it was initially telemarketing fraud. Um, started, uh, I was working at the first job I had was a telemarketer at a, uh, cemetery selling grave sites. And then, uh, that ended. Went over to work for the Shriners Circus, Shriners Hospital, and it was a third-party company that was doing all the telemarketing, made really good money doing that. That job ended, and then they pivoted over to working with Kiwanis Clubs, selling food baskets to the food banks and everything. So I stole the phone list and started up my own Kiwanis Club, and would do the telemarketing, go out twice a week and pick up checks. Well, what happened was is I'm going out picking up checks, go knock on a door. Turns out one of the persons that I had called was a law enforcement officer. So he was like, who are you? I'm like, I'm with the Kiwanis Club. And he's like, no, you're not. So got arrested, spent three months in a county jail for theft by deception. Got out and, um, we had to move from, from, uh, Lexington back to hazard and live with Susan's parents. They had gotten a desktop computer, uh, HP. And, um, I started surfing around online, found eBay and, uh, didn't really know how to make money on eBay about the same time. I'm, um, Committing low-level frauds online. I don't really talk about that in the past the first time I've really talked about that, but I would Pay for it with bad checks so some more person so not using a platform like eBay more I would find somebody had like a stereo system on eBay something like that and I'd pay for with bad check and Would rely on them not to chase me Because they were out of state at that point and the dollar amounts were very low. I So got the money to move to finally did those schemes enough to get the money to move back to lexington Got to lexington and by this point i'm doing this like i said these schemes on ebay And i'm like there's got to be a better way to make money on ebay gotta be so didn't really know how One night I'm watching Inside Edition with Bill Reilly, and they're profiling Beanie Babies. So I'm sitting there watching, and the one they're profiling is this one called Peanut the Royal Blue Elephant, selling for $1,500 on eBay. And I'm sitting there going like, shit, I need to find me a peanut. So my initial thought was, well, there's got to be one in one of these Hallmark stores in Kentucky someplace. So I skip class the next day, went around to all the Hallmark stores looking for Peanut. No, idiot. He's on eBay for $1,500. So after a few hours of that, I'm like, hmm, turns out they had a little gray beanie baby elephants for $8. Picked up one of those for $8, stopped by Kroger on the way home, picked up a pack of blue Rit dye, went home, tried to dye the little guy. So that was a nightmare. Turns out they're made out of polyester. Get them out of the bath. Looks like they've got the mange. And what happens is I, so I, I'm trying to die the damn thing. And I'm like, well, that's not going to work. That's just not going to work. So I got online, found a picture of a real one, posted it on eBay. And, um, I was like, well, what I can do is I can claim that's the one I've got. And then maybe claim that it got messed up in the mail and work out like that. So, uh, posted a picture of a real one online woman thought I had the real thing. She wins the bid. That social engineering kicks in immediately. I didn't want to, I didn't want to be on the defensive. I wanted to put her on the defensive. So as soon as she wins the bid, I send her a message. Hey, we've not done any business before. I don't even know if I can trust you. What I need you to do protects us. Both go down the U S postal service, get two money orders, totaling $1,500. Send them to me issued by the U S government. That way we're both protected. Soon as I get the money orders, I'll send you your animal. She believed that, didn't ask any questions at all. She believed that. Sent me the money orders, I cashed them out, sent her the creature, immediately got a phone call. I didn't order this. My response, lady, you ordered a blue elephant. I sent you a blue fish elephant. And she got pissed and she kept calling. What I found out, and that's really the first lesson of cybercrime that most of these criminals, including self, learns. If you delay a victim long enough, just keep putting them off, a lot of them, they get exasperated, throw their hands in the air, walk away, you don't hear from them. And none of them, to this day, none of them complain to law enforcement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They eat it. So it's a mixture of like you're exhausted by the process, so it's just easier to walk away, and second, almost like an embarrassment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a whole slew of reasons, all right? There's the exhaustion, certainly. There's the embarrassment. So if you figure out, if you look at it today, where does the embarrassment come from? Well, the media, family members, were all very good about blaming the victim for crimes. Why would you click on the link? Why would you send money to somebody you don't know? Blah, blah, blah. So you've got that that's going on. You've got the issue of who do you complain to? Back then, you didn't know. Do you complain to local police? Because she's in another state. So which local police do you complain to? Do you complain to the feds? Well, the dollar amounts aren't high enough to complain to feds. Feds are going to tell you to go local. Local is going to tell you, hey, it happened in Kentucky. Complain to them. Kentucky is going to tell you, well, shit, you're over there. We need you to come in. So there's this whole issue of the jurisdiction, of the blame factor, everything else. So I got away with that crime. and did it under my own name at that point. I kept going and got better at it, started to understand how to hide identities, things like that, started selling pirated software. Pirated software led into installing mod chips. The initial pirated software was Sega Saturn, PlayStation 1. Well, you had to have a mod chip in those to play the pirated discs, so I started selling and installing mod chips. That led him to installing mod chips into cable television boxes, so you could watch all the pay-per-view, which in turn led him to programming satellite DSS cards. Those 18 inch RCA satellite systems, pull the card out of it, program it, turns on all the channels. Started doing that. Can we just pause?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That is very entrepreneurial. So just technically. So there's laws and rules that you're breaking nonstop. So there's also legitimate ways of doing that, which is break the rules of the conventions of the past. That's the first principles thing. That's what Elon Musk and his ilk do all the time. That is... guts and brilliance, but when it's crossing the lines of the law, actually, sometimes the law is outdated. The thing is, as a human being, you have to then compute the ethical damage you're doing, like ethically, the damage you're doing about other human beings. That is fundamentally the thing that you're breaking, is you're adding to the suffering in the world in one way or another, and you're justifying it. But in terms of me sort of as an engineer, that is some gutsy thinking. That's how Woz and Steve Jobs thought. That's innovation. And maybe just think your, if you can introspect your thinking process here. This is a new, I like how you remember this in HP. Like what, this is a totally new thing to you. Computers is another domain. How are you figuring these puzzles out? Presumably mostly alone. Alone. When you were thinking through these problems, is there, this is a strange question to ask, but you know, what, What is your thinking process? What is your approach to solving these problems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So so the approach is is is you do something and you fuck it up and you're like you think back Okay, how do I fix that? You fix that aspect you commit the crime again and it goes a little bit further and it screws up Okay, how do I fix that? What's the issue on that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do I fix that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's not a deep design thinking like, like later on, it becomes that once, once you, once you lay that groundwork of the way these schemes are working. All right. It becomes that, and you can apply that to other things in, in cyber crime as a whole. All right. But initially it's, it's basically trial and error. You know, you've got a problem. How do you solve that problem? All right. So how do I, I'm committing these crimes under my name. How do I solve that? Well, one of the first principles that we started to teach on Shadow Crew is all crime should begin with identity theft. That's one of the main first principles that a lot of people to this day still don't really get. All right. Why would I commit a crime under my name if I can do it under your name? So that's that's one of the big buffers. And that takes trial and error to get to that point where you start to understand that's the way crime should operate if you're a criminal. All right. But, uh, with me, it was, I mean, it's, it's trial and error. It's, it's that childhood where that mindset is kind of ingrained in you, where you're, you're looking for ways, non-traditional, let's say non-traditional ways of getting around things or getting through things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, one of the questions we'll probably ask this later is, there's also a unique aspect to the outcome of what you were doing, which is you weren't, you didn't get caught for a very long time. We'll talk about why that is. And the thing is, it's so interesting, all crime probably should, to be effective, should start with identity theft. I like that, identity theft, because identity theft can take so many forms. So yes, so Shadow Crew. So what's, so as we're, you started with love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Started with love, so now we're, you know, doing these schemes online. I'm selling to these, I'm programming these satellite DSS cards, and you, one of the interesting things, and you still see that to this day, is something will happen that will create an industry for criminals, all right? So what happened is, Canada Canadian judge rules about the same time that I'm doing these satellite satellite cards Canadian judge comes out and says hey It's legal for my citizens to pirate Those signals and his reasoning was is since RCA doesn't sell the systems up here. My citizens can pirate it Okay This is overnight about the same time PayPal comes into play. So PayPal is coming right online about the same time and Overnight a little cottage dentistry pops up in the United States. You go down to Best Buy, buy the system for $100, take it out in the parking lot, open system up, pull it, open box up, pull the system out, pull the card out, throw the system away, program the card, ship its ass to Canada, $500 a pop. Started doing that. Business is good. Making, you know, $3,000 or $4,000 a week doing that. I'm like, yeah, that's good. I have so many orders, I can't fill all the orders. And quickly think to myself, Why do I need to fill any of them? They're in Canada. I'm down here. Who are they going to complain to? Because I already found out people don't complain. All right. They're not going to complain to anybody. So I start- Especially in Canada. Especially in Canada. And I'm having them send money. That's when PayPal's first into play. And it amazes me that everybody is using PayPal. It's like, you don't even have to really ask. They're like, can we pay back? Yeah, you can pay all day long by PayPal and PayPal had no clue what they were doing with security. So it's like, okay. So they're sending money to PayPal. I'm having the PayPal cashed out to, uh, to bank accounts in my name at that point. And I get scared because by that point, I'm still in four to $6,000 a week. And I'm like, somebody's going to be looking at money laundering. So get it in my head. I'm like, best thing that I can do is get a fake driver's license, open up a bank account using that driver's license, cash out at the ATM. Good. No idea where to get a fake ID, not a clue. So I get online, looked around. It's been a couple of weeks looking around. Thought I found a guy. He went by the screen name of Fake ID Man. Thought I found a guy, sent him $200, sent him my picture. Dude rips me off. And I'm like, what the hell, man? Oh, I got played. He had a little website set up with reviews. And I'm like, oh, it's all legitimate. He's building that trust that I talked about. So the end result, I got pissed. And there was no site that dealt with anything criminal or cybercrime related. The only real Avenue you had was an IRC chat session, internet relay chat. And that, I'm sure you've been on that. It's this rolling chat board. You don't know who the hell you're talking to. Most of them are full of shit. You can't trust anybody. And you're sitting there trying to conduct business. So if somebody claims they've got a product or service, do they have it? Does it work? Or are they just going to rip you off? Because in those channels, everyone's a criminal. I kept looking around, and I happened upon a website called Counterfeit Library. And Counterfeit Library only dealt with counterfeit degrees and certificates, as well as degree meal type stuff. But they had a forum and no one was using the forum. So I basically get on there and bitch every day. I got ripped off, don't know what to do. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. About the same time I started doing that, two other guys show up. One's named Mr. X. He's out of Los Angeles. The other guy's named Beelzebub. He's out of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. And we all become buddies. So, you know, a few weeks of me bitching, a few weeks of them responding. Beelzebub gets me on ICQ and he sends me a message. He's like, I went by the screen name of Gollum at that point, Gollum fun. And he's like, Gollum, I can make you a fake driver's license. And I was like, well, motherfucker, do it. And he's like, well, I'm going to charge you for it. I'm like, yeah, you are. He's like, I am. I was like, no, you're not. And he's like, look, man, he said. This business, if you're going to do this, you have to trust people or you're going to fail. He said, so I'm going to charge you $200, but I'm going to send you a driver's license. Well, by this point, I'm friends with the people who own Counterfeit Library. We're emailing, chatting, everything else. And I tell him, I'm like, okay, I'm going to send you $200. That way, when you rip me off, I'll have them ban you and I don't have to deal with you anymore. And he's like, bet. I'm like, okay. So I sent him $200, sent him my picture. Two weeks later, I get a driver's license. Name is Steven Schweke out of Ohio and a real guy. Worked at ADP Payroll to this day, works at ADP is where the guy works. Got the driver's license. And to me at that point in time, it was the prettiest thing that I'd ever seen. You know, I'd never seen a fake ID before. I thought it was great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Turns out, you know, looking back, it's like, it is a kind of a strong first step in creating a fake identity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very strong, very strong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that was like Gaskill just on the on the point he made that if you're going to be successful in this, you should have people you trust. Is he right on that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, he's absolutely right. He's absolute." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have to have this is like mob. You have to, you have to have an inner circle that you trust." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I'm sure you've probably heard me say this before successful cyber crime. All right. There are three necessities to being successful online. If you're a criminal, three necessities are gathering data, committing the crime, and then cashing it out. All three of those necessities have to work in conjunction. If they don't, the crime fails. The problem, and it's a huge problem, is that one guy can't do all three things. You've got the people who gather the data. Basically, the general store sells people who sell PII, credit card logins, data tools. They always sell the spoofed phone numbers and the RDPs, stuff like that. A lot of the times those people don't know how to commit the crime. And those people certainly don't know how to launder the money out, put cash in pocket. So you've got either because of a skill level, sometimes a geographic location limits what that individual can do. All right. So you have to rely on people who are good in areas where you are not in order for that crime. to succeed. And that means you have to trust those people. So what happens with shadow crew? All right. So counterfeit library is the start. All right. Counterfeit Library transitions over to Shadow Crew. Right before that transition, there's a Ukrainian guy by the name of Dmitry Golubov. He was a spammer at that point in time. He saw what we were doing with Counterfeit Library, and he liked it. He was getting all these credit card details, and this kid, I mean, he's a kid. This kid has an idea, and his idea was, I wonder if people would buy stolen credit card details." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's pretty good Ukrainian-Russian accent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So he picks up the phone. He calls his buddies. They call their buddies. They have a physical conference in Odessa. 150 of these cybercriminals show up, and they launch this idea. They launch a website called Carter Planet, which is the genesis of all modern credit card theft as we know it. All right. Remember, I mentioned those three necessities of cybercrime. Dmitry had all the credit data in the world, and he partnered with all these other Ukrainians who had all this data as well. The problem was that so much fraud had been committed on that eastern side of Europe that every card had been shut down. Even if you were a legitimate cardholder and tried to cash it out, you weren't doing it at that point. So again, those three necessities, gathering data, committing crime, cashing out. Dimitri had the data. They could commit the crime. They could not put cash in pocket. So we were running counterfeit library. One day I get this message or not a message, one day script shows up and he posts just on the general forum. He posts, hey, I've got credit card data. give me an address, give me a burner phone number, wait five business days, order whatever you want to. We had never seen anything like that. We were a PayPal fraud and eBay fraud site is what we were and fake driver's licenses. So then, and we had, I guess we had two, 3000 members at that point. So, um, the response from the members was that can't be real. You've got to be law enforcement. It's gotta be in trying to get us arrested and everything else. What, let me backtrack a little bit. So, The driver's license that I had got, Beelzebub had an idea. What he wanted to do is he wanted to sell driver's licenses. Mr. X wanted to sell Social Security cards. He made a very passable Social Security card. Me, I had no skill level on that. I knew PayPal fraud and eBay fraud. So Beelzebub was like, tell you what, you be the reviewer. That way you get every product or service that comes in. They'll have to send it to you or let you have access to it. You can learn the entire game. And because you're not selling anything, it gives you legitimacy on the reviews. All right. So I started out as a reviewer, the only reviewer on Counterfeit Library. So over the next year, Beelzebub turns out he was a pot grower. He goes back to growing pot because he wasn't making shit, selling driver's licenses. Mr. X, about a year and a half in, he gets arrested, cashing out casinos, doing some shit with that. So I'm the only guy left standing and I'm at the top of the heap. So and it becomes this thing where if I review somebody, they make a lot of money. If I don't, you don't do business here. So script shows up saying he's got this. I'm the only reviewer on site. People think he's law enforcement. First week, it goes like that. After a while, I'm like, OK, I got to do something. And I'm scared, man, because I'm like, he may be law enforcement. So I get him on ICQ and I'm like, hey, you have to be reviewed. He's like, what the hell is that? So I tell him what it is. He's like, you review me. I was like, yeah, that's the idea. So give him a drop address. Give him a burner phone number. Wait five business days, and I try to hit Dell for $5,000. The order fails. I get back on ICQ. Hey man, it didn't work. He's like, give me one more chance. I was like, look, I'll give you one more chance, but it's your ass after that. And he's like, one more chance. I'm like, okay. Give him another address, another phone number. Wait another five business days. Hit Thompson's Computer Warehouse for $4,000, Dell for $5,000. Order goes through, get the products in. I posted that review on Counterfeit Library. And literally overnight, we turned from an eBay, PayPal fraud site to a credit theft site. And that becomes a lot of money really quickly for members. So we were doing, now it's called CMP fraud, card not present fraud. So you hit an online merchant with stolen credit card data. Back then, a fairly experienced fraudster could profit $30,000 to $40,000 a month. Okay. Just buying, you know, laptops, what have you, and cashing out, you know, put them on eBay for sale and sell them like that. And 30 to 40K a month was the profit on that. Script had a lot of buddies. He had people like Roman Vega, these other guys that would sell not just credit card data, but counterfeit physical credit cards as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We had- Counterfeit, not stolen. So counterfeit. Counterfeit. That must be tough to do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That must be harder than driver's license. It's crazy. So what BOA initially had, and I became the United States salesperson for BOA, but what he had was he was the first dumps provider in the United States. So on the back of your credit or debit card, there's a magnetic stripe. Three data tracks on the stripe. The first data track is the customer's name. Second data track is the card number, forward slash, 16-digit algorithm outside of that. That's important. We'll get back to that in a few minutes. Third data track is called indiscriminate data. No one uses it, all right? So what's bought and sold is the second data track. It's called the dump. And the reason that's sold is when you go into a shop, you insert the card or you swipe the card, the only information that's sent out for verification is the second data track. All right, that goes to the processor bank for verification. the first data track that customer's name shows up on the screen of the cashier in front of you. So what typically happens is, is you buy 10 of these dumps, you get 10 counterfeit cards, encode track 2 on all 10 cards, track 1 you create one fake driver's license, track 1 is just the name of that one fake driver's license. That way when you go in the shop, swipe the card, track 2 gets sent off for verification, track 1 shows up on the screen in front of the cashier. If you ever ask for ID, you pull out the fake ID. Everyone's nice, warm, fuzzy. You walk out with the cameras, Rolex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And track one could be, it doesn't have to be connected. It's not connected to track two." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not connected at all. All right. That's one of the big problems. All right. Yeah. So, Scrip brought a host of technical people into that type of environment, all committing credit card theft. We had proxy providers. We had all these people that were doing this stuff. start making a lot of money a lot and the reason that happens is again script did not have the ability to cash out so he was reduced to selling things and at the same time he's looking for how do i make more money all right the ukrainians happened upon this thing called the CVV1 breach or hack. That's what they called it. So what happens is, remember I told you of track two, card number forward slash 16 digit algorithm. You got to know the algorithm to encode it so you can swipe the card or take it to the ATM machine. All right, ATM. Gotta know it. Now, we were fishing data from hell. I mean, we were doing a lot of fishing, a lot. We were getting pins, we were getting card numbers, but you can't get that algorithm. So Ukrainians start testing stuff. What they found out was no bank had implemented the hash on track two. So you take the card number forward slash any 16 digits it would encode. Take it to the ATM, pull cash out, because you got the pin. All right? Started doing that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, wait. Sorry, I'm trying to understand. So that means, so if there's no, are they generating random numbers, or do they have valid numbers for track two?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No numbers needed at all, as long as just the track two was a complete track two." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a valid track two. That doesn't matter. So the pin is the thing that gets you in back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So back then, all right. So back then, what we're talking about is you need to typically today, you need a whole track to, you need that valid track to, all right. You need the, you need the 16 digit card number, the forward slash, and then whatever that algorithm is the other side of it. All right. Back then, none of the banks had implemented that algorithm. So while the algorithm was there, you didn't need it to encode. Interesting interesting so you can make a lot of money with physical of So much money that credit cards debit cards card not present fraud remember I told you was thirty to forty thousand dollars a month All right that turned into thirty to forty thousand dollars a day. Yeah, the Ukrainians again They can't cash it out They've got all the data on the planet, but they can't cash it out, those three necessities of cybercrime. So the deal became, you have to rely on the Americans. Tell you what, we'll give you 40%. So you had all these cashiers that were 40% of $40,000 a day. Yeah, we'll take that. All right. send the rest of it over to buy Western Union or what have you to your Ukrainian contact. That's before cryptocurrency came into play. Now you had a couple of forerunners with e-gold and Liberty Reserve, things like that. But back then, it starts out with Western Union, then it becomes prepaid cards, sending track information over, loading the card up like that, and then finally you get to e-gold, Liberty Reserve, and today it's with crypto that's used. Started stealing a lot of money. Lot and that got law enforcement attention So we started to see I mean just it's crazy-ass story. We started to see IPs coming in from law enforcement agencies government agencies because back then they didn't know how to shield their identity either So you saw you saw Secret Service? You saw DOD saw all these like and you're like, that's interesting At the same time We had, uh, it was called a hack, but it wasn't a hack. We had a guy that worked at T-Mobile in Los Angeles. This is the same guy that back then published Paris Hilton's phone contact list. That made a lot of news. Not only did he do that, but it turned out that the Los Angeles Secret Service Agency was using T-Mobile phones. So he's getting text messages of the Secret Service investigating ShadowCrew. And he posts those damn things on ShadowCrew. So I'm sitting there going, head of the pile. I'm sitting there going, this is not going to end well. This is not going to end well. So at the same time, I had access. I started out with access to the Indiana State Sex Offenders Registry, and I was using that to create bank accounts, laundered the money out, and I would sell the bank accounts, stuff like that. They shut that down. The next database I had access to was the Texas Driver's License Database and started using that to create fake driver's licenses, what have you. And then finally, we happened upon the California Death Index. All right. Complete information, mother's maiden, socials, DOBs, all that. And it's like, got to be a use for that. Well, you can use it to create identities all day long. My idea was, I wonder, if you could take somebody that's died and then file for social security death benefits, not death benefits, but social security benefits for that individual and get that recurring paycheck in. So that takes a lot of research to start seeing if you can do that. How does the federal government know if you're dead? Do federal indexes reference state indexes? You got all these questions that pop up. Well, it turns out federal indexes don't reference state indexes. It's against the law. It also turns out the only way the federal government knows you're dead is prior to 1998, the family had to file a Social Security death benefit for that person. All right. Prior to 98. Prior to 98, it took the family. After 98, the hospital can do it, funeral home can do it, or the family can do it. So a lot more people haven't filed after if they've died. But it's still, there's a lot of people. A lot of people don't because that death benefits only like $219. Yeah. Okay. Nobody's thinking about that shit. So I started to apply for social security. benefits. Nope. Number's dormant. So they want you to come in for a physical interview. Here I am, you know, 32. You're not going to pass as a 65 year old. So no. So the next idea I had was, wonder if you could file income tax returns on these people. Turns out you can. all day long. So I started doing that. And I started to steal. Once I got ramped up, because you test everything, you know, you're testing to make sure you got to figure out what the deposit instrument is and everything else. And once you get all that lined out, I started to steal $160,000 a week, every week for 10 months out of the year. By paying taxes. By filing fake. Yeah, filing returns. So you find a business. Yes. And the way the system worked is the IRS will issue a refund on somebody before they're able to verify that that person worked for an employer. Still works like that today. All right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So. And you're keeping the amounts relatively low." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Keeping it $3,000." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Amounts are very low. But you're still able to achieve scale because this large index of real people. And I was manual. Later on, a couple of buddies of mine went automated with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait, you were doing this by hand? So there's no code involved?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All manual. Wow. I'd file a return once every six minutes, work 10 hours a day, three days a week. So typing fast and clicking. One return every six minutes. That's changing IP, that's changing address, everything else will return every six minutes for three days a week. Fourth day, I would take a road trip, plot out a map of ATMs, and then the next two days, cash out. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. All right, come back home, rinse and repeat. Turns out that a backpack, I don't see any sitting around here, but a backpack will hold $150,000 of 20s, is what it'll hold. So I'd put 150K in 20s in a backpack, I had a spare bedroom, I'd come in, toss the backpack in the bedroom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is very, very important information, and the fact that you know it is also very, first we started with the volume of coal that weighs a ton, and now a backpack holds $150,000 in 20s, and then you can multiply that by five for hundreds, Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like this. Versus 20. Most of the time it's 20 that's coming out of ATM, right? That's true. You can't do hundreds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Each 20 weighs a gram. Each 20 weighs a gram." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you can actually go by weight, which is what federal authorities do when they get a pallet of cash. They just weigh it. Oh, they just weigh it. Okay. So 150K is seven and a half keys of cash." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Seven and a half keys, 15. Oh, that's pretty light." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not bad, not bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, did you get a big backpack? Do a good run of David Goggins with it? Yeah. Nice, I like it. So the fact, you know, this is great. So wait, where does that come in with the backpack?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what happens is, I didn't know how to launder money. Alright, so, you know, I'm throwing cash in the spare bedroom. One day you open up the bedroom and you're like, Got to do something with those backpacks. And that's when you start learning how to launder money, you know, cash based businesses, things like that. I had a production company, had a couple of detailing company. I was thinking about going into food trucks. Things like that in Charleston." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Actually, can you pause on that to take a tangent there? How does money laundering work? I mean, at that time, and what years are we talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "By the time the tax return schemes go into play, we're talking 2002, 2003 is when tax returns start." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so what, at that time, and what you're aware of now, how it evolved, how does money laundering work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's not that much different. It's really not. You get a cash-based business, start laundering the money or putting the money through that, saying the transactions are legal. You then start depositing into bank accounts. From bank accounts, my thing was is have bank accounts in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and then finally bounce over to Estonia was the final destination of all this stuff. And the idea is to try to move them to so many places that by the end of the day, it looks legal and you can't trace it all if you're ever caught, which you ultimately are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But so the cash-based businesses, you know- So when you say, sorry to interrupt, but the cash-based businesses, so you have money that needs to be moved to other people. So, how does that work? What's the business? Are people providing you a service and you're giving them money?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So, you do the Ozark thing if you want to do that. So, you can gamble, cash out something like that. So, trips to whatever casinos you've got. You've got your production company or your detail company. So, how many cars you're cleaning a day? How many companies have you got to do that? All right. Whatever that company is, it's got to be cash-based. Somebody's paying you in cash is what you're doing. You have to have enough of those cash-based businesses where it doesn't look funny. All right? Because if you're a detail company making $100,000 a month, that's a problem. Okay? So then you start depositing into that. Well, Because of the Patriot Act, a suspicious activity report, SARS, came in at $2,500 instead of the 10K that it used to be. So all of a sudden, you've got multiple bank accounts that you've got to set up. Fortunately, what you also had is you had a bunch of prepaid debit cards that were coming into play at the same time. So a combination of bank accounts, prepaid debits that had ACH abilities attached to those as well, and you start running them all together. Then once it's out of the United States, you don't have to worry as much. You can start funneling that into fewer bank accounts until finally you've got the one main account that's over at Bank Latiko in Estonia at that point. That's what you've got." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a bunch of hops that end up at a place that you can't trace." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And to give you an idea, I was arrested February 8th, 2005. My last seizure was 2010. Got the last seizure notice. They got it, but it did took them that long to get to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do the stories like with Scrip that come into play here where he had someone who owed him money kidnapped and tortured. So when does it turn darker?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It turns darker when the more money you make. Scrip was a kid that, he was stealing enough money that he was able to buy whatever estate he wanted to. And he would brag about touring the countryside, and if he saw property that he liked, he would buy it. And that was not just a brag, he was doing that. So this kid is stealing a lot of money. At the same time, he's got connections politically because of his family. He's got connections, and that family's got connections with a Ukrainian mob. All right, so he's got these inroads and people are looking out for him and he's stealing a lot of money at the same time. Somebody doesn't pay him. Decent amount of money somebody doesn't pay him now. We had never With shadow crew with Carter planet with counterfeit library. We were basically the geeks. All right We were the just the fraudsters of social engineers We had never really considered violence the rules that I had in play were hey, we're not we don't do child pornography We don't do counterfeit currency. We don't do drugs And the only thing we ended up really obeying was the child porn stuff except for Max Butler who you mentioned earlier Um, script, someone rips the guy off and, uh, he comes online on shadow crew at that point. And he posts these pictures one day. And I mean, it was a detailed narrative through the pictures, had the guy that rammed in the van, had the door open round and rammed in the van, had the guy tied up, had the guy being tortured. And, uh, the response was, this is what happens when you steal from me. And that's the first time that violence came into play at that point. And that's when you start realizing things are getting a little serious. How did that make you feel? The first response is, can't be real. He's just doing that. He's wanting to send a message. Then you're like, No, that's real. That's real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were you afraid in your own heart that you might descend to that too? Like if you see that, or was it pretty clear to you that that's a line that some people can cross and some can't, and you're not one of those that can cross it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, I gotta tell you, I joke with my wife. The joke I tell my wife is, you know, if I knew some guy that had 8,000 Bitcoins, I might be persuaded to ask him for access to that. And she was like, how? And I was like, well, hammer and toes. And I say that as a joke, but there's that line where you're like, I remember who I used to be. And if you're looking at that kind of money, I might be persuaded to do that back then. You know, that's, and I think that was Scripps' issue, is it was a lot of money to him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was the money, and then there's, you know, violence can also be gradual, so over time you do a little more, a little more, a little more, a little more. Always, always." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You get used to what's going on, and then I get desensitized. And you figure, you take somebody like Ross Ulbrich, the Silk Road guy, all right? Ross was not a violent guy. He's he was not, but at that point in time, you know, he was sitting on 24, 24 million in Bitcoin. He was the only game in town. And that 24 now is like, I don't know, 22, 24 billion, some crap like that. But, um, he. Felt in danger of this guy was going to turn him in, you know, it was a black mountain and everything. So Ross thinks he hires a couple of hit men to kill the guy. So it's, it's, it becomes that thing. And I saw that over and over again. And I'd like to say I wasn't like that, but given the same circumstances, I would have probably done the same thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also when you're, it's not just about money. There's a lot of other forces, like if you're threatened. for your well-being, or for your wealth, or for your power. All of us operate under different motivations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Plus that online aspect with those communities like that, if you're the head guy, you really feel like you're the parent of these guys. So if somebody's starting to threaten them, it's like, all right, what do I need to do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you make of Silk Road? The Shadow Crew started something that today you can call Darknet and Darknet markets. So these markets that operate, that trade, Trade things, everything from child pornography to drugs to, I mean, what else? What are the dark things that humans want to do that they don't want anyone to know about? All of those things. Um, so can you maybe tell me, you know what, let's just even step back. What is the dark net? How big is it? What happens there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's let's backtrack a little bit more before we get to that. All right. Um, what shadow crew did other than, you know, dealing in all these stolen wares, what shadow crew did, that's really important. Remember those three necessities that I talked about. But the important thing is, is it established trust among criminals, all right? Because that's a necessity. You have to be able to trust who you're dealing with, because you have to deal with somebody. You have to. All right? So how do you know you're not dealing with a cop? How do you know you're dealing with somebody that's skilled? How do you know you're going to deal with somebody that's not going to rip you off? You have to be able to trust that individual. The shadow crew provided that trust mechanism for criminals you had that communication channel with forums Where you could reference conversations weeks months old take part learn from those conversations You had vouching systems and review systems in place escrow systems in place You had you could knew by looking at someone's screen name If you could trust the individual Network with the individual. All right, and that community of just humans provided that backbone of trust. And that's that's really interesting when you think about it. You had the trust that was there, but you also had this. Almost this instantaneous information that was available about the community or about cybercrime at large, and that's that's still in play today. All right. So when. That that was the way things were until a couple of things happen, and one was cryptocurrency. The other one was the Tor browser, the dark web. Now, I was working with the Secret Service, ripping the Secret Service off, when Tor comes into play. All right, so we got a memo in one day, and it was talking about the Tor browser. And it was like, we really need to be careful with this. This is going to be a problem. And so we all fired up the Tor browser. And it turns out this was 2005, early 2006. Turns out it was completely unusable. Could not use it at all, simply because no one was using it, and it was extremely slow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So... So for people who don't know, Tor browser is a way to be completely anonymous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As long as you properly know how to use it. Right. Huge caveat. Yeah. All right. So, developed by the United States Navy, and they developed... I know this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I cannot... Oh, yeah. It wasn't the hackers that... Interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "US Navy. To this day, the number one funder of Tor? Military. To this day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right. Interesting. I mean, the same, I guess, with the Internet, the origins are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it was developed so that operatives could communicate with each other without being identified. All right. That then goes open source. They release it. EFF comes in, starts sponsoring and everything else like that. The next idea was, well, you know, people can get around their country's firewalls, whistleblowers can use it, things like that. Well, someone forgot to mention that the first adoptees of tech, if you can use it to launder money or remain anonymous, are criminals. And so criminals start to use the damn thing. All right. So along the same time, we get, well, a few years later, we get Satoshi Nakamoto pops up with his ideas for Bitcoin, and then Ross Ulbrich runs with it. Ross Ulbrich decides he's going to start up Silk Road. So initially, the people who were using Tor, which later is the dark web, people were using Tor or just talking with each other, visiting websites, communicating like that. Someone figured out, hey, man, we could host websites on this thing, and they have a lot of trouble finding the box. So that is the advent of Silk Road. All of a sudden, Ross Ulbrich has this idea that he's going to change the world. by becoming the largest drug dealer on the planet. So he opens up the Silk Road, and the only payment instrument he allows is Bitcoin. So if those people out there are wondering why Bitcoin is going at, what, 44K today? Yeah. Yeah, it starts up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by the time this is out, it could be $100,000 or $10,000." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. We'll see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who knows?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If it's $10,000, I'm going to buy some." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is a hilarious statement to make, because that statement would be ridiculously wrong like five years ago, right? I know, I know. People 100 years from now will be laughing, wait, it was that low?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So he only accepts Bitcoin, and that's, of course, the initial use case of crypto is no one wants to admit it today. But the initial use case is we're going to buy a bunch of pot. We need somebody, we need a way to pay for it. So that's what happens. Ross, it's really interesting to me. If you look at motivations of cybercriminals, the motivations are status, cash, ideology. All right? My guys, all cash. Across the board, all cash. Ross is ideology. He really believed he was going to change the world. really didn't. I've been fortunate. I actually know the guy who ran Silk Road 2 and have talked to the kid, everything else. And I will tell you that those guys who are motivated by ideology, they are a completely different breed. They really are. It's not, you know, the cash guy, it's low-hanging fruit. The ease of, it's hard to stop committing crime. But it's much easier for a cash-motivated individual to stop than it is that ideology guy. That Silk Road 2 guy, he's still got it. He's not breaking the law. But you can see it's like, he wants to. He wants to. So it's- That's fascinating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, the worst atrocities in human history are committed with people that operate under ideology. All the other motivations are much weaker." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But, you know, you think about it with Ross. I mean, very bright guy, very bright guy. But think about the amount of cognitive dissonance that the guy's got, that he thinks he's going to change the world by running a drug site. I mean, certainly, I mean, could he have changed the world? Yeah. Could he have done it like that? Probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I could steel man those arguments. I listened to quite a few libertarians, and you could push that to anarchists. There's a lot of people that argue, so I actually talked to a professor at Columbia who actually argues that all drugs should be legalized, and not at a philosophical level, political level, but the fact that all the negative consequences of drugs that people talk about actually have to do with other factors in your life. I would agree with that. And so that's a, okay, but that's more like a argument about negative aspects of drugs. I think the ideology comes in where it's like, well, nobody should tell you what to do. You should be, you should have the responsibility of your own actions, like, you know, the government or any other institutions shouldn't be the rule setters, the constraints for how you live your life. And so I could see that argument being made. And ultimately, if you create an open market for drugs, how that could build a better society, it might break down the outdated, the corrupt, the bureaucratic institutions. I mean, you can make that argument." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's an argument. And let's be fair. I want to be fair with it. Did he change the world? We do have this whole thing called cryptocurrency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in the long arc of history, perhaps. Yeah, we do have that. That's a biggie. And that might have been for it to take hold in society, maybe the darker parts of society at first, maybe that was necessary." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. I mean, maybe. We'll see how it pans out. Shadow Crew, we had this guy. Albert Gonzalez, this kid's name. We were growing so big that I had to start farming things out. So the first thing I started farming, I instituted this review system, kind of establishing that trust mechanism even further for criminals to use. We needed somebody to take care of our tech aspects of the forum. So an associate of mine by the name of Kim Taylor, we were looking for a forum techie. He comes to me one night and he's like, Founder Forum Techie. I was like, who's that? And he's like, it's this kid. And I was like, is it any good? He's like, well, he knows the software. I was like, OK. We just signed his ass on. He went by the screen name of Kumpajani was his screen name. And he starts selling credit cards after a while under a screen name of Scarface. And that CVV1 breach where you're cashing out the track twos at ATMs, you know, $40,000 a day. So Albert's in New Jersey one day, broad daylight, and stands at an ATM for 40 minutes, just standing there, feeding in one ATM card after another, pulling out cash, taking the 20s out, stuffing them in that backpack. Meanwhile, just across the street, a couple of cops just happen to be there. And they start noticing this kid just standing there. So 40 minutes they watch this kid, 40 minutes. Finally, one cop looks at the other. Let me see what's going on. Walks over across the street. Albert's wearing a wig. He's got the disguise on everything else like that. Ask him, kid, what are you doing? Albert falls apart. We didn't know Albert had been arrested, so Albert immediately goes in. I want to work for the Secret Service. At that point in time, Secret Service I referred to and I want to make sure that I don't say that it's not like that anymore. But back then they were fucking idiots. All right. They had no clue what was going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there was a competence issue that they were working through is one way to put it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a nice that's a nice euphemism for fucking idiots is another way to say it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they're just like not aware of the digital world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They had no clue. No clue. The way that Albert tells them how to catch us, because they looked at him, how do we catch them? And Albert's like, Albert, I'm serious. I'm serious. So Albert's like, well, you could try a VPN. What's a VPN? So he explains it to them. They're like, that's a good idea. So I quit shadow crew. I was worried about all the news that was coming in and everything like that. I'm still in 160K a week. I didn't know Albert had been arrested. I'm worried about being arrested. I know the writing's on the wall, and I'm like, I'm quitting. Where did you see the writing? The IPs that were coming in, the text messages about the Secret Service investigators I referred to, I was like, man, this is not going to end well. This is going to be bad. So I announced my retirement of February 15th, oh, I'm sorry, April 15th, 2004 is my retirement. I think that's the 2004. And I quit. I walk away. Well, Albert had been arrested. They cut him loose. No one knows he's been arrested. He comes back into shadow crew. I leave Kim Taylor at the same time. He's kind of on the run, which if you want to know, that's where it's a nightmare story in and of itself. So my second in charge, Kim Taylor, this guy, there was this guy named David. Oh, what was his name? He was L mariachi was a, was a guy's name. David Thomas, David. Yeah. Yeah. He was a film guy. Scarface. Yeah. So L mariachi real name, David Thomas. He's on the run out of Nebraska for check fraud. He comes to us on shadow crew telling us the sad story. We take up a collection for this guy, send it to him. All right. I get him a job working with a low level Carter trying to make him some money. All right. El Mariachi does, or Thomas does this for a few weeks, comes to me one day and he's like, man, I'm not making any money. I'm like, okay, let me see what I can do. Well, I had a Ukrainian guy by the name of Big Buyer. He, a real friend of mine, and I contacted him. I was like, look, man, I got a guy that wants to do some work. Can you help the guy out? And he's like, I got it. I was like, okay. So he sends Thomas enough money to go, Thomas is in Texas at that point, sends Thomas enough money to go from Texas to Issaquah, Washington and rent an office space. All right. So Thomas goes up there, rents his office space, him and his girlfriend, rents an office space. And the plan is this big buyer is going to place an order, get products sent, Mariachi is going to get the product listed on eBay cash out 5050 easy enough. All right, so big buyer places an order first order is outpost.com $18,000 The largest order outpost.com had ever received at that point in time Order goes through he goes through still goes through he gets the product. All right Mariachi comes back tells me tells my second in charge Kim Taylor Kim Taylor at this point. He's I'm 33 34 Kim Taylor's 46. He works at the tattered cover bookstore in Denver, Colorado That's where he works at this point and he fancies himself Jason Bourne. Mm-hmm. All right He's even got one of the screen names of Jason Bourne So I'm like, all right, so Mariachi is telling us how much money he's making everything else. I'm like, well, that's good. I'm glad you're all right. Kim contacts me. He's like, I want to go to Issaquah. And I was like, why? He's like, to make some money. I'm like, you're making money. He's like, I want to go to Issaquah. I was like, all right, go be careful. So he gets in the car. Saturn is what he's driving. He drives his little piece of Saturn all the way up to Issaquah, gets there, you know, midnight. They party all night long because they've never met each other. They're just celebrating, partying, drinking, everything else like that. Meanwhile, Big Buyer has placed another order with Outpost.com. $17,000. The second largest order Outpost.com had ever received at that point in time. By this point in time, Outpost knows the first order was fraudulent. Guess where it's going? The exact same address the first order goes. So Outpost picks up the phone, calls Issaquah PD. Hey, we got a fraudster. Issaquah's like, would you mind sending some empty boxes? And Outpost is like, be happy to. So the rule was, is on credit card fraud, if you've got full account access, You place the order. The morning that's supposed to arrive, you sign into the bank account or the credit card account. If you can sign in, you go pick up your product. If you can't sign in, you go back to sleep that day. All right. Well, Big Buyer was the guy who placed the order. Mariachi and my second in charge are partying. All right. So they're supposed to contact Big Buyer. They don't. Meanwhile, Big Buyer is raising hell, getting up with me like, hey, Where are the guys? I can't find them. They don't need to pick up this product. So I can't get in touch with them. They go down to pick up the thing. So Mariachi's got a Cadillac, old 70s Cadillac. He's got a Cadillac, pulls into the complex. Now, Mariachi's driving. Kim Taylor's in the passenger seat. David Thomas's girlfriend's in the backseat. As they pull into the complex, going through the parking lot, Mariachi just happens to glance over and he sees a van with a guy sitting sideways in the van. And he looks at Kim Taylor and he's like, that's an undercover. And Kim's like, ah, it's fine. So they pull up to the office complex. Kim's like, I'll go in and get the packages. So he walks in. Looks at the guy behind the counter. I believe you have some packages for us guys. Like one second. So he disappears around the wall out pops. The issaquah PD arrest. Kim David Thomas is in the car watching all this happen. He bugs out and they arrest him on the interstate. where he has three fake driver's licenses in his wallet along with his real driver's license, another no-no, but they get him. So David Thomas had outstanding warrants out of Nebraska. We couldn't bond him out. Kim Taylor didn't have any warrants, so we bonded him out. My third in charge, Kidd, Seth Sanders was his name. He bonds them out, uses his girlfriend's account to bond them out. And, uh, I get Marriott, not, I get Kim Taylor to go to Utah where he, uh, another friend of mine agrees to house him, him and his wife. So I think everything's fine and all that. About three weeks later, this guy in Utah gets me on the phone. Hey, he's got to go. I'm like, what's going on? He's like, well, the only thing he's doing is popping ecstasy tablets every day, all day. And I'm like, seriously? He's like, yeah. I was like, okay, he's got to go. So we kick him out of there. By this point, I've got another crew that's coming through. I mean, I had all these crews running, had another crew that's coming through Denver. Send Kim back to Denver to partner up with these guys. Kim gets these guys arrested. So by this point in time, I'm exasperated. I just want to throw my hands up in the air and walk away. So my retirement's coming up at the same time. So I'm like, fuck it. I'm done. So I tell everybody, the rest of the admins and the mods there, I'm like, this is what's going on. You guys need to watch out for this. We need to ban Kim, not let him back in. Be careful what's going on. I walk away. At the same time I walk away, Cumbajani, Albert Gonzalez, comes back into play. He sees everything that's going on. He uses that to his advantage. He starts banning everyone that's suspicious of him, sets up the VPN at the same time, and says, hey, to make sure we're all secure, I need all transactions to go through this VPN. VPNs ran by the Secret Service. All right. Secret Service ends up, I think they ended up cataloging like $7 million worth of transactions over the next four or five months. ShadowCrew makes the front cover of Forbes, August 2004. Headline, Who's Stealing Your Identity? October 26, 2004, United States Secret Service arrests 33 people, six countries, six hours. I was in Charleston, South Carolina when I saw it happen, and I'm like... You're the one that got away. There were a couple other guys that got away that they didn't publicly mention. One, his name was Tron. He went by the screen name Tron. He had access, almost unfettered access, to Bank of America. So what happens is they identified the guy, secret services in the air to go get him. They call the Ukrainian police. Hey, we're coming down to arrest this guy. Ukrainian cops are like, Oh, come on down. So as soon as they got off the phone, Ukrainian cops get in the car, go down and tell Tron, Hey, there. They're coming to get you. So he bugs out down to South America and they don't catch him. I think for six or seven years after that, something like that caught him eventually caught him eventually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me actually ask you on this point. You've said that if you do cyber crime, eventually it's not going to end well. It does not end well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why is that? So I don't want to say that's because you're going to be arrested because honestly, very few people are arrested. All right. But it doesn't end well because of the type of person that you become. You quoted me earlier. You lie to everybody. around you. You lie to yourself. You lie to your friends. You lie to your family. Of course, you lie to your victims. You don't have any friends. You know, I went 20 years without friends. I had associates. I didn't have friends. And you can't truly trust. You don't trust anybody. You don't trust anybody. You know, I had my wife. I was married for nine years. I lied to her every single day of those nine years. And it took her nine years to to give up on me, to realize that I was that piece of shit. And she leaves at that point. Then from there, I started dating a stripper and lied to her. I thought I had friends. I lied to all those people that I knew that thought they were my friends. I lied to them the entire time. You become that individual. I don't think a lot of people really understand how bad that is. You know, you talked about, you pointed out that woman. that are ripped off. She was trying to put a roof on her house for freaking kids, man. You're that person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're that person. So you're also lying to yourself. And that's not a mindset in which you can. grow as a person, find happiness, find genuine, simple human affection, which is what love is. Simple, real friendship, all of those things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I went to prison, of course. One of the most important lessons that I learned in prison Because cyber crime, crime as a whole, if you're a criminal, it's an addiction, all right? If you're addicted to something, whether it be drugs, crime, gambling, what have you, if you're addicted to something, you cannot love anything else except the addiction. The addiction comes first, all right? And you pointed out some of those truly despicable things. Scripps, for example, tortures that guy. You get to the point where it's like, okay, This is the business. And I tried to convince myself that I'm a businessman, but I'm a good guy on the other end. And you're not. You're not. So those lies become part of it, everything else. You know, it's yeah, you get the higher ups are usually arrested. They are. But, you know, you've got millions of cyber criminals these days. So most guys are not going to be arrested. So you may be arrested. You may you may be like freaking Jonathan James. He was a minor, a very, very talented individual, very competent. He had, as a kid, he had broke into NASA, DOD, Pentagon. He shut the NASA computers down for six weeks. This is that kid. Then he decides he wants to go into credit card theft. Partners with Albert. He's arrested with Albert. Law enforcement, they were going to blame him. He was the only competent individual. So this kid gets up one day. He wasn't in prison yet. He gets up one day, goes in his dad's bedroom, gets out his 45. walks in the bathroom and blows his brains out. You know, you've got, you've got things like that. Um, or you're going to rip somebody off and you're going to end up like scripted with that guy. The, uh, the guy who hit, uh, who ran evolution marketplace, no one knew who two people ran that guy and a girl and no one knew who they were. He ends up still in about $24 million. A lot of from Ukrainian mob and they found them. about a year later on a beach without his head and hands. But, uh, you know, it always goes south. But more than anything to me, the, uh, the negative thing is, is you really become somebody that, I mean, just truly a despicable human being. When you get to the point when you're destroying people's retirement accounts, you're stealing money from a woman that simply wants to do something good for her family. When you, when you become that individual and you're okay with that, my God, man, I got to the point. I had one guy ripped off. It's like for $900 is when I first started the cybercrime stuff is when I was becoming competent. And, uh, I ripped him off for like $900 and he sent me an email and, uh, he was like, uh, the email said something like, uh, I guess you needed the money and it's okay. You know, you keep it. And, uh, I'm getting chills right now thinking about it, but it's that, uh, where you become that individual." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Can I actually backtrack? Listen, I love love, okay? And there's a story that you fell in love with the stripper. I mean, you have to tell the story. So how did you fall in love with somebody? Not that there's anything wrong with that profession, but it's romantic. It's like a true romance, by the way, great movie." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is a great film. It's truly a great film." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even even Brad Pitt who makes a brief appearance is genius. There's so much good acting there Anyway, so tell me that love story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, so, you know what? Like I said, I get from my dad I get that fear of being abandoned, you know, I lied to my wife for nine years until she leaves and I was in Charleston, South Carolina and what happened was I noticed that Susan She was not coming to bed. Like, you know, she used to, she'd stay up all night long and sometimes she'd go and be gone a few hours and everything else. And I'm like, well, something's going on. And I'd pass by her, her computer and she would minimize the screens. And I'm like, well, got to figure out what the hell is going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, uh, put a key logger on her system as any, uh, anybody should in a relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Cause you trust them. Why not?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You should be tracking all their movements, all their- Exactly, exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like I said, I was the control freak too. That's romantic. So, I found out she'd been cheating on me and she was- See, there you go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They had a reason. They had a reason." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I justified. So, I found out she was cheating on me. She was asleep when I found it out and I sat there looking at it and I was like, well, shit. So, got up, walked in the bedroom, opened up the wardrobe, got a suitcase out, started putting her clothes in it. Then she wakes up. She's like, where are you going? I'm like, I'm not. Well, my, my bravado disappeared pretty quickly. I, uh, took about a week of both of us crying and arguing and everything else. And she, she finally left and, uh, I went through this depression. I went, uh, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, South Carolina. I would just walk around the house, kind of stumbling in a daze. Realized I was getting suicidal and was smart enough to do something about it and picked up the phone book and That's where there's always a sense of humor. So I picked up the phone, but I'm going through the yellow pages I'm like psychologist criminal psychologist cuz I need that Called the psychologist crying to her. I'm crying on the phone told her everything. I'm this criminal. This is what's happened she's like come in now, so I go in spill my guts and I Saw her for about four months and I joke about it, but it's true. She, uh, she was trying to get me to stop breaking the law and to go into real estate. And I remember telling her, is there a difference? She was like, yes, there's a difference. So sorry for about four months. I was, um, I was 34. I didn't start drinking until I was 34. I'd never done drugs or anything else like that because my mom was an addict as well. So I, I was this guy that always wanted to be in control. Didn't want to. You know, lose control of myself and, uh, had never been to strip club. So, uh, one night I was getting lonely. So I walked into the strip club. Actually, I was researched this strip club and it was a Joe's roundup in Charleston, South Carolina. Joe's roundup little bitty hole in the wall stuff. I was, yeah, real classy. So I walked in and I'm literally that guy, man, that fell in love with the first, the first stripper that he sees. She walks by, I'm like, that one? So I didn't know the strip club game. Again, criminal, naive as hell. So belly up at the bar, order the beer. I'm sitting there drinking it. She comes over to me and we start talking and she's like, would you like to get a bottle of champagne? I was like, does that mean going in back or what? She's like, well, yeah, you need to do the bottle going back. And I was like, sure, let's buy a bottle of champagne. $400 bottle of Korbel. All right. So then again, that bravado disappears pretty quickly. I get back there and we talk for two hours. And you know, nowadays I don't understand that most men who go to strip clubs, the strippers are their therapist most of the time. All right. So I'm sitting there talking, we're talking. And of course she's, she's sizing me up. She's looking at the watch. She's like, what kind of car you drive? Everything else. And I'm like telling her I'm talking. And so at the end of the night, I'm like really nice to me. She's like, it's so nice meeting you too. So I leave." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You guys just talked. Just talked. And there's no dance feeling of love and all that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So just talk, just, you know, got along pretty good. I'm like, I like her. I like her. So come back in a week later, walk in and call her over. And I was like, look, I said, I'm not, I said, that was my first time to the strip club. I said, don't know you. I like you. I'd like to know you more. Would you like to go out to dinner? And she was like, Yeah. I was like, where would you like to go? So she says rude to John. And I was like, don't know what it is. That's where we'll go. So I go back and I was, uh, I had a theater buddy at that point in time. Cause I was trying to get my life. Yeah. I'm trying to get my life together. Uh, JC was his name. And I was like, I got a date. He's like, he got a date. I was like, yeah, man, I got a date. And he's like, okay, where are you going? I was like rude to John. And he's like, take your wallet. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, take your wallet. It's like, all right, so we start doing the lunch and the dinner thing, and I get to where I really like her. I was 34, she was 23, and got along really well, had common interest in music and arts and stuff like that. I mean, it's stereotypical. She had graduated college with a degree in religious studies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So I was like, all right. So, um, so yeah, you just fell in love. We, we, we got along really well, really well. So I ended up moving her in with me. She hadn't quit her job. And, uh, what was happening was she was working weekends and, um, you know, the club would close at three or four. She wouldn't come home until 10 or 11 in the morning. And most of the time it would be a phone call saying, come and pick me up. I can't drive home. And, uh, then I'd never used drugs, had never been around my mom, Valium and pot and things like that. But as far as interacting with her, I'd never done anything like that. By this point in time, I'm kind of getting head over heels with her. I've moved her in with me and everything. And, uh, I had never, I was 34, I'd never went through a woman's purse in my entire life. And so she comes in, passes out, and I'm like, I gotta know what the fuck's going on. And went over and went through her purse, found cocaine, and you know, the straw, cut off straws and all that stuff. And I'm like, broke my heart. I just sat there and started crying. Got online and, uh, I'm the guy that can find information. So I started looking for forums on strip clubs, found a forum. I found that one found where it was talking about her prostitute herself to support the habit. And, uh, that got me, man, that got me. I was talking about everything she was doing to, uh, to do that. And that broke your heart there. Oh man. Yeah. So I didn't have the heart to tell her that I knew she was prostituting, but I went to her and I was like, she's waking up and I was like, look, I found this in your purse. I can't have that. And she's like, well, you think I'm prostituting? And I was like, no, no, I don't think that. I knew it, but I didn't mention it to her. And I was like, I can't have that. Well, I don't do that. It's just a one-time thing. I was like, all right. So she went back to work and continued to do it for a couple more weeks. And then finally I was like, I can't. So I picked her up one morning as like, she was, she was couldn't drive home. Um, before I picked her up, I had written her a note, left it on the pillow. So I brought her home, tucked her in the bed and, uh, Told her I'd be back that night. Told her she had a letter when she woke up. I woke up and the letter was basically, you know, I love you. If you can't stop this, don't be here when I get back. And I went to Columbia that day. Came back that night and she had quit her job. And she quit drugs that night. Real acquittal. And I got it in my head that I needed to do whatever I needed to do to make sure she didn't go back to that. That became, to me, because of my background, that meant spending a lot of money. So every night was, you know, three to $600 for dinner. It was a thousand dollar shoes every week, $2,000 purse every week, all that. I had most of my money laundered out to, uh, to Estonia and, uh, Elizabeth at the same time, she had, uh, she, she quit, but, uh, she didn't want me to go anywhere. All right. She wanted me there all the time. I guess that was that connection. You know, she, I guess she was scared. She might go back to something. So shadow crew gets busted. I start, I go through basically all my us funds. Can't get anything from overseas. Shadow crew gets busted October. I can't go into committing tax fraud because season's over. Can't go back into credit fraud because shadow crew has been busted. I don't know who to trust online. I'm left with running counterfeit cashier's checks to get money in, trying to make it until I can start back with some other fraud, and lying to her the entire time. She knows about none of this. None of it. And she thinks I've got a shitload of money, and she's got expensive taste. And at the same time, she couldn't be intimate. I mean, the girl loved me. That's the first time I've really said that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a deep love there, both ways. Yeah. Yeah. The things we do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So she couldn't be intimate unless she was stone-cold drunk. I mean, just shit. Stone-cold drunk. I didn't mind her drinking alcohol. I'd rather have that than cocaine. So that was the intimacy there. And I kept, I had this, I kept thinking if I continued to invest that it would work out, you know, that just keep going. She'll be all right. We'll be all right. And what happens is, is, uh, Like I said, she thought I had money. She thought I had money. She wanted a couple of Tiffany engagement rings. So I said, we can get married. You know, I figured a marriage sure that I love her. Sure. It's going to be all right. So I was like, Oh, let's get married. She's like, wow. I've always wanted a Tiffany ring. Shut. I didn't have money to buy the Tiffany ring cause all my money was overseas. So here I am. I defraud. So it's counterfeit cashiers. I, um, find a, like a three carat ring on eBay for 20 grand and, uh, pay for it with a counterfeit cashier's check at the same time, because she doesn't want me to leave. She needs me there. Typically, if you're doing that type of crime, you need to be traveling. You can't do it in one central area because you're going to be identified pretty quickly. I knew that, but I didn't have much choice. So, uh, Start running counterfeit cashier's checks to get the money to, to live and everything and get the, uh, get the engagement ring. We were, uh, scheduled to be married. Our wedding date was February 26, 2005, February 8th, 2005. I'm, uh, I've got a Tiffany wedding band, a couple of them coming in. And I get arrested in Charleston, South Carolina. And she didn't know. I told her, I said, I've got to go pick up those rings. She didn't, she thought I was just having them sent in. So I got to go get those rings. And I said, we'll go out to dinner after that. And, uh, I left at like eight o'clock in the morning and I was arrested at, uh, I think 1130, something like that. Of course, I wanted to call her, and the FBI got me. It turns out it was controlled delivery. There were like 30 agents in the parking lot. FBI got me. Charleston PD got me. Within 45 minutes, the Secret Service comes in, takes over that investigation. They knew exactly who they had. Along about 7 o'clock at night, they're like, we want to search your house. I was like, look, I'll sign off on the search if you let me go with you so I can see her. They were like, okay. So I got to see my phone at that point. I had like 140 calls that she, where she had been trying to call that time. Yeah. And, uh, so they load me up and hell, I mean, you talk about 10, 12 cars, you know, 40 agents, everything else. Uh, she's got a dog at that point. I'm scared they're going to shoot the dog. And, uh, uh, it was dark. And they have me walk up and they're all behind me. I knock on the door and tell her the police are there and she needs to put the dog up. So she does. And they come in and just start ransacking. Put me in cuffs, set me down, start berating her with questions. She had no idea what the hell was going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were you able to say a word or two to help her understand?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I was trying to tell her. And at the same time, they take a watch off her wrist. They let her keep the ring. They're telling her, I'm this guy. What's my real name? Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang across the board." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So she's probably terrified." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I tell her, I was like, look, they're going to arraign me tomorrow. Don't come. Don't come. I said, see what's going on, but don't show up. Of course, she's there the next morning, her and her dad. And she's back in the back crying. They're reading off the charges. I'm under $300,000 bond, everything else. And that's it. They throw me in a cell. Meanwhile, more charges keep coming in, you know. It's like 10, 12 charges a day at that point. And I'm trying to call her to make sure she's all right. And, uh, does it get through? So I spent three months in jail and during that three months, she visits twice. I get like three or four phone calls to her. Um, I just looking back now, I understand why, you know, back then it was like, I'm the victim. You know, why doesn't she talk to me? But, uh, You know, now I understand why the girl loved me too. You know, and then she found out I was this piece of shit. And, uh, after a week in county jail, two agents fly in from New Jersey, two secret service guys pulled me out of cell, looked at me and they were like, uh, we've got your laptop. And I was like, yeah. And, uh, he's like, well, have you got anything on your laptop? I was like, yeah. He's like, you're going to be charged for it. I was like, I figured. And then he looks at me, he's like, um, can you do anything for us? And I told him my exact words were, look, you let me get back with Elizabeth. I'll do whatever you want me to do. And he looks at me, he's like, we're going to get you out. I was like, all right. So they let me sit there for three months to get a taste of it and get me out. My sister, they have the bond reduced to a thousand dollars. My sister pays the thousand dollar bond. By this point, she's disowned me because I'm dating the stripper. And, uh, Denise bonds me out. The person that I call immediately is Elizabeth. I'm out. And she's like, I'll be there. So that's like 11 o'clock at night. I'm in the parking lot of the Charleston County Jail. Me and a Secret Service agent standing there. And Elizabeth had a friend that owned a limo company. So she pulls up in a limo. Gets out, pops the trunk, gets these two plastic containers out that have my clothes in them, drops off the pavement, comes over, hugs me, call me later. Gets in the car, drives off. I'm sitting there crying like a baby. Agent looks at me, is that your fiance? I'm like, yeah. And he's like, I am so sorry. And I'm like, yeah. I had, uh, she sounds fascinating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Pull up in a limo." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I had $30 to my name at that point, $30. Uh, the agent had to pay for my hotel room that first night. So he drops me off after paying for the hotel room, buy me something to eat. Soon as he drops me off, I take that $30 walk a half mile to Walmart by prepaid debit card. So I can start back in tax fraud. So as I get back to the hotel room, call Elizabeth, beg her to come see me. She comes to see me and we talk most of the night and convince her to give me a chance. I tell her that I, everything's going to be all right. They're going to hire me. I'm going to be this big consultant. lies, lies, just so she'd get back with me. And she's like, okay. And so we moved from Charleston. The field office is in Columbia, South Carolina, and I'm breaking the law. Even before I start working with them, I'm breaking the law. And so they've got me in the office, the field office, they got this big war room in there, I'm on a laptop, outside line, laptops hooked up to a 50 inch plasma monitor on the wall. They've got a desktop sitting directly next to me, outside line, two secret service officers in the room at all times with a South Carolina law enforcement officer. My job is four to six hours a day, surfing the web, picking up targets, intel, teaching them how cybercrime operates, everything else like that. For the first two weeks, they are extremely diligent. They pay attention to everything that's going on, ask questions, everything else. But the problem is, is that that shit gets boring real quick because I'm very fast online doing that. So they're like, what the hell is he doing? And it gets tiring looking at a guy just doing that shit. So after two weeks, they get lazy and bored and they start watching porn instead of watching me. At the same time, they've got a key logger and they've got Spectre Pro and Camtasia. Key loggers and taking snapshots of everything that I'm doing. Every night it goes on a DVD-ROM on a spindle. So I'm like, they're not gonna go through that shit. So I'm like, fuck it. Start breaking it all from inside the Secret Service offices while they're in the room. Why not? That continues for 10 months. At the same time, um, the relationship with Elizabeth fell apart, completely fell apart." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, do you, do you have an understanding of why it's just because of the, um, her heart got broken cause there was lying. It was the trust. She did a lot to, uh, sacrifice for the relationship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You've got, uh, you got a woman there that, uh, She had even said it, she was like, she had told one of her friends when we were out having dinner one night, and this was before I got arrested, she told one of her friends that I was the only guy that ever asked her to stop using drugs. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I have to say that that part of the story is so powerful. And that she chose to do it and she chose to stop." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And she told me that, there's one instance she told me that if she didn't marry me, she'd never be married. And as far as I know, she's never been married." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so it started to fall apart there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because I was that piece of shit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Still, you didn't take a step by the way. Can I just say how just moving it is, how honest you are, but thank you. Thank you for being that person. But at that time you, there's still that line." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, it's falling apart. She had, uh, she wants to start going to strip clubs and, uh, I'm like, fuck it. Why not? We'll go. So we started going to strip clubs and she's, you know, she'll come back and be, get wasted and we'll have sex, what have you. And, uh, one night she looks at me and she was like, uh, she was like, I think it'd be funny if you got a blowjob from somebody else. And, uh, that got me, that got me. I was like, uh, To me, that was the final straw right there. I was like, she doesn't care for me anymore or anything else like that. We've been going to strip clubs. So I started dating another stripper and, uh, she knew something was going on. And, uh, she looks at me one day and she's like, why don't you just tell me that it's over? And I looked at her, I said, it's over. We're done. And, uh, I told her, I was like, look, I said, uh, whatever you want. We were renting an apartment. I was like, whatever you want in here, take it. And I said, not only that, but I'll make sure you got money for several months. So you're all right. And I was like, just leave me, you know, leave my TV and leave me some plates and stuff. And so I go to work that day at the Secret Service, come back that night, and she's taken everything and left a picture of herself in the bedroom on the floor. I'm like, okay, I guess I deserve that. I like her." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "She's cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "She was cool. I, I've, I've, I've, I've given her a thousand dollars like every two weeks or some shit like that. And, uh, it gets to the point cause I'm doing this tax fraud from inside the offices. Well, the debit card companies are pinging the cards. They start to realize that, Hey, some son of a bitch is stealing money using our debit cards. So they start to shut down the cards before I can pull cash out. So I start not to have the money to send to her. And I'm like, So she calls and she's like, look, I have to have money. And I was like, well, look, I'm doing what I can. You promised money. And I was like, look, if you knew what I was doing to get this money, you wouldn't be asking that. And she was like, I need money. My rent's behind by a month right now. And I'm like, your rent's behind? She's like, yeah. So I was like, okay. So I pick up the phone, call the rental office. And I was like, want to make sure that, uh, you know, I'm sorry, I'm behind on the rent for this apartment number. Oh no, that rent's paid up three months. It's like, okay, hang up, call Elizabeth back. I was like, uh, you're behind on the rent. And she was like, yeah. And I was like, funny. They just said you're up on it three months. And she gets quiet and she's like, well, you lied to me too. And I was like, You're right. I did. I did that. I was like, but look, I can't do it anymore. And, uh, that's the last time I spoke to her right there. What happens is, is, um, I was breaking law from inside the offices. I had a buddy that his name was Sean Mims out of Los Angeles. I had taught him how to do tax return fraud. I had told Sean, I go missing, right? I go missing for three months. I told him if I ever went missing, not to contact me. And, uh, so I go missing. Then I show back up online first day he contacts. So he becomes a target and, uh, they identify him pretty quickly at that point. He's set to be arrested sometime in March of, uh, of six. That's when he said to be arrested. Operation Rolling Stone was the name of the operation. Nine people were supposed to be arrested that night. So Secret Service goes and arrests this guy. They search his apartment and don't find anything. The apartment manager comes out and explains to him how Sean has done all kinds of work to the apartment. As a matter of fact, he brought in $30,000 worth of Italian tile to put in the apartment that he's renting. And by the way, last night he had a U-Haul out here and took out a whole shitload of stuff. So the Secret Service comes back in. They look at me and they're like, we need you to take a polygraph. And my answer was, I ain't taking a polygraph. So they're like, well, we'll throw you back in jail if you don't. I was like, call my lawyer. Lawyer gets me on the phone. He's like, you don't have to take polygraph. I was like, well, good. I'm not going to. He's like, but they will throw you back in jail. I was like, don't want to do that. He's like, have you done anything? I was like, yeah. And he's like, Well, you can try to pass the polygraph. I'm like, OK. So I was like, let's take the polygraph. They asked three questions. The questions were, have you talked to anybody? Have you been on a computer outside of the offices? Have you talked to the press, which I was interviewing with a New York Times writer the entire time? And then have you contacted or warned anybody about investigations? And I failed polygraph completely. So they revoked the bond. Take me back down to Charleston County, throw me in a jail. Three days later, Secret Service shows back up and pulled me out of a cell. It's Jim Ramacone and Bobby Kirby. And they were, I mean, honestly, they were good men. And they gave me chances upon chances to do the right thing. And I was not ready to do that. And Jim Ramacone and Bobby's in there. And Bobby, I mean, Bobby was a friend. I mean, he truly was. Later on, a couple of years ago, I had a chance to have lunch with the man. I told him I was sorry for everything I did to him because I got him and another agent fired. I told him I was sorry for what happened. He told me then, he's like, we were your friends, man. We were truly your friends. So they were good men." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They wanted to help. Yeah. They wanted you to be a good man." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And what got me so damn bad is I told him, I was like, man, I'm trying to be a better guy. And he was like, Brett, you always were a good guy, you just didn't know it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Fuck, people like that, we need people like that in this world. You need somebody to basically believe that you can be a good man." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, uh, Jim Ramacombe pulls me out. He's the second in Charles charge in South Carolina. He's got the Miranda waiver. in front of him, right? And he looks at me, he's like, I'm playing hard ass. Bobby's over here looking distraught and like a hurt dog. And Jim's like, here's the way this is going to work. He said, you're going to tell me everything you've done the past six years, or I'm going to make it my mission in life to fuck over you and your family. And he said, not just this case. Once you get out of prison, I'll hound you the rest of your life. Then he slides the Miranda waiver over and he's like, now you want to talk? And I looked at him, I was like, nope. It's like he gets up, gets all red in the face, storms out as on the way out. He's like, fuck you very much. So I go back to the cell a week later. I was on only under, under a state charges a week later, judge rules. They revoke the bond improperly. Wow. Oh, reinstates the bond. Nobody calls the secret service to tell him I walk out. I walk out, I was dating this stripper and I told my mom, I was like, well, if they're going to fuck me, they're going to have to find me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "She just went on the move." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I called this stripper girl up. I'd given her like 60 K, some bullshit like that. And, um, I told her, I was like, Kim, I need some money. And she was like, what? And I was like, look, I said, give me a thousand dollars. I'll give you back $3,000 in two weeks. She was like, okay. So I met her in Augusta, Georgia. and got the thousand from her and started driving West on I-20. No idea where to go to, anything else. Got to Dallas. There was a prepaid debit card supplier in Dallas. Went in, walked in the office, convinced the guy, social engineering, convinced the guy to give me 60 prepaid debit cards without a driver's license, without payment, anything else he did. And that started the run. I ended up stealing from that. I stole like 160K profit, used that to buy a Jeep Cherokee and went on. The idea was to steal enough money to bug out to Florianopolis, Brazil and set up shop down there. Do it again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was the dream." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was it. That was it. I was on the run for four months, stole $600,000. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada. One day, I had stolen, the night before, I had stolen 160K out of ATMs. Went in the next morning, I woke up, signed on to cartersmarket.com, which was ran by Max Butler, the Iceman, and there's my name, U.S. Most Wanted on it. And that gets your attention. That was my real name with the U.S. most wanted beside of it. Nobody knew my real name in that environment at all, but then they did. And it was talking about me being part of the Secret Service, Operation Anglerfish, everything else. So, of course, they're all like, everybody's after you. They're like, oh, yeah, we're going to get this son of a bitch. So I sat there looking at it and I was like, said it out loud. I was like, well, Mr. Johnson, you've made the United States most wanted list. What do you do now? And I was like, I'm going to Disney world. Literally, literally, literally said that out loud. So loaded up the Jeep drove from Las Vegas to Orlando, Florida. And, uh, Got the two annual passes, one to Disney World, the other one to Universal Studios. Paid for a timeshare. They were building these new timeshares right off of Universal Drive, building these brand new timeshares. Paid for a timeshare, nine months cash. I was like, we take cash? Yeah, we take cash. There's $12,900. Then it wasn't furnished, so I went down to a furniture store, bought $30,000 in furniture. They had seized a DVD collection of mine worth $30,000, bought that back, and proceeded to go to Disney World every day. And that lasted about six weeks. They used a triggerfish is what they use. Nowadays, it's called a stingray. to find me. So one day I was, uh, it was like 10 30 in the morning on Saturday, September 16th was the day 2006. So yeah, 2006, September 16th. I was used to the builders coming around, knocking, making sure everything was all right. So I was asleep, heard this knock at the door and, uh, get up, look through the keyhole. Nobody's there. You know, people, nobody's there. I was like, huh? Open the door, step out into the hallway, walking down the hall is Bobby Kirby, another South Carolina guy and a, um, Orlando Orange County cop and they turn around They're like, hey Brett. I'm like, hey Bobby. How are you? And it's like we're good. How are you? I'm like, I'm fine. Would you like to come in? He was like, let's put you in cuffs first and I was like, that's probably a good idea He walks out like those guys he's like have you got anything in here and I was like, yeah, there's $120,000 in the bedroom and he was like seriously, I was like, yeah that an ak-47 and His face goes white. He's like, you've got a rifle. And I was like, no, I'm kidding with you. He was like, okay. So, uh, they throw me in jail in orange County and, uh, they give me diesel therapy and, uh, diesel therapy is. It took like two weeks to transport me from Orange County, Orlando, to Columbia, South Carolina. And what happens is, is you stop at every county jail you possibly can, go through the processing, which is about six hours. Once you get to your bunk, hey, time to transport you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They do that on purpose?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "On purpose, on purpose. It wears you down mentally and physically and everything. I get to Columbia, South Carolina. Now, while I was at Orange County, what happens is this inmate, because we were in federal holding, this inmate, he looks at me, his name was Yeti, and he's like, hey, man, you know, the only time you get off in federal prison is the drug program. I was like, well, man, I don't use drugs. And he's like, you can find a drug problem, can't you? And I was like, I can find a drug problem. So what happens is, is every county jail I stop at on the way to Columbia, I tell them I'm alcoholic and cocaine. So by the time I get to Columbia, South Carolina, they've got this paper trail of Mr. Johnson requesting help for drugs. I had hired Strom Thurmond's son as an attorney. They make me drop him because I paid for him with illegal funds. So they give me a public defender. He gets a psychological evaluation ordered for me. So psychologist comes into county jail, four hour interview, about halfway through, he looks at me, he's like, using these type of drugs. I was like, yeah. He's like, what do you use? Cocaine, smoke or snort? Snort. How much? An eight ball day. That's a lot. Yeah. Do you have any trouble out of that? Yeah. I can't get an erection. And he looks at me and I'm looking at him like, cause I had gotten that shit from Boogie Nights. And finally I'm like, is that right? And he was like, it could happen. I was like, okay. So that makes it into. My pre-sentence report. So all federal inmates, probation office and prosecutor, they do this detailed background check to basically tell the judge how much time to give you. All right. So that drug bit with that interview makes it into the PSR. So day of interview. I mean, day of sentencing. I pled guilty. Day of sentencing. The prosecutor, he stands up, and this dude is screaming at this point. And he's like, Mr. Johnson's manipulated the Secret Service. He's manipulated the prosecutor. Then he points at the judge. And he's manipulating you today, Your Honor. We insist on the upper limits of the guidelines. Well, I've been telling everybody in the jail that if they give me any more than 60 months, I am not staying. OK, sure. So the judge looks at me and she's like, I agree. I'm like, she says, 75 months. So I looked at my lawyer and I was like, can you get the drug program for me? He's like, I don't know. I'll ask. So he stands up. Your Honor, will you order the drug program for Mr. Johnson? The judge says no, but I'll recommend he gets evaluated. So the Secret Service had told her, hey, he's full of shit. Yeah. So she's like, no, but I recommend he gets evaluated. I looked at my lawyer and I was like, what does that mean? He was like, you're probably not going to get it. And I was like, how soon can you get me to the camp? And he was like, well, if you don't appeal, I can get you there pretty quick. My exact words were, fuck the appeal. Get me to the camp. I'll take it from there. He looks at me like I'm the biggest idiot in the world. I get sent to because you can get a camp recommended. I have friends, family members. look for camps that don't have a fence around them. And we settle on Ashland, Kentucky. Six weeks later, I'm in Ashland, Kentucky, and pull up there, 14-foot fence, razor wire on top. And I'm like, I don't climb fences. So I go in. First question I ask is, are there any jobs outside of the fence? And he was like, guards like, well, you can work in the National Forest. And I'm like, no, I'll die out there. He was like, well, you could do landscaping. I'm like, I could run a weed eater. Two days later, I walk into the landscaping office and the cop, this is this genius of some of these people and institutions, the cop behind his desk, the entire wall is a blown up photo of the compound and the outlying area. So I can literally sit there and plot where I'm going. All right. My dad, I hadn't spoken to that man in years. And he shows up at my sentencing and stands up in front of the judge. And he's like, Your Honor, I want to make sure Brett gets a good start. He can live with me when he gets out, everything else. Looking back, the man meant that. And I just thought it was bullshit at the time. So he starts to visit me in prison. I mean, yeah, in prison, he starts to visit. And about the third visit in, he looks at me. He's like, I've been reading about you online. I was like, yeah. He's like, yeah. He's like, that's a lot of money you made. And I was like, yeah. He's like, you think you can teach somebody how to do that? And I'm like, so what I used to say, and again, that it's this, it's this thing of, you know, really coming to terms with things. What I used to say was, is I thought my dad was back in my life and that he was just trying to use me. All right. The truth of the matter was, is that my dad hadn't really seen me except in that frame of crime, you know, being that criminal with my mom, everything else. I really think that's how the man was trying to communicate with me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He wanted to connect with you in the places where you know, where you love, where you're interested in, where your addiction is essentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And what I did is I manipulated the man into helping me escape. So I agreed to teach him how to do tax fraud. And in return, he had the only money he had to his name. He had $4,000 cash. So I manipulated him into giving me that and to drop me off a change of clothes, a cell phone, and a driver's license. The only driver's license he had was my driver's license, Brett Johnson. So I was at the camp for, I don't know, six, eight weeks. And the hardest worker that landscaping had ever seen. At one point, the cops got me on a mountainside with a broom, sweeping off a mountain. I'm like, yeah, we'll do that. Absolutely. So building trust with the guys there. Yeah. Working my ass off. Yeah. And then six weeks, I take off. And I lasted, I think, two, three weeks, something like that. U.S. Marshals, I made it 120. Took off, you escaped. Yeah, escaped. Escaped. U.S. Marshals, they're canvassing a three-state area. They find me, I think, 250 miles away. It's like Lexington, Kentucky. They find me in Lexington because I had to use my real driver's license, I had a laptop, I had prepaid debit cards, and I had stolen identity information. The way it got me was, I had dyed my hair this flaming red, I had this deep tan, I didn't look anything like myself. And I was at a hotel, had the curtains open, saw this guy, I was on the laptop, saw this guy walk by. He walks by the window and he stops. And then he backs up, he looks inside, he knocks on the window. I look up at him, he's like, you. I was like, me? He's like, you. Then he pulls out this badge and he points at it. He's like, and then he points at the door now. So I was like, Oh, okay. So I opened up the door and he's like, U S marshal service. So they arrest me and- How did they track you down? They canvassed that area. They talked to every hotel, everything else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I had- So it's like a traditional- Traditional police work is what it was. So it wasn't like from the internet, they kind of got something- I don't know, just straight police work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Good, good, good police work. US Marshals are outstanding in everything they do. So they arrest me. I go to a- I'm initially held at a county jail in Moorhead, Kentucky. And that, man, that was one hell of an experience there. But then I'm transferred after sentencing on that. So sentencing, here's the weird thing. So I spent like, I think, two or three months at the county jail in Moorhead, Kentucky. Get sentenced. At my sentencing, it happens so quickly after the initial sentencing that they use the exact same pre-sentence report. The report that's got all that drug shit in there. So at my sentencing, Prosecutor's there, Secret Service is there, judge, me, and my attorney. Prosecutor stands up, he's like, your honor, we would like it if you would consider that when Mr. Johnson was arrested, he had a laptop, he had all this information with him, looks like he was engaged in identity theft, yet again. Judge looks at the prosecutor, says no. says, hey, if you were going to charge him with it, you should have charged him with it. I'm only considering the escape. Then he looks at me. He's like, Mr. Johnson. He said, it looks like by you keeping your mouth shut right now, you're really saving yourself a pretty serious charge. And my response was, yes, your honor. And he was like, then he opens up the pre-sentence report. He's fingering through and he's like, it also looks like before you got involved with all these drugs, you were a pretty good citizen. I was like, yes, your honor. And he's like, so here's what I'm gonna do. He said, I'm gonna give you 18 months on the escape. I was like, okay. He said, I'm also gonna give you, no, it was 15 months on the escape. He said, I'm gonna give you 15 months on the escape. He said, and I'm also gonna order the drug program for you. I was like, yes, your honor. So the drug program gives you a year off and it gives you six months and halfway house. So by escaping, I got out of prison three months earlier than what I should have gotten out of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the original thing about drugs worked in the long term." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It worked. Now, the interesting thing with that, and it's the best lie I ever told. Honestly, the best lie I ever told. I spent eight months in solitary confinement. Okay. Eight months. And that's an experience. Because you ain't got no books for the first month or so, then they give you a King James Bible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And then. For a month, no books. No books for a month. So this is a pretty small. Six by nine room. Six by nine. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No books. No books, no paper, no pen, no pencil." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're alone with your mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You got a mat, a toilet. What's that like? You sleep as much as you can. You're sleeping 16, 18 hours a day is what you're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, were you thinking about even just going back to like Elizabeth, you go through all that, the whole thing, all that, every bit, your mom too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Going through every single bit of that. And, uh, so you're supposed to get out an hour a day. Uh, law says you're supposed to get out an hour a day. That's the law. That's not the way things actually happen. What actually happens is, is you're lucky to get out an hour a week. You take a shower twice a week. And that's it. You get a phone call once a month." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so you don't get to see nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't see anything. You get in solitary. All right. And it takes about a week. The first week is the roughest. You're bouncing off the walls that first week because you can't sleep, can't do anything else. Then you start to adapt to it after a while. When that book does arrive, you're happy as hell to have it. I'm well versed. King James Bible, so you're happy to have it. Then finally, you get other books that come in from that point. I spent eight months at that, and they send me out to a real prison, Big Spring, Texas, West Texas, where... Have you been out there? No. Man. Prairie dogs and tarantulas is what it is. No kidding, it gets so hot. that warnings come on the radio telling you not to drive on certain streets because they're melted. That's Big Spring. So if you've seen the movie, uh, uh, from dusk till dawn, the opening scene is in big spring, Texas that, uh, so it's hot, very hot. So, uh, and that's where I find out what a real prison is. And, uh, it's not ran by guards, prisons are ran by inmates and that's a fact. So, uh, you're met at the door by whatever race you are. is what happens. So, uh, big spring is a converted air force compound. It's a disciplinary prison. So you get the bad guys are in there. So I get, uh, I go through processing and I'm walking up to the unit and I'm met at the door by a guy named Nick Sandefur. He's the treasurer of the Aryan brotherhood. And, uh, first question out of his mouth is any more white guys come in and shit. I didn't know. I was like, I don't know, four or five. Next question is what are you in here for? My answer was, because I'm like, I got no worries. My answer was, computer crime, smiled at him. And it turns out, wrong thing to say. Because computer crime is not credit card theft or hacking or any bullshit like that. Computer crime in prison is child pornography. So tell him that. He looks at me like I'm a piece of shit. Goes and gets his buddies. They circle around. What are you in here for?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like how the Aryan Brotherhood has like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "lines they're like oh yeah yeah this this child porn that's it that's the bad guy they circle around they're like what'd you say you're in here for so i'm sitting there trying to explain it to them they're like you know you tell a good story you still said this" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, computer crime basically really does mean, usually, child pornography." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In prison, yeah. And what you see, and that's one of the things you find out, the guys that are going in there for child porn, they will tell them it's credit card theft." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So, yeah. Right, they've learned. So I'm that guy. But you also don't, I mean, for people who are just listening to this, you don't exactly look like the typical computer hacker." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's true, that's true, that's very true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's right. That's right. But it's like, it doesn't make it seem like you're, I mean, I guess you're not wearing a hoodie and you're not like emo, dark." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The way it actually works in prison, they won't attack you until they know. All right. So they have to see paperwork, which now in federal prison, you don't get transported with paperwork because of that. So they have to see paperwork or a guard will tell them what you're in there for. Guards will tell who the pedophiles are. So none of the guards told them that I was anything. So for the first month, they think I am, but they're not doing anything because they don't know for sure. At the end of the first month, I'd been talking to Kevin Poulsen over at Wired Magazine about Max Butler. He does an article about that, shows up in Wired Magazine. So at the end of the first month, Wired Magazine hits a compound, front cover, all the story. You would think, you would think it saved me. So I'm reading the article, really happy about it. So what happens is, four o'clock is mail call. Four o'clock's a stand-up count nationwide. After four o'clock is your mail call. They hand out all the mail for the day. So the mail comes, I get the magazine. I'm reading through it, I'm like, well shit, I'm good to go. Then it says, Brett Johnson, Secret Service informant in the article." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're now a snitch." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which is right up there with the pedophiles. We go to dinner after that. At dinner, you can hear it. You can hear the chat. We got a snitch. I think it's that guy over there. Warden, next day, shuts down the entire compound. Calls me into his office. They got security there. You got the counselors there and everything else. Warden looks at me. He's like, did you give an interview to Wired Magazine? I'm like, yeah. He's like, do you not know they will kill you in here? I was like, He was like, do you feel safe? Well, I know if you tell me you don't feel safe, they transport you. Transport you means another eight months in solitary confinement. You start to see shit in solitary after a while. So I'm like, no, not gonna do that. So I'm like, completely safe. He was like, look, he's like, if anybody says anything to you, immediately come to us because they'll fucking kill you. So they do a locker search, try to confiscate the magazines. They can't. The next day I walk into the unit, there's Nick Sandefur laying on his bunk, magazine wide open, reading it. I'm like, Oh shit. Walked up to him. I was like, uh, Hey Nick, what are you doing? He's like, Oh, doing some reading. I was like, anything interesting? He's like, it's getting there. I was like, I was like, let me save you the trouble. Take the magazine, turn over the page. I was like, right. There's what you're looking for. He was like, man, I already knew. I was like, Do we have a problem? And he looks at me, he's like, is anyone on the compound you told on? I was like, no. He's like, until someone gets here you snitched on, we're okay. I was like, okay. He's like, but I need you to do something for me. All right, so in federal prison, you gotta have a job. Everybody works. Doesn't matter what you do, but you gotta work. I got a job in education teaching a lit class. Every Wednesday, 6, 8, 30 PM, lit. And had all, every area on the compound signs up for the lit class, had a couple of guards every now and then popped in. And did we teach lit? No, we taught fraud every Wednesday, 6, 8, 30 PM. That's how I didn't get my ass beaten. And my other job, I had two jobs with them. The other job, you get to the point, it's weird, man. You get to the point, people walking off the bus, you know, immediately two groups of people, you know, who the bank robbers are immediately just by them walking off the bus or like that motherfuckers are bank robber. And you know who the pedophiles are immediately. So my job as the as the white guy was to approach the white pedophiles and have a conversation. And the conversation was basically, hey, don't know what you're in here for. Don't care what you're in here for. But if you got some sort of fucked up charge, You need to tell me if you tell me everything's going to be all right. If you don't tell me you see those guys over there, if you start to associate with them or they start to talk to you and then they find out you're in here on something, they're going to kill you. And what are the things pedophile, pedophile, rapist, anything that harms children, harms women, anything like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There are, it's like the mob, there's rules, there's an ethical code, even if you have the division between races on all that, you still have these lines drawn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And there's a hierarchy too. Very much so. And what that looks like in prison, depending on the, it depends on the security class that you're in, what level prison. But at that prison, what that looked like was you're not allowed to talk to anybody. You're not allowed to watch television. You can go to the library. You don't associate with anyone except your own type. If you do anything like this, we will kill you. If someone wants to extort you, we will do that too, and you won't tell on us, or we'll kill you. So that's the way that works at that point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And everybody quickly learns this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Quickly, quickly. And so typically the guys would say, I just want to do my own time. That would be the line. And it's like, okay, don't mess with him. All right. Every now and then you'd have somebody lie and that would come with those types of consequences. I got to see While I was there, saw two people murdered, went through three prison riots, and through my entire tenure in prison, saw four suicides. The people who got killed, it was, so we had outside, you had this track, a third of a mile track, you walk it counterclockwise, and inside of the track, you got two handball courts. So, of an evening, it happened both times, all of us would be walking, doing our exercises, And at the top of the key, like a flock of birds, you'd see all the inmates start to migrate down toward the gate. So the first time you see that, you see that migration, you look up in the distance and one of the inmates got another inmate down and he's just hammering his head right into the pavement like that right there. Well, guards don't stop that because a guard may get hurt. So a guard is 15 minutes coming out to stop that until everything's over. By that point, the guy doesn't have a head. They shut the compound down, and this is what happens. So you shut the entire compound down. They make two lines of the inmates. And what happens is the inmate walks into a room. They shut the door behind the inmate. Guard asks him two questions. First question is, did you see anything? The answer is no. Second question is, if you had seen anything, would you say anything? Answer is no. Guard then says, get the fuck out. And that's it. Anybody that stays in any longer than that, is automatically suspect. So there was one incident, I remember this Hispanic guy, he's in there for a few minutes, and everybody's like, what's going on? So his people then call him over, explain to us what went on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "yeah and it happens like that it's fascinating that because you talked about the the network of trust in the in the cyber crime community and here's a network of trust absolutely in the prison crime community absolutely and trust trust matters it's trust drives everything at the end of the day the riots that i went through" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The first riot, man, you're scared to death. Scared to death. You've got the cops dressed up in the Ninja Turtle outfits. You've got the rubber bullets, the tear gas canisters, all that crap. You've got the inmates that are raising hell. Scared to death. The second riot, you calm down. Second riot, you start to notice. This is a racial riot. This is typically, and almost always, it's Hispanics and African-Americans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you get to detect what is the motivation for the riot, what is the reason, and that gives you some calm." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's exactly right. So second riot, you start to notice this. Hey man, this ain't me. This ain't our group. Third riot, no shit. Third riot, you lay in your bunk. You let them, you let them wage war all around you. And every now and then you have an inmate that'll run up to you and they'll point to a locker and say, is that your locker? And if you tell them, yes, they leave it alone. If you say it's not my locker, they'll break into it and steal everything out of it and go from there. And that's what happens. But, uh." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you did your time for five years. Five and a half. Five and a half." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You made it out. Made it out. I went through the, I told you it was a good lie that I told. I went through the residential drug abuse program. It's a nine month intensive therapy. And the way I got to that, This counselor at Big Spring, he bought this. He wanted inmates to be educated. He was a really good guy. So he wanted inmates to be educated. He got a discount on a game theory class set. So he gets all these discs and everything, and he's asking, does anybody on the compound know anything about game theory? And somebody says, if anybody does, it'll be Brett Johnson. He comes up to me one day at my buggy. He's like, are you Brett Johnson? I was like, yeah. He's like, do you know anything about game theory? And I was like, yes, I do. So I start rattling off Prisoner's Dilemma and everything else. He's like, well, you teach a class. So I start teaching that. I start teaching inmates public speaking and to make friends with this counselor. So it gets time where I'm supposed to be transferring out to this drug program that they only had in Fort Worth. And the transfers are taking like four or five months. And that's four or five months I could be out free. So I walked, I went up to him one day and I was like, look, his name was Keely. I was like, look, man, I said, is there any way that I can get transferred out any sooner? And he looks at me, he's like, Brett, I cannot help you. And I was like, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for even trying. So he said that, a week later, I'm on a bus going to Fort Worth. So he got me to Fort Worth. I got it. Yeah. I love it. So it was a nine-month program, 24 hours a day of cognitive behavioral therapy. It had nothing to do with drugs. It was all peer study stuff and CBT training. And honestly, it's the best thing that could ever happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Truly is that part? What what is it? What was the thing that changed you as a man? Is it the solitary confinement? Was it the years was it losing? The people you loved or was it that behavioral therapy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a combination man. It's a combination it was So my sister disowns me the only person I had in my life, you know that I mean me and my sister That's it. You know, I mean, yeah, I loved Elizabeth. I love my wife now, but you know, it's I Me and my sister, we went through all that shit together. So Denise disowns me. She doesn't talk to me for an entire year when all this stuff happens. And after I get arrested on the escape, she ends up driving seven hours to come see me to tell me she loves me. And I don't see her again for five and a half years. Yeah. So that's really the first turnaround. Took me two and a half years in prison to accept responsibility." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was amazing that she did that. Yeah. She drove down. Yeah, she did that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, she's something. She's something. Yeah, she saw me for 10 minutes, tell me she loves me, and then I don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Planted the seed. Yeah. But yeah, you had time to think over those years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it took two and a half years to realize that I didn't commit crime because of stripper girlfriends or wives or family. I committed it because I wanted to, chose to. And That's the first turnaround. Second turnaround is the CBT training. It didn't really hit while I was in prison. I went through it and they ingrained it in you, but until you choose to make it work, it doesn't work. So I got out in 2011, didn't want to break the law, did not. And I was under three years probation, couldn't touch a computer. I had a job offer from a Deloitte to run a cyber crime office in the UK, which that was a no, no, you're not moving. And that's a computer idiot. So then, uh, had a job offer from a no before a fishing company. Couldn't take that. I got to where I was trying to apply for fast food jobs. That's a computer. Can't touch that. Okay. Then what about a waiter's position? Well, that's a computer and access to credit cards. Idiot. Can't touch that either. So literally could not get a job. Could not, um, doing food stamps. I had a roommate that, uh, pen half the rent. They tell you when you leave prison to, uh, to get a job and something you care about and you won't recidivate. Couldn't get a job. And what I had was a cat monster, the cat that was a cat's name. And I had enough money to feed that little guy and didn't have money to buy toilet paper for the apartment. So I was on Panama City Beach. How long were you living like this? It was a steady decline. Because remember, I taught my dad how to commit tax fraud. So he bankrolled a lot of that until he couldn't. And then from there, it's like, what the fuck do you do? So I didn't want to go into computer crime at all. And I ended up shoplifting toilet paper, man. shoplift and toilet paper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just like for the basics, the basics of survival." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So about the same time, I had a friend that, this guy, I've been dating the same type of women I had been dating, you know, these unhealthy ones, the hot unhealthy ones. Yes. Love, that's how that works. So I had a friend post an ad for me on Plenty of Fish, and this woman responds, my wife, she responds. The pictures I had taken were these prison type pictures, you know, the serious, like they were there. And she sends me a message of why aren't you smiling? And my response was that is my happy face. So we started talking and, uh, we started dating and she ends up, she's that second saving thing, man. She, uh, I ended up moving in with her. I was going broke. I was about to get kicked out of the apartment and everything else. And she didn't say it, but I think she knew it. And, uh, Moved in with her, and I got a job. And the job I got, my probation officer let me have a cell phone. I was going through Craigslist. This guy was advertising for landscaping. Called him up. His name was Dustin Doremus. Called him up, and he was like, come on down and talk to me. So he was running this business, him and his brother were, out of his house. So I'm sitting there talking to him for about 20 minutes. He looks at me, he's like, can I ask you a question? I was like, yeah. He's like, are you on the run or something? So I'm like, no, why? And he's like, well, you just don't look like the kind of guy that do this. So I told him, I was like, this is who I am is what I've done. And, uh, he looks at me, he's like, man, I got to think about that. So he, uh, he tells me to go on home. That was a Friday, Sunday evening. He gives me a call and he was like, uh, Brett is like, if I hire you, will you actually work? And I told him, I was like, Dustin, if you'll give me a job, I promise I'll work my ass off. And he's like, show up six o'clock. I was like, all right. So my job was to push a lawnmower 10 hours a day, five days a week for $400 a week and, uh, busted my ass. I hit it so hard. I would, uh, I had come in of a night and pass out, wake up the next morning and hit it again. And, uh, it got to the point. He ended up, uh, this dude ended up offering me to come in a partner with his business. His brother dropped out. And he, uh, by that point, I'd, I'd learned everything on the business and everything. And he was like, uh, you know, if you'd like to come in, I'll cut you in half. And I was like, Dustin, I can't do it, man. Cause I wasn't making any money when he didn't want to pay me anymore until, you know, he was able to do more. And, uh, I thought I found another job. Doing something else. I, in a speech, I say it got cold and the grass started, stopped growing. The truth of the matter was, is I thought I found another job. A guy was offering to pay me $1,500 a week doing the, uh, sales for, uh, uh, oil rig training was what it was. And, um, I accepted the job. I quit working for Dustin and the guy, um, I told him, uh, before he even offered me the job, I told him what I, you know, my criminal history, cause I was required to do that. So I was supposed to start work. Well, he calls me and tells me he can't hire me. So I'm out of work and Dustin's already hired somebody else by that point. So I can't go back with him. And, uh, I'm that guy again, man. I, I, it's important for me to, uh, to show value in a relationship. All right. So, uh, Michelle was only one working. And I'm like, I got to do something. And I get it in my head. I was like, you know, if nothing else, I can just bring food in the house. She was only making, I think she was, she was, I mean, we were headed hard, you know, it was just her, her working. And I was like, nothing else I can bring food in the house and get on the dark web. Get some stolen credit cards. Yeah. Start ordering food. Well, it gets worse than that. It, uh, you know, she's got two sons there. So I'm like, well, they need clothes. So he started stealing clothes and continues like that. I get arrested. I get arrested, uh, on a food order. And, um, Michelle didn't know what I was doing. So she had, she had been to work and she was coming back from work. I get arrested and I'm like, um, they let me make a phone call. And I call her and I say, come to the police station. I've been arrested. And she shows up and she didn't know I'd been doing that. My probation officer, of course, he didn't know or anything else. At my sentencing for that, probation officer was there, prosecutor, the judge, U.S. Marshals, Michelle and me. Michelle stands up and she tells the judge that I'm a better dad to her kids than their actual father is. By that point, I'm crying. Probation officer stands up, and he was like, we think Mr. Johnson's a good guy. We think this is a one-time thing. Prosecutor says the same thing. Judge sentences me to one year. Probation officer stands back up, and he was like, Mr. Johnson, judge, if you can give Mr. Johnson a year and a day, he can get the good time. and get back to his family center. So the judge amends the sentence to a year and a day. So I served 10 months. They sent me back to Texas. And that's when I find out that Michelle didn't need me for what I could give her. She just wanted me for me that entire time. She stands by me the entire time. I do my 10 months, get out, we get married after that, and they kill probation. So I can touch a computer and they tell you, they tell you, they were like, you know, inmates, a felon, if nothing else, he can sell cars. Well, it turns out you can't. You can sell cars if you're a drug dealer. If you're the guy that steals all the money and people's information, no, fuck no, you can't get a job selling cars. So I can't get a job, cannot. And to this day, Lex, I know what my, what my triggers are. I know what it would take to get me back into committing crime. And I knew I'd go so far at that point. So I looked at Michelle and I was like, let me see what I can do. Signed on to LinkedIn, reached out to this FBI super cop named Keith Malarski out of the Pittsburgh office. He was involved with my arrest and some associates and everything else and sent him a message. And the message was, you know, Hey, I respect everything you did. Thank you. Did a great job. By the way, I'd like to be legal. And, uh, Dude responded within two hours. Two hours, he gives me references, advice, takes me in under his wing, everything else like that. And from that point, man, it was the head of the Identity Theft Council did the same thing. Cardnot Present Group hires me to speak. Microsoft hires me to consult with them. And the Microsoft hire established enough trust in the industry that I was all right from" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So now you're helping in many ways fight the very guy that you used to be. So big picture advice, given that you were that guy, how do we fight cybercrime today and in the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years? What advice do you have to individuals, to companies, to governments, and also to Elizabeth? Like the humans, human beings that love, that live, that are friends with cyber criminals." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's so many lessons to really be had from that. To me, the lesson, one of the big lessons to me is you can't serve two masters. If you're that guy that is committing crime that person that's addicted or you're in love with somebody that's addicted or has that, they don't love you. They love that addiction. That comes first. It's always going to come first. So you have to realize that. You have to know when to cut somebody off, when to end something, knowing that they're not going to change until they decide to change. At the same time, you got to realize that the only reason I was able to turn my life around is because people took that chance on me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You know, that's really the only reason. They believe that there's a good person in there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. If if if Malarski hadn't responded, if I hadn't had my sister, my wife, these companies that that initially gave me that chance, my ass would be back in prison for 20 years. I have no doubt about that at all. All right. So you have to realize that, you know, cybercrime, A lot of companies that I talk to, they don't really understand or appreciate that networking aspect, that trust aspect of how criminals establish trust with each other, how they work together. A lot of companies think that it's a single player that's out victimizing them. When you really break down how cybercrime operates, that you've got a group of individuals that are working together to hit you, but not only hit you, but they share and exchange information freely. Companies don't do that. You've got privacy concerns, you've got competitive edge concerns, everything else. Companies don't share information across the board like criminals do. Criminals do that. You have to appreciate that. You have to understand that big statistic. that 90% of their attacks use known exploits. It's not the stuff we don't know about, it's the shit we do know about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're not doing anything about. So the way to defend against cybercrime is like, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that you should fix. A lot of that. A lot of that. Sort of a lot of basic stuff that's already vulnerabilities, update the system security." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now that doesn't take care of SolarWinds or CNAP or anything like that. It doesn't. But those instances, I mean, okay, that's a big instance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it is. But in the full spectrum of, especially in the future. because there's more and more companies that are coming online, becoming digital, and it's just more and more and more, and those vulnerabilities in terms of human nature, for social engineering, and the actual outdated systems, all of it. And some of it, I guess, is, I mean, you're exceptionally good at this, is educating on the social engineering side, is educating people in companies that like- You've got to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And companies have to, you know, I made that point that They never report to law enforcement. That's companies and individuals. You know, I've worked with Fortune 50 companies that will not press charges. Instead, they'll have that insider or that criminal sign an NDA. They'll pay them off. And we won't mention this shit anymore. You have to be you have to press charges. You have to report. You have to raise the awareness of everyone in the group. You have to be, it's that idea, and I've talked about that before, of understanding your place in that cybercrime spectrum. The way a criminal will victimize you depends on who you are and what you do as a person and as a business. So you have to understand that, design security around that. You know, we've got 7,500 security companies out there. A whole lot of them are snake oil salesmen. A lot of them is going to tell you that we're the one-stop solution, but you're not. You're not. You're a tool. All right, and you may have a very good tool, but it's not the only tool that's needed to protect against the attacks that are out there. And we have to be open and honest about that kind of stuff, if we're not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I guess defending defense is not just like one tool, it's a process of just like a diversity and just constantly educating people. Absolutely. So it's the social side, it's constantly Because there's so many probably attack vectors in terms of the software that you have." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at it, that attack surface, you can't plug everything. It's too damn large to plug everything. But you can do the best job you can possibly do. But it takes a variety of tools to do that. All right. The idea, and Archos is big about that, but the idea is to Take the cost of fraud to the fraudster so high that they basically try to pick another target. All right. And that's that's the idea that you want. You want it to be not worth the criminal's time to hit your company." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about white hat hacking? So like, you know, hacking for good. sort of testing systems and then giving companies the vulnerabilities as you find them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's outstanding. I do. I think that I think pen testing white hat stuff is outstanding. I truly do. I think that that you have to. It has to be tempered with what. Is reality as well, though, all right, you know, we've got a whole industry of people who try to sell our FID wallets. that I don't know of many RFID hackers out there on the criminal side, to be honest with you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so some of it is just like a psychological safety blanket that's not actually providing any protection. By the way, you wrote on LinkedIn something about ID me. What is it? Why is it a problem? I was going down a rabbit hole." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was wondering if you were going to mention that, you know, they lost. I guess I was partially responsible for them losing an $86 million contract." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was the contract with the IRS?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what is it? So ID me as an identity. OK, backtrack. ID me as a marketing company that wants to say they're an identity verification." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just want to bring this up to see you get angry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, I'll tell you what my issue is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "My issue is- So it's a company that's used for authentication by the IRS, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "IRS, Social Security Administration, VA, at 1.23 state unemployment offices, a few other services as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I guess the idea is that you would be able to unlock account or get, you know, authenticate yourself as a human being by using your face or something like that, or private information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They've got a tiered system of verification. They've got, you can do, they've got a free system which is questionable where you submit an ID and it's been shown several bypasses has been shown and I don't want to talk about their security horribly bad because I want to be honest there are bypasses for a lot of security systems out there. All right. The issue that I have with ID.me is that their policies are somewhat questionable. I don't care if you're a private company that has those policies in place but if you're a government agency And you as a citizen are entitled to a benefit or a service of that government agency. And then the government agency forces you to give up your complete identity profile to a private company. And then that private company uses that profile for marketing purposes, to further profit, things like that. I have a huge issue with that. I don't care if you're a private company that does that. I just don't think that citizens need to be forced into doing that in order to get a benefit or service that they're entitled to. So that's my big issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that, I mean, given how much value, how much we talked about the value of identity, you don't think that should be handed over lightly? No, absolutely not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And who would have thought that Brett Johnson would ever become a privacy advocate? Here I am. I mean, it's just, people don't understand or appreciate the value of who they are. You know, and certainly you've got a host of companies. ID means not the only one, but you've got some of these companies that say, well, we strip out the PII of the individual. We're just using the biometrics and the sites they're visiting and things like that. That's identity. You can still ping that one unique individual using that information, stripping out the PII. You can still ping who that individual is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So having lived a life of crime for many years, I'm sure you've connected indirectly to a large number of very dangerous people. Indirectly and directly. Yeah. But the network indirectly is even larger, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Are you, and I apologize for this question, Are you ever worried for your life, for your well-being? Like having seen a world that's really dangerous in ways that's not, that operates in the shadows." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, like I said, when I, when we started shadow crew and started that initial cybercrime business, that world, Violence wasn't there it came in later now violence is inherent in the system to do the Monty Python, but it's a it's part of it You know the mob the mafia are now part of this whole thing cartels are part of it. Yeah drugs are inherently Intertwined in cybercrime marketplaces because of the profit potential and with that comes a lot of violence as well Yeah, the cartels already brought" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the violence that they're good at from the 20th century absolutely into the technology of the 21st century." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now, do I worry about that? It's interesting that my family worries about that. All right. I think I may be just too involved in it to appreciate that type of danger. But my family worries about that. They do. Do I think it's a possibility? I'm the guy that says what needs to be said. I've built my trust in this industry by not being scared of calling out companies and individuals and not being scared of targeting criminals or criminal groups." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "as a human being emotionally and intellectually is really refreshing. It's a gift and thank you, thank you for doing that. Is there advice you can give to young people today about life? You broke many rules, all the rules. Some rules should be broken. So if you look at somebody young today in high school and college thinking how they can break the rules legally and live a life that's something they could be really proud of, what would you say?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Biggest lesson I've learned, you want your life to be one where you're helping people and not hurting people. And that really hit me the first time I walked into Quantico. You see the brightest minds in the United States who give up a lot of money, the opportunities of a lot of money, because they believe in helping people. Where I spent a career just hurting and harming individuals, that's a hell of a lesson. And I'm glad I'm there, but I would tell people out there, it's fine to want money. It's fine to do that. It's fine to test systems. It's fine to circumvent the rules if you're not breaking the law. It's fine to do all that. I like doing that, all right? But if you've got the mindset, if you can just adhere to the mindset of helping people and not hurting people, I think you'll be all right at the end of the day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What gives you, again, given the dark web, given all the dangers out there, what gives you hope about the future? Looking into five, 10 years, 50 years, I mean, hope for human civilization. If we do all right, if we make it out of this century, what do you think would be the reason?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What would be that's a damn good question. Cause I mean, we got a lot of bad stuff going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We've got a lot of reasons. If I asked you the other question of how do you think human civilization will destroy itself?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sure you have a lot of, you know, what, what gives me hope is, uh, you see people working together. The COVIDs have been a little bit different because I think too many people wanted to play politics with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's been the heartbreaking thing about COVID is it's, in many ways, pulled people apart. I mean, because a virus involves kind of... being afraid of each other because, I mean, that was a scary thing. People talk about pandemics in that way, that you're afraid of other humans. That is the most terrifying thing. It's not the destructive nature of what it does to your body, it's just that it pulls people apart. And then you realize how fundamental that human connection is to human civilization. Absolutely, absolutely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you know, we, as human beings, we do, When things really get bad, when things really get bad, we do tend to respond and group together. We do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When there's injustice, we see it, we rise up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wake up in the morning and I watch Fox News and CNN so I can be pissed off at everyone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The division the outrage they're really feeding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They want you they want you to be angry Yeah, that's what that's what causes me to spare what I think that you know, we just need to Elizabeth was a very good. She taught me one hell of a lesson because before I met her I was a newshound news be on all the time a couple channels of it and She was the woman who didn't watch the news at all And, uh, I didn't understand that back then, man, but now I do, you know, now I'm like, it's pretty smart, you know? You don't need to listen to that bullshit as it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's why I love reading history books. I feel like that's the right perspective I take on modern times. How will this time be written about in the history books? And react to that. The daily ups and downs of the outrages, which is getting worse and worse in terms of how quick the turnaround is in terms of the news." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll tell you what, I'm sitting here, I appreciate you talking to me. I do. Because, you know, talking about that relationship and everything, it's really been this kind of realization for me on a lot of things. So I really appreciate you asking those questions and everything, me being able to talk about that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it that you value, first of all, you're self-aware how important love is in a human being's life. It can make you do some of the best and some of the worst things in this world. And it's good to think about that. It's good to think about that. That is what makes us human, is that connection and that love for each other. What do you think is the meaning of life? This big ridiculous question. Why the hell, what are we all here for?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it is ridiculous, man. To me, that meaning of life is finding out that lesson. that we need to help each other. If you talk, you ask about security, how do you get to say that? But, you know, everybody's worried about themselves. The way you solve that security problem is it takes everybody looking out for everyone else. That's how you solve that problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And however you take, whatever journey you take to discovering that point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, with me, I've been asked a few times, do you regret anything? Would you change anything? Now, I've done a shitload of despicable things in my life, but I'm at a point in my life where I like who I am, and I know that I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. So would I change anything? As bad as a lot of that shit has been, I wouldn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It made you who you are. Yeah. The whole of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's, that's trite to say that, but it's true. That's, that's the weird thing. It's true. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Also, you mentioned that you're, uh, you're thinking of launching a show. What's it going to be called? Cause you've done a, uh, you've done a couple of podcasts. You're incredibly good at this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So good at this. I've done a couple, I'm on a lot of podcasts and everything like that. I had the broadcast with a friend of mine, Carice Hendrick, and that ended because of a difference of opinion. Depending on who you ask, one of us was an asshole. Yes. And it may have been me. Yeah. But then I did the Anglerfish podcast, which that was, I got to be honest with you, Lex, it was completely directionless. And it was Brett Johnson getting lazy. Yeah. So I ended that. The Brett Johnson Show is launching. That's the new one. That's the new one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what the new one's called. And, you know, I. What do you think of doing with it?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I learned why von Neumann and Turing made fundamental mistakes. I learned the secret of life. I learned how to solve many of the world's most important problems, which all sound presumptuous, but all of those are things I learned at that boundary." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so Turing and von Neumann, let's start there. Some of the most impactful, important humans who have ever lived in computing, why were they wrong?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I worked with Andy Gleason, who was Turing's counterpart. So just for background, if anybody doesn't know, Turing is credited with the modern architecture of computing. among many other things. Andy Gleason was his US counterpart. And you might not have heard of Andy Gleason, but you might've heard of the Hilbert problems. And Andy Gleason solved the fifth one. So he was a really notable mathematician. During the war, he was Turing's counterpart. Then von Neumann is credited with the modern architecture of computing. And one of his students was Marvin Minsky. So I could ask Marvin what Johnny was thinking, and I could ask Andy what Alan was thinking. And what came out from that, what I came to appreciate as background, I never understood the difference between computer science and physical science, but Turing's machine, that's the foundation of modern computing, has a simple physics mistake. which is the head is distinct from the tape. So in the Turing machine, there's a head that programmatically moves and reads and writes a tape. The head is distinct from the tape, which means persistence of information is separate from interaction with information. Then von Neumann wrote deeply and beautifully about many things, but not computing. He wrote a horrible memo called the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, which is how you program a very early computer. In it, he essentially roughly took Turing's architecture and built it into a machine. So the legacy of that is The computer somebody's using to watch this is spending much of its effort moving information from storage transistors to processing transistors, even though they have the same computational complexity. So in computer science, when you learn about computing, there's a ridiculous taxonomy of about 100 different models of computation, but they're all fictions. In physics, a patch of space occupies space, It stores state, it takes time to transit, and you can interact. That is the only model of computation that's physical. Everything else is a fiction. So I really came to appreciate that a few years back when I did a keynote for the annual meeting of the supercomputer industry, and then went into the halls and spent time with the supercomputer builders, and came to appreciate Oh, see, if you're familiar with the movie The Metropolis, people would frolic upstairs in the gardens, and down in the basement, people would move levers. And that's how computing exists today, that we pretend software is not physical, it's separate from hardware. And the whole canon of computer science is based on this fiction that bits aren't constrained by atoms, but all sorts of scaling issues in computing come from that boundary, but all sorts of opportunities come from that boundary. And so you can trace it all the way back to Turing's machine making this mistake between the head and the tape. Von Neumann, he never called it Von Neumann's architecture. He wrote about it in this dreadful memo, and then he wrote beautifully about other things we'll talk about. Now, to end a long answer, Turing and von Neumann both knew this. So all of the canon of computer scientists credits them for what was never meant to be a computer architecture. Both Turing and von Neumann ended their life studying exactly how software becomes hardware. So von Neumann studied self-reproducing automata, how a machine communicates its own construction. Turing studied morphogenesis, how genes give rise to form. They ended their life studying the embodiment of computation, something that's been forgotten by the canon of computing, but developed sort of off to the sides by a really interesting lineage." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's no distinction between the head and the tape, between the computer and the computation, it is all computation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so I never understood the difference between computer science and physical science. And working at that boundary helped lead to things like my lab was part of doing with a number of interesting collaborators, the first faster than classical quantum computations. We were part of a collaboration creating the minimal synthetic organism where you design life in a computer. Those both involve domains where you just can't separate hardware from software. The embodiment of computation is embodied in these really profound ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the first quantum computations. Synthetic life, so in the space of biology. So the space of physics at the lowest level and the space of biology at the lowest level. So let's talk about CBA, Center of Bits and Atoms. What's the origin story of this MIT, legendary MIT center that you're a part of creating?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In high school, I really wanted to go to vocational school where you learn to weld and fix cars and build houses. And I was told, no, you're smart, you have to sit in a room. And nobody could explain to me why I couldn't go to vocational school. I then worked at Bell Labs, this wonderful place before deregulation, legendary place. And I would get union grievances because I would go into the workshop and try to make something. And they would say, no, you're smart, you have to tell somebody what to do. And it wasn't until MIT, and I'll explain how CBA started, but I could create CBA, that I came to understand this is a mistake that dates back to the Renaissance. So in the Renaissance, the liberal arts emerged, and liberal doesn't mean politically liberal. This was the path to liberation, birth of humanism. And so the liberal arts were the trivium, quadrivium, roughly language, natural science, and At that moment, what emerged was this dreadful concept of the illiberal arts. So anything that wasn't the liberal arts was for commercial gain and was just making stuff and wasn't valid for serious study. And so that's why we're left with learning to weld wasn't a subject for serious study. But the means of expression have changed since the Renaissance. So, micromachining or embedded coding is every bit as expressive as painting a painting or writing a sonnet. So, never understanding this difference between computer science and physical science, the path that led me to create CBA with colleagues was I was what's called the junior fellow at Harvard. I was visiting MIT through Marvin because I was interested in the physics of musical instruments. This will be another slight digression. In Cornell, I would study physics. And then I would cross the street and go to the music department where I played the bassoon. And I would trim reeds and play the reeds. And they'd be beautiful, but then they'd get soggy. And then I discovered in the basement of the music department at Cornell was David Borden. who you might not have heard of, but is legendary in electronic music because he was really the first electronic musician. So, Bob Moog, who invented Moog synthesizers, was a physics student at Cornell, like me, crossing the street. And eventually, he was kicked out and invented electronic music. David Borden was the first musician who created electronic music. So, he's legendary for people like Phil Glass and Steve Reich. And so that got me thinking about, I would behave as a scientist in the physics department, but not in the music department, got me thinking about what's the computational capacity of a musical instrument. Through Marvin, he introduced me to Todd back over at the Media Lab, who was just about to start a project with Yo-Yo Ma that led to a collaboration to instrument a cello, to extract Yo-Yo's data and bring it out into computational environments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is the computational capacity of a musical instrument as we continue on this tangent and when we shall return to CBA?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. One part of that is to understand the computing. And if you look at like the finest timescale and length scale, you need to model the physics. It's not heroic. A good GPU can do teraflops today. That used to be a national class supercomputer. Now it's just a GPU. That's about, if you take the time scales and length scales relevant for the physics, that's about the scale of the physics computing. For Yo-Yo, what was really driving it was he's completely unsentimental about the Strad. It's not that it makes some magical wiggles in the sound wave, it's performance as a controller, how he can manipulate it as an interface device. Interface between what and what exactly? Him and sound. And so what it led to was, I had started by thinking about ops per second, but Yo-Yo's question was really resolution and bandwidth. It's how fast can you measure what he does? and the bandwidth and the resolution of detecting his controls and then mapping them into sounds. And what we found, what he found, was if you instrument everything he does and connect it to almost anything, it sounds like yo-yo, that the magic is in the control, not in ineffable details in how the wood wiggles. And so with Yo-Yo and Todd, that led to a piece. And towards the end, I asked Yo-Yo what it would take for him to get rid of his strad and use our stuff. And his answer was just logistics. It was at that time, our stuff was like a rack of electronics and lots of cables and some grad students to make it work. Once the technology becomes as invisible as the Strad, then sure, absolutely, he would take it. And by the way, as a footnote on the footnote, an accident in the sensing of Yo-Yo's cello led to a $100 million a year auto safety business to control airbags in cars. How did that work? I had to instrument the bow without interfering with it. So I set up local electromagnetic fields where I would detect how those fields interact with the bow he's playing. But we had a problem that his hand, whenever his hand got near these sensing fields, I would start sensing his hand rather than the materials on the bow. I didn't quite understand what was going on with that interference. So my very first grad student ever, Josh Smith, did a thesis on tomography with electric fields, how to see in 3D with electric fields. Then through Todd, and at that point, a research scientist in my lab, Joe Paradiso, it led to a collaboration with Penn and Teller, where we did a magic trick in Las Vegas to contact Houdini. And sort of these fields are sort of like, you know, contacting spirits. So we did a magic trick in Las Vegas. And then the crazy thing that happened after that was Phil Rittmuller came running into my lab. He worked with, this became with Honda and NEC, airbags were killing infants in rear-facing child seats. Cars need to distinguish a front-facing adult where you'd save the life versus a bag of groceries where you don't need to fire the airbag versus a rear-facing infant where you would kill it. And so the seat need to, in effect, see in 3D to understand the occupants. We took the Penn and Teller magic trick derived from Josh's thesis from Yo-Yo's cello to an auto show, and all the car companies said, great, when can we buy it? And so that became Ellicis, and it was a hundred million dollar a year business making sensors. There wasn't a lot of publicity because it was in the car, so the car didn't kill you. So they didn't sort of advertise, we have nice sensors so the car doesn't kill you, but it became a leading auto safety sensor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that started from the cello and the question of the computational capacity of a musical instrument." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so now to get back to MIT, I was spending a lot of outside time at IBM research that had gods of the foundations of computing. There's just amazing people there. And I'd always expected to go to IBM to take over a lab, but at the last minute pivoted and came to MIT to take a position in the media lab and start what became the predecessor to CBA. Media Lab is well-known for Nicholas Negroponte. What's less well-known is the role of Jerry Wiesner. So Jerry was MIT's president before that, Kennedy's science advisor, grand old man of science. At the end of his life, he was frustrated by how knowledge was segregated. And so he wanted to create a department of none of the above, a department for work that didn't fit in departments. And the Media Lab, in a sense, was a cover story for him to hide a department. As MIT's president towards the end of his tenure, if he said, I'm going to make a department for things that don't fit in departments, the departments would have screamed. But everybody was sort of paying attention to Nicholas creating the Media Lab, and Jerry kind of hid in it a department called Media Arts and Sciences. It's really the department of none of the above. And Jerry explaining that, and Nicholas then confirming it, is really why I pivoted and went to MIT. Because my students who helped create quantum computing or synthetic life get degrees from Media Arts and Sciences, this department of none of the above. So that led to coming to MIT with Todd and Joe Paradiso and Mike Hawley. We started a consortium called Things That Think, and this was around the birth of Internet of Things and RFID. But then we started doing things like work we can discuss that became the beginnings of quantum computing and cryptography and materials and logic and microfluidics, and those needed much more significant infrastructure and were much longer research arcs. So with a bigger team of about 20 people, we wrote a proposal to the NSF to assemble one of every tool to make anything of any size, was roughly the proposal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of any tool to make anything of any size." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so they're usually nanometers, micrometers, millimeters, meters are segregated, input and output is segregated. We wanted to look just very literally at how digital becomes physical and physical becomes digital. And fortunately, we got NSF on a good day and they funded this facility of one of almost every tool to make anything. And so with a group of core colleagues that included Joe Jacobson, Ike Chuang, Scott Manalis, we launched CBA." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so you're talking about nanoscale, microscale, nanostructures, microstructures, macrostructures, electron microscopes and focused ion beam probes for nanostructures, laser, micromachining, and x-ray microtomography for microstructures, multi-axis machining and 3D printing for macrostructures, just some examples. What are we talking about in terms of scale? How can we build tiny things and big things all in one place?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How's that possible? A well-equipped research lab has the sort of tools we're talking about, but they're segregated in different places. They're typically also run by technicians where you then have an account and a project and you charge. All of these tools are essentially when you don't know what you're doing, not when you do know what you're doing, in that they're when you need to work across length scales, where we don't, once projects are running in this facility, we don't charge for time, you don't make a formal proposal to schedule, and the users really run the tools, and it's for work that's kind of inchoate, that needs to span these disciplines and length scales. And so, you know, Work in the project today, work in CBA today ranges from developing Zeptojoule electronics for the lowest power computing to micromachining diamond to take 10 million RPM bearings for molecular spectroscopy studies up to exploring robots to build 100 meter structures in space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, can we, the three things you just mentioned, let's start with the biggest. What are some of the biggest stuff you attempted to explore how to build in the lab?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, so viewed from one direction. what we're talking about is a crazy random seeming of almost unrelated projects. But if you rotate 90 degrees, it's really just a core thought over and over again, just very literally how bits and atoms relate, just going from digital to physical in many different domains. But it's really just the same idea over and over again. So to understand the biggest things, Let me go back to bring in now Shannon as well as von Neumann. Yeah, so what is digital? The casual obvious answer is digital in one and zero, but that's wrong. There's a much deeper answer, which is Claude Shannon, at MIT wrote the best master's thesis ever. In his master's thesis, he invented our modern notion of digital logic. Where it came from was Vannevar Bush was a grand old man at MIT. He created the post-war research establishment that led to the National Science Foundation. And he made an important mistake, which we can talk about. But he also made the differential analyzer, which was the last great analog computer. So it was a room full of gears and pulleys. And the longer it ran, the worse the answer was. And Shannon worked on it as a student, and he got so annoyed in his master's thesis he invented digital logic. But he then went on to Bell Labs, and what he did there was communication was beginning to expand. There was more demand for phone lines. And so there's a question about how many phone messages you could send down a wire. And you could try to just make it better and better. He asked a question nobody had asked, which is rather than make it better and better, what's the limit to how good it can be? And he proved a couple things, but one of the main things he proved was a threshold theorem for channel capacity. And so what he showed was, my voice to you right now is coming as a wave through sound, and the further you get, the worse it sounds. But people watching this are getting it as packets of data in a network. When the computer that's watching this gets the packet of information, it can detect and correct an error. And what Shannon showed is, if the noise in the cable to the people watching this is above a threshold, they're doomed. But if the noise is below a threshold for a linear increase in the energy representing our conversation, the error rate goes down exponentially. Exponentials are fast. There's very few of them in engineering. And the exponential reduction of error below a threshold if you restore state is called the threshold theorem. That's what led to digital. That means unreliable things can work reliably. So Shannon did that for communication. Then von Neumann was inspired by that and applied it to computation. And he showed how an unreliable computer can operate reliably by using the same threshold property of restoring state. It was then forgotten many years. We had to rediscover it in effect in the quantum computing era when things are very unreliable again. But now to go back to how does this relate to the biggest things I've made? So, In fabrication, MIT invented computer-controlled manufacturing in 1952. Jet aircraft were just emerging. There was a limit to turning cranks on a milling machine to make parts for jet aircraft. Now, this is a messy story. MIT actually stole computer-controlled machining from an inventor who brought it to MIT, wanted to do a joint project with the Air Force, and MIT effectively stole it from him. So it's kind of a messy history. That sounds like the birth of computer-controlled machining, 1952. There are a number of inventors of 3D printing. One of the companies spun off from my lab by Max Lebowski is Formlabs, which is now a billion dollar 3D printing company. That's the modern version. But all of that's analog. meaning the information is in the control computer, there's no information in the materials. And so it goes back to Vannevar Bush's analog computer. If you make a mistake in printing or machining, just the mistake accumulates. The real birth of computerized digital manufacturing is four billion years ago. That's the evolutionary age of the ribosome. So the way you're manufactured, is there's a code that describes you, the genetic code. It goes to a micro machine, the ribosome, which is this molecular factory that builds the molecules that are you. The key thing to know about that is there are about 20 amino acids that get assembled. And in that machinery, it does everything Shannon and von Neumann taught us. You detect and correct errors. So if you mix chemicals, the error rate is about a part in 100. When you elongate a protein in the ribosome, it's about a part in 10 to the four. When you replicate DNA, there's an extra level of error correction. It's a part in 10 to the eight. And so in the molecules that make you, you can detect and correct errors and you don't need a ruler to make you. The geometry comes from your parts. So now compare a child playing with Lego and a state-of-the-art 3D printer or computerized milling machine. The tower made by a child is more accurate than their motor control, because the act of snapping the bricks together gives you a constraint on the joints. You can join bricks made out of dissimilar materials. You don't need a ruler for Lego, because the geometry locally gives you the global parts, and there's no Lego trash. The parts have enough information to disassemble them. Those are exactly the properties of a digital code." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The unreliable is made reliable." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, absolutely. So what the ribosome figured out four billion years ago is how to embody these digital properties, but not for communication or computation in effect, but for construction. So a number of projects in my lab have been studying the idea of digital materials. And think of a digital material just as Lego bricks. The precise meaning is a discrete set of parts reversibly joined with global geometry determined from local constraints. And so it's digitizing the materials. And so I'm coming back to what are the biggest things I've made. My lab was working with the aerospace industry. So Spirit Aero was Boeing's factories. They asked us for how to join composites. When you make a composite airplane, you make these giant wing and fuselage parts. They asked us for a better way to stick them together, because the joints were a place of failure. What we discovered was, instead of making a few big parts, if you make little loops of carbon fiber, and you reversibly link them in joints, and you do it in a special geometry that balances being under-constrained and over-constrained with just the right degrees of freedom. We set the world record for the highest modulus ultralight material just by, in effect, making carbon fiber Lego. So lightweight materials are crucial for energy efficiency. This let us make the lightest weight, high modulus material. We then showed that with just a few part types, we can tune the material properties. And then you can create really wild robots that instead of having a tool the size of a jumbo jet to make a jumbo jet, you can make little robots that walk on these cellular structures to build the structures where they error correct their position on the structure and they navigate on the structure. And so using all of that with NASA, we made morphing airplanes, a former student, Kenny, Chang and Ben Jeanette made a morphing airplane the size of NASA Langley's biggest wind tunnel. With Toyota, we've made super efficiency race cars. We're right now looking at projects with NASA to build these for things like space telescopes and space habitats, where The ribosome, who I mentioned a little while back, can make an elephant one molecule at a time. Ribosomes are slow, they run at about one molecule a second, but ribosomes make ribosomes, so you have thousands of them, or trillions of them, and that makes an elephant. In the same way, these little assembly robots I'm describing can make giant structures, at heart because the robot can make the robot. So more recently, two of my students, Amira and Miana, had a nature communication paper showing how this robot can be made out of the parts it's making, so the robots can make the robots, so you build up the capacity of robotic assembly. It can self-replicate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you linger on what that robot looks like? What is a robot that can walk along and do error correction, and what is a robot that can self-replicate? from the materials that is given. What does that look like, what are we talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is fascinating. Yeah, the answer is different at different length scales. So to explain that, in biology, primary structure is the code in the messenger RNA that says what the ribosome should build. Secondary structure are geometrical motifs. They're things like helices or sheets. Tertiary structures are functional elements like electron donors or acceptors. Quaternary structure is things like molecular motors that are moving my mouth or making the synapses work in my brain. So there's that hierarchy of primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary. Now what's interesting is If you want to buy electronics today from a vendor, there are hundreds of thousands of types of resistors or capacitors or transistors, huge inventory. All of biology is just made from this inventory of 20 parts of amino acids. And by composing them, you can create all of life. And so as part of this digitization of materials, were in effect trying to create something like amino acids for engineering, creating all of technology from 20 parts. As another discretion, I helped start an office for science in Hollywood and there was a fun thing for the movie The Martian where I did a program with Bill Nye and a few others on how to actually build a civilization on Mars that they described in a way that I like as I was talking about how to go to Mars without luggage. And at heart, it's sort of how to create life in non-living materials. So if you think about this primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary structure, in my lab, we're doing that, but on different length scales for different purposes. So we're making micro robots out of like nanobricks, And to make the robots to build large scale structures in space, the elements of the robots now are centimeters rather than micrometers. And so the assembly robots for the bigger structures are there are the cells that make up the structure, but then we have functional cells, and so cells that can process and actuate, each cell can move one degree of freedom, or attach or detach, or process. Now, those elements I just described, we can make out of the still smaller parts, so eventually there's a hierarchy of the little parts make little robots that make bigger parts of bigger robots, up through that hierarchy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- And that way you can move up the landscape." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Early on, I tried to go in a straight line from the bottom to the top, and that ended up being a bad idea. Instead, we're kind of doing all of these in parallel, and then they're growing together. And so to make the larger scale structures, like there's a lot of hype right now about 3D printing houses where you have a printer the size of the house. We're right now working on using swarms of these table scale robots that walk on the structures to place the parts much more efficiently. That's amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but you're saying you can't, for now, go from the very small to the very large." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That'll come. That'll come in stages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just linger on this idea, starting from von Neumann's self-replicating automata that you mentioned? It's just a beautiful idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's at the heart of all of this. In the stack I described, so one student, Will Langford, made these micro robots out of little parts that then we're using for Mianna's bigger robots up through this hierarchy. And it's really realizing this idea of the self-reproducing automata. So von Neumann, when I complained about the von Neumann architecture, It's not fair to von Neumann because he never claimed it as his architecture. He really wrote about it in this one fairly dreadful memo that led to all sorts of lawsuits and fights about the early days of computing. He did beautiful work on reliable computation and reliable devices. And towards the end of his life, what he studied was how, and I have to say this precisely, how a computation communicates its own construction. So beautiful. So a computation can store a description of how to build itself. But now there's a really hard problem, which is if you have that in your mind, how do you transfer it and wake up a thing that then can contain it. So how do you give birth to a thing that knows how to make itself? And so with Stan Ulam, he invented cellular automata as a way to simulate these. But that was theoretical. Now the work I'm describing in my lab is fundamentally how to realize it, how to realize self-reproducing automata. And so this is something von Neumann thought very deeply and very beautifully about theoretically. And it's right at this intersection. It's not communication or computation or fabrication. It's right at this intersection where communication and computation meets fabrication. Now, the reason self-reproducing automata intellectually is so important, because this is the foundation of life. This is really just understanding the essence of how to, life, and in effect, we're trying to create life in non-living material. The reason it's so important technologically is because that's how you scale capacity. That's how you can make an elephant from a ribosome, because the assemblers make assemblers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So simple building blocks that inside themselves contain the information how to build more building blocks and between each other construct arbitrarily complex objects." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now let me give you the numbers. So let me relate this to, right now we're living in AI mania explosion time. Let me relate that to what we're talking about. A hundred petaflop computer which is a current generation supercomputer, not quite the biggest ones, does 10 to the 17 ops per second. Your brain does 10 to the 17 ops per second. It does about 10 to the 15 synapses and they run at about 100 hertz. So as of a year or two ago, the performance of a big computer matched a brain. So you could view AI as a breakthrough, but the real story is within about a year or two ago, and let's see, the supercomputer has about 10 to the 15 transistors in the processors, 10 to the 15 transistors in the memory, which is the synapses in your brain. So the real breakthrough was the computers matched the computational capacity of a brain, and so we'd be sort of derelict if they couldn't do about the same thing. But now, the reason I'm mentioning that is the chip fab making the supercomputer is placing about 10 to the 10 transistors a second. While you're digesting your lunch right now, you're placing about 10 to the 18 parts per second. There's an eight order of magnitude difference. So in computational capacity, it's done, we've caught up. But there's eight orders of magnitude difference in the rate at which biology can build versus state-of-the-art manufacturing can build. And that distinction is what we're talking about. That distinction is not analog, but this deep sense of digital fabrication, of embodying codes in construction. So a description doesn't describe a thing, but the description becomes the thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying, I mean, this is one of the cases you're making, that this is this third revolution. We've seen the Moore's law in communication, we've seen the Moore's law-like type of growth in computation, and you're anticipating we're going to see that in digital fabrication. Can you actually, first of all, describe what you mean by this term, digital fabrication?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, the casual meaning is a computer controls a tool to make something. And that was invented when MIT stole it in 1952. There's the deep meaning of what the ribosome does, of a digital description doesn't describe a thing, a digital description becomes the thing. That's the path to the Star Trek replicator. And that's the thing that doesn't exist yet. Now, I think the best way to understand what this roadmap looks like is to now bring in fab labs and how they relate to all of this. What are fab labs? So here's a sequence. With colleagues, I accidentally started a network of what's now 2,500 digital fabrication community labs called Fab Labs right now in 125 countries. And they double every year and a half. That's called Lassa's Law after Sherry Lassiter, who I'll explain. So here's the sequence. We started Center for Bits and Atoms to do the kind of research we're talking about. We had all of these machines, and then had a problem. It would take a lifetime of classes to learn to use all the machines. you know, colleagues who helped start CBA. We began a class modestly called how to make almost anything. And there's no big agenda. It was just, it was aimed at a few research students to use the machines. And we're completely unprepared for the first time we taught it. We were swamped by every year since hundreds of students try to take the class. It's one of the most oversubscribed classes at MIT. Students would say things like, can you teach this at MIT? It seems too useful. It's just how to work these machines. And the students in the class, I would teach them all the skills to use all these tools. And then they would do projects integrating them. And they're amazing. So Kelly was a sculptor, no engineering background. Her project was she made a device that saves up screams when you're mad and plays them back later." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and saves up screams when you're mad and plays them back later." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You scream into this device and it deadens the sound, records it, and then when it's convenient, releases your scream." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just pause on the brilliance of that invention, creation, the art, I don't know, the brilliance? Who is this that created this? Kelly Dobson. Kelly Dobson." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "gone on to do a number of interesting things. Mijin, who's gone on to do a number of interesting things, made a dress instrumented with sensors in spines, and when somebody creepy comes close, it would defend your personal space. Another project early on was a web browser for parrots, which have the cognitive ability of a young child and lets parrots surf the internet. Another was an alarm clock you wrestle with and prove you're awake. And what connects all of these is So MIT made the first real-time computer, the Whirlwind. That was transistorized as the TX. The TX was spun off from MIT as the PDP. PDPs were the mini computers that created the internet. So outside MIT was DEC, Prime, Wang, Data General, the whole mini-computer industry. The whole computing industry was there, and it all failed when computing became personal. Ken Olson, the head of digital, famously said, you don't need a computer at home. There's a little background to that, but DEC completely missed computing became personal. So I mentioned all of that because I was asking how to do digital fabrication, but not really why. The students in this how to make class were showing me that the killer app of digital fabrication is personal fabrication." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, how do you jump to the personal fabrication?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Kelly didn't make the screen body because it was for a thesis. She wasn't writing a research paper. It wasn't a business model. It was because she wanted one. It was personal expression, going back to me in vocational school, it was personal expression in these new means of expression. So that's happened every year since." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It literally is called, the course is literally called How to Make Almost Anything, a legendary course at MIT, every year." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's grown to multiple labs at MIT with as many people involved in teaching as taking it. And there's even a Harvard lab for the MIT class." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What have you learned about humans colliding with the Fab Lab, about the capacity of humans to be creative and to build?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mentioned Marvin. Another mentor at MIT, sadly no longer living, is Seymour Papert. So Papert studied with Piaget. He came to MIT to get access to the early, Piaget was a pioneer in how kids learn. Papert came to MIT to get access to the early, computers with the goal of letting kids play with them. Piaget helped show kids are like scientists. They learn as scientists and it gets kind of throttled out of them. Seymour wanted to let kids have a broader landscape to play. Seymour's work led with Mitch Resnick to Lego, Logo, Mindstorms, all of that stuff. As Fab Lab spread and we started creating educational programs for kids in them, Seymour said something really interesting. He made a gesture. He said, it was a thorn in his side that they invented was called the Turtle, an early robot kids could program to connect it to a mainframe computer. Seymour said the goal was not for the kids to program the robot, it was for the kids to create the robot. And so in that sense, the Fab Labs, which for me were just this accident, he described as sort of this fulfillment of the arc of kids learn by experimenting. It was to give them the tools to create, not just assemble things and program things, but actually create. So coming to your question, what I've learned is, MIT, a few years back, somebody added up businesses spun off from MIT. And it's the world's 10th economy. It falls between India and Russia. And I view that, in a way, as a bad number, because it's only a few thousand people. And these aren't uniquely the 4,000 brightest people. It's just a productive environment for them. And what we found is in rural Indian villages, in African shanty towns, in Arctic Hamlets, I find exactly, precisely that profile. So, Ling sided a few hours above Tromso, way above the Arctic Circles. It's so far north, the satellite dishes look at the ground, not the sky. Hans Christian in the lab was considered a problem in the local school because they couldn't teach him anything. I showed him a few projects. Next time I came back, he was designing and building little robot vehicles. And in South Africa, And I mentioned Soshen Govi, in this apartheid township, the local technical institute taught kids how to make bricks and fold sheets. It was punitive. But Tepiso in the Fab Lab was actually doing all the work of my MIT classes. And so over and over, we found precisely the same kind of bright invent of creativity. And historically, the answer was, go, you're smart, go away. It's sort of like me in vocational school. But in this lab network, what we could then do is, in effect, bring the world to them. Now let's look at the scaling of all of this. So there's one Earth, 1,000 cities, a million towns, a billion people, a trillion things. There was one Whirlwind computer. MIT made the first real-time computer. There were thousands of PDPs. There were millions of hobbyist computers that came from that, billions of personal computers, trillions of Internet of Things. So now if we look at this Fab Lab story, 1952 was the NC Mill. There are now thousands of fab labs, and the fab lab costs exactly the same cost and complexity of the mini computer. So on the mini computer, it didn't fit in your pocket, it filled a room, but video games, email, word processing, really anything you do, the internet, anything you do with a computer today happened at that era, because it got on the scale of a work group, not a corporation. In the same way, fab labs are like the mini computers inventing how does the world work if anybody can make anything. Then if you look at that scaling, labs today are transitioning from buying a machine to make machines making machines. So we're transitioning to, you can go to a fab lab, not to make a project, but to make a new machine. So we talked about the deep sense of self-replication. There's a very practical sense of Fab Lab machines making Fab Lab machines. And so that's the equivalent of the hobbyist computer era, what it's called the Altair historically. Then the work we spent a while talking about, about assemblers and self assemblers, that's the equivalent of smartphones and internet of things. That's when, so the assemblers are like the smartphone, where a smartphone today has the capacity of what used to be a supercomputer in your pocket. And then the smart thermostat on your wall has the power of the original PDP computer, not metaphorically, but literally. And now there's trillions of those in the same sense that when we finally merge materials with the machines in the self-assembly, that's like the Internet of Things stage. But here's the important lesson. If you look at the computing analogy, computing expanded exponentially, but it really didn't fundamentally change. The core things happened in that transition in the minicomputer era. So in the same sense, the research now we spent a while talking about is how we get to the replicator. Today, you can do all of that if you close your eyes and view the whole Fab Lab as a machine. In that room, you can make almost anything, but you need a lot of inputs. Bit by bit, the inputs will go down and the size of the room will go down as we go through each of these stages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how difficult is it to create a self-replicating assembler, self-replicating machine that builds copies of itself or builds a more complicated version of itself, which is kind of the dream towards which you're pushing in a generic, arbitrary sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I had a student, Nadia Peek with Jonathan Ward, who for me started this idea of how do we use the tools in my lab to make the tools in the lab? In a very clear sense, they are making self-reproducing machines. So one of the really cool things that's happened is there's a whole network of machine builders around the world. So there's Daniel and now in Germany and Jens in Norway. And each of these people has learned the skills to go into a fab lab and make a machine. And so we've started creating a network of super fab labs. So the fab lab can make a machine, but it can't make a number of the precision parts of the machine. So in places like Bhutan or Kerala in the South of India, we started creating super fab labs that have more advanced tools to make the parts of the machines so that the machines themselves become even cheaper. So that is self-reproducing machines, but you need to feed it things like bearings or microcontrollers. They can't make those parts. But other than that, they're making their own things. And I should note as a footnote, the stack I described of computers controlling machines, to machine making machines, to assemblers, to self assemblers, view that as fab one, two, three, four. So we're transitioning from Fab 1 to Fab 2, and the research in the lab is 3 and 4. At this Fab 2 stage, a big component of this is sustainability in the material feedstocks. So Alicia, a colleague in Chile, is leading a great effort looking at how you take forest products and coffee grounds and seashells and a range of locally available materials and produce the high-tech materials that go into the lab. So all of that is machine building today. Then back in the lab, what we can do today is we have robots that can build structures and can assemble more robots that build structures. We have finer resolution robots that can build micro mechanical systems. So robots that can build robots that can walk and manipulate. And we're just now, we have a project at the layer below that, where there's endless attention today to billion dollar chip fab investments. But a really interesting thing we pass through is, today, the smallest transistors you can buy as a single transistor, just commercially for electronics, is actually the size of an early transistor in an integrated circuit. So we're using these machines making machines, making assemblers to place those parts to not use a billion dollar chip fab to make integrated circuits, but actually assemble little electronic components." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So have a fine enough, precise enough actuators and manipulators that allow you to place these transistors." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, that's a research project in my lab. on called dice on discrete assembly of integrated electronics. And we're just at the point to really start to take seriously this notion of not having a chip fab make integrated electronics, but having not a 3d printer, but a thing that's a cross between A pick and place makes circuit boards in 2D. The 3D printer extrudes in 3D. We're making sort of a micro manipulator that acts like a printer, but it's placing to build electronics in 3D." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But this micro manipulator is distributed, so there's a bunch of them, or is this one centralized thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, so that's why that's a great question. So I have a prize that's almost but not been claimed for the students whose thesis can walk out of the printer. Oh, nice. So you have to print the thesis, with the means to exit the printer, and it has to contain its description of the thesis that says how to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a really good, I mean, it's a fun example of exactly the thing we're talking about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I've had a few students almost get to that. And so, In what I'm describing, there's this stack where we're getting closer, but it's still quite a few years to really go from us. So there's a layer below the transistors where we assemble the base materials that become the transistor. We're now just at the edge of assembling the transistors to make the circuits. we can assemble the micro parts to make the micro robots, we can assemble the bigger robots, and in the coming years, we'll be patching together all of those scales." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you see a vision of just endless billions of robots at the different scales, self-assembling, self-replicating and building more complicated structures?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and the but to the yes but is, let me clarify two things. One is that immediately, raises King Charles' fear of gray goo, of runaway mutants self-reproducing things. The reason why there are many things I can tell you to worry about, but that's not one of them, is if you want things to autonomously self-reproduce and take over the world, that means they need to compete with nature on using the resources of nature, of water and sunlight. And in light of everything I'm describing, biology knows everything I told you. Every single thing I explained, biology already knows how to do. What I'm describing isn't new for biology, it's new for non-biological systems. So in the digital era, the economic win ended up being centralized, the big platforms. in this world of machines that can make machines. I'm asked, for example, what's the killer opportunity? Who's going to make all the money? Who to invest in? But if the machine can make the machine, it's not a great business to invest in the machine. in the same way that if you can think globally but produce locally, then the way the technology goes out into society isn't a function of central control, but is fundamentally distributed. Now, that raises an obvious kind of concern, which is, well, doesn't this mean you could make bombs and guns and all of that? The reason that's much less of a problem than you would think is making bombs and guns and all of that is a very well-met market need. Anywhere we go, there's a fine supply chain for weapons. Now, hobbyists have been making guns for ages, and guns are available just about anywhere. So you could go into the lab and make a gun. Today, it's not a very good gun, and guns are easily available. And so generally, we run these lab in war zones. What we find is People don't go to them to make weapons, which you can already do anyway. It's an alternative to making weapons. Coming back to your question, I'd say the single most important thing I've learned is the greatest natural resource of the planet is this amazing density of bright and ven of people whose brains are underused. And you could view The social engineering of this lab work is creating the capacity for them. In the end, the way this is going to impact society isn't going to be command and control, it's how the world uses it. And it's been really gratifying for me to see just how it does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but what are the different ways the evolution of the exponential scaling of digital fabrication can evolve? So you said, yeah, self-replicating nanobots, right? This is the grey goo. It's a caricature of a fear, but nevertheless, there's interesting, just like you said, spam and all these kinds of things that came with the scaling of communication and computation. What are the different ways that malevolent actors will use this technology?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well first, let me start with a benevolent story, which is, Trash is an analog concept. There's no trash in a forest. All the parts get disassembled and reused. Trash means something doesn't have enough information to tell you how to reuse it. It's as simple as there's no trash in a Lego room. When you assemble Lego, the Lego bricks have enough information to disassemble them. As you go through this Fab 1, 2, 3, 4 story, one of the implications of this transition from printing to assembling, the real breakthrough technologically isn't additive versus subtractive, which is a subject of a lot of attention and hype. 3D printers are useful. We spun off companies like Formlabs, led by Max for 3D printing. But in a fab lab, it's one of maybe 10 machines. It's used, but it's only part of the machines. The real technological change is when we go from printing and cutting to assembling and disassembling. But that reduces inventories of hundreds of thousands of parts to just having a few parts to make almost anything. It reduces global supply chains to locally sourcing these building blocks. But one of the key implications is it gets rid of technological trash because you can disassemble and reuse the parts, not throw them away. And so initially that's of interest for things at the end of long supply chains, like satellites on orbit. But one of the things coming is eliminating technical trash through reuse of the building blocks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like when you think about 3D printers, you're thinking about addition and subtraction. When you think about the other options available to you in that parameter space, as you call it, it's going to be assembly, disassembly, cutting, you said." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the 1952 NC Mill was subtractive, you remove material. And 3D printing additive, and there's a couple claims to the invention of 3D printing, that's closer to what's called net shape, which is you don't have to cut away the material you don't need, you just put material where you do need it. And so that's the 3D printing revolution. There are all sorts of limitations on 3D printing to the kinds of materials you can print, the kind of functionality you can print. We're just not going to get to making a everything in a cell phone on a single printer. But I do expect to make everything in a cell phone with an assembler. And so instead of printing and cutting, technologically, it's this transition to assembling and disassembling. Going back to Shannon and von Neumann, going back to the ribosome 4 billion years ago. Now, you come to malevolent. Let me tell you a story about I was doing a briefing for the National Academy of Sciences group that advises the intelligence communities. And I talked about the kind of research we do. And at the very end, I showed a little video clip of Valentina in Ghana, a local girl making surface mount electronics in the Fab Lab. And I showed that to this room full of people. One of the members of the intelligence community got up livid and said, how dare you waste our time showing us a young girl in an African village making surface mount electronics. We're looking at, we need to know about disruptive threats to the future of the United States. And somebody else got up in the room and yelled at him and you idiot, I can't think of anything more important than this. But for two reasons, one reason was, Because if we rely on like informational superiority in the battlefield, it means other people could get access to it. But this intelligence person's point, bless him, wasn't that, it was getting at the root causes of conflict is, if this young girl in an African village could actually master surface mount electronics, it changes some of the most fundamental things about recruitment for terrorism, impact of economic migration, basic assumptions about an economy. It's just existential for the future of the planet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but we've just lived through a pandemic. I would love to linger on this, because the possibilities that are positive are endless, but the possibilities that are negative are still nevertheless extremely important. What's both positive and negative? What do you do with a large number of general assemblers?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With the Fab Lab, you could roughly make a biolab, then learn biotechnology. Now that's terrifying because making self-reproducing gray goo that outcompetes biology, I consider doom because biology knows everything I'm describing and is really good at what it does. In How to Grow Almost Anything, you learn skills in biotechnology that let you make serious biological threats." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And when you combine some of the innovations you see with large language models, some of the innovations you see with AlphaFold, so applications of AI for designing biological systems, for writing programs, which you can with large language models increasingly. So there seems to be an interesting dance here of automating the design stage of complex systems using AI. And then that's the bits. And you can leap, now the innovations you're talking about, you can leap from the complex systems in the digital space to the printing, to the creation, to the assembly at scale of complex systems in the physical space." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so something to be scared about is, a fab lab can make a bio lab, a bio lab can make biotechnology, somebody could learn to make a virus. That's scary. Unlike some of the things I said I don't worry about, that's something I really worry about that is scary. Now, how do you deal with that? Prior threats we dealt with command and control. So like, Early color copiers had unique codes and you could tell which copier made them. Eventually you couldn't keep up with that. There was a famous meeting at Asilomar in the early days of recombinant DNA where that community recognized the dangers of what it was doing and put in place a regime to help manage it. And so that led to the kind of research management So MIT has an office that supervises research, and it works with the national office. That works if you can identify who's doing it and where. It doesn't work in this world we're describing. So anybody could do this anywhere. And so what we've found is you can't contain this, it's already out. You can't forbid because there isn't command and control. The most useful thing you can do is provide incentives for transparency. But really the heart of what we do is you could do this by yourself in a basement for nefarious reasons, or you could come into a place in the light where you get help and you get community and you get resources. and there's an incentive to do it in the open, not in the dark. And that might sound naive, but in the sort of places we're working, again, bad people do bad things in these places already, but providing openness and providing transparency is a key part of managing these. And so it transitions from regulating risks as regulation to soft power to manage them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's so much potential for good, so much capacity for good, that Fab Labs and the ability and the tools of creation really unlock that potential." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I don't say that as sort of dewy-eyed naive. I say that empirically from just years of seeing how this plays out in communities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if it's the early days of personal computers, though, before we get spam, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the end, most fundamentally, literally the mother of all problems is who designed us. So assume success in that we're gonna transition to the machines making machines and all of these new sort of social systems we're describing will help manage them and curate them and democratize them. If we close the gap I just led off with of 10 to the 10 to 10 to the 18 between chip fab and you, we're ultimately in marrying communication, computation and fabrication gonna be able to create unimaginable complexity. And how do you design that? And so I'd say, The deepest of all questions that I've been working on goes back to the oldest part of our genome. In our genome, what are called Hox genes, and these are morphogenes. Nowhere in your genome is the number five. It doesn't store the fact that you have five fingers. What it stores is what's called a developmental program. It's a series of steps, and the steps have the character of like grow up a gradient or break symmetry. And at the end of that developmental program, you have five fingers. So you are stored not as a body plan, but as a growth plan. And there's two reasons for that. One reason is just compression. Billions of genes can place trillions of cells. But the much deeper one is evolution doesn't randomly perturb. Almost anything you did randomly in the genome would be fatal. or inconsequential, but not interesting. But when you modify things in these developmental programs, you go from like webs for swimming to fingers, or you go from walking to wings for flying. It's a space in which search is interesting. So this is the heart of the success of AI. In part, it was the scaling we talked about a while ago. And in part, it was the representations for which search is effective. AI has found good representations, it hasn't found new ways to search, but it's found good representations of search." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's, you're saying that's what biology, that's what evolution has done is created representations, structures, biological structures through which search is effective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct. And so the developmental programs in the genome beautifully encapsulate the lessons of AI. And this is, it's embodied, it's molecular intelligence. It's AI embodied in our genome. It's every bit as profound as the cognition in our brain, but now this is sort of thinking in, molecular thinking in how you design. And so, I'd say the most fundamental problem we're working on is it's kind of tautological that when you design a phone, you design the phone, you represent the design of the phone. But that actually fails when you get to the sort of complexity that we're talking about. And so there's this profound transition to come. Once I can have self-reproducing assemblers placing 10 to the 18 parts, you need to not sort of metaphorically, but create life in that you need to learn how to evolve. But evolutionary design has a really misleading, trivial meaning. It's not as simple as you randomly mutate things. It's this much more deep embodiment of AI and morphogenesis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a way for us to continue the kind of evolutionary design that led us to this place from the early days of bacteria, single cell organism, to ribosomes and the 20 amino acids?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You mean for human augmentation?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For life, I mean, what would you call assemblers that are self-replicating and placing parts, what is that? The dynamic complex things built with digital fabrication, what is that? That's life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so ultimately, absolutely, if you add up everything I'm talking about, it's building up to creating life in non-living materials. And I don't view this as copying life, I view it as deriving life. I didn't start from how does biology work, and then I'm gonna copy it. I start from how to solve problems, and then it leads me to, in a sense, rediscover biology. So if you go back to Valentina in Ghana making her circuit board, she still needs a chip fab very far away to make the processor in her circuit board. For her to make the processor locally, for all the reasons we described, you actually need the deep things we were just talking about. There's a wonderful series of books by Gingery. Book one is How to Make a Charcoal Furnace, and at the end of book seven you have A Machine Shop. So it's sort of how you do your own personal industrial revolution. ISRU is what NASA calls in situ resource utilization. And that's how do you go to a planet and create a civilization? ISRU has essentially assumed gingery. You go through the industrial revolution and you create the inventory of a hundred thousand resistors. What we're finding is the way the minimum building blocks for a civilization is roughly 20 parts. So what's interesting about the amino acids is they're not interesting. They're hydrophobic or hydrophilic, basic or acidic. They have typical but not extremal properties, but they're good enough you can combine them to make you. So what this is leading towards is technology doesn't need enormous global supply chains. It just needs about 20 properties you can compose to create all technology as the minimum building blocks for a technological civilization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's going to be 20 basic building blocks based on which the self-replicating assemblers can work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and I say that not philosophically, just empirically, sort of that's where it's heading. And I like thinking about how you bootstrap a civilization on Mars, that problem. There's a fun video on bonus material for the movie with a neat group of people. We talk about it because it has really profound implications back here on Earth about how we live sustainably." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "what does that civilization on Mars looks like that's using ISRU, that's using these 20 building blocks and does self-assembly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, go through primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary. You extract properties like conducting, insulating, semiconducting, magnetic, dielectric, flexural. These are the kind of roughly 20 properties. With those, Those are enough for us to assemble logic and they're enough for us to assemble actuation. With logic and actuation, we can make micro robots. The micro robots can build bigger robots. The bigger robots can then take the building block materials and make the structural elements that you then do to make construction. And then you boot up through the stages of a technological civilization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, where in the span of logic and actuation did the sensing come in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I skipped over that, but my favorite sensor is a step response. So if you just make a step and measure the response to the electric field, that ranges from user interfaces to positioning to material properties. And if you do it at higher frequencies, you get chemistry and you can get all of that just from a step in an electric field. So for example, once you have time resolution in logic, something as simple as two electrodes let you do amazingly capable sensing. So we've been talking about all the work I do. There's a story about how it happens, where do ideas come from?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's an interesting story, where do ideas come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I had mentioned Vannevar Bush and... He wrote a really influential thing called The Endless Frontier. So science won World War II. The more known story is nuclear bombs. The less well-known story is the Rad Lab. So at MIT, an amazing group of people invented radar, which is really credited as winning the war. So after the war, a grand old man from MIT, and at the, was charged with science won the war, how do we maintain that edge? And the report he wrote led to the National Science Foundation and the modern notion we take for granted but didn't really exist before then of public funding of research or research agencies. In it, he made, again, what I consider an important mistake, which is he described basic research leads to applied research, leads to applications, leads to commercialization, leads to impact. And so we need to invest in that pipeline. The reason I consider it a mistake is almost all of the examples we've been talking about in my lab went backwards, that the basic research came from applications, and further, almost all of the examples we've been talking about came fundamentally from mistakes. Essentially, everything I've ever worked on has failed. but in failing, something better happened. So the way I like to describe it is ready, aim, fire, is you do your homework, you aim carefully at a target you want to accomplish, and if everything goes right, you then hit the target and succeed. What I do, you can think of as ready, fire, aim. So you do a lot of work to get ready, Then you close your eyes and you don't really think about where you're aiming, but you look very carefully at where you did aim, where you aim after you fire. And the reason that's so important is if you do ready aim fire, the best you can hope is hit what you aim at. So let me give you some examples. Because this is a source of great- You're full of good lines today. Source of great frustration. So I mentioned the early quantum computing. So quantum computing is this power of using quantum mechanics to make computers that for some problems are dramatically more powerful than classical computers. Before it started, there was a really interesting group of people who knew a lot about physics and computing. that were inventing what became quantum computing before it was clear anything, there was an opportunity there. It was just studying how those relate. Here's how it fits to the ReadyFire aim. I was doing really short-term work in my lab on shoplifting tags. This was really before there was modern RFID. And so how you put tags in objects to sense them. something we just take for granted commercially. And there was a problem of how you can sense multiple objects at the same time. And so I was studying how you can remotely sense materials to make low cost tags that could let you distinguish multiple objects simultaneously. To do that, you need non-linearity so that the signal is modulated. And so I was looking for material sources of non-linearity, and that led me to look at how nuclear spins interact, just for spin resonance, the sort of things you use when you go in an MRI machine. And so I was studying how to use that, and it turns out that it was a bad idea. You couldn't remotely use it for shoplifting tags, but I realized you could compute. And so, with a group of colleagues thinking about early quantum computing, like David DiVincenzo and Charlie Bennett, was articulating what are the properties you need to compute, and then looking at how to make the tags. It turns out the tags were a terrible idea for sensing objects in a supermarket checkout, but I realized they were computing. So with Ike Chuang and a few other people, we realized we could program nuclear spins to compute. And so that's what we used to do Grover's search algorithm, and then it was used for Shor's factoring algorithm, and it worked out. The systems we did it in, nuclear magnetic resonance, don't scale beyond a few qubits. But the techniques have lived on, and so all the current quantum computing techniques grew out of the ways we would talk to these spins. But I'm telling this whole story because it came from a bad way to make a shoplifting tag." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Starting with an application, mistakes led to breakthrough fundamental science. I mean, can you just link on that? I mean, just using nuclear spins to do computation in that, What gave you the guts to try to think through this, from a digital fabrication perspective, actually, how to leap from one to the other?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't call it guts, I would call it collaboration. So at IBM, there was this amazing group of like, I mentioned Charlie Bennett and David DiVincenzo and Ralph Landauer and Nabeel Amir, and these were all gods of thinking about physics and computing. So I yelled at the whole computer industry being based on, a fiction, Metropolis, programmers frolicking in the garden while somebody moves levers in the basement. There's a complete parallel history of Maxwell to Boltzmann to Szilard to Landauer to Bennett. Most people won't know most of these names, but this whole parallel history thinking deeply about how computation and physics relate. So I was collaborating with that whole group of people and then, At MIT, I was in this high traffic environment. I wasn't deeply inspired to think about better ways to detect shoplifting tags, but stumbled across companies that needed help with that and was thinking about it. And then I realized those two worlds intersected and we could use the failed approach for the shoplifting tags to make early quantum computing algorithms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this kind of stumbling is fundamental to the Fab Lab idea, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Here's one more example. With a student, Manu, we talked about ribosomes, and I was trying to build a ribosome that worked on fluids so that I could place the little parts we're talking about. And it kept failing because bubbles would come into our system, and the bubbles would make the whole thing stop working. And we spent about half a year trying to get rid of the bubbles. Then Manu said, wait a minute, the bubbles are actually better than what we're doing, we should just use the bubbles. And so, we invented how to do universal object with little, logic with little bubbles in fluid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's- Okay, you have to explain this microfluidic bubble logic, please. How does this work? This is rude. Yeah. It's super interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and so, I'll come back and explain it. But what it led to was, we showed fluids could do, It'd been known fluid could do logic, like your old automobile transmissions do logic, but that's macroscopic. It didn't work at little scales. We showed with these bubbles we could do it at little scales. Then I'm going to come back and explain it, but what came out of that is Manu then showed you could make a 50-cent microscope using little bubbles, and then the techniques we developed are what we use to transplant genomes to make synthetic life all came out of the failure of trying to make the genome, the ribosome. Now, so the way the bubble logic works is in a little channel, fluid at small scales is fairly viscous. It's sort of like pushing jello, think of it as. If a bubble gets stuck, the fluid has to detour around it. So now imagine a channel that has two wells and one bubble. If the bubble is in one well, the fluid has to go in the other channel. If the fluid is in the other well, it has to go in the first channel. So the position of the bubble can switch, it's a switch, it can switch the fluid between two channels. So now we have one element of switch, and it's also a memory because you can detect whether or not a bubble is stored there. Then if two bubbles meet, if you have two channels crossing, A bubble can go through one way, or a bubble can go through the other way, but if two bubbles come together, then they push on each other, and one goes one way, and one goes the other way. That's a logic operation. That's a logic gate. So we now have a switch, we have a memory, and we have a logic gate, and that's everything you need to make a universal computer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, the fact that you did that with bubbles in microfluid just kind of brilliant, you know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So to stay with that example, what we proposed to do was to make a fluidic ribosome, and the project crashed and burned. It was a disaster. This is what came out of it. And so it was precisely ready, fire, aim, in that we had to do a lot of homework to be able to make these microfluidic systems. The fire part was we didn't think too hard about making the ribosome, we just tried to do it. The aim part was we realized the ribosome failed, but something better had happened. And if you look all across research funding, research management, it doesn't anticipate this. So fail fast is familiar, but fail fast tends to miss the goal. ready and aim. You can't just fail. You have to do your homework before the fail part, and you have to do the aim part after the fail part. And so the whole language of research is about milestones and deliverables. That works when you're going down a straight line, but it doesn't work for this kind of discovery. And to leap to something you said that's really important is, I view part of what the Fab Lab Network is doing is giving more people the opportunity to fail." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've said that geometry is really important in biology. What does fabrication biology look like? Why is geometry important?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, molecular biology is dominated by geometry. That's why the protein folding is so important, that the geometry gives the function, and There's this hierarchical construction of, as you go through primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, the shapes of the molecules make the shape of the molecular machines. And they really are exquisite machines. If you look at how... If you look at how your muscles move, if you were to see a simulation of it, it would look like a improbable science fiction cyborg world of these little walking robots that walk on a discrete lattice. They're really exquisite machines. And then from there, there's this whole hierarchical stack of, once you get to the top of that, you then start making organelles that make cells that make organs through the stack of that hierarchy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just stepping back, does it amaze you that from small building blocks where amino acids, you mentioned, molecules, let's go to the very beginning of hydrogen and helium at the start of this universe, that we're able to build up such complex and beautiful things like our human brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So studying thermodynamics, which is exactly the question of, you know, Batteries run out and need recharging. Equipment, cars get old and fail, yet life doesn't. And that's why there's a sense in which life seems to violate thermodynamics, although of course it doesn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems to resist the Mars-Taurus entropy somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and so Maxwell, who helped give rise to the science of thermodynamics, posited a problem that was so infuriating it led to a series of suicides. There was a series of advisors and advisees, three in a row that all ended up committing suicide, that happened to work on this problem. And Maxwell's demon, is this simple but infamous problem where right now in this room, we're surrounded by molecules and they run at different velocities. Imagine a container that has a wall and it's got gas on both sides and a little door. And if the door is a molecular sized creature, and it could watch the molecules coming, and when a fast molecule is coming, it opens the door. When a slow molecule is coming, it closes the door. After it does that for a while, one side is hot, one is cold. Once something is hot and is cold, you can make an engine, and so you close that, and you make an engine, and you make energy. So the demon is violating thermodynamics because it's never touching the molecule, Yet by just opening and closing the door, it can make arbitrary amounts of energy and power a machine. And in thermodynamics, you can't do that. So that's Maxwell's demon. That problem is connected to everything we just spoke about for the last few hours. So Leo Szilard, around early 1900s was a deep physicist who then had a lot to do with also post-war anti-nuclear things, but he reduced Maxwell's demon to a single molecule. So the molecule, there's only one molecule and the question is which side of the partition is it on? That led to the idea of one bit of information. So Shannon credited Szilard's analysis of Maxwell's Demon for the invention of the bit. For many years, people tried to explain Maxwell's Demon by the energy in the demon looking at the molecule or the energy to open and close the door, and nothing ever made sense. Finally, Rolf Landauer, one of the colleagues I mentioned at IBM, finally solved the problem. He showed that you can explain Maxwell's demon by you need the mind of the demon. When the demon opened and closes the door, as long as it remembers what it did, you can run the whole thing backwards. But when the demon forgets, then you can't run it backwards, and that's where you get dissipation, and that's where you get the violation of thermodynamics. And so, the explanation of Maxwell's demon is that it's in the demon's brain. So then, Rolf's colleague Charlie at IBM then shocked Rolf by showing you can compute with arbitrarily low energy. So one of the things that's not well covered is that the big computers used for big machine learning, the data centers use tens of megawatts of power. They use as much power as a city. Charlie showed you can actually compute with arbitrarily low amounts of energy by making computers that can go backwards as well as forwards. And what limits the speed of the computer is how fast you want an answer and how certain you want the answer to be. But we're orders of magnitude away from that. So I have a student, Cameron, working with Lincoln Labs on making superconducting computers that operate near this Landauer limit that are orders of magnitude more efficient. So stepping back to all of that, that whole tour was driven by your question about life. And right at the heart of it is Maxwell's Demon. Life exists because it can locally violate thermodynamics. It can locally violate thermodynamics because of intelligence. And it's molecular intelligence that I would even go out on a limb to say we can already see we're beginning to come to the end of this current AI phase. So depending on how you count, this is, I'd say, the fifth AI boom bus cycle. And you can already, it's exploding, but you can already see where it's heading, how it's going to saturate, what happens on the far side. The big thing that's not yet on horizons is embodied AI, molecular intelligence. So to step back to this AI story, there was, automation and that was gonna change everything. Then there were expert systems. There was then the first phase of the neural network systems. There've been about five of these. In each case, on the slope up, it's gonna change everything. In each case, what happens is on the slope down, we sort of move the goalposts and it becomes sort of irrelevant. So a good example is, Going up, computer chess was gonna change everything. Once computers could play chess, that fundamentally changes the world. Now on the downside, computers play chess. Winning at chess is no longer seen as a unique human thing, but people still play chess. This new phase is gonna take a new chunk of things that we thought computers couldn't do, now computers will be able to do. They have roughly our brain capacity. But we'll keep thinking as well as computers. And as I described, while we've been going through these five boom busts, if you just look at the numbers of ops per second, bits storage, bits of IO, that's the more interesting one. That's been steady and that's what finally caught up to people. But, you know, as we've talked about a couple of times, there's eight orders of magnitude to go. not in the intelligence in the transistors or in the brain, but in the embodied intelligence, in the intelligence in our body." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the intelligent constructions of physical systems that would embody the intelligence versus contain it within the computation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and there's a brain-centrism that assumes our intelligence is centered in our brain. And in endless ways in this conversation, we've been talking about molecular intelligence. Our molecular systems do a deep kind of artificial intelligence. All the things you think of as artificial intelligence does in representing knowledge, storing knowledge, searching over knowledge, adapting to knowledge, our molecular systems do, but the output isn't just a thought, it's us. It's the evolution of us. And that's the real horizon to come is now embodying AI, not just a processor and a robot, but building systems that really can grow and evolve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we've been speaking about this boundary between bits and atoms, so let me ask you about one of the big mysteries of consciousness. Do you think it comes from somewhere between that boundary?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I won't name names, but if you know who I'm talking about, it's probably clear. I once did a drive, in fact, up to the Mussolini-era villa outside Torino, in the early days of what became quantum computing with a famous person who thinks about quantum mechanics and consciousness. And we had the most infuriating conversation that went roughly along the lines of consciousness is weird, quantum mechanics is weird, therefore quantum mechanics explains consciousness. That was roughly the logical process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're not satisfied with that process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, and I say that very precisely in the following sense. I was a program manager, somewhat by accident, in a DARPA program on quantum biology. And so, biology trivially uses quantum mechanics that were made out of atoms, but the distinction is, in quantum computing, quantum information, you need quantum coherence. And there's a lot of muddled thinking about collapse of the wave function and claims of quantum computing that garbles just quantum coherence. you can think of it as a wave that has very special properties, but these wave-like properties. And so there's a small set of places where biology uses quantum mechanics in that deeper sense. One is how light is converted to energy in photo systems. It looks like one is olfaction, how your nose is able to tell different smells. Probably one has to do with how birds navigate how they sense magnetic fields. That involves a coupling between a very weak energy with a magnetic field, coupling into chemical reactions. And there's a beautiful system, standard in chemistry is magnetic fields like this can influence chemistry, but there are biological circuits that are carefully balanced with two pathways that become unbalanced with magnetic fields. Each of these areas are expensive for biology. It has to consume resources to use quantum mechanics in this way. So those are places where we know there's quantum mechanics in biology. In cognition, there's just no evidence. There's no evidence of anything quantum mechanical going on in how cognition works. Well, I'm saying cognition, I'm not saying consciousness. to get from cognition to consciousness. So McCullough and Pitts made a model of neurons that led to perceptrons. that then through a couple boom busts led to deep learning. One of the interesting things about that sequence is it diverged off. So deep neural networks used in machine learning diverged from trying to understand how the brain works. What makes them work what's emerged is, it's a really interesting story. This may be too much of a technical detail, but it has to do with function approximation. We talked about exponentials, a deep network needs an exponentially larger shallow network to do the same function. And that exponential is what gives the power to deep networks. But what's interesting is the sort of lessons about building these deep architectures and how to train them have really interesting echoes to how brains work. And there's an interesting conversation that's sort of coming back of neuroscientists looking over the shoulder of people training these deep networks, seeing interesting echoes for how the brain works, interesting parallels with it. And so I didn't say consciousness, I just said cognition, but I don't know any experimental evidence that points to anything in neurobiology that says we need quantum mechanics. I view the question about whether a large language model is conscious as silly, in that biology is full of hacks and it works. There's no evidence we have that there's anything deeper going on than just this sort of stacking up of hacks in the brain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And somehow consciousness is one of the hacks or an emerging property of the hacks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. And just numerically I said big computations now have the degrees of freedom of the brain. And they're showing a lot of the phenomenology of what we think is properties of what a brain can do. and I don't see any reason to invoke anything else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That makes you wonder what kind of beautiful stuff digital fabrication will create. If biology created a few hacks on top of which consciousness and cognition, some of the things we love about human beings was created. It makes you wonder what kind of... beauty in the complexity created through digital fabrication." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's an early peek at that which is, there's a misleading term which is generative design. Generative design is where you don't tell a computer how to design something, you tell the computer what you want it to do. That doesn't work, that only works in limited subdomains. You can't do really complex functionality that way. The one place it's matured, though, is topology optimization for structure. Let's say you wanted to make a bicycle or a table. You describe the loads on it, and it figures out how to design it. What it makes are beautiful, organic-looking things. These are things that look like they grew in a forest. they look like they grew in a forest, because that's sort of exactly what they are, that they're solving the ways of how you handle loads in the same way biology does. And so you get things that look like trees and shells and all of that. And so that's a peak at this transition from we design to we teach the machines how to design." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What can you say about, because you mentioned cellular automata earlier, about from this example you just gave and in general the observation you can make by looking at cellular automata that there's a, from simple rules and simple building blocks can emerge arbitrary complexity. Do you understand what that is, how that can be leveraged?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So understand what it is is much easier than it sounds. I complained about Turing's machine making a physics mistake, but Turing never intended it to be a computer architecture. He used it just to prove results about uncomputability. what Turing did on what is computation is exquisite, is gorgeous. He gave us our notion of computational universality. And something that sounds deep and turns out to be trivial is it's really easy to show almost everything is computationally universal. So Norm Margulis wrote a beautiful paper, with Tom Toffoli showing in a cellular, a cellular automata world is like the game of life, where you just move tokens around. They showed that modeling billiard balls on a billiard table with cellular automata is a universal computer. To be universal, you need a persistent state, you need a nonlinear operation to interact them, And you need connectivity. So that's what you need to show computational universality. So they showed that a CA modeling billiard balls is a universal computer. Chris Moore went on to show that instead of chaos, Turing showed there are computable, there are problems in computation that you can't solve. that they're harder than you can't predict. They're actually in a deep reason that they are unsolvable. Chris Moore showed it's very easy to make physical systems that are uncomputable, that what the physics system does, just bouncing balls and surfaces, you can make systems that solve uncomputable problems. And so almost any non-trivial physical system is computationally universal. So the first part of the answer to your question is, this comes back to my comment about how do you bootstrap a civilization? You just don't need much to be computationally universal. there isn't today a notion of like fabricational universality or fabricational complexity. The sort of numbers I've been giving you about you eating lunch versus the chip fab, sort of that's in the same spirit of what Shannon did. But once you connect computational universality to kind of fabricational universality, you then get the ability to grow and adapt and evolve. Because that evolution happens in the physical space, and that's ultimately. Yeah, and so that's why, for me, the heart of this whole conversation is morphogenesis. So just to come back to that, what Turing ended his sadly cut short life studying was how genes give rise to form. So how the small amount of it, relatively, in effect, small amount of information in the genome can give rise to the complexity of who you are. And that's where what resides is this molecular intelligence. which is first how to describe you, but then how to describe you such that you can exist, and you can reproduce, and you can grow, and you can evolve. And so, that's the seat of our molecular intelligence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The maker revolution in biology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it really is. It really is. And that's where you can't separate communication, computation, and fabrication. You can't separate computer science and physical science. You can't separate hardware and software. They all intersect right at that place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think of our universe as just one giant computation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would even kind of say quantum computing is overhyped in that there's a few things quantum computing is gonna be good at. One is breaking cryptosystems, how to make new cryptosystems. What it's really good at is modeling other quantum systems. So for studying nanotechnology, it's gonna be powerful. But quantum computing is not going to disrupt and change everything. But the reason I say that is this interesting group of strange people who helped invent quantum computing before it was clear anything was there, one of the main reasons they did it wasn't to make a computer that can break a cryptosystem. It was you could turn this backwards. You could be surprised quantum mechanics can compute, or you can go in the opposite direction and say if quantum mechanics can compute, That's a description of nature. So physics is written in terms of partial differential equations. That is an information technology from two centuries ago. The equations of physics are not this would sound very strange to say, but the equations of physics, Schrodinger's equations and Maxwell's equations and all of them, are not fundamental. They're a representation of physics that was accessible to us in the era of having a pencil and a piece of paper. They have a fundamental problem, which is if you make a dot on a piece of paper, In traditional physics theory, there's infinite information in that dot. A point has infinite information. That can't be true because information is a fundamental resource that's connected to energy. And in fact, one of my favorite questions you can ask a cosmologist to trip them up is ask, is information a conserved quantity in the universe? Was all the information created in the Big Bang or can the universe create information? And I've yet to meet a cosmologist who doesn't stutter and not clearly know how to handle that existential question. But sort of putting that to a side, in physics theory, the way it's taught, information comes late. You're taught about X, a variable, which can contain infinite information, but physically that's unrealistic. And so physics theories have to find ways to cut that off. So instead, there are a number of people who start with a theory of the universe should start with information and computation as the fundamental resources that explain nature. And then you build up from that to something that looks like throwing baseballs down a slope. And so in that sense, the work on physics and computation has many applications that we've been talking about, but more deeply, it's really getting at new ways to think about how the universe works. And there are a number of things that are hard to do in traditional physics that make more sense when you start with information and computation as the root of physical theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So information and computation being the real fundamental thing in the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, that information is a resource. You can't have infinite information in finite space. Information propagates and interacts, and from there you erect the scaffolding of physics. Now it happens, the words I just said look a lot like quantum field theories. but there's an interesting way where instead of starting with differential equations to get to quantum field theories and quantum field theories, you get to quantization. If you start from computation information, you begin sort of quantized and you build up from there. And so that's the sense in which absolutely I think about the universe as a computer. The easy way to understand that is almost anything is computationally universal, but the deep way is it's a real fundamental way to understand how the universe works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me go a little bit to the personal and the center of bits and atoms. You have worked with, the students you've worked with have gone on to do some incredible things in this world, including build supercomputers that power Facebook and Twitter and so on. What advice would you give to young people? What advice have you given them how to have one heck of a great career, one heck of a great life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One important one is, If you look at junior faculty trying to get tenure at a place like MIT, the ones who try to figure out how to get tenure are miserable and don't get tenure. And the ones who don't try to figure it out are happy and do get it. I mean, you have to love what you're doing and believe in it. nothing else could possibly be what you want to be doing with your life and it gets you out of bed in the morning. And again, it sounds naive, but within like the limited domain I'm describing now of getting tenure at MIT, that's a key attribute to it. And then same sense, if you take the sort of outliers students were talking about, 99 out of a hundred come to me and say, your work is very fascinating. I'd be interesting to work for you and one out of a hundred come and say, you're wrong, here's your mistake, here's what you should have been doing. they just sort of say, I'm here and get to work. And again, that's, I don't know how far this resource goes. So, you know, I've said, I consider the world's greatest resource, this engine of bright inventive people of which we only see a tiny little iceberg of it. And everywhere we open these labs, they come out of the woodwork. They come, you know, we didn't create all these educational programs, all these other things I'm describing. We tried, to partner everywhere with local schools and local companies and kept tripping over dysfunction and find we had to create the environment where people like this can flourish. And so I don't know if this is everyone, if it's 1% of society, what the fraction is, but it's so many orders of magnitude bigger than we see today. We've been racing to keep up with it, to take advantage of that resource." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something tells me it's a very large fraction of the population." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the thing that gives me most hope for the future is that population. Once a year, this whole lab network meets, and it's my favorite gathering, it's in Bhutan this year, because it's every body shape, it's every language, every geography, but it's the same person in all those packages. It's the same sense of bright inventive joy and discovery." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If there's people listening to this and they're just overwhelmed with how exciting this is, which I think they would be, how can they participate, how can they help, how can they encourage young people or themselves to build stuff, to create stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a great question. This is part of a much bigger maker movement that has a lot of embodiments. The part I've been involved in, this Fab Lab Network, you can think of as a curated part that works as a network. So you don't benefit in a gym if somebody exercises in another gym. But in the Fab Network, you do, in a sense, benefit when somebody works in another network, another lab, in the way it functions as a network. So you can come to cba.mit.edu to see the research we're talking about. There's a Fab Foundation run by Sherry Lasseter at fabfoundation.org. FabLabs.io is a portal into this lab network. Fabacademy.org is this distributed hands-on educational program. Fab.city is the platform of cities producing what they consume. Those are all nodes in this network." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you can learn with Fabacademy and you can perhaps launch or help launch or participate in launching a fab lab." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and in particular, From one to 1,000, we carefully counted labs. Now we're going from 1,000 to a million, where it ceases to become interesting to count them. And in the 1,000 to the million, what's interesting about that stage is technologically, you go to a lab not to get access to the machine, but you go to the lab to make the machine. But the other thing interesting in it is we have an interesting collaboration on a fab lab in a box. And this came out of a collaboration with SolidWorks on how you can put a fab lab in a box, which is not just the tools, but the knowledge. So you open the box and the box contains the knowledge of how to use it, as well as the tools within it. so that the knowledge can propagate. And so we have an interesting group of people working on, you know, the original Fab Labs, we'd have a whole team to get involved in the setting up and training. And the Fab Academy is a real in-depth, deep technical program in the training. But in this next phase, how sort of the lab itself knows how to do the lab, that it's, you know, We've talked deeply about the intelligence in fabrication, but in a much more accessible one about how the AI in the lab, in effect, becomes a collaborator with you in this near term to help get started. And for people wanting to connect, it can seem like a big step, a big threshold, but we've gotten to thousands of these and they're doubling exactly that way just from people opting in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And in so doing, driving towards this kind of idea of personal digital fabrication." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and it's not utopia, it's not free, but come back to today, we separately have education, we have big business, we have startups, we have entertainment, sort of each of these things are segregated. when you have global connection to one of these local facilities, in that you can do play and art and education and create infrastructure. You can make many of the things you consume. You could make it for yourself. It could be done on a community scale. It could be done on a regional scale. It really, I'd say, The research we spent the last few hours talking about, I thought was hard. And in a sense, I mean, it's non-trivial, but in a sense, it's just sort of playing out, we're turning the crank. What I didn't think was hard is, if anybody can make almost anything anywhere, How do you live? How do you learn? How do you work? How you play? These very basic assumptions about how society functions. There's a way in which it's kind of back to the future in that this mode where work is money is consumption and consumption is shopping by selecting is only a kind of a few decade old stretch. In some ways, we're getting back to, you know, a Sami village in North Norway is deeply sustainable, but rather than just reverting to living the way we did a few thousand years ago, being connected globally, having the benefits of modern society, but connecting it back to older notions of sustainability, I hadn't remotely anticipated just how fundamentally that challenges how a society functions, and how interesting and how hard it is to figure out how we can make that work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's possible that this kind of process will give a deeper sense of meaning to each person." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me violently agree in two ways. One way is this community making crosses many sensitive sectarian boundaries in many parts of the world where there's just implicit or explicit conflict, but sort of this act of making seems to transcend a lot of historical divisions. I don't say that philosophically, I just say that as an observation. And I think there's something really fundamental in what you said, which is deep in our brain is shaping our environment. A lot of what's strange about our society is the way that we can't do that. The act of shaping our environment touches something really, really deep that gets to the essence of who we are. That's again why I say that, in a way, the most important thing made in these labs is making itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think, if the shaping of our environment gets to something deep, what do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of life, Neil?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can tell you my insights into how life works, I can tell you my insights in how to make life meaningful and fulfilling and sustainable. I have no idea what the meaning of life is, but maybe that's the meaning of life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now the uncertainty, the confusion, because there's a magic to it all. Everything you've talked about, from starting from the basic elements with the big bang that somehow created the sun, that somehow said a few to thermodynamics and created life, and all the ways that you've talked about, from ribosomes that created the machinery that created the machine, and then now the biological machine creating through digital fabrication, more complex artificial machines, all of that, there's a magic to that creative process. And we humans are smart enough to notice the magic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, you haven't said the S word yet. Which one is that? Singularity. I'm not sure if Ray Kurzweil is listening, if he is. Hi, Ray. But I have a complex relationship with Ray, because a lot of the things he projects I find annoying, But then he does his homework, and then somewhat annoyingly, he points out how almost everything I'm doing fits on his roadmaps. And so the question is, are we heading towards a singularity? I'd have to say I lean towards sigmoids rather than exponentials." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we've done pretty well with sigmoids." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so sigmoids are things grow and they taper and then there can be one after it and one after it. So, I'll pass on whether there's enough of them that they diverge, but you know, The selfish gene answer to the meaning of life is the meaning of life is the propagation of life. And so, it was a step for atoms to assemble into a molecule, for molecules to assemble into a protocell, for the protocell to form to then form organelles, for the organ cells to form organs, the organs to form an organism. Then it was a step for organisms to form family units, then family units to form villages. You can view each of those as a stack in the level of organization. So you could view everything we've spoken about as the imperative of life just the next step in the hierarchy of that and the fulfillment of the inexorable drive of the violation of thermodynamics. So you could view, I'm an embodiment of the will of the violation of thermodynamics speaking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The two of us having an old chat, yes. And so it continues and even then the singularity is just a transition up the ladder." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's nothing deeper to consciousness than it's a derived property of distributed problem solving. There's nothing deeper to life than embodied AI in morphogenesis. So why so much of this conversation in my life is involved in these fab labs? And initially it just started as outreach, then it started as keeping up with it, then it turned to it was rewarding, then it turned to we're learning as much from these labs in as goes out to them. It began as outreach, but now more knowledge is coming back from the labs than is going into them. And then finally, it ends with what I described as competing with myself at MIT, but a better way to say that is tapping the brain power of the planet. And so I guess for me personally, that's the meaning of my life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And maybe that's the meaning for the universe, too. It's using us humans and our creations to understand itself in the way it's, whatever the creative process that created Earth, it's competing with itself." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're awful and anti-Semitic, and they seem to get worse over time. They started off with the bizarre DEFCON 3 tweet, and then they went into even more stereotypical garbage about Jews and Jews being sexual manipulators. I think that was the Pete Davidson, Kim Kardashian stuff. And then Jews running all of the media, Jews being in charge of the financial sector. Jewish people, I mean, there's no, I mean, I called it on my show, there's Sherman Nazism, and it is, I mean, it's like, right from Protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think those words come from pain? Where'd they come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know, it's always hard to try and read somebody's mind. What he looks like to me, just having experience in my own family, people who are bipolar, is he seems like a bipolar personality. He seems like somebody who is in the middle of a manic episode, and when you're manic, you tend to say a lot of things that, you shouldn't say, and you tend to believe that they're the most brilliant things ever said. The Washington Post did an entire piece speculating about how bipolarism played into the kind of stuff that Ye was saying, and it's hard for me to think that it's not playing into it, especially because even if he is an anti-Semite, and I have no reason to suspect he's not, given all of his comments, If he had an ounce of common sense, he would stop at a certain point. And bipolarism tends to drive you well past the point where common sense applies. So, I mean, I would imagine it's coming from that. I mean, from his comments, I would also imagine that he's doing the logical mistake that a lot of anti-Semites or racists or bigots do, which is Somebody hurt me. That person is a Jew. Therefore, all Jews are bad. And that jump from a person did something to me I don't like, who's a member of a particular race or class, and therefore everybody of that race or class is bad, I mean, that's textbook bigotry, and that's pretty obviously what Ye is engaging in here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So jumping from the individual to the group." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the way he's been expressing it, right? He keeps talking about his Jewish agents. And I watched your interview with him, and you kept saying, so just name the agents, right? Just name the people who are screwing you. And he wouldn't do it. Instead, he just kept going back to the general, the group, the Jews in general. I mean, that's textbook bigotry. And if it were put in any other context, he would probably recognize it as such." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to the degree as words fuel hate in the world, what's the way to reverse that process? What's the way to alleviate the hate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, when it comes to alleviating the kind of stuff that he's saying, obviously debunking it, making clear that what he's saying is garbage. But the reality is that I think that for most people who are in any way engaged with these issues, I don't think they're being convinced to be anti-Semitic by Ye. I mean, I think there's a group of people who may be swayed that anti-Semitism is acceptable because Ye is saying what he's saying, and he's saying so very loudly and he's saying it over and over. Yeah, I think that, for example, there are these signs that are popping up in Los Angeles saying Ye is right. Well, that group's been out there posting anti-Semitic signs on the freeways for years. And there are groups like that posting anti-Semitic signs where I live in Florida. They've been doing that for years, well before Ye was saying this sort of stuff. It's just like latest opportunity to kind of jump on that particular bandwagon. But listen, I think that people do have a moral duty to call that stuff out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there is a degree to which it normalizes that kind of idea that Jews control the media, Jews control X institution. Is there a way to talk about a high representation of a group like Jewish people in a certain" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Institution like the media or Hollywood and so on without it being a hateful Conversation of course a high percentage of higher than statistically represented in the population percentage of Hollywood agents are probably Jewish. A higher percentage of lawyers generally are probably Jewish. A higher percentage of accountants are probably Jewish. Also, a higher percentage of engineers are probably Asian. Statistical truths are statistical truths. It doesn't necessarily mean anything about the nature of the people who are being talked about. There are a myriad of reasons why people might be disproportionately in one arena or another, ranging from the cultural to sometimes the genetic. I mean, there are certain areas of the world where people are better long-distance runners because of their genetic adaptations in those particular areas of the world. That's not racist, that's just fact. What starts to get racist is when you are attributing a bad characteristic to an entire population based on the notion that some members of that population are doing bad things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a jump between, it's also possible that record label owners as a group have a kind of culture that Fs over artists, doesn't treat artists fairly. And it's also possible that there's a high representation of Jews in the group of people that own record labels, but it's that small, but a very big leap that people take from the group that own record labels to all Jews." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For sure. And I think that one of the other issues also is that anti-semitism is fascinating because it breaks down into so many different parts, meaning that if you look at sort of different types of anti-semitism, if you're a racist against black people, it's typically because you're racist based on the color of their skin. If you're racist against the Jews, you're anti-semitic, then there are actually a few different ways that breaks down. You have anti-semitism in terms of ethnicity, which is like Nazi-esque anti-semitism. you have Jewish parentage, you have a Jewish grandparent, therefore your blood is corrupt and you are inherently going to have bad properties. Then there's sort of old school religious antisemitism, which is that the Jews are the killers of Christ, or the Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys, and therefore Judaism is bad, and therefore Jews are bad. And the way that you get out of that antisemitism, historically speaking, is mass conversion, which most antisemitism for a couple thousand years actually was not ethnic. It was much more rooted in this sort of stuff, right? If a Jew converted out of the faith, then the antisemitism was quote-unquote alleviated. And then there's a sort of bizarre antisemitism that's political antisemitism, and that is members of a group that I don't like are disproportionately Jewish, therefore all Jews are are members of this group or are predominantly represented in this group. So you'll see Nazis saying the communists are Jews. You'll see communists saying the Nazis are Jews. Or you'll see communists saying that the capitalists, rather, are Jews. And so that's the weird thing about anti-Semitism. It's kind of like the Jews behind every corner. It's basically a big conspiracy theory. Unlike a lot of other forms of racism, which are not really conspiracy theory, anti-Semitism tends to be a conspiracy theory about believers of power being controlled by a shadowy cadre of people who are getting together behind closed doors to control things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the most absurd illustration of anti-Semitism, just like you said, is Stalin versus Hitler over Poland, that every bad guy was a Jew. It was like, so every enemy, there's a lot of different enemy groups, intellectuals, political and so on, military, and behind any movement that is considered the enemy for the Nazis and any movement that's considered the enemy for the Soviet Army are the Jews. What does the fact that Hitler took power teach you about human nature? When you look back at the history of the 20th century, what do you learn from that time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, there are a bunch of lessons to Hitler taking power. The first thing I think people ought to recognize about Hitler taking power is that the power had been centralized in the government before Hitler took it. So if you actually look at the history of Nazi Germany, the Weimar Republic had effectively collapsed. The power had been centralized in the chancellery and really under Hindenburg for a couple of years before that. And so it was only a matter of time until someone who was bad grabbed the power. And so the struggle between the Reds and the Browns in Nazism, in pre-Nazi Germany, led to this kind of up-spiraling of radical sentiment that allowed Hitler in through the front door, not through the back door, right? He was elected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think communists could have also taken power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, there's no question communists could have taken power. They were a serious force in pre-Nazi Germany." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there was an underlying current that would have led to an atrocity if the communists" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Wouldn't have been quite the same atrocity, but obviously the communists in Soviet Russia at exactly this time were committing the Haladomar. There were very few good guys in terms of good parties. The moderate parties were being dragged by the radicals into alliance with them to prevent the worst case scenario from the other guy. And I'm sort of fascinated by the history of this period, because it really does speak to how does a democracy break down? I mean, the 20s, Weimar Republic was a very liberal democracy. How does a liberal democracy break down into complete fascism and then into genocide? And there's a character who was very prominent in the history of that time, named Franz von Papen, who was actually the second to last chancellor of the republic before Hitler. So he was the chancellor, and then he handed over to Schleicher. And then Schleicher ended up collapsing, and that ended up handing power over to Hitler. It was Papen who had stumped for Hitler to become chancellor. Papen was a Catholic Democrat. He didn't like Hitler. He thought that Hitler was a radical and a nutjob. But he also thought that Hitler, being a buffoon as he saw it, was going to essentially be usable by the right forces in order to prevent the communists from taking power. maybe in order to restore some sort of legitimacy to the regime because he was popular, in order for Papin to retain power himself. And then immediately after Hitler taking power, Hitler basically kills all of Papen's friends. Papen, out of quote-unquote loyalty, stays on. He ends up helping the Anschluss in Austria. Now all this stuff is really interesting mainly because what it speaks to is the great lie we tell ourselves that people who are evil are not like us. They're a class apart. People who do evil things. People who support evil people. People, they're not like us. That's an easy call. Everybody in history who has sinned is a person who's very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he's fond of doing a sort of thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand if they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand. He says, of course that's not true. Of course that's not true. The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over. And so you have to be very cautious in how you approach these issues and the back and forth of politics, the sort of bipolarity of politics, or the polarization in politics might be a better way to put it, you know, makes it very easy to kind of fall into the Rock'em Sock'em robots that eventually could theoretically allow you to support somebody who's truly frightening and hideous in order to stop somebody who you think is more frightening and hideous. And you see this kind of language, by the way, now predominating almost all over the Western world, right? My political enemy is an enemy of democracy. My political enemy is going to end the republic. My political enemy is going to be the person who destroys the country we live in. And so that person has to be stopped by any means necessary. And that's dangerous stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the communists had to be stopped in Nazi Germany, and so they're the devil, and so any useful buffoon, as long as they're effective against the communists, would do. Do you ever wonder, because the people that are participating in evil may not understand that they're doing evil, do you ever sit back you know, in the quiet of your own mind and think, am I participating in evil?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, so my business partner and I, one of our favorite memes is from, there's a British comedy show, the name escapes me, of these two guys who are members of the SS and they're dressed in the SS uniforms and the black uniforms, the skulls on them and they're saying to each other, one says to the other guy, you notice like the British, the symbol is something, It's something nice, and it's like an eagle. But it's a skull and crossbones. You see the Americans, you see their blue uniforms. They're very nice and pretty. Ours are jet black. Are we the baddies?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And, you know, that's it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the truth is we look back at the Nazis and we say, well, of course they were the baddies. They wore black uniforms and they had jackboots and they had this and that. And of course, they were the bad guys, but evil rarely presents its face so clearly. So yeah, I mean, I think you have to constantly be thinking along those lines, and hopefully you try to avoid it. You can only do the best that a human being can do. But yeah, I mean, the answer is yes. I would say that I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on whether I'm doing the right thing. And I may not always do the right thing. I'm sure a lot of people think that I'm doing the wrong thing on a daily basis, but it's definitely a question that has to enter your mind as a historically aware and hopefully morally decent person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think you're mentally strong enough if you realize that you're on the wrong side of history? to switch sides. Very few people in history seem to be strong enough to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think that the answer I hope would be yes. You never know until the time comes and you have to do it. I will say that having heterodox opinions in a wide variety of areas is something that I have done before. I'm the only person I've ever heard of in public life who actually has a list on their website of all the dumb, stupid things I've ever said. So where I go through and I either say, this is why I still believe this, or this is why what I said was terrible and stupid. And I'm sure that list will get a lot longer as the years go on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I look forward to new additions to that list. Yeah, exactly. It actually is a super, super long list. People should check it out. And it's quite honest and raw. What do you think about, it's interesting to ask you given how pro-life you are about Ye's comments about comparing the Holocaust to the 900,000 abortions in the United States a year." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'll take this from two angles. As a pro-life person, I actually didn't find it offensive because if you believe, as I do, that unborn and preborn lives deserve protection, then the slaughter of just under a million of them every year for the last almost 50 years is a historic tragedy on par with a Holocaust. From the outside perspective, I get why people would say there's a difference in how people view the pre-born as to how people view, say, a seven-year-old who's being killed in the Holocaust. Like, the visceral power and evil of the Nazis shoving full-grown human beings and small children into gas chambers can't be compared to... a person who, even from a pro-life perspective, may not fully understand the consequences of their own decisions, or from a pro-choice perspective, fully understands the consequences, but just doesn't think that that person is a person, that that's actually different. So I understand both sides of it. I wasn't offended by Ye's comments in that way, though. Because if you're a pro-life human being, then you do think that what's happening is a great tragedy on scale that involves the dehumanization of an entire class of people, the pre-born." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the philosophical, you understand the comparison? I do. Sure. So in his comments, in the jumping from the individual to the group, I'd like to ask you, you're one of the most effective people in the world at attacking the left. And sometimes they can slip into attacking the group. Do you worry that that's the same kind of oversimplification that Ye is doing about Jewish people that you can sometimes do with the left as a group?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So when I speak about the left, I'm speaking about a philosophy. I'm not really speaking about individual human beings as the leftists like group and then try to name who the members of this individual group are. I also make a distinction between the left and liberals. There are a lot of people who are liberal who disagree with me on taxes, disagree with me on foreign policy, disagree with me on a lot of things. The people who I'm talking about generally when I talk about the left in the United States are people who believe that alternative points of view ought to be silenced because they are damaging and harmful simply based on the disagreement. So that's one distinction. The second distinction, again, is when I talk about the right versus the left, typically I'm talking about a battle of competing philosophies. And so I'm not speaking about typically It would be hard to, if you put a person in front of me and said, is this person of the left or of the right? Having just met them, I wouldn't be able to label them in the same way that if you met somebody in the name of Greenstein, you'd immediately got you. Or you met a black person, black person. And the adherence to a philosophy makes you a member of a group. If I think the philosophy is bad, that doesn't necessarily mean that you as a person are bad, but it does mean that I think your philosophy is bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the grouping is based on the philosophy versus something like a race, like the color of your skin or race as in the case of the Jewish people. So it's a different thing. You can be a little bit more nonchalant and careless in attacking a group because it's ultimately attacking a set of ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, it's really nonchalant in attacking the set of ideas. And I don't know that nonchalant would be the way I'd put it. I try to be exact when you're, you know, you don't always hit, but you know, if I say that I oppose the communists, Right? And then presumably I'm speaking of people who believe in the communist philosophy. Now the question is whether I'm mislabeling, right? Whether I'm taking someone who's not actually a communist and then shoving them in that group of communists, right? That would be inaccurate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The dangerous thing is it expands the group. as opposed to you talking about the philosophy, you're throwing everybody who's ever said, I'm curious about communism, I'm curious about socialism, because there's like a gradient. You know, it's like to throw something at you, I think Joe Biden said, MAGA Republicans, right? You know, I think that's a very careless statement because the thing you jump to immediately is like all Republicans for Trump versus I think, In the charitable interpretation, that means a set of ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my actual problem with the MAGA Republicans line from Biden is that he went on in the speech that he made in front of Independence Hall to actually try and define what it meant to be a MAGA Republican who was a threat to the republic was the kind of language that he was using. And later on in the speech, he actually suggested, well, there are moderate Republicans. And the moderate Republicans are people who agree with me on the Inflation Reduction Act. It's like, well, that can't be the dividing line between a MAGA Republican and a moderate Republican, somebody who agrees with you. You've got to name me a Republican who disagrees with you fairly strenuously, but is not in this group of threats to the Republic. You make that distinction, we can have a fair discussion about whether the idea of election denial, for example, makes somebody a threat to institutions. That's a conversation that we can have, and then we'll have to discuss how much power they have, what the actual perspective is, delve into it. But I think that he was being overbroad and sort of labeling all of his political enemies under one rubric. Now, again, in politics, this stuff sort of happens all the time. I'm not going to plead clean hands here, because I'm sure that I've been inexact. But what would be good in that particular situation is for somebody to sort of read me back the quote, and I'll let you know where I've been inaccurate. I'll try to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also you don't shy away from humor and occasional trolling and mockery and all that kind of stuff for the fun, for the chaos, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you know, I try not to do trollery for trollery's sake, but, you know, if the show's not entertaining and not fun, people aren't going to listen. And so, you know, if you can't have fun with politics, the truth about politics is we all take it very seriously because it has some serious ramifications. Politics is Veep, it is not House of Cards. the general rule of politics is that everyone is a moron unless proven otherwise, that virtually everything is done out of stupidity rather than malice, and that if you actually watch politics as a comedy, you'll have a lot more fun. And so the difficulty for me is I take politics seriously, but also I have the ability to sort of flip the switch and suddenly it all becomes incredibly funny because it really is. Like if you just watch it from a pure entertainment perspective and you put aside the fact that it affects hundreds of millions of people, then watching, you know, President Trump being president, I mean, he's one of the funniest humans who's ever lived. Watching Kamala Harris be Kamala Harris and talking about how much she loves Venn diagrams or electric buses, I mean, that's funny stuff. So, if I can't make fun of that, then my job becomes pretty morose pretty quickly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's funny to figure out what is the perfect balance between seeing the humor and the absurdity of the game of it versus taking it seriously enough because it does affect hundreds of millions of people. It's a weird balance to strike. It's like, I am afraid with the internet that everything becomes a joke." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I totally agree with this. I will say this. I try to make less jokes about the ideas and more jokes about the people in the same way that I make jokes about myself. I'm pretty self-effacing in terms of my humor. I would say at least half the jokes on my show are about me. When I'm reading ads for Tommy John and they're talking about their no wedgie guarantee, I'll say things like, you know, that would help me in high school because it would have. I mean, just factually speaking. So if I can speak that way about myself, I feel like everybody else can take it as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Difficult question. In 2017, there was a mosque shooting in Quebec City. Six people died, five others seriously injured. The 27-year-old gunman consumed a lot of content online and checked Twitter accounts of a lot of people, but one of the people he checked quite a lot of was you, 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. If you could talk to that young man, what would you tell him? And maybe other young men listening to this that have hate in their heart in that same way, what would you tell them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're getting it wrong. If anything that I or anyone else in mainstream politics says drives you to violence, you're getting it wrong. You're getting it wrong. Now again, when it comes to stuff like this, I have a hard and fast rule that I've applied evenly across the spectrum and that is I never blame people's politics for other people committing acts of violence unless they're actively advocating violence. So when a fan of Bernie Sanders shoots up a congressional baseball game, that is not Bernie Sanders' fault. I may not like his rhetoric, I may disagree with him on everything, Bernie Sanders did not tell somebody to go shoot up a congressional baseball game. When a nutcase in San Francisco goes and hits Paul Pelosi with a hammer, I'm not going to blame Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker, for that. When somebody threatens Brett Kavanaugh, I'm not going to suggest that that was Joe Biden's fault, because it's not Joe Biden's fault. I mean, we can play this game all day long, and I find that the people who are most intensely focused on playing this game are people who tend to oppose the politics of the person as opposed to actually believing sincerely that this has driven somebody into the arms of the god of violence. But, you know, I have 4.7 million Twitter followers. I have 8 million Facebook followers. I have 5 million YouTube followers. I would imagine that some of them are people who are violent. I would imagine that some of them are people who do evil things or want to do evil things. And I wish that there were a wand that we could wave that would prevent those people from deliberately or mistakenly misinterpreting things as a call to violence. It's just a negative byproduct of the fact that you can reach a lot of people. And so if somebody could point me to the comment that I suppose, quote unquote, drove somebody to go and literally murder human beings, then I would appreciate it. So I could talk about the comment, but I don't Mainly because I just think that if we remove agency from individuals, and if we blame broad scale political rhetoric for every act of violence, we're not going to, the people who are going to pay the price are actually the general population because free speech will go away. If the idea is that things that we say could drive somebody who is unbalanced to go do something evil, the necessary byproduct is hate, is that speech is a form of hate, hate is a form of violence, speech is a form of violence, speech needs to be curbed. And that to me is deeply disturbing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, definitely he, that man, that 27-year-old man is the only one responsible for the evil he did. But what if he and others like him are not in those cases? What if there are people with pain, with anger in their heart? What would you say to them? You are exceptionally influential and other people like you that speak passionately about ideas. What do you think is your opportunity to alleviate the hate in their heart?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If we're speaking about people who aren't mentally ill and people who are just misguided, I'd say to him, the thing that I said to every other young man in the country, you need to find meaning and purpose in forming connections that actually matter in a belief system that actually promotes general prosperity and promotes helping other people. And this is why the message that I most commonly say to young men is it's time for you to grow up, mature, get a job, get married, have a family, take care of the people around you, become a useful part of your community. I've never, at any point in my entire career, suggested violence as a resort to political issues. And the whole point of having a political conversation is that it's a conversation. If I didn't think that it were worth trying to convince people, from my point of view, I wouldn't do what I do for a living. So violence doesn't solve anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, it doesn't. As if this wasn't already a difficult conversation. Let me ask about Ilhan Omar. You've called out her criticism of Israel policies as anti-Semitic. Is there a difference between criticizing a race of people, like the Jews, and criticizing the policies of a nation like Israel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, of course. I criticize the policies of Israel on a fairly regular basis. I would assume from a different angle than Ilhan Omar does. But yeah, I mean, I criticize the policies of a wide variety of states. And to take an example, I mean, I've criticized Israel's policy in giving control of the Temple Mount to the Islamic Waqf, which effectively prevents anybody except for Muslims from praying up there. I've also criticized the Israeli government for their COVID crackdown. I mean, you can criticize the policies of any government, but that's not what Ilhan Omar does. Ilhan Omar doesn't actually believe that there should be a state of Israel. She believes that Zionism is racism and that the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is, in and of itself, the great sin. That is a statement she would make about no other people in no other land. She would not say that the French don't deserve a state for the French. She wouldn't say that Somalis wouldn't deserve a state in Somalia. She wouldn't say that that Germans don't deserve a state in Germany. She wouldn't say for the 50 plus Islamic states that exist across the world that they don't deserve states of their own. It is only the Jewish state that has fallen under her significant scrutiny. And she also promulgates lies about one specific state in the form of suggesting, for example, that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is most eminently not, considering that the last unity government in Israel included an Arab party, that there are Arabs who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court, and all the rest. And then beyond that, obviously, she's engaged in some of the same sort of anti-Semitic tropes that you heard from Ye, right? The stuff about, it's all about the Benjamins, that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins. And she's had to be chided by members of her own party about this sort of stuff before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you empathize with the plight of Palestinian people?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I mean, I, you know, some of the uglier things that I've ever said in my career are things that I said very early on when I was 17, 18, 19, I started writing a syndicated comment, I was 17, I'm now 38. So virtually all the dumb things, I don't say virtually all, many of the dumb things, the plurality of the dumb things that I've said came from the ages of I'd say 17 to maybe 23. And they are rooted, again, in sloppy thinking. I feel terrible for people who have lived under the thumb and currently live under the thumb. of Hamas, which is an actual terrorist group, or the Palestinian Authority, which is a corrupt oligarchy that steals money from its people and leaves them in misery, or Islamic Jihad, which is an actual terrorist group. And the basic rule for the region, in my view, is if these groups were willing to make peace with Israel, they would have a state literally tomorrow. And if they are not, then there will be no peace. And it really is that simple. If Israel The formula that's typically used has become a bit of a bumper sticker, but it happens to be factually correct. If the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there'd be a state. If the Israelis put down their guns, there'd be no Israel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You get attacked a lot on the internet. I gotta ask you about your own psychology. How do you not let that break you mentally? And how do you avoid letting that lead to a resentment of the groups that attack you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, so there are a few sort of practical things that I've done. So for example, I would say that four years ago, Twitter was all-consuming. Twitter is an ego machine, especially the notifications button, right? The notifications button is just people talking about you all the time. And the normal human tendency is, wow, people talking about me. I got to see what they're saying about me, which is a recipe for insanity. So my wife actually said, Twitter is making your life miserable. You need to take it off your phone. So Twitter is not on my phone. If I want to log on to Twitter, I have to go on to my computer and I have to make the conscious decision to go on to Twitter and then take a look at what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I could just imagine you like there's a computer in the basement, you descend into the Czech Twitter in the darkness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at when I actually tweet, it's generally like in the run-up to recording my show or when I'm prepping for my show later in the afternoon, for example." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That doesn't affect you negatively mentally, like put you in a bad mental space?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not particularly if it's restricted to what's being watched. Now, I will say that I think the most important thing is you have to surround yourself with a group of people who you trust enough to make serious critiques of you when you're doing something wrong, but also you know that they have your best interests at heart. Because the internet is filled with people who don't have your best interests at heart and who hate your guts. And so you can't really take those critiques seriously or it does wreck you. The world is also filled with sycophants, right? The more successful you become, there are a lot of people who will tell you you're always doing the right thing. I'm very lucky. I got married when I was 24. My wife was 20, so she's known me long before I was famous or wealthy or anything. And so she's a good sounding board. I have a family that's willing to call me out on my bullshit, as you talked to Ye about. I have friends who are able to do that. I try to have open lines of communications with people who I believe have my best interests at heart. Conditions of being friends that when you see me do something wrong, I'd like for you to let me know that so I can correct it. I don't want to leave bad impressions out there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The sad thing about the internet, just looking at the critiques you get, I see very few critiques from people that actually want you to succeed, want you to grow. I mean, they're very, they're not sophisticated, they're just, they're, I don't know, they're cruel. The critiques are just, it's not actual critiques, it's just cruelty." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's most of Twitter. I mean, Twitter is a place to To smack and be smacked. I mean that's the anybody who uses Twitter for a for an intellectual conversation I think is engaging in category error. I use it to spread love. I think it's the only one it's you it's you and no one else my friend All right, well on that topic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about you on buying Twitter? What do you like? What are you hopeful on that front? What would you like to see Twitter improve?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'm very hopeful about Elon buying Twitter. I mean, I think that Elon is significantly more transparent than what has taken place up till now. He seems committed to the idea that he's going to broaden the Overton window to allow for conversations that simply were banned before, everything ranging from efficacy of masks with regard to COVID, to whether men can become women and all the rest. A lot of things that would get you banned on Twitter before without any sort of real explanation. It seems like he's dedicated to at least explaining what the standards are going to be and being broader and allowing a variety of perspectives on the outlet, which I think is wonderful. I think that's also why people are freaking out. I think the kind of wailing and gnashing of teeth and wearing of sackcloth and ash by so many members of the legacy media, I think a lot of that is because Twitter essentially was an oligarchy in which certain perspectives were allowed and certain perspectives just were not. And that was part of a broader social media reimposed oligarchy in the aftermath of 2017. So in order for, just to really understand, I think, what it means for Elon to take over Twitter, I think that we have to take a look at sort of the history of media in the United States in two minutes or less. The United States, the media, for most of its existence up until about 1990, at least from about 1930s until the 1990s, virtually all media was three major television networks, a couple major newspapers, and the wire services. Everybody had a local newspaper, it was the wire services that basically did all the foreign policy and all the national policy. McClatchy, Reuters, AP, AFP, etc. So that monopoly or oligopoly existed until the rise of the internet. There were sort of pokes at it and talk radio and Fox News, but there certainly was not this plethora of sources. Then the internet explodes and all of a sudden you can get news everywhere. And the way that people are accessing that news is You're, I believe, significantly younger than I am, but we used to do this thing called bookmarking, where you would bookmark a series of websites, and then you would visit them every morning. And then social media came up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is this an AOL, or?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. You had the dial up, and it was actually a can connected to a string. And you would actually just, it would go, ehh, ehh. And then there came a point where social media arose. And social media was sort of a boon for everybody, because you no longer had to bookmark anything. You just followed your favorite accounts, and all of them would pop up. And you follow everything on Facebook, and it would all pop up, and it was all centralized. And for a while, everybody was super happy because this was the brand new wave of the future. It made everything super easy. Suddenly, outlets like mine were able to see new eyeballs because it was all centralized in one place, right? You didn't have to do it through Google optimization. You could now just put it on Facebook. And so many eyeballs were on Facebook, you'd get more traffic. And everybody seemed pretty happy with this arrangement until precisely the moment Donald Trump became president. At that point, then the sort of pre-existing supposition of a lot of the powers that be, which was, Democrats are going to continue winning from here on out so we can sort of use the social media platforms as ways to push our information and still allow for there to be other information out there. The immediate response was, we need to reestablish this siphoning of information. It was misinformation and disinformation that won Donald Trump the election. We need to pressure the social media companies to start cracking down on misinformation and disinformation. And actually see this, in the historical record. I mean, you can see how Jack Dorsey's talk about free speech shifted from about 2015 to about 2018. You can see Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown in 2018 in which he talked about free speech and its value. And by 2019, he was going in front of Congress talking about how he was responsible for the stuff that was on Facebook, which is not true. He's not responsible for the stuff on Facebook, right? It's a platform. Is AT&T responsible for the stuff you say on your phone? The answer is typically no. So when that happened, all of these, because all the eyeballs had now been centralized in these social media sites, they were able to suddenly control what you could see and what you could not see. And the most obvious example was obviously leading up to 2020, the election that the killing of the Hunter Biden story is a great example of this. And so Elon coming in and taking over one of the social media services and saying, I'm not playing by your rules, right? There's not going to be this sort of group of people in the halls of power who are going to decide what we can see and hear. Instead, I'm going to let a thousand flowers bloom. There will be limits, but it's going to be on a more case-by-case basis. We're going to allow perspectives that are mainstream, but maybe not mainstream in the halls of academia or in the halls of media. Let those be said. I think it's a really good thing. Now, that comes with some responsibilities on Anilan's personal part, which would be to be For example, I think more responsible in dissemination of information himself sometimes, right? Like he got himself in trouble the other day for tweeting out that story about Paul Pelosi that was speculative and untrue. And I don't think what he did is horrific. He deleted it when he found out that it was false. And that's actually a free speech working, right? He said something wrong. People ripped into him. He realized he was wrong and he deleted it, which seems to me a better solution than preemptively banning content, which only raises more questions than it actually stops. With that said, As the face of responsible free speech, you know, and that's sort of what he's pitching at Twitter, he, I think, should enact that himself and be a little more careful in the stuff that he tweets out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's a tricky balance. The reason a lot of people are freaking out is because, one, he's putting his thumb on the scale by saying he is more likely to vote Republican. he's showing himself to be center-right and sort of just having a political opinion versus being this amorphous thing that doesn't have a political opinion. I think, if I were to guess, I haven't talked to him about it, but if I were to guess, he's sending a kind of signal that's important for the Twitter, the company itself, because if we're being honest, most of the employees are left-leaning. So you have to kind of send a signal that like a resisting mechanism, to say like, since most of the employees are left, it's good for Elon to be more right to balance out the way the actual engineering is done, to say we're not going to do any kind of activism inside the engineering. If I were to guess, that's kind of the effective Aspect of that of that mechanism and the other one by posting the Pelosi thing is probably To expand the Overton window like saying we can play We could post stuff we could post conspiracy theories and then through discourse figure out what is and isn't true again Like I say, I mean, I think that the that is a better mechanism in action than what it was before I just think it gave people who hate his guts the opening to kind of slap him for for" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No reason, but I can see the strategy of it for sure. And I think that the, you know, the general idea that he's, you know, kind of pushing right where the company had pushed left before, I think that there is actually unilateral polarization right now in politics, at least with regard to social media, in which one side basically says the solution to disinformation is to shut down free speech from the other side. And the other side is basically like people like me are saying the solution to disinformation is to let a thousand like I'd rather have people on the left also being able to put out stuff that I disagree with than for there to be anybody who's sort of in charge of these social media platforms and using them as editorial sites. I mean, I'm not criticizing MSNBC for not putting on right wing opinions. I mean, that's fine. I run a conservative site. We're not going to put up left-wing opinions on a wide variety of issues, because we are a conservative site. But if you pitch yourself as a platform, that's a different thing. If you pitch yourself as the town square, as Elon likes to call it, then I think Elon has a better idea of that than many of the former employees did, especially now that we have that report from The Intercept suggesting that there are people from Twitter working with DHS to monitor, quote unquote, disinformation, and being rather vague about what disinformation meant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I don't think activism has a place in what is fundamentally an engineering company that's building a platform. Like the people inside the company should not be putting a thumb on the scale of what is and isn't allowed. You should create a mechanism for the people to decide what is and isn't allowed. Do you think Trump should have been removed from Twitter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Should his account be restored? His account should be restored. And this is coming from somebody who really dislikes an enormous number of Donald Trump's tweets. Again, he's a very important political personage, even if he weren't. I don't think that he should be banned from Twitter or Facebook in coordinated fashion. By the way, I hold that opinion about people who I think are far worse than Donald Trump. Everyone knows I'm not an Alex Jones guy. I don't like Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones pervades. Uh-oh. You think Alex should be back on Twitter? I do, actually, because I think that there are plenty of people who are willing to say that what he's saying is wrong. And I'm not a big fan of this idea that because people I disagree with, and people who have personally targeted me, by the way. I mean, Alex Jones has said some things about me personally that I'm not real fond of. Well, we're not besties. No, it turns out. Yeah, you know, all I've said is I don't really enjoy a show He said some other stuff about the Antichrist and such but that's it. That's a bit of a different thing I suppose, you know, even so, you know I'm just not a big fan of this idea like I've defended people who have really gone after me on a personal level have targeted me that I The town square is online. Banning people from the town square is unpersonning them. Unless you violated a criminal statute, you should not be unpersonned in American society, as a general rule. That doesn't mean that companies that are not platforms don't have the ability to respond to you. I think Adidas is right to terminate its contract with Kanye, for example, with Ye. You know, that's, but Twitter ain't Adidas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the way your stance on free speech to the degree it's possible to achieve on a platform like Twitter is you fight bad speech with more speech, with better speech. So if Alex Jones and Trump is allowed back on, in the coming months and years leading up to the 2024 election, you think that's gonna make for a better world in the long term?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that on the principle that people should be allowed to do this and the alternative being a group of thought bosses telling us what we can and cannot see, yes. Do I think in the short term it's gonna mean a lot of things that I don't like very much? Sure, I mean, that's, them's the cost of doing business, you know? Like, I think that one of the costs of freedom is people doing things that I don't particularly like. And I would prefer the freedom with all the stuff I don't like than not the freedom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me linger on the love a little bit. You and a lot of people are pretty snarky on Twitter, sometimes to the point of mockery, derision, even a bit of, if I were to say, bad faith in the kind of mockery. And you see it as a war. I disagree with both you and Elon on this. Elon sees Twitter as a war zone, or at least has saw it that way in the past. Have you ever considered being nicer on Twitter? As a voice that a lot of people look up to? That if Ben Shapiro becomes a little bit more about love. that's gonna inspire a lot of people, or no? Is it just too fun for you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The answer is yes. Sure, it's occurred to me. Let's put it this way. There are a lot of tweets that actually don't go out that I delete. I'll say that Twitter's new function, that 30-second function, is a friend of mine. Every so often, I'll tweet something and I'll think about it a second time. Like, do I need to say this? Probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you make a book published after you pass away of all the tweets that you didn't send?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh no, my kids are still gonna be around, I hope. So that's the legacy. But yeah, I mean, sure. The answer is yes. And this is a good piece of what we would call in Orthodox Judaism, Mussar. This is like, he's giving you a Mussar schmooze right now. This is like the kind of be a better person stuff. I agree with you, I agree with you. And yeah, I will say that Twitter is sometimes too much fun. And I try to be at least, if not even-handed, then equal opportunity in my derision. I remember that during the 2016 primaries, I used to post rather snarky tweets about virtually all of the candidates, Republican and Democrat. And every so often, I'll still do some of that. I do think actually the amount of snark on my Twitter feed has gone down fairly significantly. I think if you go back a couple of years, it was probably a little more snarky. Today I'm trying to use it a little bit more in terms of strategy to get out information. Now, that doesn't mean I'm not gonna make jokes about, for example, you know, Joe Biden. I will make jokes about Joe Biden. He's the President of the United States. Nobody else will mock him. So, the entire comedic establishment has decided they actually work for him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, the President of the United States, no matter who they are, get the snark." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. And President Trump, I think, is fairly aware that he got the snark from me as well. When it comes to snarking the president, I'm not going to stop that. I think the president deserves to be snarked. So you're not afraid of attacking Trump? No. I mean, I've done it before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you say what your favorite and least favorite things are about President Trump and President Biden one at a time? So maybe one thing that you can say is super positive about Trump and one thing super negative about Trump." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so the super positive thing about Trump is that because he has no preconceived views that are establishmentarian, he's sometimes willing to go out of the box and do things that haven't been tried before. And sometimes that works. I mean, the best example being the entire foreign policy establishment telling him that he couldn't get a Middle Eastern deal done unless he centered the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and instead he just went right around that and ended up cutting a bunch of peace deals in the Middle East. or moving the embassy in Jerusalem, right? Sometimes he does stuff and it's really out of the box and it actually works and that's kind of awesome in politics and neat to see. The downside of Trump is that he has no capacity to use any sort of There's no filter between brain and mouth. Whatever happens in his brain is the thing that comes out of his mouth. I know a lot of people find that charming and wonderful, and it is very funny, but I don't think that it is a particularly excellent personal quality in a person who has as much responsibility as President Trump has. I think he says a lot of damaging and bad things on Twitter. I think that he seems consumed in some ways by his own grievances, which is why you've seen him focusing in on election 2020 so much. And I think that that is very negative about President Trump. So I'm very grateful to President Trump as a conservative for many of the things that he did. I think that a lot of his personality issues are pretty severe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about Joe Biden?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think that the thing that I like most about Joe Biden, I will say that Biden, two things. One, Biden seems to be a very good father by all available evidence, right? There are a lot of people who are put out, you know, kind of tape of him talking to Hunter and Hunter's having trouble with drugs or whatever. And I keep listening to that tape and thinking, he seems like a really good dad. Like the stuff that he's saying to his son is stuff that God forbid, if that were happening with my kid, I'd be saying to my kid. And so, you know, you can't help but feel for the guy. He's had an incredibly difficult go of it with his first wife and the death of members of his family and then Beau dying. I mean, like that kind of stuff obviously is deeply sympathetic and he seems like a deeply sympathetic father. As far as his politics, he seems like a slap on the back, you know, kind of guy. And I don't mind that. I think that's nice so far as it goes. It's sort of an old school politics where things are done with handshake and personal relationships. The thing I don't like about him is I think sometimes that's really not genuine. I think that sometimes, you know, I think that's his personal tendency, but I think sometimes he allows the prevailing winds of his party to carry him to incredibly radical places, and then he just doubles down on the radicalism in some pretty disingenuous ways. And there I would cite the Independence Day speech, or the Independence Hall speech, which I thought was truly one of the worst speeches I've seen a president give." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think he's trying to be a unifier in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not at all. I mean, that's what he was elected to do. He was elected to do two things, not be alive and be a unifier. Those were the two things. And when I say not be alive, I don't mean like physically dead. This is where the snark comes in. But what I do mean is that he was elected to not be particularly activist. Basically, the mandate was don't be Trump, be sane, don't be Trump, calm everything down. And instead he got in and he's like, what if we spend $7 trillion? What if we pull out of Afghanistan without any sort of plan? What if I start labeling all of my political enemies, enemies of the republic? What if I start... bringing Dylan Mulvaney to the White House and talking about how it is a moral sin to prevent the general mutilation of minors. I mean, like this kind of stuff is very radical stuff. And this is not a president who has pursued a unifying agenda, which is why his approval rating sank from 60% when he entered office to low 40s or high 30s today. Unlike President Trump, who never had a high approval rating, right? Trump came into office and he had like a 45% approval rating. And when he left office, he had about a 43% approval rating. and bounced around between 45 and 37 pretty much his entire presidency. Biden went from being a very popular guy coming in to a very unpopular guy right now. And if you're Joe Biden, you should be looking in the mirror and wondering exactly why." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think that pulling out from Afghanistan could be flipped as a pro for Biden in terms of he actually did it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's going to be almost impossible. I think the American people are incredibly inconsistent about their own views on foreign policy. In other words, we like to be isolationist until it comes time for us to be defeated and humiliated. When that happens, we tend not to like it very much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned Biden being a good father. Can you make the case for and against the Hunter Biden laptop story for it being a big deal and against it being a big deal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. So the case for it being a big deal is basically twofold. One is that it is clearly relevant if the president's son is running around to foreign countries picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden while his father is vice president of the United States. And it raises questions as to influence peddling for either the vice president or the former vice president using political connections. Did he make any money? Who was the big guy? Right? All these open questions that obviously implicates the questions to be asked, and then the secondary reason that the story is big is actually because of the reaction of the story. The banning of the story is in and of itself a major story. If there's any story that implicates a presidential candidate in the last month of an election and there is a media blackout, including a social media blackout, that obviously raises some very serious questions about informational flow and dissemination in the United States." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So no matter how big of a deal the story is, it is a big deal that there's a censorship of any relevant story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When there's a coordinated collusive blackout, yeah, that's a serious and major problem. So those are the two reasons why it would be a big story. The two reasons, a reason why it would not be a big story, perhaps, is if it turns out, and we don't really know this yet, but let's say that Hunter Biden was basically off on his own doing what he was doing, being a derelict or a drug addict or acting badly. And his dad had nothing to do with it. And Joe was telling the truth. But the problem is we never actually got those questions answered. So if it had turned out to be a nothing of a story, the nice thing about stories that turn out to be nothing is that after they turn out to be nothing, they're nothing. The biggest problem with this story is that it wasn't allowed to take the normal life cycle of a story, which is original story breaks, follow on questions are asked, follow on questions are answered. Story is either now a big story or it's nothing. When the life cycle of a story is cut off right at the very beginning, right when it's born, then that allows you to speculate in any direction you want. You can speculate it means nothing. It's nonsense. It's Russian. It's a Russian laptop. It's It's disinformation. Or on the other hand, this means that Joe Biden was personally calling Hunter and telling him to pick up a sack of cash over in Beijing and then he became president and he's influence peddling. So this is why it's important to allow these stories to go forward. So this is why actually the bigger story for the moment is not the laptop. It's the reaction to the laptop because it cut off that life cycle of the story. And then, you know, at some point I would assume that there will be some follow-on questions that are actually answered. I mean, the House is pledging, if it goes Republican, to investigate all of this. Again, I wouldn't be supremely surprised if it turns out that there was no direct involvement of Joe in this sort of stuff. Because it turns out, as I said before, that all of politics is veep. And this is always the story with half the scandals that you see, is that everybody assumes that there's some sort of deep and abiding clever plan that some politician is implementing it, and then you look at it and it turns out, no, it's just something dumb, right? This is sort of a perfect example of this, you know, President Trump with the classified documents in Mar-a-Lago. So, people on the left are like, it's probably nuclear codes. Probably he's taking secret documents and selling them to the Russians or the Chinese. And the real, most obvious explanation is Trump looked at the papers and he said, I like these papers, and then he just decided to keep them. And then people came to him and said, Mr. President, you're not allowed to keep those papers. He said, who are those people? I don't care about what they have to say. I'm putting them in the other room, in a box. It is highly likely that that is what happened. And it's very disappointing to people, I think, when they realize the human brain, I mean, you know this better than I do, but the human brain is built to find patterns. It's what we like to do. We like to find plans and patterns, because this is how we survived in the wild, is you found a plan, you found a pattern. You crack the code of the universe. When it comes to politics, the conspiracy theories that we see so often, it's largely because we're seeing inexplicable events. Unless you just assume everyone's a moron. If you assume that there's a lot of stupidity going on, everything becomes quickly explicable. If you assume that there must be some rationale behind it, you have to come up with increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories to explain just why people are acting the way that they're acting. And I find that, I won't say 100% of the time, but 94% of the time, the conspiracy theory turns out just to be people being dumb, and then other people reacting in dumb ways to the original people being dumb." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's also, to me, in that same way, very possible, very likely that Hunter Biden getting money in Ukraine, I guess, for consulting, all that kind of stuff, is a nothing burger. He's qualified, he's getting money as he should. There's a lot of influence peddling in general that's not corrupt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the most obvious explanation there, probably, is that he wasn't fake influence peddling, meaning he went to Ukraine, and he's like, guess what, my dad's Joe. And they're like, well, you don't have any qualifications in oil and natural gas, and you don't really have a great resume, but your dad is Joe. And then that was kind of the end of it. They gave him a bag of cash, hoping he would do something, he never did anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you're making it sound worse than it is. I think that in general, consulting is done in that way. Your name, it's not like you're- I agree with you. You're not, it's not like he is some rare case. and this is an illustration of corruption. If you can criticize consulting, which I would, which they're basically not providing. You look at a resume and who's who, like if you went to Harvard, I can criticize the same thing. If you have Harvard on your resume, You're more likely to be hired as a consultant. Maybe there's a network there of people that you know, and you hire them in that same way. If your last name is Biden, if you're last, there's a lot of last names that sound pretty good at it, right? For sure, for sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Biden admitted that much, by the way, right? In an open interview, he was like, if your last name weren't Biden, wouldn't you have got that job? And he's like, probably not. And you're right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I agree with you. It's not like he's getting a ridiculous amount of money. He was getting like a pretty standard consulting kind of money, which also I would criticize, because they get a ridiculous amount of money. But sort of even to push back on the life cycle or to steel man the side that was concerned about the Hunter Biden laptop story, I don't know if there is a natural life cycle of the story, because there's something about the virality of the internet that we can't predict, that a story can just take hold, and the conspiracy around it builds, especially around politics, where the interpretation, some popular, sexy interpretation of a story that might not be connected to reality at all will become viral. And that, from Facebook's perspective, is probably what they're worried about, is a organized misinformation campaign. that makes up a sexy story or sexy interpretation of the vague story that we have. And that has an influence on the populace." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think that's true, but I think the question becomes who's the great adjudicator there, right? Who adjudicates when the story ought to be allowed to go through even a bad life cycle or allowed to go viral as opposed to not. Now, it's one thing if you wanna say, okay, we can spot the Russian accounts that are actually promoting this stuff. They belong to the Russian government, gotta shut that down. I think everybody agrees. This is actually one of the slides that's happened linguistically that I really object to, is the slide between disinformation and misinformation. You notice there is this evolution. In 2017, there's a lot of talk about disinformation. It was Russian disinformation. The Russians were putting out deliberately false information in order to skew election results was the accusation. And then people started using disinformation or misinformation. And misinformation is either mistaken information or information that is, quote unquote, out of context. That becomes very subjective very quickly as to what out of context means. And it doesn't necessarily have to be from a foreign source. It can be from a domestic source, right? It could be somebody misinterpreting something here. It could be somebody interpreting something correctly, but PolitiFact thinks that it's out of context. That sort of stuff gets very murky very quickly. And so I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook, I mean, Zuckerberg was on with Rogan and talking about how the FBI had basically set lookout for Russian interference in the election. And then all of these people were out there saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation. So he basically shut it down. That sort of stuff is frightening, especially because it wasn't Russian disinformation. I mean, the laptop was real. And so the fact that You have people who seem to, let's put it this way, it seems as though, maybe this is wrong, it seems as though when a story gets killed preemptively like this, it is almost universally a story that negatively affects one side of the political aisle. I can't remember the last time there was a story on the right that was disinformation or misinformation where social media stepped in and they went, we cannot have this. This cannot be distributed. We're going to all colludes that this information is not distributed. Maybe in response to the story being proved false, it gets taken down. But what made the Hunter Biden thing so amazing is that it wasn't really even a response to anything. It was like the story got posted. There were no actual doubts expressed. as to the verified falsity of the story. It was just supposition that it had to be false and everybody jumped in. So I think that confirmed a lot of the conspiracy theories people had about social media and how it works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so if the reason you want to slow down the viral spread of a thing is at all grounded in partisanship, that's a problem. Like you should be very honest with yourself and ask yourself that question. Is it because I'm on the left or on the right that I want to slow this down? Versus is it hate? bipartisan hate speech, right? So that's, but it's really tricky. But I, like you, I'm very uncomfortable in general with any kind of slowing down, with any kind of censorship. But if there is something like a conspiracy theory that spreads hate, that becomes viral. I still lean to let that conspiracy theory spread, because the alternative is dangerous, more dangerous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's sort of like the ring of power, right? Like everybody wants the ring, because with the ring you can stop the bad guys from going forward, but it turns out that the ring gives you enormous power, and that power can be used in the wrong ways too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You had the Daily Wire, which I'm a member of. I appreciate that, thank you. I recommend everybody sign up to it. It should be part of your regular diet, whether you're on the left and the right, the far left or the far right. Everybody, it should be part of your regular diet. Okay, that said, do you worry about the audience capture aspect of it? Because it is a platform for conservatives and you have a powerful voice on there. It might be difficult for you to go against the talking points or against the stream of ideas that is usually connected to conservative thought. Do you worry about that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean the audience would obviously be upset with me and would have a right to be upset with me if I suddenly flipped all my positions on a dime. I have enough faith in my audience that I can say things that I think are true and that may disagree with the audience. you know, on a fairly regular basis, I would say. But they understand that on the deeper principle, we're on the same side of the, at least I hope, that much from the audience. It's also why we provide a number of different views on the platforms, many of which I disagree with, but are sort of within the generalized range of conservative thought. It's something I do have to think about every day, though, yeah. I mean, you have to think about, like, am I saying this because I'm afraid of taking off my audience, or am I saying this because I actually believe this? And, you know, that's a delicate dance a little bit. You have to be sort of honest with yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, somebody like Sam Harris is pretty good at this, at fighting, at saying the most outrageous thing that he knows. He almost leans into it. He knows it'll piss off a lot of his audience. Sometimes you almost have to test the system. It's like if you feel, you almost exaggerate your feelings just to make sure to send a signal to the audience that you're not captured by them. So speaking of people you disagree with, What is your favorite thing about Candace Owens? And what is one thing you disagree with her on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, my favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. My least favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. I mean, listen, she says things that are audacious and I think need to be said sometimes. Sometimes I think that she is morally wrong. I think the way she responded to Kanye, I've said this clearly, was dead wrong and morally wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What was her response?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Her original response was that she proffered confusion of what Ye was actually talking about. And then she was defending her friend. I wish that the way that she had responded was by saying, he's my friend. And also he said something bad and anti-Semitic. I wish that she had said that. Right away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right away. Yeah. I think you can also. This is the interesting human thing. You can be friends with people that you disagree with, and you can be friends with people that actually say hateful stuff. And one of the ways to help alleviate hate is being friends with people that say hateful things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and then calling them out on a personal level when they do say wrong or hateful things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, from a place of love and respect and privately." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Privately is also a big thing, right? I mean, like the public demand for, you know, denunciation from friends to friends is difficult. And I certainly have compassion for Candace, given the fact that she's so close with you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it breaks my heart sometimes, the public fights between friends and broken friendships. I've seen quite a few friendships publicly break over COVID. COVID made people behave their worst in many cases, which, Yeah, it breaks my heart a little bit. Because like the human connection is a prerequisite for effective debate and discussion and battles over ideas. Has there been any argument from the opposite political aisle that has made you change your mind about something? If you look back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I will say that the, I'm thinking it through because I think that my views probably on foreign policy have morphed somewhat. I would say that I was much more interventionist when I was younger. I'm significantly less interventionist now. I'd probably put myself- Will you give an example? Sure. I was a big backer of the Iraq War. I think now in retrospect, I might not be a backer of the Iraq War if the same situation arose again, based on the amount of evidence that had been presented or based on the sort of willingness of the American public to go at it. If you're going to get involved in a war, you have to know what the end point looks like, and you have to know what the American people really are willing to bear. The American people are not willing to bear open-ended occupations. And so knowing that, you have to consider that going in. So on foreign policy, I've become a lot more of a, it's almost Henry Kissinger realist in some ways. And when it comes to Social policy, I would say that I'm fairly strong where I was. I may have become slightly convinced actually by more of the conservative side of the aisle on things like drug legalization. I think when I was younger, I was much more pro-drug legalization than I am now, at least on the local level. On a federal level, I think the federal government can't really do much other than close the borders with regard to fentanyl trafficking, for example. But when it comes to how drugs run in local communities, you can see how drugs run in local communities pretty easily." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is weird because I saw you smoke a joint right before this conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's my biggest thing. I mean, I try to keep that secret." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right. Well, that's interesting about intervention. Can you comment about the war in Ukraine? So for me, it's a deeply personal thing, but I think you're able to look at it from a geopolitics perspective. What is the role of the United States in this conflict, before the conflict, during the conflict, and right now in helping achieve peace?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think before the conflict, the big problem is that the West took almost the worst possible view, which was encourage Ukraine to keep trying to join NATO and the EU, but don't let them in. And so what that does is it achieves the purpose of getting Russia really, really, really ticked off and feeling threatened, but also does not give any of the protections of NATO or the EU to Ukraine. I mean, Zelensky is on film when he was a comedy actor making that exact joke, right? He has Merkel on the other line, and she's like, oh, welcome to NATO. And he's like, great. She's like, wait, is this Ukraine on the line? Oops. So that sort of policy is sort of nonsensical. If you're going to offer alliance to somebody, offer alliance to them. And if you're going to guarantee their security, guarantee their security. And the West failed signally to do that. So that was mistakes in the run-up to the war. Once the war began, then the responsibility of the West became to give Ukraine as much material as is necessary to repel the invasion. the West did really well with that. I think we were late on the ball in the United States. It seemed like Europe led the way a little bit more than the United States did there. But in terms of effectuating American interests in the region, which being an American is what I'm chiefly concerned about, the American interests were several fold. One is preserve borders. Two is degrade the Russian aggressive military because Russia's military has been aggressive. and they are geopolitical rival of the United States. Three, recalibrate the European balance with China. Europe was sort of balancing with Russia and China, and then because of the war, they sort of rebalanced away from China and Russia, which is a real geostrategic opportunity for the United States. It seemed like most of those goals have already been achieved at this point for the United States. And so then the question becomes, what's the off-ramp here? And what is the thing you're trying to prevent? So what's the best opportunity? What's the best-case scenario? What's the worst-case scenario? And then what's realistic? So best-case scenario is Ukraine forces Russia entirely out of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea, right? That's the best-case scenario. Virtually no one thinks that's accomplishable, including the United States, right? The White House has basically said as much. It's difficult to imagine, particularly Crimea, the Russians being forced out of Crimea. The Ukrainians have been successful in pushing the Russians out of certain parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, but the idea that they're going to be able to push the entire Russian army completely back to the Russian borders, That would be, at best, a very, very long and difficult slog in the middle of a collapsing Ukrainian economy, which is a point that Zelensky has made. It's like, it's not enough for you guys to give us military aid. We're in the middle of a war. We're going to need economic aid as well. So it's a pretty open-ended and strong commitment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I take a small tangent on that? Sure. Best case scenario, if that does militarily happen, including Crimea, do you think there's a world in which Vladimir Putin would be able to convince the Russian people that this was a good conclusion to the war." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so the problem is that the best case scenario might also be the worst case scenario, meaning that there are a couple of scenarios that are sort of the worst case scenario, and this is sort of the puzzlement of the situation. One is that Putin feels so boxed in, so unable to go back to his own people and say, we just wasted tens of thousands of lives here for no reason, that he unleashes a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield. Nobody knows what happens after that. So we put NATO planes in the air to take out Russian assets. Do Russians start shooting down planes? Does Russia then threaten to escalate even further by attacking an actual NATO civilian center or or even Ukrainian civilian center with nuclear weapons? Like where it goes from there? Nobody knows because nuclear weapons haven't been used since 1945. So that's, you know, that is a worst-case scenario. It's an unpredictable scenario that could devolve into really, really significant problems. The other worst-case scenario, could be a best-case scenario, could be a worst, we just don't know, is Putin falls. What happens after that? Who takes over for Putin? Is that person more moderate than Putin? Is that person a liberalizer? It probably won't be Navalny. If he's gonna be ousted, it'll probably be somebody who's a top member of Putin's brass right now and has capacity to control the military. Or it's possible the entire regime breaks down and what you end up with is Syria and Russia, where you just have an entirely out of control region with no centralizing power, which is also a disaster area. And so in the nature of risk mitigation, in sort of an attempt at risk mitigation, what actually should be happening right now, is some off-ramp has to be offered to Putin. The off-ramp likely is going to be him maintaining Crimea and parts of Luhansk and Donetsk. It's probably gonna be a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO formally, but a guarantee by the West to defend Ukraine in case of an invasion of its borders again. by Russia, like an actual treaty obligation, not like the BS treaty obligation when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 90s. And that is likely how this is going to have to go. The problem is that requires political courage, not from Zelensky. It requires courage from probably Biden. because the only... Zelensky's not in a political position where he can go back to his own people who have made unbelievable sacrifices on behalf of their nation and freedom and say to them, guys, now I'm calling it quits, we're gonna have to give them a handstand asking to give Putin an off-ramp. I don't think that's an acceptable answer to most Ukrainians at this point in time from the polling data and from the available data we have on the ground. It's gonna actually take Biden biting the bullet and being the bad guy and saying to Zelensky, listen, We've made a commitment of material aid. We're offering you all these things, including essentially a defense pact. We're offering you all this stuff. But if you don't come to the table, then we're going to have to start weaning you off. There will have to be a stick there. It can't just be a carrot. And so that will allow Zelensky, if Biden were to do that, it would allow Zelensky to blame Biden for the solution everybody knows has to happen. Zelensky can go back to his own people and he can say, listen, this is the way it has to go. Like, I don't want it to go this way, but it's not my, I'm signing other people's checks, right? I mean, like, this is, it's, it's not my money. And Biden would take the hit because he wouldn't then be able to blame Ukraine for whatever happens next, which has been the easy road off, I think, for a lot of politicians in the West is for them to just say, well, this is up to the Ukrainians to decide. It's up to the Ukrainians to decide. Well, is it totally up to the Ukrainians to decide? Because it seems like the West is signing an awful lot of checks and all of Europe is going to freeze this winter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is the importance of great leadership, by the way. That's why the people we elect is very important. Do you think Do you think there's power to just one-on-one conversation where Biden sits down with Zelensky and Biden sits down with Putin almost in person? Or maybe I'm romanticizing the notion, but having done these podcasts in person, I think there's something fundamentally different than through a remote call and also like a distant kind of recorded political type speak versus like man-to-man." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'm deeply afraid that Putin outplays people in the one-on-one scenarios, because he's done it to multiple presidents already. He gets in one-on-one scenarios with Bush, with Obama, with Trump, with Biden, and he seems to be a very canny operator and a very sort of hard-nosed operator in those situations. I think that if you were going to do something like that, like an actual political face-to-face summit, what you would need is for Biden to first have a conversation with Zelensky, where Zelensky knows what's going on, so he's aware. And then Biden walks in and he says to Putin on camera, here's the offer. Let's get it together. Let's make peace. you get to keep this stuff, and then let Putin respond how Putin is going to respond. But the big problem for Putin, I think, and the problem with public-facing fora, maybe it's a private meeting. If it's a private meeting, maybe that's the best thing. If it's a public-facing forum, I think it's a problem, because Putin's afraid of being humiliated at this point. If it's a private meeting, then sure, except that, again, I wonder whether when it comes to a person as canny as Putin and to a politician that I really don't think is a particularly sophisticated player in Joe Biden. And again, this is not unique to Biden. I think that most of our presidents for the last 30, 40 years have not been particularly sophisticated players. I think that that's a risky scenario." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I still believe in the power of that because otherwise, I don't know, I don't think stuff on paper and political speak will solve these kinds of problems, because from Zelensky's perspective, nothing but complete victory will do. As a nation, his people sacrificed way too much, and they're all in. And if you look at, because I traveled to Ukraine, I spent time there, I'll be going back there, hopefully also going back to Russia. Just speaking to Ukrainians, they're all in, they're all in. nothing but complete victory. And so for that, the only way to achieve peace is through like honest human to human conversation, giving both people a way to off-ramp, to walk away victorious. And some of that requires speaking honestly as a human being, but also for America to, actually not even America, honestly, just the president, be able to eat their own ego a bit and be the punching bag a little, just enough for both presidents to be able to walk away and say, listen, we got the American president to come to us. And I think that makes the president look strong, not weak." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I agree with you. I think it would also require some people on the right, people like me, if it's Joe Biden, to say, if Biden does that, I see what he's doing, and it's the right move. I think one of the things that he's afraid of, to steel man him, I think one of the things he's afraid of is he goes and he makes that sort of deal, and the right says, you just cowered in front of Russia. You just gave away Ukraine, whatever it is. But it's going to require some people on the right to say that that move is the right move, and then hold by it if Biden actually performs that move." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're exceptionally good at debate. You wrote how to debate leftists and destroy them. You're kind of known for this kind of stuff, just exceptionally skilled at conversation and debate and getting to the facts of the matter and using logic to get to the conclusion in the debate. Do you ever worry that this power, we talked about the ring. this power you were given has corrupted you and your ability to pursue the truth versus just winning debates?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope not. I mean, so I think one of the things that's kind of funny about the branding versus the reality is that most of the things that get characterized as destroying in debates with facts and logic, most of those things are basically me having a conversation with somebody on a college campus, It actually isn't like a formal debate where we sit there and we critique each other's positions, or it's not me insulting anybody. A lot of the clips that have gone very viral is me making an argument and then there not being like an amazing counter-argument. Many of the debates that I've held have been extremely cordial. Let's take the latest example, like about a year ago I debated Anna Kasparian from Young Turks. It was very cordial, it was very nice, right? That's sort of the way that I like to debate. My rule when it comes to debate and or discussion is that my opponent actually gets to pick the mode in which we work. So if it's going to be a debate of ideas and we're just going to discuss and critique and clarify, then we can do that. If somebody comes loaded for bear, then I will responding kind, because one of the big problems, I think, in sort of the debate slash discussion sphere is very often misdiagnosis of what exactly is going on people who think that a discussion is a bait and vice versa. And that can be a real problem. And there are people who will you know, treat what ought to be a discussion as, for example, an exercise in performance art. And so what that is, is mugging or trolling or, or saying trolly things in order to just get to the like, that's something I actually don't do during debate. I mean, if you actually watch me talk to people, I don't actually do the trolling thing. The trolling thing is almost solely relegated to Twitter and me making jokes on my show. When it comes to actually debating people, that Sounds actually a lot like what we're doing right now. It's just the person maybe taking just an obverse position to mine. And so that's fine. Usually half of the debate or discussion is me just asking for clarification of terms. Like what exactly do you mean by this so I can drill down on where the actual disagreement may lie? Because some of the time people think they're disagreeing and they're actually not disagreeing. When I'm talking with Anna Kasparian and she's talking about how corporate and government have too much power together, I'm like, well, you sound like a tea party. You and I are on the same page about that. That sort of stuff does tend to happen a lot in discussion. I think that when discussion gets termed debate, it's a problem. When debate gets termed discussion, it's even more problematic because debate is a different thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I find that your debate and your conversation is often in good faith, you're able to steal men on the other side, you're able to, you're actually listening, you're considering the other side. The times when I see that Ben Shapiro destroys leftists, it's usually just like you said, the other side is doing the trolling. Because they've, I mean, the people that do criticize you for that interaction is the people that usually get destroyed are like 20 years old. And they're usually not sophisticated in any kind of degree in terms of being able to use logic and reason and facts and so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's that's totally fine by the way. I mean if people want to criticize me for speaking on college campuses where a lot of political conversation happens both right and left, that's fine. I mean I've had lots of conversations with people on the other side of the aisle too. I mean right I've done podcasts with Sam Harris and we've talked about atheism or I've done debates with Anna Kasparian or I've talked to I've done a debate with Cenk Uygur or I've I've had conversations with lots of people on the other side of the aisle. In fact, I believe I'm the only person on the right who recommends that people listen to his shows on the other side of the aisle, right? I mean, I say on my show on a fairly regular basis that people should listen to Positive America. Now, no one on Positive America will ever say that somebody should listen to my show. That is verboten. That is not something that can be had. It's one of the strangenesses of our politics. It's what I've called the happy birthday problem, which is I have a lot of friends who are of the left and are publicly of the left. And on my birthday, they'll send you a text message, happy birthday, but they will never tweet happy birthday, lest they be acknowledging that you were born of woman and that this can't be allowed. So on the Sunday special, I've had a bevy of people who are on the other side of the aisle, a lot of them. ranging from people in Hollywood like Jason Blum, to Larry Wilmore, to Sam, to just a lot of people on the left. I think we're in the near future probably gonna do a Sunday special with Ro Khanna up in California, the California congressperson. Very nice guy, had him on the show. That kind of stuff is fun and interesting. But I think that the easy way out for a clip that people don't like is to either immediately clip the clip. I'll take a two minute clip and clip it down to 15 seconds where somebody insults me and then that goes viral, which is, you know, welcome to the internet. or to say, well, you're only debating colleges. You're only talking to 20. I mean, I talked to a lot more people than that. That's just not the stuff you're watching." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You lost your cool in an interview with BBC's Andrew Neil, and you were really honest about it after, which was kind of refreshing and enjoyable. As the internet said, they've never seen anyone lose an interview. So to me, honestly, it was like seeing like Floyd Mayweather Jr. or somebody like knocked down. What can you take me through that experience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here's that day. That day is I have a book release, didn't get a lot of sleep the night before, and this is the last interview of the day. And it's an interview with BBC. I don't know anything about BBC. I don't watch BBC. I don't know any of the hosts. So we get on the interview, and it's supposed to be about the book. And the host, Andrew Neal, doesn't ask virtually a single question about the book. He just starts reading me bad old tweets, which I hate. I mean, it's annoying, and it's stupid, and it's the worst form of interview when somebody just reads you bad old tweets, especially when I've acknowledged bad old tweets before. And so I'm going through the list with him. And this interview was solidly 20 minutes. I mean, it was a long interview. And we get to, and I make a couple of particularly annoyed mistakes in the interview. So annoyed mistake number one is the ego play, right? So there's a point in the middle of the interview where I say, like, I don't even know who you are, which was true. I didn't know who he was, but it turns out he's a very famous person in Britain. And so you can't make that ego play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But even if he's not famous, that's not..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a dumb thing to do, and it's an ass thing to do. So saying that was more just kind of peak in silliness. So that was mistake number one. I enjoyed watching that. I was like, oh, Ben is human. Glad somebody enjoyed it. So there is that. And then the other mistake was that I just don't watch enough British TV. So the way that interviews are done there are much more adversarial than American TV. In American TV, if somebody is adversarial with you, you assume that they're a member of the other side. That's typically how it is. And so I'm critiquing some of his questions at the beginning, and I thought that the critique of some of his questions is actually fair. He was asking me about abortion, and I thought he was asking it from a way of framing the question that wasn't accurate, and so I assumed that he was on the left, because again, I'd never heard of him. And so, you know, I mischaracterized him, and I apologize later for mischaracterizing him. We finally go through the interview, it's 20 minutes, he just keeps going with the bad old tweets, and finally I got up and I took off the microphone and I walked out. And immediately I knew it was a mistake. Like within 30 seconds of the end of the interview, I knew it was a mistake. And that's why even before the interview came out, I believe I corrected the record that Andrew Neil is not on the left, that's a mistake by me. And then took the hit for a bad interview. And so as far as what I wish I'd done differently, I wish I'd known who he was, I wish I'd done my research, I wish that I had treated it as though there was a possibility that it was gonna be more adversarial than it was. I think I was incautious about the interview because it was pitched as it's just another book interview. And it wasn't just another book interview. It was treated much more adversarially than that. So I wish that that's on me. I got to research the people who are talking to me and watch their shows and learn about that. And then obviously, you know, the kind of gut level appeal to ego or arrogance like that. That's a bad look and and shouldn't have done that. And losing your cool is always a bad look." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the fact that that sort of became somewhat viral and stood out just shows that it happens so rarely to you. So just to look at like the day in the life of Ben Shapiro, you speak a lot, very eloquently about difficult topics. What goes into the research, the mental part, and you always look pretty like energetic and You're not exhausted by the burden, the heaviness of the topics you're covering day after day after day after day. So what goes through the preparation mentally, diet-wise, anything like that? Like when do you wake up?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so I wake up when my kids wake me up. Usually that's my baby daughter who's two and a half. She'll be here on the monitor usually about 6.15, 6.20 a.m. So I get up. My wife sleeps in a little bit. I go get the baby. Then my son gets up. And then my oldest daughter gets up, I have eight, six, and two. The boy's the middle child." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that both a source of stress and happiness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my God, it's the height of both, right? I mean, it's the source of the greatest happiness. So the way that I characterize it is this, when it comes to sort of kids in life. So when you're single, Your boundaries of happiness and unhappiness, you can be a 0 in terms of happiness, you can be like a 10 in terms of happiness. Then you get married and it goes up to like a 20 and a negative 20 because the happiest stuff is with your wife and then the most unhappy stuff is when something happens to your spouse. It's the worst thing in the entire world. Then you have kids and all limits are removed. So the best things that have ever happened to me are things where I'm watching my kids and they're playing together and they're being wonderful and sweet and cute and I love them so much. And the worst things are when my son is screaming at me for no reason because he's being insane. And I have to deal with that. Or something bad happens to my daughter at school or something like that. That stuff is really bad. So yes, the source of my greatest happiness is the source of my greatest stress. So they get me up at about 6.15 in the morning. I feed them breakfast. I'm kind of scrolling the news while I'm making the megs. just updating myself on anything may have happened overnight. I go into the office, put on the makeup and the wardrobe or whatever, and then I sit down and do the show. A lot of the prep is actually done the night before because the news cycle doesn't change all that much between kind of late at night and in the morning so I can supplement in the morning. So I do the show." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a lot of the preparation, like thinking through what are the big issues in the world is done the night before." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, and that's reading, you know, pretty much all the legacy media. So I rip on legacy media a lot, but that's because a lot of what they do is really good and a lot of what they do is really bad. I cover a lot of legacy media. That's probably covering Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Daily Mail. And then I'll look over at some of the alternative media. I'll look at my own website, Daily Wire. I'll look at Breitbart. I'll look at The Blaze. I'll look at maybe The Intercept. I'll look at a bunch of different sources. And then I will look at different clips online, so media comes in handy here, Graebian comes in handy here, that sort of stuff, because my show relies very heavily on being able to play people so you can hear them in their own words. And so that's sort of the media die. So I sit down, I do the show, And then once I'm done with the show, I usually have between, now it's like 11, 15 in the morning maybe, because sometimes I'll pre-record the show. So it's 11, 15 in the morning. I'll go home, and if my wife's available, I'll grab lunch with her. If not, then I will go and work out. I try to work out, like, five times a week with a trainer, something like that. And then I will... Just regular gym stuff?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just start at the gym?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, weights and plyometrics and some CrossFit kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, beneath this mild exterior lies a hulking monster. And so I'll do that. Then I will do reading and writing. So I'm usually working on a book at any given time. You shut off the rest of the world. Yes. So I put some music in my ears, usually Brahms or Bach, sometimes Beethoven or Mozart. It's those four." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those are on rotation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No rap. No rap. No rap. Despite my extraordinary rendition of WAP, I'm not in fact a rapper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you still hate WAP, the song?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I will say I do not think that it is the peak of Western civilized art. I don't think that 100 years from now people will be gluing their faces to a WAP and protest at the environment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But Brahms and the rest will be still around. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would assume if people still have a functioning prefrontal cortex in any sort of taste." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Strong words from Ben Shapiro. All right, so you got some classical music in your ears and you're focusing. Are you at the computer when you're writing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'm at the computer. Usually we have a kind of a room that has some sun coming in, so it's nice in there, or I'll go up to a library that we just completed for me. So I'll go up there and I'll write and read. Like with physical books? Yeah, I love physical books. Because I keep Sabbath, I don't use Kindle. Because when I'm reading a book and I hit Sabbath, I have to turn off the Kindle. So that means that I have tons and tons and tons of physical books. When we moved from Los Angeles to Florida, I had about 7,000 volumes. I had to discard probably 4,000 of them. and then I've built that back up now, so I'm probably gonna have to go through another round where I put them somewhere else. I tend to tab books rather than highlighting them because I can't highlight on Sabbath, so I have like the little stickers and I put them in the book, so a typical book from me, you can see it on the book club, will be like filled with tabs on the side, things that I want to take. Now actually, I got a person who I pay to go through and write down in files the quotes that I like from the book, so I have those handy. Which is a good way for me to remember what it is that I've read. Because I read probably some routine, three and five books a week. And then the, in a good week, five. And then I write, I read, and then I go pick up my kids from school at 3.30. So according to my kids, I have no job. I'm there in the mornings until they leave for school. I pick them up from school. I hang out with them until they go to bed, which is usually 7.30 or so. So I'm helping them with their homework, and I'm playing with them, taking them on rides in the brand new Tesla, which my son is obsessed with. And then I put them to bed, and then I sit back down. I prep for the next day, go through all those media sources I was talking about, compile kind of a schedule for what I want the show to look like, and run a show. It's very detail-oriented. Nobody writes anything for me. I write all my own stuff. So every word that comes out of my mouth is my fault. you know, hopefully I have a couple hours to, or an hour to hang out with my wife before we go to bed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The words you write, do you edit a lot? Or does it just come out, you're thinking like, what are the key ideas I want to express?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't tend to edit a lot. So I, thank God, I'm able to write extraordinarily quickly. So I write very, very fast. In fact, in a previous life, I was... to speak fast, so it's similar. Yeah, exactly. And I speak in paragraphs. So it's exactly the same thing. In a previous life, I was a ghostwriter. So I used to be sort of known as a turnaround specialist in the publishing industry. There'd be somebody who came to the publisher and says, I have three weeks to get this book done. I don't have a word done. And they would call me up and be like, this person needs a book written. And so in three weeks, I'd knock out 60,000 words or so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something you can say to the process that you follow to think? Like how you think about ideas, like stuff is going on in the world and trying to understand what is happening, what are the explanations, what are the forces behind this? Do you have a process or just you wait for the muse to give you the interpretation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I think that, I don't think it's a formal process, but because I read So there's two ways to do it. One is sometimes, you know, sometimes the daily grind of the news is going to refer back to core principles that are broader and deeper. So I thank God because I've read so much on so many different things. of a lot of different point of views, then if something breaks and a piece of news breaks, I can immediately sort of channel that into, in the mental Rolodex, these three big ideas that I think are really important, and then I can talk at length about what those ideas are and I can explicate those. And so, you know, for example, when you're talking about must taking over Twitter before and I immediately go to the history of media, right, that's that's me tying it into a broader theme on, you know, and I do that, I would say fairly frequently what we're talking about. say, subsidization of industry. And I can immediately tie that into, OK, what's the history of subsidization in the United States going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and forward through FDR's industrial policy? And how does that tie into broader economic policy internationally? So it allows me to tie into bigger themes. Because what I tend to read is mostly not news. What I tend to read is mostly books. I would say most of my media diet is actually not the stuff. That's the icing on the cake. But the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in history, econ. Geography that I'm that I'm social science that I'm reading every week and so that that sort of stuff Allows me to think more deeply about these things. So that's one way of doing it The other way of doing it is Russia breaks in the news. I don't know anything about Russia I immediately go and I purchase five books about Russia and I read all of them And so one of the unfortunate things about our, well, the fortunate thing for me and the unfortunate thing about the world is that if you, and the unfortunate thing about the world is if you read two books on a subject, you are now considered by the media an expert on the subject. So that's, you know, sad and shallow, but that is the way that it is. The good news for me is that my job isn't to be a full expert on any of these subjects, and I don't claim to be, right? I'm not a Russia expert. I know enough on Russia to be able to understand when people talk about Russia, what the system looks like, how it works, and all of that, and then to explicate that for the common man, which a lot of people who are infused with the expertise can't really do. If you're so deep in the weeds that you're like a full-on academic expert on a thing, sometimes it's hard to translate that over to a mass audience, which is really my job." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I think you can actually, it's funny, with the two books, you can actually get a pretty deep understanding if you read and also think deeply about it. It allows you to approach a thing from first principles. A lot of times if you're a quote unquote expert, you get carried away by the momentum of what the field has been thinking about. versus like stepping back, all right, what is really going on? The challenge is to pick the right two books." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So that usually what I'll try to find is somebody who knows the topic pretty well and have them recommend or a couple people and have them recommend books. So a couple years ago, I knew nothing about Bitcoin. I was at a conference and a couple of people who you've had on your show actually were there and I asked them, give me your top three books on Bitcoin. And so then I went and I read like nine books on Bitcoin. And so if you read nine books on Bitcoin, you at least know enough to get by. And so I can actually explain what Bitcoin is and why it works or why it doesn't work in some cases and what's happening in the markets that way. So that's very, very helpful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, Putin is an example. That's a difficult one to find the right books on. I think the new czar is the one I read where it was the most objective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When I read, I think, about Putin, it was one called Strongman. It was very highly critical of Putin, but it gave a good background on him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so I'm very skeptical of things that are very critical of Putin, because it feels like there's activism injected into the history. Like the way The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is written about Hitler, I like because there's almost not a criticism of Hitler. It's a description of Hitler, which is very, it's easier to do about a historical figure, which with William Shire, with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it's impressive because he lived through it. But it's very tough to find objective descriptions about the history of the man in a country of Putin, of Zelensky, of any difficult... Trump is the same." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I feel like... Everybody has the hero-villain archetype, right? And it's like, either somebody's completely a hero or completely a villain. And the truth is... pretty much no one is completely a hero or completely a villain. People, in fact, I'm not sure that I love descriptions of people as heroes or villains generally. I think that people tend to do heroic things or do villainous things in the same way that I'm not sure I love descriptions of people as a genius. My dad used to say this when I was growing up. He used to say they didn't believe that there were geniuses. He said he believed that there were people with a genius for something because people, you know, yes, there are people who are very high IQ and we call them geniuses, but does that mean that they're good at EQ stuff, not necessarily, but there are people who are geniuses at EQ stuff. In other words, it would be more specific to say that somebody is a genius at engineering than to say just broad spectrum, they're a genius. And that does avoid the problem of thinking that they're good at something that they're not good at, right? It's a little more specific." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So because you read a lot of books, are there, can you look back, and it's always a tough question, because so many, it's like your favorite song, but are there books that have been influential in your life that are impacting your thinking, or maybe ones you go back to that, that still carry insight for you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Federalist paper is a big one in terms of sort of how American politics works. The first econ book that I thought was really great because it was written for teenagers essentially is one called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It's like 150 pages. I recommend it to everybody sort of 15 and up. It's easier than say Thomas Sowell's basic econ which is four or five hundred pages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's looking at like macroeconomics, microeconomics, that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then in terms of, there's a great book by Karl Truman called Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which I think is the best book in the last 10 years. That's been sort of impactful on some of the thoughts I've been having lately. What's the key idea in there? Now the key idea is that we've shifted the nature of how identity is done in the West from how it was historically done. That basically for nearly all of human history, the way that we identify as human beings is as a mix of our biological drives and then how that interacts with the social institutions around us. And so when you're a child, you're a bunch of unfettered biological drives, and it's your parents' job to civilize you. And civilize you literally means bring you into civilization, right? You learn the rules of the road. You learn how to integrate into institutions that already exist and are designed to shape you. And it's how you interact with those institutions that makes you you. It's not just a set of biological drives. And then, in the modern world, we've really driven toward the idea that what we are is how we feel on the inside without reference to the outside world. And it's the job of the outside world to celebrate and reflect what we think about ourselves on the inside. And so what that means is that we are driven now toward fighting institutions, because institutions are impositions. So everything around us, societal institutions, these are things that are crimping our style. They're making us not feel the way that we want to feel. And if we just destroy those things, then we'll be freer and more liberated. It's a, I think, much deeper model of how to think about why our social politics, particularly, are moving in a particular direction, is that a ground shift has happened in how people think about themselves. And this has had some somewhat kind of shocking effect in terms of social politics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's negative consequences in your view of that, but is there also a positive consequence of more power, more agency to the individual?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that you can make the argument that institutions were weighing too heavily in how people form their identity, but I think that what we've done is gone significantly too far on the other side. We basically decided to blow up the institutions in favor of unfettered feeling slash identity, and I think that that is not only a large mistake, I think it's going to have dire ramifications for everything from suicidal ideation to institutional longevity in politics and in society more broadly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking about the nature of self, you've been an outspoken proponent of pro-life. Can you, can we start by you trying to steel man the case for pro-choice, that abortion is not murder and a woman's right to choose is a fundamental human right, freedom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think that the only way to steel man the pro-choice case is to, and be ideologically consistent, is to suggest that there is no interest in the life of the unborn that counterweighs at all freedom of choice. So what that means is we can take the full example or we can take sort of the partial example. So if we take the full example, what that would mean is that up until point of birth, which is sort of the Democratic Party platform position, that a woman's right to choose ought to extend for any reason whatsoever up to point of birth. The only way to argue that is that bodily autonomy is the only factor. There is no countervailing factor that would ever outweigh bodily autonomy. That would be the strongest version of the argument. Another version of that argument would be that the reason that bodily autonomy ought to weigh so heavily is because women can't be the equals of men if the vicissitudes of biology are allowed to decide their futures. If pregnancy changes women in a way that it doesn't change men, it's a form of sex discrimination for women to ever have to go through with pregnancy, which is an argument that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, kind of. Those are the arguments. The kind of softer version is the... more, I would say, emotionally resonant version of the argument, which is that bodily autonomy ought to outweigh the interests of the fetus up till point X. And then people have different feelings about what point X looks like. Is it up to the point of viability? Is it up to the point of the heartbeat? Is it up to 12 weeks or 15 weeks? And that really is where the American public is, where the American public is, broadly speaking, not state by state, where there are various really, really varied opinions. But broadly speaking, it seems like the American public, by polling data, wants somewhere between a 12 and 15 week abortion restriction. And they believe that up until 12 or 15 weeks, there's not enough there for, to not be specific, but to be kind of how people feel about it, to outweigh a woman's bodily autonomy. And then beyond that point, then there's enough of an interest in the life of the pre-born child. It's developed enough, and now we care about it enough that it outweighs a woman's bodily autonomy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the strongest case for pro-life in your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the strongest case for pro-life is that, from conception, a human life has been created. It is a human life with potential. That human life with potential now has an independent interest in its own existence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I may just ask a quick question, so conception is when a sperm fertilizes an egg? Yes. Okay, just to clarify the biological beginning of what conception is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, because that is the beginning of human life. Now, there are other standards that people have drawn, right? Some people say implantation in the uterus, some people will suggest viability, brain development, or heart development, but the clear dividing line between a human life exists and a human life does not exist is the biological creation of an independent human life with its own DNA strands and etc. which happens at conception. Once you acknowledge that there is that independent human life with potential, and I keep calling it that because people sometimes say potential human life, it's not a potential human life, it's a human life that is not developed yet to the full extent that it will develop, Once you say that, and once you say that it has its own interest, now you have to, now the burden of proof is to explain why bodily autonomy ought to allow for the snuffing out of that human life if we believe that human life ought not to be killed for, quote unquote, no good reason. You have to come up with a good reason. The burden of proof has now shifted. Now, we'll find people who will say, well, the good reason is that it's not sufficiently developed to outweigh the mental trauma or emotional trauma that a woman goes through if, for example, she was raped or the victim of incest. And that is a fairly emotionally resonant argument, but it's not necessarily positive. You can make the argument that just because something horrific and horrible happened to a woman does not rob the human life of its interest in life. One of the big problems in trying to draw any line for the self-interest of life in the human life, is that it's very difficult to draw any other line that doesn't seem somewhat arbitrary. You say that independent heartbeat, well, people have pacemakers. If you say brain function, people have various levels of brain function as adults. If you say viability, babies are not viable after they are born. If I left a newborn baby on a table and did not take care of it, it would be dead in two days. So once you start getting into these lines, it starts to get very fuzzy very quickly. And so if you're looking for a bright line moral rule, That would be the Bright Line Moral Rule, and that's sort of the pro-life case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's still mysterious, difficult scientific questions of things like consciousness. So what do you, does the question of consciousness, how does it come into play into this debate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I don't believe that consciousness is the sole criterion by which we judge the self-interest in human life. So we are unconscious a good deal of our lives. That does not, we will be conscious again, right, when you're unconscious, when you're asleep, for example. Presumably your life is still worth living. If somebody came in and killed you, that'd be a serious moral quandary, at the very least." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the birth of consciousness, the lighting up of the flame, the initial lighting up of the flame, there does seem to be something special about that. And it's a mystery of when that happens." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, Peter Singer makes the case that basically self-consciousness doesn't exist until you're two and a half. So he says that even infanticide should be okay. He's the bioethicist over at Princeton. So you get into some real dicey territory once you get into consciousness. Also, the truth is that consciousness is more of a spectrum than it is a dividing line, meaning that there are people with various degrees of brain function. We don't actually know how conscious they are. And you can get into eugenic territory pretty quickly when we start dividing between lives that are worth living based on levels of consciousness and lives that are not worth living based on levels of consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you find it, the aspect of women's freedom, do you feel the tension between that ability to choose the trajectory of your own life versus the rights of the unborn child?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In one situation yes, in one situation no. If you've had sex with a person voluntarily, and as a product of that you are now pregnant, No. You've taken an action with a perfectly predictable result, even if you took birth control, this is the way that human beings procreated for literally all of human existence, and by the way, also how all mammals procreate. So the idea that this was an entirely unforeseen consequence of your activity, I find, I have less sympathy for you in that particular situation because you could have made decisions that would not lead you to this particular impasse. In fact, this used to be the basis of marriage, right, was when we were a, apparently, more terrible society. We used to say that people should wait until they get married to have sex, a position that I still hold. And the reason for that was because then if you have sex and you produce a child, then the child will grow up in a two-parent family with stability. So, you know, not a ton of sympathy there. When it comes to rape and incest, obviously heavy, heavy sympathy. And so that's why I think you see, statistically speaking, a huge percentage of Americans, including many pro-life Americans, people who consider themselves pro-life, would consider exceptions for rape and incest. One of the sort of dishonest things that I think happens in abortion debates is arguing from the fringes, this tends to happen a lot, is pro-choice activists will argue from rape and incest to the other 99.8% of abortions. Or you'll see people on the pro-life side argue from partial birth abortion to all of abortion. You actually have to take on sort of the mainstream case and then decide whether or not that's acceptable or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But to you, the exception, just ethically, without generalizing it, that is a valid ethically exception." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't hold that there should be an exception for rape or incest, because again, I hold by the bright line rule that once a human life with potential exists, then it has its own interest in life that cannot be curbed by your self-interest. The only exception that I hold by is the same exception that literally all pro-lifers hold by, which is the life of the mother is put in danger." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Such a tough, tough topic, because if you believe that that's the line, then we're committing mass murder." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, or at least mass killing. So I would say that murder typically requires a level of mens rea that may be absent in many cases of abortion. Because the usual follow-on question is, well, if it's murder, why not prosecute the woman? And the answer is because the vast majority of people who are having abortions don't actually believe that they're killing a person. They have a very different view of what is exactly happening. So, you know, I would say that there are all sorts of interesting hypotheticals that come in to play when it comes to abortion, and you can play them any which way. But levels, let's put it this way, there are gradations of wrongs. I don't think that all abortions are equally blameworthy, even if I would ban. virtually all of them. I think that they're mitigating circumstances that make, while being wrong, some abortions less morally blameworthy than others. I can admit a difference between killing a two-week-old embryo in the womb and stabbing a seven-year-old in the face. I can recognize all that while still saying I think that it would be wrong to terminate a pregnancy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the question of when life begins, which I think is a fascinating question, is a question of science or a question of religion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, when life begins, it's a question of science. When that life becomes valuable enough for people to want to protect it is going to be a question that is beyond science. Science doesn't have moral judgments to make about the value of human life. This is one of the problems that Sam Harris and I have had this argument many times, and it's always kind of interesting. Because Sam is of the opinion that you can get to ought from is. That science says is, therefore we can learn ought. So human flourishing is the goal of life. And I always say to him, I don't see where you get that from evolutionary biology. You can assume it, just say you're assuming it, but don't pretend that that is a conclusion that you can draw straight from biological reality itself. Because obviously that doesn't exist in the animal world, for example. Nobody assumes the innate value of every ant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think I know your answer to this, but let's test it, because I think you're going to be wrong. So there's a robot behind you. Do you think there will be a time in the future when it will be unethical and illegal to kill a robot because they will have sentience? My guess is you would say no, Lex, because there's a fundamental difference between humans and robots, and I just want to get you on record, because I think you'd be wrong." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it depends on the level of development, I would assume, of the robots. I mean, you're assuming a complexity in the robots that eventually imitates what we in the religious life would call the human soul, the ability to choose freely, for example, which I believe is sort of the capacity for human beings. The ability to suffer. Yeah, if all of that could be approved and not programmed, meaning the freely willed capacity of a machine to do X, Y, or Z. You could not pinpoint exactly where it happens in the program. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not deterministic. Yeah. Then it would raise serious moral issues, for sure. I'm not sure I know the answer to that question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you afraid of that time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not sure I'm afraid of that time. I mean, it's any more than I'd be afraid if aliens arrived in the world and had these characteristics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's just a lot of moral complexities and they don't necessarily have to be in the physical space. They can be in the digital space. There's an increased sophistication and number of bots on the internet, including on Twitter. As they become more and more intelligent, there's going to be serious questions about what is our moral duty to protect ones that have or claim to have an identity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that'll be really interesting. Actually, what I'm afraid of is the opposite happening, meaning that people, the worst that should happen is that we develop robots so sophisticated that they appear to have free will, and then we treat them with human dignity. That should be the worst that happens. What I'm afraid of is the opposite, is that we, if we're talking about this particular hypothetical, that we develop robots that have all of these apparent abilities, and then we dehumanize them, which leads us to also dehumanize the other humans around us, which you could easily see happening. The devaluation of life to the point where It doesn't really matter. I mean, people have always treated, unfortunately, newly discovered other humans this way. So, I don't think there's actually a new problem. I think it's a pretty old problem. It'll just be interesting when it's made of human hands." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's an opportunity to celebrate humanity or to bring out the worst in humanity. So the derision that naturally happens, like you said, with pointing out the other. Let me ask you about climate change. Let's go from the meme to the profound philosophy. Okay, the meme is there's a clip of you talking about climate change and saying that" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Aquaman meme." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said that for the sake of argument, if the water level rises five to ten feet in the next hundred years, people will just sell their homes and move. And then the meme is sell to who? Can you argue both sides of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The argument that they're making is a straw man. The argument that I'm making is over time. I don't mean that if a tsunami is about to hit your house, you can list it on eBay. That's not what I mean, obviously. What I mean is that human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt. It's actually our best quality. And that as water levels rise, real estate prices in those areas tends to fall. that over time, people tend to abandon those areas, they tend to leave, they tend to, right now, sell their houses, and then they tend to move. And eventually, those houses will be worthless, and you won't have anybody to sell to, but presumably not that many people will be living there by that point, which is one of the reasons why the price would be low, because there's no demand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's over a hundred years, so all of these price dynamics are very gradual, relative to the other price dynamics. Correct." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's why the joke of it, of course, is that, like, I'm saying that tomorrow there's a tsunami on your source step, and you're like, oh, Bob will buy my house. Bob ain't gonna buy your house. Like, we all get that. But it's a funny name, and I laughed at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How is your view on climate change? The human contribution to climate change, what we should do in terms of policy to respond to climate change, how has that changed over the years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say... The truth is, for years and years, I've believed that climate change was a reality and that anthropogenic climate change is a reality. I don't argue with the IPCC estimates. I know climatologists at places like MIT or Caltech, and they know this stuff better than I do. So, you know, the notion that climate change is just not happening or that human beings have not contributed to climate change, I find doubtful. The question is to what extent human beings are contributing to climate change. Is it 50%? Is it 70%? Is it 90%? I think there's a little bit more play in the joints there, so it's not totally clear. The one thing I do know, and this I know with factual accuracy, is that all of the measures that are currently being proposed are unworkable and will not happen. So when people say Paris Climate Accords, even if those were imposed, you're talking about lowering the potential trajectory of climate change by a fraction of a degree. If you're talking about the, if you're talking about green new deal, net zero by 2050, the carbon is up there in the air and the climate change is going to happen. Also, you're assuming that geopolitical dynamics don't exist. So everybody's going to magically get on the same page and we're all going to be imposing massive carbon taxes to get to net zero by 2050. I mean like hundreds of times higher than they currently are. And that's not me saying that, it's Klaus Schwab saying this, of the World Economic Forum, who's a big advocate of exactly this sort of policy. And the reality is that we're going to have to accept that at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate change is baked into the cake by the end of the century. Again, not me talking, William Nordhaus, the economist, who just won the Nobel Prize in this stuff, talking. And so what that suggests to me is what we've always known. Human beings are crap at mitigation and excellence in adaptation. We are very bad at mitigating our own faults. We are very good at adapting to the problems as they exist. which means that all of the estimates that billions will die, that there will be mass starvation, that we will see the migration in just a few years of hundreds of millions of people. Those are wrong. What you'll see is a gradual change of living. People will move away from areas that are inundated on the coast. You will see people building seawalls. You'll see people adapting new technologies to suck carbon out of the air. You will see geoengineering. This is the sort of stuff that we should be focused on. and the sort of bizarre focus on what if we just keep tossing hundreds of billions of dollars at the same three technologies over and over in the hopes that if we subsidize it, this will magically make it more efficient. I've seen no evidence whatsoever that that is going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this. Necessity being the mother of invention, I think human beings will adapt because we have adapted and we will continue to adapt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to the degree we invest in the threat of this, it should be into the policies that help with the adaptation versus the mitigation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Sea walls, geoengineering, developing technologies that carbon out of the air. Again, if I thought that there was more sort of hope for the green technologies currently in play than subsidization of those technologies, I might be a little bit more for, but I haven't seen tremendous progress over the course of the last 30 years in the reliability of, for example, wind energy. or the ability to store solar energy to the extent necessary to actually power a grid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your thoughts on nuclear energy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nuclear energy is great. Nuclear energy is a proven source of energy and we should be radically extending the use of nuclear energy. To me, honestly, this is like a litmus test question as to whether you take climate change seriously. If you're on right or left and you take climate change seriously, you should be in favor of nuclear energy. If you're not, I know that you're just, you have other priorities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the fascinating thing about the climate change debate is the dynamics of the fear mongering over the past few decades, because some of the nuclear energy was tied up into that somehow. There's a lot of fear about nuclear energy. It seems like there's a lot of social phenomena, social dynamics involved versus dealing with just science. It's interesting to watch. On my darker days, it makes me cynical about our ability to use reason and science to deal with the threats of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that our ability to use reason and science to deal with threats of the world is almost a time frame question. So I think that we're again, we're very bad at looking down the road and saying, you know, because people can't handle, for example, even things like compound interest. I like the idea that if I put a dollar in the bank today that 15 years from now, that's going to be worth a lot more than a dollar. People can't actually see that. And so the idea of let's foresee a problem, then we'll deal with it right now, as opposed to 30 years down the road. Typically, we let the problem happen, and then we solve it. And it's bloodier and worse than it would have been if we had solved it 30 years ago. But it is, in fact, effective. And sometimes it turns out the solution that we're proposing 30 years in advance is not effective. And that can be a major problem as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's then to steel man the case for fear-mongering, for irrational fear-mongering. We need to be scared shitless in order for us to do anything. I'm generally against that, but maybe on a population scale, maybe some of that is necessary for us to respond appropriately for two long-term threats. we should be scared shitless." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think that we can actually do that though. First of all, I think that it's platonic lies are generally bad. And then second of all, I don't think that we actually have the capacity to do this. I think that the people who are, you know, the sort of elites of our society who get together in rooms and talk about this sort of stuff. And I've been in some of those meetings at my synagogue Friday night, actually. I was going to make the joke, but I'm glad you didn't. Yeah, you know, I've been in rooms like Davos like rooms. And when people discuss these these sorts of topics, and they're like, what if we just tell people that it's going to be a disaster with tsunamis and day after tomorrow? It's like, you guys don't have that power. You don't. And by the way, you dramatically undercut your own power because of COVID to do this sort of stuff. Because a lot of the sort of what if we scare the living hell out of you to the point where you stay in your own house for two years, and we tell you you can't send your kids to school. And then we tell you that the vaccine is going to prevent transmission. And then we also tell you that we need to spend $7 trillion in one year, and it won't have any inflationary effect. And it turns out you're wrong on literally all of those things. The last few years have done more to undermine institutional trust than any time in probably American history. It's pretty amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I tend to agree with that. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Let me ask you back to the question of God. And a big ridiculous question, who's God?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Who is God? So I'm going to use sort of the Aquinas formulation of what God is. If there is a cause of all things, not physical things, if there is a cause underlying the reason of the universe, then that is the thing we call God. So, not a big guy in the sky with a beard. He is the force underlying the logic of the universe, if there is a logic to the universe. And he is the creator, in the Judaic view, of that universe. And he does have an interest in us living in accordance with the laws of the universe that, if you're a religious Jew, are encoded in the Torah, but if you're not a religious Jew, it would be encoded in the natural law by sort of Catholic theology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you think God created the universe? Or, as is popularly asked, what do you think is the meaning? behind it? What's the meaning of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's the meaning of life? So I think that the meaning of life is to fulfill what God made you to do, and that is a series of roles. I think that human beings, and here you have to look to sort of human nature, rather than looking kind of to big questions. I've evolved something that I've really been working on. I'm writing a book about this, actually, that I call, colloquially, role theory. And basically, the idea is that the way that we interact with the world is through a series of roles. And those are also the things we find most important and most implementable. And there is sort of virtue ethics, which suggests that if we act in accordance with virtue, like Aristotle, then we will be living the most fulfilled and meaningful life. And then you have sort of deontological ethics, like Kantian ethics, that it's a rule-based ethic. If you follow the rules, then you'll find the meaning of life. And then what I'm proposing is that there's something that I would call role ethics, which is there are a series of roles that we play across our lives, which are also the things that we tend to put on our tombstones and find the most meaningful. So when you go to a cemetery, you can see what people found the most meaningful, because it's the stuff they put on the stone that has like four words on it, right? Like beloved father, beloved mother, sister, brother. You might have a job once in a while. A creator, a religious person. These are all roles that have existed across societies and across humanity. And those are the things where we actually find meaning. And the way that we navigate those roles brings us meaning. And I think that God created us in order to fulfill those roles for purposes that I can't begin to understand because I ain't him. And the more we recognize those roles, and the more we live those roles, and then we can express freedom within those roles. I think that liberty exists inside each of those roles, and that's what makes all of our lives different and fun. We all parent in different ways, but being a parent is a meaningful role. We all have spouses, but you know, how you interact that relationship is what makes your life meaningful and interesting. And that that that is, that is what we were put on earth to do. And if we perform those roles properly, and those roles do include things like being a creator, like we have a creative instinct as human beings, being a creator, being an innovator, being a being a defender of your family, being somebody who builds up being a social member of your community, which is something that we're built to do. If we fulfill those roles properly, then we will have made the world a better place than we then we inherited it. And we will also have have had the joy of experiencing the sort of flow they talk about in psychology, where when you engage in these roles, you actually do feel a flow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So these roles are a fundamental part of the human condition? Yes. So the book you're working on is constructing a system to help us understand?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's looking at, let's assume that all that's true. The real question in the book is how do you construct a flourishing and useful society and politics?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a society level. If this is our understanding of a human being, how do we construct a good society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, exactly. Because I think that a lot of political theory is right now based in either J.S. Mill kind of thought, which is all that a good politics does is allows you to wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face. Or Rawlsian thought, which is what if we constructed society in order to achieve the most for the least, essentially. What if we constructed society around what actually makes humans the most fulfilled, and that is the fulfillment of these particular roles. And where does liberty come into that? How do you avoid the idea of a tyranny in that? You have to be a mother. You must be a father. Where does freedom come into that? Can you reject those roles totally as a society and be okay? The answer probably is not. So you need a society that actually promotes and protects those roles, but also protects the freedom inside those roles. And that raises a more fundamental question of what exactly liberty is for. And I think that both the right and the left actually tend to make a mistake when they discuss liberty. The left tends to think that liberty is an ultimate good, that simple choice makes a bad thing good, which is not true. And I think the right talks about liberty in almost the same terms sometimes. And I think that's not true either. The question is whether liberty is of inherent value or instrumental value? Is liberty good in and of itself, or is liberty good because it allows you to achieve X, Y, or Z? And, you know, I've thought about this one a lot, and I tend to come down on the latter side of the aisle. I mean, this is, you asked me areas where I move, this may be an area where I've moved, is that I think when you think more shallowly about politics, or maybe more quickly, because this is how we talk in America, is about liberties and rights, we tend to think that the right is what make, not like the political right, rights make things good, liberties make things good. The question really is what are those rights and liberties for? Now, you have to be careful so that that doesn't shade into tyranny, right? You can only have liberty to do the thing that I say that you can do. But there have to be spheres of liberty that are roiling and interesting and filled with debate, but without threatening the chief institutions that surround those liberties. Because if you destroy the institutions, the liberties will go too. If you knock down the pillars of the society, the liberties that are on top of those pillars are going to collapse. And I think that that's, if people are feeling as though we're on the verge of tyranny, I think that's why." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is fascinating, by the way. It's an instrumental perspective on liberty. That's going to have to give me a lot to think about. Let me ask a personal question. Was there ever a time that you had a crisis of faith where you questioned your belief in God?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, and I would less call it a crisis of faith than an ongoing question of faith, which I think is, I hope, most religious people. And the word Israel, right, in Hebrew, Yisrael, means to struggle with God. That's literally what the word means. And so the idea of struggling with God, right, if you're Jewish or B'nai Yisrael, right, the idea of struggling with God, I think, is endemic to the human condition. If you understand what God's doing, then I think you're wrong. And if you think that that question doesn't matter, then I think you're also wrong. I think the God is a very necessary hypothesis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The struggle with God is life. That is the process of life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. Because you're never going to get to that answer, otherwise you're God and you aren't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why does God allow cruelty and suffering in the world? One of the tough questions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we're going deep here. There's two types of cruelty and suffering. So if we're talking about human cruelty and suffering, because God does not intervene to prevent people from exercising their free will, because to do so would be to deprive human beings of the choice that makes them human. And this is the sin of the Garden of Eden, basically, is that God could make you an angel, in which case you wouldn't have the choice to do the wrong thing. But so long as we are going to allow for cause and effect in a universe shaped by your choice, cruelty and evil are going to exist. And then there's the question of just the natural cruelty and vicissitudes of life. And the answer there is I think that God obscures himself. I think that if God were to appear in all of his glory to people on a regular basis, I think they would make faith, you wouldn't need it. There would be no such thing as faith. It would just be reality. Nobody has to prove to you that the sun rises every day. But if God is to allow us the choice to believe in him, which is the ultimate choice from a religious point of view, then he's going to have to obscure himself behind tragedy and horror and and all those other things. I mean, this is a fairly well-known Kabbalistic concept called Tzimtzum in Judaism, which is the idea that when God created the universe, he sort of withdrew in order to make space for all of these things to happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So God doesn't have an instrumental perspective on liberty?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In a chief sense, he does, because the best use of liberty is going to be belief in him. And you can misuse your liberty, right? there will be consequences if you believe in an afterlife. Or if you believe in sort of a generalized better version of life led by faith, then liberty does have a purpose. But he also believes that you have to give people from a cosmic perspective the liberty to do wrong without threatening all the institutions of society. I mean, that's why it does say in the Bible that if man sheds blood by man shall his blood be shed, right? There are punishments that are in biblical thought for doing things that are wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for a human being who lacks the faith in God, so if you're an atheist, can you still be a good person?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course. A hundred percent. And there are a lot of religious people who are crappy people. How do we understand that tension? Well, from a religious perspective, what you would say is that it is perfectly plausible to live in accordance with a set of rules that don't damage other people without believing in God, you just might be understanding the reason for doing that wrong, is what a religious person would say. This is the conversation, again, that I had with Sam, basically, is you and I agree, I said this to Sam, you and I agree on nearly everything when it comes to morality, like we probably disagree on 15-20% of things. The other 80% is because you grew up in a Judeo-Christian society and so do I and we grew up 10 miles from each other, you know, around the turn of the millennium. So, there's that. So, you can perfectly well be an atheist living a good, moral, decent life because you can live a good, moral, decent life with regard to other people without believing in God. I don't think you can build a society on that because I think that, you know, that relies on the sort of goodness of mankind, natural goodness of mankind. I don't believe in the natural goodness of mankind. You don't? No. I believe in, I believe that man is created both sinful and with the capacity for sin and the capacity for good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But if you let them be on their own, isn't, doesn't it- Without social institutions to shape them, I think that that's very likely to go poorly. Oh, interesting. Well, we came to something we disagree on, but that may be, that might reflect itself in our approach to Twitter as well. I think if humans are left on their own, they tend towards good. They definitely have the capacity for good and evil, but when left on their own, I tend to believe they're good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think they might be good with limits. What I mean by that is that what the evidence I think tends to show is that human beings are quite tribal. So what you'll end up with is people who are good with their immediate family and maybe their immediate neighbors, and then when they're threatened by an outside tribe, then they kill everyone. which is sort of the history of civilization in the pre-civilizational era, which was a very violent time. Pre-civilizational era was quite violent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think, on the topic of tribalism in our modern world, what are the pros and cons of tribes? Is that something we should try to outgrow as a civilization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it's ever gonna be possible to fully outgrow tribalism. I think it's a natural human condition to want to be with people who think like you or have a common set of beliefs. And I think trying to obliterate that in the name of a universalism likely leads to utopian results that have devastating consequences. Utopian sort of universalism has been failing every time it's tried, whether you're talking about, now it seems to be sort of a liberal universalism, which is being rejected by a huge number of people around the world in various different cultures, or you're talking about religious universalism, which typically comes with religious tyranny, or you're talking about communistic or Nazi-esque sort of universalism, which comes with mass slaughter. So this is, you know, universalism, I'm not a believer in. I think that you have, you know, some values that are fairly limited, that all human beings should hold in common, and that's pretty much it. Like, I think that everybody should have the ability to join with their own culture. I think how we define tribes is a different thing. So I think that tribes should not be defined by innate physical characteristics, for example. Because I think that, thank God, as a civilization, we've outgrown that. And I think that that is a childish way to view the world. All the tall people aren't a tribe. All the black people aren't a tribe. All the white people aren't a tribe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the tribes should be formed over ideas versus physical characteristics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, which is why actually to go back to sort of the beginning of the conversation when it comes to Jews, you know, I'm not a big believer in ethnic Judaism, right? As a person who takes Judaism seriously, Judaism is more to me than you were born with a last name like Berg or Steen. And so I would disagree with you. He would disagree with me, but that's because he was a tribalist, right? He thought in racial terms, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe robots will help us see humans as one tribe. Maybe that, as long as- This is Reagan's idea, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Reagan said, well, if there's an alien invasion, then we'll all be on the same side. So I'll go over to the Soviets and we'll talk about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's some deep truth to that. What does it mean to be a good man? The various role that a human being takes on in this role theory that you've spoken about, what does it mean to be good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It means to perform, now I will do Aristotle, it means to perform the function well. What Aristotle says is the good is not like moral good, moral evil in the way that we tend to think about it. He meant that a good cup holds liquid. A good spoon holds soup. It means that a thing that is broken can't hold those things, right? So the idea of being a good person means that you are fulfilling the function for which you were made. It's a teleological view of humanity. So if you're a good father, this means that you are bringing up your child in durable values that is going to bring them up healthy, capable of protecting themselves and passing on the traditional wisdom of the ages to future generations while allowing for the capacity for innovation. That'd be being a good father. Being a good spouse would mean protecting and unifying with your spouse and building a safe family and a place to raise children. Being a good citizen of your community means protecting the fellow citizens of your community while incentivizing them to build for themselves. And it becomes actually much easier to think of how to, this is why I like the role theory because it's very hard since sort of in virtue theory to say, be generous. Okay, how does that manifest? I don't know, I don't know what that looks like. Sometimes being generous might be being not. generous to other people, right? When Aristotle says that you should be benevolent, like what does that mean? This is very vague. When I say be a good dad, most people sort of have a gut level understanding of what it means to be a good dad, and mostly what they have a gut level understanding of what it means to really be a really bad dad. And so what it means to be a good man is to fulfill those roles, as many of them as you can. properly and at full function. And that's a very hard job. I've said before that, you know, because I engage a lot with the public and all of this, the word great comes up a lot. What does it take to be a great leader? What does it take to be a great person? And I've always said to people, it's actually fairly easy to be great. It's very difficult to be good. There are a lot of very great people who are not very good. And there are not a lot of good people. And most of them, you know, frankly, most good people die mourned by their family and friends, and two generations later, they're forgotten. But those are the people who incrementally move the ball forward in the world, sometimes much more than the people who are considered great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Understand the role in your life that involves being a cup and be damn good at it. Exactly, that's right. Hold the soup. It's very- Jordan Peterson have been there. It's very like Lobster with Jordan Peterson. Exactly, exactly. I think people will quote you for years and years to come on that. What advice would you give? A lot of young people look up to you. What advice? despite their better judgment. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just only kidding. Only kidding. They seriously look up to you and draw inspiration from your ideas, from your bold thinking. What advice would you give to them? How to live a life worth living, how to have a career they can be proud of, and everything like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So live out the values that you think are really important and seek those values in others. would be the first piece of advice. Second piece of advice, don't go on Twitter until you're 26. Because your brain is fully developed at that point. As I said early on, I was on social media and writing columns from the time I was 17. It was a great opportunity, and as it turns out, a great temptation to say enormous numbers of stupid things when you're young. I mean, you're kind of trying out ideas and you're putting them on, you're taking them off, and social media permanentizes those things. engraves them in stone, and then that's used against you for the rest of your life. So I tell young people this all the time. If you want to be on social media, be on social media, but don't post. Watch if you want to take in information. And more importantly, you should read books. As far as other advice, I'd say engage in your community. There's no substitute for engaging your community and engaging interpersonal action because that will soften you and make you a better person. I've become a better person since I got married. I've become an even better person since I've had kids. So you can imagine how terrible I was before all these things. And engaging your community does allow you to build the things that matter on the most local possible level. I mean, the outcome, by the way, of the sort of politics of the politics of fulfillment that I was talking about earlier is a lot of localism, because the roles that I'm talking about are largely local roles. So that stuff has to be protected locally. I think we focus way too much in this country and others on like world-beating solutions, national solutions, solutions that apply to hundreds of millions of people. How do I get to the solutions that apply for like 5. And then we get to the solutions that apply to like 20. And then we get to the solutions that involve 200 people or 1,000 people. Let's solve that stuff. And I think the solutions at the higher level flow bottom up, not top down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about mentors and maybe role models? Have you had a mentor, or maybe people you look up to, either you interacted on a local scale, like you actually knew them, or somebody you really looked up to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me, I'm very lucky. I grew up in a very solid two-parent household. I'm extremely close to my parents. I've lived near my parents literally my entire life, with the exception of three years of law school. And like right now, they live a mile and a half from us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you learn about life from your parents and your father?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, oh man, so many things from my parents. That's a hard one. I mean, I think the good stuff from my dad is that you should hold true to your values. He's very big on, you have values, those values are important, hold true to them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you understand what your values are, what your principles are early on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Fairly quickly, yeah. And so he was very big on that, which is why, for example, I get asked a lot in the Jewish community why I wear a kippah. And the answer is it never occurred to me to take off the kippah. I always wore it. Why would I take it off at any point? That's the life that I want to live, and that's the way it is. So that was a big one from my dad. From my mom, practicality. My dad is more of a dreamer. My mom is much more practical. And so, you know, the sort of lessons that I learned from my dad are that you can have, this is sort of the counter lesson, is that you can have a good idea, but if you don't have a plan for implementation, then it doesn't end up as reality. And I think actually he's learned that better over the course of his life, too. But my dad, from time I was very young, he wanted me to engage with other adults, and he wanted me to learn from other people, and one of his rules was if he didn't know something, he would find somebody who he thought did know the thing for me to talk to. That was a big thing. So I'm very lucky. I have wonderful parents. As far as sort of other mentors, in terms of media, Andrew Breitbart was a mentor. Andrew obviously, he was kind of known in his latter days, I think more for the militancy than when I was very close with him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for somebody like me who knows more about the militancy, can you tell me what is a great, what makes him a great man?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What made Andrew great is that he engaged with everyone. I mean everyone. So there are videos of him. Rollerblading down the boulevard and people would be protesting and he would literally like rollerblade up to them and he would say, let's go to lunch together and he would just do this. That's actually who Andrew was. What was the thinking behind that? Just just was he was just careless. He was he was much more outgoing than I am. Actually, he was he was very warm with people like for me. Yeah, I would say that with Andrew, I knew Andrew for, let's see, I remember when I was 16, he passed away when I would have been 28. So I knew Andrew for 10, 12 years. And people who met Andrew for about 10 minutes, New Andrew 99% as well as my new Andrew because he was just all out front like everything was out here and he was he loved talking people he loved engaging with people and so this made him a lot of fun and unpredictable and fun to watch and all that and then I think Twitter got to him I think by you know Twitter is One of the lessons I learned from Andrew is the counter lesson, which is Twitter can poison you. Twitter can really wreck you. If you spend all day on Twitter reading the comments and getting angry at people who are talking about you, it becomes a very difficult life. And I think that, you know, in the last year of his life, Andrew got very caught up in that because of a series of sort of circumstances." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "it can actually affect your mind, it can actually make you resentful, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tend to agree with that. But the lesson that I learned from Andrew is engage with everybody, take joy in sort of the mission that you're given. And you can't always fulfill that. Sometimes it's really rough and difficult. I'm not gonna pretend that it's all fun and rainbows all the time, because it isn't. And some of the stuff that I have to cover, I don't like. And some of the things I have to say, I don't particularly like. That happens. But that's what I learned from Andrew. As far as sort of other mentors, I had some teachers when I was a kid who said things that stuck with me. Fourth grade teacher named Miss Janetti who said don't let potential be written on your tombstone Which was which is a pretty that's a good line. It's a great line particularly to a fourth grader But it was that that you know, that's got an 11th grade English teacher named Anthony Miller who is terrific really good writer he'd studied with James Joyce at Trinity College in Dublin and so he and I really got along and He helped my writing a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you ever have doubt in yourself? I mean, especially as you've gotten into the public eye with all the attacks, did you ever doubt your ability to stay strong, to be able to be a voice of the ideas that you represent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't doubt my ability to say what I want to say. I doubt my ability to handle the emotional blowback of saying it, meaning that that's difficult. I mean, again, In, to take just one example, in 2016, the ADL measured that I was the number one target of antisemitism on planet Earth. You know, that's, that's not fun. You know, it's unpleasant. And when you take critiques, not from antisemites, but when you take critiques from people generally, we talked about near the beginning, how you surround yourself with people who are gonna give you good feedback. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Sometimes people are giving you feedback and you don't know whether it's well-motivated or poorly motivated. And if you are trying to be a decent person, you can't cut off the mechanism of feedback. And so what that means is sometimes you take to heart the wrong thing or you take it to heart too much. You're not light enough about it. You take it very, very seriously. You lose sleep over it. I mean, I can't tell you the number of nights where I've just not slept because of some critique somebody's made of me and I've thought to myself, maybe that's right. And sometimes it is right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you know, that's- Some of that is good to stew in that criticism, but some of that can destroy you. Do you have a shortcut? So Rogan has talked about taking a lot of mushrooms. Since you're not into the mushroom thing, what's your escape from that? Like when you get low, when you can't sleep." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Usually writing is a big one for me. So writing for me is cathartic. I love writing. That is a huge one. Spending time with my family. Again, I usually have a close circle of friends who I will talk with in order to sort of bounce ideas off of them. And then once I've kind of talked it through, I tend to feel a little bit better. Exercise is also a big one. I mean, if I go a few days without exercise, I tend to get pretty grumpy pretty quickly. I mean, I gotta keep this six pack going somehow, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There you and Rogan agree. We haven't, aside from Twitter, mentioned love. What's the role of love in the human condition, Ben Shapiro?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Man, don't get asked for love too much. In fact, I was" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't get that question on college camp?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I typically don't actually. In fact, we were at an event recently, it was a Daily Wire event, and in the middle of this event, it was a meet and greet with some of the audience, and in the middle of this event, this guy walks by with this girl, they're talking, and they're talking to me, and their time kind of runs, the security's moving them, and he says, no, no, no, wait, hold on a minute, and he gets down on one knee and he proposes to the girl in front of me, and I said to him, this is the weirdest proposal in human history, what is happening right now? Like, I was your choice of Cupid here. So, well, you know, we actually like got together because we listened to your show. And so I can perform it like a Jewish marriage right now. We're gonna need like a glass. We're gonna need some wine. It's gonna get weird real fast. But yeah, so love doctor, I'm typically not asked too much about. The role of love is important in binding together human beings who ought to be bound together. And the role of respect is even more important in binding together broader groups of people. I think one of the mistakes that we make in politics is trying to substitute love for respect or respect for love. And I think that's a big mistake. So I do not bear tremendous love in the same sense that I do for my family, for random strangers. I don't. I love my family. I love my kids. Anybody who tells you they love your kid as much as you love your kid is lying to you. It's not true. I love my community more than I love other communities. I love my state more than I love other states. I love my country more than I love other countries. That's all normal and that's all good. The problem of empathy can be when that becomes so tight-knit that you're not outward looking, that you don't actually have respect for other people. So in the local level, you need love in order to protect you and shield you and give you the strength to go forward. And then beyond that, you need a lot of respect for people who are not in the circle of love. And I think trying to extend love to people who either are not going to love you back or are going to slap you in the face for it, or who you're just not that close to, it's either it runs the risk of being airsats and fake, or it can actually be counterproductive in some senses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's some sense in which you could have love for other human beings just based on the humanity that connects everybody, right? So you love this whole project that we're a part of. And actually, another thing we disagree on, so loving a stranger, like having that basic empathy and compassion towards a stranger, even if it can hurt you, I think it's ultimately like a, that to me is what it means to be a good man, to live a good life, is to have that compassion towards strangers. Because to me, it's almost, it's easy and natural and obvious to love people close to you. But to step outside yourself and to love others, I think that's what, that's the fabric of a good society. You don't think there's value to that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there can be, but I think we're also discussing love almost in two different senses. Meaning that when I talk about love, what I think of immediately is the love I bear for my wife and kids, or my parents, or my siblings. Or the love of my close friends. But I think that using that same term to describe how I feel about strangers I think would just be inaccurate. And so that's why I'm suggesting that respect might be a more solid and realistic foundation for the way that we treat people far away from us or people who are strangers. Respect for their dignity, respect for their priorities, respect for their role in life. It might be too much of an ask, in other words. There might be the rare human being who's capable of literally loving a homeless man on the street the way that he loves his own family. But if you respect the homeless man on the street the way that you respect your own family, because everyone deserves that respect, I think that you get to the same end without forcing people into a position of of unrealistically expecting themselves to feel a thing they don't feel. You know, one of the big questions in religion that comes up is God makes certain requests that you feel certain ways, right? You're supposed to be bisimkhah, you're supposed to be happy about certain things, or, you know, you're supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself, right? You'll notice that in that statement, it's thy neighbor, right? It's not just, like, generally anyone, it's love thy neighbor as thyself. In any case," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that extends to anyone that follows you on Twitter. Thy neighbor, because God anticipated the social network aspect that is not constrained by geography." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'm going to differ with you on the interpretation on that, but in any case, the sort of, you know, the kind of extension of love outwards might be too big an ask, so maybe we can start with respect, and then hopefully, out of that respect, can grow something more if people earn their way in. Because I think that one of the big problems when we're talking about universalism is when people say, like, I'm a world citizen. I love people of the other country as much as I love myself, or as much as I love my country. It tends to actually lead to an almost crammed-down utopianism that I think can be kind of difficult, because with love comes a certain expectation of solidarity. And I think, right, I mean, when you love your family, you love your wife, like there's a certain level of solidarity that is required inside the home in order to preserve the most loving kind of home. And so if you love everybody, then that sort of implies a certain level of solidarity that may not exist. So maybe the idea is, for me, start with respect and then maybe as people respect each other more, then love is an outgrowth of that as opposed to starting with love and then hoping that respect develops." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a danger that that word becomes empty and instead is used for dogmatic kind of," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Utopianism I mean, this is this is the way that for example religious theocracies very often work. We love you so much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We have to convert you So let's start with respect what I would love to see after our conversation today is to see a Ben Shapiro that continues the growth on Twitter of being even more respectful than you've already been. And maybe one day converting that into love on Twitter. That would, if I could see that in this world, that would make me die a happy man. A little bit more love in the world for me, as a gift for me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll try to make that happen. I do have one question. I'm gonna need you to tell me Can I, like, which jokes are okay? Are jokes still okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, yeah, can I just run your Twitter from now on? You just send it to me. 100%." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I will pre-screen you the jokes. And you can tell me if this is a loving joke or if this is a hate-filled obnoxious joke." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "People will be very surprised by all the heart emojis that start popping up on your Twitter. Bennett, thank you so much for being bold and fearless and exploring ideas. And your Twitter aside, thank you for being just good faith and all the arguments and all the conversations you're having with people. It's a huge honor. Thank you for talking to me." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'd love to, especially now as we start 2021 here. It's a really fun time to think about what were the biggest breakthroughs in AI, not the ones necessarily that media wrote about, but that really matter. What does that mean for our ability to do better science? What does it mean for our ability to help people around the world? And what does it mean for new problems that they could cause if we're not smart enough to avoid them? So, you know, what do we learn basically from this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, absolutely. So one of the amazing things you're part of is the AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions. What's up with this institute? What are you working on? What are you thinking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The idea is something I'm very on fire with, which is basically AI meets physics. And, you know, it's been almost five years now since I shifted my own MIT research from physics to machine learning. And in the beginning, I noticed a lot of my colleagues, even though they were polite about it, were like kind of, what is Max doing?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is this weird stuff? He's lost his mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But then gradually I, together with some colleagues were able to persuade more and more of. the other professors in our physics department to get interested in this. And now we got this amazing NSF center, so 20 million bucks for the next five years, MIT and a bunch of neighboring universities here also. And I noticed now those colleagues who were looking at me funny have stopped asking what the point is of this, because it's becoming more clear. And I really believe that, of course, AI can help physics a lot to do better physics, But physics can also help AI a lot, both by building better hardware. My colleague, Marin Soljacic, for example, is working on an optical chip for much faster machine learning, where the computation is done not by moving electrons around, but by moving photons around. Dramatically less energy use, faster, better. We can also help AI a lot, I think, by having a different set of tools and a different, maybe more audacious attitude. AI has, to a significant extent, been an engineering discipline where you're just trying to make things that work and being more interested in maybe selling them than in figuring out exactly how they work and proving theorems about that they will always work, right? Contrast that with physics. When Elon Musk sends a rocket to the International Space Station, they didn't just train with machine learning, oh, let's fire it a little bit more to the left, a bit more to the right, oh, that also missed, let's try here. No, we figured out Newton's laws of gravitation and other things and got a really deep fundamental understanding. And that's what gives us such confidence in rockets. And my vision is that In the future, all machine learning systems that actually have impact on people's lives will be understood at a really, really deep level, right? So we trust them, not because some sales rep told us to, but because they've earned our trust. And really safety critical things even prove that they will always do what we expect them to do. That's very much the physics mindset. So it's interesting, if you look at big breakthroughs that have happened in machine learning this year, from dancing robots, you know, is pretty fantastic. Not just because it's cool, but if you just think about not that many years ago, this YouTube video at this DARPA challenge where the MIT robot comes out of the car and face plants. How far we've come in just a few years. Similarly, AlphaFold2, you know, crushing the protein folding problem. We can talk more about implications for medical research and stuff. But hey, you know, that's huge progress. You can look at. GPT-3 that can spout off English text, which sometimes really, really blows you away. You can look at the Google, at DeepMind's Mew Zero, which doesn't just kick our butt in Go and Chess and Shogi, but also in all these Atari games. And you don't even have to teach it the rules now. You know, what all of those have in common is, besides being powerful, is we don't fully understand how they work. And that's fine if it's just some dancing robots and the worst thing that can happen is they face plant, right? Or if they're playing Go and the worst thing that can happen is that they make a bad move and lose the game, right? It's less fine if that's what's controlling your self-driving car or your nuclear power plant. And we've seen already that even though Hollywood had all these movies where they try to make us worry about the wrong things, like machines turning evil, The actual bad things that have happened with automation have not been machines turning evil. They've been caused by overtrust in things we didn't understand as well as we thought we did. Even very simple automated systems like what Boeing put into the 737 MAX, right? Killed a lot of people. Was it that that little simple system was evil? Of course not. But we didn't understand it as well as we should have, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we trusted without understanding. Exactly. That's the overtrust." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "we didn't even understand that we didn't understand, right? Humility is really at the core of being a scientist. I think step one, if you wanna be a scientist, is don't ever fool yourself into thinking you understand things when you actually don't, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's probably good advice for humans in general." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think humility in general can do us good. But in science, it's like so spectacular. Like why did we have the wrong theory of gravity ever from Aristotle onward until like Galileo's time? Why would we believe something so dumb as that if I throw this water bottle, it's gonna go up with constant speed until it realizes that its natural motion is down. It changes its mind. Because people just kind of assumed Aristotle was right, he's an authority, we understand that. Why did we believe things like that the sun is going around the earth? Why did we believe that time flows at the same rate for everyone until Einstein? Same exact mistake over and over again. We just weren't humble enough to acknowledge that we actually didn't know for sure. We assumed we knew, so we didn't discover the truth because we assumed there was nothing there to be discovered, right? There was something to be discovered about the 737 MAX. And if you had been a bit more suspicious and tested it better, we would have found it. And it's the same thing with most harm that's been done by automation so far, I would say. So I don't know if you, did you hear of a company called Knight Capital? So good. That means you didn't invest in them earlier. They deployed this automated rating system. Yes. all nice and shiny. They didn't understand it as well as they thought. And it went about losing 10 million bucks per minute for 44 minutes straight until someone presumably was like, shut this off, you know? Was it evil? No, it was again, misplaced trust, something they didn't fully understand, right? And there have been so many, even when people have been killed by robots, which is quite rare still, but in factory accidents, it's in every single case been not malice, just that the robot didn't understand that a human is different from an auto part or whatever. So this is where I think there's so much opportunity for a physics approach, where you just aim for a higher level of understanding. And if you look at all these systems that we talked about, from reinforcement learning systems and dancing robots to all these neural networks that power GPT-3 and Go playing software, they're all basically black boxes. much like, not so different from if you teach a human something, you have no idea how their brain works, right? Except the human brain, at least, has been error corrected during many, many centuries of evolution in a way that some of these systems have not, right? And My MIT research is entirely focused on demystifying this black box. Intelligible intelligence is my slogan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good line, intelligible intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that we shouldn't settle for something that seems intelligent, but it should be intelligible so that we actually trust it because we understand it, right? Like, again, Elon trusts his rockets because he understands Newton's laws and thrust and how everything works. And let me tell you, can I tell you why I'm optimistic about this? I think we've made a bit of a mistake where we, some people still think that somehow we're never gonna understand neural networks. And we're just gonna have to learn to live with this. It's this very powerful black box. basically for those who haven't spent time building their own, it's super simple what happens inside. You send in a long list of numbers and then you do a bunch of operations on them, multiply by matrices, et cetera, et cetera. And some other numbers come out, that's the output of it. And then there are a bunch of knobs you can tune. And when you change them, it affects the computation, the input-output relation. And then you just give the computer some definition of good, and it keeps optimizing these knobs until it performs as good as possible. And often you go like, wow, that's really good. This robot can dance. Or this machine is beating me at chess now. And in the end, you have something which, even though you can look inside it, you have very little idea of how it works. You can print out tables of all the millions of parameters in there. Is it crystal clear now how it's working? No, of course not. Many of my colleagues seem willing to settle for that. And I'm like, no, that's like the halfway point. Some have even gone as far as sort of guessing that the mister, the inscrutability of this is where some of the power comes from and some sort of mysticism. I think that's total nonsense. I think the real power of neural networks comes not from inscrutability, but from differentiability. And what I mean by that is simply that the output changes only smoothly if you tweak your knobs. And then you can use all these powerful methods we have for optimization in science. We can just tweak them a little bit and see, did that get better or worse? That's the fundamental idea of machine learning, that the machine itself can keep optimizing until it gets better. Suppose you wrote this algorithm instead in Python or some other programming language. And then what the knobs did was they just changed random letters in your code. Now it would just epically fail, right? You change one thing and instead of saying print, it says, psynt. Syntax error. You don't even know, was that for the better or for the worse, right? This to me is, this is what I believe is the fundamental power of neural networks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And just to clarify, the changing of the different letters in a program would not be a differentiable process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would make it an invalid program, typically. And then you wouldn't even know if you changed more letters, if it would make it work again, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the magic of neural networks, the inscrutability." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The differentiability, that every setting of the parameters is a program and you can tell is it better or worse, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't like the poetry of the mystery of neural networks as the source of its power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I generally like poetry, but not in this case. It's so misleading, and above all, it shortchanges us. It makes us underestimate the good things we can accomplish. So what we've been doing in my group is basically step one, train the mysterious neural network to do something well. And then step two, do some additional AI techniques to see if we can now transform this black box into something equally intelligent that you can actually understand. So for example, I'll give you one example, this AI Feynman project that we just published. We took the 100 most famous or complicated equations from one of my favorite physics textbooks. In fact, the one that got me into physics in the first place, the Feynman lectures on physics. And so you have a formula, you know, maybe it has what goes into the formula is six different variables, and then what comes out is one. So then you can make like a giant Excel spreadsheet with seven columns. You put in just random numbers for the six columns for those six input variables, and then you calculate with a formula of the seventh column, the output. So maybe it's like the force equals in the last column, some function of the other. And now the task is, okay, if I don't tell you what the formula was, can you figure that out from looking at my spreadsheet I gave you? This problem is called symbolic regression. If I tell you that the formula is what we call a linear formula, so it's just that the output is some sum of all the things inputted, the times some constants, that's the famous easy problem we can solve. We do it all the time in science and engineering. But the general one, if it's more complicated functions with logarithms or cosines or other math, It's a very, very hard one and probably impossible to do fast in general, just because the number of formulas with N symbols just grows exponentially, just like the number of passwords you can make grow dramatically with length. But we had this idea that if you first have a neural network that can actually approximate the formula, you just trained it, even if you don't understand how it works, that can be, First step towards actually understanding how it works so that's what we do first. And then we study that neural network now and put in all sorts of other data that wasn't in the original training data and use that to discover simplifying properties of the formula. And that lets us break it apart often into many simpler pieces in a kind of divide and conquer approach. So we were able to solve all of those hundred formulas, discover them automatically, plus a whole bunch of other ones. It's actually kind of humbling to see that this code, which anyone who wants now is listening to this can type pip install AI Feynman on the computer and run it. It can actually do what Johannes Kepler spent four years doing when he stared at Mars data until he's like, finally, Eureka, this is an ellipse. This will do it automatically for you in one hour, right? Or Max Planck. He was looking at how much radiation comes out from different wavelengths from a hot object and discovered the famous blackbody formula. This discovers it automatically. I'm actually excited about seeing if we can discover not just old formulas again, but new formulas that no one has seen before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And do you like this process of using kind of a neural network to find some basic insights and then dissecting the neural network to then gain the final, so that that's, in that way you've, forcing the explainability issue, really trying to analyze the neural network for the things it knows in order to come up with the final, beautiful, simple theory underlying the initial system that you were looking at." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love that. And the reason I'm so optimistic that it can be generalized to so much more is because that's exactly what we do as human scientists. Think of Galileo, whom we mentioned, right? I bet when he was a little kid, if his dad threw him an apple, he would catch it. Why? Because he had a neural network in his brain that he had trained to predict the parabolic orbit of apples that are thrown under gravity. If you throw a tennis ball to a dog, it also has this same ability of deep learning to figure out how the ball is going to move and catch it. But Galileo went one step further when he got older. He went back and was like, wait a minute. I can write down a formula for this. Y equals X squared, a parabola. And he helped revolutionize physics as we know it, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there was a basic neural network in there from childhood that captured the experiences of observing different kinds of trajectories, and then he was able to go back in with another extra little neural network and analyze all those experiences and be like, wait a minute, There's a deeper rule here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. He was able to distill out in symbolic form what that complicated black box neural network was doing. Not only did the formula he got ultimately become more accurate. And similarly, this is how Newton got Newton's laws, which is why Elon can send rockets to the space station now. So it's not only more accurate, but it's also simpler, much simpler. And it's so simple that we can actually describe it to our friends. and each other, right? We've talked about it just in the context of physics now, but hey, isn't this what we're doing when we're talking to each other also? We go around with our neural networks, just like dogs and cats and chipmunks and blue jays, and we experience things in the world. But then we humans do this additional step on top of that, where we then distill out certain high level knowledge that we've extracted from this in a way that we can communicate it to each other in a symbolic form, in English, in this case, right? So if we can do it, and we believe that we are information processing entities, then we should be able to make machine learning that does it also." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, do you think the entire thing could be learning? Because this dissection process, like for AI Feynman, the secondary stage feels like something like reasoning. And the initial step feels more like the more basic kind of differentiable learning. Do you think the whole thing could be differentiable learning? Do you think the whole thing could be basically neural networks on top of each other? It's like turtles all the way down. Could it be neural networks all the way down?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's a really interesting question. We know that in your case, it is neural networks all the way down because that's all you have in your skull is a bunch of neurons doing their thing, right? But if you ask the question more generally, what algorithms are being used in your brain? I think it's super interesting to compare. I think we've gone a little bit backwards historically because we humans first discovered good old-fashioned AI, the logic-based AI that we often called Go-Fi for good old-fashioned AI. And then more recently, we did machine learning because it required bigger computers. So we had to discover it later. So we think of machine learning with neural networks as the modern thing and the logic-based AI as the old-fashioned thing. But if you look at evolution on earth, right, it's actually been the other way around. I would say that For example, an eagle has a better vision system than I have using, and dogs are just as good at casting tennis balls as I am. All this stuff which is done by training in neural network and not interpreting it in words, it's something so many of our animal friends can do, at least as well as us, right? What is it that we humans can do that the chipmunks and the eagles cannot? it's more to do with this logic-based stuff, right, where we can extract out information in symbols, in language, and now even with equations, if you're a scientist, right? So basically what happened was first we built these computers that could multiply numbers real fast and manipulate symbols, and we felt they were pretty dumb. And then we made neural networks that can see as well as a cat can and do a lot of this, inscrutable black box neural networks, what we humans can do also is put the two together in a useful way. So artificial- In our own brain. Yes, in our own brain. So if we ever wanna get artificial general intelligence that can do all jobs as well as humans can, then that's what's gonna be required to be able to combine the neural networks with symbolic. combine the old AI with the new AI in a good way. We do it in our brains and there seems to be basically two strategies I see in industry now. One scares the heebie-jeebies out of me and the other one I find much more encouraging." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we break them apart? Which of the two?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The one that scares the heebie-jeebies out of me is this attitude that we're just going to make ever bigger systems that we still don't understand until they can be as smart as humans. What could possibly go wrong? I think it's just such a reckless thing to do. And unfortunately, and if we actually succeed as a species to build artificial general intelligence, then we still have no clue how it works, I think. at least 50% chance we're going to be extinct before too long. It's just going to be an utter epic own goal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, it's that 44 minute losing money problem or like the paperclip problem, like where we don't understand how it works. And it's just in a matter of seconds runs away in some kind of direction that's going to be very problematic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even long before you have to worry about the machines themselves somehow deciding to do things and to us that we have to worry about people using machines that are short of AI, AGI, and power to do bad things. I mean, just take a moment, and if anyone is not worried particularly about advanced AI, just take 10 seconds and just think about your least favorite leader on the planet right now. Don't tell me who it is. I'm gonna keep this apolitical. But just see the face in front of you of that person for 10 seconds. Now imagine that that person has this incredibly powerful AI under their control and can use it to impose their will on the whole planet. How does that make you feel?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so can we break that apart just briefly? For the 50% chance that we'll run into trouble with this approach, do you see the bigger worry in that leader or humans using the system to do damage, or are you more worried about And I think I'm in this camp more worried about like accidental, unintentional destruction of everything. So like humans trying to do good and like in a way where everyone agrees it's kind of good. It's just that they're trying to do good without understanding. Because I think every evil leader in history thought they're, to some degree, thought they're trying to do good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, I'm sure Hitler thought he was doing good too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've been reading a lot about Stalin. I'm sure Stalin, he legitimately thought that communism was good for the world and that he was doing good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think Mao Zedong thought what he was doing with the Great Leap Forward was good too. Yeah. I'm actually concerned about both of those. Before, I promised to answer this in detail, but before we do that, let me finish answering the first question, because I told you that there were two different routes we could get to artificial general intelligence, and one scares the hippies out of me, which is this one where we build something, we just say bigger neural networks, ever more hardware, and just train the heck out of more data, and poof, now it's very powerful. That, I think, is the most unsafe and reckless approach. The alternative to that is the intelligible intelligence approach instead, where we say neural networks is just a tool for the first step to get the intuition. But then we're going to spend also serious resources on other AI techniques for demystifying this black box and figuring out what's it actually doing so we can convert it into something that's equally intelligent, but that we actually understand what it's doing. Maybe we can even prove theorems about it, that this car here will never be hacked when it's driving, because here's the proof. There is a whole science of this. It doesn't work for neural networks. There are big black boxes, but it works well in certain other kinds of codes, right? That approach, I think, is much more promising. That's exactly why I'm working on it, frankly. Not just because I think it's cool for science, but because I think the more we understand these systems, the better the chances that we can make them do the things that are good for us, that are actually intended, not unintended." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think it's possible to prove things about something as complicated as a neural network? That's the hope?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, ideally, there's no reason it has to be a neural network in the end either, right? We discovered that Newton's laws of gravity with neural network in Newton's head. But that's not the way it's programmed into the navigation system of Elon Musk's rocket anymore. It's written in C++, or I don't know what language he uses exactly. And then there are software tools called symbolic verification, DARPA and the US, Military has done a lot of really great research on this because they really want to understand that when they build weapon systems, they don't just go fire at random or malfunction, right? And there's even a whole operating system called Cell 3 that's been developed by Adorpa Grant, where you can actually mathematically prove that this thing can never be hacked. One day, I hope that will be something you can say about the OS that's running on our laptops, too. As you know, we're not there. But I think we should be ambitious, frankly. If we can use machine learning to help do the proofs and so on as well, right, then it's much easier to verify that a proof is correct than to come up with a proof in the first place. That's really the core idea here. If someone comes on your podcast and says they proved the Riemann hypothesis or some new sensational new theorem. It's not me. It's much easier for someone else. Take some smart grad math grad students to check. Oh, there's an error here on equation, equation five, or this really checks out than it was to discover the proof." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, although some of those proofs are pretty complicated, but yes, it's still nevertheless much easier to verify the proof. I love the optimism. Even with the security of systems, there's a kind of cynicism that pervades people who think about this, which is like, oh, it's hopeless. I mean, in the same sense, exactly like you're saying, when you own networks, oh, it's hopeless to understand what's happening. With security, people are just like, well, there's always going to be attack vectors, like ways to attack the system. But you're right, we're just very new with these computational systems. We're new with these intelligent systems. and it's not out of the realm of possibility, just like people didn't understand the movement of the stars and the planets and so on. It's entirely possible that within, hopefully soon, but it could be within 100 years, we start to have an obvious laws of gravity about intelligence, and God forbid, about consciousness too. That one is..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Agreed. You know, I think, of course, if you're selling computers that get hacked a lot, that's in your interest as a company that people think it's impossible to make it safe, so nobody's going to get the idea of suing you. But I want to really inject optimism here. It's absolutely possible to do much better than we're doing now. Your laptop does so much stuff. You don't need the music player to be super safe in your future self-driving car, right? If someone hacks it and starts playing music you don't like, the world won't end. But what you can do is you can break out and say the drive computer that controls your safety. must be completely physically decoupled entirely from the entertainment system. And it must physically be such that it can't take on over-the-air updates while you're driving. And it can be, it can have, it's not that, it can have ultimately some operating system on it, which is symbolically verified and proven. that it's always gonna do what it's supposed to do. We can basically have, and companies should take that attitude too. They should look at everything they do and say, what are the few systems in our company that threaten the whole life of the company if they get hacked? And have the highest standards for them. And then they can save money by going for the El Cheapo, poorly understood stuff for the rest. This is very feasible, I think. And coming back to, The bigger question that you worried about, that there'll be unintentional failures, I think, there are two quite separate risks here, right? We talked a lot about one of them, which is that the goals are noble of the human. The human says, I want this airplane to not crash, because this is not Mohammed Atta now flying the airplane, right? And now there's this technical challenge of making sure that the autopilot is actually gonna behave as the pilot wants. If you set that aside, there's also the separate question. How do you make sure that the goals of the pilot are actually aligned with the goals of the passenger? How do you make sure very much more broadly that if we can all agree as a species that we would like things to kind of go well for humanity as a whole, that the goals are aligned here? The alignment problem. I think there's been a lot of progress in the sense that there's suddenly huge amounts of research going on about it. I'm very grateful to Elon Musk for giving us that money five years ago so we could launch the first research program on technical AI safety and alignment. There's a lot of stuff happening, but I think We need to do more than just make sure little machines do always what their owners do. You know, that wouldn't have prevented September 11. If Mohammed Atta said, OK, OK, autopilot, please fly into World Trade Center, you know, and it's like, OK. That even happened in a different situation. There was this depressed pilot named Andreas Lubitz, right, who told his German wings passenger jet to fly into the Alps. He just told the computer to change the altitude to 100 meters or something like that. And you know what the computer said? Okay. And it had the frigging topographical map of the Alps in there. It had GPS, everything. No one had bothered teaching it even the basic kindergarten ethics of like, no, we never want airplanes to fly into mountains under any circumstances. And so we have to think beyond just the technical issues and think about how do we align in general incentives on this planet for the greater good. So starting with simple stuff like that, every airplane that has a computer in it should be taught whatever kindergarten ethics it's smart enough to understand. Like, no, don't fly into fixed objects if the pilot tells you to do so, then go on autopilot mode, send an email to the cops and land at the latest airport, nearest airport, you know, any car, with a forward-facing camera should just be programmed by the manufacturer so that it will never accelerate into a human ever. That would avoid things like the Nice attack and many horrible terrorist vehicle attacks where they deliberately did that, right? this was not some sort of thing, oh, you know, US and China, different views on, no, there was not a single car manufacturer in the world, right, who wanted the cars to do this. They just hadn't thought to do the alignment. And if you look at, more broadly, problems that happen on this planet, the vast majority have to do with poor alignment. I mean, think about, let's go back really big, because I know you're so good at that. Yeah, in the very, so long ago in evolution, we had these genes. And they wanted to make copies of themselves. That's really all they cared about. So some gene said, hey, I'm going to build a brain on this body I'm in so that I can get better at making copies of myself. And then they decided, for their benefit, to get copied more, to align your brain's incentives with their incentives. So it didn't want you to starve to death. So it gave you an incentive to eat and it wanted you to make copies of the genes. So it gave you incentive to fall in love and do all sorts of naughty things to make copies of itself, right? So that was successful value alignment done on the genes. They created something more intelligent than themselves, but they made sure to try to align the values. But then something went a little bit, against the idea of what the genes wanted because a lot of humans discovered, hey, you know, yeah, we really like this business about sex that the genes have made us enjoy, but we don't want to have babies right now. So we're going to hack the genes and use birth control. And I really feel like drinking a Coca-Cola right now, but I don't wanna get a potbelly, so I'm gonna drink Diet Coke. We have all these things we've figured out, because we're smarter than the genes, how we can actually subvert their intentions. So it's not surprising that we humans now, when we're in the role of these genes, creating other non-human entities with a lot of power, have to face the same exact challenge. How do we make other powerful entities have incentives that are aligned with ours? And so they won't hack them. Corporations, for example. We humans decided to create corporations because it can benefit us greatly. Now all of a sudden there's a supermarket. I can go buy food there. I don't have to hunt. Awesome. And then to make sure that this corporation would do things that were good for us and not bad for us, we created institutions to keep them in check. Like if the local supermarket sells poisonous food, then the owners of a supermarket have to spend some years reflecting behind bars, right? So we created incentives to align them. But of course, just like we were able to see through this thing, birth control, if you're a powerful corporation, you also have an incentive to try to hack the institutions that are supposed to govern you. Because you ultimately, as a corporation, have an incentive to maximize your profit. It's like you have an incentive to maximize the enjoyment your brain has, not for your genes. So if they can figure out a way of bribing regulators, then they're going to do that. In the US, we kind of caught on to that and made laws against corruption and bribery. Then in the late 1800s, Teddy Roosevelt realized that, no, we were still being kind of hacked because the Massachusetts railroad companies had like a bigger budget than the state of Massachusetts. And they were doing a lot of very corrupt stuff. So he did the whole trust busting thing to try to align these other non-human entities, the companies, again, more with the incentives of Americans as a whole. It's not surprising though that you know, this is a battle you have to keep fighting now We have even larger companies than we ever had before and of course, they're gonna try to again support The institutions not because you know, I think people make a mistake of getting all too thinking about things in terms of good and evil, like arguing about whether corporations are good or evil, or whether robots are good or evil. A robot isn't good or evil, it's a tool. And you can use it for great things, like robotic surgery, or for bad things. And a corporation also is a tool, of course. And if you have good incentives to the corporation, it'll do great things, like start a hospital or a grocery store. If you have really bad incentives, then it's gonna start maybe marketing addictive drugs to people and you'll have an opioid epidemic, right? It's all about, we should not make the mistake of getting into some sort of fairytale, good, evil thing about corporations or robots. We should focus on putting the right incentives in place. My optimistic vision is that if we can do that, then we can really get good things. We're not doing so great with that right now, either on AI, I think, or on other, intelligent non-human entities, like big companies, right? We just have a new Secretary of Defense, who's gonna start up now in the Biden administration, who is, was an active member of the board of Raytheon, for example. So, you know, I have nothing against Raytheon. I'm not a pacifist, but there's an obvious conflict of interest if someone, is in the job where they decide who they're going to contract with. And I think somehow we have, maybe we need another Teddy Roosevelt to come along again and say, hey, you know, we want what's good for all Americans and we need to go do some serious realigning again of the incentives that we're giving to these big companies. And then we're going to be better off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems that naturally with human beings, just like you've beautifully described the history of this whole thing, it all started with the genes, and they're probably pretty upset by all the unintended consequences that happened since. But it seems that it kind of works out, like it's in this collective intelligence that emerges at the different levels. it seems to find, sometimes last minute, a way to realign the values or keep the values aligned. It's almost, it finds a way, like different leaders, different humans pop up all over the place that reset the system. Do you want, I mean, Do you have an explanation why that is? Or is that just survivor bias? And also, is that different, somehow fundamentally different than with AI systems, where you're no longer dealing with something that was a direct, maybe companies are the same, a direct byproduct of the evolutionary process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there is one thing which has changed. That's why I'm not all optimistic. That's why I think there's about a 50% chance if we take the dumb route with artificial intelligence that humanity will be extinct in this century. First, just the big picture. Yeah, companies need to have the right incentives. Even governments, right? We used to have governments Usually there were just some king, you know, who was the king because his dad was the king, you know, and then there were some benefits of having this powerful kingdom because, or empire of any sort, because then it could prevent a lot of local squabbles. So at least everybody in that region would stop warring against each other and their incentives of different cities in the kingdom became more aligned, right? That was the whole selling point. Harari, Noah Yuval Harari has a beautiful piece on how empires were collaboration enablers. And then we also, Harari says, invented money for that reason, so we could have better alignment and we could do trade even with people we didn't know. So this sort of stuff has been playing out since time immemorial, right? What's changed is that it happens on ever larger scales, right? The technology keeps getting better because science gets better. So now we can communicate over larger distances, transport things faster over larger distances. And so the entities get ever bigger, but our planet is not getting bigger anymore. So in the past, you could have one experiment that just totally screwed up, like Easter Island, where they actually managed have such poor alignment that when they went extinct, people there, there was no one else to come back and replace them, right? If Elon Musk doesn't get us to Mars and then we go extinct on a global scale, then we're not coming back. That's the fundamental difference. And that's a mistake I would rather that we don't make for that reason. In the past, of course, history's full of fiascos, right? But it was never the whole planet. And then, okay, now there's this nice uninhabited land here, some other people could move in and organize things better. This is different. The second thing which is also different is that technology gives us so much more empowerment, right, both to do good things and also to screw up. In the Stone Age, even if you had someone whose goals were really poorly aligned, like maybe he was really pissed off because his Stone Age girlfriend dumped him and he just wanted to, if he wanted to kill as many people as he could, how many could he really take out with a rock and a stick before he was overpowered, right? Just a handful, right? Now, With today's technology, if we have an accidental nuclear war between Russia and the US, which we almost have about a dozen times, and then we have a nuclear winter, it could take out seven billion people, or six billion people, we don't know. So the scale of the damage is bigger than we can do. There's obviously no law of physics that says that technology will never get powerful enough that we could wipe out our species entirely. That would just be fantasy to think that science is somehow doomed to not get more powerful than that, right? And it's not at all unfeasible in our lifetime that someone could design a designer pandemic, which spreads as easily as COVID, but just basically kills everybody. We already had smallpox. It killed one third of everybody who got it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what do you think of the, here's an intuition, maybe it's completely naive, and this optimistic intuition I have, which it seems, and maybe it's a biased experience that I have, but it seems like the most brilliant people I've met in my life all are, really like fundamentally good human beings. And not like naive good, like they really wanna do good for the world in a way that, well, maybe is aligned to my sense of what good means. And so I have a sense that the, the people that will be defining the very cutting edge of technology, there will be much more of the ones that are doing good versus the ones that are doing evil. So the race, I'm optimistic on the us always like last minute coming up with a solution. if there's an engineered pandemic that has the capability to destroy most of the human civilization, it feels like to me, either leading up to that before or as it's going on, there will be, we're able to rally the collective genius of the human species. I can tell by your smile that you're at least some percentage, doubtful, but could that be a fundamental law of human nature? That evolution only creates, like karma is beneficial, good is beneficial, and therefore we'll be all right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope you're right. I really would love it if you're right, if there's some sort of law of nature that says that we always get lucky in the last second because of karma, but you know. I prefer, I prefer, I prefer, not playing it so close and gambling on that. And I think in fact, I think it can be dangerous to have too strong faith in that because it makes us complacent. Like if someone tells you you never have to worry about your house burning down, then you're not going to put in a smoke detector because why would you need to? Even if it's sometimes very simple precautions, we don't take them. If you're like, oh, the government is going to take care of everything for us, I can always trust my politicians. we abdicate our own responsibility. I think it's a healthier attitude to say, yeah, maybe things will work out, but maybe I'm actually gonna have to myself step up and take responsibility. And the stakes are so huge. I mean, if we do this right, we can develop all this ever more powerful technology and cure all diseases and create a future where humanity is healthy and wealthy for not just the next election cycle, but like billions of years throughout our universe. That's really worth working hard for and not just, you know, sitting and hoping for some sort of fairytale karma." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I just mean, so you're absolutely right. From the perspective of the individual, like for me, like the primary thing should be to take responsibility and to build the solutions that your skill set allows. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which is a lot. I think we underestimate often very much how much good we can do. If you or anyone listening to this is completely confident that our government would do a perfect job on handling any future crisis with engineered pandemics or future AI, I ask you to reflect a bit on what actually happened in 2020. Do you feel that the government by and large around the world has handled this flawlessly?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a really sad and disappointing reality that hopefully is a wake-up call for everybody. For the scientists, for the engineers, for the researchers in AI especially, it was disappointing to see how inefficient we were at collecting the right amount of data in a privacy-preserving way and spreading that data and utilizing that data to make decisions, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think when something bad happens to me, I made myself a promise many years ago that I would not be a whiner. So when something bad happens to me, of course it's, to process the disappointment, but then I try to focus on what did I learn from this that can make me a better person in the future. And there's usually something to be learned when I fail. And I think we should all ask ourselves, what can we learn from the pandemic about how we can do better in the future? And you mentioned there's a really good lesson. We were not as resilient as we thought we were. and we were not as prepared maybe as we wish we were. You can even see very stark contrasts around the planet. South Korea, they have over 50 million people. Do you know how many deaths they have from COVID last time I checked? About 500. Why is that? Well, the short answer is that they had prepared. They were incredibly quick. incredibly quick to get on it with very rapid testing and contact tracing and so on, which is why they never had more cases than they could contract trace effectively, right? They never even had to have the kind of big lockdowns we had in the West. But the deeper answer to it, it's not just the Koreans are just somehow better people. The reason I think they were better prepared was because they had already had a pretty bad hit from the SARS pandemic, which never became a pandemic, something like 17 years ago, I think. So it's a kind of fresh memory that we need to be prepared for pandemics. So they were, right? And so maybe this is a lesson here for all of us to draw from COVID that rather than just wait for the next pandemic or the next problem with AI getting out of control or anything else, maybe we should just actually set aside a tiny fraction of our GDP to have people very systematically do some horizon scanning and say, okay, what are the things that could go wrong? And let's duke it out and see which are the more likely ones and which are the ones that are actually actionable and then be prepared." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Uh, so one of the observations is one little ant slash human that I am of disappointment is the political division over information that has been observed that I observed this year that it seemed, uh, the discussion was less about, um, sort of what happened and understanding what happened deeply and more about there's different truths out there. And it's like an argument, my truth is better than your truth. And it's like red versus blue or different. It was like this ridiculous discourse that doesn't seem to get at any kind of notion of the truth. It's not like some kind of scientific process. Even science got politicized in ways that's very heartbreaking to me. You have an exciting project on the AI front of trying to rethink one of the, you mentioned corporations, there's one of the other collective intelligence systems that have emerged through all of this is social networks and just the spread, the internet is the spread of information on the, the internet, our ability to share that information. There's all different kinds of news sources and so on. And so you said like, that's from first principles, let's rethink how we think about the news, how we think about information. Can you talk about this amazing effort that you're undertaking?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I'd love to. This has been my big COVID project. I've spent nights and weekends on ever since the lockdown. To segue into this, actually, let me come back to what you said earlier, that you had this hope that, in your experience, people who you felt were very talented were often idealistic and wanted to do good. Frankly, I feel the same about all people, by and large. There are always exceptions, but I think the vast majority of everybody, regardless of education and whatnot, really are fundamentally good, right? So how can it be that people still do so much nasty stuff, right? I think it has everything to do with the information that we're given. If you go into Sweden 500 years ago and you start telling all the farmers that those Danes in Denmark, they're so terrible people and we have to invade them because they've done all these terrible things that you can't fact check yourself. A lot of Swedes did that, right? We've seen so much of this today in the world, both geopolitically, where we are told that China is bad, and Russia is bad, and Venezuela is bad, and people in those countries are often told that we are bad. And we also see it at a micro level, where people are told that, oh, those who voted for the other party are bad people. It's not just an intellectual disagreement, but they're bad people, and we're getting ever more divided. And so how do you reconcile this with this intrinsic goodness in people? I think it's pretty obvious that it has, again, to do with the information that we're fed and given, right? We evolved to live in small groups where you might know 30 people in total, right? So you then had a system that was quite good for assessing who you could trust and who you could not. And if someone told you that, you know, Joe there is a jerk, but you had interacted with him yourself and seen him in action, and you would quickly realize maybe that that's actually not quite accurate, right? But now that we, the most people on the planet are people we've never met, it's very important that we have a way of trusting the information we're given. So, okay, so where does the news project come in? Well, throughout history, you can go read Machiavelli from the 1400s and you'll see how already then they were busy manipulating people with propaganda and stuff. Propaganda is not new at all. And the incentives to manipulate people is just not new at all. What is it that's new? What's new is machine learning meets propaganda. That's what's new. That's why this has gotten so much worse. Some people like to blame certain individuals, like in my liberal university bubble, many people blame Donald Trump and say it was his fault. I see it differently. I think Donald Trump just had this extreme skill at playing this game in the machine learning algorithm age. a game he couldn't have played 10 years ago. So what's changed? What's changed is, well, Facebook and Google and other companies, and I'm not badmouthing them, I have a lot of friends who work for these companies, good people, they deployed machine learning algorithms just to increase their profit a little bit, to just maximize the time people spent watching ads. And they had totally underestimated how effective they were gonna be. This was, again, the black box, non-intelligible intelligence. they just noticed, oh, we're getting more ad revenue. Great. It took a long time until they even realized why and how and how damaging this was for society. Because, of course, what the machine learning figured out was that the by far most effective way of gluing you to your little rectangle was to show you things that triggered strong emotions, anger, et cetera, resentment. And If it was true or not, didn't really matter. It was also easier to find stories that weren't true. If you weren't limited, that's just a limitation to show people. That's a very limiting fact. And before long, we got these amazing filter bubbles on a scale we had never seen before. Couple this to the fact that also The online news media was so effective that they killed a lot of print journalism. There's less than half as many journalists now in America, I believe, as there was a generation ago. You just couldn't compete with the online advertising. So all of a sudden, most people are not getting even reading newspapers. They get their news from social media. And most people only get news in their little bubble. So along comes now some people like Donald Trump who figured out, among the first successful politicians to figure out how to really play this new game and become very, very influential. But I think Donald Trump was a simple, well, he took advantage of it. He didn't create, the fundamental conditions were created by machine learning taking over the news media. So this is what motivated my, little COVID project here. So, you know, I said before, machine learning and tech in general is not evil, but it's also not good. It's just a tool that you can use for good things or bad things. And as it happens, machine learning and news is mainly used by the big players, big tech, to manipulate people and to watch as many ads as possible, which had this unintended consequence of really screwing up our democracy and fragmenting it into filter bubbles. So I thought, well, machine learning algorithms are basically free. They can run on your smartphone for free also if someone gives them away to you, right? There's no reason why they only have to help the big guy. to manipulate the little guy. They can just as well help the little guy to see through all the manipulation attempts from the big guy. So, did this project, it's called, you can go to improvethenews.org. The first thing we've built is this little news aggregator. Looks a bit like Google News, except it has these sliders on it to help you break out of your filter bubble. So, if you're reading, you can click, click, and go to your favorite topic. And then, if you just slide the left-right slider all the way over to the left. There's two sliders, right? Yeah, the most obvious one is the one that has left to right labeled on it. You go to left, you get one set of articles, you go to the right, you see a very different truth appearing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's literally left and right on the political spectrum." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so if you're reading about immigration, for example, it's very, very noticeable. And I think step one, always, if you wanna not get manipulated, be able to recognize the techniques people use. So it's very helpful to just see how they spin things on the two sides. I think many people are under the misconception that the main problem is fake news. It's not. I had an amazing team of MIT students where we did an academic project to use machine learning to detect the main kinds of bias over the summer. Yes, of course, sometimes there's fake news where someone just claims something that's false, right? Like, oh, Hillary Clinton just got divorced or something. But what we see much more of is actually just omissions. If you go to, there's some stories which just won't be mentioned by the left or the right because it doesn't suit their agenda. And then they'll mention other ones very, very, very much. So for example, we've had a number of stories about the Trump family's financial dealings. And then there's been a bunch of stories about the Biden families, Hunter Biden's financial dealings, right? Surprise, surprise, they don't get equal coverage on the left and the right. One side loves to cover Hunter Biden's stuff and one side loves to cover Trump. You never guess which is which, right? But the great news is if you're a normal American citizen and you dislike corruption in all its forms, then slide, slide, you can just look at both sides and you'll see all those political corruption stories." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's really liberating to just take in both sides, the spin on both sides. It somehow unlocks your mind to think on your own, to realize that I don't know, it's the same thing that was useful, right, in the Soviet Union times for when everybody was much more aware that they're surrounded by propaganda, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is so interesting what you're saying, actually. So Noam Chomsky, you know, used to be our MIT colleague, once said that propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism. And what he means by that is if you have a really totalitarian government, you don't need propaganda. People will do what you want them to do anyway out of fear, right? But otherwise, you need propaganda. So I would say actually that the propaganda is much higher quality in democracies, much more believable. And it's really striking. When I talk to colleagues, science colleagues, like from Russia and China and so on, I noticed they are actually much more aware of the propaganda in their own media than many of my American colleagues are about the propaganda in Western media." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's brilliant. That means the propaganda in the Western media is just better. Yes. That's so brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everything is better in the West, even the propaganda." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, man. That's good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But once you realize that, you realize there's also something very optimistic there that you can do about it, right? Because first of all, omissions, as long as there's no outright censorship, you can just look at both sides and pretty quickly piece together a much more accurate idea of what's actually going on, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And develop a natural skepticism, too. Just an analytical, scientific mind about the way you take in information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I think, I have to say, sometimes I feel that some of us in the academic bubble are too arrogant about this and somehow think, oh, it's just people who aren't as educated as us. When we are often just as gullible also, you know, because we read only our media. and don't see through things, anyone who looks at both sides like this and compares will immediately start noticing the shenanigans being pulled. And, you know, I think what I tried to do with this app is that the big tech has to some extent tried to blame the individual for being manipulated, much like Big tobacco tried to blame the individuals entirely for smoking. And then later on, you know, our government stepped up and said, actually, you know, you can't just blame little kids for starting to smoke. We have to have more responsible advertising and this and that. I think it's a bit the same here. It's very convenient for a big tech to blame. So it's just people who are so dumb and get fooled. The blame usually comes in saying, oh, it's just human psychology. People just want to hear what they already believe. But Professor David Rand at MIT actually partly debunked that with a really nice study showing that people tend to be interested in hearing things that go against what they believe, if it's presented in a respectful way. Like, suppose, for example, that you have a company, and you're just about to launch this project, and you're convinced it's gonna work, and someone says, you know, Lex, I hate to tell you this, but this is gonna fail, and here's why. Would you be like, shut up, I don't wanna hear it. La la la la la la la la. Would you? You would be interested, right? And also, if you're on an airplane, back in the pre-COVID times, you know, and the guy next to you is clearly from the opposite side of the political spectrum, But it's very respectful and polite to you. Wouldn't you be kind of interested to hear a bit about how he or she thinks about things? Of course. But it's not so easy to find out respectful disagreement now, because, like, for example, if you are a Democrat and you're like, I want to see something on the other side, you just go Breitbart.com. And then after the first 10 seconds, you feel deeply insulted by something. it's not going to work. Or if you take someone who votes Republican and they go to something on the left and they just get very offended very quickly by them having put a deliberately ugly picture of Donald Trump on the front page or something, it doesn't really work. So this news aggregator also has this nuance slider, which you can pull to the right and then to make it easier to get exposed to actually more sort of academic style or more respectful Portrayals of different views. And finally, the one kind of bias I think people are mostly aware of is the left-right, right? Because it's so obvious. Because both left and right are very powerful here, right? Both of them have well-funded TV stations and newspapers, and it's kind of hard to miss. But there's another one, the establishment slider, which is also really fun. I love to play with it. And that's more about corruption. Because If you have a society where almost all the powerful entities want you to believe a certain thing, that's what you're going to read in both the big media, mainstream media on the left and on the right, of course. And the powerful companies can push back very hard. Like tobacco companies pushed back very hard back in the day when some newspapers started writing articles about tobacco being dangerous. So it was hard to get a lot of coverage about it initially. And also if you look geopolitically, right? Of course, in any country, when you read their media, you're mainly gonna be reading a lot of articles about how our country is the good guy and the other countries are the bad guys, right? So if you want to have a really more nuanced understanding, you know, like the Germans used to be told that the British used to be told that the French were the bad guys, and the French used to be told that the British were the bad guys. Now they visit each other's countries a lot and have a much more nuanced understanding. I don't think there's going to be any more wars between France and Germany. But on the geopolitical scale, It's just as much as ever, you know, big Cold War now, US-China, and so on. And if you want to get a more nuanced understanding of what's happening geopolitically, then it's really fun to look at this establishment slider. Because it turns out there are tons of little newspapers, both on the left and on the right, who sometimes challenge establishment and say, you know, maybe we shouldn't actually invade Iraq right now. Maybe this weapons of mass destruction thing was BS. If you look at the journalism research afterwards, you can actually see that quite clearly that both CNN and Fox were very pro, let's get rid of Saddam, there are weapons of mass destruction. Then there were a lot of smaller newspapers that were like, wait a minute, this evidence seems a bit sketchy and maybe we, But of course, they were so hard to find. Most people didn't even know they existed, right? Yet, it would have been better for American national security if those voices had also come up. I think it harmed America's national security, actually, that we invaded Iraq." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And arguably, there's a lot more interest in that kind of thinking, too, from those small sources. So when you say big, it's more about kind of the reach of the broadcast. but it's not big in terms of the interest. I think there's a lot of interest in that kind of anti-establishment or like skepticism towards out-of-the-box thinking. There's a lot of interest in that kind of thing. Do you see this news project or something like it being basically taken over the world as the main way we consume information? How do we get there? Okay, the idea is brilliant, you're calling it your little project in 2020, but how does that become the new way we consume information?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope, first of all, there's the plant, the little seed there, because normally the big barrier of doing anything In media, you need a ton of money, but this costs no money at all. I've just been paying myself, pay a tiny amount of money each month to Amazon to run the thing in their cloud. There will never be any ads. The point is not to make any money off of it. And we just train machine learning algorithms to classify the articles and stuff. So it just kind of runs by itself. So if it actually gets good enough at some point that it starts catching on, it could scale. And if other people carbon copy and make other versions that are better, that's. More the more the merrier, I think there's a real opportunity for machine learning to empower the individual. against the list of the powerful players. It's, as I said in the beginning here, it's been mostly the other way around so far that the big players have the AI and then they tell people this is the truth. This is how it is. But it can just as well go the other way around. And when the internet was born, actually, a lot of people had this hope that maybe this will be a great thing for democracy, make it easier to find out about things. And maybe machine learning and things like this can actually help again. And I have to say, I think it's more important than ever now, right, because this is very linked also to the whole future of life, as we discussed earlier, right, we're getting this ever more powerful tech, you know, Frank, it's pretty clear if you look on the one or two generation, three generation timescale that there are only two ways this can end geopolitically. Either it ends great for all humanity or it ends terribly for all of us. There's really no in between. And we're so stuck in, because technology knows no borders and you can't have people fighting when the weapons just keep getting ever more powerful indefinitely, eventually the luck runs out. You know, right now we have, I love America. But the fact of the matter is, what's good for America is not opposite in the long term to what's good for other countries. It would be if this was some sort of zero sum game, like it was 1000s of years ago, when the only way one country could get more resources was to take land from other countries, because that was basically the resource, right? Look at the map of Europe, some countries kept getting bigger and smaller, endless wars. But then since 1945, there hasn't been any war in Western Europe, and they all got way richer because of tech. So the optimistic outcome is that The big winner in this century is going to be America and China and Russia and everybody else, because technology just makes us all healthier and wealthier. And we just find some way of keeping the peace on this planet. But I think, unfortunately, there are some pretty powerful forces right now that are pushing in exactly the opposite direction and trying to demonize other countries. makes it more likely that this ever more powerful tech we're building is gonna be used in disastrous ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, for aggression versus cooperation, that kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, even look at just military AI now, right? It was so awesome to see these dancing robots. I loved it, right? But One of the biggest growth areas in robotics now is, of course, autonomous weapons. And 2020 was like the best marketing year ever for autonomous weapons, because in both Libya, it's a civil war, and in Nagorno-Karabakh, they made the decisive difference, right? And everybody else is like watching this. Oh, yeah, we want to build autonomous weapons, too. In Libya, you had, on one hand, our ally, the United Arab Emirates, that were flying their autonomous weapons that they bought from China, bombing Libyans. And on the other side, you had our other ally, Turkey, flying their drones. They had no skin in the game, any of these other countries. And of course, it was the Libyans who really got screwed. In Nagorno-Karabakh, you had actually Again, so now Turkey is sending drones built by this company that was actually founded by a guy who went to MIT AeroAstro. Do you know that? Yeah. So MIT has a direct responsibility for ultimately this. And a lot of civilians were killed there. And so because it was militarily so effective, now suddenly there's like a huge push. Oh yeah, yeah, let's go build. and ever more autonomy into these weapons and it's gonna be great. And I think actually people who are obsessed about some sort of future terminator scenario right now should start focusing on the fact that we have two much more urgent threats happening for machine learning. One of them is the whole destruction of democracy that we've talked about now where our flow of information is being manipulated by machine learning. And the other one is that right now, you know, this is the year when the big arms race and out of control arms race and at least Thomas weapons is going to start or it's going to stop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you'd have a sense that there is a, like 2020 was a instrumental catalyst for the race of, for the autonomous weapons race." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because it was the first year when they proved decisive in the battlefield. And these ones are still not fully autonomous, mostly they're remote controlled, right? But, you know, we could very quickly make things about, you know, the size and cost of a smartphone, which you just put in the GPS coordinates or the face of the one you want to kill, a skin color or whatever, and it flies away and does it. The real good reason why the US and all the other superpowers should put the kibosh on this is the same reason we decided to put the kibosh on bioweapons. So we gave the Future of Life Award that we can talk more about later to Matthew Messelson from Harvard before for convincing Nixon to ban bioweapons. And I asked him, how did you do it? And he was like, well, I just said, look, we don't want there to be a $500 weapon of mass destruction that even all our enemies can afford, even non-state actors. And Nixon was like, good point. You know, it's in America's interest that the power of weapons are all really expensive. so only we can afford them, or maybe some more stable adversaries, right? Nuclear weapons are like that, but bioweapons were not like that. That's why we banned them, and that's why you never hear about them now. That's why we love biology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have a sense that it's possible for the big powerhouses in terms of the big nations in the world to agree that autonomous weapons is not a race we wanna be on, that it doesn't end well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because we know it's just going to end in mass proliferation and every terrorist everywhere is going to have these super cheap weapons that they will use against us. And our politicians have to constantly worry about being assassinated every time they go outdoors by some anonymous little mini drone. We don't want that. If even if the US and China and everyone else could just agree that you can only build these weapons if they cost at least 10 million bucks That would that would be a huge win for the superpowers and frankly for everybody People often push back and say, well, it's so hard to prevent cheating. But hey, you can say the same about bioweapons. Take any of your RMIT colleagues in biology. Of course, they could build some nasty bioweapon if they really wanted to. But first of all, they don't want to because they think it's disgusting because of the stigma. And second, even if there's some sort of nutcase and want to, it's very likely that some of their grad students or someone would rat them out because everyone else thinks it's so disgusting. And in fact, we now know there was even a fair bit of cheating on the bioweapons ban, but no countries used them because it was so stigmatized that it just wasn't worth. revealing that they had cheated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You talk about drones, but you kind of think that drones is the remote operation. Which they are mostly still. Yes, but you're not taking the next intellectual step of like, where does this go? You're kind of saying the problem with drones is that you're removing yourself from direct violence, therefore you're not able to sort of maintain the common humanity required to make the proper decisions strategically. but that's the criticism as opposed to like if this is automated and just exactly as you said if you automate it and there's a race, then technology's gonna get better and better and better, which means getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And unlike perhaps nuclear weapons, which is connected to resources in a way, like it's hard to get the, it's hard to engineer, yeah. It feels like it's, you know, there's too much overlap between the tech industry and autonomous weapons to where you could have smartphone type of, cheapness. If you look at drones, you know, it's a, you know, for a thousand dollars, you can have an incredible system that's able to maintain flight autonomously for you and take pictures and stuff. You can see that going into the autonomous weapon space that's, but like, why is that not thought about or discussed enough in the public, do you think? You see those dancing Boston Dynamics robots and everybody has this kind of, Like as if this is like a far future. They have this like fear like, oh, this will be Terminator in like some, I don't know, unspecified 20, 30, 40 years. And they don't think about, well, this is like some much less dramatic version of that is actually happening now. It's not gonna be legged, it's not gonna be dancing, but it already has the capability to use artificial intelligence to kill humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the Boston Dynamics leg robots. I think the reason we imagine them holding guns is just because you've all seen Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? That's a reference point. That's pretty useless. That's not going to be the main military use of them. They might be useful in law enforcement in the future. And there's a whole debate about do you want robots showing up at your house with guns telling you to who will be perfectly obedient to whatever dictator controls them. But let's leave that aside for a moment and look at what's actually relevant now. So there's a spectrum of things you can do with AI in the military. And again, to put my card on the table, I'm not the pacifist. I think we should have good defense. So for example, a predator drone is basically a fancy little remote controlled airplane, right? There's a human piloting it and the decision ultimately about whether to kill somebody with it is made by a human still. And this is a line I think we should never cross. There's a current DoD policy. Again, you have to have a human in the loop. I think algorithms should never make life or death decisions. They should be left to humans. Now, why might we cross that line? Well, first of all, these are expensive, right? So, for example, when Azerbaijan had all these drones and Armenia didn't have any, they start trying to jerry-rig little cheap things. fly around. But then, of course, the Armenians would jam them, or the Azeris would jam them. And remote control things can be jammed. That makes them inferior. Also, there's a bit of a time delay between, you know, if we're piloting something from far away, speed of light, and the human has a reaction time as well, it would be nice to eliminate that jamming possibility in the time delay by having it fully autonomous. But now you might be crossing that exact line. You might program it to just, oh yeah, the air drone, go hover over this country for a while, and whenever you find someone who is a bad guy, kill them. Now the machine is making these sort of decisions and some people who defend this still say, well, that's morally fine because we are the good guys and we will tell it the definition of bad guy that we think is moral. But now, it would be very naive to think that if ISIS buys that same drone, that they're gonna use our definition of bad guy. Maybe for them, bad guy is someone wearing a US Army uniform. Or maybe there will be some weird ethnic group who decides that someone of another ethnic group, they are the bad guys, right? The thing is, human soldiers, with all our faults, right? We still have some basic wiring in us. Like, no, it's not okay to kill kids and civilians. And Thomas Weapon has none of that. It's just gonna do whatever is programmed. It's like the perfect Adolf Eichmann on steroids. Like, they told him, Adolf Eichmann, you know, he wanted to do this and this and this to make the Holocaust more efficient. And he was like, And off he went and did it, right? Yeah. Do we really want to make machines that are like that, like completely amoral and will take the user's definition of who's the bad guy? And do we then want to make them so cheap that all our adversaries can have them? Like what could possibly go wrong? That's the, that's, I think the big argument for why we want to This year really put the kibosh on this. And I think you can tell there's a lot of very active debate even going on within the US military and undoubtedly, in other militaries around the world also about whether we should have some sort of international agreement to at least require that These weapons have to be above a certain size and cost, you know, so that things just don't totally spiral out of control. And finally, just for your question, but is it possible to stop it? Because some people tell me, oh, just give up, you know. But again, so Matthew Messelson, again, from Harvard, right, who, the bioweapons hero, He had exactly this criticism also with bioweapons. People were like, how can you check for sure that the Russians aren't cheating? And he told me this, I think really ingenious insight. He said, you know, Max, some people think you have to have inspections and things, and you have to make sure that people, you can catch the cheaters with 100% chance. You don't need 100%, he said. 1% is usually enough. Because if it's an enemy, if it's another big state, like suppose China and the US have signed the treaty, drawing a certain line and saying, yeah, these kind of drones are okay, but these fully autonomous ones are not. Now suppose you are China and you have cheated and secretly developed some clandestine little thing, or you're thinking about doing it. What's your calculation that you do? Well, you're like, okay, what's the probability that we're gonna get caught? if the probability is 100% of course, we're not going to do it. But if the probability is 5% that we're going to get caught, then it's going to be like a huge embarrassment for us. Yeah. And We still have our nuclear weapons anyway, so it doesn't really make an enormous difference in terms of deterring the US, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that feeds the stigma that you kind of established, like this fabric, this universal stigma over the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. It's very reasonable for them to say, well, you know, we probably get away with it, but if we don't, then, The US will know we cheated, and then they're going to go full tilt with their program and say, look, the Chinese are cheaters, and now we have all these weapons against us, and that's bad. So the stigma alone is very, very powerful. And again, look what happened with bioweapons, right? It's been 50 years now. When was the last time you read about a bioterrorism attack? The only deaths I really know about with bioweapons that have happened, when we Americans managed to kill some of our own with anthrax, you know, the idiot who sent them to Tom Daschle and others in letters, right? And similarly, in Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union, they had some anthrax in some lab there. Maybe they were cheating or who knows, and it leaked out and killed a bunch of Russians. I'd say that's a pretty good success, right? 50 years, just two own goals by the superpowers and then nothing. And that's why whenever I ask anyone what they think about biology, they think it's great. They associate it with new cures, new diseases, maybe a good vaccine. This is how I want to think about AI in the future. And I want others to think about AI too, as a source of all these great solutions to our problems, not as, Oh, AI, oh yeah, that's the reason I feel scared going outside these days." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's kind of brilliant that the bioweapons and nuclear weapons, we've figured out, I mean, of course, they're still a huge source of danger, but we figured out some way of creating rules and social stigma over these weapons that then creates a stability to our, whatever that game theoretic stability is, of course. And we don't have that with AI. And you're kind of screaming from the top of the mountain about this, that we need to find that because just like, you know, it's very possible, you know, with the future of life, as you point out, Institute Awards pointed out that, you know, with nuclear weapons, we could have destroyed ourselves quite a few times. And it's, you know, it's a learning. experience that is very costly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We gave this Future Life Award, we gave it the first time to this guy, Vasily Arkhipov. He was on most people haven't even heard of him. Vasily Arkhipov, he has, in my opinion, made the greatest positive contribution to humanity of any human in modern history. And maybe it sounds like hyperbole here, like I'm just over the top, but let me tell you the story, and I think maybe you'll agree. So during the Cuban Missile Crisis, We Americans first didn't know that the Russians had sent four submarines. But we caught two of them. And we didn't know that. So we dropped practice depth charges on the one that he was on, try to force it to the surface. But we didn't know that this nuclear submarine actually was a nuclear submarine with a nuclear torpedo. We also didn't know that they had authorization to launch it without clearance from Moscow. And we also didn't know that they were running out of electricity. Their batteries were almost dead. They were running out of oxygen. Sailors were fainting left and right. The temperature was about 110, 120 Fahrenheit on board. It was really hellish conditions, really just a kind of doomsday. And at that point, these giant explosions start happening from Americans dropping these. The captain thought World War III had begun. They decided that they were going to launch the nuclear torpedo. And one of them shouted, you know, we're all going to die, but we're not going to disgrace our Navy, you know. We don't know what would have happened if there had been a giant mushroom cloud all of a sudden, you know, against the Americans. But since everybody had their hands on the triggers, You don't have to be too creative to think that it could have led to an all-out nuclear war, in which case we wouldn't be having this conversation now, right? What actually took place was they needed three people to approve this. The captain had said yes. There was the Communist Party political officer. He also said, yes, let's do it. And the third man was this guy, Vasily Arkhipov, who said, nyet. Yeah, for some reason he was just more chill than the others and he was the right man at the right time. I don't want us as a species rely on the right person being there at the right time. You know, we tracked down his family living in relative poverty outside Moscow. when he flew his daughter, he had passed away, and flew them to London. They had never been to the West even. It was incredibly moving to get to honor them for this. And the next year we gave this Future Life Award to Stanislav Petrov. Have you heard of him? So he was in charge of the Soviet early warning station, which was built with Soviet technology and honestly not that reliable. It said that there were five US missiles coming in, again, If they had launched at that point, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. He decided, based on just mainly gut instinct, to just not escalate this. And I'm very glad he wasn't replaced by an AI that was just automatically following orders. And then we gave the third one to Matthew Messelson. Last year, we gave this award to to these guys who actually use technology for good, not avoiding something bad, but for something good. The guys who eliminated this disease, which is way worse than COVID, that had killed half a billion people in its final century, smallpox, right? So you mentioned it earlier. COVID, on average, kills less than 1% of people who get it. Smallpox, about 30%. And they just ultimately, Viktor Zhdanov, And Bill Fahey, most of my colleagues have never heard of either of them. One American, one Russian. did this amazing effort. Not only was Zhdanov able to get the US and the Soviet Union to team up against smallpox during the Cold War, but Bill Fahy came up with this ingenious strategy for making it actually go all the way to defeat the disease without funding for vaccinating everyone. And as a result, we haven't had any, we went from 15 million deaths the year I was born in smallpox So what do we have in COVID now? A little bit short of 2 million, right? Yes. To zero deaths, of course, this year and forever. There have been 200 million people, they estimate, who would have died since then by smallpox had it not been for this. So isn't science awesome when you use it for good? And the reason we want to celebrate these sort of people is to remind them of this. Science is so awesome when you use it for good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And those awards actually, the variety there paints a very interesting picture. So the first two are looking at, it's kind of exciting to think that these average humans, in some sense, that are products of billions of, other humans that came before them, evolution, and some little, you said gut, but there's something in there that stopped the annihilation of the human race. And that's a magical thing, but that's like this deeply human thing. And then there's the other aspect where it's also very human, which is to build solution to the, to the existential crises that we're facing, to build it, to take the responsibility and to come up with different technologies and so on. And both of those are deeply human. The gut and the mind, whatever that is that creates." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The best is when they work together. I wish I could have met him, of course, but he had passed away. He was really a fantastic military officer, combining all the best traits that we in America admire in our military. Because first of all, he was very loyal, of course. He never even told anyone about this during his whole life, even though you think he had some bragging rights, right? But he just was like, this is just business, just doing my job. It only came out later after his death. And second, the reason he did the right thing was not because he was some sort of liberal or some sort of, not because he was just, oh, you know, peace and love. It was partly because he had been the captain on another submarine that had a nuclear reactor meltdown. And it was his heroism that helped contain this. That's why he died of cancer later also. But he's seen many of his crew members die. And I think for him, that gave him this gut feeling that, you know, if there's a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union, the whole world is gonna go through what I saw my dear crew members suffer through. It wasn't just an abstract thing for him. I think it was real. And second though, not just the gut, the mind, right? He was, for some reason, very level-headed personality and very smart guy. which is exactly what we want our best fighter pilots to be also, right? I never forget Neil Armstrong when he's landing on the moon and almost running out of gas. And he doesn't even change, when they say 30 seconds, he doesn't even change the tone of voice, just keeps going. Arkhipov, I think, was just like that. So when the explosions start going off and his captain is screaming and we should nuke them and all, he's like, I don't think the Americans are trying to sink us. I think they're trying to send us a message. That's pretty badass coolness. Because he said, if they wanted to sink us, and he said, listen, listen, it's alternating one loud explosion on the left, one on the right, one on the left, one on the right. He was the only one to notice this pattern. And he's like, I think this is them trying to send us a signal. that they want us to surface and they're not going to sink us and somehow this is how we then managed to ultimately with his combination of gut and also just cool analytical thinking, was able to deescalate the whole thing. And yeah, so this is some of the best in humanity. I guess coming back to what we talked about earlier, it's the combination of the neural network, the instinctive, I'm tearing up here, I'm getting emotional, but he is one of my superheroes. having both the heart, you know, and the mind combined." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And especially in that time, there's something about the, I mean, this is a very, in America, people are used to this kind of idea of being the individual, of like, on your own thinking. Yeah. I think under, in the Soviet Union, under communism, it's actually much harder to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, he didn't even, he even got, He didn't get any accolades either when he came back for this, right? They just wanted to hush the whole thing up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's echoes of that with Chernobyl. That's a really hopeful thing that amidst big centralized powers, whether it's companies or states, there's still the power of the individual to think on their own, to act." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we need to think of people like this not as a panacea we can always count on, but rather as a wake-up call. Because of them, because of Arkhipov, we are alive to learn from this lesson. to learn from the fact that we shouldn't keep playing Russian roulette and almost have a nuclear war by mistake now and then. Because relying on luck is not a good long-term strategy. If you keep playing Russian roulette over and over again, the probability of surviving just drops exponentially with time. And if you have some probability of having an accidental nuclear war every year, the probability of not having one also drops exponentially. I think we can do better than that. So I think the message is very clear. Once in a while, shit happens. there is a lot of very concrete things we can do to reduce the risk of things like that happening in the first place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On the AI front, if we could just link on that for a second. So you're friends with, you often talk with Elon Musk throughout history, you've did a lot of interesting things together. He has a set of fears about the future of artificial intelligence, AGI, Do you have a sense, we've already talked about the things we should be worried about with AI, do you have a sense of the shape of his fears in particular about AI, of which subset of what we've talked about, whether it's creating, you know, it's that direction of creating sort of these giant computational systems that are not explainable, they're not intelligible intelligence, or is it the, And then as a branch of that, is it the manipulation by big corporations of that or individual evil people to use that for destruction or the unintentional consequences? Do you have a sense of where his thinking is on this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "From my many conversations with Elon, yeah, I certainly have a model of how he thinks. It's actually very much like the way I think also. I'll elaborate on it a bit. push back on when you said evil people, I don't think it's a very helpful concept, evil people. Sometimes people do very, very bad things, but they usually do it because they think it's a good thing, because somehow other people have told them that that was a good thing or given them incorrect information or whatever, right? I believe in the fundamental goodness of humanity that if we educate people well and they find out how things really are, people generally want to do good and be good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hence the value alignment. It's about information, about knowledge, and then once we have that, we'll likely be able to do good in the way that's aligned with everybody else who thinks the same way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and it's not just the individual people we have to align. So we don't just want people to be educated to know the way things actually are and to treat each other well. But we also would need to align other non-human entities. We talked about corporations, there has to be institutions so that what they do is actually good for the country they're in. And we should make sure that what countries do is actually good for the species as a whole, et cetera. Coming back to Elon, yeah, my understanding of how Elon sees this is really quite similar to my own, which is, one of the reasons I like him so much and enjoy talking with him so much, I think he's quite different from most people in that he thinks much more than most people about the really big picture, not just what's going to happen in the next election cycle, but in millennia, millions and billions of years from now. And when you look in this more cosmic perspective, it's so obvious that we are gazing out into this universe that as far as we can tell, is mostly dead with life being a almost imperceptibly tiny perturbation, right? And he sees this enormous opportunity for our universe to come alive, for us to become an interplanetary species. Mars is obviously just first stop on this cosmic journey. And precisely because he thinks more long-term, it's much more clear to him than to most people that what we do with this Russian roulette thing we keep playing with our nukes, is a really poor strategy, a really reckless strategy. And also that we're just building these ever more powerful AI systems that we don't understand is also a really reckless strategy. I feel Elon is very much a humanist in the sense that he wants an awesome future for humanity. He wants to be us that control the machines. rather than the machines that control us. And why shouldn't we insist on that? We're building them after all, right? Why should we build things that just make us into some little cog in the machinery that has no further say in the matter? That's not my idea of an inspiring future either." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, if you think on the cosmic scale, in terms of both time and space, so much is put into perspective. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Whenever I have a bad day, that's what I think about. It immediately makes me feel better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It makes me sad that for us individual humans, at least for now, the ride ends too quickly. We don't get to experience the cosmic scale." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think of our universe sometimes as an organism that has only begun to wake up a tiny bit. Just like when you... the very first little glimmers of consciousness you have in the morning when you start coming around. Before the coffee." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Before the coffee." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even before you get out of bed, before you even open your eyes. Start to wake up a little bit. Oh, there's something here. That's very much how I think of where we are. All those galaxies out there. I think they're really beautiful. But why are they beautiful? They're beautiful because conscious entities are actually observing them and experiencing them through our telescopes. I define consciousness as subjective experience, whether it be colors or emotions or sounds. So beauty is an experience, meaning is an experience, purpose is an experience. If there was no conscious experience observing these galaxies, they wouldn't be beautiful. If we do something dumb with advanced AI in the future here and Earth originating life goes extinct, and that was it for this, if there is nothing else with telescopes in our universe, then kind of game over for meaning beauty and meaning and purpose in our whole universe and I think that would be just such an opportunity lost frankly and I think When Elon points this out, he gets very unfairly maligned in the media for all the dumb media bias reasons we talked about, right? They wanna print precisely the things about Elon out of context that are really clickbaity. Like, he has gotten so much flack for this summoning the demon statement. I happen to know exactly the context, because I was in the front row when he gave that talk. It was at MIT, you'll be pleased to know. It was the AeroAstro. anniversary, they had Buzz Aldrin there from the moon landing, the whole house, Kresge Auditorium, packed with MIT students. And he had this amazing Q&A, it might have gone for an hour, and they talked about rockets and Mars and everything. At the very end, this one student who was actually in my class, asked him, what about AI? Elon makes this one comment, and they take this out of context. print that, goes viral, and try to cast him as some sort of doom and gloom dude, you know. You know Elon. He's not the doom and gloom dude. He is such a positive visionary. And the whole reason he warns about this is because he realizes more than most what the opportunity cost is of screwing up. That there is so much awesomeness in the future that we can and our descendants can enjoy if we don't screw up, right? I get so pissed off when people try to cast him as some sort of technophobic Luddite And at this point, it's kind of ludicrous when I hear people say that people who worry about artificial general intelligence are Luddites, because, of course, if you look more closely, you have some of the most outspoken people making warnings are people like Professor Stuart Russell from Berkeley, who's written the bestselling AI textbook, you know. So claiming that he's a Luddite who doesn't understand AI, the joke is really on the people who said it. But I think more broadly, this message is really not sunk in at all. What it is that people worry about, they think that Elon and Stuart Russell and others are worried about the dancing robots picking up an AR-15 and going on a rampage, right? They think they're worried about robots turning evil. They're not. I'm not. The risk is not malice. It's competence. The risk is just that we build some systems that are incredibly competent, which means they're always going to get their goals accomplished, even if they clash with our goals. That's the risk. Why did we humans drive the West African black rhino extinct? Is it because we're malicious, evil rhinoceros haters? No, it's just because our goals didn't align with the goals of those rhinos and tough luck for the rhinos. The point is just we don't want to put ourselves in the position of those rhinos creating something more powerful than us if we haven't first figured out how to align the goals. And I am optimistic. I think we could do it if we worked really hard on it because I spent a lot of time around intelligent entities that were more intelligent than me, my mom and my dad. And I was little and that was fine because their goals were actually aligned with mine quite well. But we've seen today many examples of where the goals of our powerful systems are not so aligned. So those click-through optimization algorithms that are polarized social media, right, they were actually pretty poorly aligned with what was good for democracy, it turned out. And again, almost all problems we've had with machine learning, again, came so far not from malice, but from poor alignment. And that's exactly why that's why we should be concerned about it in the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's possible that with systems like Neuralink and brain-computer interfaces, you know, again, thinking of the cosmic scale, Elon's talked about this, but others have as well throughout history of figuring out how the exact mechanism of how to achieve that kind of alignment. So one of them is having a symbiosis with AI, which is like coming up with clever ways where we're like stuck together in this weird, relationship, whether it's biological or in some kind of other way. Do you think there's that's a possibility of having that kind of symbiosis? Or do we want to instead kind of focus on this distinct entities of us humans talking to these intelligible, self-doubting AIs, maybe like Stuart Russell thinks about it. We're self-doubting and full of uncertainty, and then have our AI systems that are full of uncertainty, we communicate back and forth, and in that way achieve symbiosis." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I honestly don't know. I would say that because we don't know for sure which of any of our ideas will work, But we do know that if we don't, I'm pretty convinced that if we don't get any of these things to work and just barge ahead, then our species is probably gonna go extinct this century." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it's- This century. You think we're facing this crisis is a 21st century crisis. This century will be remembered. On a hard drive somewhere. On a hard drive somewhere or maybe by future generations as like, Like there'll be future, Future of Life Institute awards for people that have done something about AI." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It could also end even worse, where we're not superseded by leaving any AI behind either. We just totally wipe out, like on Easter Island. Our century is long. There are still 79 years left of it. Think about how far we've come just in the last 30 years. So we can talk more about, what might go wrong, but you asked me this really good question about what's the best strategy. Is it Neuralink or Russell's approach or whatever? I think, you know, when we did the Manhattan Project, we didn't know if any of our four ideas for enriching uranium and getting out the uranium-235 were going to work. But we felt this was really important to get it before Hitler did. So, you know, what we did, we tried all four of them. Here, I think it's analogous where there's the greatest threat that's ever faced our species, and of course, U.S. national security by implication. We don't know, we don't have any method that's guaranteed to work, but we have a lot of ideas. So we should invest pretty heavily in pursuing all of them with an open mind and hope that one of them at least works. The good news is the century is long, you know, and it might take decades until we have artificial general intelligence. So we have some time, hopefully, but it takes a long time to solve these very, very difficult problems. It's going to actually be, it's the most difficult problem we were ever trying to solve as a species. So we have to start now, so we don't have, rather than begin thinking about it the night before, some people who've had too much Red Bull switch it on, and we have to, coming back to your question, we have to pursue all of these different avenues and see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you were my investment advisor, and I was trying to invest in the future, how do you think the human species is most likely to destroy itself in this century? Yeah, so if the crises, many of the crises we're facing are really before us within the next 100 years, how do we make explicit, make known the unknowns and solve those problems to avoid the biggest, starting with the biggest existential crisis?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So as your investment advisor, how are you planning to make money on us destroying ourselves, I have to ask?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know. It might be the Russian origins that somehow is involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the micro level of detailed strategies, of course, these are unsolved problems. For AI alignment, we can break it into three sub-problems that are all unsolved. I think you want first to make machines understand our goals, then adopt our goals, and then retain our goals. So to hit on all three real quickly. The problem when Andreas Lubitz told his autopilot to fly into the Alps was that the computer didn't even understand anything about his goals, right? It was too dumb. It could have understood, actually, but you would have had to put some effort in as a system designer to don't fly into mountains. So that's the first challenge. How do you program into computers human values, human goals? we can start rather than saying, oh, it's so hard, we should start with the simple stuff. As I said, self-driving cars, airplanes, just put in all the goals that we all agree on already and then have a habit of whenever machines get smarter so they can understand one level higher goals, you know, put them into. The second challenge is getting them to adopt the goals. It's easy for situations like that where you just program it in, but when you have self-learning systems like children, you know, any parent knows that there is a difference between getting our kids to understand what we want them to do and to actually adopt our goals, right? With humans, with children, fortunately, They go through this phase. First, they're too dumb to understand what we want, our goals are. And then they have this period of some years when they're both smart enough to understand them and malleable enough that we have a chance to raise them well. And then they become teenagers. It's kind of too late. But we have this window. With machines, the challenges, the intelligence might grow so fast that that window is pretty short. So that's a research problem. The third one is how do you make sure they keep the goals if they keep learning more and getting smarter? Many sci-fi movies are about how you have something in which initially was a line, but then things kind of go off the heel. And, you know, my kids were very, very... excited about their Legos when they were little. Now they're just gathering dust in the basement. If we create machines that are really on board with the goal of taking care of humanity, we don't want them to get as bored with us. as my kids got with Legos. So this is another research challenge. How can you make some sort of recursively self-improving system retain certain basic goals?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That said, a lot of adult people still play with Legos. So maybe we succeeded with the Legos." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe. I like your optimism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So not all AI systems have to maintain the goals, right? Just some fraction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So there's a lot of talented AI researchers now who have heard of this and want to work on it. Not so much funding for it yet. Of the billions that go into building AI more powerful, It's only a minuscule fraction. So for going into the safety research, my attitude is generally we should not try to slow down the technology, but we should greatly accelerate the investment in this sort of safety research. And also make sure, this was very embarrassing last year, but the NSF decided to give out six of these big institutes. We got one of them for AI and science, you asked me about. Another one was supposed to be for AI safety research. And they gave it, It's people studying oceans and climate and stuff. So I'm all for studying oceans and climates, but we need to actually have some money that actually goes into AI safety research also and doesn't just get grabbed by whatever. That's a fantastic investment. And then at the higher level, you asked this question, okay, what can we do? What are the biggest risks? I think we cannot just consider this to be only a technical problem. Again, because if you solve only the technical problem, can I play with your robot? Get our machines, you know, to just blindly obey the orders we give them. So we can always trust that it will do what we want. That might be great for the owner of the robot, but it might not be so great for the rest of humanity if that person is that least favorite world leader or whatever you imagine, right? So we have to also take a look at the apply alignment, not just to machines, but to all the other powerful structures. That's why it's so important to strengthen our democracy. Again, as I said, to have institutions make sure that the playing field is not rigged so that corporations are given the right incentives to do the things that both make profit and are good for people, to make sure that countries have incentives to do things that are both good for their people and Don't screw up the rest of the world. And this is not just something for AI nerds, you know, to geek out on. This is an interesting challenge for political scientists, economists, and so many other thinkers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the magical things that perhaps makes humans, this Earth quite unique is that it's home to conscious beings. So you mentioned consciousness. Perhaps as a small aside, because we didn't really get specific to how we might do the alignment, like you said, it's just a really important research problem, but do you think engineering consciousness into AI systems, is a possibility, is something that we might one day do, or is there something fundamental to consciousness that is, is there something about consciousness that is fundamental to humans and humans only?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's possible. I think both consciousness and intelligence are information processing, certain types of information processing. And that fundamentally, it doesn't matter whether the information is processed by carbon atoms in neurons and brains or by silicon atoms and so on in our technology. Some people disagree, this is what I think as a physicist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I... The consciousness is the same kind of, you said consciousness is information processing. So meaning, you know, I think you had a quote of something like, it's information knowing itself, that kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think consciousness, yeah, is the way information feels when it's being processed in certain complex ways. We don't know exactly what those complex ways are. It's clear that, most of the information processing in our brains does not create an experience. We're not even aware of it, right? Like, for example, you're not aware of your heartbeat regulation right now, even though it's clearly being done by your body, right? It's just kind of doing its own thing. When you go jogging, there's a lot of complicated stuff about how you put your foot down. And we know it's hard. That's why robots used to fall over so much. But you're mostly unaware about it. Your brain, your CEO consciousness module just sends an email. Hey, you know, I'm going to keep drawing along this path. The rest is on autopilot, right? So most of it is not conscious, but somehow There is some of the information processing which is, we don't know what exactly, I think this is a science problem that I hope one day we'll have some equation for or something so we can be able to build a consciousness detector and say, yeah, here there is some consciousness, here there is not. Oh, don't boil that lobster because it's feeling pain or it's okay because it's not feeling pain. Right now we treat this as sort of just metaphysics. But it would be very useful in emergency rooms to know if a patient has locked-in syndrome and is conscious, or if they are actually just out. And in the future, if you build a very, very intelligent helper robot to take care of you, I think you'd like to know if you should feel guilty about shutting it down. Or if it's just like a zombie going through the motions like a fancy tape recorder, right? And once we can make progress on the science of consciousness and figure out what is conscious and what isn't, then we, assuming we If we want to create positive experiences and not suffering, we'll probably choose to build some machines that are deliberately unconscious, that do incredibly boring, repetitive jobs in an iron mine somewhere or whatever. And maybe we'll choose to create helper robots for the elderly that are conscious. so that people don't just feel creeped out that the robot is just faking it when it acts like it's sad or happy?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like I said, elderly, I think everybody gets pretty deeply lonely in this world. And so there's a place, I think, for everybody to have a connection with conscious beings, whether they're human or otherwise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I know for sure that I would, if I had a robot, if I was gonna develop any kind of personal emotional connection with it, I would be very creeped out if I knew it at an intellectual level that the whole thing was just a fraud. You know, today you can buy a little talking doll for a kid, which will say things and the little child will often think that this is actually conscious and even real secrets to it that then go on the Internet with all sorts of creepy repercussions. You know, I would not want to be just hacked and tricked like this if I was going to be developing real emotional connections with a robot, I would want to know that this is actually real. It's acting conscious, acting happy because it actually feels it. And I think this is not sci-fi. I think" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's possible to measure, to come up with tools. After we understand the science of consciousness, you're saying we'll be able to come up with tools that can measure consciousness and definitively say this thing is experiencing the things it says it's experiencing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Kind of by definition, if it is a physical phenomena, information processing, and we know that some information processing is conscious and some isn't, well, then there is something there to be discovered with the methods of science. Giulio Tononi has stuck his neck out the farthest and written down some equations for a theory. Maybe that's right, maybe it's wrong, we certainly don't know. But I applaud that kind of efforts to sort of take this, say this is not just something that philosophers can have beer and muse about, but something we can measure and we can study. and bringing that back to us. I think what we would probably choose to do, as I said, is if we cannot figure this out, choose to be quite mindful about what sort of consciousness, if any, we put in different machines that we have. And certainly, we wouldn't want to make, we should not be making a bunch of machines that suffer without us even knowing it, right? And if at any point someone decides to upload themselves, like Ray Kurzweil wants to do, I don't know if you've had him on your show." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We agree, but then COVID happened, so we're waiting it out a little bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, suppose he uploads himself into this robo-Ray and it talks like him and acts like him and laughs like him. And before he powers off his biological body, he would probably be pretty disturbed if he realized that there's no one home. This robot is not having any subjective experience, right? If humanity gets replaced by... wrote by machine descendants, which do all these cool things and build spaceships and go to intergalactic rock concerts. And it turned out, turns out that they were all unconscious, just going through the motions. Wouldn't that be like the ultimate robot zombie apocalypse, right? Just a play for empty benches." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I have a sense that there's some kind of, once we understand consciousness better, we'll understand that there's some kind of continuum, and it would be a greater appreciation. And we'll probably understand, just like you said, it'd be unfortunate if it's a trick. We'll probably definitively understand that love is indeed a trick that we play on each other, that we humans are We convince ourselves we're conscious, but we're really, us and trees and dolphins are all the same kind of consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can I try to cheer you up a little bit with a philosophical thought here about the love part? Yes, let's do it. You might say, okay, yeah, love is just a collaboration enabler. And then maybe you can go and get depressed about that. But I think that would be the wrong conclusion, actually. I know that the only reason I enjoy food is because my genes hacked me and they don't want me to starve to death. Not because they care about... me consciously enjoying succulent delights of pistachio ice cream, but they just want me to make copies of them. So in a sense, the whole enjoyment of food is also a scam, like this. But does that mean I shouldn't take pleasure in this pistachio ice cream? I love pistachio ice cream, and I can tell you, I know this is an experimental fact, I enjoy pistachio ice cream every bit as much, even though I scientifically know exactly why, what kind of scam this was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your genes really appreciate that you like the pistachio ice cream." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, but I, my mind appreciates it too, you know, and I have a conscious experience right now. Ultimately, all of my brain is also just something the genes built to copy themselves. But so what? You know, I'm grateful that, yeah, thanks genes for doing this. But, you know, now it's my brain that's in charge here and I'm going to enjoy my conscious experience. Thank you very much. And not just the pistachio ice cream. But also the love I feel for my amazing wife and all the other delights of being conscious. Actually, Richard Feynman, I think, said this so well. He is also the guy who really got me into physics. Some art friend said that, oh, science kind of just is the party pooper, which kind of ruins the fun, right? Like, you have a beautiful flower, says the artist, and then the scientist is going to deconstruct that into just a blob of quarks and electrons. And Feynman pushed back on that in such a beautiful way, which I think also can be used to push back. and make you not feel guilty about falling in love. So here's what Feynman basically said. He said to his friend, you know, yeah, I can also, as a scientist, see that this is a beautiful flower. Thank you very much. Maybe I can't draw as good a painting as you because I'm not as talented an artist, but yeah, I can really see the beauty in it. And it just, it also looks beautiful to me. But in addition to that, Feynman said, as a scientist, I see even more beauty. that the artist did not see, right? Suppose this is a flower on a blossoming apple tree. You could say this tree has more beauty in it than just the colors and the fragrance. This tree is made of air, Feynman wrote. This is one of my favorite Feynman quotes ever. And it took the carbon out of the air and bound it in using the flaming heat of the sun to turn the air into tree. And when you burn logs in your fireplace, It's really beautiful to think that this is being reversed. Now the tree is going, the wood is going back into air and in this flaming, beautiful. dance of the fire that the artist can see is the flaming light of the sun that was bound in to turn the air into tree. And then the ashes is the little residue that didn't come from the air that the tree sucked out of the ground. You know, Feynman said, these are beautiful things. And science just adds, it doesn't subtract. And I feel exactly that way about love and about pistachio ice cream also. I can understand that there is even more nuance to the whole thing, right? At this very visceral level, you can fall in love just as much as someone who knows nothing about neuroscience. But you can also appreciate this even greater beauty in it. Isn't it remarkable that it came about from this completely lifeless universe, just a bunch of hot blob of plasma expanding? And then over the eons, you know, gradually, first, the strong nuclear force decided to combine quarks together into nuclei, and then the electric force bound in electrons and made atoms, and then they clustered from gravity, and you got planets and stars and this and that. natural selection came along and the genes had their little thing and you started getting what went from seeming like a completely pointless universe that was just trying to increase entropy and approach heat death into something that looked more goal-oriented. Isn't that kind of beautiful? And then this goal-orientedness through evolution got ever more sophisticated where you got ever more... And then you started getting this thing which is kind of like DeepMind's mu zero and steroids self the ultimate self play is not what what DeepMind's AI does against itself to get better at go. It's what all these little quirk blobs did against each other in the game of survival of the fittest. Now when you had really dumb bacteria living in a simple environment, there wasn't much incentive to get intelligent. But then The life made the planet more complex, and then there was more incentive to get even smarter, and that gave the other organisms more of incentive to also get smarter. And then here we are now, just like Mu Zero learned to become world master at the go and chess from playing against itself, by just playing against itself. All the quarks here on our planet and electrons have, created giraffes and elephants and humans and love. I just find that really beautiful and to me that just adds to the enjoyment of love. It doesn't subtract anything. Do you feel a little more careful now?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel way better. That was incredible. So this self-play of quarks Taking back to the beginning of our conversation a little bit, there's so many exciting possibilities about artificial intelligence understanding the basic laws of physics. Do you think AI will help us unlock, there's been quite a bit of excitement throughout the history of physics of coming up with, more and more general, simple laws that explain the nature of our reality. And then the ultimate of that would be a theory of everything that combines everything together. Do you think it's possible that, well, one, we humans, but perhaps AI systems will figure out a theory of physics that unifies all the laws of physics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it's absolutely possible. I think it's very clear that we're gonna see a great boost to science. We're already seeing a boost actually from machine learning helping science. Alpha fold was an example, you know, decades old protein folding problem. So, and gradually, yeah, unless we go extinct by doing something dumb like we discussed, I think it's very likely that our understanding of physics will become so good that our technology will no longer be limited by human intelligence, but instead be limited by the laws of physics. So our tech today is limited by what we've been able to invent, right? I think as AI progresses, it'll just be limited by the speed of light and other physical limits, which will mean It's gonna be just dramatically beyond where we are now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's a fundamentally mathematical pursuit of trying to understand the laws that govern our universe from a mathematical perspective? So almost like if it's AI, it's exploring the space of theorems and those kinds of things. or is there some other, is there some other more computational ideas, more sort of empirical ideas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're both, I would say. It's really interesting to look out at the landscape of everything we call science today. So here you come down with this big new hammer, it says machine learning on it, and ask, you know, where are there some nails that you can help with here, that you can hammer? Ultimately, if machine learning gets to the point that it can do everything, better than us is we'll be able to help across the whole space of science. But maybe we can anchor it by starting a little bit right now near term and see how we kind of move forward. So like right now, First of all, you have a lot of big data science, right? Where, for example, with telescopes, we are able to collect way more data every hour than a grad student can just pour over like in the old times, right? And machine learning is already being used very effectively, even at MIT, right? To find planets around other stars, to detect exciting new signatures of new particle physics in the sky and to detect the, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that we call gravitational waves caused by enormous black holes crashing into each other halfway across the observable universe. Machine learning is running and ticking right now, doing all these things, and it's really helping all these experimental fields. There is a separate front of physics, computational physics, which is getting an enormous boost also. So we had to do all our computations by hand, right? people would have these giant books with tables of logarithms, and oh my God, it pains me to even think how long time it would have taken to do simple stuff. Then we started to get little calculators and computers that could do some basic math for us. Now, what we're starting to see is kind of a shift from GOFI, computational physics, to neural network, Computational physics, what I mean by that is most computational physics would be done by humans programming in the intelligence of how to do the computation into the computer. Just as when Garry Kasparov got his posterior kicked by IBM's Deep Blue in chess, humans had programmed in exactly how to play chess. Intelligence came from the humans, it wasn't learned, right? Mu zero, can beat not only Kasparov in chess, but also Stockfish, which is the best sort of go-fi chess program by learning. And we're seeing more of that now, that shift beginning to happen in physics. So let me give you an example. So lattice QCD is an area of physics whose goal is basically to take the periodic table and just compute the whole thing from first principles. This is not the search for theory of everything. We already know the theory that's supposed to produce this output, the periodic table, which atoms are stable, how heavy they are, all that good stuff. They're spectral lines. It's a theory, lattice QCD. You can put it on your T-shirt. Our colleague Frank Wilczek got the Nobel Prize for working on it. But the math is just too hard for us to solve. We have not been able to start with these equations and solve them to the extent that we can predict, oh yeah, And then there is carbon, and this is what the spectrum of the carbon atom looks like. But awesome people are building these supercomputer simulations where you just put in these equations and you make a big... cubic lattice of space, or actually it's a very small lattice because you're going at the subatomic scale, down to the subatomic scale, and you try to solve this. But it's just so computationally expensive that we still haven't been able to calculate things as accurately as we measure them in many cases. And now machine learning is really revolutionizing this. So my colleague Fiola Shanahan at MIT, for example, she's been using this really cool machine learning technique called normalizing flows, where she's realized she can actually speed up the calculation dramatically by having the AI learn how to do things faster. Another area like this where we suck up an enormous amount of supercomputer time to do physics is black hole collisions. So now that we've done the sexy stuff of detecting a bunch of this with LIGO and other experiments, we want to be able to know what we're seeing, and so it's a very simple conceptual problem. It's the two-body problem. Newton solved it for classical gravity hundreds of years ago, but the two-body problem is still not fully solved." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For black holes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and Einstein's gravity, because they won't just orbit each other forever anymore, two things. They give off gravitational waves, and eventually they crash into each other. And the game, what you wanna do is you wanna figure out, okay, what kind of wave comes out as a function of the masses of the two black holes, as a function of how they're spinning relative to each other, etc. And that is so hard. It can take months of supercomputer time and massive numbers of cores to do it, you know. Wouldn't it be great if you can use machine learning to greatly speed that up, right? Now you can use the expensive old Gophi calculation as the truth and then see if machine learning can figure out a smarter, faster way of getting the right answer. Yet another area of computational physics. These are probably the big three that suck up the most computer time. Lattice QCD, black hole collisions, and cosmological simulations, where you take not a subatomic thing and try to figure out the mass of the proton, but you take something that's enormous and try to look at how all the galaxies get formed in there. There again, there are a lot of very cool ideas right now about how you can use machine learning to do this sort of stuff better. The difference between this and the big data is you kind of make the data yourself, right? And then finally, we're looking over the physical landscape and seeing what can we hammer with machine learning, right? So we talked about experimental data, big data, discovering cool stuff that we humans then look more closely at. Then we talked about taking the expensive computations we're doing now and figuring out how to do them much faster and better with AI. And finally, let's go really theoretical. So things like discovering equations, having deep fundamental insights. This is something closest to what I've been doing in my group. We talked earlier about the whole AI Feynman project, where if you just have some data, how do you automatically discover equations that seem to describe this well, that you can then go back as a human and work with and test and explore. And you asked a really good question also about if this is sort of a search problem in some sense. That's very deep, actually, what you said, because it is. Suppose I ask you to prove some mathematical theorem. What is a proof in math? It's just a long string of steps, logical steps that you can write out with symbols. And once you find it, it's very easy to write a program to check whether it's a valid proof or not. So why is it so hard to prove it then? Well, because there are ridiculously many possible candidate proofs you could write down, right? if the proof contains 10,000 symbols, even if there were only 10 options for what each symbol could be, that's 10 to the power 1,000 possible proofs, which is way more than there are atoms in our universe, right? So you could say it's trivial to prove these things. You just write a computer, generate all strings, and then check, is this a valid proof? No. Is this a valid proof? No. And then you just keep doing this forever. But there are a lot of, but it is fundamentally a search problem. You just want to search the space of all those, all strings of symbols to find the one that is the proof, right? And there's a whole area of machine learning called search. How do you search through some giant space to find the needle in the haystack? It's easier in cases where there's a clear measure of good, like you're not just right or wrong, but this is better and this is worse. You can maybe get some hints as to which direction to go in. That's why we talked about neural networks work so well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's such a human thing of that moment of genius of figuring out the intuition of good, essentially. I mean, we thought that that was... Or is it? Maybe it's not, right? We thought that about chess, right? Exactly. That the ability to see like 10, 15, sometimes 20 steps ahead, was not a calculation that humans were performing. It was some kind of weird intuition about different patterns, about board positions, about the relative positions, somehow stitching stuff together. And a lot of it is just like intuition. But then you have like Alpha, I guess Zero be the first one that did, the self-play, it just came up with this, it was able to learn through self-play mechanism, this kind of intuition. But just like you said, it's so fascinating to think within the space of totally new ideas, can that be done in developing theorems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We know it can be done by neural networks, because we did it with the neural networks in the craniums of the great mathematicians of humanity, right? And I'm so glad you brought up AlphaZero, because that's the counterexample. It turned out we were flattering ourselves when we said intuition is something different. Only humans can do it. It's not information processing. It used to be that way. Again, it's really instructive, I think, to compare the chess computer Deep Blue that beat Kasparov with AlphaZero that beat Lee Sedol at the goal. Because for Deep Blue, there was no intuition. Humans had programmed in some intuition. After humans had played a lot of games, they told the computer, you know, count the pawn as one point, the bishop as three points, the rook as five points, and so on. You add it all up, and then you add some extra points for past pawns, and subtract if the opponent has it, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then what Deep Blue did was just search. just very brute force, tried many, many moves ahead, all these combinations in a pruned tree search, and it could think much faster than Kasparov, and it won, right? And that, I think, inflated our egos in a way it shouldn't have, because people started to say, yeah, yeah, it's just brute force search, but it has no intuition. AlphaZero really popped our bubble there, because what AlphaZero does, yes, it does also do some of that tree search, but it also has this intuition module, which in geek speak is called a value function, where it just looks at the board and comes up with a number for how good is that position. The difference was no human told it how good the position is. It just learned it. And Mew Zero is the coolest or scariest of all, depending on your mood, because the same basic AI system will learn what the good board position is, regardless of whether it's chess, or Go, or Shogi, or Pac-Man, or Lady Pac-Man, or Breakout, or Space Invaders, or any number, a bunch of other games. You don't tell it anything, and it gets this intuition after a while for what's good. So this is very hopeful for science, I think, because if it can get intuition for what's a good position there, maybe it can also get intuition for what are some good directions to go if you're trying to prove something. I often, one of the most fun things in my science career is when I've been able to prove some theorem about something, and it's very heavily intuition guided, of course. I don't sit and try all random strings. I have a hunch that, you know, This reminds me a little bit of about this other proof I've seen for this thing. So maybe I first, what if I try this? Nah, that didn't work out. But this reminds me actually, the way this failed reminds me of that. So combining the intuition that, with all these brute force capabilities, I think it's gonna be able to help physics too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there'll be a day when an AI system being the primary contributor, let's say 90% plus, wins a Nobel Prize in physics? Obviously, they'll give it to the humans, because we humans don't like to give prizes to machines. It'll give it to the humans behind the system. You could argue that AI has already been involved in some Nobel prizes, probably, maybe some to the black holes and stuff like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we don't like giving prizes to other life forms. If someone wins a horse racing contest, they don't give the prize to horse either. It's true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you think that we might be able to see something like that in our lifetimes when AI, so like the first system I would say that makes us think about a Nobel Prize seriously is like AlphaFold is making us think about, in medicine physiology, a Nobel Prize, perhaps discoveries that are a direct result of something that's discovered by AlphaFold. Do you think in physics we might be able to see that in our lifetimes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think what's probably going to happen is more of a blurring of the distinctions. Today, if somebody uses a computer to do a computation that gives them the normal price, nobody's gonna dream of giving the price of the computer. They're gonna be like, that was just a tool. I think for these things also, people are just gonna, for a long time, view the computer as a tool. But what's gonna change is the ubiquity of machine learning. I think at some point in my lifetime, finding a human physicist who knows nothing about machine learning is going to be about almost as hard as it is today finding a human physicist who doesn't says, oh, I don't know anything about computers, or I don't use math. It would just be a ridiculous concept." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the thing is, There is a magic moment though, like with AlphaZero, when the system surprises us in a way where the best people in the world truly learn something from the system in a way where you feel like it's another entity. Like the way people, the way Magnus Carlsen, the way certain people are looking at the work of AlphaZero, it truly is no longer a tool in the sense that it doesn't feel like a tool. It feels like some other entity. So there is a magic difference where you're like, if an AI system is able to come up with an insight, that surprises everybody in some major way that's a phase shift in our understanding of some particular science or some particular aspect of physics. I feel like that is no longer a tool. And then you can start to say, that they could perhaps deserve the prize. So for sure, the more important, the more fundamental transformation of the 21st century science is exactly what you're saying, which is probably everybody will be doing machine learning. It's to some degree, like if you want to be successful at unlocking the mysteries of science, you should be doing machine learning. But it's just exciting to think about like whether there'll be one that comes along that's super surprising and they'll make us question like who the real inventors are in this world. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think the question of isn't if it's gonna happen but when and but it's important in my mind the time when that happens is also More or less the same time when we get artificial general intelligence. Yes, and then we have a lot of bigger things to worry about than whether we should get the Nobel Prize or not, right? Because when you have machines that can outperform our best scientists at science, they can probably outperform us at a lot of other stuff as well, which can, at a minimum, make them incredibly powerful agents in the world. And I think it's a mistake to think we only have to start worrying about loss of control when machines get to AGI across the board, when they can do everything, all our jobs. Long before that, they'll be hugely influential. We talked at length about how the hacking of our minds with algorithms trying to get us glued to our screens, right, has already had a big impact on society. That was an incredibly dumb algorithm in the grand scheme of things, right? Just supervised machine learning, yet that had huge impact. So I just don't want us to be lulled into a false sense of security and think there won't be any societal impact until things reach human level, because it's happening already. And I was just thinking the other week, you know, when I see some scaremonger going, oh, the robots are coming, the implication is always that they're coming to kill us. And maybe you shouldn't have worried about that if you were in Nagorno-Karabakh during the recent war there, but more seriously, the robots are coming right now, but they're mainly not coming to kill us, they're coming to hack us. They're coming to hack our minds into buying things that maybe we didn't need, to vote for people who may not have our best interests in mind. And it's kind of humbling, I think, actually, as a human being, to admit that it turns out that our minds are actually much more hackable than we thought. And the ultimate insult is that we are actually getting hacked by the machine learning algorithms that are, in some objective sense, much dumber than us. But maybe we shouldn't be so surprised because, you know, how do you feel about the cute puppies? Love them. So, you know, you would probably argue that in some across the board measure, you're more intelligent than they are, but boy, are our cute puppies good at hacking us, right? Yeah. They move into our house, persuade us to feed them and do all these things. What do they ever do for us? Yeah. Other than being cute and making us feel good. Right. So if puppies can hack us, maybe we shouldn't be so surprised if. a pretty dumb machine learning algorithm which can hack us too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not to speak of cats, which is another level. And I think we should, to counter your previous point about there, let us not think about evil creatures in this world. We can all agree that cats are as close to objective evil as we can get. But that's just me saying that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Have you seen the cartoon, I think it's maybe The Onion, where this incredibly cute kitten, and it just says, underneath something that thinks about murder all day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. That's accurate. You've mentioned offline that there might be a link between post-biological AGI and SETI. So last time we talked, you've talked about this intuition that we humans might be quite unique in our galactic neighborhood. perhaps our galaxy, perhaps the entirety of the observable universe who might be the only intelligent civilization here, which is, and you argue pretty well for that thought. So I have a few little questions around this. One, a scientific question. In which way would you be, if you were wrong, in that intuition. In which way do you think you would be surprised? Why were you wrong? If we find out that you ended up being wrong, Like, in which dimension? So like, is it because we can't see them? Is it because the nature of their intelligence or the nature of their life is totally different than we can possibly imagine? Is it because the, I mean, something about the great filters and surviving them? Or maybe because we're being protected from signals? All those explanations for, for why we haven't heard a big, loud, red light that says, we're here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there are actually two separate things there that I could be wrong about, two separate claims that I made, right? One of them is, I made the claim, I think most civilizations, going from, simple bacteria-like things to space colonizing civilizations. They spend only a very, very tiny fraction of their life being where we are. That I could be wrong about. The other one I could be wrong about is a quite different statement that I think that actually, I'm guessing, that we are the only civilization in our observable universe from which light has reached us so far that's actually gotten far enough to invent telescopes. So let's talk about maybe both of them in turn, because they really are different. The first one, if we look at the n equals one, the data point we have on this planet, right, so we spent, four and a half billion years futzing around on this planet with life, right? We got, and most of it was pretty lame stuff from an intelligence perspective, you know, bacteria, and then the dinosaurs spent, then things gradually accelerated, right? Then the dinosaurs spent over a hundred million years stomping around here without even inventing smartphones. And, um, And then very recently, we've only spent 400 years going from Newton to us, right? In terms of technology. And look what we've done even when I was a little kid, there was no internet even. So I think it's pretty likely for in this case of this planet, right, that we're either gonna, really get our act together and start spreading life into space, the century, and doing all sorts of great things, or we're going to wipe out. It's a little hard. I could be wrong in the sense that maybe what happened on this Earth is very atypical. And for some reason, what's more common on other planets is that They spend an enormously long time futzing around with ham radio and things, but they just never really take it to the next level for reasons I don't haven't understood. And I'm humble and open to that. But I would bet at least ten to one that our situation is more typical because the whole thing with Moore's law and accelerating technology, it's pretty obvious why it's happening. Everything that grows exponentially, we call it an explosion, whether it's a population explosion or a nuclear explosion, it's always caused by the same thing. It's that the next step triggers a step after that. So today's technology enables tomorrow's technology and that enables the next level. Because the technology is always better, of course, the steps can come faster and faster. On the other question that I might be wrong about, that's the much more controversial one, I think. But before we close out on this thing about, the first one, if it's true that most civilizations spend only a very short amount of their total time in the stage, say, between inventing telescopes or mastering electricity and doing space travel. If that's actually generally true, then that should apply also elsewhere out there. So we should be very, very surprised if we that find some random civilization and we happen to catch them exactly in that very, very short stage. It's much more likely that we find a planet full of bacteria. Or that we find some civilization that's already post-biological and has done some really cool galactic construction projects in their galaxy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would we be able to recognize them, do you think? Is it possible that we just can't? I mean, this post-biological world, Could it be just existing in some other dimension? It could be just all a virtual reality game for them or something, I don't know, that it changes completely where we won't be able to detect." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have to be honestly very humble about this. I think I said earlier, the number one principle of being a scientist is you have to be humble and willing to acknowledge that everything we think just might be totally wrong. Of course, you can imagine some civilization where they all decide to become Buddhists and very inward looking and just move into their little virtual reality and not disturb the flora and fauna around them and we might not notice them. But this is a numbers game, right? If you have millions of civilizations out there or billions of them, all it takes is one with a more ambitious mentality that decides, hey, we are going to go out and settle a bunch of other solar systems and maybe galaxies. And then it doesn't matter if they're a bunch of quiet Buddhists, we're still gonna notice that expansionist one, right? And it seems like quite the stretch to assume that, you know, we know even in our own galaxy that there are probably a billion or more planets that are pretty Earth-like. And many of them were formed over a billion years before ours, so had a big head start. So if you actually assume also that life happens kind of automatically on an Earth-like planet, I think it's quite the stretch to then go and say, okay, so there are another billion civilizations out there that also have our level of tech, and they all decided to become Buddhists, and not a single one decided to go Hitler on the galaxy and say, we need to go out and colonize, and not a single one decided for more benevolent reasons to go out and get more resources. That seems like a bit of a stretch, frankly. And this leads into the second thing you challenged me to be that I might be wrong about. How rare or common is life? You know, so Francis Drake, when he wrote down the Drake equation, multiplied together a huge number of factors. And then we don't know any of them. So we know even less about what you get when you multiply together the whole product. Since then, a lot of those factors have become much better known. One of his big uncertainties was how common is it that a solar system even has a planet? Well, now we know it's very common." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Earth-like planets, we know we have better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are many, many of them, even in our galaxy. At the same time, we have, thanks to, I'm a big supporter of the SETI project and its cousins, and I think we should keep doing this, and we've learned a lot. We've learned that so far, all we have is still unconvincing hints, nothing more, right? And there are certainly many scenarios where it would be dead obvious. If there were 100 million other human-like civilizations in our galaxy, it would not be that hard to notice some of them with today's technology, and we haven't, right? So what we can say is, well, okay, We can rule out that there is a human level civilization on the moon. And in fact, the many nearby solar systems where we, we cannot rule out, of course, that there is something like Earth sitting in a galaxy five billion light years away. But we've ruled out a lot. And that's already kind of shocking, given that there are all these planets there, you know? So like, where are they? Where are they all? That's the classic Fermi paradox. And, So my argument, which might very well be wrong, it's very simple really, it just goes like this. Okay, we have no clue about this. It could be the probability of getting life on a random planet, it could be 10 to the minus one a priori, or 10 to the minus 10, 10 to the minus 20, 10 to the minus 30, 10 to the minus 40. Basically every order of magnitude is about equally likely. When you then do the math and ask how close is our nearest neighbor, it's again equally likely that it's 10 to the 10 meters away, 10 to the 20 meters away, 10 to the 30 meters away. We have some nerdy ways of talking about this with Bayesian statistics and a uniform log prior, but that's irrelevant. This is the simple basic argument. And now comes the data. So we can say, okay, there are all these orders of magnitude, 10 to the 26 meters away. there's the edge of our observable universe. If it's farther than that, light hasn't even reached us yet. If it's less than 10 to the 16 meters away, well, it's within Earth's, it's no farther away than the sun. We can definitely rule that out. So I think about it like this. A priori, before we looked with telescopes, it could be 10 to 10 meters, 10 to 20, 10 to 30, 10 to 40, 10 to 50, 10 to blah, blah, blah. Equally likely anywhere here. And now we've ruled out like this chunk. Yeah, and most of it is outside. And here is the edge of our observable universe already. So I'm certainly not saying I don't think there's any life elsewhere in space. If space is infinite, then you're basically 100% guaranteed that there is. But the probability that there is life, that the nearest neighbor, it happens to be in this little region between where we would have seen it already and where we will never see it. There's actually significantly less than one, I think. And I think there's a moral lesson from this, which is really important, which is to be good stewards of this planet and this shot we've had. It can be very dangerous to say, Oh, you know, it's fine if we nuke our planet or ruin the climate or mess it up with unaligned AI, because I know there is this nice Star Trek fleet out there. They're going to swoop in and take over what we failed. Just like it wasn't the big deal that the Easter Island losers wipe themselves out. That's a dangerous way of lulling yourself into false sense of security. If it's actually the case that it might be up to us, and only us, the whole future of intelligent life in our observable universe, then I think it's both, it really puts a lot of responsibility on our shoulders." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's inspiring. It's a little bit terrifying, but it's also inspiring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's empowering, I think, most of all, because the biggest problem today is, and I see this even when I teach, right? So many people feel that it doesn't matter what they do or we do. We feel disempowered. Oh, it makes no difference. This is about as far from that as you can come. But we realize that what we do on our little spinning ball here in our lifetime could make the difference for the entire future of life in our universe. How empowering is that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, survival of consciousness. I mean, the other, a very similar kind of empowering aspect of the Drake equation is Say there is a huge number of intelligent civilizations that spring up everywhere, but because of the Drake equation, which is the lifetime of a civilization, maybe many of them hit a wall. And just like you said, it's clear that for us, the great filter, the one possible great filter seems to be coming in the next hundred years. So it's also empowering to say, OK, well, we have a chance to not. I mean, the way great filters work, you just get most of them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. Nick Bostrom has articulated this really beautifully, too. You know, every time yet another search for life on Mars comes back negative or something, I'm like, yes, yes. Our odds for us surviving." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You already made the argument in broad brush there. Right. But just unpack it. Right. The point is, we already know. there is a crap ton of planets out there that are Earth-like. And we also know that most of them do not seem to have anything like our kind of life on them. So what went wrong? There's clearly one step along the evolutionary, at least one filter roadblock in going from no life to spacefaring life. And where is it? Is it in front of us or is it behind us, right? If there's no filter behind us and we keep finding all sorts of, of little mice on Mars or whatever, right? That's actually very depressing because that makes it much more likely that the filter is in front of us and that what actually is going on is like the ultimate dark joke that whenever a civilization invents sufficiently powerful tech, it just sets their clock and then after a little while it goes poof for one reason or another and wipes itself out. Wouldn't that be like utterly depressing if we're actually doomed? Whereas if it turns out that there is a great filter early on that for whatever reason seems to be really hard to get to the stage of sexually reproducing organisms or even the first ribosome or whatever, right? Or maybe you have lots of planets with dinosaurs and cows, but for some reason they tend to get stuck there and never invent smartphones. All of those are huge boosts for our own odds because been there, done that, you know? It doesn't matter how hard or unlikely it was. that we got past that roadblock because we already did. And then that makes it likely that the future is in our own hands. We're not doomed. So that's why I think the fact that life is rare in the universe, it's not just something that there is some evidence for, but also something we should actually hope for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the end, the mortality, the death of human civilization that we've been discussing in life, maybe prospering beyond any kind of great filter. Do you think about your own death? Does it make you sad that you may not witness some of the You lead a research group on working some of the biggest questions in the universe, actually, both on the physics and the AI side. Does it make you sad that you may not be able to see some of these exciting things come to fruition that we've been talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, of course it sucks, the fact that I'm going to die. I remember once when I was much younger, my dad made this remark that life is fundamentally tragic. And I'm like, what are you talking about, daddy? And then many years later, I felt, now I feel I totally understand what he means. You know, we grow up, we're little kids. everything is infinite and it's so cool. And then suddenly we find out that actually, you know, you got to start only this is that you can get game over at some point. So of course, it's, it's, it's, it's something that's sad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you afraid?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, not in the sense that I think anything terrible is going to happen after I die or anything like that. No, I think it's really going to be game over. But it's more that... it makes me very acutely aware of what a wonderful gift this is that I get to be alive right now. And it's a steady reminder to just live life to the fullest and really enjoy it because it is finite, you know. And I think actually, and we all get the regular reminders when someone near and dear to us dies that, you know, one day it's gonna be our turn. It adds this kind of focus. I wonder what it would feel like, actually, to be an immortal being, if they might even enjoy some of the wonderful things in life a little bit less, just because there isn't that... Finiteness?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Do you think that could be a feature, not a bug, the fact that we... beings are finite, maybe there's lessons for engineering and artificial intelligence systems as well that are conscious. Do you think it makes, is it possible that the reason the pistachio ice cream is delicious is the fact that you're going to die one day and you will not have all the pistachio ice cream that you could eat because of that fact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let me say two things. First of all, it's actually quite profound what you're saying. I do think I appreciate the pistachio ice cream a lot more knowing that there's only a finite number of times I get to enjoy that. And I can only remember a finite number of times in the past. And moreover, my life is not so long that it just starts to feel like things are repeating themselves in general. It's so new and fresh. I also think, though, that death is a little bit overrated in the sense that it comes from a sort of outdated view of physics and what life actually is. Because if you ask, okay, what is it that's going to die exactly? What am I really? When I say I feel sad about the idea of myself dying, am I really sad that this skin cell here is going to die? Of course not, because it's going to die next week anyway, and I'll grow a new one, right? And it's not any of my cells that I'm associating really with who I really am, nor is it any of my atoms or quarks or electrons. In fact, basically all of my atoms get replaced on a regular basis, right? So what is it that's really me from a more modern physics perspective? It's the information in Processing Amy. That's where my memory, that's my memories, that's my values, my dreams, my passion, my love. That's what's really fundamentally me. And frankly, not all of that will die when my body dies. Like Richard Feynman, for example, his body died of cancer. But many of his ideas that he felt made him very him actually live on. This is my own little personal tribute to Richard Feynman. I try to keep a little bit of him alive in myself. I've even quoted him today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he almost came alive for a brief moment in this conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and this honestly gives me some solace. When I work as a teacher, I feel if I can actually share a bit about myself that my students feel worthy enough to copy and adopt as a part of things that they know or they believe or aspire to, now I live on also a little bit in them, right? Being a teacher is a little bit of what I, that's something also that contributes to making me a little teeny bit less mortal, right? Because I'm not, at least not all gonna die all at once, right? And I find that a beautiful tribute to people we didn't respect. If we can remember them and carry in us the things that we felt was the most awesome about them, right? Then they live on. And I'm getting a bit emotional here, but it's a very beautiful idea you bring up there. I think we should stop this old-fashioned materialism and just equate who we are with our quarks and electrons. There's no scientific basis for that, really. And it's also very uninspiring. Now, if you look a little bit towards the future, right, One thing which really sucks about humans dying is that even though some of their teachings and memories and stories and ethics and so on will be copied by those around them, hopefully, a lot of it can't be copied and just dies with them, with their brain. And that really sucks. That's the fundamental reason why we find it so tragic when someone goes from having all this information there to just gone, ruined, right? With more post-biological intelligence, that's gonna shift a lot, right? The only reason it's so hard to make a backup of your brain in its entirety is exactly because it wasn't built for that, right? If you have a future machine intelligence, there's no reason for why it has to die at all if it wants to, if you want to copy it, whatever it is, into some other, quark blob, right? You can copy not just some of it, but all of it, right? And so, in that sense, you can get immortality because all the information can be copied out of any individual entity. And it's not just mortality that will change if we get more post-biological life. It's also with that, I think, very much the whole individualism we have now, right? The reason that we make such a big difference between me and you is exactly because we're a little bit limited in how much we can copy. Like I would just love to go like this and copy your Russian skills, Russian speaking skills. Wouldn't it be awesome? But I can't. I have to actually work for years if I want to get better at it. But if we were robots." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just copy and paste freely, then that loses completely, it washes away the sense of what immortality is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And also individuality a little bit, right? We would start feeling much more, maybe we would feel much more collaborative with each other if we can just, hey, I'll give you my, you can give me your Russian and I'll give you whatever, and suddenly you can speak Swedish. Maybe that's a bad trade for you, but whatever else you want from my brain, right? And there've been a lot of sci-fi stories about hive minds and so on where experiences can be more broadly shared, And I think one, we don't, I don't pretend to know what it would feel like to be a super intelligent machine, but I'm quite confident that however it feels about mortality and individuality will be very, very different from how it is for us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, for us, mortality and finiteness seems to be pretty important at this particular moment, and so all good things must come to an end, just like this conversation, Max. I saw that coming. Sorry, this is the world's worst transition. I could talk to you forever. It's such a huge honor that you spent time with me. Honor is mine. Thank you so much for getting me essentially to start this podcast by doing the first conversation, making me realize falling in love with conversation in itself. And thank you so much for inspiring so many people in the world with your books, with your research, with your talking, and with the other, like this ripple effect of friends, including Elon and everybody else that you inspire. So thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, first of all, I grew up in the Soviet Union, in a small town near Moscow. called Columna. And I was a smart kid, you know, in school, but mathematics was probably my least favorite subject. Not because I couldn't do it, I was, you know, a straight-A student and I could do all the problems easily, but I thought it was incredibly boring. And since the only math I knew was what was presented at school, I thought that was it. And I was like, what kind of boring subject is this? So what I really liked was physics, and especially quantum physics. So I was buying, I would go to a bookstore and buy popular books about elementary particles and atoms and things like that, and read them, you know, devour them. And so I thought, my dream was to become a theoretical physicist. and to delve into this finer structure of the universe. So then something happened when I was 15 years old. It turns out that a friend of my parents was a mathematician who was a professor at the local college. It was a small college preparing educators, teachers. It's a provincial town. Imagine it's like 117 kilometers from Moscow, which would be something like 70 miles, I guess. You do the math." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like how you remember the number exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, isn't it funny how we remember numbers? So his name was Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Petrov. And if this doesn't remind you of the great works of Russian literature, then you haven't read them. Like War and Peace with the patronymic names. But this was all real, this was all happening. So my mom one day by chance met Yevgeny Yevgenyevich and told him about me. that I was a bright kid and interested in physics. And he said, oh, I wanna meet him. I'm going to convert him into math. And my mom's like, nah, math, he doesn't like mathematics. So I was like, okay, let's see what I can do. So I went to see him, so I'm about 15, and a bit arrogant, I would say, you know, like average teenager. So he says to me, So I hear that you are interested in physics and elementary particles. It's like, yeah, sure. I said, for example, do you know about quarks? And I said, yes, of course I know about quarks. Quarks are the constituents of matter. particles like protons and neutrons, and it was one of the greatest discoveries in theoretical physics in the 60s that those particles were not elementary, but in fact had the smaller parts. And he said, oh, so then you probably know representation theory of the group SU3. I'm like, SU what? So in fact, I wanted to know what were the underpinnings of those theories. I knew the story, I knew the narrative, I knew kind of this basic story of what these particles look like, but how did physicists come up with these ideas? How were they able to theorize them? And so I remembered, like it was yesterday, so he pulls out a book, and it's kind of like a Bible, like a substantial book, and he opens it somewhere in the middle, and there I see the diagrams that I saw in popular books, but in popular books, there was no explanation. And now I see all these weird symbols and equations. It's clear that it is explained in there. Oh my God. He said, you think what they teach you at school is mathematics? It's like, no, this is real mathematics. So I was instantly converted." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That to understand the underpinnings of physical reality, you have to understand what SU3 is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to learn what are groups, what is group SU3, what are representations of SU3. There was a coherent and beautiful, I could appreciate the beauty even though I could not understand heads and tails of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you were drawn to the methodology, the machinery of how such understanding could be attained." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in retrospect, I think what I was really craving was a deeper understanding. And up to that point, the deepest that I could see were those diagrams, or that story that a proton consists of three quarks and a neutron consists of three quarks and they're called up and down and so on. But I didn't know that there was actually underneath, beneath the surface, there was this mathematical theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you can just linger on it, what drew you to quantum mechanics? Is there some romantic notion of understanding the universe? What is interesting to you? Is it the puzzle of it, or is it the philosophical thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now I am looking back, so whatever I say about Edward at 15 is colored by all my experiences that happen in the meantime, my current views and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the people who may not know you, I think your book and your presentations kind of revealed that that 15-year-old is still in there somewhere. Well, I take it as a compliment. Some of the joy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's probably still here now, yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in some way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it was a joy of discovery and the joy of going deeper into the kind of the, to the root, to the deepest structures of the universe, the secrets, the secrets. And we may not discover all of them, we may not be able to understand, but we're going to try and go as far and as deep as we can. I think that's what was the motivating factor in this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's this mystery, there's this dark room, and there's a few of these mathematical physicists that are able to shine a flashlight briefly into there. We'll talk about it, but it also kind of makes me sad that there's so few of your kind that have the flashlight to look into the room. It's interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think there are so few, to be honest, because I find a lot of people are actually interested. If you talk to some people you wouldn't expect to be interested in this, from all walks of life, from people of all kinds of professions. I tell them I'm a mathematician, and they, a mathematician, okay, so that's a separate story. A lot of people, I think, have been traumatized by their experience in their math classes. We can talk about it later. But then they ask me what kind of research I do, and I mentioned that I work on the interface of math and quantum physics. and their eyes light up, and say, oh, quantum physics, or Einstein's relativity, or I'm really curious about it, I watch this podcast, or I watch that podcast, and I've learned this, and it's like, what do you think about that? So I actually find that physicists are doing a great job educating the public, so to speak, in terms of quantum physics. popular books and videos and so on. Mathematicians are behind. We're starting to catch up a little bit, have been starting last 10 years, but we're still behind. But I think people are curious. Science is still very much something that people want to learn because that's our kind of, the best way we know to establish some sort of objective reality, whatever that might be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, to figure out this whole puzzle, to figure out the secrets that the universe holds." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Things that we can agree on, kind of. Even though for me, at this point, I always make an argument that our physical theories always change, they get updated. So you had Newton's theory of gravity, then Einstein's theory superseded it, but in mathematics, it seems that theories don't change. Pythagoras' theorem has been the same for the last 2,500 years. X squared plus y squared equals z squared. We don't expect that next year suddenly it will be z cubed. And so that to me is actually even more, hints even more at how much we are connected to each other. Because Pythagoras' theory, if you think about it, or any other mathematical theorem, means the same thing to anyone in the world today, regardless of their cultural upbringing, religion, ideas, ideology, gender, whatever. nationality, race, whatever, right? And it has meant the same to everyone everywhere, and most likely will mean the same. So that's, to me, kind of an antidote to the kind of divisiveness that we sometimes observe these days, where it seems that we can't agree on anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To the political complexity of two plus two equals five in George Orwell's 1984." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was in the Soviet Union in 1984, and so in many ways, I see that it was prescient, the novel was prescient, but we still have not found a dictator who would actually say two plus two equals five and would demand their citizens to repeat that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The knight is too young. Has not happened yet, okay? Yeah, it does feel like math. and physics are both sneaking up to a deep truth from slightly different angles, and you stand at the crossroads or at the intersection of the two. It's interesting to ask, what do you think is the difference between physics and mathematics, and the way physics and mathematics look at the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is actually an essential difference, which is that physicists are interested in describing this universe. Okay, mathematicians are interested in describing all possible mathematical universes, of which, you know, in some of our work, I still consider myself more of a mathematician than a physicist, my first love for physics notwithstanding. Mathematicians are, in a way, we have more diversity, if you might say, so we are accepting, for instance, our universe has three spatial dimensions and one time dimension, right? So what I mean is that. Allegedly. Allegedly. Observed, but that we can observe today, right? So of course there are theories where there are some hidden dimensions as well. Well, let's just say observed dimensions. So this tabletop has two dimensions because you can have two axis, two coordinate axis, X and Y, but then there is also a third one to describe the space of this room. And then there's a time dimension. So realistic theories of physics have to be about spaces of three dimensions or space-time, so four dimensions. But mathematically, we are just as interested in theories in 10 space-time dimensions, or 11, or 25, or whatever, or infinite dimensional spaces, you know? So that's the difference. On the other hand, I have to give it to the physicists, we don't have the same satisfaction that they have of having their theories confirmed by an experiment. We don't get to play with big machines like LHC in Geneva, a large hadron collider that recently discovered the Higgs boson and some other things. For us, it's all like a mental exercise in some sense. We prove things by using rules of logic. And that's our way of confirming, experimental confirmation, if you will. But I think we kind of, I kind of envy a little bit my friends physicists that they get to experience this sort of, these big toys, you know, and play with them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it does seem that sometimes, as you've spoken about, abstract mathematical concepts map to reality, and it seems to happen quite a bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, so mathematics underpins physics, obviously. It's a language. The book of nature, as Galileo famously said, is written in the language of mathematics. And the letters in it are the circles, triangles, and squares. and those who don't know the language, I'm paraphrasing, are left to wander in a dark labyrinth. That's a famous quote from Galileo, which is very true and has become even more true more recently in theoretical physics in the most sort of far out parts of the theoretical physics that have to do with elementary particles and as well as the structure of the cosmos at the large scale." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think of, Max Tegmark wrote a book, Mathematical Universe. So do you think, just lingering on that point, you think at the end of the day, the future generations will all be mathematicians? Meaning the ones that deeply understand the way the universe works. At the core, is it just mathematics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the core of, you know, I would say mathematics is one half of the core. So the book is called Love and Math. So these are the two pillars. In my view. In other words, you can't cover everything by math. So mathematics gives you tools, it gives you kind of a clear vision. But mathematics by itself is not enough for one to have a harmonious and balanced life. So I am suspicious of any theory that declares that everything is mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So math can generate things that are beautiful, but it can't explain why. It's beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Math, you could say, is a way to discern patterns, to find regularities in the universe, and both physical and mental universe. Mathematics explores the mind as much as it explores the physical world around us, and it helps us to find those patterns. which makes our perception more sophisticated, our ability to perceive things such as beauty. It sharpens our ability to see beauty, to understand beauty. So our world becomes more complex from thinking that Earth is flat, we go to realizing that it is round, that it's shaped as a sphere so that we can actually travel around the Earth, so there isn't a place where we hit the end, so to speak. And then proceeding in the same vein, then Einstein's general relativity theory tells us that our space-time is not flat either. This is much harder to imagine, a bent three-dimensional or four-dimensional space or four-dimensional space-time, because this idea that the space around us is flat is so deeply entrenched. And yet we know from this theory and from the experiments that have confirmed it that a ray of light bends around a star as if being attracted by the force of gravity. But in fact, the force of gravity is the bending. It's just that it's not only the bending of the space, it's also the bending of space-time. There is a curvature, not only between spatial dimensions, the way parallels and meridians come together. In the small scale, they look like perpendicular lines, but if you zoom out, you see that the space, they're curving the space. They are sort of the tracks along which the space gets curved. That would be the curvature of spatial dimensions. but in fact now throwing time, and one time, imagine a sphere which has one of the meridians correspond to time, and parallels correspond to space. I can't imagine it, but I can write mathematical formula expressing that curvature, and that's, in fact, that curvature is responsible for the force of gravity attraction between, the sort of simplest instantiation of it, attraction between two planets, or between two human beings. Would that matter?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yet the time, bending time, it's not very nice what that theory did to time because it feels like the marching of time forward is fundamental to our human experience. The arrow of time. marching forward nicely, seems to be the only way we can understand the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the fact that you can start- Up to now, up to now. There are people who claim that they can, that they possess other ways of experiencing it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So truly can visualize messing with time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, messing with time, but not necessarily messing with time, because one point of view is that, you know, I think, who was it, I think William Blake, who wrote that eternity loves time production. So one point of view is that it is eternity which is fundamental, where time stands still, which our mind conceptualizes as the time. But in fact, it's not something mystical. If you think about it, when you're really absorbed in something, Time does stand still, and then you look at the clock and it's like, oh my God, two hours have passed, and it felt like a couple of seconds. When you are absorbed, when you are in love, when you are passionate about something, when you are creating something, we lose ourselves and we lose the sense of time, and space for that matter, you see? So there is only that which is happening, that creative process. So I think that this is familiar to all of us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we may be actually the closest to the truth at that moment, to the true natural reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yes, so then there is a point of view that this is where we are, we are who we are, at our sort of fundamental, at our fundamental level. And after that, the mind comes in and tries to conceptualize it. It's like, oh, because I was writing something. I was writing a book, I was painting this painting, or maybe I was watching this painting and got totally absorbed in it, or I fell in love with this person, that's what happened. But in the moment when it's happening, you're not thinking about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're just there. Yeah, we construct narratives around the set of memories that seem to have happened in sequence, or at least that's the way we tell ourselves that. And we also have a bunch of weird human things, like consciousness and the experience of free will, that we chose a set of actions as the time unrolled forward. And we are intelligent, conscious agents taking those actions. But what if all of that is just an illusion, a nice narrative we tell ourselves? That's a really difficult thing to internalize." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And imagine that to make it really catch 22. Imagine that our minds are set up in such a way that they can't approach the world or experience otherwise. So in other words, to understand, to see that from a more kind of all-encompassing point of view, we have to step out of the mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I wonder what's the more honest way to look at things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I think we like to play with time. I think we like to play with these experiences, with all the drama of it, with all the memories, with all the tribulations. We love it, we love it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it. Or Earth loves it. The evolutionary process somehow loves it. Whatever this thing that's being created here on Earth, it seems to, like to allow its children to play with certain truths that they hold, subjective truths that are useful for the competition or whatever, this dance that we call life, broadly defined, not just humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I'm glad you mentioned that because what I find fascinating is that the greatest scientists are on record saying that when they were making their discoveries, they felt like children. So Isaac Newton said to myself, I only appeared as a child playing on the seashore and every once in a while finding a prettier pebble or a prettier shell, whilst I think he said something like the infinite ocean of knowledge was lying before me. Alexander Grothendieck who probably was the greatest mathematician of the second half of the 20th century, the French mathematician, Alexander Grotendieck, wrote that discovery is a privilege of a child, a child who is not afraid to be wrong once again, to look like an idiot, to try this and that, I'm paraphrasing, and go through trial and error. That is, for them, in other words, for them, that innocence of a child who is not afraid, who has not yet been told that it cannot be done, okay? That was essential to scientific pursuit, to scientific discovery. And now, also, compare it to Pablo Picasso, a great artist, right? So who said, every child is an artist. The question is how to preserve that as we grow up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you struggle with that? You're one of the most respected mathematicians in the world. You're Berkeley, you're like. there's a statue, you're supposed to be very like, you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sometimes I joke, I say, I take an elevator to the top of the ivory tower every day, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're supposed to speak like royalty. Do you struggle to strip all of that away to rediscover the child when you're thinking about problems, when you're teaching, when you're thinking about the world? Absolutely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's part of being human, because when we grow up, I mean, all of them, all of these great scientists. I think they were so great, in part, because they were able, they maintained that connection, okay, and that fascination, that vulnerability, that spontaneity, you know, and kind of looking at the world through the eyes of a child. But it's difficult because, you know, you go through education system, and for many of us, it's not especially, helpful for maintaining that connection, that we're being told certain things that we accept, take for granted, and so on, little by little. And also, we get hit every time we act differently, every time we act in a way that doesn't fit the pattern. We get punished by the teachers, we get punished by parents, and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And don't get respect when you act childlike in your thinking, when you are fearless and looking like an idiot. That's right. Because there's a hierarchy in society." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nobody wants to look like an idiot, you know? Once you start growing up, or you think you're growing up. In the beginning, you don't even think in these terms. You just play, you're just playing. And you are open to possibilities, to these infinite possibilities that this world presents to us. So how do we, I'm not saying that education system should not be also kind of taming that a little bit. Obviously, the goal is balance, that acquiring knowledge, so that we can be more mature and more discerning, more discriminating in terms of our approach to the world, in terms of our connections to the world and people and so on. But how do we do that while also preserving that innocence of a child? And my guess is that there is no formula for this. It is A life is an answer, every life, every human being is one particular answer to how do we find balance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one imperfect approximation, approximate solution to the problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But we can look up to the great ones who have credentials, in the sense that they have shown and they have proved that they have done something that other humans appreciate, our civilization appreciates, say Isaac Newton or Alexander Grotendieck or Pablo Picasso. So they have established their right to speak about these matters, and we cannot dismiss them as mere madmen. they say, okay, well, if the same thing was said by somebody who never achieved anything in their field of endeavor, it would be easy for us to dismiss it. But when it comes from someone like Isaac Newton, we take notice. So I think there's something important that they teach us. And especially today, in this age of AI, of course there's a big elephant in the room always, which is called AI, right? And so I know that you are an expert in the subject, and we are living now in this very interesting times of new AI systems coming online pretty much every couple of weeks. So to me, that whole debate about what is artificial intelligence, where is it going, what should we do about it? needs an influx of this type of considerations that we've just been talking about. That, for instance, the idea that inspiration, creativity, doesn't come from accumulation of knowledge. Because obviously a child has not yet accumulated knowledge. And yet, the great ones are on record saying that a child has a capacity to create. And an adult, credits the inner child for this capacity to create as an adult, you see. That's kind of weird if we take the point of view that everything is computation, everything is accumulation of knowledge, that just bigger and bigger data sets, finer and finer neural networks, and then we will be able to replicate human consciousness. If we take that point of view, then what I just said kind of doesn't fit. Because obviously a child has not been fed any training data, as far as we know, yet they're perfectly capable of distinguishing between cats and dogs, for instance, and stuff like that. But much more than that, they're also capable of that wide-eyed sort of perspective. So can it really be captured, that perspective, that sense of awe, can it really be captured by computation alone? I actually, I don't know the answer, so I'm not sort of trying to present a particular point of view. I'm just trying to question any theory that starts out by saying life is this, or consciousness is this. Because when you look more closely, you recognize that there are some other things at play which do not quite fit the narrative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and it's hard to know where they come from. It's also possible that the evolutionary process has created... It is computation, and the child is actually not a blank slate, but the result of one of the most incredible, several billion year old computations that had explored all kinds of aspects of life on Earth, of war and love and terror and ambition. and invention, all of that, from the bacteria to today. So that young child is not a blank slate. They're actually hold within them the knowledge of several billions of years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, the question is whether, as a child, you carry that in the form of the kind of computational algorithms that we are aware today. You see, what strikes me as unlikely is that, how should I put it? How interesting that you are a computer scientist, and there are other people, I have studied computer science, so I know a little bit, and so it's tempting to say, oh, the whole world is computer science, or is based, can be explained by computer science. Why? Because it makes me feel good, because I have mastered it, I have learned it, my ego is very happy, and people come to me, and they look up to me and they revere me, kind of like priests in old days when religion was paramount, when you would tend to explain things in theological, religious terms. Today, science has progressed. There are fewer people who kind of buy into official religion, you know? So, We have this urge, I suppose, to explain and to know and to dissect and to analyze and to conceptualize, which is a wonderful quality that we have, and we should definitely pursue that. But I find it a little bit unlikely that the universe is just exactly what I have learned. and not something that I don't know, you see?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's a lot of interesting aspects to the current large language models that one perspective of it I think speaks to the love in math that you talked to, which is they're trained on human data from the internet. So at its best, a large language model, like GPT-4, captures the magic of the human condition on its full display, its full complexity. And so it's mimicking, it's trying to compress all the weirdness of humans, of all the debates and discussions, the perspectives, all the different ways that people approach solving different problems, all of that compressed. So we live, we're each individual ants. We only have like, we have a family, we interact with a few little ants. And here comes AI that's able to summarize, like a TLDR, report of humanity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's the beauty of it. So I embrace it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm very impressed by it. I wonder if it can be very impressive. meaning way more impressive in being able to fake or simulate or emulate a human." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Fake, I'm glad you mentioned that, because that seems to be the mantra. Fake it till you make it, isn't it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Isn't that what we all do, though?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, well, yes, we do that, but we also do other things. We can be truly in love, we can be truly inspired when it is not fake. I do believe, call me romantic, okay, but I do believe And this is a very good, I'm glad you're putting it in these terms because I've had conversations like that. that, yeah, fake it till you make it, but that's what humans do. Yes, we do that, but not all the time. And that is debatable, because also I speak from my own experience, and that's where the first-person perspective comes in, the subjective view. I cannot prove to you, for instance, or anyone else, that there are certain moments in my life where I am genuine, I am pure, so to speak, when it's not faking it. But I do have a tremendous, a certainty of it, and that's a subjective certainty. Now, I am, as a scientist, I'm also trained to give more credibility to objective arguments that are things that can be reproduced, things that I can demonstrate, that I can show. But as I get older, so we say, as I get more mature, hopefully, I'm starting to question why I am not giving as much credibility to my subjective understanding of the world, the kind of the first-person perspective, when actually modern science has already sold on that. You know, quantum mechanics has shown unambiguously that the observer is always involved in the observation. Likewise, Gödel's incompleteness theorems, to me, show how essential is the observer of a mathematical theory. For one thing, that's the one who chooses the axioms. And we can talk about this in more detail. Likewise, Einstein's relativity, where Time is relative to the observer, for instance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's brilliant. You're just describing all of these different scales, the observer, what the observer means." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Science of 19th century had the, from modern perspective, and I don't want to offend anybody, had the delusion that somehow you could analyze the world being completely detached from it. We now know, after the landmark achievements of the first half of the 20th century, that this is nonsense, that is simply not true. And this has been experimentally proved time and time again. So to me, I'm thinking maybe it's a hint that I should take my first-person perspective seriously as well and not just rely on kind of objective phenomena, things that can be proved in a traditional sort of objective way by setting up an experiment that can be repeated many times. Maybe I fall in love, the deepest love of my life perhaps, perhaps hasn't happened yet, perhaps I will fall in love, but it's unique, it's a unique event. You can't reproduce it necessarily, you see? So in that sense, you see how these things are closely connected. I think that if we are declaring from the outset that all there is to life is computation in the form of neural networks or something like this, however sophisticated they might be, I think we are from the outset denying to ourselves the possibility that yes, there is a side of me which is not faking it. Yes, there is a side of me which cannot be captured by logic and reason. And you know what another great scientist said, bless Pascal, he said, the heart has its reasons of which the reason knows nothing. And then he also said, the last step of reason is to grasp that there are infinitely many things beyond reason. How interesting, this was not a theologian, this was not a priest, this was not a spiritual guru. It was a hardcore scientist who actually developed, I think, one of the very first calculators. How interesting that this guy also was able to impart on us that wisdom. Now, you can always say that's not the case. But why should we, from the outset, exclude this possibility that there is something to what he was saying? That is my question. I'm not taking sides. What I'm trying to do is to shake a little bit the debate, because most mathematicians that I know, and computer scientists even more so, they're kind of already sold on this. It reminds me of this famous Lord Kelvin's quote from the end of 19th century. There's some debate whether he actually said that. Never let a good story stand in the way of truth. He said, physics is basically finished. All that remains is more precise measurement. So I find a lot of my colleagues are happy to say, everything's finished. We already got it. We got it. We got it. Maybe little tweaks in our language models. So now, here's my question. I'm kind of playing devil's advocate a little bit because I don't see the other side represented that much. And I'm saying, okay, could it be also that if you believe in that, that that becomes your reality? That you can kind of put yourself in a box. where everything is computation, and then you start seeing things as being such. It's confirmation bias, if you will. This also reminds me, I think a good analogy is a friend of mine, Philippe Cauchon, told me that in France there is this literary movement which is called Oulipo, O-U-L-I-P-O. And it's a bunch of writers and mathematicians who create works of literature where in which they basically impose certain constraints. A good example of this is a novel which is called The Void or Disappearance by a writer named Georges Perec, which is a 300 page novel in French. which never uses the letter E, which is the most widely used letter of the French language. So in other words, he set these parameters for himself. I'm going to write a book where I don't use this letter, which is a great experiment, and I applaud it. But it's one thing to do that and to kind of show his gamesmanship, if you will, and his ability as a writer. But it's another thing, if at the end of writing this book, when you finish the book, he would say, letter E actually doesn't exist. And try to convince us that in fact, French language does not have that letter, simply because he was able to go so far without using it, you see. So self-imposed limitation, that's how I see it. And I wonder why. We should do that. Do we really feel the urge to say the world is like that? The world can be explained this way or that way. And I'm saying it, it's a personal question for me because I am addicted to knowledge myself. Hi, my name is Edward. And I'm a knowledge addict, okay? I'm being serious, I'm not being facetious. Up until very recently, maybe a couple of years ago, I simply did not feel comfortable if I could not say, like, give an answer, explanation. It's like, oh, there has to be some explanation. And I try to frantically search for it. Just for somebody like me, a nerd, you know, a left brainiac, and, you know, that's kind of typical for a scientist, for a mathematician, it is incredibly hard just to allow the possibility that it's a mystery, and not to feel the urge to get the answer. It is incredibly hard, but it's possible, and it is liberating. It's a recovering addict to knowledge. Let me say. what you gain from it. For instance, I understand the value of paradoxes. I appreciate paradoxes more. And you know, to use another philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, said, a thinker without paradox is like a lover without passion. A paltry mediocrity. Right? So, and you know, Niels Bohr, Niels Bohr said, in similar vein, the great Danish also, something about Danes. I think it all started with Hamlet. He said, the opposite of a simple truth is a falsity, but the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. In other words, things are not black and white, you know? And I would even venture to say the most interesting things in life are like that. The ones which are ambiguous. It's an electron, a particle, or a wave. It depends how you set up an experiment. It will reveal itself as this or that, depending on how you set up an experiment. This bottle, if you project it down onto the table, you will see more or less a square. If you project it onto a wall, you will see a different shape. A naive question would be, is it this or that? We understand that it's neither. But both projections reveal something. They reveal different sides of it. A paradox is like that. It's only paradoxical if we are confined in a particular vision, if we are wedded to a particular point of view. It's a harbinger, if you will, of a possibility of seeing things as they are, more sophisticated than we thought before, you see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's such a difficult idea for science to grapple with, that I don't know how, there's so many ways to describe this, but you could say maybe that the subjective experience of the world from an observer is actually fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But we know that. Our best physical theories tell us that unambiguously. In quantum mechanics, actually, Heisenberg, I think, captured it the best when he said, what we observe is not reality itself, but reality subjected to our method of questioning. When I talk about electrons, for instance, there is a very specific way in which this is realized. There is a so-called double-slit experiment. For those who don't know, you have a screen and you have an emitter from which you shoot electrons, and in between you put another screen which has two vertical slits parallel to each other. If we were shooting tennis balls, each ball would go through one slit or another and then hit the screen behind this or that slit. So you would have, let's say they're colored, they're painted. So there'll be sort of bumps or spots of paint behind this or that. But that's not what happens when we shoot electrons. We see an interference pattern as if we were actually sending a wave so that each electron it seems like each electron goes through both slits at once, and then has the audacity to interfere with itself, where at some points, two crests would amplify, and at some points, a crest and a trough would cancel each other. Yet, so that suggests, okay, so electron is a wave, not so fast, because if you put a detector behind one of the slits and you say, I'm going to capture you, I'm going to find out which slit you went through, the pattern will change, and it will look like they're particles. So that's a very concrete realization of the idea that depending on how we set up an experiment, we will see different results. And the problem is that our psyche, I feel, is lagging behind, in part because maybe our scientists are not doing such a great job, so I take responsibility for this, that why haven't I explained this properly? I tried in a bunch of talks and so on, so now I'm talking about this again. Our psyche kind of is lagging behind. We're still, even though our science has progressed so much from the certainty and the determinism and all of that of the 19th century, our psyche is somehow still attached to those ideas. The ideas of causality, of this naive determinism that the world is a bunch of billiard balls hitting each other, driven by some blind forces. That's not at all like it is. And we've known this for over, well, for about 100 years at least." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know? And you call this self-imposed limitation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is a self-imposed limitation when we pretend that, for instance, that these naive ideas of 19th century physics are still valid, and then start applying them to our lives, and then also derive conclusions from it. And for instance, people say, there is no free will, why? Oh, because the world is just a bunch of billiard balls. Where is the free will? But excuse me, didn't you get the memo that this has been debunked thoroughly by the so-called quantum mechanics, which is our best scientific theory? This is not some kind of bullshit or some kind of you know, concoction of a madman, this is our scientific theory, which has been confirmed by experiment. So we should pay attention to that. But of course, it's not just self-imposed limitation. Unfortunately, in this case, there is a big issue of education. So a lot of people are not aware of it through no fault of their own, because they were never properly taught that. Because our system is broken, education system is broken, especially in math. And then our, so where do you get information? You get information from our scientists who actually write popular books and so on, which is a great thing that they do. But a lot of scientists somehow, when it comes to explaining the laws of physics, they're doing a fantastic job. talking about this phenomenon, for instance, double-slit experiment and things like that. But then, interviewed by a science magazine about free will and so on, they revert back to 19th century physics as if those developments actually never happened. So to me, this is single most important sort of issue in our popular science, the idea that somehow there is this world out there, but it has nothing to do with me. So I can revel in the intricacies of these particles and their interactions, but completely ignore what implications this has. for my own relationship to physical reality, to my own life, you know? Because it's kind of scary, I guess, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also, what are the tools with which we can talk about the observer, the subjective view on reality? What are the tools with which we could talk about, rigorously talk about free will and consciousness? What are the tools of mathematics that allow that? I don't think we have those tools." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "because we haven't been taught properly. So actually, tools are there. For instance, I think, well, here we have to, I have to say, my conviction is that everybody knows. In the heart of hearts, everybody knows that there is that, there is something ineffable, there is something mysterious. And in fact, you know, Somehow, immediately I feel the impulse to quote somebody on this, because as if my own opinion doesn't count." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a long-dead expert that hasn't said it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even Einstein said that. See, look at me. I am supposedly this smart, intelligent person. I am afraid to say it and own it myself. I have to find confirmation. I have to find an authority who agrees with me. And in fact, it's not so difficult to find because Albert Einstein literally said the most important thing in life is the mysterious, okay? He actually said that. There are some quotes which are attributed to him, which he never said, but this he did. I investigated, okay? But more importantly, how do you feel about it? I think that everybody knows. But, in other words, he also said, Einstein, imagination is more important than knowledge, okay? And he explained, for knowledge is always limited. Whereas imagination embraces the entire world, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research, he says. And he says, I am enough of an artist to follow my intuition and imagination. That's Albert Einstein, again. And I feel the same way, to be honest. If I think about my own mathematical research, it's never linear. It's never like, give me more data, give me more data, give me more data, boom, the glass is full, and then I come up with a discovery. No, it's always felt as a jump, as a leap. And I have actually been studying various examples in history of mathematics of some fundamental discoveries, like discovery of complex numbers, like square root of negative one. I wonder if a large language model could actually ever come up with the idea that square root of negative one is something that is essential or meaningful. Because if all the information that you get that all the knowledge that had been accumulated up to that point tells you that you cannot have a square root of a negative number. Why? Because if you had such a square root, we know that if you square it, you get a negative number. But we know that if you square any real number, positive or negative, you will always get a positive number. So, Checkmate, you know, it's over. Square root of negative one doesn't exist. Yet, we know that these numbers make sense, they're called complex numbers, and in fact, quantum mechanics is based on complex numbers. They are essential and indispensable for quantum mechanics. Could one discover that? So to me, that sounds like a discontinuity in the process of discovery. It's a jump. It's a departure. It is like a child who is experimenting. It's like a child who says, I'm not afraid to be an idiot. Everybody says, The adults are saying square root of negative number doesn't exist, but guess what? I'm going to accept it, and I'm going to play with it, and I'm going to see what happens. This is literally how they were discovered. There was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer. He made money, apparently, by compiling astrological readings for the elite of his era. This is 16th century, as one does. A gambler. All around interesting guy. I'm sure we would have an interesting conversation with him. Gerolamo Cardano. He also invented what's called kardanshaft, which is an essential component of a car. Kardanovyval, we say in Russian. So he wrote a book which is called Ars Magna, which is a great art of algebra. And he was writing solutions for the cubic and quartic equations. This is something that is familiar because At school, we study solutions of quadratic equations, equations of degree two. So you have AX squared plus BX plus C equals zero. And there is a formula which solves it using radicals, using square roots. And Cardano was trying to find a similar formula for the cubic and quartic equations, which would start with X cubed or X to the power of four, as opposed to X squared. And in the process of solving these equations, he came up with square root of a negative number, specifically square root of minus 17. And he wrote that I have to forego some mental tortures. to deal with it, but I am going to accept it and see what happens. And in fact, at the end of the calculation, these weird numbers got canceled. They kind of canceled out. And the formula appeared, square root of negative 17, and it's negation. So they kind of conveniently gave the right answer, which did not involve those numbers. So he was like, phew, okay. What does it mean, mental tortures? So you see, from the point of view, of the thinking mind, it is something almost unbearable. It's almost I feel that a large language model, a computer running a large language model trying to do that would just explode. And yet a human mathematician was able to find the courage and inspiration to say, you know what? What's wrong? Why are we so adamant that these things don't exist? That's just our past knowledge. It's based on what our past knowledge is, and knowledge is limited. What if we make the next step? Today, for us mathematicians, complex numbers, that we call them, are not at all mysterious. The idea is simply that You plot real numbers, that is to say, all the whole numbers like 0, 1, and so on, 2, and so on, right? All fractions like 1 half or 3 halves or 4 over 3. But then also numbers like square root of 2 or pi. We plot them as points on the real line. So we draw. This is one of the kind of perennial concepts even in our very poor math curriculum at school. But now imagine that instead of one line, you have one axis, you have a second axis, and so your numbers now have two coordinates, x and y, and you associate to this point with coordinates x and y, The number x, which is a real number, plus y times square root of negative one. This is a graphical geometrical representation of complex numbers, which is not mysterious at all. Now, it took another two or three hundred years for mathematicians to figure that out. But initially, it looked like a completely crazy idea, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So all it is, all a complex number is, is just an expansion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The real part and the imaginary part." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just an expansion of your view of the mathematical world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The fact that you can add them up by adding together the real parts and the imaginary parts, that's easy. But there is also a formula for the product, for the multiplication, which uses the fact that square root of minus one squared is minus one. And the amazing thing is that that product, that multiplication, satisfies the same rules, the same properties that are usual operation of multiplication for real numbers. For instance, there is an inverse for every non-zero number that you can find. Like number five has an inverse, one over five. But one plus I also has an inverse, for instance. You know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was always there in the mathematical universe, but we humans didn't know it. And here comes along this guy who engages in the mental torture, who takes a leap off the cliff of comfort, of like mathematical comfort. Established knowledge. Established knowledge." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And now, obviously, for each sort of fruitful leap like that. There probably were thousands of things which went nowhere. I'm not saying that every leap... It's an open-shooting game. Because, for example, you can try to do the same with three-dimensional space. So you have coordinates x, y, and z. And you can say, oh, if it's one-dimensional, we have a bona fide numerical system called real numbers. If it's two-dimensional, which geometrically is just like this tabletop extended to infinity in all directions, these are complex numbers, and we can define addition and multiplication, and they will satisfy the same properties as real numbers that we're used to. What about three-dimensional space? Is it possible to also define some operation of addition and multiplication on it so that these operations would satisfy properties that we're used to? And the answer is no. You can define addition, but you can't define multiplication, for which there would be the inverse, for instance. So there is something special about the plane, the two-dimensional case. And by the way, the next question would be, what about four-dimensional? In the four-dimensional space, again, you can, and you get what's called quaternions, discovered by an Irish mathematician, Hamilton, in the 19th century. And then in the eight-dimensional, there is something similar called Actonians, and that's about it. So how interesting. These structures exist in dimension one, two, four, and eight, which are all powers of two. Two squared is four, two to the third power is eight. That's one of the bigger mysteries in mathematics, why it is so. So that's a hint, that's a hint of what's missing in our high school curriculum. The kind of fascinating mysteries, yes. So in other words, yes, we resolved this one mystery that we understood that square root of negative one is real, is meaningful. We build a theory to service those, to describe those numbers. Did we find the theory of everything? No, because we then invited other mysteries. Because we pull the veil, so to speak, or we push the frontier, and then new things come, get illuminated, which we couldn't see before. That's how I see the process of discovery in mathematics. It's an endless, limitless pursuit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you comment on what you think this human capability of imagination that Einstein spoke about, of the artists following their intuition in this big Alice in Wonderland world of imagination, what is it? You visit there sometimes. What does it feel like? Yeah, what does it feel like? What is it, what is that place?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It feels like playing, but I think all of us are engaged in that kind of play, no matter, when we do what we love, I think it always feels the same." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's not real, right? So you're describing a feeling, but that place you go to in the imagination, it's bigger than the real world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there is a big conundrum as to whether mathematics is invented or discovered. And mathematicians are divided on this. Nobody knows." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where do you bet your money on, financially? Investment advice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let me tell you something. My views have evolved, okay? When I wrote Love and Math, when I wrote my book, I was squarely on the side of mathematics is discovered. What does it mean? Usually mathematicians or others who have this idea or belief are called Platonists, in honor of the great philosopher Plato, who talked about these absolute perfect forms. So for me, about 10 years ago, the world of mathematics was this world of pure forms, this beautiful, pure forms, which existed outside of space and time, but I was able to connect to it through my mind. and as it were, kind of dive into it and bring treasures back into this world, into this space and time. That's how I viewed the process of mathematical discovery. How nice, how neat, very neat. against the picture, also makes you feel connected to something divine. Allows you this sense of escape from the cruelty and injustice of this world, which I now recognize." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the divine world of forms is stable, reliable." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's something stable. In that world, everything is clear-cut. It's either true or false. How nice, huh? It's very nice. Oh my God. The biggest illusion of all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Allegedly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think now. I think now. I understand why I liked it, because I think that I was very dissatisfied with the was what we call the real world, the world around me, the cruelty, the injustice of it. And I went through certain experiences as a kid which made me love mathematics even more as this place where I could be safe and in control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Made you see the human world as lesser than the mathematical world, as more limited than the mathematical world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, and I think that I think that it's still missing the mark in some sense, because in fact, what I now think, it's a paradoxical, the question whether mathematics is invented or discovered, whether there is this world of pure forms and so on, is another paradoxical question, which doesn't have a simple answer, like whether electron is a particle or a wave. From one point of view, yes, it's true, and just the fact that so many mathematicians today actually subscribe to this idea gives it a certain credibility, because that's what we feel. We do feel that we dive into that mindscape, so to speak, but a very structured mindscape, where I wrote in Love and Math that, you know, the enchanted gardens of platonic reality, you know, where all this fruit grows, you know, and then we might, it gives you this sort of romantic sense of an explorer. And someone may be stuck in a, you know, some provincial town in Russia, for instance. but have the sense of Magellan, of traveling around the world. It's just not in the world that we usually think of. So it's one point of view, but the other point of view is that, yes, it is a human process. Of course it is. I mean, you cannot deny that. It's human beings who have so far discovered new mathematics. And I do not deny the possibility that computer programs will be able to discover new mathematics. but so far it's been humans. So whatever it is, whether it's discovered or invented, it is a human activity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The possibility that paradoxes are actually fundamental to reality and really, really internalizing that, that we exist in a world of not forms but of paradoxes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so it's like what I said. But if you think it's weird, and I agree with you, as a recovering addict to knowledge, but I am liking it more and more because there's so much freedom in it. And like Niels Bohr said, I quoted that earlier, the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. He's pointing out to this fact that And he also said that some things in quantum physics are so complicated, the only way you can speak of them is in poetry. So in other words, what is it about poetry? What is it about art? Why are we so drawn to that? Why are we so captivated by those forms? They are not intellectual, necessarily. When you look at a painting that you like, when you listen to music, that you love, you get lost in it, you get absorbed in it. It can make you cry, it can make you laugh, it can make you remember something, it can make you feel more confident, it can make you feel sad or happy and so on. What is this all about? Is it really just some play between some kind of like cellophane play or some neurons hitting on each other? Is it really that only? Maybe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It could be both. I'm just worried about kids these days that might live in a world of paradoxes. If there's no God, everything is possible. And yet, they'll have a little too much fun. And we have to put a constraint to the fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Have you looked at the world lately?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I haven't checked in in a while." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You think it's perfect the way it is now? The world without paradoxes? The world in which we believe that every question can be answered? as yes or no, that it is this or that, and if you disagree with me, you're my enemy?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wouldn't that be interesting if this 21st century is a transition into seeing the world as a world of paradoxes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm telling you, people predicted that, the age of Aquarius, that the axis of the Earth is rotating relative to the plane in which the Earth goes around the Sun, and the period of this revolution is around 2,000 years. So there is a traditional way of measuring that by these eras, the ages. So the previous one was called the Age of Pisces, because of the constellation of Pisces that it points to, so to speak. And now, as in famous musical hair, they said the Age of Aquarius is upon us. So the different people, they did differently, but somewhere around the time where we are finding ourselves. How interesting, right, is all the strife and all the difficulties the world is experiencing. This might actually be the transition to something more harmonious. Wouldn't it be nice?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's also interesting that people from long ago are able to predict certain things. It's... And it's almost like from long ago, and you've talked about this with Pythagoras, that it seems that they had a deep sense of truth that sort of permeates all of this, even now. So it's not just a linear trajectory of an expanding knowledge. There's a deep truth that permeates the whole thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so that's how I see it. Actually, I gave a talk about Pythagoras and Pythagoreans just a few weeks ago at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. And because of that, I did a kind of a deep dive into the subject. And I learned that I actually totally misunderstood Pythagoras and Pythagoreans, that they were much deeper than I thought. Because most of us remember Pythagoras from the Pythagoras theorem about the right triangles. We also know that Pythagoreans were instrumental in introducing the tuning system for the musical scale, the famous perfect fifth, three halves for the G, for the Sol, compared to the frequency of Do or Si. But actually, they were much more interesting. So for them, numbers were not just clerical devices, not the kind of thing that you would use in accounting only. They were imbued with the divine. And I cannot say that I think we lost it. At least I have lost it. I look at numbers, and I don't really see that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The divine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The divine. They clearly did. And so, Why else, you know, how else would you explain? In other words, divine is, of course, is a term which is, you know, it's a bit loaded, so it's hard to escape that. Let's just say something that more from the world of imagination and intuition than from the world of knowledge, let's just put it this way. They were able to divine, okay, strike that, to intuit, to intuit that, The planets were not revolving. The sun and the planets were not revolving around the Earth. They were the first ones, at least in the Western culture as far as I know. And in fact, Copernicus gave credit to Pythagoreans as being his predecessors. They did not quite have the Copernicus model with the sun in the middle. They had what they called the central fire in the middle. And all the planets and the sun were revolving around. around the central fire, or hearth, they called it hearth. But still, what a departure from the dogma, from the knowledge of the era that the Earth was at the center. So how could they come up with this idea? The reason was, in my opinion, that for them, the movement of celestial bodies was like music. In fact, we call it music universalis, or music of the spheres. For them, the universe was this infinite symphony in which every being, humans, animals, as well as the Earth and other celestial bodies were moving in harmony, like different notes of different instruments in a symphony. And so they applied the same reasoning to the cosmological model as they applied to their model of music. And from that perspective, they could see things deeper than their contemporaries. So in other words, they saw mathematics as a tool, but that tool was not limited to itself. They always knew that there is more. And they knew also that every pattern that you detect It's finite, but the world is infinite. They actually accept that infinity. They believe that infinity is real. And if you discern a pattern, great, you can play with it, and you can use that. It gives you a certain lens through which to see the world in a particular way, which could be beneficial for you to learn more and so on. But they never had the illusion that that was the final word, that they always knew that it's not the whole thing. So there is more. There are more sophisticated patterns that could be discovered using mathematics or otherwise. And I think that what happened was we kind of lost this other side of their teachings. We took their numbers and their idea that you could use mathematics to discern patterns and to find regularities and to explain things about the world. We took that and we ran with it. And we kind of dropped the other idea that in fact, there is another side to it, which is kind of, to us now, we say, oh, That's mystical. But what does it mean, mystical, if it is something that helps you to make great discoveries?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the interesting thing is that the people who are in touch with the mystical among us are often seen as mad. And many of them are, most of them are. But not all of them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not all of them. We mentioned Niels Bohr and Newton and Albert Einstein. But that's where the conundrum is. How do you find the balance between the two? So, the point I'm trying to make, and this is what I feel, if you ask me what I find most important today, what makes me excited and enthusiastic and passionate, is this idea of balance. So, you know, Nietzsche wrote this book in the 19th century called The Birth of Tragedy, and he presented this theory, which I think is kind of very useful, of these two sides of a human. One that comes from God Apollo, and that's our left brain, so to speak, proverbial left brain. So it's everything that has to do with logic and reason and analyzing, dissecting, conceptualizing. And the other side, which comes from God Dionysus, Dionysus, and that's responsible for intuition, imagination, love. Dionysus was also God of wine, so it's also that side of a human that makes us sing and engage in revelry and, you know, and drink wine and spend time with friends and laugh and enjoy it, you know? So Nietzsche advocated this point of view that those were two complementary sides of every human as well as society. And the purpose of human life is to find balance between them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So math is both discovered and invented, we should be okay with. having both ideas in our head and living in the balance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me, Apollo is like math and Dionysus is like love. So Dionysus and Apollo in modern version is love and math." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I return to that question we had about GPT and the language models. And I think about this quite a lot, which is when the model, and we know what it's trained on, we know the parameters, we know all the different hacks that are involved in the training process and the fine tuning process. And the final result, whether it's GPT-5, six or seven, will result in hundreds of millions of people falling deeply in love with that language model and to be able to have conversations that are very much like the conversations we have with somebody we're deeply in love with. And not only that, the model will say that it's deeply in love with us. And who are we to say it is not? I think there's, it's the same imperative that you described in the scientific mind that wants to throw away the subjective. That same imperative wants to throw away the feelings that AI might have. And I'm very careful. to not ignore when an AI system says it's lonely, it's afraid, it doesn't want to die, it misses you, it loves you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I am with you. I would also say that you could try to, you could for instance say that the origin of that, is the romantic novels that were fed to it, for instance. However, you could also, then you can retort, but what if my, what I consider my subjective, unique feelings are also the reverberations of the novels I have read, because I have learned, or movies I have seen, because that's the purpose of movies, kind of to teach us how to express ourselves, how to feel, maybe even. One could argue that, some people have argued that. I agree that this is, there is no obvious answer to this. But see, that's exactly my point. That is an example of something which is paradoxical, for which there is no answer. And that's where the subjective has an important role. For someone, that type of interaction would be helpful, would be consoling, would make them happy or sad or whatever, would kind of strike the nerve. For some, it won't. And I agree with you that, in principle, there is no one to judge this. This is where subjective is paramount. But remember, a lot of this has been anticipated by artists. The great movie Her, there you have this guy who is this lonely, he kind of writes letters or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The romantic letters, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Kind of romantic letters for other people, but he doesn't have a partner, he's lonely, and then he gets this sort of enhanced version of Siri with the voice of Scarlett Johansson, which is a very sexy voice, you know? Obviously she's a great actress. And then, at first, it looks like a fantastic arrangement. He confides in her, she tells him things, she makes him happy, and so on, until he finds out that she has a relationship, quote-unquote, if you can call it that, with 10,000 other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not two others, not three others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like 10,000, because it has a computing capability. So yes, definitely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, it certainly makes sense, it's a good explanation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the guy is heartbroken. But see, so here's my analysis of this, okay? It's like a couch therapist, okay? The guy did not have the courage to go out in the real world and to meet a woman and to get a girlfriend and so on. It's true, no fault of his own, perhaps, because he may have had some experiences which made him withdrawn and closed and so on, and a lot of us are like this. I had periods like that myself. Definitely can sympathize and relate. However, part of the joy of having this Siri-like relationship for him, one could say, was the absence of that fear that she would abandon him, which prevented him from initiating a relationship with a human being. And yet, it turns out that he could be betrayed, quote-unquote, that she could be unfaithful to him, quote-unquote, anyway. So then, that means that it did not resolve the underlying fear, having that relationship. So in other words, that human element of the relationship still found its way into the seemingly sterilized, protected partnership. So the human being rears its head anyway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I think the lesson there is that the system in the movie Her actually gave him a lesson that even AI could betray you, even AI can leave you, even AI can be unfaithful to you, and I would argue that the next AI he meets, will be one he actually falls in deep love with because he knows the possibility of betrayal is there, the possibility of death is there, the possibility of infidelity is there because we need that possibility to truly feel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or he would turn off his Siri program and get out of his house, go to a local bar and strike a conversation with a human being. Although you might say by then some of those might be androids" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we don't even have a good test to know the difference between one or the other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that was predicted by another great movie. Blade Runner." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Blade Runner." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How interesting that artists could see that so long ago. Of course, Blade Runner was based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That guy was a genius, you know? It's somehow that artists have their eyes open to a bigger reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How is it that they anticipate? Is it also a large language model that they're using for that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "An even larger one. An even larger. I hesitate to dismiss the magic. in large language models. A lot of the work I've done is in robotics, and the robotics community generally doesn't notice the magic of feeling. I've been working a lot with quadrupeds recently, legged robots with four legs, and the feelings I feel when I see, you know, I'm programming the thing, but when the thing is excited to see me or shows with its physical movement that it's excited to see me, I cannot dismiss the feeling I feel as not somehow fundamental to what it means to program robots. And I don't want to dismiss that. And the- The robotics community often doesn't gender robots. They really try to work hard to not anthropomorphize the robots, which is good for technical development of how to do control, how to do perception. But when the final thing is live... and moving, and it does whatever, like I've been doing a lot of butt wiggling, it can wiggle its butt, it can turn around and look up excited. That's not just, I know how it's programmed, but the feeling I feel, that's something, I don't know what that is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree, I hear you when you speak about it, you speak with passion, and that's, to me, that is proof. It is magical, you see. So don't, I would say, don't dismiss that, don't discard that. On the contrary, I think magic is everywhere, you know? So I used to be, okay, kind of confession, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you already confessed to quite a few addictions. Yeah, I'm kind of, yes, I'm kind of worried. Recovering from many." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you know, I, in old days, I was, more on the side of everything is computational, or everything can be explained by science and whatever. I would dismiss and disregard the intuitive or imaginative things. So then I had a flip, that suddenly I started feeling it, I started seeing it, and so on. So then the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. Then I was arguing with myself, that somehow that was real, that imagination was intuitive, imaginative was real, and discounting what you just described. And I would argue with people saying, no, no, this is not real, this is all imitation game, and so on. But you see that what's new now, the new Edward, okay, is the 2.0, 3.0, is the one who is seeking balance, who is not, because suddenly become aware that no matter which one-sided, lopsided point of view you take, you're limiting yourself. So whereas even a couple of years ago, if you just told me what you just described, I would be like, being polite, I wouldn't contradict you since you're the host anyway, right? But I would be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, but I wouldn't say anything. But suddenly, I find this moving. I find it, honestly, I'm not being facetious. I find it moving, and I almost feel like I can see it through your eyes, because the way you describe so vividly, and you're passionate about it. And this is what's real. So ultimately, love is neither in lush language models, nor in something mystical. It's exactly in this moments of passion, and I would, I would even go as far as saying that in this moment when you're describing it, there was a connection of sorts, so that I could feel your passion for it. And in this moment, something else comes up, which is far beyond any theories that we can come up with. And that's what we, for now, exactly. So on the one side, there is this impulse of finding a theory, and then there is another impulse to escape from what has already been known. In other words, my basic example is one impulse to say, everything is a real number, square root of negative one doesn't exist. But another impulse is, I'm going to be this naughty child who is not afraid to be an idiot, and I will say square root of negative 15 is real. And both are essential. when it's done with conviction, when it's done with passion, when it's not like, you know, gratuitous, or when it's not, it doesn't come from self-limiting, but comes from this sense of this is how I am, this is how I feel, it is real. That's where the progress is, that's where creativity is, and that's where, I would even say, a real connection is. Because the strife, to me, that I observe today in our society, and the society level, and the level of humans and so on, it comes from not seeing the other person, actually, and being caught up in a very specific conceptual bubble, you see? And the way out of it is not to refine the bubble, but just break out of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A good guide out of the bubble is a childlike passion. Discovering that and following it. Goosebumps. Yeah, following the goosebumps. Not the rigor of science, but the magic of goosebumps." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then, if you're interested, try to find a confirmation of those goosebumps in science or whatever, you know. you'll find interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And most of the time you'll fail." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And most of the time you fail, which we also love because then it sets us up for that moment of bliss when we succeed, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. Quick pause, bathroom break. You mentioned Godel's The Completeness Theorem. Can you talk a little bit about it? What is it as you understand it? Did it break mathematics? Maybe another question is, what are the limits of mathematics? What is mathematics from the perspective of Godel's The Completeness Theorem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes. How much time do I have?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We talked about time previously, so it's relative. Time is an illusion, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we agreed. So Kurt Gödel was a great Austrian mathematician and logician. He moved to the United States before Second World War and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he was a colleague of Einstein and other great scientists. Von Neumann, Herman Weyl, and so on. But one interesting quote that I like in this regard is that Einstein said that at some point he said that the only reason he came to the Institute was that he would have the privilege of walking back home with Gödel in the evening. So in other words, Einstein thought that Gödel was the smart one, okay? So his most important contribution was his two incompleteness theorems, the first incompleteness theorem and the second incompleteness theorem. And what is this about? It's really about inherent limitations of mathematical reasoning, the way of producing mathematical theorems, the way we do it. So to set the stage, how do we actually do mathematics? So we know that, we discussed that. say physics is based on mathematics. And you could say chemistry is based on physics, biology based on chemistry. Okay, so it comes to mathematics. What is mathematics based on? Well, mathematics is based on axioms. So any field of mathematics can be presented as what is called the formal system. And at the core of the formal system is a system of axioms or postulates. These are the statements which are taken for granted." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Given without proof." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Without proof. An example would be, so one of the very first formal systems was the system, was Euclidean geometry, developed by Euclid in his famous book, Elements, about 2,200 years ago. And it's about, well, it's a subject familiar from school, because we studied, but what it's really about is about the geometry of the plane. And by plane, I mean just this table top extended to infinity, no directions, kind of a perfect plane, a perfectly even table. And so Euclidean geometry is about various geometric figures on the plane, specifically lines, triangles, circles, things like that. So what's an example of an axiom? An example of an axiom is that if you have two points, which are distinct, two points on the plane, then there is a unique line which passes through them. Now it kind of sounds reasonable, but this is an example of an axiom. In mathematics, you have to have a seed, so to speak. You have to start with something. And you have to choose certain postulates or statements which you simply take for granted, which do not require proof. Usually they are ones which kind of intuitively clear to you, but in any case, you cannot have any mathematics without choosing those axioms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you refer to those as the observer, because they're kind of subjective," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The observer comes in the process of choosing the axioms. Who chooses the axioms?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The turtles that it's all sitting on top of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As Alan Watts like to say, who is watching the water? And so in mathematics, but you see mathematicians are so clever. It's really kind of like a little kind of a game of mirrors that we often like to say, and I used to say that, that mathematics is objective. It's really the only objective science. But that's because we hide this fact that actually is based on axioms. And the fact that that there is no unique choice, that there are many choices. And so Euclidean geometry is actually a good illustration of this because Euclid had five axioms. Four of them were kind of obvious, like the one I just mentioned. And the fifth, which came to be known famously as the fifth postulate, was that if you have a line and you have a point outside of this line, there is a unique line passing through that point, which is parallel to the first line, meaning that doesn't intersect it. And Euclid himself was uncomfortable about this because he felt that it was kind of a, you know, he takes for granted something that is not obvious. And for many centuries after that, mathematicians were trying to derive this axiom from other axioms, which were more obvious in some sense, and they failed. And it was only almost 2,000 years later that mathematicians realized that you can't, not only you cannot derive, but you can actually replace it with its opposite, and you will still get a bona fide consistent, not self-contradictory, which is called non-Euclidean geometry, which of course sounds very complicated, but it's not. Think of a sphere, just the surface of a basketball, or the surface of the Earth idealized. The analogs, so you have points, you have analogs of lines, which are meridians, right? Every two meridians intersect, unlike parallel lines on a flat space. There is also a so-called hyperbolic plane, where there are infinitely many lines which do not intersect. So every possibility can be realized, there are different flavors. This is a good illustration of what a formal system is. You start with a set of axioms, those statements you take for granted, and this is where you have a choice. And by making different choices, you actually create different mathematics. After that, there are rules of inference, logical rules, such as if A is true and A implies B, then B is true. Most of them were actually introduced already by Aristotle, even before Euclid. And then it runs as follows. You have the axioms, which are accepted as true statements. Then you have a way to produce new statements by using the rules of logical inference from the axioms. Every statement you obtain, you call a theorem, and you kind of add it to the collection of true statements. And then the question is, how far can you go? How many statements can you prove this way? Of course, you want the system to be non-trivial in the sense that you don't prove everything. Because if you prove everything, it would mean that it's self-contradictory, that you prove a statement A and it's negation. So that's kind of useless. It has to be discriminating enough so that it doesn't prove contradictory statements. So there is already a question that mathematicians call consistency. It has to be consistent in the sense that it is not self-contradictory. And then the idea that was basically prevalent in the world of mathematics by the beginning of the 20th century was that in principle, all of mathematics could be derived this way. We just have to find the correct system of axioms, and then everything you ever need could be produced by this procedure, which is really algorithmic procedure, which actually could be run on a computer. Now, think about it. What is special about this process? In this process, you are just manipulating symbols, basically. You're going from one statement to another without really understanding the meaning of it. So it's an ideal playground for a computer program. It's a purely syntactic process where there are some rules, some rigid rules of passing from one statement to the next. Most mathematicians believed that this way you can produce all true statements. And if this were true, it would give a lot of credibility to the thesis that everything in life is computational. Or life is computation. Because then, at least mathematics is computational because then it can be programmed. And a computer, after sufficient time, depending on its capacity, would produce every true statement. So Gödel's first incompleteness theorem says that that's not the case. And it not just says it, but it proves it at the highest level of rigor that is available in mathematics. That is to say within another formal system that he was operating in. So more precisely, what he proved was that if you have a sufficiently sophisticated formal system, that is to say that you can talk about numbers, whole numbers in it, that you have whole numbers, one, two, three, four, you have formalized the operation of addition and multiplication within the system, If it is consistent, that is to say, if it's not completely useless, then there will be a true statement in it which cannot be derived by this linear syntactic process of proving theorems from axioms. It's really incredible. So this was a revolution. 1931, revolution in logic, revolution in mathematics, and we're still feeling the tremors of this discovery." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and at a similar time, the computer is being born, the actual engineering of the computational system is being born, which is ironic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Turing was, Alan Turing, who is considered as the father of modern computing, right, so he actually did something very similar, so he had this halting problem. that he proved that halting problem cannot be solved algorithmically, that you cannot, out of all computer programs, roughly speaking, you cannot have an algorithm of choosing out of all possible computer programs which ones are meaningful, which ones will halt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Very depressing results all across the table." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or, on the contrary, life affirming. Depends on your point of view." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because everything is full of paradoxes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that means, you're right, it's depressing if we are sold on a certain idea from the outset and then suddenly this doesn't pan out. But okay, to which I retort, what if he proved that actually everything can be proved? So then what? What is left to do if you're a mathematician? So that would be depressing to me. And here there is an opportunity to do something new, to discover something new, which maybe a computer will not be able to. Again, with a caveat, according to our current understanding, maybe some new technology, some new ideas will be brought into the subject. And the meaning of the word computation, like now we think of computation in a particular framework, Turing machines or Church thesis and stuff like that. But what if in the future, another genius like Alan Turing will come and propose something else? The theory will evolve the way we went from Newton's gravity to Einstein's gravity. Maybe in the framework of that concept, some other things will become possible. So it's not... To me, it's kind of like not so much about deciding once and for all how it is or how it should be, but kind of like accepting it as an open-ended process. I think that's much more valuable in some sense than deciding things one way or another. You know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder, I don't know if you think or know much about cellular automata and the idea of emergence I often return to Game of Life. And just look at the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And wonder. The kind of things they can do with such a small, you know, tools." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That from simple rules, a distributed system can create complex behavior. And it makes you wonder that maybe the thing we'll call computation is simple at the base layer, but when you start looking at greater and greater layers of abstraction, you zoom out with blurry vision, maybe after a few drinks, you start to see something that's much, much, much more complicated and interesting and beautiful than the original rules that our scientific intuition says cannot possibly produce complexity and beauty. I don't know if anyone has a good answer, a good model of why stuff emerges, why complexity emerges from a lot of simple things. It's a why question, I suppose, not a, but every why question will eventually have a rigorous answer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not necessarily, it could have an approximate answer, which still eludes something. by quantum mechanics. 99%, maybe. Would you be able to describe it with 99% certainty or 99% accuracy? And then maybe in 100 years or next year, somebody will come up with a different point of view, which suddenly will change our perspective. To this point, I want to say also one thing that I find fascinating, speaking of paradoxes and so on, Do you remember how everybody was freaking out about this blue dress? And the blue, was it blue or was it black? I think yellow and white or black and blue. It almost broke Twitter, I remember that, that night. So there are many examples like that, where you can perceive things differently and there is no way of saying which is correct and which is not. For instance, You got this, the vase, the Rubin's vase, where you have, from one perspective, it's a vase, from another perspective, it's two faces. Then there is this duck-rabbit picture, where you can Google it. If somebody doesn't know, they can Google it and find it, it's very easy. Actually, Ludwig Wittgenstein devoted several pages, duck-rabbit, in his book. And so on, there are many others. There are like squares where you can see, a square you can see from different perspective, this way, that way, and so on. When we talk about neural networks, we're talking about training data and stuff so that you have some pictures, for example, that you feed to your program and you try to find the most optimal neural network which would be able to decide which one is it, the dog or a cat or whatever. But sometimes it doesn't have a definite answer. So what do you do then? Actually, it's a question. I actually don't know. Has modern AI even come to appreciate this question? That actually sometimes you can have a picture on which you cannot say what is in it. From one perspective, it's a rabbit. From another perspective, it's a duck. How are you supposed to train? If you have a neural network which is supposed to distinguish between ducks and rabbits, how is it going to process this, you see?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so the trivial trick it does is to say there's this X probability that it's a duck, and this probability that it's a rabbit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good approach, but also I would say there's no given percentages. For instance, actually, at some point I was really curious about it, and I looked, And for each picture of this nature, and there are a bunch of them you can easily find online, my mind immediately interprets it in a particular way. But because I know that other people could see it differently, I would then strain my mind, strain my eyes, and stare at it and try to see it in a different way. And sometimes I could see it right away, and then I could go back and forth between the two. And sometimes it took me a while for some pictures. So in that sense, even if these probabilities exist, they are subjective. Some people immediately see it this way, some people immediately see it that way, and I think that nobody knows, not psychologists, not neuroscientists, not philosophers, what to make of it. The best answer, of course, as a scientific mind, even though I say, no, don't look for interpretation, leave some place for mysticism or mystery, right, I say that, but of course I want a theory, I want an explanation. So the best explanation I find is from Niels Bohr's complementarity principle. So it is like particle and wave, that there are different ways to look at it. And when you look at it in a particular way, another side will be obscured. Think about it like the other side of the moon. So we are observing the moon from one side, and then we don't see the other side. There is a complementary perspective where we see the other side, but not the side we normally see. But the moon is the same. It's still there. It's our limitations of being able to grasp the whole. That's complementarity. And we know from quantum mechanics that our physical reality is like that. rather than being certain, rather than being one way or another." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we should just, as a small aside, in terms of neural networks, mention that at the end of the day, there's humans, it's built on top of humans. Or with Chad GPT that is using reinforcement learning by human feedback, we're actually using a set of humans to teach the networks. And that's the thing that people don't often talk about because or I sometimes think about that those humans all have a life story. Each human that annotated data, that fed data to the network or did the RLHF, they have a life story. They grew up, they have biases." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They have biases, there's some things that they like, there's some things they don't like, which can... kind of appear under their radar screen. They may not be aware that they are exercising those biases. That's the point. What you brought up is a very important issue here. Not so much issue, but it's not a bug. It's a feature, in my opinion. That implicit in the discussion of the question is thinking computational and so on, is the idea that our conscious awareness covers everything. within our psyche, and we just know that that's not the case. All of us have observed other people who have had sort of destructive tendencies, so obviously, they did things destructive for themselves, and many of us have observed ourselves doing that as part of human nature, right? And there is great research in analytic psychology in the past 100 years, strongly suggesting, if not proving, the existence of what Carl Jung called the personal unconscious and also collective unconscious, the kind of circle of ideas which are under the radar screen, which lead us to some strong emotions and inspire us to act in certain ways, even if we cannot really understand. So if we accept that, then the proposition that somehow everything can still be covered by our actions, which are totally kind of neutral and totally righteous and totally conscious, that it becomes really tenuous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you some tricky questions in terms of how big they are. in terms of how, you know, they become difficult because of how much of a romantic you are. What to you is the most beautiful idea in mathematics? Another one we can ask is what is the most beautiful equation in mathematics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I may have just broken your brain. because what your brain is doing is walking down a long memory lane of beautiful experiences." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you see, in mathematics, we have this idea that we have an idea of a set, right? So we have a collection of things. For instance, the set of tables, the set of chairs, and so on, or set of microphones. But it could be set of numbers. Could be a set of ideas, could be a set of formulas, mathematical equations, and then we have the notion of an ordered set, ordered, like the set in which there is order, which means that for every two members of the set, we will say which one is better than the other or greater than the other. For instance, all numbers are ordered. Five is greater than three, five is less than seven, and so on. But not all sets are ordered. So the set of beautiful theorems is not, beautiful equations is not ordered. So in other words, there are many best equations. And so... Richard Feynman chose one, which I think one of the best, is that if you take e, the base of natural logarithm, to the power pi i, so you have e in it, the base of natural logarithm, you have pi i, which is square root of negative one, then the result is negative one. So that's up there, for sure, in the pantheon of beautiful formulas that I think pretty much every mathematician would agree. I don't know what my favorite one is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm just lingering on that one, Euler's Identity. What makes it beautiful? Just a few symbols together. I mean, part of it is actually just trying to define what is beautiful about mathematics that is laid in there in this particular equation that is somehow revealed when the human eye looks at it. Why is it beautiful, do you think? Pi, I?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is an element of surprise in it. How is it possible? We always think of pi as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. Here we are taking some number to the power pi. Not even pi, mind you. But pi multiplied by square root of negative one? Surely this is something completely incomprehensible. And yet the result is negative one. You see? And if you take e to the power two pi i, you get one. Actually one. So I would guess that that's, but in other words, the initial reaction is just that it was surprise, I guess. I guess for anyone who first comes across." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "that these three folks, four folks got together. It reminds me of the idea that Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, and Freud were all in Vienna in some early, at the beginning of the 20s." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Wittgenstein was a classmate of Hitler, you know this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I did not know this, no. So there, it makes you, you can imagine a situation where they're all sitting at a bar together at some point, not knowing it, but they somehow, it all made sense in space-time to be located there. And that's what this feels like, some kind of intersection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Intersection, yes. But I would say that after the initial shock, you look at the proof of this equation. and it actually does make sense, and actually it is nothing but the statement that the circumference of the circle is, and in fact, in this case, it's the circumference of a semicircle is equal to pi, and that's where it comes from." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the end, the truth is simple." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the end, the truth is simple. Not necessarily easy, but simple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I mentioned to you offline that I desperately, in trying to figure out the optimal, in an ordered set, questions to ask you, I texted Eric Weinstein asking for what questions he can ask you, and he said that you are definitively one of the greatest living mathematicians, so don't screw this up. But he did give me a few questions. So he asked to ask you, what are the most shockingly passionate, this is in Eric's language, what are the most shockingly passionate mathematical structures? And he gave a list of four for him, but he said he really wanted your list. Okay, let me say that. Shockingly passionate. Mathematical structures." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Shocking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something you can, is there something that jumps to mind? Sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm here to shock. So first of all, Eric Weinstein is a very dear friend, I have to say. And I really, really, really appreciate and love him. He's just like my brother. So it's interesting to have a question posed by him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And maybe if we can linger for a moment, what do you think is special about Eric Weinstein for you know of his work and his mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the way he straddles so many different disciplines. It's like a renaissance man. There are very few people like that at any given moment, let alone in the 21st century, where information has become so huge that it's almost physically impossible to be able to keep track of things. He does, and he has his own unique vision and unique point of view, and he has integrity, which is almost impossible. I can't think of so many people who possess those qualities, almost no one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also the ability, in some sense, to embody the balance that you talked about, of both the rigor of mathematics and the imagination." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Humanity also, I would say. We talk about imagination as a kind of a counterpoint to knowledge or logic. But just basic humanity, just compassion, just being able to, because, Every destructive, I would say, every destructive society, be it Germany under Hitler or Soviet Union under Stalin and so on, was based on some kind of what was considered unassailable truths. So it's kind of a conceptual system, if you think about it. There is a beautiful episode of this series by Jacob Bronowski, where he talks about, he filmed it in Auschwitz, talking about the certainty that what led the Nazis to killing people wholesale was a certain, it was almost a mathematical idea. they just basically bought into this idea and checked out their humanity at the door. So I would say that antidote to this type of thing is not necessarily even imagination in a kind of elevated sense that we have been discussing today, that is exemplified by our greatest scientists and philosophers. but just basic humanity, basic common sense of just knowing that it's just not right, and I don't care what my ideology tells me, but I'm just not going to do it. So that, I think, is kind of missing a little bit in today's society, because people get a lot too caught up in the ideology, in certain conceptual frameworks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So societies that lose that basic human compassion, that basic humanity run to trouble. Oh, very much so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But not only society, like a human being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And Eric is one of the people, I agree with you, keeps that flame of humanity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like I trust that he will not do something that's not human, that's not right. I just feel that, you know, like there's some people you just kind of feel that they won't cross that line. And that's a huge thing, you know, today. Because I have to say, looking back, definitely, I have not hurt people personally, but I could be mean, for instance, I could be harsh. And now I see it as a sign of weakness, as a sign of insecurity. You know, I saw your interview with Ray Kurzweil the other day. Beautiful, I was really moved by it. But you know, at some point I was like, I looked at him at this sort of like Dr. Evil. I'm kind of ashamed of it now, but like, you know, I'm kind of coming clean. And I would, you know, because, well, why? Because I needed an adversary in my mind, because I projected onto him kind of the fears that I had, that AI will conquer us and so on. And this was rooted in my awakening moment, in a sense, a moment where I suddenly started to see the other side. But I wasn't sure yet, you see? You had to feel it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I had to have a fight about it. You had to actually have the projection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I had to, so it was not in, I believe that it was not in me already, so I had to throw it onto somebody. And that's not balance yet. So balance is when you recognize that it's you, actually. And I had this moment, actually. It was so amazing. I would give this mean, I would talk about AI and the dangers, and he would always be my foil. I would put a sinister photograph of him on the slide, and I was like, look at this guy. He wants to put nanobots into your brain, and he's also a top executive at Google, and so on. So I would create this whole narrative. And then something happened where I was giving a lecture, this is 2015, in Aspen, Aspen Ideas Festival, which is a wonderful festival. It's a keynote speech, actually. And I was doing my usual stick. And then suddenly I said, I came up to that, there was a big screen, and there was a picture of him there. And I came up to the screen, and I kind of touched it with my hand, and I said, but I don't want to pick on Mr. Goswami because he's me. I had this revelation that I'm actually fighting with myself, with my own fears. And then I learned about his father, that his father died when he was young. And that he's, in fact, he's very, to his credit, he's very sincere and upfront about it. Self-disclosure, I think, is very essential, by the way, in all this discussion. Like, what really motivates you? He said it publicly many times, even as early as 2015, I could find this information, that he wanted to reunite with his father in the cloud. And suddenly I saw him not as a caricature, that exemplified all my fears, but as a human being, a child longing for his father, grieving for his father. So suddenly it became a story, a love story. And so that is, so in other words, I've seen it in myself, this capacity to project my own fears and then fight with other people over something that actually was my own. And as soon as I got to this point of seeing him, and then my next lecture, actually, I talked about him in this way, and I said, look, it's a love story, and he is actually, and it's not how I would want to reunite with my father, But like you said, if I am consistent, I have to allow the possibility that different people perceive things differently. And so for him, that's his imagination. So you know how, who is this, Voltaire, I think, is ascribed to Voltaire. It's like, I disagree with you, but I will fight to death for you to have the right to say it. So now that I feel like my position is more like, I disagree with him, that this is the way to approach death and to approach the death of our loved ones and how we miss them and how we, the sense of loneliness and inability to interact directly. That's not something that resonates with me, but I think it can also be called imagination from his perspective. And look, motivated by that, how much he has brought, how many interesting inventions. A musical invention, for instance, naturally, because his father was a composer, a music composer and a conductor. So in other words, in the bigger scheme of things, even if I think he's misguided, Still, I can't deny that it's a certain leap of faith from his perspective to try to say that this is the way we can all connect to our loved ones. And because it is sincere, and I see it now, it's sincere, and in fact, in your interview, you really teased it out of him, and I was really moved by it, I have to say. He has mellowed a little bit too, I said. It was really, really sweet when he talked about his father. And I can relate, you know, my father died four years ago, and I can relate what a heartbreak I was much older than Ray was when his father died. But I can relate to this longing and that grief, you know. And when somebody is sincere and he puts his opens his cards and says, this is why, this is what I want to do, because I want to recreate my father and I want to be able to talk to him this way. Then we have a serious, then we understand, the opposite of it would be not disclosing and just... pretending that this is how it's supposed to be in scientific terms. So it's replacing your real emotion that comes from the heart by some kind of a theory which comes from the mind. And this is where we can go astray, because then we become captives of frameworks and conceptual systems which may not be beneficial to our society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In tough times, we need the people that have not lost their way in the ideologies. We need the people who are still in touch with their heart. And you mentioned this with Eric, it's certainly true. I disagree with him on a lot of stuff, but I feel like when the world is burning down, Eric is one of the people that you can still count on to have a heart. We've talked a lot over the past year about the war in Ukraine and the possibility of nuclear war, and it feels like he's one of the people I would call first if, God forbid, something like a nuclear war would begin, because you look for people with a heart, no matter their ideas. That's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It takes courage, and it takes a certain self-awareness, I would say. And which brings me, you know, I think the crucial is that which was inscribed, you know, on the temple of Apollo in Delphi. There was a statement, know thyself, know yourself, you know, like who am I? Ultimately, it boils down to this and all these debates. And the point is that I used to be, like I said, you know, pessimistic at some point, and I was scared even of where development of AI was going. This is about 2014, 2015. And now I'm much more, so for instance, after I saw Ray Kurzweil as a human being, after I could relate to him and sympathize with him, suddenly I stopped seeing him in the news. Before that, I would always see him in the news saying, we're going to put nanobots in your brain by the year 2030, whatever, you know? And then we upload you by 21st, and I would be like, no, you know, that's so terrible. Suddenly I didn't see him anymore. I had to, you know? So now it makes me question, who was creating the trouble? Was it him who was stirring the trouble, or was it my mind, you see? And so, as I became self-aware, suddenly other possibilities opened, and suddenly that conflict, which by the way, if I kept giving this nasty talks about him, one day I suppose we'd have a debate, and so you have this, one person says this, and then that, and what I learned is that it's a never-ending conflict. This conflict just does not end. But there is an alternative, there is a better way, which is to realize that it is you arguing with yourself Now, if you want to continue arguing with yourself, continue as long as you need. Just be careful not to destroy too many things in the process. But there is an option of actually dropping it, of actually dropping it. I was so surprised by this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, just discovering yourself. the human capacity for compassion. And you understand that he has a perspective, he is operating in the space of imagination, a human being like you, and we're all in this kind of together trying to figure this out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But we're on the same boat, ultimately. And also, it's like, with realizing how much I have screwed up, you know, comes this humility also. So like, I find it extremely hard now to like really lash out at somebody, and to say like, you're horrible, whatever. Because immediately the question is, Who am I to criticize, you know? So is there another way to have a dialogue? Is there a way to, you know, speaking, you know, since we talked about the innocence of a child and how much it drives a discovery in science and so on, you know, I remember, I think I heard, Adyashanti, who gave this nice example, he's like, when you're a kid, you know, you go and you play with your friends, and then you fight with another kid. And he was like, I hate you. I don't wanna see you again.\" And you just go home after half an hour, okay, what are you gonna do? You wanna play? So you come out, it's like, hey, you wanna play? You don't talk about what happened, you don't rehash this, just keep going. And I think we are on the verge, maybe, of learning that. Because I think that if we continue to push each of us, our set of ideas and ideologies, you know, what matters to us and so on. Like, yeah, no, no, what matters to you, but like, there are other ways to approach other people. There are other ways you can find point of contact. Speaking of which, mathematics, mathematical formulas are universal, represent universal knowledge. Two plus two is four. whether you vote for this guy or that guy in the election. How about that as a point of contact, of commonality? And nobody can patent those formulas, did you know that? There is a Supreme Court decision that mathematical formulas cannot be patented. Einstein could not patent E equals MC squared. It doesn't belong to him because if the formula is correct, then it belongs to everyone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you think of that all-too-tricky question? And if you want, I can deeply bias your answer by giving the list of four that Eric provided." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know, let me give mine. I cannot see, by the way, what you have. But I can guess some of them. So I'm going to try to do something different from him. So I already mentioned one, which is that you have one-dimensional space. numerical system, which is real numbers. You have two-dimensional, which is complex numbers. You have four-dimensional, and it's probably connected to what he wrote because it has to do with some homotopic groups of spheres and stuff like that. Then, of course, one I love, okay? One plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six and so on. Does it make any sense, the sum? You probably heard about this one. It became very popular at some point. One plus two plus three, I did a video for Numberphile, the YouTube channel about it, maybe 10 years ago. So one plus two plus three plus four plus five ostensibly diverges, goes to infinity, because you get a bigger and bigger number. And yet, there is a way to make sense of it, in which it comes up to minus one over 12. How fascinating. First of all, the answer is not even a positive number, and it's not an integer, it's not a whole number, it's minus one over 12. So sometimes people ask me, what is your favorite number? And it's kind of a joke, I say minus one over 12. It's actually 42." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So your favorite number is not an ordered set. Right. So what else? What else?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Langlands program, of course, I have to mention that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we'll explore that in depth. Do you want to know what Eric said? Sure. Sphere aversion, Boy's surface, hop vibration. Co-vibration, okay. And pi one of SO3." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, oh yes, so that's the famous cup trick, you know? Okay, look, so this is how it works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No tricks, no tricks. It is magical, okay?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But not because I'm tricking you. So, you start with a bottle like this, or a cup, and you start twisting it, and at the same time you twist your arm. Then you come, so this is actually going to rotate it 360 degrees, the full turn. Then you say, okay, I won't be able to do another turn because then my arm would really get twisted, I'll have to go see a doctor. Yet, if I do it a second time, it untwists. This is the pi 1 of SO3 Eric is talking about. So there is something where The first motion is not trivial, but if you double down on it, you come back to the initial position. It's very closely connected to the fact that we have elementary particles of two types, bosons and fermions. So bosons are, for example, photons, or carriers of other forces, or the Higgs boson, it is called a boson for a reason, because it is a boson, in honor of Indian mathematician Bose, B-O-S-E, and Einstein. So these particles obey what's called Bose-Einstein statistics. But then there are other particles called fermions, in honor of Enrico Fermi, Italian-born mathematician who worked in the US. And they follow what's called Dirac Fermi statistics. And those are electrons and constituents of matter. Electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on. And they have a certain duplicity, if you will. And that duplicity is rooted mathematically in this experiment, this little experiment that I have just done. So I imagine, speaking of imagination, okay? So I'm just kind of riffing on this. Imagine a world in which this will not be shocking or like... In this case, it's not even shocking because I haven't really explained the details because I can't do it in two minutes. I indicated what this is all about, and so on. But imagine a world in which this is not foreign to most people, that most people have seen it before. They're not afraid to approach this type of questions, because we talked a little bit about mass education, but I really believe that a lot of people in our society, and it is not only in the United States, but throughout the world, a lot of people have been traumatized It's really PTSD. That's why people, when they see mathematical formula or even how they need to calculate tip on the bill, they're terrified because it brings up those memories when they were kids and being called to blackboard. and solve a problem, you can solve a problem, and unscrupulous teacher says, you're an idiot, sit down, and you feel ashamed and lowly, and that stays with you. And so I think that, unfortunately, that's where we are, but one can dream, and so my dream is that one day we'll be able to overcome this, and actually, all of these treasures of mathematics, will become widely available, or at least people will know where to find them, and they will not be afraid of going there and looking. And I think this will help, because like I said, for one thing, it gives you a sense of belonging, it gives you, it kind of is an antidote to the kind of alienation and separation that we feel today, oftentimes because of ideological divide, sectarian strife, and all kinds of things like that. Because then you will, once you see there's a critical mass of this beauty, that kind of dawns on you, it's like, my God, this is what we all have in common." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned Langlands program. We have to talk about it. Sure. At the core of your book and your work is the Langlands program. Can you describe what it is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, so Langlands is a mathematician. It's a name of a mathematician, Robert Langlands. Canadian born, still alive. He was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study that we talked about, where Einstein and Gödel and other great scientists have worked. In fact, he used to occupy the office of Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study. So he, in the late 60s, he came up with a set of ideas, which captivated a lot of mathematicians, several generations of mathematicians by now, which came to be known as the Langlands program. And what it is about is connecting different fields of mathematics, which seem to be far away from each other. For example, number theory, which, as the name suggests, deals with numbers, and various equations with, you know, like x squared plus y squared equals one, And on the other side, harmonic analysis. Something that any music lover can appreciate, because the sound of a symphony can be kind of decomposed into sounds of different instruments, and each of those sounds can be represented by a wave like this, like a sine function. Those are the harmonics. The period of a harmonic, periods of different notes are different, they correspond to different notes and different instruments, different semitones, if you will, but they all combine together into something special, which is not... cannot be reduced to any one of those. So mathematically, it's the idea that you can decompose a signal as a collection, as a simultaneous oscillation of several elementary signals. That's called harmonic analysis. So what Langlands found is that some really difficult questions in number theory can be translated into much more easily tractable questions in harmonic analysis. That was his initial idea. But what happened next surprised everybody, that the kind of patterns that he was able to observe, the kind of regularities that he was able to observe, which were quite surprising, were subsequently found in other areas of mathematics. for example, in geometry, and eventually in quantum physics. So in fact, Ed Witten, who is kind of a dean of modern theoretical physicists, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well, got interested in this subject. I describe in my book how it happened. And he was instrumental in bridging the gap between these patterns found in physics and in geometry, finding kind of a substratum, a kind of a superstratum, if you will. It's kind of a way to connect these two things, kind of a bridge between these two fields. So subsequently, I collaborate with Witten on this, and this has been one of the major themes of my research. I always found it interesting to connect things, to unite things. When I was younger, I couldn't understand why, but I was always interested in, when not in working in a specific field, but kind of cutting across fields. And then I would discover that, for instance, I talk to some people who know what happens in this field, but don't know what happens in their field, or conversely. And then I would find it imperative to go out and explain to them, to the different sides, what this is all about. so that more people are aware of these hidden structures, of these hidden parallels, if you will. So that has been sort of a theme in my research. And so I guess now I kind of understand more why it's kind of a balance, like what we talked about earlier." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So can you elucidate a little bit how, what are the mathematical tools that allow you to connect these different continents of mathematics? Is there something you can convert into words that Langlands was able to find and you were able to explore further?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say what it suggests is that there is some hidden principles which we still don't understand. My view is that we still don't know why. that we can prove some instances of this correspondences and connections, but we still don't know the real underlying reasons, which means that there is a certain layer beneath the surface that we see now, It is like, so the way I see it now is like this, that there is something three-dimensional like this bottle, but what we are seeing is this projection onto the table and the projection onto a wall, and then we can map things from one projection to another, and you say, oh my God, that's incredible. But the real explanation is that both of them are projections of the same thing, and that we haven't found yet, but that's what I want to find, so that's what motivates me, I would say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "from number theory to geometry to quantum physics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there is this one thing which has different projections, except it's not just the table and the wall, but there are many different walls, if you will." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what is the philosophical implication that there is commonalities like that across these very disparate fields?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It means that what we believe are the fundamental elements of mathematics are not fundamental. There is something beyond. It's like we previously thought that atoms were indivisible. Then we found out that there is a nucleus and electrons, and the nucleus consists of protons and neutrons. Then we thought, okay, protons and neutrons must be elementary. Now we know they consist of quarks. So it's about kind of finding the quarks of mathematics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of course, beyond that, there's maybe even more." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which was my initial motivation to study mathematics, by the way, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Quarks was the first time you fell in love with understanding the nature of reality. What was it like working with Ed Witten, who many people say is one of the smartest humans in history, or at least mathematical physicists in history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, fascinating. I enjoyed it very much. I also felt that I have to keep up, you know? And so we wrote this long paper in 2007, and we collaborated for about a year. I have known him before, and we talked before, and I've seen him since, and we talked, but it's very different to just meet somebody at conferences and have a conversation, as opposed to actually working on a project together. So he's very, very serious, very focused. This is one thing which I have to say, I was really struck by this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is he considered to be such a powerful intellect by many other powerful intellects?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He has had this unique vision of the subject. He was able to connect different things. especially find connections between quantum physics and mathematics, almost unparalleled. I don't think anyone comes close in some sense in the last 50 years to him in terms of finding just consistently time after time breaking ground, new ground, new ground. So he would basically, one way one could describe it is he would take some idea in physics, and then find an interpretation of it in mathematics, and then say, distill it, present it in mathematical terms, and tell mathematicians, this should be like that. Kind of like one plus two plus three plus four is minus one over 12. And mathematics should be like, no way. And then it would pan out, and mathematicians would then, a whole industry would be created of groups of mathematicians trying to prove his conjectures and his ideas, and he would always be proven right. So in other words, being able to glean some mathematical truths from physical theories, that's one side. On the other hand, Conversely, applying sophisticated mathematics, he's probably the physicist who kind of could learn mathematics the fastest, I don't think. Some younger physicists maybe could come close, but it's still quite, for them, a long way to go to get, to be comparable to Witten. To take some of the most sophisticated mathematics, and not learn it to the point where it becomes a practitioner of the subject, practically, and then use it to gain some new insights on the physics side. Now, of course, the thing is that the theories that physics, one could say, is in a sort of a crisis, in some sense, because of a current gap between the sophisticated theories which came from applying sophisticated mathematics and the actual universe. So we have theories, for instance, which describe 10-dimensional worlds, 10-dimensional space-time, coming from string theory and things like that, but we don't know yet how to apply it to understanding our universe. A lot of progress has been made, but it's kind of at an impasse right now. And at the same time, our most realistic theories, most advanced theories of the four-dimensional universe are in contradiction with each other. The standard model describing the three known forces of nature, the electromagnetic, strong and weak, with great accuracy, and Einstein's relativity, which describes the fourth, called gravity. Everybody above a certain age knows that one. So these two theories are in contradiction at the moment. And string theory was one of the, the promise of string theory was that it would unify those two. And so far it has not happened. So we are kind of at a very interesting place right now. And I think that new ideas perhaps are needed. And I wouldn't be surprised if Witten is one of those people who come up with those ideas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, he has been one of the people that added a lot of ideas under the flag of string theory. What do you think about this theory? What do you think is beautiful about it, string theory?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first of all, remember we talked about Pythagoreans and how for Pythagoreans, the whole world was this symphony where you have these different vibrations all the humans, every human is a vibration, every animal, every being, every tree, and every celestial body, and so on. So string theory is kind of like that, because in string theory, there is this fundamental object, which is a vibrating string. And all particles are, in a sense, supposed to be different modulations or vibrations of that string. So that by itself is already interesting, that you kind of, describe this diversity of various particles and interactions between them using one guiding principle in some sense. But also just the mathematical things that come out of it, the kind of, it looks impossible to satisfy various constraints and then there is sort of like a unique way to do it. So that's sort of the, every time that happens when you have some system, like overdetermined system, let's suppose You have to do five interviews in one day, and you wake up in the morning and you're like, that's impossible. because then so many things have to align. For instance, let's suppose you have to go from one place to another, so then you have a commute, and then who knows, maybe there is a traffic jam and stuff like that. And now suppose that it all works seamlessly, and there were a bunch of places where it could have gone hopelessly wrong, and it didn't. And then in the evening, you're like, wow, it worked. That's beautiful, right? That's kind of like, Great luck, we would say. But in science this happens sometimes, that you have this theory which is not supposed to work because there's so many seemingly contradictory demands on it. And yet, there is a sweet spot where they balance each other. So string theory is kind of like this. The unfortunate aspect of it is that it balances itself in 10 dimensions and not in four. So maybe there is another universe somewhere But see, as a mathematician, for me, all spaces are created equal, 10-dimensional, 4-dimensional. So mathematicians love string theory because it has given us so much food for thought." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a correct or a incorrect theory for understanding this reality. So it might be a theory that explains some 10th dimensional reality in some other universe, but is it potentially, what do you think are the odds? Again, financial advice, you are to bet. What do you think are the odds that it gets us closer to understanding this reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in the form that it is now, that seems unlikely, but it could well be that based on these ideas with some modifications, with some essential new elements, it could work out. So I would say right now it doesn't look so good from the point of view of what we know. But maybe somebody will come and introduce square root of negative number. I mean, they already introduced, but I mean as a metaphor. Maybe somebody will come and say, what if we do this? It looks crazy. Speaking of Niels Bohr, he had this famous quote that he said to somebody, there is no doubt that your theory is crazy. The question is whether it's crazy enough to describe reality. So that's where we are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of crazy and crazy enough, let me ask for therapy, for advice, for wisdom in returning to Eric Weinstein and maybe give some guidance, understanding. his view on, his attempt at a theory of everything, they call it geometric unity, that he told me that you may have some inkling of an understanding of. If you were to describe this theory to aliens that visited Earth, how would you do it? Or you could try, if it was just me visiting Earth, how would you describe it, your best understanding of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He shared with me some of it when I was in New York at Columbia, like 11 years ago. We actually spent a lot of time where he explained to me, and I found it beautiful. He has a very original idea at the core of it, where you have this, instead of four-dimensional, instead of 10-dimensional, he has 14-dimensional space. And I thought it was really original, and this exactly goes to the point I made earlier, that we need new ideas. I feel that without some fundamentally new idea, we won't be able to get closer to understanding our universe. Now, I have a problem with the whole idea of theory of everything. I don't believe that one exists, nor that we should aim to construct one. And I think it's really, not to offend anybody, but it's ultimately a fault of education system of physicists. Like in mathematics, we're not brought up, we're not educated as mathematicians with the idea that one day we will come up with the theory of everything. Even though, as a joke, I said that Langland's program is mathematical theory of everything, but I meant it as kind of a tongue in cheek." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But isn't it a little bit kind of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not really, because first of all, it doesn't cover all fields of mathematics, and it covers specific phenomena." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but isn't it spiritually striving towards the same platonic form of a theory of everything?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like connecting, connecting fields. But connecting doesn't mean that it covers everything, right? So you could connect two things and then you have infinitely many other things which are outside of the purview of this connection. That's how it is in mathematics, I feel. And I would venture to say that Most mathematicians look at it this way. Like there is no idea that somehow, I think it's actually impossible because we're not talking about such a thing as like one universe. We're talking about all possible universes of all possible dimensions and so on. It is just not feasible to have a unified, unify everything in one equation. Now, physicists on the other hand have been brought up, educated for decades with this idea. And to me, and I am not sure I should say that, but I feel like it's kind of an ultimate ego trip. so that I have come up with the unified theory. I have found the unified theory of everything. It's me, and my name will be on it. I think a lot of physicists get educated this way, especially men take it seriously. And I've seen that happen, and I think it is counterproductive. I think that a lot of people agree that this debate is kind of, I feel like it's kind of settled. I hear it less and less, but I disagree with the whole premise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting, because both are interesting points you made, which is you don't think a theory of everything exists, and you don't think the pursuit of a theory of everything is good. So I think you spoke to the second thing, which is basically that the pursuit of a theory of everything becomes like a drug to the human ego." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, so it's a huge motivating factor. I don't deny that. But I feel that there are better ways to motivate people than like that, than this way, okay? So I would say, for instance, if one, because then it's not a game of winner takes all in some sense. And in fairness, when physicists say theory of everything, grand unified theory, they mean something very specific, which is unifying the standard model and Einstein's relativity theory, which is theory of gravity. So they don't necessarily, a lot of physicists may say these words, but they don't really mean them. I think it's important to realize that. That, in my opinion, that's not productive, and it's not feasible anyway. So, having said that, there are some theories that are better than others, obviously. So, for instance, Eric's theory has, as far as I understand, does have a certain way of producing some of the elementary particles that we see, and as well as the force of gravity. So it does have that promise. I feel that, at least from the place where I had seen it about 10 years ago, it still requires a lot of work to get to the point of actually saying that it does work. There are a lot of elements. It's a huge enterprise to have a theory, because just to describe the fields, the building blocks of the theory, it's already a tremendous undertaking. He's trying to do it for curved spaces in greater generality, which is what makes it so unique and so beautiful. But then, on top of that, there's all this issue of quantization, of actually describing them as quantum field theory. And the quantum field theory, even as a language, as a framework, is currently incomplete, in my opinion. And not only my opinion, everybody agrees on that. It's a collection of tricks, so to speak. It's a collection of tools. It's a toolbox, but it is not a consistent, rigorous theory like number theory in mathematics. Physicists have still been able to derive predictions from it and confirm them to great accuracy. but the underpinnings, it doesn't have the real rigorous foundation from mathematical perspective. So in that sense, even if in that framework a new theory could lead to an explanation of some, some new explanation of some phenomena, it would still be incomplete in a sense because it wouldn't be mathematically rigorous, you see what I mean? Because the whole framework is not yet on a firm foundation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not consistent. Why is it that the universe should have? So that's to your first point. Do you think the universe has a beautiful, clean, when you show up and meet God and there's one equation on the board and the two of you just chuckle, do you think such equation exists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there are such equations. Let's say I am interested in a particular question, right? In the Langlands program, so moving away from physics, so let's talk about math. So in the context of Langlands program, I have recently developed with my co-authors, Ettingoff and Kashdan, a kind of a new strength, a new flavor of the Langlands program, if you will. But so far, it's a vision, it's a set of conjectures, which we have proved in some cases, but not in full generality. So yes, I would like to use your framework, for me the creator, and ask her, what is the explanation of this? And it may well be that she will answer in a way that I will just burst out laughing. It's like, how could we not see it, you see? So that I totally see. But I don't see one equation governing, one equation governing them all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "not one equation to govern them all, but it does seem that such equations exist, where she will tell you something and you look back and say, how could I not see it? It seems like the truth at the end of the day is simple. that we're seeking, especially through mathematics. It seems somehow simple. The nature of reality, the thing that governs it seems to be simple. I wonder why that is. And I also wonder if it's not totally incorrect and we're just craving the simplicity. And then mixing into the whole conversation about how much the observer that craves simplicity is part of the answer. It's a whole big giant mess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or a whole big beautiful painting or symphony." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said of Eric Weinstein that I find it remarkable that Eric was able to come up with such beautiful and original ideas even though he has been out of academia for so long. Yes. Doing wonderful things in other areas such as economics and finance. I'd like to use that kind of quote as just a question to you about different places where people of your level can operate, so inside academia and outside. What is the difference of doing mathematics inside academia and outside? Not even mathematics, but developing beautiful original ideas. Where's the place that your imagination can flourish most. So the limitations of academia is there's a community of people that take a set of axioms as gospel, so it's harder to take that leap into the unknown. But it's also, the nice thing about academia is some of the most brilliant people in the world are there. It's that community. Both the competition and the collaboration is there. I wonder if there's something you could say sort of to further about this world that people might not be familiar with." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I think you gave a very good description. I'm not sure I can go on it because I don't have an overarching theory of academia. I definitely have been part of it and I'm grateful because it gives you a great sense of security. which comes with its own downside, too, because you kind of get a little disconnected from the real world, because you get tenure, so you feel financially secure. It didn't pay you that much, so to speak, relatively speaking. It's comfortable, but it's not that much. But you can't be fired, so there is something about this. which I definitely have benefit from it. People are not even aware what it's like to live outside, where you don't have this type of security. On the other hand, that also means that we're lacking certain skills that sort of real people in the real world have developed out of necessity to deal with that sort of insecurity. So it kind of always cuts both ways. On the one hand, it gives, and on the other hand, it takes away. And it's a very interesting setup. And also, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be the truth seekers, but in reality, of course, It is a human activity and it is a human community. It was all kinds of good, bad and ugly things that happened, a lot of them under the radar screen, so to speak. But maybe there is something to it. There are definitely people who are upholding that old tradition, definitely. And that is inspiring. And I aspire to be one of those, do my best. So whether this is a system that will stay or should stay, I don't know. I really don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's really fascinating. Yeah, it's fascinating what, especially with it, just to introduce the bit of AI poison into the mix, as that changes the nature of education, perhaps, as well, what the role of the university is in the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years. I wonder. I wonder. And I wonder that, you know, how do you make sense that Einstein was working, after attempting, I believe, to be a university professor, It was both in the patent office. Yeah, as a patent clerk." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I have to say, to these days, the science has become so much faster. It is really hard to do it being outside. Now, Eric is unique in this way. Even though he did go to great undergraduate and graduate schools, and then worked for a while in academia. There are very few examples like this. There's Yutang Zhang, who proved an important conjecture number theory about 10 years ago, and is now, as I understand, is a professor at UC Santa Barbara. He worked outside of academia and was able to make a tremendous advance on his own. This case is exceedingly rare. in part because academia is trying to protect its turf and it's creating this sort of prohibitive cost of an outsider, that is true. But there is also something about how much concentration. In mathematics, I don't think people who are not in the field understand what kind of focus and concentration, actually doing mathematics at the top level these days requires. Because we're not talking about something that is more or less good. It is something which is unassailable. It's finding this treasure at the bottom of the ocean, you know, without, you know, the aqualung, you know, without oxygen. And that's why, you know, it's not, people go crazy sometimes, you know? There is a reason for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask you about that, sort of just to linger on that, the amount of concentration required. Cal Newport wrote a book called Deep Work. He's a theoretical computer scientist. he took quite seriously the task of allocating the hours in the day for that kind of deep thinking. And then the mathematicians is theoretical computer scientists on steroids. So for your own life and what you've observed, let me ask the big question, how to think? How to think deeply? How to find the mental, psychological, pragmatic space to really sit there and think deeply? How do you do it? In the moments, do you remember what you really deeply thought? Was it an accident, was it deliberate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's deliberate because, first of all, my first years as a mathematician, I worked every day. Weekends, holidays, doesn't matter. I didn't even question that, so I would feel something's missing if I took a day off. And, you know, so it was just a kind of a sustained effort. The point is that still the process is nonlinear, to go back to what we discussed earlier, that, in other words, the way I see it is you just, you are making an effort to bring all the information into focus, what you believe is correct. And you're playing with different ways of connecting things. but it is a total miracle when suddenly there is inside strikes. It is not something that, in my experience, could be predicted or even anticipated or brought closer. There is a famous story about Einstein that he used to go think, think, think, and then go for a walk, and he would whistle sometimes. So I remember the first time I heard this story, I thought, hmm, how interesting, so what a coincidence that this came to him when he was whistling. But in fact, it's not. This is how it works, in some sense, that you have to prepare for it, but then it happens when you stop thinking, actually. So the moment of discovery is the moment when thinking stops, and you kind of almost become that truth that you're seeking. But you cannot do it by will in some sense. It's kind of like, you know how in the Eastern tradition they have this concept of satori, like in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism you have this satori, which is enlightenment. And so there are various reports of Buddhist monks or Buddhist pastors who have had experience satori. But they say you can't, you can't do it by will, you cannot make it happen. If anything, you have to relax to let it come to you, you know? It's kind of like that, it's kind of like that. I think that what matters, but you say how to think. The point is that we're talking about such an esoteric area. Mathematics is really an esoteric area. It's a really strange subject where you try to fit everything in this very, very stringent set of rules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to obey those rules. Isn't it basically the pure, the hardest manifestation of a puzzle that we're all solving in different other disciplines, but this is the hardest puzzle?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes and no, because there is just a different, for instance, there is a different criterion for what constitutes progress. For instance, physics, A lot of arguments they make, they are not rigorous from mathematical perspective. It is kind of an intuitive argument. We think it is like this, and this is acceptable in the subject for a good reason. So there is some play. It's more like human activity, day-to-day activity. For instance, if you and I discuss something, you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we argue about it, and something seems more plausible. something seems less plausible. And so we may decide to take this point of view or that point of view as a provisional sort of like point of view and go with it. In mathematics it doesn't work this way. You either prove it or you don't. And oftentimes you get to the point where there is this much you need to prove and it just wouldn't come to you. And you just don't see it. And it can go on for months. super frustrating. But without it, it is nothing, kind of, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I would love to hear your opinion, to the degree that you know it, of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem by Andrew Wiles, which seems to have this element, perhaps for years. To the degree that you know, perhaps can you explain Fermat's Last Theorem and what your thoughts are on the process that Andrew Wiles took that seemed to, at least from my sort of romantic perspective, seemed to be very lonely?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's a lonely profession." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and hopeless, and sort of the, you put it really nicely, because it feels like there's a lot of moments where you feel like you're close." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You feel like 99% is done, and there's this one stubborn thing which just does not compute, you know, doesn't happen, and you're trying to find that push for this last link, and it could take, and nobody knows how long it's going to take," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would it be useful to maybe try to explain Fermat's Last Theorem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, it's easy to do. I am an optimist, I am an optimist. I always think that everything can be explained. Even though I say that not everything can be explained. But in mathematics, within this particular framework, I think that I always feel optimistic when people ask me to explain something. I always start with the assumption that they will understand. So let's try. Fermat's last theorem, one of the jewels of mathematics of all time. A beautiful story also behind it. Pierre Fermat, a great French mathematician who lived in the beginning of, mostly worked at the beginning of, what, 17th century. And he actually has to his credit a number of important contributions. But the most famous is called Fermat's Last Theorem, or Fermat's Great Theorem. And the reason why it became so famous is in part because he actually claimed to have proved it himself. And he did it on the margin of a book that he was reading, which was actually an important book by Diophantus about equations with coefficients in whole numbers. And he wrote on the margin, literally, this equation, this problem, which I will explain in a moment, I have solved it, I have found a proof, but this margin is too small to contain it. At some point, I was giving a public talk about this, and I made, as a joke, I made a tweet in which I wrote that I have proved this theorem, but 280 characters are not enough, and it kind of cuts me in mid-sentence. So this was 17th century Twitter-style proof, okay? But a lot of mathematicians took it seriously because he had great credibility. He did make some major contributions. And the search was on. So for 350 years, about, 350 years, it remained unproved, with many people trying and failing, until in 1994, no, in 1993, Andrew Wiles announced, a mathematician from Princeton University, announced the proof, and it was very exciting because he was one of the top number theorists in the world. And unfortunately, about a year later, a gap was found. So this is exactly what we were talking about earlier. You have 99% of the proof, this one little thing does not quite connect, and this nullifies the whole thing. Even though, well, you could say there are some interesting ideas, but it's not the same as actually having a proof. So he apparently was really frustrated, and he was really, a lot of people thought that it's going to be another 100 years or whatever. And then luckily he was able to enlist with the help, assistance of his former student, also a great number theorist, Richard Taylor, they were able to do that 1%, so to speak. Well, some people might say it may be not 1%, but 5% or whatever, but it definitely was an important ingredient, but it was not, he had a sort of like a big new set of ideas, and this one thing didn't pan out, they were able to close it with Taylor, and it finally was published, and I think was accepted and refereed in 95, and is believed to be correct. Now, what he proved actually was not Fermat's theorem itself, but a certain statement which is called Shimura-Taniyama-Wei conjecture, named after three mathematicians, two Japanese mathematicians and one French-born mathematician who worked also at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. And it was my colleague at UC Berkeley, Ken Ribbit, who in the 80s connected the two problems. So this is how it often works in mathematics. You want to prove statement A. Instead, you prove that A is equivalent to B. So after that, if you can prove B, this would automatically imply that A is correct. So this is what happened here. A was Fermat's Last Theorem, B was Shemotanian Wave Conjecture, and that's what Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor really proved. So it requires, to get to Fermat's Last Theorem, it requires that bridge, which was established by my colleague, Ken Ribbit, at UC Berkeley. So now, what is the statement of Fermat's Last Theorem? Let me start with Pythagoras, since we already talked about it, let me start with Pythagoras' Theorem, which describes the right triangles. So what is the right triangle? It's a triangle in which one of the angles is 90 degrees. Like this. So it has three sides. The longer side is called hypotenuse. And then there's two other sides. So if we denote the lengths of hypotenuse by z, and the two other sides, x and y, then z squared is equal to x squared plus y squared. So that's the equation. Or x squared plus y squared equals z squared. And it turns out that this equation has solutions in natural numbers, many, actually infinitely many solutions in natural numbers. For example, if x is, you take x equals 3, y equals 4, and z equals 5, then they solve this equation, because 3 squared is 9, 4 squared is 16, 9 plus 16, 25, and that's 5 squared. So x squared plus y squared equals z squared is solved by x equals three, y equals four, z equals five. And there are many other solutions of that nature." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we should say that natural numbers are whole numbers that are non-negative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. One, two, three, four, five, six, and so on. Now, what's Fermat's last theorem? Fermat asked, what about, what will happen if we replace squares by cubes, for example? So x cubed plus y cubed equals z cubed. Are there any solutions in, what do you call, natural numbers? It turns out there are none. What about fourth powers? Again, none. So that was a statement. So this theorem says that the equation x cubed plus y cubed equals z cubed has no solutions in natural numbers. Remember, natural means positive whole numbers, so of course there is a trivial solution, 0, 0, 0, so that this works, but you need all of them to be positive. x to the fourth plus y to the fourth equals z to the fourth also has no solutions. x to the fifth plus y to the fifth equals z to the fifth, no solutions, so you kind of see the trend. x to the n plus y to the n equals z to the n. If n is greater than 2, has no solutions in natural numbers. That is a statement of Fermat's Last Theorem. Deceptively simple, as far as famous theorems are concerned. You don't need to know anything beyond standard arithmetic. Addition and multiplication of natural numbers. That's why a lot of people, both specialists and amateurs, try to prove it. Because it's so easy to formulate. So in fact, I think Fermat proved the case of cubes. I think he did actually prove some elsewhere, the case of cubes, but so it remained like fourth. There are infinitely many cases, right? You have to, even if you prove it for cubes and for fourth power and fifth, then still there's sixth, seventh, and so on. There are infinitely many cases in which it has to be proved. And so you see, the Seplefis simple result took 350 years to prove. And in a sense, it's like mathematicians, you would think mathematics is such a sterile profession. Everybody's so serious, almost like we're all wearing lab coats and take an elevator to the ivory tower. However, look at all this drama. Look at all this drama. It's like we also like drama. We also have narratives. We also have our myths. Here is a guy, a 16th century mathematician or 17th century mathematician, who leaves a note on the margin and motivates others to find the proof. Then how many hearts were broken that they believed that they found the proof, and then later it was realized that the proof was incorrect? and so on, and brings us to modern day. And one last attempt, Andrew Wiles, who is a very serious and respected and esteemed mathematician, announces the proof only to be faced with the same reality of his hopes dashed, seemingly dashed, and like, there is a mistake, it doesn't work, and then to be able to recover a year later. How much drama in this one story, huh?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's amazing, but from what you understand, from what you know, what was the process for him that is similar, perhaps, to your own life of walking along with the problem for months, if not years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so he worked, he has given interviews about it afterwards, so we know that he described his process, that number one, he did not want to tell anybody. because he was afraid that people find out that he's working on it. Because he was such a top-level mathematician, people would guess that he has some idea, that there is some idea. So, you know, If you just know that somebody has an idea, this already gives you a great boost of confidence. So he didn't want people to have that information. So he didn't tell anybody that he was working on it, number one. Number two, he worked on it for seven years, if I remember correctly, by himself. And then he thought he had it, and he was elated, obviously, he was very happy, and he announced it at a conference, I think it was in Cambridge University or Oxford University in the UK in 1993, I believe. So, you know, This is really interesting because all of us, all mathematicians can relate to this because I remember very well my first problem, how I solved my first problem. I describe it in Love and Math in my book. So it was, how old was I? I was 18 years old. I was a student in Moscow. And I just lucked out that I was introduced to this great mathematician. Since I was not studying at Moscow University because of antisemitism in the Soviet Union, so I was in this technical school, but I was lucky that I had a mathematician who took me under his wing, and Dmitry Fuchs, who actually later came to the US, and he's still a professor at UC Davis, actually. Not so far from me. So he gave me this problem, and it was rather technical, so I will not try to describe it, but I do remember how much effort, that excitement, but also kind of a fear. What if I don't have what it takes? I lost sleep, so this was one consequence of this. I, for the first time in my life, I had trouble falling asleep. And this actually stayed for a couple years afterwards. So then it was kind of like a wake-up call that I should be, take care of myself, not work too late and so on. So that was sort of like that experience. And I was lucky that I was able to find a solution, number one, within two months maybe. And it was very, it was surprising and it was beautiful. The answer was in terms of something which seemed to be from a different world, from a different area of mathematics. So I was very happy, but I do remember this moment when suddenly you see that. In this case, it was literally, I had to compile these diagrams. what mathematicians call cohomology groups and spectral sequences, and manually calculate some numbers and trying to discern some system in it. And suddenly I saw that, how they all were governed by this one force, so to speak, one pattern. And that was absolutely wow, so it's like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe what was it, so you're sitting there at a desk." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, you know, I lived in a town outside of Moscow, so I used to take, I would take a train to Moscow. So it's what we call in Russia, elektrichka, you know, like this electric train, which was super slow. It took more than two hours to cover that distance. And I think that the crucial insight came when I was in this. And I just, I had to contain myself so I don't start screaming, you know, because there were other passengers in the car. So I was sitting there and staring at this paper. So you know what I remember, that's what came to me? I have something now which nobody else in the world has. I have a proof of, first of all, it was not just a proof. Like in the case of Fermat, the statement is already made. That's why it's called conjecture. You make a statement, you don't have a proof yet. Then you try to prove it. In my case, I did not know what the answer would be. It was a type of question where the answer was unknown. So I had to find the answer and prove it. And the answer was very nice. So nobody knew, as far as I could tell, nobody knew because my teacher told me that he explored all the literature. This was not known. Suddenly I felt that I was in possession of this. Now, it was a little thing. It was not cure for cancer. It was not a large language model. But it was something undeniably real, meaningful, And it was mine, kind of. I had it, nobody else. I had not published it, I hadn't even told anybody. And it is a very strange feeling to have that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were you worried that this treasure could be stolen?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not at the time, not at the time. So later on, there were situations where I was exposed to those type of experiences, but at that time, I didn't think of that. I was still this starry-eyed kid who was just obsessed with mathematics, with this beauty and discovering those beautiful facts, beautiful results. So I didn't think about, I didn't even think that it could be possible that somebody could steal it or whatever. I just wanted to share it with my teacher as soon as possible, you know? And he understood quickly and he's like, yeah, good job, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something you can give color to the drama? Eric Weinstein has spoken about some of the challenges, some of the triumphs and challenges of his time at Harvard. So... Is there something to that drama of people stealing each other's ideas or not allocating credit enough? All of that and creating psychological stresses because of that. On young minds and so on. Is that just the way of life? Or is this..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we can definitely do better. And I think the first step is to kind of admit that we are not 100% seekers of truth, that we are human beings and all the good and bad and ugly qualities. can be present and to have some kind of dialogue in my subject, in mathematics. This has not happened yet. There have been some famous cases where people have been accused, which had been resolved or partially resolved or unresolved. And everybody knows it, but there isn't a systematic effort, as far as I can tell, of really trying to create some rules, some ethics rules. This is fair game, this is not fair game. So that as a community, we strive to get better. I think that for most people, it's more like keeping your head in the sand and kind of pretending that it doesn't happen. Or it happens some isolated incidents. Well, I don't, my experience is not like that at all. I think it does happen much more often than it should. That's my opinion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's the pool of academia is fascinating. One of the reasons I really love it is you have young minds with fresh ideas. And that same innocence you had when you first on the train have that brilliant breakthrough. And then you throw that in together with senior, exceptional, world-class scientists who have, first of all, are getting older. Second of all, maybe they have partaken in the drug of fame and money and status and recognition, so that starts to a little bit corrupt all of our human minds. And you throw that mix in together. mostly without rules. And it's beautiful, because that's where the ideas of old contend with the new, wild-eyed, crazy ideas, and they clash, and there's a tension, and there's a dance to it, but then there's the old human corruption that can take advantage of the young minds. It's unclear what to do with that. I mean, part of that is just the way of life and there's tragedies. And oftentimes when you look at who wins the Nobel Prize, it's also tragic because sometimes so many minds are, the trajectory to the breakthrough idea involves so many different minds, young and old." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're right, I think it's like with everything else, the path is to more self-awareness, and it's like owning up your own stuff, and not blaming other people, not projecting onto other people, but taking responsibility. And that's true for everything. And the problem here, unique problem for mathematics, I would say physicists and chemists are better. They actually have better sort of ethical rules and so on, especially biologists. Because I think in part it's because there is much more money involved. because they have to get grants and so on. So for them, the question of priority, who discovered what first, is much more serious, because there's really some serious money. Mathematics, who cares? You know that Fermat's Last Theorem was proved? Did Andrew Wiles become a millionaire? No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As far as I know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even a prize, but those prizes are not..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that one was a big prize, but in general, there's not going to be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think he won the Nobel Prize, eventually, which is about a million dollars. But sometimes I joke about this, that this is the hardest way to win a million dollars. But amongst mathematicians, I think the trouble is that we are so insulated. from society because it's such a pure subject. It draws in very specific psychological types. And I can speak about myself. I did not realize it at the time, but later on, I definitely saw, I mentioned some of it earlier, that for me, mathematics was a refuge from the cruelty of the life I experienced, from discrimination that I experienced when I applied to Moscow University at 16, being failed at the exam and stuff like that, which I describe in my book as well. That was my way. I was like, I don't trust this world. I don't want to deal with it. I want to hide in this platonic reality of pure forms. This is where I know how to operate. I love this, and I couldn't be bothered in some sense for a while, up to a point. As I was getting older and more mature, I was becoming more and more interested in other things. But I think that's one of the reasons. The reasons why I wrote Love and Math was precisely to break that cycle, that it's the quiet guy in the corner that goes into math and not the flamboyant jock or DJ. I wanted to show how beautiful the subject is, to attract this new blood so that different psychological types and more women would join because then they would have students who would look at them and whom they will inspire. And then it would be instead of a vicious circle, it would be a virtuous circle. And I have to say, I think it's happening not because of my efforts alone. Obviously, there are many other mathematicians who are around the same time started to put more effort. Because see, if The old stereotype of mathematician, you're so enclosed, you're not interested in even exposing the beauty of your subject to other people, you see? And then it becomes this vicious circle. But this one day, not one day, all the time I meet the students who say, your book is the reason why I chose math as my major. And I am proud, especially when it's women who tell me this. And they are cool, they are DJs at the same time, and they are social, and they have friends, and they go out, and so on. You see, so they are, then they carry the torch, because then they will be more likely to, share this beauty with others to attract more students and so on. So I think this dumbness is broken. So now you have more influx. And once we have people who are more able to connect at the personal level, that's when we also become more self-aware as a community, I think, and that's when we should be able to have a chance to improve in terms of our ethical rules and stuff like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me return to our friend Eric Weinstein for a question that I would ask anyway, but let's have a non-Russian ask the Russian question. Ask him about the Russian concepts of friendship, science, gender, and love versus the American. You can, so there is a deep romanticism that you have. that runs your book, Love and Math. Is part of that something you've picked up from the Russian culture? What can you speak to that fueled both your fascination with math and your fascination, no, your prioritization of the human experience of love?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Good question. Definitely there is some influence of the Russian culture, Russian literature, perhaps, you know. But also, there's so many things. How do we develop certain sensibilities? Why do we care about this and not that? Why do I care, for instance, about, like you said, about this romantic ideal, so to speak, of mathematics? That's certainly not something that is automatic. Some people care about it, some people don't. And I'm not saying it is superior or inferior. It's just how my composition, my psychological composition is like that. It's an interesting question, what is the cause of it? So I think that we cannot really know, but there are some aspects of it, of course. Life experiences are bringing family. I was surrounded by love, by my parents, on the one hand, but on the other side, perhaps they were a little overprotective of me. So I was kind of like, you know, too much kind of like technique taken care of. So then when I... On the one hand, it develops on sensitivity, but it was kind of not ready for the challenges. Of the real world. Of the real world. So then that struggle, and then being lost, and then being able to overcome and to learn. And then if you don't lose, you don't appreciate maybe. But sometimes when, We lose something and then regain it, then we cherish it, we appreciate it, and then it becomes something important. Also, various difficulties, the upsetting experiences, or one could say traumatic experiences. Growing up in the Soviet Union, that was not a walk in the park. There were a lot of issues there that I had to go through. And then it doesn't break you, makes you stronger. But in my case, what happened was that for some of it, it took me 30 years to really come to terms with it and to really understand what happened. It gave me this motivation. to strive to become a mathematician, which maybe I wouldn't have otherwise. It charged me, supercharged me. I'm talking about, for instance, the experience with exam at Moscow University. Can you take me through that experience? So this is 1984. We spoke about Orwell earlier. And I was applying to Moscow University. mathematics department, it's called Mehmat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is like, for people who don't know, like the place." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was the only place to study pure mathematics in Moscow, period." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also considered to be one of the great places on Earth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's like a huge building, this monolith of a building of Moscow University. So because, as I said, a year earlier, Yevgeny Yevgenyevich converted me into math, capitalizing on my love for quantum physics. And so I spent a whole year studying with him, and I was already kind of at the level of, in some subjects, a level of early graduate studies. So it seemed like it would be a breeze to get into Moscow University. But in fact, little did I know that there was a policy of antisemitism where students like me would be failed by special examiners, mostly during the oral exam with mathematics, but occasionally would be written tests and stuff. Now, my father is Jewish by blood. It was not religious. His family was not religious. My mom is Russian. But since my last name was my father's name, so it was very easy to read what my nationality was. Can you imagine, there were special people who would screen up applicants, who would put aside the files of the undesirables. There would be special examiners who were actually professors at this university. who would be designated as those who would take the exam from those undesirables. It's almost comical when you look back now. And also, like, questions why. There was no reason other than just hatred of the other. That's how I see it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And just to give a little bit more color, so, because you mentioned nationality, it's a little quirk that perhaps gives an insight to the bigger system, that the nationality listed on your birth certificate when you're Jewish is Jewish, and when you're non-Jewish is listed as Russian." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me, it was Russian. So first of all, in the inner part, everybody has an internal passport. And there you have first name, patronymic name, last name, date of birth, so these are four. And the fifth colon is nationality, which comes from the nationality of the parents and so on. In my case, it was written Russian because my mom was Russian, but it didn't save me. Because that was my dad's last name. And so anyway, this was the toughest experience that I had up until that point. And there was these two people who came into the room where I was the only undesirable. All other kids were being questioned by other examiners, but they told me that we cannot question you, we are waiting for special examiners. So I was like, uh-oh, something is afoot. And so these two guys came, and it was for four hours, basically, and were asking me questions which were not in the program and so on. But I was a kid, I was 16 years old, I tried to answer the best I can, but it was a setup. It's been documented since then. There are even lists of problems that were given to undesirables in those days. In my year, no Jewish applicants, as far as I know. Jewish, by this metric, were accepted. So then I had to go to this, there was one school, technical school in Moscow, which was the Institute for Oil and Gas Exploration, which had an applied mathematics program. And that's where me and many of the kids who were not accepted to Moscow University ended up. But the point is, and then I was so motivated by this because I wanted to show those guys that within five years, less than five years, I got a letter from the president of Harvard University inviting me as a visiting professor to Harvard. I was 21, I was barely 21, because I already did some research in the meantime. That's how motivated I was. But the interesting aspect of it is that for the longest time afterwards, I was telling myself a story that nothing really happened. It wasn't so bad. Okay, so I was failed, but I knew that I was going to succeed. It was 30 years later that I finally got to meet that boy, that 16-year-old, that I neglected this time, and I realized that he died, that it was a crushing blow. The innocence? Not just the innocence, because there was no way, it looked like there was no way I could become a mathematician, because if they don't accept me there, it's over. I didn't know that I could actually find this striving applied math program, and then eventually somebody would take me under his wing and so on, and then could move to the United States. This was not in the realm of possibilities. So in other words, there was nothing to look forward to. It was clear that it's over. I cannot do what I love. And so when I finally, When I finally connected to that boy, oh my God, that was a totally different experience. All the pain and all the trauma came to the surface, and it was kind of a tsunami. I wasn't sure I would survive this. It was so hard. And what happened was I was invited to give a talk about this in New York. It was kind of a spoken word event, about science, but like personal experiences related to science. This was almost a year after my book came out. In my book, one of the first chapters is a chapter about this experience. But what I realize now is that I wrote it from the third person perspective. I knew the facts, but I was not emotionally connected to that experience. However, since I wanted to write the book and to connect to my readers, I allowed the boy to write it. So a lot of people were touched by it. And they would, people would say, wow, that chapter, you know, it really got a lot of resonance. It was translated into other language even before the book was published. I was surprised by this. because I didn't know yet. So the adult Edward was not yet in touch, but the book gave the outlet to the child. And that kind of started the process. So finally, almost a year later, I'm in New York at this event, and the night before, I'm in my hotel room, and I was like, okay, what am I going to talk about tomorrow? And I take a piece of paper just to, you know, my usual preparation for things. And then suddenly I have this vision that I will walk up to the microphone tomorrow and I will just start crying. And I was like, By that time, I already had an insight that it's possible to have that kind of a splitting, kind of dissociation. Things were happening quickly. There was someone in my life who explained to me this idea that some things are under the radar of awareness, but they may still influence you. And a lot of that could be connected to some experiences in your childhood. So I was kind of ready for it from different angles. But I was so surprised because I was like, what is there to remember? I know, I know everything. So then my inner voice says, all right then, you have nothing to worry about. They'll go tomorrow, and you will speak about this. And if you start crying, it's not a problem. I was like, no, I don't want to cry in front of people. I want to find out what it is, what happened. And I sat on my bed, closed my eyes, and it came. So it's hard to describe, so this is what. and the sheer energy of it, and how much effort it took to suppress it actually for all these years, how much effort it took to build that I wouldn't say in Russian, you know, that hardcore, you know, around myself. So that, and the thing, later I realized there were moments when it could come out. And for instance, I developed this fear of public speaking. All kinds of little things that I now feel more connected. So anyway, I saw what happened now through the eyes of that child. I saw how difficult it was, how crushed he was. and it looked completely hopeless, and I felt like, what's the point of living now for me, now that I know how cruel this world is, which I didn't realize before, because I prefer to wear this pink, the rose-colored glasses. But then something happened, it's so strange. It's like you feel that inside of you there is this dead child, and it is incredibly sad. I can't even describe it, but suddenly he comes alive. And suddenly it's like, oh, he's here. And I had a little talk with him, and I said, look, I know, and now I thank you. I'm so sorry that I neglected you for so long. I didn't know. Thank you. for doing this, and it's almost like, you know, I felt like the image came to mind is like a fallen soldier, like you leave a fallen soldier on the battlefield, a wounded soldier, and then you come back to take him with you. And I said, but look, look what we have done. Look at us now. It was not in vain. We are doing okay. And it's kind of almost just like holding, holding, holding that child and that, that sense of who I am, you know, and feeling it. So, the next day, I went to the microphone, and I let him speak for the first time about his experience in his own voice. It was incredible. People were crying, and afterwards came up to me and started sharing stories and so on. Because it is a story, it's a universal story, it's an archetypal story. It's the story of rejection and being treated unfairly. We all know it. And I think it's so important to realize that it's possible to revisit those moments. It's possible to reconnect to our little ones. It's possible to bring them back. and we are better for it because this changed my life, this experience. Then suddenly it's like a floodgates. There were many other things that came. That's when I became interested in the dimensions of imagination and intuition and so on because suddenly I realized that I was deprived of that possibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a child because that child was frozen in time. I was not connected to him. But suddenly he's with me and he's like, almost like opens his doors and says, look at this, look at this. So." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I could ask you, about there's a difficult idea here, there's a tension. I've interacted with a few folks in my personal life and in general that have lived through this experience of unfairness and cruelty in the world as young people. And what wisdom do you draw from the action you took of not acknowledging that you were a victim to cruelty, but instead just working your ass off, working harder. And then the flip side of that is you eventually reconnecting with the cruelty that you experienced. Because if you did that early on," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was not ready for it. It is a defense mechanism. I could have, you know, there were kids who commit suicide after this experience. I could have committed suicide because it's too much. And it is well-known afterwards, of course, I became aware of all the literature about childhood trauma and so on. And I have been speaking publicly about it since then too. And so, you know, it is a well-known issue and well-known, kind of universal phenomenon. I think that, interestingly enough, even though now I see a lot of discussion of it, now that my eyes are open, but somehow before I didn't see it, which also shows you our confirmation bias, how we screen ourselves, how we turn a blind eye to things which do not confirm our views or for which we are not yet ready. And by the way, Nobody should push to do it too soon. I'm glad I developed certain strength. I was confident. I was strong to withstand this. And if I weren't, who knows how it could turn out. So it is a very subtle kind of alchemical process, which I don't think there is a recipe, there's a formula. The reason I'm talking about this is just to share this experience, because I think that the only thing we can do in this, in some sense, is to share it with each other, because then we can find, for instance, if somebody shared with me, it would naturally lead me maybe to get closer to that kind of understanding. It's really just personal stories, it's not, Obviously, there is a component where professionals could be involved, professional therapists and so on. In my case, it somehow happened miraculously. Well, I did have support, but not from professional psychotherapists, but from dear friends. So I did have, you do need, I had somebody at the time who basically held my hand through this experience. Yes, it was invaluable, and it could not be done otherwise. So I think it's very common, and here's the thing. I would not do it in any other way. When I reconnected and I saw all the horrors and so on, but I also was able to see that my examiners were victims of their own situation, that they fell for these bogus theories, or maybe it was more of an issue of career advancement or something. And I also realized they must have suffered as well, because they must have had some kind of consciousness about it, that acting in this way towards sort of basically kids. So it wasn't pretty from their point of view. So I could forgive them, and I could also appreciate what a boost of energy it gave me. If I was accepted and I was a first-year student, I would live in a dorm because I would be probably partying and drinking, and who knows what? Maybe I wouldn't even become a mathematician. But this focused me like a laser, without me even thinking about it. It just happened. I didn't care about anything but doing mathematics, and it paid off. It changed my life. So was it good or bad? Paradox." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Seems like life is full of those. You said you lost your father four years ago. What have you learned about life from your dad?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's another big one, yeah, because I was very close to him, and it was tough, it was tough. And I was not, I was sort of not ready for it, because up until that point, I lived pretending that death does not exist. when my grandparents died, I was already in the U.S., so it was very convenient. And I couldn't go back, so I grieved, but it kind of was a bit abstract for me. I didn't see their dead bodies, you know, I didn't bury them and so on. So I waited till the, so the first death in my life was my father, like of really close loved ones. And I was absolutely devastated. you know, he was such an amazing creature, such an amazing human being. He was the kindest, the smartest, the most funny, just really funny and just really fun to be with, you know? This is what I miss, obviously. I mean, I would just love to hang out with him. So, and then suddenly he's not there, so it's tough, but it kind of changed my perspective. You miss him? I miss him tremendously. I miss him tremendously. But in a way, I learned that he never left me. I mean, it sounds so... Words are so... You cannot express in words this, what I'm trying to say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But... Do you carry him with you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. In some sense, I always did. I saw that, that it's always been, it was really, we were one in some sense, but there was this experience of two people being together, and that I miss tremendously. But he gave me so much, and let me tell you one aspect of it, for instance. When he was a kid, his father was sent to Gulag on bogus pretenses. So when he was 16, he applied to a university. He wanted to become a theoretical physicist. By the way, my love for theoretical physics was to a large extent because of that. And he was not accepted, even though he was brilliant, because he was the son of the enemy of the people. And he... it kind of broke him, this experience, that he didn't care. He went to technical school and he didn't really care. That's my take on it. And then he ended up in this little provincial town and he thought he would escape from it as soon as possible. And then he met my mother and they fell in love. And so I am sort of the product of that. But then what I learned is that because he was not able to overcome that specific experience, it fell to me to do it. And if I didn't, my son or my daughter would have. I think that that was one of the things I learned, that it was not by chance, that about the same age, for slightly different reasons, I was subjected to the same kind of unfairness and cruelty. And I, in some ways, I feel like I did it for him also. I always, because he was also always so proud of me. I was so happy. And I was, I had this tremendous gift. Twice I was invited by American Mathematical Society to give these big lectures, twice. It was in 2012 and in 2018. And both times they were in Boston. It could be anywhere in the US. Both times it was in Boston, walking distance from my parents' place. So he could be there in my mom as well. And that was such a gift that he was beaming, seeing me on the stage. So, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now that he's no longer here and it's just you. Well, I still have my mom, I still have my sister. Yeah, but as a man, there's some aspect that it's, that it does hit you hard, are you afraid of your own death? Do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have a certain conceptual view of life and death today, which is informed by my experiences, in particular, going through my father's death. And that is something which cannot be conceptualized, that experience, you cannot give it to somebody. One thing I will say, is that I felt that what it was, it was actually love totally exposed, like naked. And you try to throw, it is so acute, so facing that love is incredibly painful because it's so intense. When the person is alive, we have conversation, we have words, we have some actions, we have some stuff is going on, and it puts a filter. So we rarely actually feel love in its totally, completely pure, unadulterated state. But when a person dies, it's there, and it's staring at you, and no matter what you do, you cannot turn away. Like, I tried to, it's like, almost I felt like I want to throw a blanket over it. It burns, like, immediately, like, boom, gone. It's there. live through it. And I kept saying to myself, just live through it, live through it. And that's how you also learn what is love, for example. What is it really? What is love? What is life also? Because I was completely… I had no idea. And And then you kind of learn that, okay, so maybe it's not quite, there is more to it, there is more to it, there is more to this experience than what can be put in a concept or in a sentence, maybe poetry or music can do some justice to it. But if so, then my own life has that component, has that dimension, which is beyond anything I can say about it. And even though I love playing this role, I love it. And it kind of makes me feel different about all kinds of difficulties that arise, because it's almost like I want to enjoy it, because that's what being human is. It's being terrified, it's being frustrated, it's being self-loathing sometimes, it's not knowing, but also being joyful and just like, ah, let's just enjoy it, kind of all of it. That's why you came here for, in some sense, you know? It's like not trying to run away from things, but kind of trying to just live through them and appreciate. So the biggest thing is gratitude, in some sense. It's just gratitude, so thank you for letting me play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's gratitude for every single moment, even if it's dark, even if it's lost." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and that's why I am so, people around me, they all say that it's a total doom and gloom and the world is ending, and I'm like, First of all, that's how you see it, okay? That's not the only point of view. But also, even if it is, that's your challenge. What are you going to do about it? Stop complaining about other people. Do something yourself. How can you make it a better world? You know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I think all of that starts with just a gratitude for the moment, to be able to play this game." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, how beautiful it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What, we've talked about love, but let me ask, what role does love play in this whole game, in the human condition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like the glue, you know? It's like, for me, it's like that. And it's not because people say love is for a human being, like a romantic love, which is a huge component of it, obviously, because it's so, so beautiful to be able to express it in this way. But it could be love for what you do, for your passion for something, you know? Or... or love for your friends, for instance, or love, it doesn't have to be. And so, in some sense, that's what it's all about, ultimately, because living without love, it's kind of bland, boring, and so..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I don't think it's possible for science to explain exactly what it is. You can do a evolutionary biology perspective, you can talk about some kind of sociology perspective, psychology perspective, but the experience, the intensity, where you forget, where time, we're reminded, becomes an illusion, and everything just freezes. And then it's kind of beautiful and painful to hear you say that. When you've experienced love, the deepest is when you lost it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but in a sense, you can say that you could not have one without the other. I could not have that deep connection with my father, like really on so, so many levels, if there weren't a moment. That's how I see it, and I'm not trying to say that's how everybody should see. For instance, I respect Ray Kurzweil. I respect, and I feel, and I almost like, I feel good bumps right now. I feel that desire to reconnect Even if it is in the form of a computer program, let's be honest about it. I find it to be very moving. I find it very moving. And I understand because he actually didn't have a chance to spend much time. I think he was 16 or 17 when he was a teenager when his dad died. I was lucky because my father died. I was much older. I've had so many moments with him. But that's not my thing. Like, I think it is a feature, it's not a bug, and it sounds crazy. Like, I would love, I would give anything to have him here right now. Right now, everything I have, I give it away right now. Where do I sign? Just see him for one hour. I promise you, I will. But I also know that then I'll still lose him. or I will die, or whatever. So why is it so worth to just hold on to it? Why? Why are we holding on to this? And I am the first sucker, I'm the first one to hold on. But I'm questioning it now. Is there another way to approach life where you just, you know how Buddha is like, just let it go. Enjoy and let it go. Enjoy and let it go. Is it possible?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Except the paradox of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, ask me in a couple of years, I will report. But I think that, to my mathematical mind, it sounds like a very interesting idea, to be honest. Because to me, the idea of holding sounds like an impasse. Because no matter, in all my experience, and if you look in history, every time somebody's holding, You know, it's how they said in the Matrix, whatever has a beginning has an end. It's like, you cannot go around it. If you have a beginning, you will have an end. So then, might as well just enjoy it and not worry too much about extending it longer. That's how I see it now, but maybe tomorrow will be something else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the rollercoaster of life, the paradox of life. Edward, you're an incredible human being. I've been a fan for a long time. Thank you for writing Love and Math. Thank you for being who you are, being both one of the greatest living mathematicians and still childlike wanderer of exploring how this whole world works, the nature of the universe. And thank you so much for speaking with me today. This is amazing." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, what is real? Easy question. So first, let me start with belief. So belief is generally, there are different definitions of belief, just as there are different definitions of what is real. Okay. So for belief in my field, it would be attitudes toward something that dictate our actions. Okay. So we believe the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Therefore we act as if it will rise tomorrow. All right. Beliefs can be wrong. For a long time, people believed, and actually some still do, that the earth was flat. Okay. Well, that's obviously an erroneous belief. So beliefs can be wrong. Now, the bigger question that philosophers ask is, is this belief accurate toward what we consider to be objective reality? So now let me go to objective reality. So what is real? I don't think we can actually obtain a correct understanding of what is real. And in that sense, I have to refer to a philosopher again, and that would be Immanuel Kant. So Immanuel Kant is one of the, he was, Basically in the 1750s he wrote critiques of reason and things like that So he's a well if you're a philosopher or have any kind of understanding of Western history, you know who he is He had this idea that we can actually never get to the thing in it in itself Okay, so and he called that the numinal the thing in itself. He said this let's take this table for instance that you and I are talking across and So this thing is a table. You and I both know that. We assume it's real. We believe in it because we put our water on it and our water stays on it. OK. However, can we know this thing in and of itself as a table? So that would be what he then would call the phenomenal. How do we know that that phenomena exists? as we know it is, okay? How do we know? We use our faculties. So we use our senses and things like that. But again, even our senses can be wrong. So I've been on committees just recently, this year, last year, for hiring professors in my department who are philosophers. And we're hiring metaphysicians and people who are thinking about the nature of reality. And basically what I've learned from them, yeah, they're very- I'd love to attend those faculty talks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, metaphysics professors. It's so great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's funny is that for each one of them, I'm convinced each time. They all say different things, but they're so convincing. I'm like, yes, hire that one, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it like historical philosophy at a particular time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or do they have an actual belief? They're practicing metaphysicians?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Metaphysicians, yes. So what they do is they come and they're usually excellent philosophers from Harvard or USC or whatever, they come. and they give what's called a job talk. Every academic does a job talk in order to get it. They talk to us about a department about what they do. And so it so happens that we need a metaphysician and now we're hiring again for one. And so I've learned a lot about metaphysics in the last year, and this is what I've learned. that they use physics as a basis for understanding what we can know about what is real. And what is real is really difficult to pin down. And so your question is, what is belief? Well, belief, does it correspond to reality? That's the question I would ask. And first, we don't even know what is real. So the table, they would say, how do we know that the table even exists? Well, how do we differentiate it from the floor, for example? So these are the questions that philosophers are asking. No one else's, of course, but philosophers are asking these questions and they have different answers for it. So I would say that it's very difficult to know what is real. And in fact, what I do usually is I paraphrase my friend and colleague, Brother Guy Consolmagno. He's a Jesuit priest, he's also an astronomer, and he's the director of the Vatican Observatory. And so he says this, he's a very smart person, he says, well, truth is a moving target. So basically, to know what is real out there, like gravity or something like that, you've got to approximate it. And as human beings, you know, we have senses to tell us what, at least so we don't get hurt, you know, we're not going to fall off a building or something like that. We have eyes to see and things like that. So we can approximate what reality is, but we're never going to get to it. unless we develop better senses, okay? And I think that that is what we are in the process of doing. We're developing better senses. We have telescopes, we have microscopes, we have extensions of ourselves, which are now called technology, and we can get to a better understanding of what reality is and what the objective world is, and therefore our beliefs can be honed. so we can get better beliefs, more accurate beliefs. But can we get beliefs that actually correspond to reality? Not in any precise way, but in approximate ways. So I hope that's not too big an answer to your question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, do you think beliefs in themselves can become reality? I mean, so you've now adapted the in this little bit of a conversation, adopted the metaphysician view of reality, which is the physics. But we humans kind of operate in the space of ideas, very much so. We've kind of, in the collective intelligence of human beings, have come up with a set of ideas that persist in the minds of these many people, and they become quite strong and powerful. In terms of impact on our lives, they can have sometimes more impact than this table does, than the physics. And in that sense, is there some sense in which our beliefs are," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "reality even if they're not connected to the physics yes even if they're not real yeah even if okay so yes absolutely so um our beliefs are tremendously they uh they create social effects absolutely um there was a belief that I'm gonna use this example. There was a belief back in the day, and we're talking about, when I say back in the day, I'm a historian, so I'm talking about like a thousand years ago, right? That women had no souls, okay? So look, I don't know if human beings have souls. I can tell you this though, that if human beings have souls, probably animals do too. That's my own personal belief. That's not a professor belief there. But there was this belief among the Catholic magisterium, which runs Europe, that women had no souls, so they had to have this big meaning about it, you know, did women have souls? But that belief had consequences for women. I mean, women were treated and have been treated as if they didn't have souls." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so there's- And the soul was really the essence of the human being." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was, it's called the animus, right? It's what is the essence of what is eternal, you know, when women weren't eternal. Here's another example, okay? This is an example from my own research. All right, so there in the Catholic tradition, there's this idea of purgatory, hell and heaven. And these are three destinations that people can go to when they die. And if you're great, you go to heaven automatically and you're considered a saint. If you're okay, you go to purgatory, right? And you suffer for a time and then get back into heaven. If you're terrible you go to hell, right? Okay. Well, there was a place that The Catholics determined and this this was a belief for a long time like a thousand years or more And it was called limbo. All right, and limbo comes from the Latin limbus and it means edge and And it was either on the edge of hell or on the edge of heaven. No one really could determine which it was. No historians are like, well, this person says it was on the edge of heaven. Well, listen, this was a terrible, first of all, there is no limbo anymore. In 2007, Benedict, the then Pope, got rid of the idea that there was limbo. Okay, so Catholics kind of went crazy because they didn't really know, they forgot that limbo existed and they thought it was purgatory. And they said, how could you get rid of purgatory? But actually he just got rid of this idea of" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so that's a distinct thing from Purgatory." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, people should know they have a book on Purgatory that came before American Cosmic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I wrote a book on Purgatory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Anyway, so limbo is a distinct thing from Purgatory." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and the the the types of people who go to limbo happen to be Virtuous pagans. Okay, like socrates or somebody like that. Um And children who weren't baptized so think of this think of for like more than a thousand years mothers and fathers gave birth to babies who weren't baptized and Couldn't be buried with their family in these burial and you know They then they couldn't be reunited with them in heaven think of the pain and suffering that that caused and that was nothing Limbo's nothing yet the belief in it caused untold suffering and that's just a small example and that was as real to them as It was absolutely real. I mean, the effects were real, let's put it that way. The place itself, not real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the families themselves, do you think they've really believed it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They totally believed it. As much as the table is real. Yes. I've read, listen, we have trigger warnings today, right? So don't read this. It's going to make you upset. Okay. History, primary sources, no trigger warnings. Okay. So you're going through like, you know, somebody's diary from 1400 and you hear the suffering and pain that they went through. There were times in my research where I'd have to put my primary source down, you know, and just basically go outside and take a walk because it was so horrific. I knew it was true because they wouldn't write something, you know, they're not going to write in their diary something that's not true. And it was horrible. So, yes, these people went through untold suffering for nothing for, you know, because they had an erroneous belief. But they didn't know it was erroneous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it was real to them. Yeah. So I don't know if you're familiar with Donald Hoffman. He has this idea that in terms of the distance we are from being able to know the reality, which is there, the physics reality, is we're actually really, really, really, really far away from that. Yeah. So like it's I think his idea is that or basically like completely detached from it. What's your sense, how close are we to the reality? We'll talk about a bunch of ideas about our beliefs in technology and beyond, but in terms of what is actually real from a physical sense, how close are we to understanding that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pretty far. I'm gonna use examples from what I do. Okay, so this idea that we're suspicious of what we actually think is real, is not new. Of course, it goes back a long time, thousands of years, in fact. And philosophers, I'm not actually technically a philosopher, but I was one. I'm a professor of religious studies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but what do you introduce yourself at, like at a bar, when the bartender asks, what do you do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I never tell people what I do, especially on airplanes. It's a bad idea. So generally if they push though, I say, you know, I'm the chair of philosophy and religion, although I stepped down last year, so I'm no longer the chair. But I have like a master's degree in philosophy and I was a philosophy major and I still study philosophy, so I integrate it into my research. All right, so this idea that we can't know, we're suspicious of what we know, it's called external world skepticism. That's the official philosophical name for it. Our faculties and our senses don't give us accurate perceptions of what is there, okay? Especially at a quantum level or a molecular level. I mean, that's just obvious. So yeah, so I think that the person you mentioned is correct in that I think we're far away from it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you're talking about our direct senses, but you know, we have tools, measurement tools, from microscopes to all the tools of astronomy, cosmology, that gives us a sense of the big universe and also the sense of the very small. Do you think there's some other things that are completely sort of other dimensions or There's ideas of panpsychism, that consciousness permeates all matter, that there's fundamental forces of physics we're not even aware of yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, I do think and this is why I write about technology and I I mean, that's actually what I specialize in is belief in technology with respect to religion. So in my opinion Thank goodness for think for technology because where would we be without it? I mean frankly, I think that it's like Marshall McLuhan was the person who said technology is like an extension of our senses. And I absolutely believe that to be true. I think that we're lucky that we, you know, that Prometheus gave us technology, okay? And that we use it and we're making it better and better and better and better. And that makes us more efficient. It makes us more efficient as a species. And like, my point is that, I think that our instruments, I mean, I don't want to be a religious technologist, you know, but our instruments will save us. I mean, they're already making life better for us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You think it's important that they also help us understand reality more directly, more deeply?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think directly is better than deeply. I think directly, more directly is probably a more accurate term for what you're trying to, I think, ask me. Can we actually, I mean, I think you're asking me that question that Kant basically was trying to get at, was can we know the thing in itself? Can we know that? Can we have some kind of intense, knowing of it, it's almost mystical. And I would say that that's where religion comes in. Okay, that's where we talk about religion. And if I may also go back to Immanuel Kant, this idea that he, just before he died, just as he died, he was working on, he did this critique of reason, where basically he believed, he basically talks about Can we know what's real and he basically has this long, you know that question. Can we know it's real and then You know a thousand pages later No I'll just give you the rundown. Okay, so okay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly Um, then he does this other uh critique and um, okay, so he does like three critiques then he does this critique of judgment Okay, well judgment is this other thing altogether and I think that that's what you're getting at So, how do we know things? How can we know things? really intensely and intimately. And I think that he thought that judgment was the idea that we can actually know the thing in itself. And he was working on that as he died, and then he never finished it. Hannah Arendt, another philosopher of the 20th century, took it up, took up the critique of judgment and tried to finish it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why the word judgment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because judgment, think about it, when you see a work of art, who judges that to be decent? Okay, so there is a group of people who come to the decision that that's rotten, or that's pretty good. I noticed that you like to play guitar. Well, you choose music that I happen to like too, okay? So you and I both have a sense of judgment, just a sense. So he said there's a sense that some people have Why do certain communities have a similar sense? What what dictates that and so he was working on that He said he thought it had something to do with the knowledge the intimate knowledge of the thing in itself Yeah, so another Philosopher that philosophers actually don't like at all. But religious studies people do is Martin Heidegger so Martin Heidegger has some great essays one is called what is a work of art and And again, he gets to, you know, he talks about Van Gogh and Van Gogh's shoes, you know, that picture, the painting Van Gogh's shoes. It's really a really intense picture. It's just shoes. It's, you know, it's an amazing painting of shoes. And I think everybody can agree. that's a cool picture of shoes, right? And so why? You know, the question is, why is that a cool picture of shoes? You know, what kind of knowledge are we accessing to determine that indeed that works, right? And in fact, we still like it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So basically the nature of knowledge and what does it represent? It can operate in the space of that's detached from reality, or can it ultimately represent reality? I guess that's the space of metaphysics? Is that the?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what can we know is actually called epistemology. Epistemology. But metaphysics is basically what is the nature of reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, and those intersect." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of things intersect in philosophy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We just have fancy names for them another non philosopher that may be considered a philosopher since we're talking about reality is Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism and What are your thoughts on her sense of taking this idea of reality, calling her philosophy objectivism, and kind of starting at the idea that you really could know everything and it's pretty obvious. And then from that, you can derive an ethics about how to live life. Like what is the good ethical life and all the virtue of selfishness, all that kind of stuff. So you talk to a lot of academic philosophers. So I'd be curious to see from the perspective of like, is she somebody that's taken seriously at all? Why is she dismissed as I see from my distant perspective by serious philosophers? And also like your own personal thoughts of like, is there some interesting bits that you find inspiring in her work or not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so Ayn Rand, I've had so many exceedingly intelligent students, basically give me her books and basically say, please, Dr. Pasulka, read this book. And I'll tell them, yes, thank you. I've read this book before. And then want to engage in, you know, let me put it this way. They're religious about Ayn Rand. Okay. So to them, Ayn Rand represents some type of way of life, right? Her objectivism. Now, why is she not taken seriously by philosophers in general? Well, let me put it this way. Philosophers in general tend to get pretty... I guess you could call it their... kind of scientists, but with words. I always call philosophy, when I describe it to someone who's gonna take a philosophy class, I say, it's basically math problems, like word math problems, okay? So that's basically what it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they take words very seriously, and they're very formal about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And definitions very seriously, yeah. So they all wanna get on the same page, so there is no confusion. So for Ayn Rand to basically say you can know everything, and establish ethics from that, I think philosophers, automatically say no. Now, that doesn't mean I say no. In fact, we have at my university a wonderful business school. And when you walk into the dean of the business school's office, Ayn Rand is everywhere. So I want to say that not all academics are anti-Ayn Rand. And in fact, I don't think philosophers are either, except that they don't teach Ayn Rand. So in one sense, you could say that because they don't teach her, they're being exclusive in what they teach. Or very particular, perhaps, is another way to put it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's hard to know where to place people like her because, you know, do you put Albert Camus as a philosopher? So I guess what's the good term for that? Like literary philosophers? Or whatever the term is, it's annoying to me that the academic philosophers get to own the word philosophy because it's just like people who think deeply about life. It's what I think about as philosophy. And like to me, it's like, all right. So I know Nietzsche is another person that's probably not respected in the philosophy circles because he is full of contradictions, full of... I love Nietzsche." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's just my favorite philosopher. Oh, really? Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I absolutely love Nietzsche So he's deaf, you know, I love people that are full of ideas even if they're full of contradictions and Nietzsche And Ayn Rand is also that I'm able to look past the obvious ego that's there on the page, and the fact that she actually has, in my view, a lot of wrong ideas. But there's a lot of interesting tidbits to pick up, and the same goes with Nietzsche. I'm weirded out by the religious aspect here, on both the people who worship Ayn Rand, and people who completely dismiss her. I just kind of see it as, oh, can we just read a few interesting things and get inspired by it and move on? As opposed to have a dogmatic, binary thing. Is there something you find about her work that's interesting to you or her personality or any of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think she's fascinating. I don't dismiss her. She was a woman who reached a level of success with her mind at a time when that was difficult. So, I mean, she's definitely worth looking at for even that reason, but also her idea, I guess, part of the situation with Rand, first of all, I think that, Her work is you have to it's misinterpreted Okay, and I think that's the same with nicha like a lot of people think that I'm in in fact it is the case that Nietzsche's writing before the 20th century. So he's got the you know, he's somewhat his rhetoric is sexist and racist and you know of the time period right he was a educated philosopher of that time period. However, his books are amazing. And Nietzsche's philosophy is incredible. And I think that I think that's what you're saying about Rand, too. And I agree. I mean, I think that that We get caught up. I mean Likely we should and we should contextualize these thinkers in the time period within which they are We should not forgive their you know, because there were people during niches time that were you know, uh feminist and and not racist and things like that and you know, so but uh each has Merit, I mean I would say nicha is an You did ask me to talk about some of the books that made the largest impact on me, and Nietzsche's Gay Science is one of them. It's one of the best books ever, in my opinion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I do think Nietzsche was... I don't know about exactly sexist, he certainly was sexist, but it felt like he didn't get laid much in his life. No, I felt like it was extra sexist. I was like, his theories on women are like, all right, he's pretty angry. He seems frustrated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like, all right, calm down, buddy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, the fate of philosophers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just ignore everything Nietzsche says about women. So can we talk about myth and religion a little bit? Yes. I mean, can we start at the beginning, which is like myths? How are they born? There's this collective intelligence amongst us human beings and we seem to create these beautiful ideas that captivate the minds of millions. How is such a myth born?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Great question. Okay, so that brings us to terminology again. In my field, we definitely, I think, try not to distinguish between religion, this is gonna be controversial, I think, between religion and myth, because we call other cultures, religions, myths, right? And then we call our myths, religions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I guess myth has a bad connotation to it, that it's not somehow real." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not true, yeah. Now what's interesting is that people like Plato, who lived thousands of years ago, 2,500 about, basically made this distinction himself within his own culture, which was Greek, right? So Plato's a very famous Greek philosopher. And he would say things like this, he would say that, he would make a distinction between the reality of the one God or the one, he would call it, he didn't use the word God, but he's referencing a divinity, okay? And he believes in the soul, okay? But he would also say that the gods and goddesses of the Greeks are just myths. So even he would make that distinction. Again, he would say the population is not too bright, so they believe in these gods and goddesses. But he himself is talking to his students and he's basically talking about forms, you know, so, you know, that live and seem to live in these other dimensions. Like this table, let's go back to this table that we're talking around right now. He would say that this table is the instantiation of the form table. and that there's this table that actually exists somewhere. It's this place where numbers exist, like the number two. So we use the number two mathematically, therefore it exists, but have you ever seen a real one? Have you ever seen the real two? No. But where does it exist? So he says that tables... So he was also talking about things that you know, he says are real, making a distinction between the people. And by the way, he got this from Socrates, his mentor, who was killed by Athens because he would say such things. People don't like to be told that what they believe in is not real, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, his idea of forms, it's just, you're just making me realize how incredible it was that somebody like that was able to come up with that. I mean, that idea became a myth. The idea of forms, right, that permeated probably the most influential set of ideas in the history of philosophy, in the history of ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yeah. I mean, Plato, we know him for a reason, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So let's say that we're not, it's a gray area between religious and myth and maybe not even." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is gray." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So what, how's that idea with like little Plato start and permeate through all of society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, how does it happen? Okay. So there are different ways that religions work. So a lot of people would call the UFO narrative today like And this is what I talk about in my book like a myth right the UFO myth But a lot of people believe in it. Okay. So how do these things work? Well, what I did was I took There's a Ann Taves at UC Santa Barbara, she's a pretty well-known academic who studies religion, and she has this building block definition of religion, like it builds, okay? And so she says there are no religious experiences or mythic experiences. There are experiences and then they get interpreted as religious or mythic. Okay. And so I, I use that with the UFO narrative. So I take, um, and I compare it to the religious narrative. So basically what happens, um, what happens is this, is that a person generally has a very intense experience, uh, It could be with something that they see in the sky, a being, you know, that they see, you know, like Moses in the burning bush or something like that. They tell other people, okay? And those other people believe them because they say, that guy, let's take you. Okay, Lex. Okay, so you're playing, you know, some of your music, Jimi Hendrix shows up out of the blue. So Jimi Hendrix, who does electric church stuff, right? The electric church movement. So he shows up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was on the side for a small change. I was, I'm not aware of, I apologize if I should be, I'm just know how to play all of the songs. Electric Church, is this a thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I didn't know this was a thing. Yeah, it's Jimi Hendrix's thing, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was like a philosophy of his or what?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, yes, so he thought it was like a mission for him, like he was a missionary, and he was like doing the electric church. It was through his mission of music that he was actually impacting people spiritually, and I think you have to agree that his music is really spiritual, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, that's so cool to know that there's like a philosophy there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if he's ever written anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's spoken about it many times. Interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I need to actually do some research here. Wow. That adds another level of depth. That's awesome." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so... Okay, so say Lex is playing one of his songs. He shows up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your favorite Hendrix song by the way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, that's a hard one. I like Castles in the Sand. It's a sad one, but I like it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So i'm playing something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I show up and all of a sudden boom just like elvis does for people Hendrix shows up. All right, and then you're amazed and he tells you something that's very very significant And he says you need to tell other people this okay, so then like, okay I go on social media. Yes. And you start and because people believe you and because you are a person of, um, you know, credibility, people believe you. And so all of a sudden a movement starts. Okay. And it's the Hendrix movement. It's Hendrix two or something like that. You know, we call it something, uh, the next iteration of Hendrix. Hendrix lives, but he loses this vibration. And only Lex can like, you know, can manifest this vibration. Okay. So like, this is how religions start. You know, excuse your audience who are religious. I'm actually practicing Catholic. So this is how religion starts. They start with, first off, a contact experience. Not all of them, but a good portion of them. Some person has an experience that's transcendent, sacred to them. And they go and they tell other people. And then those people tell other people. And then something gets written about it, okay? And then it becomes, because it's a charismatic movement, people become affected by it. And if too many people are affected by it, an institution steps in and tries to control the narrative. So this is what you'd call the beginning of a religion or a myth a very powerful myth And so it's almost like a star right a star is born. Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we say institution do you mean some other? Organization that's already powerful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I want to become overpowered by this new movement" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, absolutely. Is this usually governments? It's usually, yeah. So I have a couple of examples. I use the example of the Christian church in my book, because I'm most familiar with the history of Christianity. And, you know, Christianity was started by this Jewish man, and it was a movement that, you know, he was a very powerful, charismatic person. Other people believed in him, and then his followers talked about him. And then, you know, usually early Christians before, The 300s were generally people who were disenfranchised because he had a pretty radical idea that, you know, humans should have dignity. And this was pretty radical during that time. So women who didn't have dignity and, you know, slaves who didn't have dignity at the time. Converged Christianity and Rose and so what happened was that all of a sudden it became this belief system that was undercurrent and then Constantine who was an elite and had an experience and made Christianity a state religion. By that time, there were different forms of Christianity, probably hundreds of them, well, most likely, and Constantine and the people who were powerful with him decided that their idea, this is the Council of Nicaea now, decided that there was one form, and they called it universal. the one form of Christianity and this should be it. And so they kind of took out all the other denominations of Christianity and different forms of it. So you can see that a very, very powerful set of beliefs put a culture on fire, right? And so how did they, they had to deal with that fire somehow. And so they narrativized it, they decided, how do we interpret this, and they interpreted it as they wished. But that wasn't the only interpretation of Christianity. I have another example. I'm in a Catholic Church, a lot of times, and I'm going to use the example of Faustina, she's a nun, and she's Polish. And I think it was in the early 20th century, if not the 1800s, that she had a very powerful many experiences actually of Jesus. And she saw Jesus with rays coming out of his heart. And basically she called this his divine mercy. And it became a devotion in Poland and it spread. The Catholic Church was not into this at all. Okay. And so they did everything they could to try to suppress Faustina's influence, which was growing and growing and growing and growing. OK. And so they were very successful in trying to keep her quiet. And she died. OK. Years later, John Paul II, Polish. Sainted her and created the divine mercy devotion, which is worldwide now and millions and millions of people But do you see how they yeah, they you know completely controls so fascinating that it That it just starts with a single so they could say contact experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes experience is the key word and is your sense that? those experiences are legitimate, so it's not" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, somehow artificially constructed. Yeah, I think for the most part there are legitimate experiences that people have Why would someone want to put themselves through what they go through? Like why would Jesus want to get crucified? I mean, that's a pretty nasty way to die You know, why would Faustina? Bring this upon herself. Um The people that I meet who've said that they've seen UFOs that most of them don't want to be known because of the ridicule that goes along with it. So I honestly think that, you know, there are people who are maybe not stable and would like the attention, but for the most part, normal people don't want this attention." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned building blocks. You didn't mention the word God or sort of the afterlife. Are those essential to the myth? So there's a contact experience. Is there some other aspects of myth and religion which makes them viral, which makes them spread and captivate the imagination of people?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, is there a pattern to them? I think that for each era it's different and people have first let's talk about the definition of religion if that's okay because most people assume The definitions that we in the West are familiar with which is that you know that of Christianity Islam Judaism, you know monotheistic religions and there are That's not, I mean, those are just some religions. There are so many different types of religions. Some religions have no God at all. Zen Buddhism, for example, is a religion that asks you to take away your belief structures, like to kind of like, in fact, I would call that a Kantian type religion, right? In that it's basically telling you to get rid of your concepts of what you think about things so that you can actually have the experience, like you were talking about earlier, of the thing in itself. And they call that Satori. So there are people who believe, you know, they try to, they call it meditation, Zen meditation. And it's fairly radical, actually, in some monasteries. I don't know if they still do this, but they'll whack you on the head if you appear to be, Not focusing and you know that kind of thing, you know, they do things to basically take you away from your conceptions of reality and bring you into a state of All that is which is what they call Satori and that has nothing to do with God." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like this religion and anything that involves sticks and whacking in order for you to focus better. I'm going to have to join a monastery. So, okay. So that's, so, um, digging into definitions of religion. So like, what is, what do you think is the scope that defines a religion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "OK, so in my field, we have a few different definitions of religion, as you can imagine, just like philosophers have different definitions of what is real. So I take this definition and it comes from John Livingston. And it's religion is that set of beliefs and practices that determine that is inspired by a transformative, what is perceived actually to be a transformative and sacred power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you say that again?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So religion is a set of, it's not just belief, it's also practices. It's both belief and practices, because you won't have the practices without the belief. So you have those together, okay? And it's inspired by what is perceived, because we don't know if it's real or not, what is perceived to be of sacred and transforming power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So perceived by the followers? Yeah. Or is this connected to the original sort of experience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no. Well, it's perceived by the followers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a really good definition. And that's the governing idea is that there's something of great power. Yes. Perceived to be of great power to which you can connect yourself either emotionally or intellectually somehow in order to explore the world that is beyond your own capabilities. Yes. And is there communication also involved?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Generally. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. That's a great definition. Okay. So within that falls everything that we've talked about so far, including technology and alien life and so on. Do you think ultimately religion is good for human civilization? Let me maybe phrase it differently, is what's religion good for?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for asking that. Most people don't ask that. And I think it's the question to ask. Why do we still have religion? That's the question, right? Because scientists and others, scholars, humanists even, thought that there's this thing called the secular secularization thesis. And it's this idea that the more we progress rationally and we have better instruments for understanding our reality, the less religious we will be. But that's been found to be untrue. We're still very religious, okay? So why? Why is it around? Well, it's adaptive in some way, in my opinion. Many people would not agree with me, but I kind of see it as an evolutionary adaptation. Now, think about religions, okay? Think about Christianity again, for one. Here comes this idea, when you have this ruthless empire called the Roman Empire, which litters its roads with crucified bodies to let you know Don't mess with us. Okay. All right here all of a sudden you have this guy saying god is love Okay. All right. Well, that's weird. Okay. So why why does this take off? well, it takes off because we're becoming a um a colonial power That means we're going into other countries We're conquering them. How do we survive together as cultures that don't clash? Well, we have to have a belief structure that allows us to, and I think religions function that way, frankly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So religions help us, from Richard Dawkins' meme idea, it allows us to explore a space of ideas. And that in itself is the, so it's like evolution of ideas. And it was just a powerful tool for us to explore ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because you know, if, if I believe that men have souls." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do they? Yes, they do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm still trying to figure that out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I still, in terms of souls, do believe cats don't have souls, but we'll never be able to confirm that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe if we get better instruments, you know, the soul instrument, you need to come up with that one, please. For cats? Yeah, not just for cats, but for all animals and people in general. For sure. You could put them in like a little, you know, soul machine and find out what's the status of their soul." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's funny. I hope we'll become a scientific discipline of consciousness, and consciousness is in some sense connected to maybe what the meaning of the word soul used to be. And I think it's a fascinating open question, like what is consciousness and so on. Maybe we'll touch on in a little bit. But yeah, anyway, back to our..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Religions being adaptive. I think that Christianity probably helped us Become better people to each other as we moved into a more global society and I also this it goes along with my book which is basically making the argument that belief in non-human intelligence or ETS or UFOs UAPs, whatever you want to call them is a new form of religion and how does that work with the" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the scientific method, do you think there's always this role of religion as being, in its broad definition of religion, as being a complement to our sort of very rigorous empirical pursuit of understanding reality? Or there's always going to be this coupling? We'll always redefine new eras of civilization of what that religion actually looks like? So you talk about technology and so on being the modern set of religious beliefs around that. So is that always going to, is religion always going to kinda cover the space of things we can't quite understand with science yet, but we still wanna be thinking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I see what you're saying. That's a great question. When you say religion, I would use the word religiosity because I think that we're moving out of the dogmatic types of religions into more of a, I hate to put it this way, but an X-Files type religion where we can say, I want to believe or the truth is out there, but we don't know that it's out there or we don't know yet what it is, but we know it's out there. So there's this kind of built-in capacity for belief in something that we don't have evidence for yet, and that's a sort of faith. So I would say yes to that question, absolutely. I think it's adaptive in that way. We're moving into a new, I mean, heck, we've already moved into this culture. Most people have not caught up with it yet. I see that in the school systems, you know, and I think that I'm hoping we can catch up fast. Because really it's moving faster than we are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I mentioned to you offline that I'm finishing up on the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I'm not sure if you have anything in your exploration interesting to say, but the use of religion by dictators or the lack of the use of religion by dictators whether we're talking about Stalin, which is mostly a secular, I apologize if I'm historically incorrect on this, but I believe it's a secular. And Hitler, I think there's some controversy about how much religion played a role in his own personal life and in general, in terms of influencing the, using it to manipulate the public, but definitely the church played a role. Do you have a sense of the use of religion by governments to control the populations, by dictators, for example, or is that outside of your little explorations as a religious scholar?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not outside of my framework. Absolutely not. I think that it's done routinely. Propaganda is done routinely. Especially, there's nothing more powerful than religion to get people to act, I think. My mother's Jewish and my father was Roman Catholic, okay, from Irish extraction. And so both members, both great-grandparents came here under duress because they were being, what would you call it? There was an act of genocide on both sides. being done by other cultures. Okay, so on the one hand, obviously, we know about the Holocaust. Okay, so they came, the great grandparents came here to avoid that, and they made it. On the other hand, there was an English genocide, we just have to say it, of the Irish. It was called a famine, but it wasn't one. It was a staged thing. And so millions of Irish left Ireland on coffin ships, is what they called them, because they usually wouldn't get here. Mine happened to get here. Okay. So that's the context that I'm coming from. So in each case, for one thing, Irish weren't considered, you know, there was, Catholics weren't considered, they were considered to be terrible. And there was a lot of anti-Catholic rhetoric here in the United States, which is kind of strange because one of the, in fact, the most wealthy colonial family were the Carrolls in Maryland, and they were Catholic. So when you look at the United States, at our history, and you see the separation of church and state, do you want to know where that came from? That came from those guys. They convinced George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I mean, they couldn't vote, yet they had their names on the Constitution. Is that not a strange contradiction? So here you can see how propaganda works. There was anti-Catholic propaganda. There was anti-Jewish propaganda. And a lot of it was that these people weren't human. They weren't human beings. Another thing I'd like to say is that when the Irish did come here, they were a lot of times indentured servants. But that's terminology. What is an indentured servant?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Slave." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pretty much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that sense, religion can be used- Derogatorily. Yeah, derogatorily as a useful grouping mechanism of saying this is the other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And, you know, it's powerful, too, because behind it is a force of, you know, what people contend to be sacred, a sacred force. Right. So, you know, it's up to God to, you know, decide who's you know, so you have to go along with what God says, of course. Well, that's basically that's not the contact event. You know, the contact event is usually some type of very specific, legitimate event that a person has with something that is non-human or considered divine. But when religions become narrativized, I would call it, by different institutions, that's when you're in danger of getting propaganda." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said Nietzsche, one of your favorite philosophers, he said famously, one of the many famous things he said is that God is dead. Yes. What do you think he meant? Do you think he was right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, good. I love this question. No one asks me about Nietzsche. And I love nisha, okay, so um first actually I do think and I could be corrected and probably will be in all the comments Yeah neat. Well first nisha. It's true. Wasn't the first to say god is dead. I think hegel said it Okay, no one reads hegel. He's like so Difficult to read that is impossible same with Heidegger as you mentioned here. Yeah, I love him. But yeah, he's really hard to read So Nietzsche's basically said God is dead and let me give you the context for him saying that he also said this He said there was only one Christian. He died on the cross. Okay, so He despised Christianity and he said that and and the people who practice it Absolutely. Yeah, but again, he believed in jesus and he believed jesus was he didn't believe he was a divinity believed jesus was a good man And he died on the cross." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so he believed in the morality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, he absolutely did. Yeah, he did Um, and nietzsche basically was making a historical statement about god is dead. He said and he was right He was basically saying that in this in the century in which he lived. Um And he died I think in 1900 again, I could be wrong about that. So I just want to say that I believe he died in 1900 Okay, so so he's writing in the 1800s and he's basically saying God is dead and we killed him Okay, so he's making a historical statement that at that point in time with science just kind of getting better and industrialization happening the idea of This this thing beyond what we know as material reality is dead. So the substrate of Western civilization is dead. That's what Nietzsche is saying, if that makes sense. And he basically says with that comes the Übermensch. Okay, which is the superhuman and he says there aren't many of them. He says but they're gonna come He also talks about the philosophers of the future and he's speaking and writing to them is my belief So he's basically telling you and me because we're now the philosophers of his future. Yeah, he's basically telling us This is what's happening now and look what it has done. He says now everything is is possible all manner of terrible evil because no one has the belief in God anymore the belief that there's That there is an afterlife you asked about an afterlife So with this kind of belief in a morality comes this belief, you know, you can have morals without God Okay people do but what? Christianity is this idea that you will reap what you sow. So if people don't believe that anymore, what will happen? And so that's what he's basically saying, is that the basic anchor for Western society is now gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he was right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, absolutely right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then again, what do you think if we brought him back to life and he read American Cosmic, your book, and he wrote, he tweeted about it, right? writing a review, maybe for the I don't know what they post for New York Times, he'd be an editorial writer with a blue checkmark on Twitter. What do you think he would say about this idea that you present that's a grander idea of religion? And, you know, like religiosity? Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't that kind of reverse the idea that God is dead?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because it would bring up this idea of external intelligences that are not human, which is basically a lot of religions talk about that, right? There are Bodhisattvas, there are angels, there are demons, you know, there's all these types of non-human intelligences that religion makes space for. So what I'm basically saying in American Cosmic is these new things are within the realm of UFOs and UAPs so we'd know I think that well, I think Nietzsche would say that that's a progressive Adaptation of religion is what I would hope he would say Nietzsche. However is Unpredictable, I think I couldn't predict him. So I would say that it would be my hope that he would say this is an accurate representation of a move into a new type of religion and and it's adaptive, therefore progressive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He would probably be uncomfortable reading a book by a brilliant female professor." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Who happens also to be short. I don't know if you read that. No. He said some pretty nasty things about short women." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh my God." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, Nietzsche, he should be canceled. No, no, please don't cancel Nietzsche. You have to take people in the context of their time. Although I'm pretty sure in his time, he was also an asshole. He was. But assholes are people too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. Just bad ones." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wrote the book, American Cosmic UFOs, Religion, Technology. What was the goal of writing this book? What maybe we'll mention it. We have already mentioned it many times, but In this little space of a conversation, can you say maybe what is the key insight that you found that lingers with you to this day from the process, the long process of putting this book together?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. Just like with my book on Purgatory, I went into the research thinking that it would be something, that it was entirely not. It ended up being something completely different. And I think that's good. I think that people who do research are very excited, actually, when their research surprises them. So I was happily surprised by my Purgatory book to learn that it was a place. And so I went into American cosmic being a non-believer in UFOs entirely and I came out being agnostic Okay Kind of believer So agnostic sort of open to the mysteries of the world I Yes. And I didn't think that, first of all, I knew that the government was part of the situation. I just didn't know how much. And so I learned that quickly and acclimated to it, accepted it and noted that indeed, Horatio, the world is much more mysterious than we think it is. It's more mysterious. There are more mysteries in this life than your philosophy provides for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So as a sense, American Cosmic is about the mysteries of the modern life as encapsulated by this, the realm of technology and the realm of alien intelligences." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I think that, I think that, I mean, I'd have to go off record as a professor and talk personally. As a person, I do think that there are mysteries of which we have an inkling. And if it's something as powerful as non-human intelligence, whether or not it's from another planet, extraterrestrial, or it happens to be from like another dimension or something else, I think that this is going to get the attention of institutions of power. And indeed, I think that's what has happened. And although probably people have had interactions with these things, it appears to me, historically, for a long time, as long as humans have existed, I would imagine that, indeed, this is something that's quite powerful and could change the belief structures of our entire societies, our civilization, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's the same way that you're talking, the belief structures were strongly affected by religious beliefs throughout history in the same way this has the potential. It serves as a source of concern for the powerful because it can have very significant effects on the populace. Huge effects, yes. Is there some broader understanding of how we should think about alien intelligences than like little green men? Yes. That you can maybe elaborate on and talk about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, this comes directly out of my research in Catholic history. What I found was that, let's take, for instance, this idea of an angel. Okay, so we all think we know what an angel looks like. Why? Well, we've been told what an angel looks like. We see what an angel looks like. Throughout history, people have painted angels and they all look pretty much the same. But actually, if you go to the primary sources on, you know, either in Hebrew or in Greek or, you know, in whatever language and in Latin, And you look at experiences that people have talked about, you know, where they've written down their experiences about angels. Angels don't at all look like what we think. They don't look like little cherubs with wings. They don't look like tall, you know, strong Anthropomorphic, you know human looking things. They don't they look really weird and Sometimes they don't look at all a humanoid and they look like Strange spinning things right with like, you know eyes and things like that. They they communicate telepathically with us okay, so what does that mean for the idea of extraterrestrials are what we consider to be aliens like I do think that They're first if we are if listen, it's i'm not the first to say this if we're in contact with Non-human intelligence. We're most likely in contact with its technology Because think about us Do we send human beings to Mars yet? Some people would say yes, but let's put that aside So no, we don't we use our technology. We send our Rovers to Mars. Okay? Okay, so if there's an extraterrestrial civilization, is it sending Are they coming by themselves? Are they coming to see us or are they sending their technology? Most likely they either are technology or they are sending their technology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there might be a gray area between what is technology and what the aliens are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, but you're saying like basically a robotic probe, that would be the equivalent of us, our human civilization created technology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Way more advanced than what we could believe to be a probe, all right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's kind of funny to think about like, if whatever sort of extraterrestrial creations have visited Earth, that we're interacting with some like, dumb crappy drone technology. And we're like, we're like building these like myths and so on from like an experience with some like crappy drone made by some crappy startup somewhere. When the actual intelligence is like something much grander. That's the more likely situation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what I like to tell people. I'm like, no, it's probably a lot weirder than you think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Oh, boy. But what forms can it possibly take? I really love this idea that I tend to be humble in the face of all that we don't know. And I tend to believe that the form alien life forms would take and the way they would communicate is much more likely to be of a form that we can't even comprehend or perhaps can't even perceive directly. So like, you know, It could be in the space of, you know, we don't understand most of how our mind works. It could be in the space of whatever the heck consciousness is. Like maybe consciousness itself is communication with aliens or like, I don't know. It could be just our own thoughts is actually the, alien life forms communicating. Like, I know all that sounds crazy, but I'm saying like, I'm just trying to come up with the craziest possible thing that doesn't make any sense that could very well be true. And you can't say it's not true because we don't understand basically anything about our mind. So it could be all of those things, everything from hallucinations, all the things that are explored through the different drugs that we've, talked about in this podcast in general. Joe Rogan loves to talk about DMT and all those kinds of hallucinogenic drugs. All of it, including love and fear, all those things that could be aliens communicating with us. Memes on the internet that could be. I'm pretty sure humor is alien communication. No, I don't know. But is there some way that's helpful for you to think about beyond the little green men?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, absolutely. It, um, it accords exactly with how I think actually. Um, so I'll explain. Um, I liked in American cosmic, I attained the status of full professor. So I was like, okay, I can pretty much write this book like I want to do it. And I did. So I used a lot of quotes from cool artists like David Bowie. Okay. So David Bowie opens the book. Okay. And he basically says, and so does Nietzsche, by the way, David Bowie and Nietzsche. Boom, two awesome quotes right together. That's how I open my book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No better opener." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you remember the quotes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, of course. So the first, the quote by David Bowie, and that's what I'm going to concentrate on in response to what you just said, which I think is absolutely correct. David Bowie said, the internet is an alien life form. OK, and if you've not seen David Bowie's interview where he says that, I highly recommend it. He's so brilliant. OK, so David Bowie is actually quite brilliant about the idea of UFOs. He's also brilliant about the idea of technology. OK, and most people wouldn't think that, but I mean, he's pretty darn smart. Okay, so all right, so I started to think about it and I also early on in my research met Jacques Vallée Okay, so he's a technologist. He has a PhD in information technology from computer science Basically from Northwestern and he got that back in the day, you know when I say back in the day I'm not talking a thousand years ago" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm talking like in the 60s, okay, so he's- Back when computer science wasn't really even a field that you can get a degree in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, he has a PhD in it. And he's French, he's from France, but he lives in Silicon Valley. And he worked on ARPANET, which is the proto-internet. He mapped Mars, he's also an astronomer. I mean, he's just this all-around brilliant guy, right? And he's also interested in UFOs. And most people take those two interests of his as separate interests. And I remember being at a very small conference and listening to him, being in awe, of course, because he's an awe-inspiring person, and then thinking, wait a minute, why do people compartmentalize those two things about him that are one and the same, okay? So when we talk about UFOs and UAPs and stuff, we have to talk about digital technology and things like that. Now, if we're going back to what I, so if I were to say what, if I were to believe in, Like I said earlier, I was agnostic, bordering on belief, most likely a believer, in this extraterrestrial, or not extraterrestrial, let me put it another way, non-human intelligence that's communicating with us. I'm gonna tell you how I think they communicate with us. And I go back to the Greeks again, okay? And the Greeks had this idea of muses, you know the muses? So, okay, so there are these things called muses, and we tend to think of them as metaphors, right? But what if they're not? What if they're actually non-human intelligence trying to communicate with us, but we're so stupid? We can't understand. So only people with super amazing capacities, like poetic, creative, intelligent, mathematical, whatever. you know, because they tend to do this symbolically, they tend to communicate with us in symbols form. And so music, you know, symbols, we've got math that are, you know, it's a symbolic language. And so what, so okay, so muses are probably a good idea for me of what this would be. Now, would muses have spaceships? or those things that we call physical counterparts to what they are, that's another question altogether. Now, why would I think this? Because if you look at the history of our space programs, both Russian and American, you're gonna find some pretty weird stuff. Pretty weird history there, Lex. So you want to get an idea, go back to Tchaikovsky and read a little bit about what he has to say. If you look back at the history of our space programs, the viable space programs are both Russian and American. Each has an amazingly strange history because the founders of the calculations that got us up into space, the rocket scientists basically, were doing some pretty weird rituals and doing religious things, right? They weren't necessarily like Jack Parsons on our side. Was out in the desert with people like L Ron Hubbard and doing really intense rituals Believing that they were opening star gates and things like that. Okay, that's awesome. And they were really doing that. Okay, so then you go to The Russian side and they had a very specific non-dogmatic, according to Catholics or Orthodox Christianity, idea of what Christianity was. And they believed that they were interacting with angels, okay? Non-human intelligences. So if you look back and you see muses, you know, you can contextualize them within this tradition. And so when I started to talk to people who were actually in the space program and who were in these programs that now the government has said, oh yeah, we do have those programs. They have the same belief structures. They believed that they were also in contact with these non-human intelligences, and they were getting what they called downloads of information and creating, sometimes with Tyler Dee in my book, creating technologies that were real, and they were selling them on NASDAQ for, you know, a lot of money, like, you know, say $100 million or something like that, undisclosed amounts, but a lot. And these things are viable technologies that we use now, and they make our lives better, and we progress as a species because of them. Now, that has nothing to do with the scientific method. As much as I know, as much as anybody's going to get angry at me for saying that, but you know, sorry, those were strange encounters that created our ability to go into space. I don't know if they're real or not, but these people believe they were real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so they have a power in actually having an impact in this world, in inspiring humans to create technology which enables us to do things we haven't been able to do before. Yeah. I like how we're putting angels, alien life forms, aliens, and technology all in the non-human intelligence camp, which I really like that, That's very true. It's this other source of wisdom, intelligence, maybe a connection to the mysterious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I was really surprised by it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you speak a little bit more to the connection between aliens and technology? that Jacques Vallée had in his own one individual mind, that's very tempting to kind of separate as two separate endeavors. Why did you come to believe that they are one and the same, or at least part of the same intellectual journey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Thanks for asking that again, because nobody asks me that question. It's central to my project. So Jacques is a huge influence on me. He taught me a lot. He gave me access to some of his information that he keeps. But a lot of his information is actually there out there for everyone to read. He has an academia.edu page and he just, so he didn't have this. Unfortunately, when I was doing my research in 2012 and 2013, so I had to go back and do microfiche type stuff. What I did was I began to read everything that he wrote. And he actually gave me a lot of his books too. And he told me, I remember he dropped me off from, this is actually quite interesting if you'll allow me to tell you a little story. Please, yeah. Okay, and it also includes Ayahuasca, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Great. Every story that includes Ayahuasca is a great story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so I was at a conference, and it was a small conference of very interesting people in California on the Pacific Ocean, and Jacques was there. And this is actually, it opens my book. This is the, I go, it's the preface to my book. I go on this ride. He takes me through Silicon Valley, I've lived there, right? My grandparents grew up in the same place that he raised his children in belmont. And so, um, but we were there with robbie graham who's a great ufologist in his own right and um and film theorist I highly recommend his work. Um, so we were together and he was taking us to san francisco where I was going to meet my brother who was going to take me home and so He took us on this long journey and he talked to us and as we got out of the car He gave me several of his books and one in particular. He gave me he said read this first Okay, I definitely will read that first, okay, so this is how the ayahuasca figures in so We were I didn't take it nor have I taken it. Okay, so we're at this place in California, and Alex Gray and his wife were there, and they were talking about their experiences with psychedelics. You know, he's an amazing visionary artist, okay? So he believes that there's this place that you can enter, and he and his wife would enter this space with either, you know, ayahuasca or LSD or something like that, and they would not talk to each other, but they would be having the same exact Experience so they would it was almost like having the same dream, right? Okay, so so somehow that whole event with Jacques there and them talking about their experiences in these realms of which religious studies people are quite familiar by the way, because visionary experiences are what we study so all of this seems super familiar to me and I recognize that immediately that Jacques is that it hit me like, you know, very obvious that UFOs and these experiences and technology all seemed, they were all meshed together. And I knew that I had to take them. I knew I had to read everything Jacques ever wrote. And the best stuff he's written, by the way, is his little essays that he wrote in the 1970s. And they were peer reviewed essays about the beginning of the internet and how a lot of it was based on, basically like neural connection with the internet, like somehow psychic connection through the internet with others and things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the brain is a biological neural network. There's this connection between visual neurons and so on. And that's what ultimately is able to have memories and has cognitive ability and is able to perceive the world and generate ideas. And those ideas are then spread on the internet even from the very early days to other humans. So it gets injected or travels into the brains of other humans and that goes around in there and then spits out other stuff and it goes back and forth. So it's nice to think of the network that's in our mind, individual mind as, I mean, very much even deeply connected to the network that is the connection between humans through the internet. And so in that sense, Jacques of the Internet as this powerful, as a source of power and wisdom that is beyond our own." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. That's external to us, like a non, like, you know, if you could call it autonomous AI, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's non-human intelligence in a sense, even though humans are a part of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, or we're invaded by it or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. It's the chicken and the egg. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if I can go on, I have lots of experience. I'm not done with that. So, and this is, so this is where I come to this idea that Um, we're in this space. We're in now a new space of religion of religiosity So what happens is then I and it's like a biosphere and i'll talk about that in a minute So we so like so jacques takes us back we get to san francisco And my brother who is your straight lace person, you know army guy and everything like that Um, I get into his car and the first thing he tells me is I took ayahuasca And I was like what and he goes it's gonna save humanity" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's great. As I mentioned to you offline, I talked to Matthew Johnson. He's a Hopkins professor. He's really a scholar of most. He's studied most drugs. He's also really deeply studied cocaine, all those stuff, and negative effects. He's focused on a lot of positive effects of the different psychedelics. It's kind of fascinating. So I'm very much interested in exploring the science of what these things do to the human mind and also personally exploring it. Although it's like this weird gray area which he's masterful at, which is he's a professor at John Hopkins, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. And and doing large-scale studies of this stuff. And until he got a lot of money for these studies, even in Hopkins itself, there's not much respect. It's not even respect, it was like... People just didn't wanna talk about it as a legitimate field of inquiry. It's kind of fascinating how hesitant we are as a little human civilization to legitimize the exploration of the mysterious, of whatever the definition of the mysterious is for that particular period of time. So for us now, there's like little groups of, things like I would say consciousness in the space of like computer science research is something that's still like, I don't know, maybe let philosophers kick it around for a little longer. And then certainly extraterrestrial life forms. in most formulations of that problem space is still the other. It's still the source of the mysterious, except maybe like SETI, which is like, how can we detect signals from far away alien intelligences that we'll be able to perceive? Yeah, it's, and psychedelics is another one of those that's like, we're starting to see, okay, well, can we try to see if there's some medical applications of like helping you get, like he does studies of help you quit smoking or help you in some kind of treatment of some disease. And he's sneaking into that. I mean, it's like openly sneaking into it. He's doing studies on it of like, how can you expand the mind with these tools? And what can the mind discover through psychedelics and so on? And we're like slowly creeping into the space of being able to explore these mysterious questions. But it's like, it sucks that sometimes a lot of people have to die, meaning, sorry, they have to age out. It's like faculty and people have a fixed set of ideas and they stick by them. And in order for new ideas to come in, then the young folks have to be born with an open mind, the possibility of those ideas, and then they have to become old enough. and get A's in school and whatever to carry those ideas forward. So, you know, the acceptance of the exploration of the mysterious takes time. It's kind of sad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is sad. I agree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe to go into my source of passion, which is artificial intelligence, what's your sense about the possibility, like Pamela McCordick has this quote that I like, I talked to her a couple of years ago, or I guess already in this podcast that, that artificial intelligence began with the ancient wish to forge the gods. So do you think artificial intelligence may become the very kind of gods that were at the center of the religions of most of our history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's a lot there. So I'm going to start by addressing this idea of artificial intelligence being separate from human beings. Okay. So I don't think that's actually, that might happen. Okay. I mean, it's already happened, but let's put it this way. Like you're talking about super artificial intelligence, like autonomous conscious artificial intelligence. Okay. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something with artificial consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First of all, I think she's correct, okay? But also, it's an awesome quote. I'd also like to bring up this writer of fiction, actually. Ted Chiang. And one of his essays, he writes short essays. One of them was The Basis for the Movie Arrival, which if you haven't seen it, it's a really great movie about UFOs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It has a very creative way of proposing an idea of how they might be able to communicate. First of all, how they appear to us. Second of all, how they may be communicating with us humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. The author, Ted Chiang, has a lot. I recommend his writings, his short stories. One is very short and it appeared as It appeared in nature about 20 years ago, and it is called, I think it's called, Eating the Crumbs from the Table or something like that. And it's basically this short essay, and I hate to do a spoiler here, but if you don't wanna know what it's about, don't listen right now. Yeah, spoiler alert. Yeah, okay, so this is what it's about. So basically it's about human beings becoming two different species, okay? And one of them is created, they're called metahumans, and they start biohacking themselves with tech, okay? Sound familiar? So they do this and they become metahumans and another species, right? And you know, just kind of another fork, such that humans can barely understand them because they're so far removed. So in a sense, Are they gods, right? No, they're metahumans, they're superhumans, they're enhanced humans, okay? I see that, hopefully, on the horizon, frankly. I hope so. Not that we have two species, but that we can use our technology or we can become... so integrated with our technology that we can survive, okay? We can survive the radiation in space. We can't go places now because of the radiation in space. Perhaps we can develop our bodies such that we can survive the radiation in space. So there's this idea of these metahumans. Now, there's also this idea that technology is just another form of humans. We've created it, right? And so maybe it is bent on surviving, thereby using us You know kind of as a meme or a team some people are calling them teams now these self-generating They're replicating themselves through us. Okay, I see that also and I don't think that's terribly bad Maybe it's just the way that we are evolving. It doesn't mean that the You know, we're evolving all the time, like we're taller than we used to be. You know, we have different skills and, you know, so I don't see that as a bad thing. I think a lot of people see it as if we're not how we are now, it's a tragedy, but it's not a tragedy. How we are now is actually a tragedy for most people alive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and that we might be evolving ways we can't possibly perceive. Like you said, that humans have created Twitter and Twitter may be changing us in ways that we can't even understand now currently. Like from a perspective, if you look at the entirety of the network of Twitter, that might be an organism that this, the organism understands what's happening. from its level of perception. But we humans are just like the cells of the human body. We're interacting individually, but we're not actually aware of the big picture that's happening. And we naturally somehow, or whatever the force that's creating the entirety of this, whatever one... One version of it is the evolutionary process, like biological evolution. Whatever force that is, it's just creating this greater and greater level of complexity. And maybe somehow other kinds of non-human intelligence are involved that we're calling alien intelligences. So just to step back, and we'll come back to AI, because I love the topic, but through American Cosmic and in general, you've interacted with much of the UFO community. You mentioned ufologists. By the way, is it ufologists or is it ufologists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's ufologists. Ufologists. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So first of all, what is a ufologist? And second of all, what have you learned about this community of ufologists, or also as you refer to them as the invisibles, or the members of the invisible college, or just in general, people who study UFOs from the different, all the different kinds of groups that study UFOs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. Generally, what I found is that They are, okay, so people who are interested in UFOs from like being a kid, you know, and seeing some cool movie like Star Wars or something, and then they become interested and then they study it as best they can, UFOs or UAPs. They're generally an honest group of people who are using their tools. There are generally two types of them. There are those who believe in the nuts and bolts like the physical craft and they believe in that these are things from other planets Okay, so that's like the ETH hypothesis, you know I'm sorry ETH hypothesis ETH is what we call it. Yeah. Sorry about that" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is like there's an actual spaceship, like something akin, but much more advanced than the rockets we use now. Yeah, they have advanced. Not necessarily biological, but something like biological organisms that travel on these spaceships." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this would be like what to the Stars Academy is trying to decipher, like how, you know, how do they do it? You know, maybe we could use that technology, the propulsion and things like that. They look at the rocket technology. Okay. So there are those. And then there are people who believe that it's more consciousness based. Okay. So these are your two types of ufologists who are known. And these are people who we know about. Then I found that there are people who are quote-unquote, I call them the invisibles, because Jacques Vallée in the 70s, he and I think actually Alan Hynek, his colleague, quoted, this is a Francis Bacon thing, by the way. It goes back to the early modern time period when scientists could be killed for basically trying to go outside what the church or the government institution determined was dogma. And so they had to be really careful. So he called it the invisible college. So Hynek took that term and reused it, or what do you call it, repurposed it. So he repurposed it. So they were still talking to each other though. So what I found to be the case was that there was a group of people who were scientists, but were not on the internet. People today, and students of mine in particular, and my own kids actually, They think that you only exist if you're on the internet or something only exists if it's on the internet and that's of course untrue And so what I found was that there are most people who are the most powerful people Of our society and are doing things are not on the internet. You're not going to find any trace of them So a lot of these people are what I call invisibles, people who are studying, at least their work is invisible. You might find them on the internet, but you're going to find that they're part of the bowling league or something like that, right? You will not find that they are actually engaged in research about this topic, okay? And so I called them the invisibles because I was surprised to find them. And I thought, well, this is no longer the invisible college. Because these people are not even talking to each other. And that's why I reference this movie fight clip in it. You have an invisible. OK. And his name is Tyler Durden. And he's incredible. He does incredible things. He's like. A person who should not exist, right? Because he does so many things that are amazing. And so I found a person like that and I call and he's a real person. He's partially on the internet, but nothing that he does around that topic of UFOs is on the internet. So I decided to call him Tyler D after Tyler Durden. And so these people, I've termed the UFO fight club, because they work together, but they don't know, in fact, his boss doesn't know what he does. They don't talk to each other, because you know the first rule of fight club." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Same as the second, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, yeah. You don't talk about fight club. No, you don't do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you have a sense that there's such a, I don't wanna say fear, but a principle of staying out of the limelight?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's something real and I think that the use of it could be dangerous for people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, sorry. You mean like something real, like there's actual technology? I don't know. What's the right terminology here to use? Alien technology. ideas about technology that are being explored that are dangerous if made public, that may become dangerous if made public." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's the word. You don't have to call it alien technology. You can call it ideas about alien technology, because I don't know if it's actual alien technology or not. I honestly don't know. But I do know for a fact, because it's a historical fact, that Jack Parsons and Konstantin Tchaikovsky, who's Russian, believed in these things and believed that they were downloading this information. Whether or not they were, I don't, I mean, they definitely created the rocket technologies. That's true. how they did and whether their process was exactly what they said it was, I don't know. So this is the same thing today. So we've got some powerful technologies going on here. And of course we have a military and we have a military for a reason. Almost every government who needs a military has one. And so they're going to keep these the way they should be kept in my interpretation. I mean, think about it. Everybody accepts the fact that we have a military. Almost everybody does. Why are they so upset then that the military keeps secrets?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, that's the nature of things. We can get into that whole thing. I tend to, I've spoken with the CTO of Lockheed Martin on this. I obviously read and think about war a lot. It's such a difficult question because this space, this particular space of technology, there's a gray area that I think is evolving over time. I think nuclear weapons change the game in terms of what should and shouldn't be secret. I think there's already technology that will enable us to destroy each other. And so there's some sense in which some technology should be made public. This is the same discussion of, you know, between companies, which part of your technology should you make public through like, for example, academic publications and all that kind of stuff. like how the Google search engine works, PageRank algorithm, or how the different deep learning, like there's pretty vibrant machine learning research communities within Google, Facebook, and so on. And they release a lot of different ideas. It's an interesting question, like how dangerous is it to release some of the ideas? I think it's a gray area that's constantly changing. I do also think it's super interesting. I wonder if you could elaborate on a little bit that there's this, gray area between what's actually real in terms of alien technology and the belief of it when held in the minds of really brilliant people, that they ultimately may produce the same kind of result in terms of being able to create new technologies that are human usable. Like, Is there, in your mind, they're one and the same? It's like believing in alien craft and actually being in possession of an alien craft?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think they're the same, no. Belief is powerful, okay? In new age communities, you know, people think thoughts are things, okay? That's been said, you know, thoughts are things, you can make them happen kind of thing, believe in them enough. It is true that if I believe I can run a 540 mile, I'll do it, okay? And I probably will do it. And I've done it before actually. Much younger, but I did it. So, but my coach is the one that instilled that belief in me, right? And so, but can I run like a one minute mile? No. Okay. So I guess, does that answer your question? Like there's only so far belief goes in generating reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, I mean, I guess that's what, just having listened to Jacques Vallee, it seemed like reality was not as important for the scientific exploration of the concept of alien technology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I could be wrong, but this is what I think Jacques is getting at. There are other ways to access places in reality other than what we consider to be physical. That's what this consciousness. Okay. So in like I said, so religious studies Is among other things it's just it's looking at visionary experiences All right, so people do have visionary experiences they did without drugs, you know, they did with drugs they do with drugs they do many have them without drugs today and oftentimes those visionary experiences correspond to each other. Now, how do we make sense of that? So, you know, do these places actually exist? In a sense, I think they do. And so I think that, you know, let's take that very famous case of a Virgin Mary apparition in Fatima, where I think there was like a lot of people, thousands and thousands, if not like, I think 50,000 or something like that, a lot of people. gathered to see what's now called the miracle of Fatima, which was the spinning of the Sun. Well, a lot of people saw different things, but they all saw some kind of thing. Okay, so they all saw different things, but it was Something happened. Okay, so I guess the question is What are these places where we access non What I'd call like non-physical realities. Okay, where we actually do get information We did get like who could say that Jack Parsons didn't get information from doing these rituals and accessing these we have to say that he actually did and because we see the results, the physical results. The same thing with Tyler, and that's why I put Tyler in this camp with this tradition with Jack Parsons. I say that Tyler is getting these, what he calls downloads, and you can see the results of them physically. He sells them on the NASDAQ. He makes millions of dollars from them. They help people. I've seen people who they've helped, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think psychedelics that I just mentioned earlier have a possibility of going to these kind of, same kind of places of exploring ideas that are outside of our more commonplace understanding of the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In my, yeah, I think so, absolutely. However, I think we have to be really careful about those because young people or people in general, I should say, absolutely can get hurt by them. I mean, but we get hurt by alcohol, you know, we drive our cars and we get kill each other. But psychedelics are really interesting because I know that within the history of our country, We have used psychedelics in various capacities for our military in order to try to stimulate ideas and access places and information that can't be accessed normally. This is all fact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I talked to Matt for like four hours, so we ran out of time being able to talk. But I wanted to talk to him about MKUltra and Ted Kaczynski, there's so many mysterious things there. There's like layers of what's known or what's not known. It's fascinating, but I think what is interesting is psychedelics were used or were attempted to be used as tools of different kinds. That's the point. So like, we think of technology as tools to enable us to do things. And that same way that psychedelics, like many drugs, could be used as tools, some more effective than others. I don't think what you, I'm not sure what you can do effectively with alcohol. Although, I think somebody commented somewhere on social media that, I don't know why everyone is so negative about alcohol, because I think the person said that it's given me some of the most incredible, it enabled me to let go and have some of the most incredible experiences with friends in my life. And it's true, we kind of sometimes say alcohol is dangerous, it can make you do horrible, but the reality is it's also a fascinating tool for letting go of trying to be somebody maybe that you're not and allowing you to be yourself fully in whatever crazy form that is and allow you to have really deep and interesting experiences with those you love. So, uh, yeah, even alcohol can be used as an effective tool for exploring experiences and becoming, uh, expanding your mind and becoming a better person. So, um, What the hell was I talking about? So yeah, so psychedelics and, oh yeah, and MKUltra. Is there something interesting to say in our historical use of psychedelics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, think about it. When did we start doing that? When did we start using those?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's true." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's quite a long time ago, right? Okay, but true, but when did our government start experimenting with them with us, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Our government is the United States government." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Okay. So that happened in around the 1950s. Okay. After quote unquote, the 1940s where we have 47 and we have, you know, this, you know, this Roswell type stuff going on. Okay. Like crash sites and things like that. So I think that, um, I think there might be a correlation there. I don't know what it is, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I do think- That's fascinating actually, yeah. A lot of interesting things started around that time period." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Around that time period, yeah. Yeah, and so Aldous Huxley would say, we opened the doors of perception, okay? And what flew in?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh man, that was beautifully put. It'd be interesting to get your opinions on certain more concrete sightings that are sort of monumental sightings of alien intelligences in the history, in the recent history, that at least I'm aware of. very much aware of this history, but the most recent one, I've spoken with David Fravor on this podcast. I really like him as a person. He's a fun guy, but also he's gotten a chance to, he's described his account of having experience with what he and others now term the TikTok UFO. What do you think of that particular sighting, which has captivated the imagination of many, in particular because there's been videos released of it, of these UFOs. But I find the videos to be way too blurry and grainy to be of interest to me. Personally, to me, the most fascinating thing is the first person to comment from David and others about that experience. But what are your thoughts?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those videos have been out for a while, actually much, I think in the mid 2000s, they were out. But what you have is you have kind of like this corroboration from a group and also the New York Times involvement in 2017. My opinion about the TicTacs is that, first, I believe the people who have had the experiences, I know some of them, like, you know, some of the radar people and things like that, they saw them. And they're not, I don't believe they're making it up. Okay. I do think that this is being, this is being used. As a spin. Okay, and I'm just going to say that. And the reason I think that is this is because at the time it was released, I was still in touch with many people who were among the UFO Fight Club. And so they had intimate knowledge of these things. And the first thing they said was, we have satellites that can read the news on your phone when you're reading it. So we've got better footage than this, and this is not good footage at all. Therefore, they believe that it was authentic footage that had been doctored up. Now, why? I don't know why. So I honestly don't know if it's accurate or not. I mean, I believe the people, absolutely, but Was this something out there to fool these people? Perhaps, I don't know. Is it spun? The people who I know who are part of the UFO Fight Club believed it was real, okay, and said, this is badly done, but real, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see, but so there's some kind of, when you say spinning, there's some parties involved that are trying to leverage it from the- For funds, probably. For funds or financial interests." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nevertheless, it has inspired a conversation and just a lot of people in the world that there's something mysterious out there that we're not fully informed about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I was certainly grateful that the New York Times ran the story right before my book came out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, see, but there's the financial interest that, to me, as a person who doesn't give a damn about money, actually, I don't like money, except for when it's used in the context of a company to build cool things. But, like, personally, I don't know. I find the financial interest side off-putting, especially when we're talking about the exploration of some of the most, like, money is a silly creation of human beings." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's used to provide temporary... The unfortunate thing with money is that it helps you buy things that too easily allow you to forget. the important things in life and also to forget the difficult aspects of life, to do the difficult intellectual work of being cognizant of your own mortality, of like fully engaging in life, in a life of reason too, of thinking deeply about the world, all those kinds of things. If you get like a nice car or something like that and just like I don't know, all the different things you can do with money is it can make you forget that. Anyway, as there's a long way to say that. Yes, yes, it's very nice that it coincided nicely with the book, but also it I think it. I mean, like I said, I think it inspired quite a lot of people that, you know, maybe there's a lot of things out there that were like it reminded a lot of people there's things out there we don't know about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Lex, I can agree with you on that, but can I push back on two things? Okay. All right. The first one is that I was happy to receive money from the book because of the New York Times article. That's absolutely false. So I published my book with Oxford, which is an academic press, and you don't get paid with an academic press. Okay, so money was not it for me. What it was was recognition that my research was being validated. So, you know, cause then people called me and said, Well, maybe it's more than interesting. Okay, and they did. Okay. The other thing about money is just as you say that Now I agree with you there. I'm upset about money, too I think there should be universal health care a universal income all you know I don't think people should be in poverty, especially because we are so wealthy as a species frankly Okay, that said think about this if you are if you don't have money you can't have a life of the mind either right" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "100%, so I'm not espousing that money's the devil. I just think that money can be a drug. Or I would compare it to food or something like that, where you really should have enough. to nourish yourself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And too much could and too much can be a huge problem. So that that's where I come from with money. And I'm just aware I'm fortunate enough to have the skills and the health to be able to earn a living in whatever way like I wish of having being in the United States and being able to speak English. So the very least, I can work at McDonald's. And my standards are I told you I made a mistake. I told Joe Rogan that I've always had a few money, and people are like, oh, Lex was always rich. No, no, no. I was always broke. What I mean by I've always had a few money is my standard of what it takes to have a few is always very little. I'm just happy with very little. But yes, it's true that money for many people including for myself, it's just a different level for different people, is freedom. Freedom to think, freedom to pursue your passions. It just so happens, I am very fortunate that many of my passions often come with a salary, if I wished. So everything, like me, I love programming. So even just like working as a like basic level software engineer will be a source of a lot of joy for me. And that happens in this modern world to come with a salary. So yeah, it's definitely true. I just mean that it can become a dangerous drug. So I'm glad you are in this pursuit that you are in for the love of knowledge. And it's true. Yeah, people should definitely buy your book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I won't be making money off of it. Oh, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, absolutely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe my next book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. Yeah. Your sense is there's something as there's some groups of people that may be trying to leverage this for financial gains." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know, probably good financial, I mean, they may have good reasons for this too. Like, okay, let's take the study of UFOs, okay? Maybe many people in government that decide who dole out the money, let's put it that way, they think UFOs aren't real. So they're not going to give these programs money. So how do these programs make money? They're gonna have to find a way to do it. So maybe that's how they do it, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating. This is a way to raise money for- Doing the research." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let's take a step back to Roswell. We talked about it a little bit. What's your sense about that whole time of Roswell and just Area 51 and the sightings and also the follow-on mythology around those sightings that's with us today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where do I get started?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, it is a mythology here, right? The mythology of Roswell, it's very religious-like in the sense that there's a pilgrimage to Roswell people make and they go to, there's a festival there as well, like a religious festival. you could get little kitschy stuff like you can get at a religious festival there. So it's very much like a place of pilgrimage where a hierophany occurred. And a hierophany is basically contact with non-human intelligence, okay? So non-human intelligence is thought to have contacted humans or crashed at this place in Roswell, New Mexico. Now, what's fascinating is that I begin my book by going out to a crash site in New Mexico. I have to get blindfolded with my, well, to tell you the truth, the story is that I'm with Tyler, who's an invisible. And he wants to show me a place in New Mexico where a crash happened. And he says that he thinks that I need to see physical evidence because I don't believe. And so I said, I'll go, but I'm going to bring a friend of mine. And he said, no, you have to go alone. He goes, it's a it's a place that is on government owned property and it's a no fly zone. And when you go, you'll be blindfolded. And I said, I definitely need to bring a friend. So he said, well, who do you want to bring? I just had met this university scientist who's very well known and I call him James in my book. And I asked, and I had a feeling James would definitely want to do this. And I asked James and he said, I'll go tomorrow. Okay. So I suggested this to Tyler and Tyler said, Absolutely not, you know, and I thought I know he's gonna look up James and he's gonna say yes Because if anybody can figure out what this material is that you're gonna go look for it's gonna be James Here's the instruments. And so Tyler did in fact look him up and finally said, okay I got you can go so we both head out there and we get blindfolded Tyler takes us out there takes about 40 minutes and outside of a certain place in New Mexico. So in terms of Roswell, this is what I can say, is that according to Tyler, there were about seven crashes out in the 1940s in New Mexico in various places. We went to one of them, according to Tyler. At the time, I was completely an atheist with regard to anything that had to do with UFOs. So we were out there, we had specially configured metal detectors for these metals, and we did find these, okay? And they've since been studied by various scientists, material scientists, so forth. And I believe Jacques talked about Not those particular ones, but others on the Joe Rogan show. They're anomalies, so there are, scientists don't, I'm not a scientist, so I can't weigh in on whether, I just believe the people, these people I believe because they're well-known scientists." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean they're not anomalies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, they are anomalous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, anomalous in terms of the materials that are naturally occurring on Earth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so there's some kind of inklings of evidence that something happened in Roswell in terms of crashes of alien technology. Now, what else is there to the mythology? So there's some crashes, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's kind of epic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's pretty epic, yeah. And what else? What are we supposed to take away from this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, yeah. So it's weird. Okay, so in religious studies, like I said, we call it a hierophany. which is the meeting of a non-human intelligent thing, whatever it is, an angel, a god, whatever, a goddess, with, or an alien, with humans. And that's the place, okay? So the place is New Mexico. So New Mexico becomes, folded into the mythology of this new religion, is what I call a new type of religion, of the UFO. And it becomes ground zero for this new mythology. Just like Mecca is the place where Muslims go, they have to go, right, at least once in their lives, it's a pilgrimage place now. So in my book, that's how I tell it. Now, what about Roswell in the public imagination? Obviously, according to Annie Jacobson, who's good, you know, she's a great author, investigative journalist, she's written about Roswell too. I don't agree with all of what she comes up with, but part of it is that there's a lot of military stuff going on there that is classified, and there's a reason why you can't get in, and nor would you want to, right? So there's a lot of experimentation going on there. I don't believe that it has to do with ETs, frankly, but in the imaginations of Americans, Roswell is that place. But I went to a different place, and apparently there are several places in New Mexico. Now, strangely enough, I travel back to New Mexico at the very end chapter of my book, but I don't go there physically. I go there through the story of a Catholic. Nun, who actually believes that she bi-located to New Mexico in the, gosh, in the 1600s. So she, yeah, it was very strange. And I was at the Vatican at the space observatory when I made that connection that she probably went to the very, well, she believed she went to this very place that I had gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you elaborate in a little bit? What does it mean to go to that place? For her? Yeah, for her. We're kind of breaking down the barrier between what it means to be in a place and time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, I agree with you. This is the field of religious studies. And again, I don't say it's true in my book. I just say it's a very strange coincidence. that I'm at the Vatican Observatory. In fact, I'd finished my book, but while I was at the Vatican Observatory, I was there with Tyler, and we were looking at the records. They're called the trial records, but they're the canonization records of these two saints. Each was said to have done amazing things. One was Joseph of Cupertino, who levitated, okay? is said to have levitated. The other was Maria of Agrada from Spain, their contemporaries in the 1600s, who was said to have been able to bilocate, which is to be in two places at once. OK, so this is a belief in Catholicism that certain very holy people can do these kinds of things like levitate, which, by the way, is also associated with UFO abductions. You know, people get levitated out of their beds and things like that. So we were sent there by a billionaire who was interested in levitation and bilocation. And since I could get into the Vatican and I knew the director of the Vatican Observatory, both Tyler and I were able to go to the secret archives and look at the canonization records and then go to Castle Gandolfo, which is about an hour from the Vatican, where the first observatory, the space observatory, The Vatican is the second one is in Arizona and has a much larger telescope So we went and we and brother guy gave me the keys to the archive I said look at anything you want and I got to see a lot of stuff by Carl Sagan, by the way I know you talked about yeah, it was awesome. So they have a whole section on extraterrestrial the search for extraterrestrial life and they don't by the way, I" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How awesome is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was awesome, yeah. So we got to stay there. They have a scholar's quarters. And so they had two. And so Tyler stayed in one and I stayed in the other. And Brother Guy probably shouldn't have been so nice to me and given me the keys because when I got home, we were there for two weeks. When I got home, I got this frantic phone call from him and he basically said, Diana he goes. Do you remember where you put the the original Kepler? And so I had this Kepler, right? And so I misplaced it Luckily, I remembered where it went I was like, oh gosh, thank goodness I found it But he'll probably change the rules of the Vatican Observatory after my visit. So Maria is, she's actually in the history of our country in that she first wrote a cosmography of what she said was the spinning earth. And this was in the 1600s. And she, that's her first book. And she wrote that. And then she said that she was transported on the wings of angels to the new world and she said that she met a culture of people and she Basically told them about the faith of Catholicism Okay, and then what happened was that the people that and she described the fauna she described the people and everything like that and so there were actually missionaries there and And when they went to try to convert some of the people who already lived there, apparently they already knew a bunch of stuff. And they said, how did you know all this stuff? And they said, this lady in blue came and told us, and they said, did it look like this? And they showed them, they obviously didn't have a photograph, but they had a picture of a sister A nun and they say, yes, they she wore similar clothes, but she was much younger, right? And these guys were, you know, thought that was weird. But when they went back to Spain, they found that this woman had been doing that in her mind had been traveling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I don't know what to make of it. There's so many things that are sort of forcing you to kind of go outside of, you know, I'm of many minds. I have a very, most of my days spent with very rigorous scientific kind of things and even engineering kind of things. And then I'm also open-minded and just the entirety of the idea of extraterrestrial life forces you to think outside of, conventional boundaries of thought, current scientific thought. Let's put it that way. And your story right now is certainly an example of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's freaking you out. That's okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a nice way to put it. Just another person that seems to be a key figure in the mythology of this is Bob Lazar. It'd be interesting, maybe there's others you can tell me about, Bob, who's also been on Joe Rogan, but his story has been told quite a bit. I think he said that he witnessed some of the work being done on the spacecraft that was captured and so on in order to try to reverse engineer some of the technology in terms of the propulsion and so on. What are your thoughts about his story, how it fits into the mythology of this whole thing, and the broader ufologist community?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so regarding Balazar, with respect to his claims, Again, I have no way to adjudicate whether or not he actually, you know, encountered this. I do have friends who are. And the people that I know who... know his story, some know him, um, believe him. And they have said to me that the most important thing that they think he has said, in fact, one of them, I think, made a... made a meme out of it or something like that, was basically, he said... Maybe the public, you know, I regret making it public. Maybe the public isn't ready for this kind of information. And basically they've, they emphasize that to me and they emphasized it so much that they wanted me to know. Right. So that is somewhat creepy to me. So I think, okay, this poor guy, Bob Lazar. So many people, you know, this is what happens to people who have experiences like this. They're questioned, their reputations are put on the line. In some instances, their reputations are manipulated on purpose to make them look uncredible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To me, as a scientist, it's just inspiring that it kind of gives this kind of, I'm not even thinking of it, is there an actual spacecraft being hidden somewhere and studied and so on? I'm thinking of it like, I don't know, it's a thing that gives you a spark of a dream, you know? as a reminder that we don't understand most of how this world works. And then we can build technologies that aren't here today that will allow us to understand much more. And it's kind of like almost like a feeling that it provides, and it inspires and makes you dream. That's the way I see the Baba Czar story. I don't necessarily, people ask me, because I'm at MIT, people ask me, did Baba Czar actually go to MIT and so on? I don't know. And I personally don't care. Like it's that's not what's interesting to me about that story. To me, the myth is more interesting, not interesting, actually, but inspiring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, because inspiring you're suggesting that the myth inspires you to create reality. Yes. Yeah. I think that's that's true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So even if it's like not real. It doesn't matter, does it? It doesn't. I mean, in some sense, just like you said, it does in some sense, it doesn't. So a lot of people know how much I love 2001 Space Odyssey. So I got all these emails asking like, uh, Hey bro, uh, do you know what's up with the monoliths in like the middle of the desert or whatever it was? I don't, I haven't been actually paying attention. I apologize. Uh, but, um, you kind of mentioned offline that this was kind of cool and interesting. What, what do you make of these monoliths? And in general, uh, are you, um, Are you a fan of 2001 Space Odyssey, where Monolith showed up? Do you have any thoughts about either the science fiction, the mythology of it or the reality of it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Okay Okay, and please say more Right. So first of all Kubrick's films are not ever easy for me because they're so weird Right, and I don't actually enjoy watching them, but that work Yeah, it doesn't take away from their incredible brilliance though and their visionary merit. So a 2001 Space Odyssey is incredibly visionary. And of course, all those things that people say, I don't have to restate them. In terms of what I have, it's a subtext to my book, by the way. I didn't mean it to be, but it's almost a character in my book, 2001 A Space Odyssey. And when the monoliths started to appear again, everything went crazy with my everything, internet, social media, phone. What's up, what's going on, right? Is this disclosure? And I thought, well, you know, I'll tell you one thing, is it's, let's look at the timing of it. It's a cool, if it's an art, you know, and then copy art and things like that. It's actually happening at a really interesting time when all of us are forced to go online. When all of us are forced, because of COVID, right? We're completely now invaded by the screen, or we're invading the screen. Like we're leaving, our infrastructure now is completely changed. So the monolith, basically, if art is supposed to like show us life, it certainly has. If that's an art project, somebody did an awesome job with it. But apparently that monolith was there for a long time. Right. I mean, that's the thing. It's been there for a couple of years. So they said, OK, all right. That said, if your audience is interested, I think the best theory about the meaning of the monolith is. is Robert Ager or Robert Ayer. I think it's Robert Ager. He's got a website where he does analyses of films and it's called collative learning or collative learning. And he does the meaning of the monolith. Everyone should go look at that because I fully agree with him. When I studied different meanings of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. I was fascinated. Okay. So what is this about? I accepted as soon as I listened to it and watched it. So basically he says that the monolith is, okay, can you pick up your phone here? What does that look like?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Looks awfully a lot like a monolith." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Okay. So basically that's what he was saying was that Kubrick was basically the monolith was Technology or the screen in particular and he basically was saying that the cinema screen we were being you know completely and if you think about it Look at all this we live in a screen culture We have computer screens, iPhone screens, or phone screens. We have TV screens. Everything is something, and now that COVID has come, we're forced to go into these screens and we're forced to live a different material existence than we have lived before. So in my sense, I think that if it's an art project, it's a really good one for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I like that meaning of it. It's a screen and a screen could take all, all kinds of forms. I mean, our perception system in a sense is a screen between reality and our mind. The screen of the computer is a screen. The virtual reality worlds that we might be one day living in, there will be an interface. I mean, ultimately it's about the interface. That's interesting. It's an interface to another world of ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's also a material change. It's a change in our material, I mean, when people talk about augmented reality, I say we already live in augmented reality, don't we? Because this isn't our grandparents' existence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I sometimes, you have to pause and remind yourself how weirdly different this reality is than just even like, I mean, 30 years ago, the internet changed so much and social media has changed so much about actually just the space of our thinking. Wikipedia changed so much about the offloading of our knowledge, the way we interact with knowledge. I mean, it offloaded our long-term memory about facts onto a digital format. So in a sense, it expanded our mind. It's kind of interesting. I'd be curious to see if he has just one interpretation. I wonder if there's others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've corresponded with him, yes. So over the years, he and I have corresponded. And I told him, I said, look, I'm gonna be using this in my book, so I think you should read what I say. And he of course wanted to see it. What did he think about your book? Did he get it just to read it? Yeah, oh yeah. So he is a non-believer in alien intelligence and UFOs, but he, And that's fine, but I still agree with him that the meaning of the monolith was the screen. But that doesn't mean the screen isn't like what David Bowie said, right? So it's not exclusive. So I could still use this theory, but differ from the conclusions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In terms of non-believer and believer, when you say believer, you also are kind of implying the idea that aliens have visited or had made direct contact with humans in some form. There's also the exploration and the idea of just alien intelligences out there in the universe. You know, the Drake equation, estimating how many intelligent civilizations may be out there, how many have ever existed, how many are about to communicate with us. I mean, when you just zoom out from our own little selfish perspective of Earth and look at the entirety, let's say the Milky Way galaxy, but maybe even the universe, does the idea that there are intelligent civilizations out there, something that you're excited about or something that you're terrified about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good question. So basically, I would say I'm not so keen on it. I think that our relationship with technology as it is, and as I hope it will go, will help us survive, okay? I don't think we're equipped to do it as we stand now, but I think that if we can up our game, or let's just put it this way, if technology is an extension of ourselves, which it actually is, it will help us because it'll probably be smarter than us, okay? It'll help us survive in the ways in which it determines best, okay? That said, if there are non-human intelligences out there and they have more advanced, you know, obviously technologies than us and they actually come. The history of human engagement with, you know, other cultures has not gone well for cultures that are less aggressive. So you see what I'm saying? Like, it's not a good idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I wonder where we stand on the, where humans stand on the full spectrum of aggression." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, heck, where are we now, Lex? I mean, we're not too great here. We're still aggressing against each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I know, but that will give us a benefit, right? Like, oh, you're saying, I thought, okay, I see. I just have a sense that there may be a lot of, intelligences out there that are less aggressive, because they've evolved past it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We can't assume that. No, I know we can't assume that. If we can't assume it, then I'm going to assume the worst." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's despite the fact that I'm Russian and think that life is suffering, I tend to assume, not the best, but I tend to assume that there is a best core to to creatures, to people and to creatures that ultimately wins out. I think there's an evolutionary advantage to being good to other living creatures. And so, ultimately, I think that if there's intelligent civilizations out there that prosper sufficiently to be able to travel across the great spans of space that they've evolved past silly aggression. That it's more likely in my mind to be deeply cooperative. So like growth over destruction. Like growth does not require destruction. I think. But if you see the universe as ultimately a place where it's highly constrained in resources that are necessary for traveling across space and time, then perhaps aggression is necessary in order to aggress against others that are desiring to get access to those resources. I don't know. I tend to try to be optimistic on that front." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I'm emotionally optimistic and intellectually non-optimistic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I guess I'm there with you. I tend to believe that the happiness and deep fulfillment in life is found in that emotional place. The intellectual place is really useful for building cool new technologies and ideas and so on, but happiness is in the emotional place. And there, it pays off to be optimistic, I think. You said that technology might be able to save us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, that's also kind of optimistic too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It might kill us. Talking to you offline a little bit, there was a sense that, you know, that we humans are facing existential risks, that it's not obvious that we will survive for long. Do you have, is there things that you worry about in terms of ways we may destroy ourselves or deeply damage the fabric of human civilization that technology may allow us to avoid or alleviate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think that Any you can choose anything actually, and it could destroy us. Okay. So, you know, uh, pollution, um, you know, here we're in a pandemic. Okay. Um, a meteor. Okay. So we can use technology. The thing is that we say we use technology, but actually that's not a correct way of putting it, in my opinion. So there is a term used by others, coined by somebody I don't know, and I'm sorry to not give credit where credit's due, but it's called technogenesis. And it's this idea, Heidegger actually had this idea, but he didn't use that term. And it's this idea that we co-evolve with technology, that we don't actually use it. Most people think it's like a tool we use. Okay, let's use technology to do this. Well, actually, when we engage with technology, we actually engage with it, and it engages back with us, and we engage with it. So it's this co-evolution that's happening. And in that sense, I think that as we create more autonomous, intelligent AI, it will help us survive because if we co-evolve with it, it will need us as much as we need it, is my opinion. how that happens or if that bears out to be true, we'll see. But I don't think the idea that we use technology is a correct way to put it. I think that technology is something so strange, the way it is today, like digital technology. I'm not talking about hammers or things like that, those kinds of tools, okay? Technology is so far removed from that and our environment is so now conditioned by our technology and the infrastructure we live within, the material structure, I think that it's going to, it's not, I don't think it's going to be a Frankenstein. I think it's actually going, you know, like a Mary Shelley type idea of technology. I think it's actually going to be more Promethean in the sense of You know, think about it, we create children and then we get old and we rely upon our children to help us, okay? Well, I feel like that about technology. We've created, well, we've created it, right? And so it's kind of growing up now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or maybe it's in its teenage years and we'll see. What do you think about, in terms of this co-evolution of the work around brain-computer interfaces and maybe Neuralink and Elon, seeing Neuralink in particular as its long-term mission as a symbiosis with artificial intelligence? like giving a greater bandwidth channel of communication between technology, AI systems, and the biological neural networks of our human mind. What do you think about this idea of connecting directly to the brain in AI systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, okay, I've listened to your podcasts with Alon. I've listened to Alon before. He's very intelligent, obviously, super smart guy. I think this is already, I mean, not in the specific ways that he is doing it, but I think we are already doing that, okay? And I can give you some examples. And there are really trivial examples, but they do make the point, and this is one of them. Before I started this research on UFOs and UAPs and technology, I actually was looking at the effects of technology and in particular media on religion. And what I did was I was lucky to be asked to be a consultant for various movies and One in particular I learned a lot from and that was The Conjuring. So I was a history consultant for The Conjuring. It happens to be my field. It's Catholic studies, right? And you've got these people who are real people and they're, you know, exercising demons and things like that. Okay, so I thought, wow, this is a great example for me. You know, I didn't do it for the money. It doesn't pay well, but I did it to learn, right? So I work closely with the screenwriters who I work with now all the time. I work with them all the time now. And what I found was this, I found that as the most interesting part of the creation of this movie was the editing process. Because they would use, it would go through editing and they would use test audiences and a lot of the test audiences would be these things where they test their flicker rates and things like that, the eye flicker rates. And when it goes really intense, they go to UC Irvine and they do this thing called cognitive consumption, which is basically... or I'm sorry, cognitive consumerism, where they basically hook test audiences up to EKGs and they read their brains and they figure out which scenes create the most... Arousal. Yeah. And so they cut out all the other scenes. Okay. So what we're getting is we're getting like this drug when we go to the movies or when we do video games or when we watch, we're literally physiologically responding to our technologies. So we're already there. We're already interfacing with them physiologically. So that's my example. Now, the kind of thing that he's doing, Musk is doing with Neuralink, I say, go for it. That's awesome. I hope he does it. I'm fascinated. I want it to happen. Why do I want it to happen? Because I think that, well, first it's inevitable that it's going to happen. I also want to point out that Jacques Vallée was trying to get this done back in the 60s and the 70s. He was writing papers about, in fact, the ARPANET, the proto-internet, was called Augmentation of the Human Intellect. So we've been doing this for a while. Okay, so props to Elon Musk, but we've been thinking about this for a good time. We've even been visioning it. Okay. So there was a really interesting Jesuit priest. He was French Tellier de Chardon. I don't know if you know who he is. If not, he's fascinating. He was actually a soldier before he became a priest. And so he believed he also saw what he called a biosphere. Now, this guy is talking in like the early 20th century, like the 1917, you know, that time period. And so basically, he, he said, and wrote about this thing called the newest fear. And he basically said, there will be a point when we merge with our technology and it's going to be somewhat like some kind of a biosphere. We have this atmosphere and then we have the stratosphere and it's going to be this biosphere and we're all going to be hooked into it mentally. So we'll be able to communicate in a way in which we don't communicate now. So, you know, that sounds so similar to the singularity. So after I've read him many many years ago, but when I read the Kurzweil's book about the singularity To me it read just like religious language like it read like, you know, cuz he I In fact, it's so much like revelation to me when I read it that I even assign it to my students in my classes. I'm like, this is, this is it. You know, this is like a really great book of the singularity, you know, the coming singularity. And this religious event, because it seems like it, when he writes about it, he says, I felt it before I even understood it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, he, I mean, Kurzweil. Kurzweil, yeah, Kurzweil. I mean, what are your feelings about, not feelings, thoughts, feelings, too, about the idea of the singularity? Do you think it's ultimately the thing that echoes throughout the history of ideas is this, like, moment of revelation like this this almost mythological religious moment or is there something more physical to this idea of concrete about the idea of there'll come a point where our technology there'll be like a phase shift between the basic fabric of humanity, of how we interact, how evolution brought us to be, this biological interaction, that our technology crosses some kind of line of capability that the world be more technology than human to where it'll leave us behind. Sort of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, I don't think it's gonna leave us behind. I think it's gonna take us along." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it will be, I mean, I guess the idea of the singularity, first of all, isn't the idea of the singularity is like, we can't possibly predict what's on the other side of the singularity. The sense is like, this is like, the world will be fundamentally transformed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, okay, so, right, and then it was, you know, this was characterized in various movies, like Lucy and stuff like that. You know, Lucy being the first human that, right, we, so kind of replicating this is gonna be the next iteration of humans is the singularity. I actually don't believe that, frankly. However, and the reason I don't believe it is because we're material beings and technology has to have a host. So we're not going to become something super abstract. It's just impossible to do. There's nothing like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, people will be listening to this podcast 100 years from now and laughing at it because... They'll be all existing in a virtual reality will be all information as opposed to material meaning connected to some kind of concept of physical, physical reality. I don't even know the right words to use here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "See, that's because there are none, because there's no place from there's no view from nowhere. There's no non material. Like, we have thoughts, but they're connected to us, right? They're in our, you know, they're somehow, okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As far as, as far as you know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Listen, platonic forms, I think, is about as close to what we're talking about as possible. Like this place where these things exist, and then there's like a physical instantiation of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but see, the question is, from the perspective of the platonic form, what does our physical world look like? You know what I'm saying? Say you're a creature existing in a virtual reality. If you grew up your whole life in a virtual reality game, like what is it, and somebody in that virtual reality world tells you that there actually exists this physical world, and in fact, your own, you think you're in this virtual world, but it's actually, you're in a body, and this is just your mind putting yourself, and there's a piece of technology. Like, how will they be able to, Think of that physical world would they would they sound exactly like you just sounded a minute ago saying like well, that's silly Who cares if there's a physical world? it's the the entirety of the perception and my memories and all of that is in this other realm of Of like information, it's just all just information. Why do I need some kind of weird meat bag to contain a" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a great, again, I always return to something for your audience to read or you. There's a great, very short article online for free by David Chalmers. Do you know him? He's the philosopher of consciousness. Yeah, interviewed him on this podcast, yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's cool. I used to, I was friends with his best friend for a while when I was in grad school. He probably has some weird friends. He does. He's a philosopher, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like his fashion choice and hairstyle too. I'm going to hang out with him a little bit. He's a great guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so he wrote this article, which I use a lot. I love it because it's accessible to undergraduates. And it's called Matrix as Metaphysics. And basically, it's an answer to external world skepticism, which is basically, how do we know there's an external world, right? How do we know that we're not in a matrix right now? And so basically, he's using, he's also, he even references He uses a religious reference even he says you could think of the matrix of the movie as a new as the new um book of genesis for our new world, right and I thought yeah, that's absolutely correct because You know, we don't know And we don't we won't know for sure or for certain therefore what we know is what is real to us And so he goes through these scenarios and within philosophy is called, there's a, this is different from that, but it's like this brain in a vat, right? If you're a brain in a vat and some not so kind scientist is like recreating this world for you just to see, you know, and you think you're this awesome rock star, right? And you're living this awesome existence, but you're actually just this brain in this vat. Okay. But there's still a brain in a vat. Okay, so his idea in The Matrix as Metaphysics kind of takes out the brain in a vat like this. I don't know if this is possible. So I've read critiques of this that, you know, what you're talking about is a non-dualism, like there's like, you know, or it's not necessarily a non-dualism. I just, I mean, information in and of itself has to have some kind of material component to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's that when taken outside the realm of human beings, because dualism is kind of talking about humans in a sense, it's just possible to me that there could be creatures that exist in a very different form, perhaps rely on very different set of materials that may perhaps not even look like materials to us. Yes, I agree. Which is why information, it could be even in computers, the information that's traveling inside a computer is connected to actual material movement. Right. Right. So like it is ultimately connected to material movement, but it's less and less about the material and more and more about the information. So I just mean that it's possible that... You think the singularity is basically" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "like sloughing off our material existence. Because I can tell you that this has been the hope of philosophers and theologians forever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, I think we're living through a singularity. I think this world, just like as you've said already, has been already transformed significantly and keeps continually being transformed. Yes. And we're just riding this big, beautiful wave of transformation, and that's why it's both exciting and terrifying from a scientific perspective that we're so bad at predicting the future, and the future is always so amazing in terms of the things it has brought us. I mean, I don't know if it always will be this exciting in terms of the rate of innovation, but it seems to be increasing still, and it's really exciting. It's exciting to- It's terrifying because obviously we're building better and better tools for destroying ourselves. But I, on the optimistic side, believe that we also can build better and better tools to defend against all the ways we can destroy ourselves. And it's kind of this interesting race of innovation. Books are great. Of course, the greatest book of all time, two of the greatest books of all time are yours. But besides those, what books, technical, fiction, or philosophical, had an impact on your life or possibly you think others might want to read and get some insights from? And what ideas did you pick up from them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Great, okay, I really enjoy Nietzsche. Okay, so anything by Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche. He's a philosopher. I actually hated him when I first read him in my early 20s." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's like the opposite of most people's experience, right? They usually love him in their 20s and then they throw him to the curb." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Later, yeah. Later, yeah. I think he's totally misrepresented and misinterpreted. He grew on you. Well, it happened in one night, so. Let me just describe it, because it's kind of funny. It happened on New Year's. So I had friends when I was in my 20s, and they kept telling me, you have to read Nietzsche, you have to read Nietzsche. And I tried, OK? But again, you know. No, I was not into how he described the philosophical concepts he was trying to get across. But they weren't giving up. I have very persistent friends. So one of them gave me the gay science and I had it on my book stand. And it was New Year's Eve and I'm actually not a big part. I'm actually an introvert. I'm a geeky introvert. Okay, so I don't go out and party a lot. It was New Year's Eve. Even that couldn't get me out to go party. So I just wanted to go to bed. Yeah. And New Year's Eve hit, and everybody went out, and I was asleep, and they woke me up. And I was like, darn, they woke me up. Eh, might as well read this book by Nietzsche. Okay, so I picked it up, and lo and behold, I turned to a page that was exactly about, it was called Sanctus Januarius, which is basically St. January, and it was about New Year's Eve. And I thought, whoa, what a weird coincidence. And it was also super Catholic. And it was a really beautiful little aphorism. It's actually a book of aphorisms, which are kind of religious, right? And so it's religious. The genre is religious. Let's put it that way. But he's not. So basically he says, today's the day when people are supposed to make these resolutions, right? And he says, from here on out, I will never say no. I will only say yes. Okay. I look away. If something's horrible, I'll just look away from it. I won't get angry at it. And then he also says, I will be like St. January and St. January is actually the St. whose blood is in this place in Italy, I think it's in Italy, and every year it turns to blood again. So it's desiccated. So it's this miracle. It says, my blood is now, it flows again. And I was like, wow, that's really beautiful. And I said, and a strange coincidence because it just turned You know, 12. So it's like New Year's Eve. I pick up the book. I read this aphorism. I said, strange coincidence that and then I turn the page and the page is about coincidences. And I was like, I shut it. And I thought, this is weird. I felt like they was alive. I felt like the book was alive and Nietzsche was speaking to me, right? I had a like experience and engagement with Nietzsche. And so after that, I couldn't put his stuff down. It was engaging, fascinating, everything. So yeah, so that's one book, The Gay Science." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What did what did you pick up from from the gay science or from each in general some ideas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah the idea is basically that truth He's got awesome one-liners You know, so truth is a woman. So, okay. What is it? What does he mean by that truth is a woman basically she's gonna lie to you. She looks real attractive Yeah, but she's not gonna tell you the truth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so basically I'm not saying that that's true about women I'm obviously a woman so he's so basically what he's saying is that truth is not is like what I Said brother guy said it's a moving target. Okay, we started this whole conversation with what's real, right? So I should have just gone straight to Nietzsche. Have you heard truth is a woman? I All right say that and also and you know Foucault this other philosopher French philosopher actually takes up this idea and creates his own Framework called genealogy from it So the genealogy of morals so that we only believe certain things and we we sediment them them into truth So we say it, you know a truth told who said that was it Lenin or Stalin a truth told? Enough times. I mean a lie told enough times becomes the truth. Yeah, so that's basically nichian right there Okay, so that's nicha. So nicha also is a huge critic of christianity. Um Which i'm actually catholic i'm a practicing catholic. So I appreciated his critique. I thought it was actually quite accurate. He's a critique of religion in general, and he's fascinating. And also, I find that he talks about altered states of consciousness, and he calls them elevated states. And I think through his book, you can actually experience elevated states. So yeah, Nietzsche. Thumbs up So what other book? Yeah. Okay. So Hannah rent She is a philosopher that not a lot of people know about but she was a Jewish woman during the Holocaust and she was in turn interred at Bergen-Belsen, which was basically Auschwitz for women and she escaped and She came to the United States and she had worked with Heidegger, even though he's supposed to be anti-Semitic and a Nazi and everything, but they were lovers, okay? So she comes out and she's at Columbia University and she teaches philosophy there. And she writes two books, which I'll recommend. One is called Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she attends the Nuremberg trials. And she basically makes this really astute observation about evil. And she says, Eichmann is one of the people who sent the Jews to the concentration camps who ran the trains, okay? And she said, the thing about Eichmann was that he didn't seem particularly evil. Actually, he seemed to be quite a nice guy. She said, what was interesting about him was he seemed incredibly thoughtless and stupid. And she said, and he used a lot of stereotypes like memes. So she actually wrote about memes before we had them. And now people just use memes, and they're actually used against us even. There's even segments of warfare called mimetic warfare, all right? So memes are something that can sway a whole population of people. So she wrote about memes before they were even in existence, and that's Eichmann in Jerusalem. And I think she also has some really amazing things to say about evil, is that, when people remain thoughtless she has another book called the life of the mind which is gigantic and I don't think anybody will read it but frankly it's one of the best books i've ever read and i've read it many times and basically the life of the mind in the life of the mind she asks a very simple question she says why do people do bad things why are they evil and what she says is she wonders if it's she says that Bad people sleep well at night contrary to you know, how the saying how do you sleep at night? Well, that's only because you're a good person that you're asking that question because you actually have a conscience and a conscience is this dual kind of you fight with yourself about the consequences of your actions and she says Bad people don't seem to have a conscience. So they actually sleep well at night. And so she goes through a whole history of philosophy About evil and that's really a good one, too. But I have um, I also have to recommend this one, too There's one more so I know I recommended two but just from the same philosopher My friend Jeffrey Kripal, he's at Rice University and he's in my field, religious studies. He's written several books. I mean, he's written a heck of a lot of books, let's put it that way. But he's – I think his best book or the one that impacted me the most is called Authors of the Impossible. And his book is his writing is very much like Nietzsche's writing in the sense that he it's almost as if he reaches out of the pages and he grabs you and he kind of slaps you around and says, think about this, you know, and you can't help but be changed after you've read it. And he's got a great chapter in there about Jacques Vallée." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so he colors a bunch of different thinkers and authors that somehow are, what is it? Renegade in some aspect or revolutionary in some aspect." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, they're thinking the impossible. There's a great one he's written called Mutants and Mystics where he talks about the comic strips. Gosh, why can't I remember the name of the person? He just died, Stan Lee. He talks about the history of the comics by Stan Lee. And they're all paranormal. They all start off super paranormal. And it's fascinating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On the topic of Hannah Arendt. Yeah, Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt. So I haven't read her work, but I've vaguely touched upon sort of like commentary of her work. And it seems like some people think her work is dangerous in some aspect. I don't know if you can comment on why that is. I just, it feels like similar with Ayn Rand or something like that, where like, this is, I should say not dangerous, but controversial." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it is. Yes, they think it's controversial. This is the reason, I believe, I've heard of the controversy. The controversy is that she didn't, first of all, she is Jewish and she did escape a concentration camp, and yet she's called, She's been called anti-jewish and I think part of that was that she basically was saying something that I believe that a lot of normal people are like Eichmann and evil things are done by people who just follow the rules and they don't think about what they're doing. And that's one of the most pernicious forms of evil of our time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we talked quite a bit about the definitions of religion and what are the different building blocks of religion. So one of the, I don't think we touched on, we did a little bit with the afterlife, but in a sense, I don't know if you're familiar with the Ernest Becker work and all the philosophies around there about the fear of death and how the fear of our own mortality, awareness of our own mortality and its fear in case of Ernest Becker, is a significant component in the psychology, in the way we humans develop our understanding of the world. So what are your thoughts in the context of religion, or maybe in the context of your own mind about the role of death in life, or fear of death in life? And are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We cover everything in this podcast. Every single topic is covered. Wow. Okay. I so happen to have benefited perhaps from living with an older brother who seemingly had no fear of death while growing up. and he did everything, okay? So he was, he climbed mountains, he was a rock climber, he jumped out of airplanes, of course he had to be a Green Beret and go into the special forces where that type of thing is a requirement, right? And so because of that, I did a lot of things outside of my comfort zone, and which probably I shouldn't have done, and hope to goodness my kids don't do them, okay? Okay, so do you so I do I fear death? Um, I think about death a lot actually, um, you may not know this about me But in my field I was the head. I was the co-chair of the death panel. It's called the death panel though, it's like it's the panel to think about death in religious studies and I was that for many years and" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've thought about it a bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A bit. Let's see, I think that people are a little too confident, I think, about life in general, that they're gonna kind of live all the time and not die. I happen to, I mean, I hate to say it, I'm super positive and most people would consider me to be too happy almost, right? And so it's odd then that I spend a lot of time thinking about death, but I wonder if there's a connection there. I'm happy to be alive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's kind of what the thinking about death does, is it makes you appreciate the days that you do have. Yeah. It's a weird controversy. I tend to believe that the fact that this life ends gives each day a significant amount of meaning. So I don't know. It seems like an important feature of life. It's not like a bug. It seems like a feature that it ends, but it's a strange feature because I wish it, I call it the good stuff. You wish it wouldn't end." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know what's interesting, Lex, and I do point this out to my students, because we cover, in a lot of the basic studies courses I teach, we cover all religions, or as many as we can, like the major religions. And so take Hinduism, for example. Now, this is an ancient religion, okay? So you and I are here talking about how we enjoy living and life and things like that. Well, the goal of Hinduism is basically never to get reincarnated again. It's basically to not live, okay? And to get off Samsara, which is the wheel of life and death." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So escape the hole." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly Can think of that conditions are so different that you and I and my students are happy to be alive But they're back in the day, you know thousands of years ago when they wrote when they actually didn't write it They spoke the Vedas which were the sacred traditions of India. They want it off and They didn't want to come back. Life was terrible. That's what people don't have the adequate understanding of history, that for the majority of people, life is really hard, right? And you and I, and your audience, among the lucky." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That we actually like life. We want to live." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Most of the time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, most of the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think the biggest, since we're covering every single possible topic, let me ask the biggest one, the unanswerable one, from the perspective of alien intelligence or from the perspective of religious studies or from the perspective of just Diana, what do you think is the meaning of this existence of this life of ours?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Okay. So, all right. So, well, of course I have to, my philosophical training as a undergrad always makes me think about like, what's the assumption in your question? There's an assumption there. It's like, there is a meaning. Okay. That's the assumption. What do you mean by meaning? What do you mean by life? Yeah. Can you define the terms? No, no, but listen, I'll answer your question. I'm just going to say that there's this assumption that we should have meaning to life, okay? Well, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe it's just all random, okay? However, I believe that it's not. And in my opinion, the meaning of life, in my opinion, is intrinsic. I enjoy living. I want to live. Sometimes I don't enjoy living. And when I don't enjoy living, I change my circumstances. So it's intrinsic. And I think that certain things are intrinsic and like love, love of your children is kind of, um, well, it's actually physiological, but it's also intrinsic. It's beautiful. You know, there's something about it that, that is intrinsically, um, desirable. So I think the meaning of life is like that intrinsically desirable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's something that just is born inside you based on what makes you feel good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, that's hedonism. That's... But where do you place love?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Love of your children?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so basically, loving your children, by the way, is not always easy because they do things that they shouldn't do. You have to discipline them. That's one of the worst things about parenthood to me is disciplining my children. I don't like to do that. I love them. So a lot of things that I do that I feel are good, are not easy. So there's an intrinsic sense that, like, okay, let's take animals, okay, so we have dogs and cats, okay, so you might not, but I do, I've, you know, I told you about them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you share their names?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If I share their names, I will share their names. Okay. So we have a cat and it has red fluffy hair. And so we called it Trump. Well, when we got our dog, we figured that it needed a companion. So we called it Putin. So we have Trump and Putin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the greatest pet names of all time. I'm sorry. Or maybe we'll be able to share a picture of your cat, because this is awesome. It is really cute, yeah. Very photogenic. I mean, is this something that's, whether we're talking about love or the intrinsic meaning, do you think that's something that's really special to humans? Or if there is intelligent alien civilizations out there, do you think that's something that they possess as well? Maybe in different forms? Like whatever this thing that meaning is, this intrinsic drive that we have, do you think that's just a property of life of some level of complexity? That we will see that everywhere in this universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, I do think that it is, but I also think that it could take different forms. So if there is like, think of gravity, right? Gravity kind of like makes stuff stick to it, right? It tracks stuff. Well, what does love do? That does that too, right? So people who are, we call them charismatic. Charism, it means love. Charism means light and love. So a charismatic person is a person who attracts people to them like the sun does, right? So I think that whatever this property is that's intrinsic is like gravity and most likely takes different forms in different types of life forms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I can't wait until like Albert Einstein type of figure in the future will discover that love is in fact one of the fundamental forces of physics. That would be cool. Diana, this is one of the favorite conversations I've ever had. It's truly an honor to talk to you. And thank you so much for spending all this time with me." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "For me personally, it was definitely the hatred of losing. I was not a guy that was about pageantry. I was not a guy that was about the parade. When I wrestled in Atlanta, I rented a three-cylinder Geo with my wife, drove home, and mowed the lawn because it hadn't been mowed for a month. And I remember one of our neighbors driving by, and they were like, they did a double take. I thought he was in Atlanta. Well, I was in Atlanta yesterday. I just sat on the stand. I got a gold medal put around my neck. That's how I was that doesn't mean that it was the right approach or the wrong approach It's just what worked for me, but when you were a kid you and Terry you dreamed about winning that Olympic gold Yeah, so winning then there is the the lure of winning but what drives you is that? You know as you move forward there's just no you reason that you have to settle for anything but being the best. And if it just, it would get to you to the point where that's not gonna happen to me again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what, the thing that keeps you up at night is the losses, and that's not gonna happen to me again. That's the thought that keeps you up at night." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the thought that drives you in your training. That's why you do, you know, nine ropes when Gable says do three ropes and buddy pushups and you're out of here. And you do nine or you do them until you can't do any more. And it's a very rare ingredient. The older I get, the more rare I find it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the ingredient of lost feeding, feeding the drive of hard training?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe that, because everybody's so worried about the negative whatever, and you're putting too much pressure on yourself, so maybe that. But what I meant was, it's when a coach says, okay, finish with four ropes and buddy pushups and four-way neck, you know, I would do 12 or 10, that's rare." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's no longer about what the coach says, it's your own demons that you're trying to exercise out. What's the few losses you've had in your life? Are all of them just melt together or is there something that stands out in your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm a guy that remembers my career that well. I know that I am judged on a very small portion of my life and that's minutes of wrestling matches. A lot of winning, but there's some losing in there too. And people think they know you because of that. And they think they know you because they see you in a press conference. But to go back to the original question, I don't know how to answer that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's no losses that just, that eat at you still?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's opponents that I have learned a great deal from. I mean, my loss to John Smith in 1991, US Open, was something that I learned a lot about. I learned a lot about positioning. I learned a lot about the importance of parterre. You know, in a certain kind of crazy way, I learned that I could go with the best guy in the world, even though it was 14 to four. And this is when tech falls were 15 or 12 points, so I didn't get tech fall. And that wasn't a badge of honor for me. But I knew I could go with him because it was one point takedowns. I scored four takedowns on him. And I learned that I had to move my feet. And I learned what it meant to move your feet constantly. And there's no break. John Smith is a very, very intense competitor that people know that now, six-time World Olympic champion. And I felt that firsthand. But I did not go in there taking a back seat, even though the score was very lopsided." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you knew you could stand with the best of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I knew that this is what this is about, and you know what? You move your feet, and you don't give up a lace that's so damn tight that you can't feel your calf muscle. And I had to get ready for the consolation side of the bracket, because I believe that was in the semis. You just learn from that and it was better than learning from a win over a second ranked senior level guy when you're a junior in college. You're wrestling the best on a stage." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you look back, you probably spent tens of thousands of hours on the mat. Spilled sweat, blood, even tears maybe, maybe a few times. So technically or philosophically, how would you do any of those hours differently? Just looking back at the tens of thousands of hours." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would be more Probably in my older age. I probably would have been more relaxed in my training and Probably would have went another cycle if I could do it over again in 96 I really thought that when Gable retired that I would be the next guy in line and I was wrong and that was immature of me In terms of the coach in terms of the coach. Yes, and I knew that Gable was close I mean, I didn't know when but it just so happens, you know 97 was his record-breaking year and then he retired and But I didn't know how close he was, but I knew that he had, you know, he went down with a bad hip injury. And so, you know, you're just, you're not gonna." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what does a relaxed Tom Brands look like? You're saying you would have been a little more relaxed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "More like where, you know what, I was pretty dang good and I was getting better every day, but maybe doing a little bit different, a little bit smarter. And Terry actually did that going through 2000. He had to do it. And he would have been in the funny farm, let alone the physical farm, whatever you want to say. He'd been mentally and physically beat up. But he had to learn to less is more type approach. And how it came around was you work hard at feeling good. You work hard in your recovery. So even when you're not wrestling hard in that wrestling room and looking for the toughest partner to go, you're still working hard in your recovery. And massage could be that. Stretching could be that. Things like that that are more fluffy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's something you weren't as good at." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Never, never. There's not a place for it with young people. Because in my opinion, there's so much development have happened. I mean, when you need to learn wrestling, you need to be wrestling. And as you get older, your body won't do it anymore. And so to learn wrestling, it's more of a probably a relaxed approach." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you had to choose between two athletes who would dominate competition, one who drills 100,000 reps of a specific takedown, specific technique, or one that spends that time live wrestling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Both, it's the same. And I like to live wrestling. I was always wanting to live wrestle, bring the warmup into the live wrestle, let's go. But where I got really, really good was the repetition. And I was disciplined enough to know that the things that you hate, to do in this sport are the things that make you the very best. And that is a rare ingredient as I've gotten older. And you spend a lot of time communicating that to younger athletes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the thing, if you feel yourself hating something, that's probably the thing you should be doing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, as a matter of fact, I had a strength coach when I was really young. He was just a fricking guy that would, he wore white, like he was almost like a nurse, nurse's clothes. He wore all white from head to toe and he was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And his first name was Walt. And he taught Terry and I to hate the bar away from you on that last rep when you're dead. And whether it's a curl, you hate it up. And then you do the negative and you hate it down and you hate that bench up and you hate it. You look at the bar and you hate it away from you. So I learned and I was young, I was young. And I remember being born, my mom's sister lived out there and we were dropped off to stay out there with our cousins and I was born a little bit. And they always treated us really good, but this was like the single most bright spot in a weightlifting, like enlightenment, even though I lifted weights. But I never knew the psychology behind lifting weights. It's just to look good, and so you can flex and look in the mirror, or is it for performance? And this guy was about performance. And you said repetition. Do you mean technique? I'm talking repetition, technique, technique, technique, drill, drill, drill, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish. So you believe in that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I believe in that wholeheartedly. But I believe that you have to do it on your own." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't believe in the coach taking you to the promised land." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in the guys today or in yourself, how often do you see people that grow the belief of doing 10,000, 20,000 reps?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's rare. I think it's very rare. And I think it's especially rare. I mean, you can talk about that as a coach, but it's especially rare to bring a guy to that understanding, but you never stop trying. You're always trying to reach him. I mean, we didn't have a good performance out there tonight, but you know what? You don't stop communicating. And there's a lot of programs out there that put their head down when things aren't going their way. And then as things start going their way, then they rise with the tide. There was no difference in the demeanor of our corner. And we talk about, that's a philosophy. And so you're reaching your guys that way. So go back to your point or your question. Do you believe in the 10,000 reps? And yes, I do. But how do you inspire people to do that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you communicate. By example, but communication. In my experience, what I've seen, communicating the value of repetition and drilling is a hard thing to communicate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's hard and it's very rare to have somebody that goes in there and will do it on their own." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have young guys that step up and do that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We do, and it's rare. And the guys that do it on their own and have done it on their own are the guys that are in that lineup and doing well. The other thing is is that when you talk about getting to that next level, a lot of times it's, you know, what held you back was I did everything the coach asked of me and nothing more. Right. I mean, you could be a great guy for a coach as an athlete, and you did everything that coach asked, but you did nothing more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're really looking for the guys that go way beyond what the coach says." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We don't want guys that are looking at their watch running out of the room when practice is over. We want guys that know what they have to get done, and they might leave early, but they're not looking at their watch. They might be done early. We might be on a whole different path, and this guy just excuses himself. I'm all about that. We are not autocrats." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's an internal engine in there. Is that something you're born with, or is that something you can develop?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you are born with it, you develop it also, and I think that there has to be comfort, and I go back to the communication, that young people are comfortable enough to communicate that I need to take the day off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you mean by communication? Just let, exactly, so letting athletes be part of their own development." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Communication to me is letting them know what they need to do to get themselves in contention to be the starting quarterback. And then to give them boosts and compliments when they earn them. And I don't have time to waste with lies and cheating. And when I say cheating, I'm talking about when they cheat themselves. And so those become very direct conversations. And the conversation starts like this. I don't have time to waste and neither do you. And so why are we wasting our time? And here's what I mean by that. We're having a conversation about your accountability. If you look in the mirror and you're accountable, then we aren't taking the time to go through this. we're already on our way to solving the problem. Problem can't be solved without that understanding." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that has to do with symptoms that you see in the wrestling room. There's something where the fire's not quite there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That has to do with mental, emotional, spiritual, physical. Got it. Everything, everything that you know about. You know, I had a boss, and our athletic director is a great athletic director, and he gives us everything we need to be successful. But I had a boss, his name was Fred Mims, and I didn't think anybody could be better than him. And then all of a sudden, this Gene Taylor guy came in. And then he was pretty doggone good too, and he actually, you know, was just like Fred and maybe even a little bit more current. And then he ended up taking a job at Kansas State where he's the athletic director now. And then this lady, Barbara Burke, comes in. And I didn't think anybody could be better than Gene Taylor or Fred Mims. And this Barbara Burke, she's better than both of them. And the reason why is because she's a problem solver. She doesn't waste time. She's direct, and she's a problem solver. And that's what we need. You need problem solvers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So on the flip side of problems and technique and repetition, here's a thing called toughness, mental toughness, something that maybe you or maybe even Iowa in general is a little bit known for. So how do you train mental toughness as a coach?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You train mental toughness by putting them in situations that they're willing to go through, but don't think they can make it, and then they go through it, and then all of a sudden those barriers are down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does that have to do with physical, usually, exhaustion? The reps on the ropes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It has to do with that, and it has to do with understanding why we're doing it. And sometimes understanding why we're doing it might not come for months, but there's blind faith. And we have a heavyweight in the room right now, this young guy that he's like that. He doesn't necessarily understand it. He asks a lot of questions, but he does it. And he's been here four months now, four and a half months now, and he's getting better every day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So mental toughness too is a matter of repetition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Mental toughness is a matter of repetition and having an open mind and being extremely accountable and not only accountable that when something doesn't go your way that you look in the mirror and own it, but accountable to the point of view that, you know what, I got to get tough in this situation right here, right now. And this is what's going to make or break me. And I talked about my own career being defined by, you know, a couple of minutes on the mat, but that's when you're going to be defined. That's how you're going to be defined. That's okay. So people are going to talk about you. So you might as well have them talking about how doggone tough you are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, we live in a world now, I've often in my own work, I hear about this concept of work-life balance or overtraining. So you've been one of the hardest workers ever on the mat. You've coached some of the hardest workers ever. Do you think it's possible to overtrain, train too much? How big of a concern is it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think peaking and burnout are frames of mind or burnout is a, is like you let things probably get to the point where you could have arrested them with a good frame of mind. But peaking is a frame of mind. And you have to know and be able to read, and that's a lot of it. And the individual athlete also has to know that it's a frame of mind. And so when you have a coach that's reading that the right way, and you have an athlete that is knowing that when zero hour comes, that you're going to be ready to go, and knowing that there's light at the end of the tunnel, if you feel like you're burning that candle at both ends, light's coming at the end of the tunnel. I mean, you're good to go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think about Gable and that whole dream of being carried off the mat because you worked so hard. Again, do you think it's possible to overtrain? So you said it's mental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do think it's possible to overtrain if you have a lot of distractions. And if you're looking at your watch running out of the room, then yeah, that frame of mind isn't gonna lend itself to excellency. And the thing is, is we have to accomplish what we need to get accomplished to get better every day. You can't kind of accomplish what you need to accomplish, you have to accomplish it. And when you're in that mindset, then the clock is irrelevant. There's no place for a clock in the wrestling room. And maybe a clock that times a match, And maybe a clock if, you know, we're student athletes here, but that's why we encourage our, you know, when you schedule your classes that you don't have a class that comes right up to, you know, practice time or starts as a night class and it starts at 5.30. You know, go to get the 6.30 class or the 7 o'clock." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you leave it all behind, your heart, your passion's completely in it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no clock. And when you walk in that wrestling room, there's no distractions. And it's never eternal. The only thing that's eternal is death. You know, there's nothing, sometimes guys come in there and they wig out. Oh, it's an hour and 25 minutes of, oh. Or an hour and 45 minutes of, oh." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you have to be willing to go as long as it takes. There's no clock." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no clock." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Again, wrestlers are some of the hardest, some of the toughest people in all the sports, but weight cutting often breaks people. So what's your thought on weight cutting, both nutrition-wise, mental-wise? How do you approach and think of it as a coach in your own career too?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a lot of discipline and it's a lot of discipline during a very uncomfortable time period that really doesn't last that long, but it feels like it lasts long and it's painful. But once you shrink your body down, And if you're hydrated, you'll get through it. If you're a little hungry, but you're eating, but you're hydrated, once you break that sweat, your energy depletion goes away. That's a fact. I've practiced that. You come in and you're yawning, and you're starting to shrink your body down, and it's that time of year where, hey, I gotta get my body shrunk down, and you're dehydrated, you are dead in the water. But if you're hungry and hydrated, when you break that sweat," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have people gotten better with that over the years, over the past few decades?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that coach's science is better. I think that coaches communicate it. I think they always have. I think the bottom line is having the energy to implement that and taking a guy by the hand when he doesn't understand and he's new in your program and he's essential and or he's unwilling to and not disciplined enough because when you take him by the hand enough, they won't learn that discipline. This is an important aspect of wrestling, buddy. You know what I'm saying? So it's not just go and show up for the match. I mean, it's not about just making weight either. You gotta be able to make weight. That's part of the warmup. That's part of the process, getting ready to wrestle. It's the whole thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the lifestyle, yeah. When did you first start believing you're going to win Olympic gold?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I mean, I found out, I got really addicted to wrestling really, really fast. Started late, but looking back at my life, wrestled my whole life with my twin brother. And when Terry and I would fight, it was wrestling, and it was to maim. And so if you're trying to maim me, I better be tough. Because if I roll over and expect you to scratch my belly when you're trying to maim me, I will lose my head. And Tom and Terry Brands, there was no alpha male. And when it was on, it was on for real. What do you mean there's no alpha male? There's both? A lot of twins, there's a dominant twin, a lot of them. Very few times is there a situation where you're gonna, I'm gonna win every time in everything, and then he's thinking the same exact way. And Terry used to describe it, like when we used to get interviewed a lot about our careers, Like it'd be like you grabbing a steering wheel and me grabbing a steering wheel and fighting. And that's what it was like when you would wrestle him or fight him. And so I had that benefit. So when did I know? Well, I got addicted to wrestling really, really fast in fifth grade and started to research it, and I don't know why, and talked about the Olympics and put it in my head. I remember said something about being an Olympic champion in fifth grade and somebody made fun of me and I got in a fight in a playground. And I remember getting pulled in, getting in trouble for that. And the people that got me in trouble for that were smart enough to not rake me over the coals, but they researched or they actually found out what the fight was about. And I was distraught. I was really emotional, like crying or whatever you want to say. You don't want to admit that too many times. But it wasn't because I got beat up or got my nose bloodied or got punched in the face or broke my arm or there was any pain. It was because they stomped on my dream and they doubted me. And so I fought for that. And that was a lesson. There's gonna be a lot of doubters. And one thing we talk about as a staff is our staff has to be lockstep in that hallway, in our offices. And when you deviate outside of that, that is heresy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So everybody has to be on board, confident that you're going to be number one in the country." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When we go forward and we go put our public foot forward, there is a decision. We are unified and there is no backbiting. And we have great people right now. And we hadn't had that before. We've had detractors in our Hawkeye Wrestling Club. We've had guys that would go out and get rolled up in ankle laces and not care in our club. And we got Brandon Sorenson who got rolled up by James Green last night. But I'll tell you what, I don't have a problem with that. You know why? Because I know it means a lot to him. He didn't roll over. He didn't quit because he was on the consolation side of a bracket. And so when you have that, and then you have, you know, if there's a disagreement, it's behind closed doors, and then you're moving forward. And when you have people that when they're meeting your fans and your supporters, you know, they're talking the right way with the right message. And anything that's catty wonk is to that you got to be careful there. You got to be careful there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that, in terms of affirmations, in terms of really believing as a team, as an individual, believing that you're the best in the world, did you, I'm sure you had detractors, you had people that continued after fifth grade." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's probably where my hatred of losing trumps my love for winning, because I wanted to shove it up their rear end bad. And the thing is, is we maintain a high level. And there's very few programs, Oklahoma State, Ohio State now, Penn State. I mean, there's four programs that try to win a national title every year. And that's it. And these other teams, they get up, and they got a good team. And they get up, and they get going. And then when things don't go well, OK, we're going to do it next year. Or this is a down year. We're going to get ready. We're three years out. So no matter what, you're fighting for first knowledge. We do, and we haven't won, and you say, well, we haven't won in eight years. Well, you're right, we haven't. But look at our results. They're better than anybody out there, besides Penn State, and it's because of our mentality, and because we have great people. Ryan Morton's there, Bobby Telford, Terry Brands, our medical team, even. Our strength coach, Quinn Holland, we're all on the same page. And when I send something, I hit it immediately. I don't have time to waste. There will not be dissension in that hallway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Everybody's in it together, yeah. 1996, Olympic Games in Atlanta. Can you take me through the day when you're going for the 62 kg gold? What did you eat, drink? What did you think was in your mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It really doesn't matter. I have a routine that, you know, I had a routine as a competitor that I could run through right now. It was a lot of self-talk, very, very positive self-talk. Visualization. Yes, visualization, self-talk, and that's how I was able to relax and getting ready for matches my whole life. Learned that very early age at a camp, at a developmental camp, at a young age, Terry and I did, and I could tell you what I ate, and I could tell you what I did to relax, and it doesn't matter. What you have to do is you have to find that peace. And I just know that when I was getting ready for the finals match, I had gone back to my room, I had my relaxed material, you know, and I was able to relax because I prepared for it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hopefully I'm right on this, but just looking at the insane bracket you had to go through, you had to beat, just to get to the finals, you had to beat three world champions, eventually world champions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know what, I don't talk about that and nobody else does either, but everybody talks about it in their own career. So now you're making my head big. But yeah, I had a road. I had a road, you're right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That is the hardest bracket I've seen. So I've talked to a lot of Olympic champions. That is the hardest bracket I've seen of any champion. So maybe I'm confused on this, but it seemed like a really tough day for you. Did you know the bracket ahead of time? Did you know who you faced?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You see the draw and it's a two-day tournament. So psychology comes into it as much as physical shape. Um, you know, because there's those, you got to sleep, you know, the night before after the way, and then you got to sleep again that next night after your set, my final match is going to be in the morning, you know, and then you have to go back and rest because your final matches and Intel, whatever time it was. And so all this relaxation and all that stuff that you just talked about, that visualization and self-talk, that's what helps you. It's your routine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And was there any doubt, any fear, anything there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The fear is the type of fear, and I just talked about this to one of my athletes today, Jack Dempsey talked about fear, and the fear of losing is what motivated him to try to take his opponent's head off. He was a boxer, and that's okay. So fear of competition, fear of screwing up, fear of, oh, I don't feel good, no. No, but that little fear that, you know what, there's somebody out there that thinks that, you know what, they're gonna revel in my, they're gonna eat it up in my misery. They're gonna love, they're gonna be thriving because I fail. And I'm not gonna let that happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're identical twin, brother, Terry. You've been at him, like you said, your whole life. And you're both some of the greatest wrestlers of all time. You won the gold medal, he won the bronze medal. You've mentioned, you know, all that really matters is the six minutes or, you know, just a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds define your whole career. So how do you think about that thin line, the tragic line at the Olympic level between winning and losing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you come to peace that in the end, when it's over, that you did the best you could. And that's certainly the case with Terry. His career credentials are better than mine internationally. He won two world championships. I won one. And he won an Olympic bronze medal. And I won an Olympic gold medal, but I only won one. And the thing is that's not what's important anyway. What's important is that when it's all over, you know, how do you look back on it? And you're kind of like, well, you just said that you made sure that you weren't going to leave anything undone. But you know what? There were tournaments where I did leave things undone. And so how do you come back from that? Well, Terry never came back from 2000 because he retired. Well, you know what? You duplicate and exceed when you're communicating to these young athletes. And because of that experience, that makes Terry a better coach. Because of 1995, that makes me a better coach, realizing that there are certain things that unraveled in that year that I could have controlled looking back on it. And when you have that perspective, you can communicate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what, control, is there, can you control everything? How big of a role is luck in this whole thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Control how you react to an injury, control that. So you can't, you don't have any control over it, it's over. You know, you have whatever and whatever happened, but relax and you learn to deal with injuries better because of that. You have that experience that you let this thing maybe get the best of you. And that's just an example and You know, Terry put a lot of demons to rest with that bronze medal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So becoming an Olympic medalist, a few demons could relax." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well a little, he'll never admit that and he probably isn't truthful and I should, I'm speaking for him, but he's truthful when he says that. But if I look at it and bronze sucks, But if I look at it, he did put some demons to rest and I'm proud of him for it. There's something there that is a consolation in the fact that he won the consolation medal. The consolation medal sucks, but there is a consolation that he won the consolation medal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a tough medal to win, by the way, yeah. But do you see the Shakespearean tragedy of it all, that the line between winning and losing? So you often say that, you know, winning is everything, but it feels like, especially at the Olympic level, or you talk about NCAA finals or that tournament, you know, a split second miss move can result in a loss where you dominated all the way up to there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's where your psychology comes in and that's where the repetition and all of the self-talk and visualization and the physical shape and everything comes together. And so that doesn't happen. And tonight, we got beat twice, actually three times and we out-wrestled. We lost three matches and we out-wrestled the guy for six minutes and 30 seconds. or one match went to overtime. And if our guys can move forward with the right perspective, I'm confident that they'll be better. I'll tell you what, I'd take our guy over their guy any day. Any day, because our guys get up for every match. And now we got a lot to work on. We got a lot to work on. But you know what, I can say all that. and I'll take our guy and blah, blah, blah. But what are they going to do tonight in their meal? What are they going to do tonight in their rest? What are they going to do tomorrow in their recovery on their own necessarily? What are they going to do Monday? Great wrestlers can use their imagination with a win that they're not satisfied with and go forward as if it was a loss. But it's still easier to go forward with that win. But they don't just, oh, I won, I'm fine, goes on. But then when they lose the exact same way that they could have lost before, then they go off the deep end. And then that's when they're gonna make the change in their life. And we talked about that to our team tonight. And the mature, rare ingredient is, is guys that can get better, even with success, like it was a loss, without beating themselves up. That's complicated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It is, it's a balance. You often talk about Iowa's focus on creating individual champions, like Spencer Lee. Can you explain the philosophy of focusing on individuals versus the team?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that we need to put them both together and the individual impacts the team. And we haven't done that since 2010 and we need to do a better job of putting 10 weight classes out there that contribute to the team. And if it's not 10, then it's nine. And if it's not nine, it can't be four. You know, and that takes a lot of pride and it takes a lot of, you know, where the coach is on top of it. And, you know, you're not just working on the easy things, the glaring things, you're working on everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean by everything?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the... Like there's just some, you know, there's ideas that, when you're a coach that aren't, they're beneath the surface and you gotta find them. And that's where communication comes in. Yeah, but you're talking about, yeah, we gotta move forward. Well, what does that mean? Well, I know what that means. But how many guys really know what that means in their program? There's so many levels of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've said before that winning is everything. And that means people lose, most people lose. There's really in whatever the context is only one winner. In many parts of our world today, outside of wrestling, that concept, the brutal honesty of that is uncomfortable for people. So how do you think about this very, philosophical, difficult concept of, you know, there only being one winner, that winning is everything. It's kind of a really painful idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think that that's a bad thing to have that mentality. I mean, I think of Kutukov. I remember a story I read about him, he comes to mind. You know, Sargouche, I remember when he lost in London. And I remember the look on his face. And those are some of the greatest wrestlers in the history of the sport, freestyle wrestling. And you know what? It's what works for you. And you can talk about being at peace with your results and that the approach is and the journey is what it's about. And that's great. And that relaxes some champions. And that makes some champions really, really tick. But not everybody. So it's okay. It's okay. And if that wigs you out and that really makes you uptight, then go the other route. You have to find what works for you. And that takes a lot of work. If you're lazy, forget it. Forget it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you and Terry, but in general, how do you find the line between extreme physical wrestling and rough wrestling or angry wrestling? So to which degree has anger, whether it's in your wrestling room these days or in your own career, entered wrestling? Do you see it as a tool that can be used?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's a balance, or not even a balance, there's a line that you go up to and you can't cross it. Sportsmanship is everything. You can get dinged for points, you can get thrown out of tournaments, there's rules with flagrant misconduct where you're kicked out of the match, other team gets the points, and then you have to sit the next meet. So it's very serious. The NCAA sends a message, a very serious message about sportsmanship. And so we talk about that. And the other thing with wrestling is there's rules in wrestling. These guys that are tough guys outside of the rules, that's what you want in your opponent. That means they're frustrated. You gotta be a tough guy inside the rules of the sport. That's more honorable than cold cocking somebody and knocking them out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, anger doesn't mean breaking the rules, but I mean, you know, a lot of people know you just watching you as a coach. There's quite a bit of passion there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, come and do what you're doing tonight. I mean, break bread with me in my kitchen and see how big of a jackass I am. No, you're a pretty nice guy. Well, I'm not asking for that necessarily, but thanks. I'm saying, you know what, as a coach, I mean, okay, come spend a month in our program and you'll see really what kind of people we are. And there's a stigma out there because they are very threatened by our program. There's nobody else that threatens the sport of wrestling like we do. And that's the truth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a legend to Iowa wrestling. It's one of the most intimidating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a legend to John Smith. It's the same thing. They get up for John Smith. They get up for Oklahoma State. They get up for Penn State. My question is, okay, I'll answer it this way. I'll give you an example in my coaching career. I coached at Virginia Tech for 22 months. We recruited the number one recruiting class. We got the administration to change 100% 180 how they looked at wrestling. Here's the thing, and because of how serious we were and because we weren't idiots, we were able to do that with our administration, but my point is this. We tried to win. We tried to win, even at Virginia Tech. It wasn't a stepping stone for me. It ended up being one, quickly. And looking back on it, I was a fool to think that I'd be there for 20 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you believed you would be. I did. I did. I did. So do you remember a time that you really pushed yourself to your limits? So Gable talks about having to be carried off the mat. Have you really found that level?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I said something about that too in a book, and I think I was misquoted one time. And actually it was Gable's quote, and I was trying to make the point that Gable's quote was like this and, you know, they weren't making it like that. It was my own words. I think it was a first wrestling tough book, but it's a good book. Um, but the stories cables and I don't know if there's anybody that has done that besides him. And I think that's a very rare quality. Um, but I've definitely been in that nirvana level of, you know, you could go all day long and it doesn't, you have to shoot me to stop me. Yeah. But there's a balance because you're not going hard with and holding your breath. It's not a, it's a relaxed and like you got a guy cornered and who's most dangerous. Well, the guy that's cornered. And so that's where you relax. I'm not bum-rushing him. I'm relaxed. I'm still moving, faking very fluid. Guy falls down on his face, I run around behind him. That's offense. You don't have to just grunt to the leg and call that offense. Offense is an in and out, smooth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now you're saying you sound like a Russian wrestler. Yeah, well, that's, they're the best. In a certain light, looking at the history of wrestling, wrestling is much bigger than folk style, freestyle, Greco. It's one of the oldest forms of combat, period. There's been cave drawings 15,000 years ago. Do you ever see, so you're one of the great coaches of all time. You're now focused on a particular rule style right now. But do you ever see wrestling as bigger than all of this, as one of the pure combats between two human beings?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do, and we're raising $20 million for a facility to make it the best facility on the planet. We have a vision to build the best facility on planet Earth and put the best wrestlers in it. And that is bigger than wrestling. It's for the University of Iowa. And our donors are doing it for the University of Iowa. But it is about the value of wrestling to me also. There is so much value to wrestling. Blind people don't play football, they wrestle. Blind people don't play basketball. I mean, maybe they do. but it'd be very difficult. They can wrestle. Wrestling is a feel sport." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's no ball, there's nothing, it's just two guys or two girls and that's it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. I mean, I'm not gonna say you can't because somebody will get a hold of this and I'll get an email or a letter that says, you said blind people can't play baseball and blah, blah. I'm just saying that blind people can wrestle very effectively. Yes. I've wrestled with my eyes shut. I mean, was honest about it too. And I was effective. Why was I able to be effective? Because wrestling is a sport that you can overcome a lot. Your demons that you're overcoming, they're not limited with whether I'm blind or not. The demons that are overcoming are inside you. You have to overcome those demons from within." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the future of Iowa Wrestling look like with this facility and this momentum you have now and this great group of guys you have now?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have a good young group of guys and you know there is a lot of buzz in the program and probably hasn't been this much buzz for quite some time and our job is to be relaxed and be focused and not get caught up in the buzz, but we have to put it together. We have a catalyst, Spencer Lee, but he's going to have to get better. We have some other catalysts as well that are going to help us in the future. Um, but they got to get better. And so all this stuff about independence and accountability and, you know, being able to get better every day under duress and not knowing that you're getting better, but you are, you know, you don't, that, you know what I mean by that? Like the great thing about Gable was wrestling for him was, is you were getting better and you didn't know you were getting better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, just like you said, grow from success. You never allow yourself to think that you're getting good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All of a sudden you do something in the practice room that you've been working on and all of a sudden you hit it and it's like it was automatic. And then that, you know, that multiplies success." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if I may say so, you're a bit of a man of the Bible. What's, where do you go, what do you go to the Bible for, your faith, for strength, love, patience, wisdom?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Same things I talked about, things that you can't control, you turn them over. So the biggest thing for me is I gotta turn over the things that I can't control, turn them over to that power, and I'm gonna be a lot better off, and that's the reason why I'm not in the funny farm. Because it's very competitive to me. It's very serious that we know that these young wrestlers come to school here to be the best that they can be and to accomplish goals that, like me, when I was young, they've set out to accomplish. And they chose Iowa to do that. So we have to deliver. And because of that peace with God, it's pure. It's a pure motivation, it's a pure platform. It's not doing this for my ego. We're not corrupt people. We're not liars and cheaters. And so often, that gets in the way of a decent person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, first and foremost, you're a good person and God helps you be that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and we're serious about wrestling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a couple more questions. What's the role of family in wrestling? You mentioned your wife, who I read turned you down when you asked her for a phone number, said it's in the phone book. That's pretty smooth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Her story of that is that she didn't want me to have to remember the number. And I say at this point, and I say, there's no way. And I remember it very clearly. Like, hey, it's in the phone book. And I was like, okay, she's blowing me off. That's okay. But luckily anyway, here's the thing with family. I mean, we have great people in our program. We have great parents. We have a culture of parents that that's part of the buzz. And this class that you see wrestling right now, that's been here a year now, Lee, Mirren, Costello, Warner, and then Lugo was a transfer. And I'm forgetting somebody. I don't want to forget anybody, but these parents are phenomenal. And that's a different parental culture. So the Kemmerer's dad is the same. And so there's a lot of good there. And that's a big, that's a big, a big move because how we talk to parents, we don't talk to parents to get along with them. We talk to parents to help them understand where we're at with their sons. And when you can have a direct conversation with a parent who's helping his son or her son, the mom, helping her son to be accountable and to own it, then you can get a lot accomplished. And that's what we've been able to do. And so you're solving problems like I talked about earlier. That's part of the family. The other part of the family is the coaches are like family. The other part of the family is the coaches, significant others and wives are part of the family. And we fed, you know, we fed 40 guys and an entire coaching staff and wives and their children here at Thanksgiving. And that equals 70 people. And it's fun. It's fun. So family means administration. Gary Barta, my athletic director, gives us everything that we need to be successful. And he has an open mind for the sport of wrestling. And wrestling's important in Iowa, so that's a no-brainer. But not if you're not a wrestling guy, but he sees we do it the right way. And so the commitment is there from him. If we were doofuses, the commitment wouldn't be there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So family is, everybody's all in. I mean, it's from the wrestlers to the family." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It goes back to what I said earlier about our people. Our people are great. Ryan Morningstar is great. Bobby Telford is great. Bobby Telford took over for a guy named Ben Burhow, who is great. Our medical team is great. Dr. Westerman, Dr. Wolf, Jesse Donenworth, our athletic trainer, is great. Terry Brands is great. Mariah Stickley and Elise Owens, our managers, are great. My daughter's a manager as well. It's great. They're hardworking young women. Our Hawkeye Wrestling Club is where it needs to be in terms of how they help in their role. And now we have four women in there. And that's great. And at least one of their dads is super involved with us. One thing that I've learned is that you have to have that. And if you don't have that, then you have to address it quickly. And those outliers, let's solve that problem. Let's get it out in the open here. And if it doesn't work out, it's not gonna work out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a heck of a Thanksgiving dinner." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, next year. Well, I don't know if it'd be legal, but I'd have to check with our compliance and, you know, they'd have to vet you. You could come. You can come and see what it's all about. This room is full." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh man, well, yeah, I'll be back next year then. All right, awesome. Last question. In 2014, I watched this video four years ago of you competing in, I believe, your first swim meet against your brother, Terry, and you came out victorious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not really." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so what's... I won the race." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Did you cheat? Here's what happened. I had researched this thing because that's how I am. You practiced. No, I didn't, but I researched it. In swimming, if you flinch on that starter block, it's a false start. You can't twitch a finger because they would be doing that to get their buddy to move or the guy next to him, you know? So you have to be rock solid. Well, when we went, Terry was leaning forward as the gun was going off, so he's moving. And so I was like, no, no, no, false start, no, no, no, no. And he couldn't hear me, he was already in the water. And so he took off like a bat out of you know where for the end of the pool and couldn't hear me and got to the end of the pool and it was a down and back. Well, that's a hard thing to do with a guy with no body fat. And so he burned a lot of energy. And he come up on that end of the pool and he was like, where's the X? He didn't see me. And so we stopped him and then he came back and then we went another one and I beat him. But it's the only time that I would say that he was tuckered out, and that's the reason why. And I'll also say this, we did a time where we timed my race, the one I won, and then we timed his first down to the wall, and then we timed the actual race where once he hit the wall, we timed him on the way back, and he'd beaten me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now, how's that for being an honest, accountable person?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I'm going to tell you something else, getting in those shorts, those swim trunks, they are tight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So is there, outside of wrestling, is there a thing that Terry got the better of you? I mean, I guess this could count as one that you're still really bitter about that you need to avenge." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the most beautiful motion of a robot has to be the passive dynamic walkers. I think there's just something fundamentally beautiful. The ones in particular that Steve Collins built with Andy Ruina at Cornell. a 3D walking machine, so it was not confined to a boom or a plane, that you put it on top of a small ramp, give it a little push. It's powered only by gravity. No controllers, no batteries whatsoever. It just falls down the ramp. And at the time it looked more natural, more graceful, more human-like than any robot we'd seen to date. Powered only by gravity. How does it work? Well, okay, the simplest model, it's kind of like a slinky. It's like an elaborate slinky. One of the simplest models we use to think about it is actually a rimless wheel. So imagine taking a bicycle wheel, but take the rim off. So it's now just got a bunch of spokes. If you give that a push, it still wants to roll down the ramp, but every time its foot, its spoke comes around and hits the ground, it loses a little energy. Every time it takes a step forward, it gains a little energy. Those things can come into perfect balance, and actually they want to. It's a stable phenomenon. If it's going too slow, it'll speed up. If it's going too fast, it'll slow down. And it comes into a stable periodic motion. Now you can take that rimless wheel, which doesn't look very much like a human walking, take all the extra spokes away, put a hinge in the middle. Now it's two legs. That's called our compass gate walker. That can still, you give it a little push, starts falling down a ramp, looks a little bit more like walking, at least it's a biped. But what Steve and Andy and Ted McGeer started the whole exercise, but what Steve and Andy did was they took it to this beautiful conclusion. where they built something that had knees, arms, a torso, the arms swung naturally, give it a little push, and that looked like a stroll through the park." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How do you design something like that? I mean, is that art or science?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's on the boundary. I think there's a science to getting close to the solution. I think there's certainly art in the way that they They made a beautiful robot, but then the finesse, because they were working with a system that wasn't perfectly modeled, wasn't perfectly controlled, there's all these little tricks that you have to tune the suction cups at the knees, for instance, so that they stick, but then they release at just the right time, or there's all these little tricks of the trade. which really are art, but it was a point. I mean, it made the point. At that time, the best walking robot in the world was Honda's ASIMO. Absolutely marvel of modern engineering. This was in 97 when they first released it, sort of announced P2 and then it went through, it was ASIMO by then in 2004." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it looks like this very cautious walking, like you're walking on hot coals or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it gets a bad rap. ASIMO is a beautiful machine. It does walk with its knees bent. Our ATLAS walking had its knees bent, but actually ASIMO was pretty fantastic. But it wasn't energy efficient. Neither was ATLAS when we worked on ATLAS. None of our robots that have been that complicated have been very energy efficient. But there's a thing that happens when you do control, when you try to control a system of that complexity. You try to use your motors to basically counteract gravity. Take whatever the world's doing to you and push back, erase the dynamics of the world, and impose the dynamics you want because you can make them simple and analyzable, mathematically simple. And this was a very sort of beautiful example that you don't have to do that. You can just let go. Let physics do most of the work, right? And you just have to give it a little bit of energy. This one only walked down a ramp. It would never walk on the flat. To walk on the flat, you have to give a little energy at some point. But maybe instead of trying to take the forces imparted to you by the world and replacing them, what we should be doing is letting the world push us around and we go with the flow. Very zen, very zen robot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but okay, so that sounds very zen, but I can also imagine how many like failed versions they had to go through. Like how many, I would say it's probably, would you say it's in the thousands that they've had to have the system fall down before they figured out how to get?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if it's thousands, but it's a lot. It takes some patience, there's no question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that sense, control might help a little bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think everybody, even at the time, said that the answer is to do that with control. but it was just pointing out that maybe the way we're doing control right now isn't the way we should." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it. So what about on the animal side? The ones that figured out how to move efficiently? Is there anything you find inspiring or beautiful in the movement of any particular animal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do have a favorite example. Okay. So it sort of goes with the passive walking idea. So is there, you know, how, how energy efficient are animals? Okay, there's a great series of experiments by George Lauder at Harvard and Mike Tranefilo at MIT. They were studying fish swimming in a water tunnel. Okay. And one of these, the type of fish they were studying were these rainbow trout, because there was a phenomenon well understood that rainbow trout, when they're swimming upstream at mating season, they kind of hang out behind the rocks. And it looks like, I mean, that's tiring work swimming upstream. They're hanging out behind the rocks. Maybe there's something energetically interesting there. So they tried to recreate that. They put in this water tunnel, a rock basically, a cylinder that had the same sort of vortex street, the eddies coming off the back of the rock that you would see in a stream. And they put a real fish behind this and watched how it swims. And the amazing thing is that if you watch from above what the fish swims when it's not behind a rock, it has a particular gate. You can identify the fish the same way you look at a human walking down the street. You sort of have a sense of how a human walks The fish has a characteristic gait. You put that fish behind the rock, its gait changes. And what they saw was that it was actually resonating and kind of surfing between the vortices. Now, here was the experiment that really was the clincher, because there was still, it wasn't clear how much of that was mechanics of the fish, how much of that is control, the brain. So the clincher experiment, and maybe one of my favorites to date, although there are many good experiments. They took, this was now a dead fish. They took a dead fish. They put a string that went, that tied the mouth of the fish to the rock so it couldn't go back and get caught in the grates. And then they asked, what would that dead fish do when it was hanging out behind the rock? And so what you'd expect is sort of flopped around like a dead fish in the vortex wake. until something sort of amazing happens, and this video is worth putting in. Right? What happens? The dead fish basically starts swimming upstream, right? It's completely dead, no brain, no motors, no control, but somehow the mechanics of the fish resonate with the vortex street and it starts swimming upstream. It's one of the best examples ever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who do you give credit for that to? Is that just evolution constantly just figuring out by killing a lot of generations of animals, like the most efficient motion? Is that, or maybe the physics of our world completely like, is evolution applied not only to animals, but just the entirety of it somehow drives to efficiency? Like nature likes efficiency? I don't know if that question even makes any sense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I understand the question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do they co-evolve?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, somehow co-, yeah, like, I don't know if an environment can evolve, but... I mean, there are experiments that people do, careful experiments, that show that animals can adapt to unusual situations and recover efficiency. So there seems like, at least in one direction, I think there is reason to believe that the animal's motor system and probably its mechanics adapt in order to be more efficient, but efficiency isn't the only goal, of course. Sometimes it's too easy to think about only efficiency, but we have to do a lot of other things first, not get eaten, and then all other things being equal, try to save energy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, let's draw a distinction between control and mechanics. Like how would you define each?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I think part of the point is that we shouldn't draw a line as clearly as we tend to. But on a robot, we have motors and we have the links of the robot, let's say. If the motors are turned off, the robot has some passive dynamics. Okay. Gravity does the work. You can put springs, I would call that mechanics, right? If we have springs and dampers, which our muscles are springs and dampers and tendons. But then you have something that's doing active work, putting energy in your motors on the robot. The controller's job is to send commands to the motor that add new energy into the system. Right, so the mechanics and control interplay somewhere. The divide is around, you know, did you decide to send some commands to your motor or did you just leave the motors off, let them do their work?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you say is most of nature on the dynamic side or the control side? So like, if you look at biological systems, or if, you know, we're living in a pandemic now, like, do you think a virus is a, do you think is a dynamic system? Or, or is there a lot of control intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's both. But I think we maybe have underestimated how important the dynamics are. Right. I mean, even our bodies, the mechanics of our bodies, certainly with exercise, they evolve. But so I actually, I lost a finger in early 2000s, and it's my fifth metacarpal. And it turns out you use that a lot in ways you don't expect when you're opening jars, even when I'm just walking around, if I bump it on something. There's a bone there that was used to taking contact. My fourth metacarpal wasn't used to taking contact. It used to hurt. It still does a little bit. But actually, my bone has remodeled, right? Over a couple of years, the geometry, the mechanics of that bone changed to address the new circumstances. So the idea that somehow it's only our brain that's adapting or evolving is not right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe sticking on evolution for a bit, because it's tended to create some interesting things. Bipedal walking. Why the heck did evolution give us... I think we're... Are we the only mammals that walk on two feet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I mean, there's a bunch of animals that do it a bit. I think we are the most successful bipeds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think I read somewhere that the reason the, you know, evolution made us walk on two feet is because there's an advantage to being able to carry food back to the tribe or something like that. So like you can carry, it's kind of this communal, cooperative thing. So like to carry stuff back to a place of shelter and so on to share with others. Do you understand at all the value of walking on two feet from both a robotics and a human perspective?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. There are some great books written about evolution of walking, evolution of the human body. I think it's easy, though, to make bad evolutionary arguments. Sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Most of them are probably bad, but what else can we do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think a lot of what dominated our evolution probably was not the things that worked well sort of in the steady state, you know, when things are good. But for instance, people talk about what we should eat now because our ancestors were meat eaters or whatever. Oh, yeah, I love that. But probably, you know, the reason that one pre-homo sapien species versus another survived was not because of whether they ate well when there was lots of food, but when the ice age came, you know, probably One of them happened to be in the wrong place. One of them happened to forage a food that was okay, even when the glaciers came or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, there's a million variables that contributed and we can't, and are actually the amount of information we're working with in telling these stories, these evolutionary stories is very little. So yeah, just like you said, it seems like if we study history, it seems like history turns on like these little events. that otherwise would seem meaningless, but in the grant, like when you, in retrospect, were turning points. And that's probably how, like somebody got hit in the head with a rock because somebody slept with the wrong person back in the K days and somebody get angry and that turned, you know, warring tribes combined with the environment, all those millions of things. and the meat eating, which I get a lot of criticism because I don't know what your dietary processes are like, but these days I've been eating only meat, which is... There's a large community of people who say, yeah, probably make evolutionary arguments and say, you do a great job. There's probably an even larger community of people, including my mom, who says it's a deeply unhealthy, it's wrong, but I just feel good doing it. But you're right, these evolutionary arguments can be flawed. But is there anything interesting to pull out for..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a great book, by the way, a series of books by Nicholas Taleb about fooled by randomness and black swan. Highly recommend them. But yeah, they make the point nicely that probably it was a few random events that, yes, maybe it was someone getting hit by a rock, as you say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That said, do you think, I don't know how to ask this question or how to talk about this, but there's something elegant and beautiful about moving on two feet. Obviously biased because I'm human, but from a robotics perspective too, you work with robots on two feet. Is it all useful to build robots that are on two feet as opposed to four? Is there something useful about it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the most, I mean the reason I spent a long time working on bipedal walking It was because it was hard, and it challenged control theory in ways that I thought were important. I wouldn't have ever tried to convince you that you should start a company around bipeds or something like this. There are people that make pretty compelling arguments. I think the most compelling one is that the world is built for the human form, and if you want a robot to work in the world we have today, then having a human form is a pretty good way to go. There are places that a biped can go that would be hard for other form factors to go, even natural places. You know, at some point in the long run, we'll be building our environments for our robots, probably. And so maybe that argument falls aside." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you famously run barefoot. Do you still run barefoot? I still run barefoot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's so awesome. Much to my wife's chagrin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you want to make an evolutionary argument for why running barefoot is advantageous? What have you learned about human and robot movement in general from running barefoot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "human or robot and or? Well, you know, it happened the other way, right? So I was studying walking robots and, uh, I was, there's a great conference called the dynamic walking conference, uh, where it brings together both the biomechanics community and the walking robots community. And so I had been going to this for years and hearing talks by people who study barefoot running and other, the mechanics of running. So I did eventually read Born to Run. Most people read Born to Run. The other thing I had going for me is actually that I wasn't a runner before, and I learned to run after I had learned about barefoot running, or I mean, started running longer distances. So I didn't have to unlearn. And I'm definitely, I'm a big fan of it for me, but I'm not gonna I tend to not try to convince other people. There's people who run beautifully with shoes on and that's good. But here's why it makes sense for me. It's all about the long term game, right? So I think it's just too easy to run 10 miles, feel pretty good, and then you get home at night and you realize my knees hurt. I did something wrong, right? If you take your shoes off, then if you hit hard with your foot at all, then it hurts. You don't run 10 miles and then realize you've done some damage. You have immediate feedback telling you that you've done something that's maybe suboptimal, and you change your gait. I mean, it's even subconscious. If I right now, having run many miles barefoot, if I put a shoe on, my gait changes. in a way that I think is not as good. So it makes me land softer. And I think my goals for running are to do it for as long as I can into old age, not to win any races. And so for me, this is a way to protect myself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think, first of all, I've tried running barefoot many years ago, probably the other way, just reading Born to Run. But just to understand, because I felt like I couldn't put in the miles that I wanted to. And it feels like running for me, and I think for a lot of people, was one of those activities that we do often, and we never really try to learn to do correctly. Like, it's funny, there's so many activities we do every day, like brushing our teeth, right? I think a lot of us, at least me, probably have never deeply studied how to properly brush my teeth. or wash, as now with the pandemic, or how to properly wash our hands. We do it every day, but we haven't really studied, like, am I doing this correctly? But running felt like one of those things that it was absurd not to study how to do correctly, because it's the source of so much pain and suffering. Like, I hate running, but I do it. I do it because I hate it, but I feel good afterwards. But I think it feels like you need to learn how to do it properly. So that's where Barefoot Runny came in. And then I quickly realized that my gait was completely wrong. I was taking huge steps and landing hard on the heel, all those elements. And so, yeah, from that, I actually learned to take really small steps, look I already forgot the number, but I feel like it was 180 a minute or something like that. And I remember I actually just took songs that are 180 beats per minute and then tried to run at that beat just to teach myself. It took a long time. And I feel like after a while, you learn to run, but you adjust it properly without going all the way to barefoot. But I feel like barefoot is the legit way to do it. I mean, I think a lot of people would be really curious about it. Can you, if they're interested in trying, what would you, how would you recommend they start or try or explore?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Slowly. That's the biggest thing people do is they are excellent runners and they're used to running long distances or running fast and they take their shoes off and they hurt themselves instantly trying to do something that they were used to doing. I think I lucked out in the sense that I couldn't run very far when I first started trying. And I run with minimal shoes, too. I mean, I will, you know, bring along a pair of actually like aqua socks or something like this. I can just slip on or running sandals. I've tried all of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the difference between a minimal shoe and nothing at all? What's like feeling wise?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What does it feel like? I mean, I noticed my gait changing, right? So, I mean, your foot has as many muscles and sensors as your hand does, right? Sensors. Oh, okay. And we do amazing things with our hands. and we stick our foot in a big solid shoe, right? So there's, I think, you know, when you're barefoot, you're just giving yourself more proprioception. And that's why you're more aware of some of the gait flaws and stuff like this. Now, you have less protection too. So... Rocks and stuff. I mean, yeah, so I think people are who are afraid of barefoot running, they're worried about getting cuts or getting stepping on rocks. First of all, even if that was a concern, I think those are all like very short term. You know, if I get a scratch or something, it'll heal in a week. If I blow out my knees, I'm done running forever. So I will trade the short term for the long term anytime. But even then, you know, this again to my wife's chagrin, your feet get tough, right? And cows. OK, yeah, I can run over almost anything now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, can you talk about, is there tips or tricks that you have, suggestions about, like if I wanted to try it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, there is a good book, actually. There's probably more good books since I read them. But Ken Bob, Barefoot Ken Bob Saxton, he's an interesting guy, but I think his book captures the right way to describe running barefoot running to somebody better than any other I've seen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you run pretty good distances and you bike. If we talk about bucket list items, is there something crazy on your bucket list athletically that you hope to do one day?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, my commute is already a little crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are we talking about here? What distance are we talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I live about 12 miles from MIT. but you can find lots of different ways to get there. So, I mean, I've run there for a long, many years, I've biked there. Long ways? Yeah, but normally I would try to run in and then bike home, bike in, run home." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you have run there and back before? Sure. Barefoot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or with minimal shoes or whatever that. 12 times two? Yeah. Okay. It became kind of a game of how can I get to work? I've rollerbladed, I've done all kinds of weird stuff, but my favorite one these days, I've been taking the Charles River to work. So I can put in a little rowboat not so far from my house, but the Charles River takes a long way to get to MIT. So I can spend a long time getting there. And it's not about, I don't know, it's just about I've had people ask me, how can you justify taking that time? But for me, it's just a magical time to think, to compress, decompress. You know, especially I'll wake up, do a lot of work in the morning, and then I kind of have to just let that settle before I'm ready for all my meetings. And then on the way home, it's a great time to sort of let that settle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You lead like a large group of people. I mean, Is there days where you're like, oh, shit, I got to get to work in an hour? Like, I mean, is there is there a tension there where and like, if we look at the grand scheme of things, just like you said, long term, that meeting probably doesn't matter. Like you can always say, I'll just I'll run and let the meeting happen how it happens. Like what? How do you That Zen, what do you do with that tension between the real world saying urgently, you need to be there, this is important, everything is melting down, how are we gonna fix this robot? There's this critical meeting and then there's this Zen beauty of just running, the simplicity of it, you along with nature. What do you do with that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say I'm not a fast runner particularly. Probably my fastest splits ever was when I had to get to daycare on time because they were going to charge me some dollar per minute that I was late. I've run some fast splits to daycare. But those times are past now. I think work, you can find a work-life balance in that way. I think you just have to. I think I am better at work because I take time to think on the way in. So I plan my day around it. and I rarely feel that those are really at odds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what, the bucket list item, if we're talking 12 times two or approaching a marathon, what, have you run an ultra marathon before? Do you do races? Is there, what's... Not to win." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not to... I'm not going to take a dinghy across the Atlantic or something if that's what you want. But if someone does and wants to write a book, I would totally read it because I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. No, I do have some fun things that I will try. You know, I like to, when I travel, I almost always bike to the Logan Airport and fold up a little folding bike and then take it with me and bike to wherever I'm going. And it's taken me, or I'll take a stand-up paddle board these days on the airplane, and then I'll try to paddle around where I'm going or whatever. And I've done some crazy things, but... But not for the..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, I now talk, I don't know if you know who David Goggins is by any chance? Not well, but yeah. But I talk to him now every day. So he's the person who made me do this stupid challenge. So he's insane and he does things for the purpose, in the best kind of way. He does things like for the explicit purpose of suffering. Like he picks the thing that, like whatever he thinks he can do, he does more. Do you have that thing in you? I think it's become the opposite. So you're like that dynamical system, the walker, the efficient..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's leave no pain, right? You should end feeling better than you started. OK, but it's mostly, I think, and COVID has tested this because I've lost my commute. I think I'm perfectly happy walking around around town with my wife and kids if they could get them to go. And it's more about just getting outside and getting away from the keyboard for some time just to let things compress." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's go into robotics a little bit. What to you is the most beautiful idea in robotics? Whether we're talking about control, or whether we're talking about optimization and the math side of things, or the engineering side of things, or the philosophical side of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I've been lucky to experience something that not so many roboticists have experienced, which is to hang out with some really amazing control theorists. And the clarity of thought that some of the more mathematical control theory can bring to even very complex, messy-looking problems is really, it really had a big impact on me. I had a day even just a couple weeks ago where I had spent the day on a Zoom robotics conference having great conversations with lots of people. Felt really good about the ideas that were flowing and the like. And then I had a late afternoon meeting with one of my favorite control theorists. And we went from these abstract discussions about maybes and what ifs and what a great idea to these super precise statements about systems that aren't that much more simple or abstract than the ones I care about deeply. And the contrast of that is, I don't know, it really gets me. I think, people underestimate maybe the power of clear thinking. And so for instance, deep learning is amazing. I use it heavily in our work. I think it's changed the world, unquestionable. It makes it easy to get things to work without thinking as critically about it. So I think one of the challenges as an educator is to think about how do we make sure people get a taste of the more rigorous thinking that I think goes along with some different approaches." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so that's really interesting. So understanding like the fundamentals, the first principles of the problem, or in this case, it's mechanics, like how a thing moves, how a thing behaves, like all the forces involved. like really getting a deep understanding of that. I mean, from physics, the first principle thing comes from physics, and here it's literally physics. Yeah, and this applies, in deep learning, this applies to not just, I mean, it applies so cleanly in robotics, but it also applies to just in any data set. I find this true, I mean, driving as well. There's a lot of folks that work on autonomous vehicles that don't study driving. like deeply. I might be coming a little bit from the psychology side, but I remember I spent a ridiculous number of hours at lunch, at this like lawn chair, and I would sit somewhere, somewhere on MIT's campus, there's a few interesting intersections, and would just watch people cross. So we were studying, pedestrian behavior. And I felt like I had to record a lot of video to try and then just the computer vision extracts their movement, how they move their head and so on. But like every time I felt like I didn't understand enough. I felt like I wasn't understanding how are people signaling to each other? What are they thinking? How cognizant are they of their fear of death? What's the underlying game theory here? What are the incentives? And then I finally found a live stream of an intersection that's like high def that I just, I would watch so I wouldn't have to sit out there. But that's interesting, so like, I feel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's tough, that's a tough example because, I mean the learning. Humans are involved. Not just because human, but I think, The learning mantra is that basically the statistics of the data will tell me things I need to know, right? And for the example you gave of all the nuances of eye contact or hand gestures or whatever that are happening for these subtle interactions between pedestrians and traffic, maybe the data will tell that story. I may be even one level more meta than what you're saying. For a particular problem, I think it might be the case that data should tell us the story. But I think there's a rigorous thinking that is just an essential skill for a mathematician or an engineer. I just don't want to lose it. There are certainly super rigorous control, or sorry, machine learning people. I just think deep learning makes it so easy to do some things that our next generation are not immediately rewarded for going through some of the more rigorous approaches. And then I wonder where that takes us. Well, I'm actually optimistic about it. I just want to do my part to try to steer that rigorous thinking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's like two questions I want to ask. Do you have sort of a good example of rigorous thinking where it's easy to get lazy and not do the rigorous thinking? And the other question I have is like, do you have advice of how to practice rigorous thinking in, you know, in all the computer science disciplines that we've mentioned?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, there are times where problems that can be solved with well-known mature methods could also be solved with a deep learning approach. There's an argument that you must use learning even for the parts we already think we know, because if the human has touched it, then you've biased the system and you've suddenly put a bottleneck in there that is your own mental model. But something like inverting a matrix, you know, I think we know how to do that pretty well, even if it's a pretty big matrix, and we understand that pretty well. And you could train a deep network to do it, but" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You shouldn't, probably. So in that sense, rigorous thinking is understanding the scope and the limitations of the methods that we have, like how to use the tools of mathematics properly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I think, you know, taking a class on analysis is all I'm sort of arguing. Take a chance to stop and force yourself to think rigorously about even, you know, the rational numbers or something, you know, it doesn't have to be the end all problem, but that exercise of clear thinking. I think goes a long way and I just wanna make sure we keep preaching it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But do you think when you're doing like rigorous thinking or like maybe trying to write down equations or sort of explicitly like formally describe a system, do you think we naturally simplify things too much? Is that a danger you run into? Like in order to be able to understand something about the system mathematically, we make it too much of a toy example." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "but I think that's the good stuff, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's how you understand the fundamentals?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so. I think maybe even that's a key to intelligence or something, but I mean, okay, what if Newton and Galileo had deep learning? And they had done a bunch of experiments and they told the world, here's your weights of your neural network, we've solved the problem. You know, where would we be today? I don't think we'd be as far as we are. There's something to be said about having the simplest explanation. for a phenomenon. So I don't doubt that we can train neural networks to predict even physical, you know, F equals MA type equations. But I maybe, I want another Newton to come along because I think there's more to do in terms of coming up with the simple models for more complicated tasks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, let's not offend the AI systems from 50 years from now that are listening to this, that are probably better at, might be better at coming up with F equals MA equations themselves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sorry, I actually think learning is probably a route to achieving this. But the representation matters, right? And I think having a function that takes my inputs to outputs that is arbitrarily complex may not be the end goal. I think there's still, you know, the most simple or parsimonious explanation for the data. Simple doesn't mean low dimensional. That's one thing I think that we've a lesson that we've learned. So, you know, a standard way to do model reduction or system identification and controls is to, the typical formulation is that you try to find the minimal state dimension realization of a system that hits some error bounds or something like that. And that's maybe not, I think we're learning that state dimension is not the right metric. of complexity. Of complexity. But for me, I think a lot about contact, the mechanics of contact, if a robot hand is picking up an object or something. And when I write down the equations of motion for that, they look incredibly complex, not because, actually not so much because of the dynamics of the hand when it's moving, but it's just the interactions and when they turn on and off. Right, so having a high dimensional, you know, but simple description of what's happening out here is fine. But if when I actually start touching, if I write down a different dynamical system for every polygon on my robot hand, and every polygon on the object, whether it's in contact or not, with all the combinatorics that explodes there, then that's too complex. So I need to somehow summarize that with a more intuitive physics way of thinking. And yeah, I'm very optimistic that machine learning will get us there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, I mean, I'll probably do it in the introduction, but you're one of the great robotics people at MIT. You're a professor at MIT. You teach a lot of amazing courses. You run a large group. And you have an important history for MIT, I think, as being a part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Can you maybe first say what is the DARPA Robotics Challenge and then tell your story around it, your journey with it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, sure. So the DARPA Robotics Challenge, it came on the tails of the DARPA Grand Challenge and DARPA Urban Challenge, which were the challenges that brought us, put a spotlight on self-driving cars. Gil Pratt was at DARPA and pitched a new challenge that involved disaster response. It didn't explicitly require humanoids, although humanoids came into the picture. This happened shortly after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. And our challenge was motivated roughly by that, because that was a case where if we had had robots that were ready to be sent in, there's a chance that we could have averted disaster. And certainly after the, in the disaster response, there were times where we would have loved to have sent robots in. So in practice, what we ended up with was a grand challenge, a DARPA robotics challenge, where Boston Dynamics was to make humanoid robots. People like me and the amazing team at MIT were competing first in a simulation challenge to try to be one of the ones that wins the right to work on one of the Boston Dynamics humanoids in order to compete in the final challenge, which was a physical challenge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And at that point, it was already, so it was decided as humanoid robots." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there were two tracks. You could enter as a hardware team where you brought your own robot, or you could enter through the virtual robotics challenge as a software team that would try to win the right to use one of the Boston Dynamics robots. Which are called Atlas. Atlas. Humanoid robots. Yeah, it was a 400 pound Marvel, but a pretty big, scary looking robot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Expensive too. How did you feel the prospect of this kind of challenge? Autonomous vehicles, I guess that sounds hard, but not really from a robotics perspective. Didn't they do in the 80s is the kind of feeling I would have Like when you first look at the problem, it's on wheels but like Humanoid robots that sounds really hard So what? Like what are the psychologically speaking? What were you feeling excited scared? Why the heck did you get yourself involved in this kind of messy challenge?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We didn't really know for sure what we were signing up for, in the sense that you could have had something that, as it was described in the call for participation, that could have put a huge emphasis on the dynamics of walking and not falling down and walking over rough terrain, or the same description, because the robot had to go into this disaster area and turn valves and pick up a drill, cut a hole through a wall. It had to do some interesting things. the challenge could have really highlighted perception and autonomous planning, or it ended up that locomoting over a complex terrain played a pretty big role in the competition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the degree of autonomy wasn't clear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The degree of autonomy was always a central part of the discussion. So what wasn't clear was how we would be able, how far we'd be able to get with it. So the idea was always that you want semi-autonomy, that you want the robot to have enough compute that you can have a degraded network link to a human. And so the same way we had degraded networks at many natural disasters, you'd send your robot in, you'd be able to get a few bits back and forth, but you don't get to have enough, potentially, to fully operate the robot, every joint of the robot. So, and then the question was, and the gamesmanship of the organizers was to figure out what we're capable of, push us as far as we could so that it would differentiate the teams that put more autonomy on the robot and had a few clicks and just said, go there, do this, go there, do this, versus someone who's picking every footstep or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what were some Memories, painful, triumphant from the experience. Like what was that journey? Maybe if you can dig in a little deeper, maybe even on the technical side and the team side, that whole process of from the early idea stages to actually competing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, this was a defining experience for me. It came at the right time for me in my career. I had gotten tenure before I was due a sabbatical. And most people do something, you know, relaxing and restorative for a sabbatical." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you got tenure before this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a good time for me. We had a bunch of algorithms that we were very happy with. We wanted to see how far we could push them. And this was a chance to really test our mettle, to do more proper software engineering. The team, we all just worked our butts off. We were in that lab almost all the time. OK, so I mean, there were some, of course, high highs and low lows throughout that. Anytime you're not sleeping and devoting your life to a 400 pound humanoid. I remember actually one funny moment where we're all super tired and so Atlas had to walk across cinder blocks. That was one of the obstacles. And I remember Atlas was powered down, hanging limp on its harness. And the humans were there picking up and laying the brick down so that the robot could walk over it. And I thought, what is wrong with this? We've got a robot just watching us do all the manual labor so that it can take its little stroll across the terrain. I mean, even the virtual robotics challenge was super nerve-wracking and dramatic. I remember, so we were using Gazebo as a simulator on the cloud, and there was all these interesting challenges. I think the investment that OSR FC, whatever they were called at that time, Brian Gerke's team at Open Source Robotics. They were pushing on the capabilities of Gazebo in order to scale it to the complexity of these challenges. So, you know, up to the virtual competition. So the virtual competition was you will sign on at a certain time and we'll have a network connection to another machine on the cloud. that is running the simulator of your robot. And your controller will run on this computer, and the physics will run on the other, and you have to connect. Now, the physics, they wanted it to run at real-time rates, because there was an element of human interaction. And humans, if you do want to tele-op, it works way better if it's at frame rate. But it was very hard to simulate these complex scenes at real-time rate. So right up to like days before the competition, the simulator wasn't quite at real-time rate. And that was great for me because my controller was solving a pretty big optimization problem. And it wasn't quite at real time rate. So I was fine. I was keeping up with the simulator. We were both running at about 0.7. And I remember getting this email. And by the way, the perception folks on our team hated that they knew that if my controller was too slow, the robot was going to fall down. And no matter how good their perception system was, if I can't make my controller fast. Anyways, we get this email like three days before the virtual competition. You know, it's for all the marbles. We're going to either get a humanoid robot or we're not. And we get an email saying, good news. We made the robot does the simulator faster. It's now one point. And, uh, we're, I was just like, oh man, what are we going to do here? So. That came in late at night for me. A few days ahead. A few days ahead. I went over, there was, it happened that Frank Permenter, who's a very, very sharp, he was a student at the time working on optimization. He was still in lab. Frank, we need to make this quadratic programming solver faster. Not like a little faster. It's actually, you know, and we wrote a new solver for that QP. together that night." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was terrifying. So there's a really hard optimization problem that you're constantly solving. You didn't make the optimization problem simpler? You wrote a new solver?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, I mean, your observation is almost spot on. What we did was what everybody, I mean, people know how to do this, but we had not yet done this idea of warm starting. So we are solving a big optimization problem at every time step. But if you're running fast enough, the optimization problem you're solving on the last time step is pretty similar to the optimization you're going to solve on the next. We, of course, had told our commercial solver to use warm starting, but even the interface to that commercial solver was causing us these delays. So what we did was we basically wrote, we called it fast QP at the time, we wrote a very lightweight, very fast layer, which would basically check if nearby solutions to the quadratic program, which were very easily checked, could stabilize the robot. And if they couldn't, we would fall back to the solver. You couldn't really test this well, right? So we always knew that if we fell back, it got to the point where if for some reason things slowed down and we fell back to the original solver, the robot would actually literally fall down. So it was a harrowing sort of ledge we were sort of on. But I mean, actually, like the 400 pound humanoid could come crashing to the ground if your solver's not fast enough. But, you know, we have lots of good experiences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, can I ask you a weird question I get about the idea of hard work? So, actually, people, like students of yours that I've interacted with, and just, and robotics people in general, But they, they have moments at moments have worked harder than most people I know in terms of if you look at different disciplines of how hard people work. But they're also like the happiest, like, just like, I don't know. It's the same thing with like running people that push themselves to like the limit. They also seem to be like the most like full of life somehow. And I get often criticized like, you're not getting enough sleep. What are you doing to your body? Blah, blah, blah, like this kind of stuff. And I usually just kind of respond like, I'm doing what I love. I'm passionate about it. I love it. I feel like it's invigorating. I actually think, I don't think the lack of sleep is what hurts you. I think what hurts you is stress and lack of doing things that you're passionate about. But in this world, yeah. I mean, can you comment about why the heck robotics people are willing to push themselves to that degree? Is there value in that? And why are they so happy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you got it right. I mean, I think the causality is not that we work hard And I think other disciplines work very hard too. But I don't think it's that we work hard and therefore we are happy. I think we found something that we're truly passionate about. It makes us very happy. And then we get a little involved with it and spend a lot of time on it. What a luxury to have something that you want to spend all your time on, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We could talk about this for many hours, but maybe if we could pick, is there something on the technical side, on the approach that you took that's interesting that turned out to be a terrible failure or a success that you carry into your work today about all the different ideas that were involved in making, whether in the simulation or in the real world, making this semi-autonomous system work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it really did teach me something fundamental about what it's going to take to get robustness out of a system of this complexity. I would say the DARPA challenge really was foundational in my thinking. I think the autonomous driving community thinks about this. I think lots of people thinking about safety critical systems that might have machine learning in the loop are thinking about these questions. For me, the DARPA challenge was the moment where I realized You know, we've spent every waking minute running this robot. And again, for the physical competition, days before the competition, we saw the robot fall down in a way it had never fallen down before, I thought. You know, how could we have found that? You know, we only have one robot. It's running almost all the time. We just didn't have enough hours in the day to test that robot. Something has to change, right? And I think that, I mean, I would say that the team that won was from KAIST was the team that had two robots and was able to do not only incredible engineering, just absolutely top-rate engineering, but also they were able to test at a rate and discipline that we didn't keep up with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does testing look like? What are we talking about here? What's a loop of tests? From start to finish, what is a loop of testing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think there's a whole philosophy to testing. There's the unit tests, and you can do that on a hardware, you can do that in a small piece of code. You write one function, you should write a test that checks that function's input and outputs. You should also write an integration test at the other extreme of running the whole system together, you know, where they try to turn on all of the different functions that you think are correct. It's much harder to write the specifications for a system-level test, especially if that system is as complicated as a humanoid robot, but the philosophy is sort of the same. On the real robot, it's no different, but on a real robot, it's impossible to run the same experiment twice. So if you see a failure, you hope you caught something in the logs that tell you what happened, but you'd probably never be able to run exactly that experiment again. And right now, I think our philosophy is just basically Monte Carlo estimation is just run as many experiments as we can, maybe try to set up the environment to make the things we are worried about happen as often as possible. But really we're relying on somewhat random search in order to test. Maybe that's all we'll ever be able to. But I think, you know, because there's an argument that the things that will get you are the things that are really nuanced in the world. And it'd be very hard to, for instance, put back in a simulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the, I guess the edge cases. What was the hardest thing? Like, so you said walking over rough terrain, like just taking footsteps. I mean, people, it's so dramatic and painful in a certain kind of way to watch these videos from the DRC of robots falling. It's just so heartbreaking. I don't know. Maybe it's because, for me at least, we anthropomorphize the robot. Of course, it's also funny for some reason, like humans falling is funny for, I don't, it's some dark reason. I'm not sure why it is so, but it's also like tragic and painful. And so speaking of which, I mean, what made the robots fall and fail in your view?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I can tell you exactly what happened. I contributed one of those. Our team contributed one of those spectacular falls. Every one of those falls has a complicated story. I mean, one time the power effectively went out on the robot. because it had been sitting at the door waiting for a green light to be able to proceed, and its batteries, you know, and therefore it just fell backwards and smashed its head to the ground, and it was hilarious, but it wasn't because of bad software, right? But for ours, so the hardest part of the challenge, the hardest task, in my view, was getting out of the Polaris. It was actually relatively easy to drive the Polaris." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you tell the story, sorry to interrupt, the story of the car? People should watch this video. I mean, the thing you've come up with is just brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But anyway, sorry, what's... Yeah, we kind of joke, we call it the big robot little car problem, because somehow the race organizers decided to give us a 400 pound humanoid. And they also provided the vehicle, which is a little Polaris. the robot didn't really fit in the car, so you couldn't drive the car with your feet under the steering column. We actually had to straddle the main column and have basically one foot in the passenger seat, one foot in the driver's seat, and then drive with our left hand. But the hard part was we had to then park the car, get out of the car, It didn't have a door, that was okay, but it's just getting up from crouch, from sitting, when you're in this very constrained environment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, I remember after watching those videos, I was much more cognizant of how hard it is for me to get in and out of the car, and out of the car especially. Like, it's actually a really difficult control problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm very cognizant of it when I'm like injured for whatever reason. It's really hard. Yeah. So how did you approach this problem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we had a, you know, you think of NASA's operations and they have these checklists, you know, pre-launch checklists and they're like, we weren't far off from that. We had this big checklist and on the first day of the competition, We were running down our checklist and one of the things we had to do, we had to turn off the controller, the piece of software that was running that would drive the left foot of the robot in order to accelerate on the gas. And then we turned on our balancing controller. And the nerves, jitters of the first day of the competition, someone forgot to check that box and turn that controller off. So we used a lot of motion planning to figure out a configuration of the robot that we could get up and over. We relied heavily on our balancing controller. And basically, when the robot was in one of its most precarious configurations, trying to sneak its big leg out of the side, the other controller that thought it was still driving told its left foot to go like this. And that wasn't good. But it turned disastrous for us because what happened was a little bit of push here. Actually, we have videos of us, you know, running into the robot with a 10-foot pole and it kind of will recover. But this is a case where there's no space to recover. So a lot of our secondary balancing mechanisms about like take a step to recover, they were all disabled because we were in the car and there's no place to step. So we were relying on our just lowest level reflexes. And even then, I think just hitting the foot on the seat on the, on the floor, we probably could have recovered from it. But the thing that was bad that happened is when we did that and we jostled a little bit, the tailbone of our robot was only a little off the seat. It hit the seat. And the other foot came off the ground just a little bit. And nothing in our plans had ever told us what to do if your butt's on the seat and your feet are in the air. Feet in the air. And then the thing is, once you get off the script, things can go very wrong. Because even our state estimation, our system that was trying to collect all the data from the sensors and understand what's happening with the robot. it didn't know about this situation. So it was predicting things that were just wrong. And then we did a violent shake and fell off in our face first out of the robot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But like into the destination." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's true. We fell in and we got our point for egress." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But so is there any hope for, that's interesting. Is there any hope for Atlas to be able to do something when it's just on its butt and feet in the air? Absolutely. So you can, what do you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, so that is one of the big challenges, and I think it's still true. You know, Boston Dynamics and Animo and there's this incredible work on legged robots happening around the world. Most of them still are very good at the case where you're making contact with the world at your feet, and they have typically point feet relatively, their balls on their feet, for instance. If those robots get in a situation where the elbow hits the wall or something like this, that's a pretty different situation. Now, they have layers of mechanisms that will make, I think, the more mature solutions have ways in which the controller won't do stupid things. But a human, for instance, is able to leverage incidental contact in order to accomplish a goal. In fact, I might if you push me, I might actually put my hand out and make a new brand new contact. The feet of the robot are doing this on quadrupeds, but we mostly in robotics are afraid of contact on the rest of our body, which is crazy. there's this whole field of motion planning, collision-free motion planning. And we write very complex algorithms so that the robot can dance around and make sure it doesn't touch the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So people are just afraid of contact, because contact is seen as a difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's still a difficult control problem and sensing problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now you're a serious person. I'm a little bit of an idiot and I'm going to ask you some dumb questions. So I do martial arts, so like jiu-jitsu, I wrestled my whole life. So let me ask the question, you know, like whenever people learn that I do any kind of AI or like I mentioned robots and things like that, They say, when are we going to have robots that can win in a wrestling match or in a fight against a human? So we just mentioned sitting on your butt. If you're in the air, that's a common position in jiu-jitsu. When you're on the ground, you're a downed opponent. difficult do you think is the problem? And when will we have a robot that can defeat a human in a wrestling match? And we're talking about a lot, like, I don't know if you're familiar with wrestling, but essentially, it's basically the art of contact. It's like, it's because you're, you're, you're picking contact points. and then using like leverage, like to off balance, to trick people. It's like, you make them feel like you're doing one thing and then they change their balance and then you switch what you're doing and then results in a throw or whatever. So like, it's basically the art of multiple contacts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So- Awesome. It's a nice description of it. So there's also an opponent in there, right? Very dynamic. Right. If you are wrestling a human and are in a game theoretic situation with a human, that's still hard. but just to speak to the quickly reasoning about contact part of it, for instance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, maybe even throwing the game theory out of it, almost like a non-dynamic opponent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. There's reasons to be optimistic, but I think our best understanding of those problems are still pretty hard. I have been increasingly focused on manipulation, partly where that's a case where the contact has to be much more rich. And there are some really impressive examples of deep learning policies, controllers, that can appear to do good things through contact. We've even got new examples of deep learning models of predicting what's going to happen to objects as they go through contact. But I think the challenge you just offered there still eludes us, right? The ability to make a decision based on those models quickly. You know, I have to think, though, it's hard for humans, too, when you get that complicated. I think probably you had maybe a slow motion version of where you learn the basic skills, and you've probably gotten better at it, and there's much more subtlety, but it might still be hard to actually, you know, really on the fly, take a model of your humanoid and figure out how to plan the optimal sequence, that might be a problem we never solve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, one of the most amazing things to me about the We could talk about martial arts. We could also talk about dancing. Doesn't really matter. Too human. I think it's the most interesting study of contact. It's not even the dynamic element of it. It's the, like when you get good at it, it's so effortless. Like I can just, I'm very cognizant of the entirety of the learning process being essentially like learning how to move my body in a way that I could throw very large weights around effortlessly. And I can feel the learning. I'm a huge believer in drilling of techniques. And you can just feel your, you're not feeling, you're feeling, sorry, you're learning it intellectually a little bit, but a lot of it is the body learning it somehow. like instinctually. And whatever that learning is, that's really, I'm not even sure if that's equivalent to like a deep learning, learning a controller. I think it's something more, it feels like there's a lot of distributed learning going on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think there's hierarchy and composition probably in the systems that we don't capture very well yet. You have layers of control systems, you have reflexes at the bottom layer, and you have a you know, a system that's capable of planning a vacation to some distant country, which is probably, you probably don't have a control or a policy for every possible destination you'll ever pick. Right. Um, but there's something magical in the in between. And how do you go from these low level feedback loops to something that feels like a pretty complex set of outcomes? You know, my guess is, I think there's evidence that you can plan at some of these levels, right? So Josh Tenenbaum just showed it in his talk the other day. He's got a game he likes to talk about. I think he calls it the pick three game or something, where he puts a bunch of clutter down in front of a person and he says, okay, pick three objects. And it might be a telephone or a shoe or a Kleenex box or whatever and apparently you pick three items and then you pick he says okay pick the first one up with your right hand the second one up with your left hand now using those objects those now as tools pick up the third object right so that's down at the level of of physics and mechanics and contact mechanics that I think we do have policies for, we do control for, almost feedback. But somehow we're able to still... I mean, I've never picked up a telephone with a shoe and a water bottle before, and it takes me a little longer to do that the first time, but most of the time we can sort of figure that out. So I think the amazing thing is this ability to be flexible with our models, plan when we need to, use our well-oiled controllers when we don't, when we're in familiar territory, having models. I think the other thing you just said was something about, I think, your awareness of what's happening is even changing as you improve your expertise, right? Maybe you have a very approximate model of the mechanics to begin with, and as you gain expertise, you get a more refined version of that model. You're aware of of muscles or balance components that you just weren't even aware of before. So how do you scaffold that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, plus the fear of injury, the ambition of goals, of excelling, and fear of mortality. Let's see what else is in there as motivations. Overinflated ego in the beginning. and then a crash of confidence in the middle. All of those seem to be essential for the learning process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And if all that's good, then you're probably optimizing energy efficiency. Yeah, right, so you have to get that right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, you know, there was this idea that you would have robots play soccer better, Then human players by 2050. That was the goal. Well, basically it was the goal to beat world champion team, to become a World Cup, be like a World Cup level team. So are we going to see that first? or a robot, if you're familiar, there's an organization called UFC for mixed martial arts. Are we going to see a World Cup championship soccer team that have robots or a UFC champion mixed martial artist that's a robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's very hard to say one thing is harder, some problem is harder than the other. What probably matters is... who started the organization that, I mean, I think RoboCup has a pretty serious following and there is a history now of people playing that game, learning about that game, building robots to play that game, building increasingly more human robots. It's got momentum. And so if you want to have mixed martial arts compete, you better start your organization now, right? I think almost independent of which problem is technically harder, because they're both hard and they're both different." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good point. I mean, those videos are just hilarious, especially the humanoid robots trying to... trying to play soccer. I mean, they're kind of terrible right now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I guess there is RoboSumo wrestling. There's like the RoboOne competitions where they do have these robots that go on a table and basically fight. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, do you have a year in mind for RoboCup, just from a robotics perspective? Seems like a super exciting possibility that Like in the physical space, this is what's interesting. I think the world is captivated. I think it's really exciting. It inspires just a huge number of people when a machine beats a human at a game that humans are really damn good at. So you're talking about chess and go, but that's in the world of digital. I don't think machines have beat humans at a game in the physical space yet, but that would be just... You have to make the rules very carefully, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, if Atlas kicked me in the shins, I'm down and game over. You know, it's very subtle on what's fair." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think the fighting one is a weird one. Yeah, because you're talking about a machine that's much stronger than you. But yeah, in terms of soccer, basketball, all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even soccer, right? I mean, as soon as there's contact or whatever. And there are some things that the robot will do better. I think if you really set yourself up to try to see, could robots win the game of soccer as the rules were written? the right thing for the robot to do is to play very differently than a human would play. You're not going to get, you know, the perfect soccer player robot. You're going to get something that exploits the rules, exploits its super actuators, its super low bandwidth, you know, feedback loops or whatever, and it's going to play the game differently than you want it to play. And I bet there's ways, I bet there's loopholes, right? We saw that in the, in the DARPA challenge, that it's very hard to write a set of rules that someone can't find a way to exploit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask another ridiculous question. I think this might be the last ridiculous question. I doubt it. I aspire to ask as many ridiculous questions of a brilliant MIT professor. Okay. I don't know if you've seen the Black Mirror." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's funny, I never watched the episode. I know when it happened, though, because I gave a talk to some MIT faculty one day, on an unassuming Monday or whatever, I was telling them about the state of robotics. And I showed some video from Boston Dynamics of the quadruped spot at the time. It was the early version of Spot. And there was a look of horror that went across the room. And I said, well, you know, I've, I've, I've shown videos like this a lot of times, what happened? And it turns out that this video had, yeah, this black mirror episode had changed the way people watched. Um. Yeah, the videos I was putting out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The way they see these kinds of robots. So I talked to so many people who are just terrified because of that episode, probably of these kinds of robots. I almost want to say they almost kind of like enjoy being terrified. I don't even know what it is about human psychology that kind of imagine doomsday, the destruction of the universe or our society and kind of like enjoy being afraid. I don't want to simplify it, but it feels like they talk about it so often it almost... There does seem to be an addictive quality to it. I talked to a guy, a guy named Joe Rogan, who's kind of the flag bearer for being terrified of these robots. Do you have a... Two questions. One, do you have an understanding of why people are afraid of robots? And the second question is, in Black Mirror, just to tell you the episode, I don't even remember it that much anymore, but these robots, I think they can shoot like a pellet or something. It's basically a spot with a gun. And how far are we away from having robots that go rogue like that, you know, basically Spot that goes rogue for some reason and somehow finds a gun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So. I mean, I'm not a psychologist. I think I don't know exactly why people react the way they do. I think we have to be careful about the way robots influence our society and the like. I think that's something that's a responsibility that roboticists need to embrace. I don't think robots are going to come after me with a kitchen knife or a pellet gun right away. And I mean, if they were programmed in such a way, but I used to joke with Atlas that All I had to do was run for five minutes and its battery would run out. But actually, they've got a very big battery in there by the end. So it was over an hour. I think the fear is a bit cultural, though, because I mean, you notice that, like, I think in my age in the US, we grew up watching Terminator. Right. If I had grown up at the same time in Japan, I probably would have been watching Astro Boy. And there's a very different reaction to robots in different countries, right? So I don't know if it's a human innate fear of metal marvels, or if it's something that we've done to ourselves with our sci-fi." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the stories we tell ourselves through movies, through just, through popular media. But if I were to tell, you know, if you were my therapist and I said, I'm really terrified that we're going to have these robots very soon that will hurt us, like how do you approach making me feel better? Like, Why shouldn't people be afraid? There's a I think there's a video that went viral. Recently, everything, everything was spot in Boston, and this goes viral in general, but usually it's like really cool stuff like they're doing flips and stuff or like sad stuff. The Atlas being hit with a broomstick or something like that. But there's a video where I think one of the new production spot robots, which are awesome, it was like patrolling somewhere in like in some country and like people immediately were like saying like this is like the dystopian future like the surveillance state for some reason like you can just have a camera like something about spot being able to walk on four feet with like really terrified people. So what do you say to those people? I think there is a legitimate fear there, because so much of our future is uncertain. But at the same time, technically speaking, it seems like we're not there yet. So what do you say?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think technology is complicated. It can be used in many ways. I think there are purely software attacks that somebody could use to do great damage. Maybe they have already. You know, I think wheeled robots could be used in bad ways too. Drones. Drones, right. I don't think that Let's see, I don't want to be building technology just because I'm compelled to build technology and I don't think about it. But I would consider myself a technological optimist, I guess, in the sense that I think we should continue to create and evolve and our world will change. And if we will introduce new challenges, we'll screw something up maybe. But I think also we'll invent ourselves out of those challenges and life will go on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's interesting because you didn't mention like this is technically too hard." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think robots are, I think people attribute a robot that looks like an animal as maybe having a level of self-awareness or consciousness or something that they don't have yet, right? So it's not, I think our ability to anthropomorphize those robots is probably, we're assuming that they have a level of intelligence that they don't yet have. And that might be part of the fear. So in that sense, it's too hard. But, you know, there are many scary things in the world, right? So I think we're right to ask those questions. We're right to think about the implications of our work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, in the short term as we're working on it, for sure. Is there something long term that scares you about our future with AI and robots? A lot of folks from Elon Musk to Sam Harris, a lot of folks talk about the existential threats about artificial intelligence. Oftentimes robots kind of inspire that the most because of the anthropomorphism. Do you have any fears?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an important question. I actually, I think I like Rod Brooks answer, maybe the best on this, I think. And it's not the only answer he's given over the years, but maybe one of my favorites is, he says, it's not going to be, he's got a book, Flesh and Machines, I believe. It's not going to be the robots versus the people. we're all going to be robot people, because we already have smartphones. Some of us have serious technology implanted in our bodies already, whether we have a hearing aid or a pacemaker or anything like this. People with amputations might have prosthetics. That's a trend, I think, that is likely to continue. I mean, this is now wild speculation. But I mean, when do we get to cognitive implants and the like?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, with neural link, brain-computer interfaces. That's interesting. So there's a dance between humans and robots that's going to be It's going to be impossible to be scared of the other out there, the robot, because the robot will be part of us, essentially. It'd be so intricately sort of part of our society." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it might not even be implanted part of us, but just it's so much a part of our, yeah, our society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that sense, the smartphone is already the robot we should be afraid of. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And all the usual fears arise of the misinformation, the manipulation, all those kinds of things that, that the problems are all the same. They're human problems, essentially, it feels like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think the way we interact with each other online is changing the value we put on, you know, personal interaction. And that's a crazy big change that's going to happen and has already been ripping through our society, right? And that has implications that are massive. I don't know if they should be scared of it or go with the flow, but I don't see, you know, some battle lines between humans and robots being the first thing to worry about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I do want to just as a kind of comment, maybe you can comment about your just feelings about Boston Dynamics in general. But, you know, I love science. I love engineering. I think there's so many beautiful ideas in it. And when I look at Boston Dynamics or legged robots in general, I think they inspire people curiosity and feelings in general, excitement about engineering more than almost anything else in popular culture. And I think that's such an exciting responsibility and possibility for robotics. And Boston Dynamics is riding that wave pretty damn well. They found it, they've discovered that hunger and curiosity in the people, and they're doing magic with it. I don't care if they, I mean, I guess it's their company, they have to make money, right? But they're already doing incredible work in inspiring the world about technology. I mean, do you have thoughts about Boston Dynamics and maybe others, your own work in robotics and inspiring the world in that way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I completely agree. I think Boston Dynamics is absolutely awesome. I think I show my kids those videos, you know, and the best thing that happens is sometimes they've already seen them, you know, right? I think, I just think it's a pinnacle of success in robotics that is just one of the best things that's happened. Absolutely, completely agree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the heartbreaking things to me is how many robotics companies fail, how hard it is to make money with the robotics company. Like iRobot went through hell just to arrive at Arumba to figure out one product. And then there's so many home robotics companies like Jibo and Anki, Anki, the cutest toy. There's a great robot, I thought, went down. I'm forgetting a bunch of them, but a bunch of robotics companies, Rod's company, Rethink Robotics. Do you have anything hopeful to say about the possibility of making money with robots?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I think you can't just look at the failures. I mean, Boston Dynamics is a success. There's lots of companies that are still doing amazingly good work in robotics. I mean, this is the capitalist ecology or something, right? I think you have many companies, you have many startups, and they push each other forward and many of them fail and some of them get through and that's sort of the natural way of those things. I don't know that is robotics really that much worse. I feel the pain that you feel too. Every time I read one of these, sometimes it's friends and I definitely wish it went better, went differently. But I think it's healthy and good to have bursts of ideas, bursts of activities. Ideas, if they are really aggressive, they should fail sometimes. Certainly, that's the research mantra, right? If you're succeeding at every problem you attempt, then you're not choosing aggressively enough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it exciting to you, the new Spot? Oh, it's so good. When are you getting him as a pet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I have to dig up 75k right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so cool that there's a price tag, you can go and actually buy it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have a Skydio R1. Love it. So, no, I would absolutely be a customer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder what your kids would think about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually, Zach from Boston Dynamics would let my kid drive in one of their demos one time. And that was just so good. So good. And again, I'll forever be grateful for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's something magical about the anthropomorphization of that arm. It adds another level of human connection. I'm not sure we understand from a control aspect the value of anthropomorphization. I think that's an under-studied and under-understood engineering problem. Psychologists have been studying it. I think it's part, like, manipulating our mind to believe things is a valuable engineering. Like, this is another degree of freedom that can be controlled." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I like that. Yeah, I think that's right. know, there's something that humans seem to do, or maybe my dangerous introspection is, I think we are able to make very simple models that assume a lot about the world very quickly. And then it takes us a lot more time, like your wrestling, you know, you probably thought you knew what you're doing with wrestling, and you were fairly functional as a complete wrestler. And then you slowly got more expertise. So maybe it's natural that our first first level of defense against seeing a new robot is to think of it in our existing models of how humans and animals behave. And it's just, as you spend more time with it, then you'll develop more sophisticated models that will appreciate the differences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. Can you say what does it take to control a robot? Like, what is the control problem of a robot? And in general, what is a robot in your view? Like, how do you think of this system? What is a robot? What is a robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think robotics- I told you ridiculous questions. No, no, it's good. I mean, there's standard definitions of combining computation with some ability to do mechanical work. I think that gets us pretty close. But I think robotics has this problem that Once things really work, we don't call them robots anymore. My dishwasher at home is pretty sophisticated, beautiful mechanisms. There's actually a pretty good computer, probably a couple of chips in there doing amazing things. We don't think of that as a robot anymore, which isn't fair, because then, roughly it means that robotics always has to solve the next problem and doesn't get to celebrate its past successes. I mean, even factory room floor robots, are super successful, they're amazing. But that's not the ones, I mean, people think of them as robots, but they don't, if you ask what are the successes of robotics, somehow it doesn't come to your mind immediately." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the definition of robot is a system with some level of automation that fails frequently." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Something like, it's the computation plus mechanical work and unsolved problem. Unsolved problem, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So from a perspective of control and mechanics, dynamics, what is a robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there are many different types of robots. The control that you need for a Jibo robot, you know, some some robot that's sitting on your countertop and and interacting with you, but not touching you, for instance, is very different than what you need for an autonomous car or an autonomous drone. It's very different than what you need for a robot that's going to walk or pick things up with its hands. Right. My passion has always been for the places where you're interacting more, you're doing more dynamic interactions with the world. So walking, now manipulation. And the control problems there are beautiful. I think contact is one thing that differentiates them from many of the control problems we've solved classically. Right. The modern control grew up stabilizing fighter jets that were passively unstable. And there's like amazing success stories from control all over the place. Power grid. I mean, there's all kinds of it's everywhere that we don't even realize, just like AI is now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned contact. What's contact?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So an airplane is an extremely complex system, or a spacecraft landing or whatever. But at least it has the luxury of things change relatively continuously. That's an oversimplification. But if I make a small change in the command I send to my actuator, then the path that the robot will take tends to change only by a small amount. And there's a feedback mechanism here. That's what we're talking about. And there's a feedback mechanism. and thinking about this as locally, like a linear system for instance. I can use more linear algebra tools to study systems like that. Generalizations of linear algebra to these smooth systems. What is contact? A robot has something very discontinuous that happens when it makes or breaks, when it starts touching the world. And even the way it touches or the order of contacts can change the outcome in potentially unpredictable ways. Not unpredictable, but complex ways. I do think there's a little bit of A lot of people will say that contact is hard in robotics, even to simulate. And I think there's a little bit of a, there's truth to that, but maybe a misunderstanding around that. So what is limiting is that when we think about our robots and we write our simulators, we often make an assumption that objects are rigid. And when it comes down, you know, that their mass moves all, you know, stays in a constant position relative to each other itself. And that leads to some paradoxes when you go to try to talk about rigid body mechanics and contact. And so for instance, if I have a three-legged stool with just a, imagine it comes to a point at the legs. So it's only touching the world at a point. If I draw my physics, my high school physics diagram of this system, then there's a couple things that I'm given by elementary physics. I know if the system, if the table is at rest, if it's not moving, it's zero velocities. That means that the normal force, all the forces are in balance. So the force of gravity is being countered by the forces that the ground is pushing on my table legs. I also know, since it's not rotating, that the moments have to balance. And since it's a three-dimensional table, it could fall in any direction, it actually tells me uniquely what those three normal forces have to be. If I have four legs on my table, four-legged table, and they were perfectly machined to be exactly the right same height, and they're set down and the table's not moving, then the basic conservation laws don't tell me there are many solutions for the forces that the ground could be putting on my legs that would still result in the table not moving. Now, the reason that seems fine, I could just pick one, but it gets funny now because if you think about friction, What we think about with friction is our standard model says the amount of force that the table will push back, if I were to now try to push my table sideways, I guess I have a table here, is proportional to the normal force. So if I'm barely touching and I push, I'll slide, but if I'm pushing more and I push, I'll slide less. It's called Coulomb friction, is our standard model. Now if you don't know what the normal force is on the four legs, and you push the table, then you don't know what the friction forces are going to be. And so you can't actually tell, the laws just aren't explicit yet, about which way the table's going to go. It could veer off to the left, it could veer off to the right, it could go straight. So the rigid body assumption of contact leaves us with some paradoxes, which are annoying for writing simulators and for writing controllers. We still do that sometimes because soft contact is potentially harder numerically or whatever, and the best simulators do both or do some combination of the two. But anyways, because of these kinds of paradoxes, there's all kinds of paradoxes in contact, mostly due to these rigid body assumptions. It becomes very hard to write the same kind of control laws that we've been able to be successful with for fighter jets. We haven't been as successful writing those controllers for manipulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so you don't know what's going to happen at the point of contact, at the moment of contact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are situations absolutely where our laws don't tell us. So the standard approach, that's okay. I mean, instead of having a differential equation, you end up with a differential inclusion, it's called. It's a set-valued equation. It says that I'm in this configuration, I have these forces applied on me, and there's a set of things that could happen, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you can- And those aren't continuous any, I mean, what, so when you say like non-smooth, they're not only not smooth, but this is discontinuous?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The non-smooth comes in when I make or break a new contact first, or when I transition from stick to slip. So you typically have static friction, and then you'll start sliding, and that'll be a discontinuous change in velocity, for instance, especially if you come to rest. That's so fascinating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so what do you do? Sorry, I interrupted you. That's fine. What's the hope under so much uncertainty about what's going to happen? What are you supposed to do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, control has an answer for this. Robust control is one approach, but roughly, you can write controllers which try to still perform the right task despite all the things that could possibly happen. The world might want the table to go this way and this way, but if I write a controller that pushes a little bit more and pushes a little bit, I can certainly make the table go in the direction I want. it just puts a little bit more of a burden on the control system, right? And these discontinuities do change the control system because the way we write it down right now, Every different control configuration, including sticking or sliding or parts of my body that are in contact or not, looks like a different system. And I think of them, I reason about them separately or differently, and the combinatorics of that blow up, right? So I just don't have enough time to compute all the possible contact configurations of my humanoid. Interestingly, I mean, I'm a humanoid. I have lots of degrees of freedom, lots of joints. I've only been around for a handful of years. It's getting up there, but I haven't had time in my life to visit all of the states in my system, certainly all the contact configurations. So if step one is to consider every possible contact configuration that I'll ever be in, that's probably not a problem I need to solve, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just as a small tangent, what's a contact configuration? Just so we can enumerate, what are we talking about? How many are there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The simplest example maybe would be, imagine a robot with a flat foot. And we think about the phases of gait, where the heel strikes, and then the front toe strikes, and then you can heel up, toe off. Those are each different contact configurations. I only had two different contacts, but I ended up with four different contact configurations. Now, of course, my robot might actually have bumps on it or other things, so it could be much more subtle than that, right? But it's just even with one sort of box interacting with the ground already in the plane has that many, right? And if I was just even a 3D foot, then it probably my left toe might touch just before my right toe and things get subtle. Now, if I'm a dexterous hand and I go to talk about just grabbing a water bottle, if every, if I have to enumerate every possible order that my hand came into contact with the, with the bottle, then I'm dead in the water. I, my, my, any approach that we were able to get away with that in walking, because we mostly touched the ground within a small number of points, for instance, and we haven't been able to get dexterous hands that way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've mentioned that people think that contact is really hard, and that that's the reason that robotic manipulation problem is really hard. Is there any flaws in that thinking?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think simulating contact is one aspect. I know people often say that we don't, that one of the reasons that we have a limit in robotics is because we do not simulate contact accurately in our simulators. And I think that is, the extent to which that's true is partly because our simulators, we haven't got mature enough simulators. There are some things that are still hard, difficult, that we should change. But we actually, we know what the governing equations are. They have some foibles, like this indeterminacy, but we should be able to simulate them accurately. We have incredible open source community in robotics, but it actually just takes a professional engineering team a lot of work to write a very good simulator like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "My word is, I believe you've written, Drake?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a team of people. I certainly spent a lot of hours on it myself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is Drake and what does it take to create a simulation environment for the kind of difficult control problems we're talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Drake is the simulator that I've been working on. There are other good simulators out there. I don't like to think of Drake as just a simulator, because we write our controllers in Drake, we write our perception systems a little bit in Drake, but we write all of our low-level control and even planning and So it has optimization capabilities. Absolutely, yeah. I mean Drake is three things roughly. It's an optimization library, which is sits on it. It provides a layer of abstraction in C++ and Python for commercial solvers. You can write. linear programs, quadratic programs, you know, semi-definite programs, sums of squares programs, the ones we've used, mixed integer programs, and it will do the work to curate those and send them to whatever the right solver is, for instance, and it provides a level of abstraction. The second thing is, is a system modeling language. a bit like LabVIEW or Simulink, where you can make block diagrams out of complex systems. Or it's like ROS in that sense, where you might have lots of ROS nodes that are each doing some part of your system. But to contrast it with ROS, We try to write, if you write a Drake system, then you have to, it asks you to describe a little bit more about the system. If you have any state, for instance, in the system, any variables that are going to persist, you have to declare them. Parameters can be declared and the like. But the advantage of doing that is that you can, if you like, run things all on one process. But you can also do control design against it. You can do simple things like rewinding and playing back your simulations. For instance, you get some rewards for spending a little bit more upfront cost in describing each system. I was inspired to do that because I think the complexity of Atlas, for instance, is just so great. And I think although, I mean, Ross has been incredible, absolute huge fan of what it's done for the robotics community, but the ability to rapidly put different pieces together and have a functioning thing is very good. But I do think that it's hard to think clearly about a bag of disparate parts, Mr. Potato Head kind of software stack. If you can, you know, ask a little bit more out of each of those parts, then you can understand the way they work better. You can try to verify them and the like. You can do learning against them. And then one of those systems, the last thing, I said the first two things that Drake is, but the last thing is that there is a, a set of multi-body equations, rigid body equations, that is trying to provide a system that simulates physics. And that we also have renderers and other things but I think the physics component of Drake is is special in the sense that we have done excessive amount of engineering to make sure that we've written the equations correctly. Every possible tumbling satellite or spinning top or anything that we could possibly write as a test is tested. We are making some, I think, fundamental improvements on the way you simulate contact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it take to simulate contact? I mean, it just seems... I mean, there's something just beautiful the way you were like explaining contact and you were like tapping your fingers on the, on the table while you're, while you're doing it, just, um, easily, right. Easily. Just like, just not even like, it was like helping you think, I guess. Um, what I, um, so you have this like awesome demo of, um, loading or unloading a dishwasher, just picking up a plate. grasping it like for the first time. That just seems like so difficult. How do you simulate any of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it was really interesting that what happened was that we started getting more professional about our software development during the DARPA Robotics Challenge. I learned the value of software engineering and how to bridle complexity. I guess that's what I want to somehow... fight against and bring some of the clear thinking of controls into these complex systems we're building for robots. Shortly after the DARPA Robotics Challenge, Toyota opened a research institute, TRI, Toyota Research Institute. They put one of their, there's three locations, one of them is just down the street from MIT. And I helped ramp that up right as a part of my, the end of my sabbatical, I guess. So TRI has given me the TRI Robotics effort, has made this investment in simulation in Drake, and Michael Sherman leads a team there of just absolutely top-notch dynamics experts that are trying to write those simulators that can pick up the dishes. And there's also a team working on manipulation there that is taking problems like loading the dishwasher And we're using that to study these really hard corner cases kind of problems in manipulation. So for me, simulating the dishes, we could actually write a controller. If we just cared about picking up dishes in the sink once, we could write a controller without any simulation whatsoever. And we could call it done. But we want to understand what is the path you take to actually get to a robot that could perform that for any dish in anybody's kitchen with enough confidence that it could be a commercial product. Right? And it has deep learning perception in the loop. It has complex dynamics in the loop. It has controller. It has a planner. And how do you take all of that complexity and put it through this engineering discipline and verification and validation process to actually get enough confidence to deploy? I mean, the DARPA challenge made me realize that that's not something you throw over the fence and hope that somebody will harden it for you, that there are really fundamental challenges in closing that last gap." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They're doing the validation and the testing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it might even change the way we have to think about the way we write systems. What happens if you have the robot running lots of tests and it screws up, it breaks a dish, right? How do you capture that? I said you can't run the same simulation or the same experiment twice on a real robot. Do we have to be able to bring that one-off failure back into simulation in order to change our controllers, study it, make sure it won't happen again? Do we, is it enough to just try to add that to our distribution and understand that on average, we're going to cover that situation again? There's like really subtle questions at the corner cases that I think we don't yet have satisfying answers for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, how do you find the corner cases? That's one kind of, is there, do you think that's possible to create a systematized way of discovering corner cases efficiently? Yes. In whatever the problem is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I mean, I think we have to get better at that. I mean, control theory has for decades talked about active experiment design. What's that? So people call it curiosity these days. It's roughly this idea of trying to exploration or exploitation, but the active experiment design is more specific. You could try to understand the uncertainty in your system, design the experiment that will provide the maximum information to reduce that uncertainty. If there's a parameter you want to learn about, what is the optimal trajectory I could execute to learn about that parameter, for instance? Scaling that up to something that has a deep network in the loop and a planning in the loop is tough. We've done some work on With Matt O'Kelley and Amancina, we've worked on some falsification algorithms that are trying to do rare event simulation that try to just hammer on your simulator. And if your simulator is good enough, you can write good algorithms that try to spend most of their time in the corner cases. So you basically imagine you're building a an autonomous car and you want to put it in, I don't know, downtown New Delhi all the time, right? Accelerated testing. If you can write sampling strategies which figure out where your controller is performing badly in simulation and start generating lots of examples around that, you know, it's just the space of possible places where that can be, where things can go wrong is very big. So it's hard to write those algorithms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, rare event simulation is just like a really compelling notion. If it's possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We joked and we call it the black swan generator. It's a black swan, right? Because you don't just want the rare events, you want the ones that are highly impactful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's the most, those are the most sort of profound questions we ask of our world. Like, what's the worst that can happen? But what we're really asking isn't some kind of like computer science, worst case analysis. We're asking like, what are the millions of ways this can go wrong? And that's like our curiosity. We humans, I think are pretty bad at, we just like run into it. And I think there's a distributed sense because there's now like 7.5 billion of us, and so there's a lot of them, and then a lot of them write blog posts about the stupid thing they've done, so we learn in a distributed way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's some- I think that's gonna be important for robots too. Yeah. I mean, that's another massive theme at Toyota Research for robotics is this fleet learning concept. You know, the idea that I, as a human, I don't have enough time to visit all of my states, right? There's just a, it's very hard for one robot to experience all the things. But that's not actually the problem we have to solve, right? We're going to have fleets of robots that can have very similar appendages. And at some point, maybe collectively, they have enough data that their computational processes should be set up differently than ours, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a this vision of just I mean all these dishwasher unloading robots. I mean that robot dropping a plate and a human looking at the robot probably pissed off. Yeah. But that's a special moment to record. I think one thing in terms of fleet learning, and I've seen that because I've talked to a lot of folks just like Tesla users or Tesla drivers. They're another company that's using this kind of fleet learning idea. One hopeful thing I have about humans is they really enjoy when a system improves, learns. So they enjoy fleet learning. And the reason it's hopeful for me is they're willing to put up with something that's kind of dumb right now. And they're like, if it's improving, they almost enjoy being part of the teaching. It's almost like if you have kids, you're teaching them something. I think that's a beautiful thing, because that gives me hope that we can put dumb robots out there. I mean, the problem on the Tesla side with cars, cars can kill you. That makes the problem so much harder. Dishwasher unloading is a little safe. That's why home robotics is really exciting. And just to clarify, I mean, for people who might not know, I mean, TRI, Toyota Research Institute, So they're, I mean, they're pretty well known for like autonomous vehicle research, but they're also interested in home robotics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "portfolio. There's also a couple other projects, advanced materials discovery, using AI and machine learning to discover new materials for car batteries and the like, for instance. And that's been actually an incredibly successful team. There's new projects starting up too. So" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see a future of where robots are in our home? And robots that have actuators that look like arms in our home, or more like humanoid-type robots? Or are we going to do the same thing that you just mentioned, that the dishwasher is no longer a robot? We're going to just not even see them as robots? What's your vision of the home of the future? 10, 20 years from now, 50 years if you get crazy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think we already have Roombas cruising around. We have, you know, Alexas or Google Homes on our kitchen counter. It's only a matter of time till they spring arms and start doing something useful like that. So I do think it's coming. I think lots of people have lots of motivations for doing it. It's been super interesting actually learning about Toyota's vision for it, which is about helping people age in place. Because I think that's not necessarily the first entry, the most lucrative entry point, but it's the problem maybe that we really need to solve no matter what. And so I think I think there's a real opportunity. It's a delicate problem. How do you work with people, help people? keep them active, engaged, you know, but improve the quality of life and help them age in place, for instance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting because older folks are also, I mean, there's a contrast there because they're not always the folks who are the most comfortable with technology, for example. So there's a division that's interesting there that you can do so much good with a robot, for older folks, but there's a gap to fill of understanding. I mean, it's actually kind of beautiful. Robot is learning about the human and the human is kind of learning about this new robot thing. And it's also with, at least with, like when I talk to my parents about robots, there's a little bit of a blank slate there too. Like you can, I mean, they don't know anything about robotics. So it's completely wide open. My parents haven't seen Black Mirror. So it's a blank slate. Here's a cool thing. What can it do for me? So it's an exciting space." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a really important space. I do feel like, you know, a few years ago, drones were successful enough in academia. They kind of broke out and started an industry and autonomous cars have been happening. It does feel like manipulation in logistics, of course, first, but in the home shortly after seems like one of the next big things that's going to really pop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I don't think we talked about it, but what's soft robotics? So we talked about like rigid bodies. If we can just linger on this whole touch thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what's soft robotics? So I told you that I really dislike the fact that robots are afraid of touching the world all over their body. So there's a couple reasons for that. If you look carefully at all the places that robots actually do touch the world, they're almost always soft. They have some sort of pad on their fingers or a rubber sole on their foot. But if you look up and down the arm, we're just pure aluminum or something. So that makes it hard, actually. In fact, hitting the table with your, you know, your rigid arm, or nearly rigid arm, has some of the problems that we talked about in terms of simulation. I think it fundamentally changes the mechanics of contact when you're soft, right? You turn point contacts into patch contacts, which can have torsional friction. You can have distributed load. If I want to pick up an egg, If I pick it up with two points, then in order to put enough force to sustain the weight of the egg, I might have to put a lot of force to break the egg. If I envelop it with contact all around, then I can distribute my force across the shell of the egg and have a better chance of not breaking it. So soft robotics is for me a lot about changing the mechanics of contact. Does it make the problem a lot harder? Um, uh, quite the opposite. Uh, it, it changes the computational problem. I think because of the, I think our world and our mathematics has biased us towards rigid, but it really should make things better in some ways. Right. Um, it's, it's a, I think the, the future is unwritten there. Um," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the other thing it can do- I think ultimately, sorry to interrupt, but I think ultimately it will make things simpler if we embrace the softness of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It makes things smoother, right? So the result of small actions is less discontinuous, but it also means potentially less instantaneously bad, for instance. I won't necessarily contact something and send it flying off. The other aspect of it that just happens to dovetail really well is that soft robotics tends to be a place where we can embed a lot of sensors too. So if you change your hardware and make it more soft, then you can potentially have a tactile sensor, which is measuring the deformation. So there's a team at TRI that's working on soft hands, and you get so much more information. You can put a camera behind the skin, roughly, and get fantastic tactile information, which is It's super important, like in manipulation, one of the things that really is frustrating is if you work super hard on your perception system for your head-mounted cameras, and then you've identified an object, you reach down to touch it, and the last thing that happens right before the most important time, you stick your hand and you're occluding your head-mounted sensors, right? So in all the part that really matters, all of your off-board sensors are occluded. And really, if you don't have tactile information, then you're blind in an important way. So it happens that soft robotics and tactile sensing tend to go hand in hand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we've kind of talked about it, but you taught a course on under-actuated robotics. I believe that was the name of it, actually. Can you talk about it in that context? What is under-actuated robotics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so under-actuated robotics is my graduate course. It's online, mostly now, in the sense that the lectures— Several versions of it, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's really great. I recommend it highly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "look on YouTube for the 2020 versions until March, and then you have to go back to 2019, thanks to COVID. No, I've poured my heart into that class. And lecture one is basically explaining what the word underactuated means. So people are very kind to show up and then maybe have to learn what the title of the course means over the course of the first lecture." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That first lecture is really good. You should watch it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a strange name, but I thought it captured the essence of what control was good at doing and what control was bad at doing. So what do I mean by underactuated? So a mechanical system has many degrees of freedom, for instance. I think of a joint as a degree of freedom. And it has some number of actuators, motors. So if you have a robot that's bolted to the table that has five degrees of freedom and five motors, then you have a fully actuated robot. If you have, if you take away one of those motors, then you have an under-actuated robot. Now, why on earth? I have a good friend who likes to tease me. He said, Russ, if you had more research funding, would you work on fully actuated robots? And the answer is no. The world gives us under-actuated robots, whether we like it or not. I'm a human. I'm an under-actuated robot, even though I have more muscles than my big degrees of freedom, because I have, in some places, multiple muscles attached to the same joint. But still, there's a really important degree of freedom that I have, which is the location of my center of mass in space, for instance. I can jump into the air and there's no motor that connects my center of mass to the ground in that case. So I have to think about the implications of not having control over everything. The passive dynamic walkers are the extreme view of that, where you've taken away all the motors and you have to let physics do the work. but it shows up in all of the walking robots where you have to use some of the actuators to push and pull even the degrees of freedom that you don't have an actuator on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's referring to walking if you're like falling forward. Like is there a way to walk that's fully actuated?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's a subtle point. When you're in contact and you have your feet on the ground, there are still limits to what you can do, right? Unless I have suction cups on my feet, I cannot accelerate my center of mass towards the ground faster than gravity because I can't get a force pushing me down, right? But I can still do most of the things that I want to. So you can get away with basically thinking of the system as fully actuated unless you suddenly needed to accelerate down super fast. But as soon as I take a step, I get into more nuanced territory. And to get to really dynamic robots or airplanes or other things, I think you have to embrace the underactuated dynamics. Manipulation, people think, is manipulation underactuated? Even if my arm is fully actuated, I have a motor, if my goal is to control the position and orientation of this cup, then I don't have an actuator for that directly. So I have to use my actuators over here to control this thing. Now it gets even worse. Like, what if I have to button my shirt? Okay. What are the degrees of freedom of my shirt? Right? I suddenly, that's a hard question to think about. It kind of makes me queasy as thinking about my state space control ideas. But actually those are the problems that make me so excited about manipulation right now, is that it breaks some of the, it breaks a lot of the foundational control stuff that I've been thinking about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there, what are some interesting insights you could say about trying to solve an under-actuated, a control in an under-actuated system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think the philosophy there is let physics do more of the work. The technical approach has been optimization. So you typically formulate your decision-making for control as an optimization problem, and you use the language of optimal control, and sometimes often numerical optimal control, in order to make those decisions and balance these complicated equations. And in order to control, you don't have to use optimal control. to do underactuated systems, but that has been the technical approach that has borne the most fruit in our, at least in our line of work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's some, so in underactuated systems, when you say let physics do some of the work, so there's a kind of feedback loop that observes the state that the physics brought you to. So like you've, there's a perception there, there's a feedback somehow. Do you do, Do you ever loop in complicated perception systems into this whole picture?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Right around the time of the DARPA challenge? We had a complicated perception system in the DARPA Challenge. We also started to embrace perception for our flying vehicles at the time. We had a really good project on trying to make airplanes fly at high speeds through forests. Sertac Karaman was on that project, and it was a really fun team to work on. He's carried it much farther forward since then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's using cameras for perception?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that was using cameras. At the time, we felt like LiDAR was too heavy and too power heavy to be carried on a light UAV, and we were using cameras. And that was a big part of it was just how do you do even stereo matching at a fast enough rate with a small camera, a small onboard compute. Since then we have now, so the deep learning revolution unquestionably changed what we can do with perception for robotics and control. So in manipulation, we can use perception in, I think, a much deeper way. And we get into not only, I think the first use of it, naturally, would be to ask your deep learning system to look at the cameras and produce the state, which is like the pose of my thing, for instance. But I think we've quickly found out that that's not always the right thing to do. Why is that? Because what's the state of my shirt? Imagine, I've- It's very noisy, you mean? If the first step of me trying to button my shirt is estimate the full state of my shirt, including like what's happening in the back, you know, whatever, whatever, that's just not the right specification. There's aspects of the state that are very important to the task. There are many that are unobservable and not important to the task. So you really need, it begs new questions about state representation. Another example that we've been playing with in lab has been just the idea of chopping onions, okay? Or carrots, it turns out to be better. So the onions stink up the lab. And they're hard to see in a camera. Details matter, yeah. Details matter, you know? If I'm moving around a particular object, right, then I think about, oh, it's got a position or an orientation in space. That's the description I want. Now, when I'm chopping an onion, okay, like the first chop comes down. I have now a hundred pieces of onion. Does my control system really need to understand the position and orientation and even the shape of the hundred pieces of onion in order to make a decision? Probably not, you know, and if I keep going, I'm just getting, more and more is my state space getting bigger as I cut. It's not right. So somehow there's a, I think there's a richer idea of state. It's not the state that is given to us by Lagrangian mechanics. There is a proper Lagrangian state of the system, but the relevant state for this, is some latent state is what we call it in machine learning, but there's some different state representation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Some compressed representation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's what I worry about saying compressed because it doesn't, I don't mind that it's low dimensional or not, but it has to be something that's easier to think about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By us humans. or my algorithms. Or the algorithms being like control, optimal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So for instance, if the contact mechanics of all of those onion pieces and all the permutations of possible touches between those onion pieces, you know, you can give me a high dimensional state representation, I'm okay if it's linear. But if I have to think about all the possible shattering combinatorics of that, then my robot's gonna sit there thinking and the soup's gonna get cold or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So since you taught the course, it kind of entered my mind, the idea of underactuated as really compelling to see the world in this kind of way. Do you ever, if we talk about onions or you talk about the world with people in it in general, do you see the world as basically an underactuated system? Do you often look at the world in this way? Or is this overreach?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Underactuated is a way of life, man. Exactly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I guess that's what I'm asking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do think it's everywhere. I think in some places, we already have natural tools to deal with it. It rears its head. I mean, in linear systems, it's not a problem. Like an underactuated linear system is really not sufficiently distinct from a fully actuated linear system. It's a subtle point about when that becomes a bottleneck in what we know how to do with control. It happens to be a bottleneck. Although we've gotten incredibly good solutions now, but for a long time I felt that that was the key bottleneck in Legged Robots. And roughly now, the underactuated course is me trying to tell people everything I can about how to make Atlas do a backflip, right? I have a second course now that I teach in the other semesters, which is on manipulation. And that's where we get into now more of the... that's a newer class. I'm hoping to put it online this fall completely. And that's going to have much more aspects about these perception problems and the state representation questions and then how do you do control. And the thing that's a little bit sad is that, for me at least, is there's a lot of manipulation tasks that people want to do and should want to do, they could start a company with it and be very successful, that don't actually require you to think that much about dynamics at all, even, but certainly underactuated dynamics. Once I have, if I reach out and grab something, if I can sort of assume it's rigidly attached to my hand, then I can do a lot of interesting, meaningful things with it. Without really ever thinking about the dynamics of that object. So we've built systems that kind of reduce the need for that. Enveloping grasps and the like. But I think the really good problems in manipulation... Manipulation, by the way, is more than just pick and place. That's like a lot of people think of that, just grasping. I don't mean that. I mean buttoning my shirt. I mean tying shoelaces. How do you program a robot to tie shoelaces? And not just one shoe, but every shoe, right? That's a really good problem. It's tempting to write down like the infinite dimensional state of the laces. That's probably not needed to write a good controller. I know we could hand design a controller that would do it, but I don't want that. I want to understand the principles that would allow me to solve another problem that's kind of like that. But I think if we can stay pure in our approach, then the challenge of tying anybody's shoes is a great challenge. That's a great challenge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, and the soft touch comes into play there. That's really interesting. Let me ask another ridiculous question on this topic. How important is touch? We haven't talked much about humans, but I have this argument with my dad where, like, I think you can fall in love with a robot based on language alone. And he believes that touch is essential, touch and smell, he says. But so. In terms of robots, you know, connecting with humans and we can go philosophical in terms of like a deep, meaningful connection, like love, but even just like collaborating in an interesting way, how important is touch like from an engineering perspective and a philosophical one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's super important, even just in a practical sense, if we forget about the emotional part of it, but for robots to interact safely while they're doing meaningful mechanical work in the close contact with or vicinity of people that need help. I think we have to have them, we have to build them differently. They have to be afraid, not afraid of touching the world. So I think Baymax is just awesome. That's just like the movie of Big Hero 6 and the concept of Baymax, that's just awesome. I think we should, and we have some folks at Toyota that are trying to, Toyota Research that are trying to build Baymax roughly. And I think it's just a fantastically good project. I think it will change the way people physically interact. The same way, I mean, you gave a couple examples earlier, but if the robot that was walking around my home looked more like a teddy bear and a little less like the Terminator, that could change completely the way people perceive it and interact with it. And maybe they'll even want to teach it, like you said. Right? You could not quite gamify it, but somehow instead of people judging it and looking at it as if it's not doing as well as a human, they're going to try to help out the cute teddy bear. Right? Who knows? But I, I think we're building robots wrong and being more soft and more contact is important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right? Yeah, like all the magical moments I can remember with robots. Well, first of all, just visiting your lab and seeing Atlas, but also Spot Mini. When I first saw Spot Mini in person and hung out with him, her, it, I don't have trouble gendering robots. I feel robotics people really always say it. I kind of like the idea that it's a her or him. There's a magical moment, but there's no touching. I guess the question I have, have you ever been, like, have you had a human robot experience where like, a robot touched you? And like, it was like, wait, like, was there a moment that you've forgotten that a robot is a robot? And like, the anthropomorphization stepped in? And for a second, you forgot that it's not human?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think when you're in on the details, then we, of course, anthropomorphized our work with Atlas, but in, you know, in verbal communication and the like, I think we were pretty aware of it as a machine that needed to be respected. I actually, I worry more about the smaller robots that could still, you know, move quickly if programmed wrong, and we have to be careful actually about safety and the like right now. And if we build our robots correctly, I think then a lot of those concerns could go away. And we're seeing that trend. We're seeing the lower cost, lighter weight arms now that could be fundamentally safe. I mean, I do think touch is so fundamental. Ted Adelson is great. He's a perceptual scientist at MIT. And he studied vision most of his life. And he said, when I had kids, I expected to be fascinated by their perceptual development. But what really, what he noticed was felt more impressive, more dominant was the way that they would touch everything and lick everything and pick things up, stick it on their tongue and whatever. And he said, watching his daughter convinced him that actually he needed to study tactile sensing more. So there's something very important I think it's a little bit also of the passive versus active part of the world, right? You can passively perceive the world, but it's fundamentally different if you can do an experiment, right? And if you can change the world. And you can learn a lot more than a passive observer. You can in dialogue, that was your initial example, you could have an active experiment exchange. But I think if you're just a camera watching YouTube, I think that's a very different problem than if you're a robot that can apply force and touch. I think it's important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think it's just an exciting area of research. I think you're probably right that this hasn't been under-researched. To me, as a person who's captivated by the idea of human-robot interaction, it feels like such a rich opportunity to explore touch. Not even from a safety perspective, but like you said, the emotional too. I mean, safety comes first. But the next step is like, you know, like a real human connection. Even in the industrial setting, it just feels like it's nice for the robot. I don't know, you might disagree with this, but, because I think it's important to see robots as tools often, but I don't know. I think they're just always going to be more effective once you humanize them. It's convenient now to think of them as tools because we want to focus on the safety, but I think ultimately to create a good experience for the worker, for the person, there has to be a human element. I don't know, for me. It feels like an industrial robotic arm would be better if it has a human element. I think Rethink Robotics had that idea with Well, the Baxter and having eyes and so on. I don't know. I'm a big believer in that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not my area, but I am also a big believer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have an emotional connection to Atlas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, do you miss him? Yes, I don't know if I more so than if I had a different science project that I worked on super hard, right? But yeah, I mean, the robot, we basically had to do heart surgery on the robot in the final competition because we melted the core. And And yeah, there was something about watching that robot hanging there. We know we had to compete with it in an hour and it was getting its guts ripped out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those are all historic moments. I think if you look back like 100 years from now, yeah, I think those are important moments in robotics. I mean, these are the early days. You look at like the early days of a lot of scientific disciplines. They look ridiculous. There's full of failure. It feels like robotics will be important in the coming 100 years. And these are the early days. So I think a lot of people look at a brilliant person such as yourself and are curious about the intellectual journey they've took. Is there maybe three books, technical, fiction, philosophical, that had a big impact on your life that you would recommend perhaps others reading?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I actually didn't read that much as a kid, but I read fairly voraciously now. There are some recent books that if you're interested in this kind of topic, like AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee is just a fantastic read. You must read that. Yuval Harari is just, I think that can open your mind. Sapiens. Sapiens is the first one. Homo Deus is the second. Yeah. We mentioned The Black Swan by Taleb. I think that's a good sort of mind opener. I actually, um, so, so there's maybe a more controversial recommendation I could give. Um, great. Well, I don't know. In some sense, it's, it's so classical. It might surprise you, but I actually recently read Mortimer Adler's, uh, how to read a book. Not so long ago. It was a while ago, but, um, some people hate that book. I loved it. I think, We're in this time right now where, boy, we're just inundated with research papers that you could read on archive with limited peer review and just this wealth of information. I don't know, I think the passion of what you can get out of a book, a really good book or a really good paper, if you find it, the attitude, the realization that you're only gonna find a few that really are worth all your time. But then once you find them, you should just dig in and understand it very deeply and it's worth, you know, marking it up and, you know, having the hard copy, writing in the side notes, side margins. I think that was really, I read it at the right time where I was just feeling just overwhelmed with really low quality stuff, I guess. And similarly, I'm giving more than three now. I'm sorry if I've exceeded my quota." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But on that topic, just real quick is, so basically finding a few companions to keep for the rest of your life in terms of papers and books and so on. And those are the ones, like not doing, What is it, FOMO, fear, missing out, constantly trying to update yourself, but really deeply making a life journey of studying a particular paper, essentially, set of papers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think when you really find something, which a book that resonates with you might not be the same book that resonates with me. But when you really find one that resonates with you, I think the dialogue that happens, and that's what I love that Adler was saying, you know, I think Socrates and Plato say the written word is never going to capture the beauty of dialogue, right? But Adler says, no, no. A really good book. is a dialogue between you and the author, and it crosses time and space. And I don't know, I think it's a very romantic. There's a bunch of like specific advice which you can just gloss over. But the romantic view of how to read and really appreciate it is so good. And similarly, teaching. I thought a lot about teaching and and so Isaac Asimov, great science fiction writer. It's also actually been a lot of his career writing nonfiction, right? His memoir is fantastic. He was passionate about explaining things, right? He wrote all kinds of books on all kinds of topics in science. He was known as the great explainer. And some, you know, I do really resonate with his style and just his way of talking about, you know, by communicating and explaining to something is a really the way that you learn something. I think I think about problems very differently because of the way I've been given the opportunity to teach them at MIT. We have questions asked, you know, the fear of the lecture, the experience of the lecture and the questions I get and the interactions just forces me to be rock solid on these ideas in a way that if I didn't have that, I don't know I would be in a different intellectual space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Also, video, does that scare you that your lectures are online and people like me in sweatpants can sit sipping coffee and watch you give lectures?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's great. I do think that something's changed right now, which is, you know, right now we're giving lectures over Zoom. I mean, giving seminars over Zoom and everything. I'm trying to figure out, I think it's a new medium. Do you think it's possibilities?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I've been quite cynical about human to human connection over that medium, but I think that's because it hasn't been explored fully. And teaching is a different thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Every lecture is a, sorry, every seminar even, I think every talk I give is an opportunity to give that differently. I can deliver content directly into your browser. You have a WebGL engine right there. I can throw 3D content into your browser while you're listening to me. And I can assume that you have a, you know, at least a powerful enough laptop or something to watch Zoom while I'm doing that, while I'm giving a lecture. That's a new communication tool that I didn't have last year. And I think robotics can potentially benefit a lot from teaching that way. We'll see. It's going to be an experiment this fall." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm thinking a lot about it. Yeah. And also like, the length of lectures is the length of like, there's something so like, I guarantee you, you know, it's like 80% of people who started listening to our conversation are still listening to now, which is crazy to me. But so there's a there's a patience and interest in long form content. But at the same time, there's a magic to forcing yourself to condense an idea to as short as possible. Shortest possible like clip it can be a part of a longer thing, but like just a really beautifully condensed an idea There's a lot of opportunity there. That's easier to do a remote with I Don't know with editing to editing is an interesting thing like what I You know, when most professors don't get, when they give a lecture, you don't get to go back and edit out parts, like crisp it up a little bit. That's also, it can do magic. Like if you remove like five to 10 minutes from an hour lecture, it can actually, it can make something special of a lecture. I've seen that in myself and in others too, because I edit other people's lectures to extract clips. It's like there's certain tangents that are not interesting. They're mumbling, they're not clarifying, they're not helpful at all. And once you remove them, it's just... I don't know. Editing can be magic. It takes a lot of time. It depends what is teaching, you have to ask... Yeah, because I find the editing process is also beneficial for teaching, but also for your own learning. I don't know, have you watched yourself?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you watched those videos? I mean, not all of them. It could be painful to see how to improve." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So do you find that, I know you segment your podcast, do you think that helps people with the attention span aspect of it? Or is it- Segment like sections like- Yeah, we're talking about this topic, whatever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nope, nope, that just helps me. It's actually bad. So, and you've been incredible. So I'm learning, like I'm afraid of conversation. This is even today, I'm terrified of talking to you. I mean, it's something I'm trying to remove from myself. There's a guy, I mean, I learned from a lot of people, but really there's been a few people who's been inspirational to me in terms of conversation. Whatever people think of him, Joe Rogan has been inspirational to me because comedians have been too. being able to just have fun and enjoy themselves and lose themselves in conversation. That requires you to be a great storyteller, to be able to pull a lot of different pieces of information together, but mostly just to enjoy yourself in conversations. And I'm trying to learn that. These notes are, you see me looking down, that's like a safety blanket that I'm trying to let go of. more and more. Cool. So that's that people love just regular conversation. That's what they the structure is like, whatever. I would say. I would say maybe like 10 to like, so there's a bunch of, you know, there's probably a couple thousand PhD students listening to this right now. Right. And they might know what we're talking about. But there is somebody, I guarantee you right now, in Russia, some kid who's just like, who's just smoked some weed, is sitting back and just enjoying the hell out of this conversation. Not really understanding. He kind of watched some Boston Dynamics videos. He's just enjoying it. And I salute you, sir. No, but just like there's so much variety of people that just have curiosity about engineering, about sciences, about mathematics. And also like I should, I mean, enjoying it is one thing, but I also often notice it inspires people to, there's a lot of people who are like in their undergraduate studies trying to figure out what, trying to figure out what to pursue. And these conversations can really spark the direction of their life. And in terms of robotics, I hope it does, because I'm excited about the possibilities of what robotics brings. On that topic, Do you have advice, like what advice would you give to a young person about life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A young person about life or a young person about life in robotics?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It could be in robotics, it could be in life in general. It could be career, it could be relationship advice, it could be running advice, just like That's one of the things I see when I talk to 20 year olds. They're like, how do I do this thing? What do I do? If they come up to you, what would you tell them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's an interesting time to be a kid these days. everything points to this being sort of a winner-take-all economy and the like. I think the people that will really excel, in my opinion, are going to be the ones that can think deeply about problems. You have to be able to ask questions agilely and use the internet for everything it's good for and stuff like this, and I think a lot of people will develop those skills. I think The leaders, thought leaders, robotics leaders, whatever, are going to be the ones that can do more, and they can think very deeply and critically. And that's a harder thing to learn. I think one path to learning that is through mathematics, through engineering. I would encourage people to start math early. I mean, I didn't really start. I mean, I was always in the better math classes that I could take, but I wasn't pursuing super advanced mathematics or anything like that until I got to MIT. I think MIT lit me up. really started the life that I'm living now. But yeah, I really want kids to dig deep, really understand things, building things too. I mean, pull things apart, put them back together. Like that's just such a good way to really understand things and expect it to be a long journey, right? You don't have to know everything. You're never going to know everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to think deeply and stick with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Enjoy the ride, but just make sure you're not, um, yeah, just, just make sure you're, you're, you're stopping to think about why things work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's true. It's a, it's easy to lose yourself in the, in the, in the distractions of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're overwhelmed with content right now, but you have to stop and pick some of it and really understand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, on the book point, I've read Animal Farm by George Orwell a ridiculous number of times. So for me, like that book, I don't know if it's a good book in general, but for me, it connects deeply somehow. It somehow connects So I was born in the Soviet Union, so it connects to me to the entirety of the history of the Soviet Union and to World War Two and to the love and hatred and suffering that went on there and the the corrupting nature of power and greed. And just somehow I just that that that book has taught me more about life than like anything else, even though it's just like a silly, like childlike book about Pigs. I don't know why, it just connects and inspires. There's a few technical books too, and algorithms that you return to often. I'm with you. Yeah, there's, I don't, and I've been losing that because of the internet. I've been like going on, I've been going on archive and blog posts and GitHub and, and the new thing and I've, you lose your ability to really master an idea. Right. Wow. Exactly right. What's a fond memory from childhood? When baby Russ Tedrick." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I guess I just said that, um, At least my current life began when I got to MIT." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I have to go farther than that. Was there a life before MIT?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, absolutely. But let me actually tell you what happened when I first got to MIT, because that, I think, might be relevant here. But I, you know, I had taken a computer engineering degree at Michigan. I enjoyed it immensely, learned a bunch of stuff. I liked computers, I liked programming. But when I did get to MIT and started working with Sebastian Sung, theoretical physicist, computational neuroscientist. The culture here was just different. It demanded more of me, certainly mathematically and in the critical thinking. And I remember the day that I borrowed one of the books from my advisor's office and walked down to the Charles River and was like, I'm getting my butt kicked, you know. And I think that's going to happen to everybody who's doing this kind of stuff, right? I think, uh, I expected you to ask me the meaning of life. You know, I think that the, uh, um, somehow I think that's, that's gotta be part of it. This doing hard things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Did you consider quitting at any point? Did you consider this isn't for me?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no warmup, that's it? No warmup. No jumping jacks? Let's break that down into two questions. I'm a human being, and like any human being, I'm biologically programmed to be terrified of death. Every physical element in our bodies is designed to keep us away from death. I'm no different from anyone else in that regard. If you throw me from the top of the Empire State Building, I'm going to scream all the way down to the concrete. If you wave a loaded firearm in my face, I'm going to flinch away in horror the same way anyone else would. So in that first sense of, are you afraid of death? my body is terrified of injury leading to death the same way any other human being would." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when death is imminent, there's a terror that will cause the death drop." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I go through the same adrenaline dumps that you would go through. But on the other hand, you're also asking a much deeper question, which is presumably, are you afraid of non-existence? What comes after your physical death? And that's the more interesting question. No, I should start right by saying from the start, I'm a materialist. I don't believe that we have an immortal soul. I don't believe there's a life after our physical death. In this sense, from someone who starts from that point of view, you have to understand that everyone has two deaths. We always talk about our death as though there was only one, but we all have two deaths. There was a time before you were born, when you were dead, You weren't afraid of that period of non-existence. You don't even think about it. So why would you be afraid of your second period of non-existence? You came from non-existence, you're gonna go back into it. You weren't afraid of the first, why are you somehow afraid of the second? So it doesn't really make sense to me as to why people would be afraid of non-existence. You dealt with it fine the first time, deal with it the second time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But your mind didn't exist for the first death. And it won't exist after you die either. But it does exist now enough to comprehend that there's this thing that you know nothing about that's coming which is non-existent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually you do know about it because you know what it was like before you were born. It was just nothing. Every time you go to sleep at night you get a sneak preview of death. It's just This kind of nothing happens. You wake up in the morning, you're alive again." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's not about the sleeping. It's about the falling asleep. And every night when you fall asleep, you assume you're going to wake up. Here you know you're not waking up. and the knowledge of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But there's a whole step from that to the idea of fearing it. I'm fully aware that there's gonna be a time I don't wake up. But are you gonna be afraid of it? Is there some mortal terror you have of this? No, you didn't have it before. You don't have it when you sleep. Going from the fact that you know you won't wake up to terror is two different things. That's an extra step. And at that point, you're making a choice at that point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about what some people in this context, we might call like the third death, which is when everybody forgets the entirety of consciousness in the universe, forgets that you've ever existed, that John Donahuer ever existed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's almost like a cosmic death. It's like everything goes. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not just, I would say it's like knowledge. The history books forget about who you are because the history books... This is inevitable, by the way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're all very, very small players in a very big game and inevitably we're all going to go at some point. Yeah, but doesn't... It's disappointing, of course. But it's... But it's not even arrogance to say I'm disappointed in the idea that I will disappear. There's far greater things than me that will disappear. It's crushing to think that there's going to come a time when no one will ever hear Beethoven's symphonies again. that the mysteries of the pharaohs will be lost and no one will even comprehend that they once existed. Humanity has come up with so many amazing things over its existence and to think that one day this is just all happening on a tiny speck in a distant corner of a very small galaxy and among millions of galaxies that This is all for nothing. Okay, I can understand. There's a kind of dread that comes with this. But there's also a sense in which the moment you're born and the moment you can think about these things, you know this is your inevitable fate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it so inevitable? So if we look at, we're in Austin, and there's a guy named Elon Musk, and he's hoping, in fact, that is the drive behind many of his passions, is the human beings becoming multi-planetary species and expanding out, exploring and colonizing the solar system, the galaxy, and maybe the rest of the universe. Is that something that fills you with excitement?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As a project, it's very exciting. I mean, we all grew up with science fiction, the idea of exploration, the same way human beings in earlier centuries were thrilled at the idea of discovering a new world, you know, America or some other part of the world that they sail to and come back. But now instead of sailing oceans, you're sailing solar systems and ultimately even further. So of course that's exciting, but as far as relieving us from non-existence, it's just playing a delaying game, because ultimately even the universe itself, if the laws of thermodynamics are correct, will ultimately die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Of course, we might not understand most of the physics and how the universe functions. You said laws of thermodynamics, but maybe that's just a tiny little fraction of what the universe actually is. Maybe there's multiple dimensions, maybe there's multiple universes, maybe the entirety of this experience You know, there's guys like Donald Hoffman that think that all of this is just an illusion, that we don't, like, human cognition and perception constructs a whole. It's like a video game that we construct that's very distant from the actual reality. And maybe one day we'll understand that reality. Maybe it'll be like the Matrix kind of thing. So there's a lot of different possibilities here. And there's also philosopher, named Ernest Becker. I don't know if you know who that is. He wrote Denial of Death and his idea, he disagrees with you but he's dead now, is that he thinks that the terror of death, the terror of the knowledge that we're going to die, is within all of us and is in fact the driver behind most of the creativity that we do. Exploring out into the universe, but also you becoming one of the great scholars of the martial arts, the philosophers of fighting, is because you're actually terrified of death. And you want to somehow permeate like your knowledge, your ideas, your essence to permeate human civilization so that even when your body dies, you live on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would agree with him insofar as death is the single greatest motivator for action. But going beyond that and saying that it's somehow terrifying, that's an extra step on his part. And not everyone's gonna follow him on that step. I do believe that death is the single most important element in life that gives value to our days. If you think, for example, of a situation where a god came to you and gave you immortality, life would be very, very different for you. You're a talented research scientist. You work to a schedule. Why? Because ultimately, you know, your life is finite, and actually very finite. And could be even more so if fate plays its hand and you die an early death or what have you. We never know what's gonna happen tomorrow. As such, we get work done as soon as we can. The moment you gain immortality, you can always put every project off. You can always say, I don't need to do this today because I can do it four centuries from now. And as you extend artificially a human life, the motivation to get things done here and now and work industriously and excel fades away because you can always come back to the idea that you can do this in the future. And so what gives value to our days is ultimately death. And value, it's not the only reason behind value, but a huge part of what we consider value is scarcity. And death gives us scarcity of days. And it's probably the single greatest motivator for almost every action we partake in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's kind of tragic and beautiful that what makes things amazing is that they end." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it would actually be a terrible burden to be immortal. Life would be in many ways very hollow and meaningless, I think. People talk about death taking away the meaning of life, but I think immortality would have a very similar effect in a different direction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So given this short life, we can think about jiu-jitsu, we can think about any kind of pursuit. What do you think makes a great life? Is it the highest peak of achievement? You know, you think about like an Olympic gold medal, the highest level of performance, or is it the longevity of performance of doing many amazing things and doing it for a long time? I think the latter is kind of what we talk about in at least American society. You know, we want people to be healthy, balanced, perform well for a long time. And then there's maybe like the gladiator ethic, which is the highest peak is what defines." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You asked an initial question, which what makes a great life? but then pointed towards two options, one of longevity versus degree of difficulty. There's gotta be a lot more than that, surely. I mean, think about, first of all, we have to understand from the start that there's never gonna be an agreed upon set of criteria for this is a great life from all perspective. If you look from the perspective of, say, Machiavelli, then Stalin lived a great life. He was highly successful at what he did. He started from nothing. So the degree of difficulty in what he did was extraordinarily high. He had massive impact upon world history. He oversaw the defeat of almost all of his major enemies. He lived to old age and died of natural causes. So from Makia Valley's point of view, he had a great life. If you ask a Ukrainian farmer in the 1930s whether he lived a great life, you get a very different answer. So everything's going to come from what perspective you begin with. You're going to look out at the world with a given point of view and you're going to make your judgments. Was this a great life or was this a terrible life? Going back to your point, you were actually, I think, focusing the question on more in terms of great single performances versus longevity performances. Presumably this isn't really a question about what makes a great life then, because there's so much more than that to a great life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know, I'm gonna push back on that. So I think their parallels are very much closer than you're making them seem. I think, let's compare Stalin. Stalin is an example of somebody who held power, considered by many to be one of the most powerful men ever. he held power for 30 years. So that's what I'm referring to, longevity. And then there's a few people, I wish my knowledge of history was better, but people who fought a few great battles and they did not maintain power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's contrast, say for example, Alexander the Great, who died at 33 from probably unnatural causes, had around four to five truly defining battles in his life, which responsible for the lion's share of his achievements and burned very bright, but didn't burn long. Stalin, on the other hand, started from nothing and quietly methodically worked his way through the revolutionary phase and gained increasing amounts of power. And as he said, went all the way to the end of his career. Yeah, there's definitely something to be said for longevity. But as to which one is greater than the other, you can't give a definition or a set of criteria which will definitively say this is better than that. Ultimately, we look at Alexander as great, but in a different way, and we look at Stalin. I don't think many people would say Stalin was a great person, but from the Machiavellian point of view, you would say he was great also." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But when you think about beautiful creations done by human beings in the space of, say, martial arts, in the space of sport, What inspires you? The peak of performance?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I see where you're coming from, Lex. It's a great question. For me, it always comes down to degree of difficulty. But things are difficult in different ways, okay? A single, flawless performance in youth is still that wins a gold medal. Let's say, for example, Nadia Comaneci won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics, the first person ever to get a perfect score. If she had disappeared after that, we would still remember that as an incredible moment. And the degree of difficulty to to get a perfect score in Olympic gymnastics is just off the charts. And contrast that with someone who went to four Olympics and got four silver medals. I mean, they're both incredible achievements. They're just different. The attributes that lead to longevity typically tend to conflict with the attributes that bring a powerful single performance. One is all about focus on a particular event. The other is on spreading your resources over time. Both present tremendous difficulties. There's no need to say one is better than the other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's also just, for me personally, the stories of somebody who truly struggled are the most powerful. I know a bunch of people don't necessarily agree, because you said perfection. Perfection is kind of the antithesis of struggle. But I look at somebody, okay, in my own life, somebody I, I'm a fan, I'm a fan of everybody, I'm a huge fan of yours, I'm trying not to be nervous here. Somebody I'm a fan of in the judo world is Travis Stevens. He's a remarkable fellow, by the way. A remarkable human being. Insane in the best kinds of ways. I think I started judo. I really started martial arts. I wrestled, if you consider those martial arts. That's been in my blood. I'm Russian, so. But beyond that, the whole pajama thing we wear, the gi, I started by watching Travis in 2008 Olympics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Was that accidental? Did you know Travis prior to watching?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no, no. I just tuned in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now, that's an unusual choice. It was just random. You just tuned in and you saw Travis Stevens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I tuned into the Olympics and I was wondering what judo is. And then I started watching We're all proud of our countries and so on. So I started watching. He was, I think, the only American in the Olympics for judo. Maybe the scale of Harrison was 2012. Rhonda was there, too. So I watched Rhonda and Travis, but obviously sort of I was focused on somebody who also weighed the same as I did. So there was a kind of, I think 81 kilograms. So there's a connection, but also there's an intensity to him. Like he would get like angry at his own failures and he would just refuse to quit. It's that kind of Dan Gable mentality. I just, that was inspiring to me that he's the underdog and the way people talk about him, the commentators, that it was an unlikely person to do well, right? And I, the F you attitude behind that, saying, no, I'm going to still win gold. Obviously, he didn't do well in 2008, but that was that that was somehow inspiring. And I just remember he pulled me in. But then I started to see this sport, I guess you can call it. of effortlessly dominating your opponent in like throwing, because to me wrestling was like a grind. You kind of control, you slowly just break your opponent. The idea that you could with like a foot sweep was fascinating to me, that just because of timing, you can take these like monsters, giant people, like incredible athletes, and just smash them with, it just doesn't, there was no struggle to it. It was always like a look of surprise. Judo, dominance in Judo, has a look, like the other person is like, what just happened? This is very different from wrestling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's built into the rule structure too, the whole idea of an Ippon, of a match being over in an instant. And that creates a thrilling spectator sport, because you can, as you say, with Ashiwaza, the foot sweeps, you can take someone out who's heavily favored. And if you're not, judo is the most unforgiving of all the grappling sports. If you have a lapse of concentration for half a second, it's done. It's over. If those guys get a grip on each other, Any one of them can throw the other. The idea, you know, when you see someone like Nomura, who won three Olympic gold medals to win across three Olympics, and that's an incredible achievement, given how many ways there are to lose in the standing position in judo, and how unforgiving it is as a sport, it shows an incredible level of dominance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I think when I was, I was also introduced at that time to the idea, just like in judo, I think in jujitsu is the same. A lot of sports is probably the same, is there's ways to win that include kind of, if I were to use a bad term, stalling, which is like use strategy to slow down, to destroy all the weapons your opponent has and just to wait it out. to sort of break your opponent by, yeah, shutting down all their weapons, but not using any of your own. And now Travis was always going for, he's of course really good at gripping and can do that whole game, but he was going for the big throws. And he was almost getting frustrated by a lot of the opponents. I remember Ola Bischoff, I think. Yes. From Germany. From Germany. Very talented. Very incredible. I know he's very good at doing big throws and he's incredible judoka, but he was also incredible at just frustrating his opponents with like gripping and strategy and so on. And I just remember feeling the pain of this person like Travis who went through Just he broke like every part of his body. He went through so many injuries. Just this person who dedicated his entire life to this moment in 2008 and then 2012 and 2016 just gave everything. You could see it in his face that, you know, his weapons are being shut down. And he's still pushing forward. He's still with that, both the frustration and the power. I mean, the kind of throw he does is his main one, I think, is the standing. It's called Seonagi. Ippon Seonagi. Ippon Seonagi. But that was that was the other thing is like the techniques he used was these big throws that There's something to me about the Seinagi. I fell in love with that throw. That's become my main throw, standing Seinagi." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is like- Why do you favor the standing variation? Because of the amplitude? You get a more powerful... Yeah, power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like... Are you a fan of Koga? Yes, that's so... that's when I... Travis... so Koga and Travis opened up my... Because Travis uses the same gripping patterns for seoi nage as Koga does. All the same and the way he uses his hips and turns. And I remember going to my judo club and other judo clubs and they were all saying, this is the wrong way to do it. The way Travis does it is the wrong way to do it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I remember like- I've always been amazed by this, by the way. I don't mean to cut you off, but I could literally fill 20 hours of reproductions of people who will tell me that either my students or other great world champions are doing things wrong. And I'm looking at them and I'm like, who would I rather trust here in their judgment? Koga, who was one of the greatest throwers of all time, or you, a recreational guy who couldn't throw my grandmother. I'm supposed to take your word over his. Don't listen to what people say. I'm going to give you a piece of advice here. Watch what the best people do. That's how you get superior athletic performance. I'm going to say that again. Don't listen to what people say. Watch what they do. particularly under the stress of high-level competition, because that's when you see their real game, what they really do under pressure. And if you can emulate that, you're gonna be very successful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I guess what I was frustrated with, to your point, is that the argument against Koga is, he has a very specific body type, and he figured out something that worked for him. The statement is, that might not be applicable to you or to the general public of judo players that want to succeed. That, by the way, at the shallow level might be true. Might be true. The point is there might be a body of knowledge that's yet to be discovered and explored that Koga opened up that I wanted to understand why his technique worked. It made no sense to me that with a single foot, like the way you turn the hip, the single foot that steps in, why does that work? Because it was actually very difficult to make work for me as a white belt in the very beginning. It doesn't make sense. Like people just, they don't get loaded up onto your hip. Anyway, for people who don't watch Koga Highlights, watch Travis Stevens Highlights, But the details of the technique don't make sense, but when mastered, it feels like there's something fundamental there that hasn't been explored yet. It's like Koga and Travis made me think that we don't know most of the body mechanics involved in dominance in Judo. Like we just kind of found a few pockets that work really well. The Ichimada, there's these different throws, Osaru Gari. I wonder if there's like totally cool new things that we haven't discovered. And that's saying I gave a little peek because there's very few people that I'm aware of that do it the way Travis and Koga did." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "May I ask you a question? Yes. The choice of standing Sayonara Gi, I should say this for your listeners, they're probably thinking, what the hell are these two guys talking about? Sayonara Gi is one of the more high percentage throws in the Olympic sport of Judo. Probably Uchimata is probably number one and variations of Sayonara Gi would be in the top five for sure. The basic choice you have in modern competition is the more difficult standing seoi nage, where you literally are up on your feet and you perform a shoulder throw that takes your opponent over from a full standing position. The most popular form of Seoi nage in modern competition by a landslide is not the standing version. It's a drop Seoi nage where you go down to your knees. This means you have a much easier time getting underneath your opponent's central gravity. The defining feature of any Seoi nage is getting underneath your opponent's central gravity and lifting them. Seoi literally means to lift and carry. Why did you choose the more difficult version? What was your motivation? You know, you're a smart kid. You know, right from the start, that for every standing Senagi, there's 20 drop Senagis in modern competition. One is obviously more high percentage. One obviously works for a wider variety of body types. The number of people who are successful with standing Senagi is dramatically lower and it appears to be a move which is completely absent in the heavyweight divisions and rarely seen in the lightweight divisions. Why? What was the motivation? Why did you willingly adopt the less high percentage over" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This would be very interesting. I would love you to break it apart because I apply the same kind of thinking to basically everything. I mentioned to you offline, there's these Boston Dynamics Spot robots. When I first met Spot, I fell in love. I don't understand what exactly, but there's magic there. And I just got excited by it. And that fire burns. I want to work with these robots. I want to work with robots. I want to, I felt like there's something special there that I could build something interesting with, create something interesting with. In the same way with the standing Seinagi from Koga and Travis, I just fell in love with that technique. Just even watching, I didn't even know what the hell to do with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Was it aesthetic? The standing Seinagi is more beautiful in execution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no question. In my own, we're talking about love here, right? In my own definition of aesthetic, yes, it's not just beauty, because you could argue there's more elegance, sort of uchimata is very beautiful and effortless. I love something about the dominance of it. I love the idea in sport, of two people that are the best in the world and one of them dominating the other. And to me, the standing Seinagi, you're lifted off your feet. And especially when it's done perfectly and with really strong resistance from the other person, it results in a big slam. And that was like beautiful to me. That's the Alexander Corral and like big pickups. I love that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's interesting that you're correct in so far as you're not just going with aesthetic and the sense of beauty, but also, but you are making, as it were, value judgments about the throw. And that's fascinating to me because there's two, elements to any grappling sport. I'm always insistent upon the idea that jiu-jitsu is both an art and a science. It has scientific elements insofar as it works according to the laws of physics and lever and fulcrum, etc. But it also has an aesthetic element insofar as you're making choices with technique. You're expressing who you are as a person. You have 10,000 different variations of moves you could use, but you're specifically choosing these. That's an element of choice and self-expression on your part. And insofar as that is true, combat sports are not just a science, but they're also an art. So most combat sports have this sense in which they have the features of both an art and a science. And it's not just about high percentage in your case. I mean, me personally, I'm obsessed with percentages. What are the ways to make you win?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the science part." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but that's also, choice is involved. But there is an undeniably aesthetic element to martial arts where you, as it were, express who you are as a person in terms of the techniques you're ultimately going to choose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does that get in the way? Do you allow yourself to enjoy the aesthetic beauty of a technique?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, yeah. When martial arts are done well, It's the most beautiful sport in the world. When it's done poorly, it's the ugliest. But a beautifully applied submission hold, a perfect throw, a superbly set up takedown are among the most difficult techniques to execute in all of sports. And when they're done well, they're magic to observe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you prefer certain techniques over others because of their, like, for example, I'll tell you, for me, chokes of all sorts with the gi, without the gi, probably with the gi is the most beautiful to me personally." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I value them above all others. People mostly associate myself and my students with leg locking. They're usually rather surprised to learn that I actually value strangleholds far above leg locks, but not for aesthetic reasons, for effectiveness. We can talk about that later if you wish." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let's step back" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sorry, we drifted awfully far off topic then." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think this is beautiful. We drifted along the river of life and martial arts. Can you explain the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. If I couldn't, I wouldn't be much of a coach. Jiu-jitsu is an art and science which looks to use a combination of tactical and mechanical advantage to focus a very high percentage of my strength against a very low percentage of my opponent's strength at a critical point on their body, such that if I were to exert my strength upon that critical point, they could no longer continue to fight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's about weapons and defenses. But then, is there something more to be said about the set of tools that we're talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's where the art comes in. Because ultimately, you have a set of choices. And those choices that you make will be an act of self-expression on your part. Some will prefer this, some will prefer that. That's where you come in as an individual." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's an overall definition of jiu-jitsu. of being a set of choices. that where you're using the things you're powerful in versus the things your opponent is weak in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I was only talking about percentages of body strength. If I have, for example, let's say we have two athletes, athlete A and athlete B. Athlete A has 100 units of strength, however we define that overall. Athlete B has 50. Okay, so ostensibly, athlete A is twice as strong as athlete B. But Athlete B can maneuver his body into a set of positions focused around a critical point of his opponent's body where he can apply 40 units of strength out of his total of 50. His opponent can only defend with 20 units of strength out of his total of 100. You have now completely reversed the strength discrepancy. Originally, athlete A was twice as strong as B. Now, on that one localized point, the knee, the elbow, the neck, B is now twice as strong as A. Under those circumstances, B should win." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I guess what I'm trying to get at, by the way, that's really beautifully said, is what you just said could be applied to other games, other battles. It could be applied to the game of chess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It could be applied to war, most obviously in war. I think about, for example, the American strategic bombing campaign in World War II. The Eighth Army Air Force was tasked with the idea of destroying German industry. Did they attack all of German industry? Of course not. That would be stupid. They attacked the ball bearing industry. Why? Because almost all of modern machines require ball bearings in order to operate. In order for the mechanical interfaces of machines to operate, you have to reduce friction. It's done through ball bearings. If you knocked out one tiny component of German industry, the ball bearing industry, the rest of it couldn't operate. So too with the human body. I didn't have to fight your whole body. I just have to fight your left knee. If I can break your left knee, the rest of your body is irrelevant to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then isn't the art of jiu-jitsu discovering the left knee, discovering the weak points." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, a huge part of Jiu-Jitsu is understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the human body. There's parts of the human body that are shockingly robust, and there are other parts that are shockingly vulnerable. The major joints, and of course the most vulnerable of all, the unprotected neck." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if we take something I'm not familiar with but I was incredibly impressed by is the body lock that I saw." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nick Rodriguez." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nick Rodriguez used last time a few weeks ago. Yes. But then I also got to hang out with Craig Jones who showed that. Also has a very good body lock. So that was, I don't know if this body lock applies to all positions, but I was seeing it from when Craig is on top of your opponent and trying to pass in the guard, use the body lock as a controlling position. The principle behind it is that it sheds down, as you've spoken about, it sheds down the weapons of a very strong opponent." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's absolutely correct. In the case of guard position, What makes guard position dangerous, what makes someone a powerful guard player is the movement of their hips forward and backward and side to side. Body locking is designed to shut down that movement and does a very fine job of it. You'll see all of my students excel at it. Gordon Ryan is probably the single best body lock guard passer I've ever seen. Nicky Ryan is outstanding with it. Nick Rodriguez is very good. Craig Jones is outstanding. All of my students use this for a very simple reason. Understand what is the central problem of shutting down a dangerous guard player. It's his hips. That's what makes him a dangerous leg locker. You go up against a dangerous leg locker, body lock guard pass. Single best way to shut down most of his entries. We're all strong in leg locks. So in our gym, you've got to control the hips as soon as possible. Otherwise, it's going to be a very difficult thing to avoid leg entanglements as you go to pass. And across the board, my students excel in body lock guard passing. They understand what's the most dangerous feature their opponent has, the lateral movement of their hips. What's the single best way to stop that? Body lock, and then work from there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if this asymmetry of power is fundamental to jiu-jitsu, how do you discover that? How did you discover the body lock as one of many methodologies of achieving this asymmetry?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would be an overstatement to say we discovered the body lock. Body lock passing has been around longer than we've been around. But what I would say is that in a room full of dangerous leg lockers, you've got to have a way to shut down the hips. And so, once we started using body locks, we saw that was one excellent way to get around that problem. As with all development, it comes from trial and error. You will often see people teach the technique to a certain level, and you see the teaching, you're like, there's a lot of inadequacies there, and that doesn't cover a lot of the problems that we're encountering. And so trial and error is the single most important part of the development. trial and error in the training room amongst ourselves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In hard training or... No, it never begins with hard training." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Techniques are born the same way we're born. Weak and in need of nutrition. You have to build them up organically like children. And you start with minimal resistance and you make progress over time. When you first go to the gym, do you put 500 pounds on the bench press and try to bench press it? No, you'll be killed. You start off with the bar, you build over time, and then one day, five years from now, perhaps you really are lifting 500 pounds. But only a fool would attempt that on their first attempt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And they're born like children in your mind first, like there's a spark of an idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, there's always a spark. It's like scientific development on a subject matter which is intrinsically simpler. There's a sense in which naive and overly simplistic assessments of scientific method may not work well at advanced levels of science, but they work damn well in the training room with jiu-jitsu, where the subject matter is inherently simpler than it is in research science. And as a result, there'll be a spark, you'll see something, there's possibilities there. Okay, let's puzzle this out, let's work with this. and you run into a lot of failures. You know, you've suddenly been, oh man, if I put my hip this way, this works really well. Then suddenly you try and spar and you get caught in a simple Walmart platter. And you're like, okay, that didn't work as well as I thought. And then you look to rectify things. If things go in promising research directions, you keep them. If not, you discard them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's funny you say science. It feels more like art. There's somebody I really admire that talks about this kind of ideas, Johnny I from Apple. He's the lead designer. He recently left, but he was the designer behind most of the products we know and love from Apple." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When you say designer, be more precise. What exactly was he working on in Apple? The iPhone. Which parts of the iPhone did he work on? The entirety of it. Was he a leader of a research team or was he the person personally responsible for development?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's kind of, I would say, very similar to your position. He wasn't necessarily the last the person executing the fine, the manufacturer. Right. Of course. But there's the he's somebody that's very hands on. And it's it's like, OK, so he worked obviously extremely close to Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has this idea We should have a computer that's as thin as a sheet of paper. And then you start to play with ideas of like, what does that actually look like? The reason I bring it up is because he talked about, he had these ideas that he would not tell Steve because he talked about in the same exact language as you're saying is there's like a little baby that it's very fragile. it needs time to grow. And then Steve Jobs would often roll in. Was too ruthless. Too ruthless. He would destroy ideas. Because Johnny Ive and the team didn't have actually good responses to the criticism at first. Because when they're babies, you can't defend the baby. But you needed time to develop. You need to sleep on it, you need to rethink it, to dream things and all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's fascinating you say this, Lex, because this is actually the entire history of scientific development is literally the story of the juxtaposition between the need to protect and nurture new theories versus the need to rigorously test them with harsh testing that either verifies them or falsifies them. And learning to find a satisfactory compromise between those two is a very, very difficult thing. When you look at the history of science, you will see that there's some pretty damn chaotic moments anytime there's major theory change where all kinds of apparently undesirable tricks they use to protect certain theories with ad hoc hypotheses, etc, etc. And ultimately, only time and success over time will justify a theory. There's usually a period where when one theory goes in to replace another, there's something of a battle between competing groups of scientists, some of whom advocate theory A, some who advocate theory B. They often use seemingly unscrupulous methods to protect or attack another person's theory. They dig for proofs. And usually some period of time has to go by. Sometimes, in some cases, it simply involved older scientists protecting an initial theory dying off and new scientists just replacing them with numbers. And this is a common, common theme. And the same applies in jiu-jitsu. You know, so many times, especially when I first started working with leg locks, I would show things I had worked on to even world champion black belts, and they would try it once or twice and fail, and be like, ah, it doesn't work. And I'd be like, you tried it once on another guy who's also a world champion, who has a strong ability to resist it, and that's it, no more, it doesn't work. And then five years later, they would see my students finishing world champions with it. And in some cases, finishing the very people who said that the technique would never work. I mean, if there was ever a refutation of a statement, that's a pretty clear example. And there has to be a sense in which you can't be too forgiving. You have to test hypotheses. But on the other hand, you can't be too ruthless either. You have to look for promise and my advice is start slow. Again, the analogy of lifting weights, you don't lift the heaviest weights on your first day, you build up, you work progressively over time. Now, you also have to have some common sense here, you can't be too forgiving to a technique if it's repeatedly failing. and good people have tried it and multiple good people have tried it and it's just not working out, then okay it's time to dismiss it. But don't be too quick, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is this where your idea of training with lower belts quite a bit comes from? I've actually, just as a side comment, and maybe you can elaborate, the place, the gym, Balance Studios with Phil and Rick McClary is where I got my black belt, where I grew up as a jujitsu person in Philadelphia. They have a huge number of black belts, but they have a huge number of all other ranks. And the way they picked sparring partners, people you train with is very ad hoc. It's very loose. It's very, one of those places, one of those gyms where you can just kind of, you can train for like three, four hours and you could take a break or you could, jump back in. Very informal. Yeah. And you can go to war with the black belts, but then you can also play around with the purple and the blue belts and so on. Excellent. And that was really beneficial for growth. And, you know, you can pick which because everybody has a style and you can pick which style you really want to work on. Right. And then I came to Boston Broadway Jiu Jitsu with John Clark, who I love. He's a good friend. But, you know, it's a little bit more formal. And I found myself, it's a very interesting journey. I would be training with black belts the whole time. And it was a very different experience. I found myself exploring much less. I found myself learning much less. I mean, part of that is on me, but part of it was also realizing that, wow, there's a value to training with people that are much worse than you. Yes. Is there a philosophy you could speak to on that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. You probably know it already. You know from your studies in artificial intelligence that all human beings are naturally risk-averse. This is a bias which is deeply seated in all of us. I'm sure you're well-read on people like Dvorsky and et cetera who talk about this all the time. For your viewers, there are numerous psychological experiments that are showing that most people to the point of irrationality, fear loss more than they are excited at the prospect of an equivalent gain. So for example, if you have $100 in your wallet, you're more worried about the idea of losing the $100 that you have now than you would be excited by the prospect of gaining $100 that I could potentially offer you. This comes out whenever you get Black Belt versus Black Belt confrontations or any kind of similar skill level. Whenever you get similar skill levels, the chances of defeat get very, very high. Interestingly, if you're a White Belt and you're going against a Black Belt, you'll take risk. Why? Because there's no shame in losing to a black belt when you're a white belt. So you'll play more lightheartedly and you'll have a more fun role. But when you have very similar skill levels, you're going to come back to what? The techniques that are most likely to get you a win. That number of techniques is usually pretty small. And if you're always battling with the same tough opponents every day, where if you make even a single error, it will cost you that match in sparring and you don't like losing. You're going to stay with a very small set of moves. You might get slightly better at direct execution over time, but you as an individual will not grow. Growth, as it does in organic life forms, comes from small beginnings and builds over time. You can't take an untested, untried move and get it on a world champion black belt. It's gonna get crushed. So it's not ready for that. It's like a lion cub being thrown out into the Serengeti plains. A lion cub is just too small and too ineffective. It's a lion, but it's a cub. And it's not until it grows into maturity that it can be a lion that can dominate the Serengeti plains. That's why I always encourage my students to play with a variety of belt types and spend the majority of their time with lesser belts for development purposes. When you're getting closer to a competition, you obviously want to change that. You want to be getting more a competitive sense of hard work. but you must learn to divide up your training cycles into non-competition cycles, where you're presumably working with people who are slightly lower in level than yourself, and in some cases, quite a bit lower than yourself, and then competition cycles, where you're working with people much closer to your own skill level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something to be said about the flip side of that, which is When you're training with people at the same skill level, being okay losing to them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. You have to see training for what it is. Training is about skill development, not about winning or losing. You've got to understand that you don't need to win every battle. You only need to win the battles that count. And the battles that count are in the World Championship Finals. That's the one that counts. Think about that win. That's the one you're going to be remembered for. You're not going to be remembered for the battle you lost on Tuesday afternoon at 3pm in some nameless gym with some guy that no one cares about. No one's going to remember that. You're going to be remembered for your peak performances, not your everyday performances. Focus your everyday performances on skill development so that your peak performances, you can focus on winning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, I just, this is not a therapy session, but if I could just speak." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Every session is a therapy session." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There is still an ape thing in there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course. You think I don't feel it? You think everyone in the room doesn't feel it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because, for example, you have never seen me roll. You know, when there's people, you know, I've seen the look in people's eyes when they see me train and they, I could see maybe it's me projecting, but they think, I thought you were supposed to be good. I thought you were supposed to be a black belt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like that look, they're like studying. I'm going to give you some therapy. Okay. Do you know how many people have come up to me over the years who have visited the training halls that I work in, and they come up to me and they go, man, I rolled with Gary Tonin. I did really well with him, like really well. I'm like, oh, that's very good, very impressive. And then I see them talking to their friends, and I'm like, man, I tapped out Gary Tonin. And I'm sitting there going, yeah. And you can see that they're just like, whoa, dude, I'm way better than I thought I was. Gary Tonin, all of my students, I push them in the direction of giving up bad positions so that they practice working, getting out of critical situations. It's a huge part of our training program. But Gary Tonin takes that to a level that just no one else even gets close. It's just amazing. Like he will put himself in impossible situations where it's a fully locked, strangle a hundred percent on with both his arms behind his back and he'll try to work out from there and Seven times out of ten he does but three times out of ten he gets caught He I'm a huge advocate of handicap training where you handicap yourself to work on skills he's took that to heart to a level that few people, I believe, can match." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just wonder what his psychology is like, because there's... It goes back to what we talked about before, Lex." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to understand it's skill development. Don't take it personally. I understand. I hear where you're coming from. We've all got what you call the ape reflex, where we want to be dominant, OK? We all do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because there's thousands of white belts out there that have tapped Gary Tonant. And they're walking around and they're posting online." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tap Gary Tonin, like Gary Tonin is like one of the best in the world. So I'm one of the best in the world. And does Gary get upset about this? No, of course not. Because Gary knows that when it counts on stage, he's gonna be going 100% with a set of skills that very few people can match. He can go into an EBI overtime at the 205 pound weight division against an 80 CC champion starting in a full armlock position and effortlessly get out. with no problems in seconds, because he's been in that situation 25,000 times with varying degrees of skilled opponents. And there's just no panic, no fear. He's just doing what he's done so many thousands of times. And that's a fine, fine example of a guy who didn't give a damn what happened in the training room, but when it counted, on the stage, in front of the cameras, it kicked in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he's an incredible inspiration, actually. He's a practitioner of something you've recently talked quite a bit about, which is the power of escaping sort of bad positions. I think you've talked about it, which is really interesting framing, is escaping bad positions is one of the best ways, if not the best way, to demonstrate dominance psychologically over your opponent. That anything they throw at you Like their weapons are useless against you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a little bit of Lex Friedman kicking through on this question. Your obsession with dominance is skewing you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a therapy session. It's a therapy session. I'm coming from a wrestling perspective. I think it's not just Lex Friedman. I think it's Dan Gable. I think it's dominant, the Gary Tonin ethic. it just goes against everything wrestling is about. You never put yourself in a bad position. And the fact, it's a, philosophically, I don't know what to do with it. It's a total reframing of, showing dominance by escaping any bad position." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let's talk about the idea of what is the value of escapes? Why do I put this in as the first skill that every Jiu-Jitsu student must master? Believe it or not, when I talked about how it pertains to dominance, that's its smallest value. Its greatest value has nothing to do with dominance, it has to do with confidence. You can train someone and teach them technique until you're blue in the face, but at some point the athlete in question has to go out there on the stage and pull the trigger when the time is right. What's going to give you that ability to go from the physical skills that you've learned to execution under pressure is confidence. I always talk about skill development and yes, skill development is the absolute bedrock of my training programs. but you can't finish at that level. There has to be something more than that. And you have to go from the physical element of skill into the psychological element of confidence. I can teach you an armbar all day. You can get to a point where you can flawlessly execute armbars in drilling and even in a certain level of competition. But if you believe that in attempting an armbar on a dangerous opponent with good guard passing skills, say the armbar is being performed from guard position, that if the armbar fails and your opponent uses that failure to set up a strong pass and get into a side pin, possibly into the mount, and you don't have the ability to get out of that side pin or mount, you won't pull the trigger on the armbar. And so even though you had all the requisite physical skills to perform the technique, when push came to shove and the critical moment came, you backed down. You didn't pull the trigger. Building that confidence is the key to championship performance and the single best way to do it is to take away the innate fear that we all have of bad outcomes that makes us naturally risk-averse. When you don't believe you can be pinned When you don't believe your guard can be passed, you'll take risks, because there's no downside to your actions. An unpenable person and an unpassable person doesn't have much to fear in a jiu-jitsu match. You can come out and fire with all guns blazing, because you know at the end of the day, no one's going to hold you down, no one's going to pass your guard. That's your first two goals in Jiu-Jitsu. They're the most boring goals. They're not exciting to learn. No one wants to come in there first and be told, OK, you're going to practice escapes for the next year of your life. OK, it's a goal. Are you kidding me? But that's what you've got to have. That's your first skill. And that's what I push upon all of my students. You'll see almost all of them are very, very strong in escape skills. They know that if things go wrong, They can always get out. They can always live to fight another day. And that is what gives them the ability to attack without fear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that is so profound and so rare. It's so rare to hear this. I think it's because it's the most painful thing to do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Always ask yourself, when you enter a Jiu Jitsu match, you already know ahead of time if you're going to lose, how you're going to lose. There's only a certain number of realistic submissions that work in the sport of Jiu-Jitsu. The number is very small. So ahead of time, you already know the most likely methods of submission loss in Jiu-Jitsu are going to be things like heel hook, armbar, renegade strangle, guillotine, etc. Just work backwards from that knowledge. So start off learning how to defend all of those things. You know what the major losing positions are in Jiu Jitsu. Someone gets mounted on you, rear mount, side control, knee on belly. Those are positions you can only lose from. So work backwards from there, getting out of those positions. And that's how I always start. I always say with my students, I teach beginners from the ground up, and I teach experts backwards. What does that mean? When a young student comes to me with no skills, they learn from the ground up. They start on their backs defending pins. Then they start on their backs working from half guard bottom, then on their backs working from variations of guard. They don't even get the seat top position until they're strong off their backs. Then they go onto their knees and they start passing. start standing and passing, and then they work their pins and transitions. And then ultimately they stand up to their feet and they work standing position on their feet. So they work from ground back on the floor to ground, knees on the floor, ground standing, and then both athletes standing. It's a gradual progression over time where they work from the bottom to the top. With regards to experts, I teach them end game first. They must become very, very strong in what finishes the match, which is submission holds. Okay? In chess, we always talk about end game. I do the same thing in jiu-jitsu. I start experts just looking at the mechanics of breaking people and all the submission holds that I teach. You should know that I teach only a very small number of submission holds, around six. It's interesting that my students have by far and away the highest submission rate in contemporary jiu-jitsu, but they only learn around six to seven submission holds. I start them with mechanics where they learn the end game, how to break someone. Once they develop in their mind the belief that if, the conditional if, they can get to one of those six positions, there's a very high likelihood they'll win. If they truly believe that, When it's competition time, they'll fucking find a way to get to those positions. That's confidence. But if you don't believe, let's say you believe, man, if I get to a finishing position, an armbar or a strangle, there's only like a 20% chance I'll finish with it. How hard are you going to fight to get to that position? You're not. Why? Why would you? But if you believe there's a 98% chance, if you get to that position, you'll finish. You'll find a way to get there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That is so powerful. There's certain things, and maybe going back to Judo a little bit, is there's a clock choke for people who are listening. It's with the gi, when a person is in a turtle position, in a crouching position, this is something that's done in Judo quite a bit. But I have, it doesn't matter what the technique is, I have a belief in my head that there's not a person in the world that I can't choke with that clock choke. That's a good belief to have. And I've done that. And that it was, it built on itself. The belief made the technique better and better and better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now you're onto something. That's exactly the mindset that I'm trying to coach." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's step one. You have to believe that once you get there. But you gotta start somewhere. It's step one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But then you have to create a system how to get there. But it's a damn important step. So you coach the end game first, and then you fill in the details afterwards." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a huge confidence builder, but I just, I have to say, to admit, and it makes me sad, but I think I'm not alone. I think majority of Jiu-Jitsu people are like this, that I didn't do the beginner step that you talk about, which is focusing on escapes. I think I learned the wrong lessons from being, from losing. I remember in a blue belt competition long ago, I was, I think it was, yeah, it was the finals of Atlanta IBJJF tournament. And there's a person that passed my guard. And he took Mount and he stayed in Mount for a long time and I couldn't breathe. And it was like one of those things where I was truly dominated. I don't think I've been dominated in a jujitsu match quite like that before or after. And the lesson I learned from that is I'm not gonna let like, as opposed to working on escapes. I'm not gonna let anyone pass my guard. What you learned is don't take risks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't take risks. Which is ultimately what kills you. Ultimately, if you become the best you can, you got to take risks. As they say, nothing risk, nothing gained. Failure usually makes us even more risk averse than we started. We're already mentally biased, being human beings in that direction and failure tends to reinforce that. I work hard in my training programs to try and correct that fault." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it still possible for a person who's a black belt to then just go back to that beginning journey, I guess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course. Let me tell you something. I'm probably going to catch a lot of flack for saying this. I have a belief. I won't say something, I won't call it knowledge because it's not known, but I have a fervent belief that human beings in most skill activities, not all skill activities, but I will say combat sports for sure, can reinvent themselves in five year periods. Now you might be saying five years, what's magical about five years? Mike Tyson was 13 years old when he was taken in by Customato. By the age of 18, he was beating world-class boxers in the gym and had already made a strong name for himself in international boxing. He was already a known figure. It was five years. Yasuhiro Yamashita, the judo player, began judo at 13. He placed silver in the All Japans at 17. I could go on all day with examples of athletes who, within a five-year time frame of starting a sport, were competing at world championship level. I'm going to give you a rough and ready definition of sport mastery. I believe that if you can play a competitive match against someone ranked in the top 25 in your sport, and it's a serious international sport, I would call you someone who's mastered that sport. You're damn good. If you can go with the number 25 wrestler in the world, and gives them a hard competitive match in the gym, you may not win it, but you know, they had a good workout, you have shown mastery of wrestling, or indeed any other combat sport you care to name. There are numerous examples of people doing far better than that in five years, winning medals at world championships and even Olympic games in that five-year period. This is not an unrealistic goal. There is a lot of empirical evidence to show that people have done this in the past, a lot of it. If you fully immerse yourself in a sport with a well-worked out, well-planned training program, there is a mountain of evidence to show that in a five-year period, you can go from a complete beginner to like very, very impressive skill level to the point where you're competitive with some of the best people on the planet. You can reinvent yourself in these five-year periods. What happens with most people is they get to a certain level and they get complacent, they get lazy, and they just keep doing the same old thing they've been doing. But if you're diligent and you're purposeful, Five years, you can accomplish an awful lot. And as I say, there's a mountain of evidence to show it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, as a small aside, somebody who's mentioned Tversky and Yamashita in the same conversation, you're one of the most impressive people I've ever spoken to. But as a small aside, so if there's this complete beginner, this is really interesting. There is empirical evidence that you can achieve incredible things in a short amount of time. There's a complete beginner standing before you and that beginner has fire in their eyes and they want to achieve mastery. Where do you place most of the credit for a journey that does achieve mastery? Is it the set of ideas they have in their mind? Is it the set of drills or the way they practice? Is it genetics and luck?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those are all good insights. All of those factors you've mentioned play a definite role. Let's start with luck, okay? We are all subject to fortune. and fortune can be good and fortune can be bad. Life is in many ways beautiful but life is also tragic and I've had students who show enormous promise and just tragic events occurred in their lives. The vicissitudes of fortune can be wonderful thing in your life and they can be a terrible tragedy. I've had students who died for various reasons who could have gone on to become world champions. I've had students who on a much lighter note just fell in love and just wanted to have kids and move away and that's a wonderful thing but different direction. You just never know, so luck does play some role. Even things like where you're born, the location of your physical location in the world or even socio-economic location can play a role which could be detrimental or favorable. So yeah, luck does play some role. Thankfully, it's one of the smaller elements. And I do believe that a truly resourceful mind can overcome the majority of what fortune throws at us and get to goals, provided you're sufficiently mentally robust. Other things you mentioned, genetics. I do believe in certain sports, genetics really do play a powerful, powerful role. For example, in any sport where power output and reaction speed, ability to take physical damage, then there are genetic elements which will help. For example, I couldn't imagine a world in which even if I have a crippled leg, so even if I grew up in a world where my leg was normal and I had normal legs and everything was fine with my body, I don't believe that I could win the Olympic gold medal in 100-meter sprinting, for example. I just don't have enough fast-twitch muscle fibers. But the more a sport involves skill and tactics, the less you will see genetics playing a role. If you look at the medal podiums in jiu-jitsu, for example, you will see that no one body type is definitively superior to another. You will see every variation of body type in the metal platforms in Jiu-Jitsu. As skill and tactics become more and more important and things like just power output over time become less and less important, then you will see that genetics play less and less of a role. I'm happy to say that the sport of Jiu-Jitsu the evidence seems pretty clear that there's no one dominant body type in the school of Jiu Jitsu. Rather, there's just advantages for one type and there's advantages for another. You just have to learn to tailor your game to your body. With regards to training program, yes, I believe with all my heart and all my soul that your training program does make a difference. I've dedicated my life to that. Obviously, I'm biased in this regard. I do believe that all of the students that I taught who became world champions would have been great athletes whether or not they had met me or not. I believe that. But I do also believe it would have taken them a lot longer and they may not have gotten to the level that they did. I'm sure they would have been impressive, but I do believe that the nature of a training program plays an enormous difference. I don't mean to say this in an arrogant way. I believe that there's, again, a mountain of evidence to suggest this is true because you see it in many different sports. Let's talk, for example, about your country, Russia, and its wrestling program. Russia is an enormous country, but the location where Russia's wrestling program comes from is actually very small, and the population is actually very small. I can't verify this, but I was told once, I can't verify this, but the number of people who wrestle in Russia is actually significantly smaller than the number of people who wrestle in the United States." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's also not part of the school athletics and it is in the United States." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that's a different point. We'll come back to that because that's also an important point. But if you look at the actual numbers of people there, they're actually pretty small. So ostensibly, if it comes down to a numbers game, America should dominate at the Olympics if we have more wrestlers. Now, the story gets more complicated because America has a different style of wrestling, the collegiate style, than the international freestyle. That is a complicating factor. But nonetheless, what you see there is that numbers aren't everything. Rather, the manner in which people are trained clearly has an impact. And we know very little about the, there's very little reliable information about the training program for wrestling in the Russian states. But one thing is incontestable is the amount of success that they've had in international world championship and Olympic competition. They are disproportionately successful, despite their relatively small numbers. There's nothing genetically special about them. You can talk about performance enhancing drugs, but those are a worldwide phenomenon. They don't have any access to technology that the rest of the world doesn't have. At some point, you got to start asking what are they doing differently in the training room? And there are many other examples of similar situations. My country, New Zealand, has an insanely successful rugby program, the sport of rugby. which they have dominated for literally generations, despite the fact that our population is very, very small compared with the rest of the country, and we don't excel in many other sports. New Zealand does fairly well in sports overall, but nothing like they do in rugby. And you've got to ask yourself, is there a culture there which built this up? And the world is full of examples of seemingly small and unpromising areas or locations putting out disproportionately high numbers of successful athletes. And that points to the idea that different training programs have different success rates. And so I truly believe with all my heart and all my soul that how you train does make a significant difference. I would even go further and say it makes the most difference. Is it the only thing? Absolutely not. We've already talked about fortune, we've talked about genetics. If you want to get nasty, you can even talk about things like performance enhancing drugs that obviously plays a role in modern sports. But I do believe that the majority of what creates success is the interaction between the athlete and the training program. Now the training program is one thing, I do believe that's the single most important, but right behind it is the athlete themselves. In my own experience, people talk about athletes that I've trained successfully, but they never talk about athletes that I've trained unsuccessfully. Always remember that for every champion a coach produces, there's a hundred people that they coach that no one ever heard of, and this is completely normal. A coach can never take the lion's share of the credit. A coach creates possibilities, but it's the athlete who actualizes the possibilities. And so building that rapport and finding the right people to excel in your training program is also a big part of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What makes the difference between the successful, your successes and your failures as a coach?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A range of reasons, the single most important is persistence. People will point to all kinds of virtues amongst athletes. This guy's the most courageous, this guy's the strongest, these are all virtues. But the one indispensable virtue is persistence. The ability just to stay in the game long enough to get the results you seek." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But what does persistence really look like? If we can just break that apart a little bit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's actually, this is a great question you're asking because most people see it as a kind of simplistic doggedness where you just show up every day. That's not it. The most important form of persistence is persistence of thinking, which looks to push you in increasingly efficient, more and more efficient methods of training. Famously, people talk about the idea that the hardest work of all is hard thinking and they're absolutely right. Okay, coming into the gym and just doing the same thing for a decade isn't going to make you better. What's going to make you better is progressive training over time where you identify clear goals marked out in time increments, three months, six months, 12 months, five years. and build those short-term goals into a program of long-term goals, making sure that the training program changes over time so that as your skill level rises, the challenges you face in the gym become higher and higher. Don't kill them at the start with challenges that are too hard for them to deal with, they get discouraged and leave. build them slowly over time, but make sure they don't just get left in a swamp where they're just doing the same thing they were doing three years ago and they get bored. And there's two ways you can leave in a gym. You can leave from adversity, it was too tough, or you can leave from boredom. Everyone talks about the first, no one talks about the second. Most people, when they get the black belt, They get bored. They know what their game is. They know what they're good at. They know what they're not good at. When they compete, they stick with what they're good at and they avoid what they're not good at. And they get bored. They reach a plateau and that's it. My whole thing is to make sure it's not so tough at the start that they leave because of adversity and then for the rest of their career to make sure it's not boring so they leave because of boredom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Travis Dean has actually said something that changed the way I see training. He said it as a side comment, but he said that at the end of a good training session, your mind should be exhausted, not your body. And I, for most of my life, saw good training sessions where my body was exhausted." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I believe that's the case with most people. You should come out of the training session with your mind buzzing with ideas, like possibilities for tomorrow. And by the way, on that note, I would go further and say that the training session doesn't finish when your body stops moving. It finishes when your mind stops moving, and your mind shouldn't stop moving. After that session, there should be analysis. What did I do well? What did I do badly? How could I do better with the things that I did well?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you about something that I truly enjoy and I think is really powerful, but most people don't seem to believe in that, but is drilling. I don't know, maybe people are different, but I love the idea, maybe even outside of Jiu Jitsu, of doing the same thing over and over. It's like Jiro dreams of sushi. I love doing the thing that nobody wants to do and doing it 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times more than what nobody wants to do. So I'm a huge fan of drilling. Obviously I'm not a professional athlete, but I feel like if I actually gave myself, if I wanted to be really good at jujitsu, like reach the level of being in the top 25 when I was much younger, like really strive, I think I could achieve it by drilling. I had this belief untested. Can you challenge this idea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or agree with it? Okay, first off, fascinating. However, we're going to have to... Disagree? No, no. We're just going to have to start to understand what are we talking about when we talk about drilling. It's a very vague term. At this moment, many of your listeners are probably having the same thought process, which is, oh, drilling, yeah, I know what that is. We go into the gym and we pick a move and we practice it for a certain number of repetitions. And if I do that, I'm going to get better at the technique. Okay? They're wrong. We've got to have a much more in-depth understanding of what the hell we're talking about when we talk about drilling. Ultimately, Any movement in the gym that doesn't improve the skills you already have or build new skills is a waste of time. a waste of resources. Everything you do should be done with the aim and the understanding that this is going to make me better at the sport I practice. If it's not, it shouldn't be there. The majority of what passes for drilling in most training halls will not make you better, including some of the most cherished forms of drilling. which is repetition for numbers. The moment you say to someone, I want you to do this 100 times, what are they really thinking about? Volume. They're saying, okay, I'm at repetition 78. I'm at 80, 20 more to go. Their primary thought process is on numbers. That's not the point of drilling. The point is skill acquisition. When people drill, don't get them focused on numbers, get them focused on mechanics. That's what they have to worry about. I never have my students drill for numbers ever. Just one, two, three, get the fuck out of here. Are you kidding me? How are you gonna get better with that? Okay, get them working on the sense of gaining knowledge. That's my job. I have to give them knowledge. I have to explain to them what they're trying to do. That starts them on the right track. But knowledge is one thing, skill is another. If jiu-jitsu was just about knowledge, then all the 60 and 70 year old red belts will be the world champions. They're not. Jiu-Jitsu isn't won by knowledge, it's won by skill. Knowledge is the first step in building skill. So my job as a coach is to transmit knowledge. Then I have to create training programs with a path from knowledge to polished skill is carried out. That's the interface between me and my students. And so I give them drills where the whole emphasis is upon getting a sense where they understand what are the problems they're trying to solve and working towards practical solutions. They never work with numbers. They work with mechanics and feel. Then you have to bring in the idea of progression. When you drill, there's zero resistance. When you fight in competition, there's 100% resistance. You can't go from zero to 100. There has to be progress over time where I have them work in drills with slightly increasing increments of resistance. And just as we talked about earlier with the weightlifter who doesn't start with 500 pounds, but who begins with the bar, and then over time builds the skills that one day out there in the future, he will lift 500 pounds. So too, that Judy Guittami that you're working on today is feeble and pathetic, but five years from now, you'll win a world championship with it. You can't have this naive idea of drilling. It's something you just come out, you randomly pick a move, and you work for numbers until you're satisfied a certain set of numbers that your coach threw at you, and then think you're gonna get better. There's even dangers with drilling. There is no performance increase that comes once you get to a certain level and you just keep doing the same damn thing. Let's say, for example, you come out and you hit a hundred repetitions of the Amba Judy Gitami from guard position and you're all proud of yourself because you hit a hundred repetitions and your body's tired and you're telling yourself, man, I got a good workout. And you come in tomorrow, you do exactly the same thing. You come in the day after that and a week goes by and you've done the same thing. Then a year later, you do the same thing. Ask yourself, Has your Judy Gitami really gotten better? No. You've performed literally thousands and thousands of repetitions. You've spent an enormous amount of training time and energy that could have gone in different directions on something which didn't make you any better. Drills have diminishing returns. Once you get to a certain skill level, if you just keep hammering on the same thing, in the same fashion, for the same amount of time, you stop getting better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I, partially for fun, partially for dollars, but partially because I actually believe this to push back on some points. Is it possible? So everything you said, I think is beautiful and correct, but, The asking yourself the question, am I getting better is a really important one. You could do that in training. Is there a set of techniques, maybe a small subset of all the techniques that are in jujitsu where you can have significant skill acquisition? if you put in the numbers or the time, whatever, on a technique against an opponent who's not resisting. Let me elaborate. Maybe I'm different. You'll probably have to furnish an example. Yes. Let me first make a general statement, then I can give examples. The general statement is, I found that through repetitions, and this is high repetitions, combined with training, but high repetitions against a non-resisting opponent, I've gotten to understand the way my body moves, the way I apply pressure on a human, because it's not actually zero resistance. The opponent's still laying there. They're still keeping their legs up. They're still doing, they might not be resisting, but they're still creating a structure, a non-dynamic structure. They're presenting a target. Yes, it's not dynamic, so you can't master the timing of things, but you can master the, not master, but I felt like I could gain an understanding of how to apply pressure to the human body over thousands of repetitions. For example, just to give you an example to know what we're talking about. There's a guy named Salo Heberro and Shanji Heberro that have this, I guess, I already forgot, but headquarters position or something like that, but putting pressure as you pass guard, like medium passing distance kind of pressure. I've did thousands of repetitions of that to understand what putting pressure with my hips feels like, to truly understand that movement. I felt like I was getting much better. It's hard to put into words, but that skill acquisition is so subtle, just the way you turn your hips." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you're already talking about a better form of drilling now. You're going beyond the basic numbers and you're getting the sense of feel and mechanics, which is what we want in drilling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the reason I say numbers, and maybe you could speak to this, but this might be an OCD thing, but It allows you to take a journey that doesn't just last a week or two weeks, but a journey where you stay with the technique for two, three years. And there's a dedication to it, where it's a long-term commitment to where you're forcing yourself, perhaps there's other mechanisms, but you're forcing yourself to stay with a technique longer than most people around you are staying with whatever they're working on. And you're taking that long journey. And the numbers somehow enforce that persistence and that dedication." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First thing, that journey's a wonderful thing. And if that technique is a crucial part of what you do, then it's time well invested. But always understand that it comes at an opportunity cost. That by spending that amount of time on that one technique, you've sacrificed other things that you could have learned that could have won you matches. So understand that every, focus upon one element of the game comes at the opportunity cost of other elements. Now, as long as you're playing a part of the game where, okay, this is central to what I do, okay, that's fine. But just be aware of the danger of opportunity cost. That's something no one talks about in the training room, but it becomes very important. Secondly, the other question you have to start asking yourself is, okay, that training clearly had benefits for you early on. But when the point of diminishing return starts coming, and if you feel you're just doing the same thing, then it's time to switch. Now, if you feel you're still getting benefit from it, by all means, continue. That will be a call on your part. You've been playing this game a long time now, so I would trust your call on that. But my job as a coach is to look out and say, okay, this kid's been working cross-ashigurami for six months. And I feel he's gotten to a good skill level. If he stays any further on it, the opportunity cost becomes greater than the expected benefits of continuing. And that's my job as a coach, is to direct things in that fashion. If I can do a good job with that, then I can take them to the next level of drilling and start amping it up. And that's how I keep progress over time. My biggest fear is to have students run past the point of diminishing returns, staying stagnant, where opportunity cost comes in and they're not making the progress they could in the time that they've been working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it was almost a philosophical question for me. That's what I was always in a search on, because I know my mind likes drilling. I don't like relying on other people for improvement. And drilling allows me to do something that is 100% me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's interesting, Lex. You say you don't like relying on other people in drilling, but in drilling, you really do rely a lot on your partner. One of the first things I do when I coach people is I teach them how to drill. That's a skill in itself and drilling is in a sense the opposite of sparring. Drilling is a cooperative venture where you work as dance partners complementing each other's movement. If I drill with Gordon Ryan and I want him to work armbars, I will move my body in ways which make it an interesting exercise for Gordon. I'm not just sitting there and he does a repetition and I'm, okay, he does 10. I can't wait for this to be over so I can do my 10 and I can't wait for all this to be over so we can just spar and get over with all this bullshit. That's the sad truth of most drilling in jiu-jitsu. There's a sense in which when good people drill, it's like watching good people dance. They move in unison and complement each other's movement and make each other look better. Sparring, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that. That's resistance, where you're trying to make the other person look as bad as possible. And once you understand the different directions in which drilling and sparring go, that's when things start getting interesting. You start getting fast progress." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, just, you're absolutely right. I think I was not very eloquent describing what I mean. I found myself not able to find in Jiu-Jitsu too many people that are willing to dedicate a huge amount of time to a particular technique." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I concur with you on that, Lex. Now, answer the interesting question. Why? Why can't you get people to drill with you?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, if I could just shout out the people that did drill with me is usually blue belt women because they're smaller. They don't like training because they get their ass kicked because they're much smaller. So they're willing to invest a significant amount of effort into training." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's good, but their motivation for doing so is not good. And your motivation for drilling is because you don't want to get your ass kicked." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No black belt. Ever. I could never find a black belt that I could drill with like this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now let's go back to that question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why? I don't know. I am somebody who likes to say nice things about people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me answer for you. Two reasons. Because they find it boring. And secondly, perhaps more importantly, they don't believe it works. Yeah, those are good answers. And now let's go further and ask the truly interesting question. Why do they believe that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I were to answer it in the context of Russian wrestling where drilling is much bigger part is I think culturally that was knowledge that everybody tells each other in jiu-jitsu that drilling" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "doesn't work because they're never taught how to drill. No one ever sits you down one day and says, okay, this is how you drill. And so the exercise feels futile. They don't feel their skill level is going up. They don't associate drilling with increased skill level. They associate sparring with increased skill level, but not drilling, which is a tragedy, because it is a fantastic way to introduce and expand the repertoire of a developing student. It's an essential part of every workout I teach. I always say that game of jiu-jitsu begins with knowledge and builds up to skill. Who wins is the one who has greater skill, and nine times out of ten. So to me, it's a tragedy that what you're saying breaks my heart to hear that you couldn't get a black belt to drill with you. That's shameful. But I understand, I sympathize with those black belts too, because the way in which most people are told to drill does feel ineffective and it is damn boring. They'd rather just spar. They feel like they get more out of the workout. And that's, if anything, an indictment upon most of the training programs around the nation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you say that drilling if you were to build a black belt world champion? would drilling be, what percent of their training, in the entirety of their career would be drilling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Great question. Let's first put a proviso on it that I don't do the same thing for all athletes. Everyone's got a different personality. And like Nicky Rod, I can only hold his attention for two minutes at a time. And Gary Tonin, five minutes. Gordon Ryan, five hours. George St. Pierre, five hours. Trevor Stephens, five hours. They are just laser focused. So everyone's different. Let's put that down as our first proviso. You probably knew those answers already." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. That's hilarious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But as a general rule, if I run a two and a half hour class, you can expect an hour and a half of it to be I'm gonna use the word drilling, but I'm also gonna say that this is too complex of a story to give now with words. I would need to demonstrate it. But the way in which we drill is not your standard method of drilling. And then it's into sparring. But if you give me a choice between a bad drilling partner and sparring, I could make the same choice that most black belts make, which I would go with sparring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you can create drilling within the sparring environment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like good drilling is a wonderful thing. Bad drilling is just a worthless waste of time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, before I have a million questions for you, but I have to ask, we've described the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu. Can we describe the principles, the fundamentals of one of the interesting systems you've developed, which is the leg lock system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Anything in particular, or just like a general understanding of what are some of the major principles of it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's like me coming to Miyamoto Musashi and asking, can you describe the principles of sword fighting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're too generous. Let's start off with some context. When I began the sport of jiu-jitsu, I was taught a fairly classical approach to jiu-jitsu, which leg locks were a part of it, but not an emphasized part of it. The overall culture of the time, this is the mid-1990s, the overall culture of the time saw leg locks as largely ineffective. We were told that against good opposition, they just didn't work very well. They were low percentage techniques. We were also told that they were tactically unsound because if you ever attempted them and you lost control of the leg lock, your opponent would end up on top of you or in some kind of good position and you'd be in terrible trouble. And we were also told that they were unsafe, that if they were applied in the gym, there'd be far too many injuries and people would be badly hurt. And that was the received wisdom of that time. And so I didn't even work with them at all. And they would be shown occasionally in the gym and you'd learn them, you'd drill them. But in the sparring, I showed no interest. You probably know that change when I met the great American grappler Dean Lister, who early in his career was using Achilles locks with considerable success. I met him in the gym, wonderful fellow. Achilles locks is like a straight full lock. Yes, that's correct. He went on to become a heel hooker and win 280 CCs later on in his career. We never met again after that. that opened some doors of inquiry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And... Well, he asked this first principles question is why would you only use half the body in a game that involves the human body?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Perfect sense. So that opened doors to inquiry. And if you looked around the Jiu-Jitsu world at that time, the number of specialized leg lockers was very small. And most of them were from outside of conventional jiu-jitsu. For example, you could look around and see people like Romina Sato had sharp leg locks for that time period, the 1990s. So they were out there, they existed. And you'd see people like Ken Shamrock would use heel hooks in competition and he had some good success with them. When I began experimenting in the gym, fairly soon certain truths started to become evident. And the most important of these can be understood very quickly and they were relatively easy to discover. The first was that most people, when they went to understand and study leg-locking, And when I talk about leg locking, I'm gonna talk about one specific type, which is the most high percentage type. This is leg locks, which are performed with entanglements of your opponent's legs with your legs. There are other forms of leg lock, but these are relatively low percentage and don't figure heavily in competition, so I'll ignore them. Most people made no distinction between the mechanism of control versus the mechanism of breaking. The heel hook is what ultimately breaks the ankle. But the mechanism of control is the entanglement of your legs to your opponent's legs. The Japanese term, ashigurami, literally just means like leg entanglement. It's a generic term. It could apply to any form of entanglement. There are many options. My idea was, let's focus on the entanglement first and worry about the breaking mechanism second. This was analogous to the idea of position before submission, only you couldn't talk about it in terms of conventional positions because Ashigurami doesn't really fit into the traditional hierarchies, positional hierarchies of Jujutsu. So the conversation was switched from position to submission to control to submission. Wrapping two of your legs around one of your opponent's legs gives you many different options. You can do it with your feet on the outside, so-called 50-50 variations. You can do it with your feet on the inside and form what we call inside foot position. There's pros and cons to both. There's also methods of harmonizing the two. So you have one foot on the inside and one foot on the outside. You can do it with a straight leg where you heel hook from the outside or you can bring the leg across your center line and heel hook from the inside. You will start to notice as you work through these different variations that some present advantages over others. All of them come at a price to some degree. regardless of which Ashigurami option you use, there will be some degree of foot exposure on my part to my opponent and some degree of back exposure on my part relative to my opponent. So that's the downside of it. Variations within those different Ashigurami enable you to lessen danger in some respects and at the price of gaining dangers in others. So you get this wide array of choices. There's not this kind of simplistic hierarchy that you see in the basic positions of jiu jitsu, but there are hierarchies. I do, for example, generally favor inside heel hooks over outside heel hooks. If I feel my opponent is very good at exposing my back while I'm in Ashigurami, I generally prefer 50-50 situations. If I believe my opponent is very good at counter leg locks, I generally prefer my feet on the inside, working with variations of inside Senkaku, etc. So there are broad heuristic rules that we can give to work in these situations. Once you start to understand there's a variety of entanglements you can use, then you start getting to the really interesting ideas that as you perform one given attack, one given heel hook, you can flow through different forms of Ashigurami where you can create new dangers and avoid possible pitfalls in a very short time frame as you switch from one Ashigurami to another over time, so that as your opponent's lines of resistance to an initial attack change, you can accommodate those by switching to another form of Ashigurami, so that your mechanism of control is always pointing in opposite directions of his escape. And if you focus on this idea of control through the legs, you can completely change the nature of leg locking and take it away from what it was in the 1990s, an opportunistic method of attack based upon surprise, speed, and power into one based on control. If you can do this, you can undermine many of the basic criticisms of leg locking which were prevalent when I began the sport of jiu-jitsu. For example, If I can completely control and immobilize you, I can perform the lock very, very safely. If my only way of breaking your leg is to be faster and more powerful than you, nine times out of ten, when I apply it, I'm going to hurt your leg as much by accident as anything. But if I can completely immobilize you, and as every attempt you make to escape, I can follow you and immobilize you in new directions, then I can apply the lock with as much force or as little force as possible. And so you'll see in our training room, despite over a considerably more than two decades, sorry, a decade and a half now of hee hawking using these methods. The number of people severely injured by heel hooks is tiny. I would say I've seen more people injured by far by Kimuras in the time I've been training than I have by heel hooks, despite them having a similar twisting dynamic to them. If you build a culture where people focus on control rather than speed of execution, then the injury rate goes down appreciably. The whole idea of positional loss. Everyone was critical of leglocks. If you go for leglocks and they don't work, well, now you're in trouble. The guy's going to be on top of you. They never make that criticism with armbars. Okay, you can be in a mounted position, go for an armbar, end up on bottom, lose the armbar and lose position, but I've never heard anyone criticize armbars on that account. More importantly, I believed from early on that the best place to attack leg locks is not top position. It's bottom position. You'll see that over 90% of my athletes attack leg locks from underneath people, not on top of people. So there is no positional loss. You're already underneath them. And so that criticism was null and void. And by focusing on this idea of breaking down and distinguishing between the mechanism of control and the mechanism of breaking, that created something new and something interesting. There was also another advantage that I had in terms of creating influence with leg locking. When you look at the great leg lockers of the past, they were basically iconoclasts. They were people who came out of nowhere who just had this remarkable success with leg locks. But they were just seen as unique individuals. They had their game and they were good at it. What was unique about the squad is you had not just one person, but a team of people who came out and did pretty much the same thing. These people had very different body types and very different personalities. So it wasn't that one kind of body type was good at it. You had tall people like Gordon Ryan. You had short people like Nicky Ryan. You had someone in the middle like Gary Tonin. You had fast people like Gary Tonin. You had slow people like Gordon. There were, there was every kind of body type involved. And it was like, people could see this was different because it... it worked for an entire team as opposed to a unique individual who had unique attributes. And that started to foster the belief that if it can work for a team, it can work for anyone, which means it can work for me. And I think that had a big effect. That's why I owe a lot to those early students, Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonin, Eddie Cummings, and Nikki Ryan. Those four kids came from nowhere. Gary had some success in grappling, like low-level success in grappling before becoming a full-time member of the squad, but the others were just nobodies who no one had known, and yet within a five-year timeframe, they were all going up against world championship competition and doing exceedingly well, which gives further credence to the idea of the five-year program. And I think by operating as a team, those young men did an incredible job of convincing the grappling world that this wasn't just about, well, they're just different or they're, it works for their body type or them as individuals. It was like, no, if a team can do it, anyone can do it. And I think that's what really convinced people that this was something worth studying. This is something that could be a big part of their lives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it also convinced you and convinced each other in those early days when you're developing the science. Essentially what was missing is an entire science and system of leg locks. Because it's not like you, knew for sure that there's a lot here to be discovered in terms of control. You perhaps hadn't, just like you said, an initial intuition, but you have to have enough, there's perseverance required to take, it's a Johnny Ive thing to take from the initial idea to an entire system. Is there a sense you have about how complicated and how big this world of control in leg locks is, how complicated is it? You've achieved a lot of success. You have a lot of powerful ideas in terms of inside, outside, what's high percentage, what's not, what's high reward, what's low risk, all those kinds of things. And then you also mentioned kind of transitions, not transitions, but how you move with your opponent to resist their escape, through control. How much do you understand about this world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is a fascinating question. As a general rule, the most powerful developments are always at the onset of a project. Okay, let's give an example. The jet engine was I believe first conceived in the late 1930s, just around the time of World War II. It was developed with great pace because of World War II, obviously military research was a huge thing back then, and first fielded, I believe, by the Germans in around 1943. Jet aircraft didn't play a big role in World War II. They were there at the end and they did play a significant role, but in terms of numbers, they just weren't there. So by around 1945, you had the onset of the jet age and the jet engine began to replace the piston engine in most aircraft. It was the new way of doing things. If you look at the pace of development of jet engine aircraft technology from 1945 to 1960, it is unbelievable. There was a solid decade where they were gaining almost 100 miles an hour per year for a decade. That's a form of growth that I mean, in the world of engineering, the only time you see growth like that is in things like Bitcoin, and that's about it. Let's put things in perspective. In World War II, the standard US aircraft bomber was the B-17, which was a mid-sized bomber with a fairly limited load capacity and, I think, top speed well below 300 miles an hour. Just 10 years later, you had the B-52, which could fly across continents and deliver nuclear weapons and carry bomb loads of up to 70,000 pounds. In a decade, that happened. If you took a B-17 pilot in 1943 and put them inside a B-52 a decade later, he would literally think he was on a UFO, a ship from another planet. That was the speed of development. Now contrast that with the speed of modern development. If I took you in a time machine and I put you in a civil airliner in 1972, let's say a Boeing 737, it's not that different from what you fly in today. That's right. Flies at the same speed, has the same range, flies at the same altitude. It's not that different. The amount of progress between 1973 and 2020 isn't very impressive, but the amount of progress from 1945 to 1955, or even better, 1960, was staggering. And so the initial progress tends to be meteoric, but after that, it tends to be incremental." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You see that with leg logs. There's a guy named Elon Musk, there's been almost no development in terms of space. rocket propulsion and rocket launches and going out into orbit or going out into deep space, and one guy comes along, one John Donaher type character, and says, it doesn't make sense why we don't use reusable rockets, why we don't make them much cheaper, why we don't launch every week as opposed to every few years. It doesn't make any sense why we don't go to the moon again over and over and over. It doesn't make any sense why we don't go to Mars and colonize Mars. it feels like it's not just a single jump to a B52, it's a series of these kinds of jumps. So the question is, is there another leap within the leg locking system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Time will tell. I do believe that we're in a phase now where the really big jumps have already been made and we're in the incremental phase at this point. What I do believe is that you'll start to see new directions start to emerge, where you start to see the interface between leg locking and wrestling, for example, the interface between leg locking and back attacks, and that will provide new avenues of direction, which will create new spurts of growth. But in terms of breaking people's legs, just the simple act of breaking legs. I believe we're in the incremental phase now rather than the meteoric phase." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you a ridiculous question. How hard is it to actually break a leg? Is this something you think about? I remember, because I'm a big fan of the straight foot lock. Not, again, we're talking about to the standing Seinagi. Maybe it's my Russian roots with samba or something like that. Maybe it's the Dean Lister Achilles lock. But I love, maybe it's my body, something like that. I just love the squeeze of it, the control and the power of a straight foot lock. And I remember trying to, there's a few people in competition that didn't want to tap. And I remember in particular, there was one person, it was again, a finals match, purple belt. I remember it was a straight foot lock, it was perfect. Everything just perfect. And I remember going all in and there was a pop, pop, pop. and I couldn't do anything more. It wasn't breaking. It was just bending and bending and bending and there's damage to it of some kind, but I wanted to like, you know, I wanted to see, first of all, it's very difficult psychologically because it's like, can I be violent here? That was in the whole nother thing. With adrenaline, you can't really think that fast. But I also thought like, where else is there to go? Like, is it the shin going to break? What is supposed to break?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I wonder that. In the case of the Achilles lock, it's going to be the anterior tibialis tendon. What's that? It runs down, there's two of them. It'll be the minor one that runs on the outside of the front of the ankle. It's not going to be the Achilles tendon. A lot of people promulgate this absurdity. The Achilles tendon can rupture, but not from pressure. Is it the tendon or the bone that's going to break? The bone won't break. I have seen on one occasion a shin bone break from an Achilles lock. But there was an enormous size and strength disparity. And there may have been other complicating factors too. But in the vast majority of cases, the Achilles lock doesn't really do tremendous damage. It can do significant damage. You'll definitely feel it the next day. But of all the major locks, it's the one where it is most likely a psychologically strong opponent will be able to absorb damage and go on to win a match. In answer to your first question, how difficult is it to break a leg? Not very difficult. come down to what is the skill level of my opponent's resistance. If your opponent is not resisting and you have an inside heel hook, it is absurdly easy to break a man's leg. Not a challenge at all. You can be a 105-pound woman, could easily snap the relevant knee ligaments in a 240-pound man's leg if he doesn't know how to defend himself. That's an easy thing, very easy to accomplish. The basic answer is yes, it's very easy. If your opponent does know how to defend and they can position their foot, play tricks of lever and fulcrum, it becomes significantly more difficult. It becomes still more difficult under match conditions where they're actively looking to position their body and work their way out of the lock, then it can become very difficult indeed. Always bear in mind that there have been some cases in our history as a team where people have literally just let their knees snap and continue fighting. Always remember that submission is a choice when it comes to the joint locks. And we've had some people who just made the choice that I'm willing to let my knee break so that I can continue in this match. That's a tough decision to make. And I admire their bravery." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something about that, just to speak to that, that you admire?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. It's mental toughness. Would I agree with it? Would I advocate it? No. But that doesn't mean I can't admire aspects of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who is the greatest grappler ever?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You were very astute in the way you asked that question. You didn't say the greatest jiu-jitsu player of all time, you specified grappler. What's the bigger category? Jiu-jitsu is the bigger category. Jiu-jitsu has four faces. There is gi competition, there is no-gi competition, there is mixed martial arts competition, and there is self-defense. So jiu-jitsu has four aspects. Grappling typically refers only to the no-gi aspect of jiu-jitsu, so it's one out of four possibilities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So who's the greatest jiu-jitsu practitioner ever, and then who is the greatest grappler ever?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I believe that the greatest jiu-jitsu player, certainly that I ever met, and I believe of all time, I don't want to sound arrogant on that because really you can only go with your own experiences and there are some great athletes that other people mentioned that I just never met. But in my estimation, the greatest jiu-jitsu player is Roger Gracie. My reasoning for that is Out of the four faces of jiu-jitsu, he excelled in three. And in two of them in particular, he was the best of his generation by a landslide. In gi grappling, no-gi grappling, Hodger dominated his generation to a degree that is truly impressive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you attribute that dominance to, by the way? Is there something, if you were to analyze him?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Fascinating question, I'll come back to it. In mixed martial arts, he was at his peak, I believe ranked in the top 10 in the world of mixed martial arts. He wasn't the best in mixed martial arts, the way he was in grappling, but he was damn good. and he beat some significant people. So he showed tremendous versatility. Gi, no gi, mixed martial arts. He's not really known in the world of self-defense, but there's no real criteria by which you would become dominant in self-defense. So that's kind of a, you can't really judge people by that. Believe me, if Hodja got into a fight in the street, I'm sure he would do just fine. So I have no concerns about that. So I would say that if you look at Jiu-Jitsu for what I believe it is, a sport with four faces, I believe you have to go with Roger Gracie as the one who went out and empirically proved his ability to go across those elements and do extraordinarily well. in all of them. He even made the extraordinary step of coming out of retirement and beating the best of the generation that came after him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, that's a truly difficult feat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And a sport which progresses very, very rapidly, that's a truly impressive accomplishment. If you ask the question, who is the greatest grappler that I've ever seen, I would say I've never seen anyone better than Gordon Ryan. Now, people are gonna jump when I give these two names. They're gonna say, well, Danaher, you're close friends with Hodger and you're close friends with Gordon, so you're biased. I can't answer them to that. It's true, I'm good friends with both of them. I'm also a notoriously cold and unemotional person, and I'm saying this based upon things that I've observed. If I honestly believed that I'd seen other people who were better, I would have said it. Will that convince the people who criticize me of bias? Probably not. But those are the two names that I will mention." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it's an uncontroversial statement to say that Gordon Ryan is one of the greatest grappler ever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Gordon is obviously a very polarizing figure and people tend to react to Gordon on an emotional level rather than a statistical level. And that colors a lot of people's minds. But I also have the benefit that I've seen both of these guys extensively in the gym, and that adds a whole new perspective. If you think those guys are dominant on the stage, wait till you see them in the gym. It's even a different level of domination, above and beyond what they did in competition. Have they trained against each other in the gym? No, they never trained together. They've been in the same gym, I think, only on one occasion. When Hodger was stopped by New York, he came by to say hello, and Gordon was here at the time. They shake hands, they know each other, and they're both wonderful people in their own way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I'd like to talk to you about Gordon Hodger and George GSP. Let's first talk about what do you think, because it's very different from my perspective, maybe you can correct me, but very different artists, masters of their pursuits. So what makes Hodger so good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hodger was probably the, living embodiment of someone who played a classical jiu-jitsu game based around the fundamental four steps of jiu-jitsu. If you took someone who had taken introduction lessons in Jujutsu for three months, they would recognize the outlines of Hojo's game with many of the techniques they learned in those first three months. Hojo was the best example of the dichotomy between the fundamentals of Jujutsu, but also a kind of hidden sophistication underneath those fundamentals. People always say, you know, Hodge's game was so basic. No, the outlines of Hodge's game were basic, but the degree of sophistication and the application was extraordinary. And his ability to refine existing technology was truly impressive. I never saw anyone in his generation that even came close to his ability, both in competition and in the gym." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people who don't know, Hajo Gracie basically used, just like you said, very simple techniques on the surface, from the outsider's perspective, that most people learn when they start jiu-jitsu, like passing guard in a very simple way, taking mount and choking from mount. Also, when he's on his back, his closed guard and all the basic submissions from closed guard, armbar and triangle. And just, that's it. And being able to dominate, shut down, and submit. So control and submit the best people in the world for many, many years, just like you said. including coming out of retirement and beating the best, perhaps by far the best of the next generation. So that just kind of lays out the story. Is there some lessons about his systems that you learn in developing your own system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Excellent question. The thing which always impressed me the most about Hodja was his relentless pursuit of position to submission. Everything was done with the belief that no victory was worthwhile if it didn't involve submitting his opponent. That's a mindset that I try very, very hard to imbue in my students. The easiest path to victory in jiu-jitsu is the one which takes the least risk. So for example, you will see many modern athletes focus on scoring the first point or the first advantage and then doing the minimum amount of work to Eek out a victory once they've done that. They get a small tactical advantage, they realize they're ahead, take no more risks, and just do the minimum amount of work to get the victory. Hodger's mindset was always to take the riskier gambit of submission, which entails a lot more work, and in many cases, a lot more skill. What I always liked about Hodger is he never tried to play tactics. It was always just go out there and try to win by submission. And that more than anything, that mindset of looking for the most perfect victory rather than the victory that takes the least skill and the least effort is probably the thing I took from his career the most and tried to work upon in my students." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I always wonder what are the little details he's doing under there when he's in mount, the little adjustments, but perhaps that's like almost indescribable, the details of that control. What makes Gordon Ryan the greatest grappler of all time so good?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With Gordon, he's also very strong on fundamentals, all of my students are, but he's also obviously a member of a new generation of Nogi grapplers that also bring in technologies that weren't really emphasized in previous generations specifically. prolific use of lower body attacks, especially from bottom position. This means that he can play a game between upper body and lower body, which was not really a part of Hodge's game. Nonetheless, you will also see significant similarities. He's got a very strong and crushing passing game to mount, and a very strong and crushing passing game to the back. you will see that the major differences between the two are from bottom position. Hodge's bottom game is essentially based around his close guard. Gordon Ryan's game is based around his butterfly guard. So one is based on outside control and one is based on inside control. one focuses almost entirely on the classical notion of getting past the legs to the upper body, and the other one works between the two as alternatives, and sees them as competing alternatives, where the stronger you become at one, the more your opponent has to overreact and become vulnerable to the second. So they have strong similarities in top position, but are very different in bottom." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He has, from an outsider's perspective, a calm to him. in the heat of battle that's like, that's inspiring and confusing. Is there something you could speak to the psychological aspect of Gordon Ryan? Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "People will talk all day about sports psychology and they will often have heated arguments as to what's the right psychological state to be in when you go out to compete. I've never seen any one school of thought which gave noticeably better sports performance than another. I've never seen any psychological mindset proved to be reliably more efficient or effective than another. I've seen fighters that were scared out of their minds when they went out every time to fight, and yet they were very successful. I've seen fighters go out who were relaxed and calm, and they too can be successful. I've seen both mindsets win. I've seen both mindsets lose. I've seen every extreme between them. What I generally recommend with regards your mind and preparation going in, find what works for you. Everyone's different. Don't try to give a one size fits all in something as vague and confusing as the human mind. Having said that, my preference, I don't force it on people because everyone's different, but my preference is to try and advocate for a mindset of unexceptionalism. Most people see competition as something exceptional. It's not your everyday grappling session. You train 300 times for every time you compete. And so they see competition as something exceptional, different, scarier or nerve-wracking. There's a crowd watching, there's cameras. My reputation is on the line. I'm going to be observed and judged. And so they see it as this exceptional event. My general preference is to see it as an unexceptional event, to see everything else, the noise, the cameras, the crowd, as illusions. The only reality is a stage, an opponent on the other side of it, and a referee adjudicating you. and to make it as unexceptional as possible. Gordon does an extraordinarily good job of doing that. Gordon looks more tense in most of his training sessions than he does in his competitions, because he knows his training partners are typically better than the people he's actually going out to compete against. And you see it in his demeanor. It's one of just complete calm. It also goes back to what we talked about earlier about the power of escapes. Gordon Ryan is almost impossible to control for extended periods of time in most of the inferior positions in the sport and most of the submissions. So he goes out in the full knowledge that the worst case scenario isn't that bad for him. And so nothing could really go that badly wrong. He can always recover from any given mistake and go on to victory. When you believe those things, you can have a calm demeanor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "then if you look at somebody who is quite a bit different than that, George St. Pierre, who at least in the way he describes it, he's basically exceptionally anxious and terrified approaching a fight, and he loves training. And hates fighting. And hates fighting. And just like you said, he made it work for him. But he's somebody, he speaks very highly of you, he's worked with you quite a bit in training. And you've studied him, you've worked with him, you've coached him." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Interestingly, I've actually coached George for twice the length of any of the squad members. So my knowledge of him is far greater than it is for the contemporary squad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you speak to what makes George St-Pierre, who I think, even though I'm Russian and a little bit partial towards Fedor and the Russians, but I think he is in the four categories you mentioned, the greatest mixed martial artist of all time. What makes him so good? His approach, his techniques, his mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "His approach is certainly part of it. George started mixed martial arts at a time when The sport was in a pretty wild phase. It was illegal to show on most American TV networks and there was talk about it being banned as a sport. In his native Canada, it was banned. You could only fight on Indian reservations in Canada. I believe his first fight may have been on an Indian reservation. So the sport at that stage was very much in its infancy and it's probably fair to say that most of the athletes involved in the sport came from a training program that would probably be described as unprofessional in the contemporary scene. George is one of a handful of people who started approaching the sport in a truly professional fashion. It was like, okay, here's what great athletes in other sports do. I'm going to try to emulate that. his ability to invest in himself. In my own experience, for example, George, when I first met him, was a garbage man. And he would jump on a bus from Montreal to New York. Now, that's a long bus ride. He would come down on a Friday afternoon when he finished work as a garbage man, stay for the weekend, and then late on Sunday night, he would jump on a bus all the way back to Montreal and work as a garbage man. That's an extraordinary commitment. for a young man to make. And George was a blue belt at the time, and so he would come down and, you know, we had a very talented room, so he didn't do well in the room when he first came in. He was inexperienced in jiu-jitsu and The people who went against were considerably better than him at jiu-jitsu. So imagine investing 25% of your weekly income, maybe even more, New York's an expensive town, 50%, to come down and just get your ass kicked. Month by month. Yeah, that says a lot about who he is. That tells you a lot. First of all, let's talk about the whole idea of delayed gratification here. I mean, that's a guy who's saying, like, this is highly unpleasant, but I have a vision of myself in the future. and I have to go through this extreme case of delayed gratification to get to that distant goal, which may never happen. And that's a level of commitment and self-belief which is just extraordinary. I always laugh when people say, you know, George was afraid, so he was mentally weak. No, that's a very, very shallow understanding of mental strength and weakness. George felt anxiety. But let's understand from the start, there's different kinds of mental strength. And the most important kind isn't whether you feel fear or don't feel fear before you step into fight. The most important form of mental strength is discipline and training. That's where most people break. I know dozens of people who are fearless to fight, but you couldn't get them to come into the gym for three months in a row and work on skills. So they're mentally strong one way, they don't feel fear, but they're mentally weak in another, which is to instill the discipline which keeps you on a road to progress over time. That's much tougher than not feeling fear before you go out to fight. Understand also that when George talks about fear, he's not afraid of his opponent. He's afraid of failure. He's got high standards. Someone who's got high standards can change the world. His standards were very, very high. That's what he was afraid of. He wasn't afraid of his opponents. And it's always been a misinterpretation. He wasn't mentally weak, he was mentally strong as an ox. To stay in his training regimen year after year after year, and do so while he became one of the first stars in mixed martial arts to actually make money. And it gets tough to stay in the training gym with people who are young and hungry and want to punch you in the face. You're coming out of a luxury room, living in finery towards the end of his career and still training as hard as ever. That's an impressive thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And always he valued perfection and you're right, the fear was not achieving the perfection. Is there something you've observed about the way he approaches training that stands out to you? Or is it simply the dedication?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's never just about dedication. There's lots of dedicated people in the world, but most of them are unsuccessful. If you want to be the best in the world at anything, you have to do out of the many skills of whatever industry you're in, You have to take at least one of those skills and be the best in the world at it. There's many skills in mixed martial arts, but George identified one skill, which is the skill of striking to takedowns. He calls it shootboxing. Shootboxing was barely even a category of skill when George began. It was just the idea that wrestlers grab people and took them down the same way they did in wrestling and you threw some punches before you did it. George largely pioneered the science of creating an interface between striking and takedowns. He did it at a time where no one else before him had made it into a system or a science. He did it largely on his own. And I've always said George is the only athlete that I ever coached who taught me more than I taught him. And almost single-handedly he created this strong sense of shoot boxing as a science, which enabled him throughout his career to determine where the fight would take place. Would it be standing or would it be on the ground? And that more than anything else was the defining characteristic of his success. I will always be I'm immensely impressed by his accomplishment in that regard. He was an innovator. He did things differently. This is such an important point. You can't go out there in combat sports and do the same things that everybody else is doing and expect to get different results. Life doesn't work that way. If you want to be dominant, you've got to find one important part of the sport, and preferably more than one, and be the best in the world at it. You can't be weak at anything. But you can't be strong at everything either. Life's not long enough for us to develop a truly complete skill set. So you've got to be good at everything, and you've got to be the best at at least one thing. And George was the best at two in his era. He was the best at striking to takedowns, and he was the best at integrating striking and grappling on the floor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you a completely ridiculous question, but it's a fascinating one for me from an engineering and a scientific perspective. When I look at a sport, really any problem, one way to ask how difficult is this problem is to see how can I build a machine that competes with a human being at that problem? You can look at chess, you can look at soccer, RoboCup. and then you can look at grappling. There's something about when you start to think, how would I build an AI system, a robot that defeats somebody like a Gordon Ryan? where it forces you to really think about formalizing this art as an engineering discipline. In the same way you do, but you still have some art injected in there. There is no space for art when you actually have to build the system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's not a ridiculous question. That's a damn interesting question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's put aside, like I mentioned, with the Boston Dynamics robots, what people don't realize is the amount of power they can deliver is huge. So let's take that weapon aside, just the amount of force you're able to deliver." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'm glad you're specifying that. So essentially your question is, OK, can Can a talented group of engineers create a robot which could defeat Gordon Ryan? On the face of it, as you just pointed out, that's the easiest project in the world. Just create a robot that carries a 9mm automatic and shoot him five times in the chest. That's it. Gordon Ryan's done. That's not the interesting question. The interesting question, and if I understand you correctly, is If we had the ability to create a robot whose physical powers were identical to Gordon Ryan, not inferior and not superior, what would it take to create a mind inside that robot that would beat Gordon Ryan in the majority of matches?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and there's two ways to build AI systems. This is true for autonomous driving, for example, which has been quite contested recently. So one is you basically, one way to describe is you have a giant set of rules. It's like this tree of rules where you apply a different condition. When there's a pattern you see, you apply a rule and they're hard-coded in. You basically get like a John Donner type of character who tries to encode, hard-code into the system all the moves you should do in every single case. Of course, you can't actually do that fully, so you're going to be taking shortcuts, what are called heuristics, just a basic kind of generalizations, and apply your own expertise as an expert of, in this case, grappling, to see how that can be encoded as a rule. Now, the other approach, Elon Musk and Tesla are taking this approach, which is called machine learning, which is... create a basic framework of the kind of things you should be observing, and what are the measures, metrics of success, and then just observe and see which things lead to success, more success, and which lead to less success. And there's a delta. When you see a thing, first of all, the way machine learning works is you predict, you see a position, or you see a situation, and then you predict how good that is, and then you watch how it actually turns out, and if it's worse or better, you adjust your expectations. And through that process, you can learn quite a lot. The challenges, and this might be a very true challenge in grappling, is in driving, you can't crash. So there's a physical world. In chess, for example, where this approach has been exceptionally successful, you can work in simulation. So you can have AI system that, for example, as in the case with AlphaZero by DeepMind, Google's DeepMind, it can play itself in simulation millions of times, billions of times. It's difficult to know if it's possible to do that in simulation for anything that involves human movement. like grappling. My sense is, if we first look at the hard encoding, if you were to try to describe Gordon Ryan to a machine, how many rules are in there, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First off, let me tell you, that's one of the most fascinating questions I've ever been asked, and I'm tremendously happy to answer this. How about what we do is, this is a massive question you've asked. There's a huge amount of ways this could get very interesting and very confusing. set some ground rules for the discussion. Lex alluded to the idea of man versus machine in chess. And I think that's a really good place for us to start the discussion. I'm going to just tell people about a little bit the history of man versus chess to give you guys some background on this. In 1968, there was a party in which a highly ranked, not a world champion, but a highly ranked chess player, his name was Levy, and he met a computer engineer at a party, and they had a lighthearted bet that in a 10-year timeframe, a human chess player would be defeated by a computer. Now, you've got to remember, in 1968, computing power was very, very low. The computers that got America to the moon were were actually pretty damn primitive. Your iPhone would kick all of their asses. So computational power was very, very low in those days. So interestingly, the chess player fully believed that no computer could beat him in the 10-year timeframe. And the computer engineer was very optimistic that he was wrong. And in fact, 10 years, the computer would win. 10 years later, they had a competition and the human won. decisively, in fact. So computational power simply hadn't risen to that level yet. Through the 1980s, computational power increased, but not sufficient to get to championship level. There were computer programs in the 1980s which were competitive with good solid chess players, but not world beaters. Understand right from the start that there's a fundamental problem here. The number of options that the two players in a chessboard can run through is astronomically high. There are 64 squares on a chessboard. The number of possible options that could work or could play out on a chessboard And this is a truly shocking thing for you to think about. The number of possible options is higher than the number of atoms in the known universe. Think about that for a second in terms of complexity, okay? The number of atoms on this table is massive, okay? That is an unbelievably large number. Then we're talking about a situation where if a computer had to go through all the options at the onset of a match, they would have to run numbers greater than the number of atoms in the known universe. The number of galaxies in our universe is vast, okay? It's measured in the billions. Like the number of atoms, that's just a number so mind-blowing it's impossible, okay? So no computer. is ever going to be able to work with those kinds of numbers. I don't even know if future generations of quantum computers could work with those kinds of numbers. So that's the fundamental problem. The number of options in a chess match is just so astronomically large that no computer could ever figure out all the available options and make decisions in a given timeframe. So that's the fundamental problem. So as Lex correctly pointed out, The way you get around this is by the use of heuristics. These are rules of thumb, which give general guidelines to action. So for example, in jiu-jitsu, I could give you a general rule of thumb. Don't turn your back on your opponent. Okay, that's a solid piece of advice. There are obviously some exceptions to that rule, but it's a good, solid piece of advice to give a beginner. The moment you give that heuristic rule, you rule out a lot of options. You've already told someone, don't turn your back, don't turn your back on someone. So a lot of possibilities have just been turned away right there. So you've cut the number of options in half right there just by giving one heuristic rule. If you were decent at chess, not great, but decent, and you knew enough to give, say, 10 heuristic rules, you could chop that initially vast number of options down by a vast amount. And now you're starting to get to a point where if a computer had sufficient computational power, it could start getting through the number of options in that acceptable timeframe. So that's the general pattern of the development. Now things started getting very interesting in the mid-1990s with IBM's computer Deep Blue. There was a great chess champion of the late 1980s through the 1990s called Garry Kasparov, who had been more or less undefeated for a decade. In 1996, he took on IBM's computer Deep Blue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just to correct the record, he was undefeated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I apologize, Russian, got to make sure that- They get very nationalistic about their chairs. Be careful of these guys. Deep Blue lost the first confrontation, I believe, in 1996. It was competitive, but it lost. Then in 1997, Deep Blue won. It wasn't a complete walkover. Kasparov, I believe, won one of the matches, but Deep Blue unequivocally won the confrontation. It was seen as this watershed moment where a computer beat the best human chess player on the planet, and that was it. There's no coming back from that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it would be remembered as one of the biggest moments in computing history, as really when the first time a machine beat a human at a thing that humans really care about in the domain of intellectual pursuits." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it was a powerful, powerful moment. Now, Not only was that a powerful moment, but things started getting truly interesting from that moment forward. Because then you started having different areas of development. The general way in which the progress is made from those early starts in 1968, all the way through to Deep Blue's victory, was of the use of heuristic rules that brought down the number of potential options to a manageable level as computer power increased, then it could make faster and faster and wiser and wiser decisions and make them at a rate which no human, even the best human could keep up with. So that was the general way in which the debate went. But things got more interesting after this with the advent of computers that, as you pointed out, make use of so-called machine learning. There were... a company put out a program, AlphaZero, which can look at the basic rule structures of chess, and then ultimately play itself in trial games, and make trial and error assessment of what are good and bad strategies, so that with no human intervention, a computer could start doing remarkable things. Not only did this company create AlphaZero, and there were some other ones too, that they fought not only in chess, but in the much more complex Asian game of Go, which has far more potential options than chess does by a very significant margin. These machine learning programs not only easily defeat any human in chess, but in Go as well. And what's truly remarkable is they weren't just beating them. When AlphaZero took on a rival chess program, which by itself was already superior to any human, it only required four hours, starting from learning the rules of chess to figuring out how to beat the second most powerful chess program in the world. That's insane. It's literally like taking a human, telling the rules of chess, they play some games with themselves for four hours, and they go out and beat Garry Kasparov. This is, to me, this is a truly exciting development, far beyond even what Deep Blue did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like how you said exciting, not terrifying, because I agree with you on the exciting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now, things also get exciting in a different direction. There is another possibility which few people foresaw after the Deep Blue episode. This is where a new form of chess started to emerge, sometimes called cyborg chess or centaur chess. where humans of moderate chess level playing ability, not world champions, just decent but not great, I guess you might say like purple belts in judaism, allied themselves with computers. So the humans and computers worked as a cyborg team. The humans supplied the heuristic insight. The computers supplied the computational power. And fascinatingly, they proved to be superior to both the best humans and the best chess programs. The united force of human insight with heuristics, with computers' ability to go through numbers in far more rapid form than any human could ever hope to do, proved to be one of the strongest combinations and enabled that pairing of human and computer to overwhelm both the best single human and the best single computer. That adds a whole new level of fascination to this topic. So to wind things up here, we've got this fascinating initial question from Lex, the idea of could there be a computer inside a robot which doesn't have any special physical properties. This is mind versus mind, because the bodies negate each other. The robot is the same body as Gordon Ryan. This is a thought experiment. What would it take to create a mind that would defeat the mind of Gordon Ryan? Based on the chess example, it would appear that this is entirely feasible at some point in the future. And in fact, I would go further and say it's actually quite likely based on what we've seen from the example of chess. The rate of progress in AI in the last 20 years has dwarfed anything from the previous 50 years. And the rate continues to increase. We're talking now at a level with machine learning, defeating world champions in chess and go in four hours, just from starting from the rules of the sport. This is gonna be difficult for humans to keep up with. Now, in humans' favor, could we take Gordon Ryan and put a chip inside his brain that created the same cyborg effect as we saw in centaur chess and cyborg chess, and then take Gordon Ryan to a new level where suddenly his computational powers were massively increased, he still has this heuristic insight. but he has vastly augmented computational powers, that's the interesting battle. You asked a great question, Lex. Let me give you my initial push for an answer would be that if it's just Gordon Ryan versus your robot technology, in 10 years, I would say with machine learning, I'd say you guys win every time. But if it is cyborg Gordon Ryan, where he's part part Gordon Ryan with heuristics and part machine, and now that's where I throw the question back at you, young man. What do you think? I'm fascinated to hear your answer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's very interesting, because there's a lot of different ways you can build a cyborg Gordon Ryan. So one is there's the Neuralink way, which is basically doing what you're suggesting, which is expanding the computational capabilities of Gordon Ryan's brain. like directly being able to communicate between a computer and the brain. So most of, you preserve most of what there is in the human body, including the nervous system and the computing system. We currently have this biological and expanding it with the computer. There's also on the cyborg chest front, Like Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion in chess, he studies AlphaZero games. It's not a regular thing for high-level grandmasters." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "From what I understand, almost every chess master now studies computer games for inspiration. Just as great chess players from the past used to go back into old leather-bound books of previous grandmasters and study games and books. Nowadays, most people, when they want to study the most perfect games, they actually study programs like AlphaZero." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And it's not just for inspiration, it's education. I mean, it's literally part of their training regimen. This isn't like a fun side thing. This is the main way to get better. So there's a certain element there where even our human brains can be trained by observing the partial explorations of an AI systems in the space of grappling. That could be actually in simulation. It doesn't have to be in the physical world. It could be in, if we construct sufficiently good biomechanical models of human beings, machines can learn how they grapple. There's quite a bit of that already. OpenAI has the system of, they're like sumo wrestlers with some basic goals of pushing each other off of a platform. And you know nothing from the, you don't even know, so you have a basic model of a bipedal system. It doesn't even know in the beginning how to stand up. It just falls, right? So it has to learn how to get up And they do that through self-play. They learn how to get up. They learn how to move enough to achieve the final goal, which is to push your opponent off of the thing. Fascinating. So they learn that. Now, open AI is not, those folks are currently not that interested in the grappling world, so they kind of stopped there. But it's very possible in simulation to then develop ideas. In fact, this is something I should probably do, because it's pretty natural to do it easy, is ideas of control and submission and all the, you know, you add the ability to I don't know how to put it nicely, but to choke your opponent and to break their body parts off, which is what Jiu Jitsu is, add that in and what kind of ideas they'll come up with is very fascinating. I actually don't know, until this conversation, I don't know why I never even thought about that. I've been very obsessed with just like walking and running and all those kinds of things, like evolving different strategies for when you have a bunch of... So one difficult thing for robots is when you have uneven terrain and there's uncertainty about the terrain is how to keep walking. or when there's a bunch of things being thrown at you, all that kind of stuff, and you learn through self-play how to be able to navigate those on certain environments when there's a lot of weird objects and all those kinds of things. There's no reason why you can't just do that with submissions and so on in simulation. That would be actually fascinating. But once you get we might be surprised by the kind of strategies in simulation these AI systems will develop. And that might make a much better Gordon Ryan, a much better John Donahart. In asking the Dean Lister question of like, why are we only using, why are we not doing X? But on the actual sort of grappling event in the physical space, I've been very surprised and a little bit disappointed by how difficult it's to build a system that's able to have the body of Gordon Ryan, or a human being, actually. which means it's not just the biomechanics, which is very difficult to do, but also all of the senses that are involved. Be able to perceive the world as richly, to be able to, there's something called soft robotics, which is incredibly difficult to do through touch, understand the hardness of things. We don't understand as human beings just how much we're able through touch to experience the world and to manipulate the world. The process of picking up a cup is very similar to the process of grappling. All the feeling that you do, all the leverage that you're applying, There's so many degrees of freedom in both the, in the interactive sense, in the sensing and the applying, sensing and applying. You're doing that through so much of your body that it's just going to be very difficult to build a system that's able to experience the world and act onto the world as richly as we humans can." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, if picking up a cup is a seemingly insurmountable challenge, then taking someone down, controlling them, getting past their legs, that's going to be one hell of a project." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. I mean, there could be shortcuts, but I mean, currently that's the field called robotic manipulation, which is picking up objects. Usually they have like a ball and a triangular object, and your whole task is to like pick it up and move it around. Generalizing that to the human body is harder, but perhaps not as hard as we might think. The question is, how do you construct experiments where you can do that safely?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In chess, it's very easy. But here, it's very, very problematic. I guess you could just have robot versus robot teamed up with each other and then they learn and then they go out to take on a human opponent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, exactly. So you have two physical robots that interact with each other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everything you've said so far suggests that many of the problems, these tactile elements, they're easy tasks for humans. So which becomes more powerful more quickly? robots that are taught to think like humans or humans that are given the computational power of computers and robots themselves, which wins first, a cyborg Gordon Ryan or an artificial robot Gordon Ryan?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Really, really strong question. And I think by far the cyborg Gordon Ryan." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's what I'm thinking here. The problems you're talking about, With regards to robots, those are deep problems. If picking up a cup is problematic, it's going to be damn difficult. But to a human, a two-year-old can do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're highlighting a very important difference. Human beings have something called common sense that we don't know how to build into computers currently. That's what picking up the cup is. is some basic rules about the way this world works. We're able to, this is when we're children and we'll crawl around, we pick up. What humans don't have that machines have is incredible computational power and access to infinite knowledge. Computers can do that. So if you have a Gordon Ryan with the infinite knowledge and compute power, that's just going to, because we know how to do that. that's going to blow out of the water." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Has there been any update on the phenomenon of cyborg or centaur chest? There was some debate as to whether or not. cyborg chess teams could stay competitive with the latest machine learning. Has there been any update on that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I believe at this point, machines dominate over the machine human pairs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With the human pairs, when they first came out, they were good chess players, but not great chess players. Does it make any difference if you have, say, Garry Kasparov, and a computer working in unison versus Joe Blow from" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, it does make a huge difference, but yeah, both are destroyed by machines at this point. And it's not even competitive, no? No, it's not competitive. But they also lost interest in this kind of idea. So I think there's still competitions between human-machine pairs versus human-machine pairs, almost like to see how the two work together. But in terms of machine versus human-machine pair, machines still dominate. Interesting. And now we've retrieved back as human beings, caring mostly about human versus human competition, which is probably what the future will look like. It's very interesting to think, but like that in chess happened really quickly. It won't happen. And it wasn't so painful in chess because we care about chess, but it's not so fundamental to human society. And when you started talking about cyborg Gordon Ryans, which really beyond grappling is referring to robots operating physical space or human robot hybrids operating physical space, you're talking about our society is now full of cyborgs. And that transition might be very painful or transformative in a way we can't even predict. And that very much has applications as both China and U.S. now have legalized is autonomous weapon systems. So use of these kinds of systems in military applications. So it used to be, there'd been a big call in the AI community to ban autonomous weapons. So the use of artificial intelligence in war, just like bioweapons are banned internationally. So you're not allowed to use bioweapons in war. And actually most people, even terrorists, have kind of agreed on this ban. It's not like a, there's been a quiet agreement, like we're not going to be doing this, because everybody's gonna get really pissed off. With autonomous weapon systems, that's not been the case. China has said that they're going to be using AI in their military. And the US in 2021 just released a report saying that they're going to they're going to add increasing amounts of artificial intelligence into our military systems, into drones, into just everything that's doing any kind of both strategic and actual like bombing and defense systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I presume a drone army would easily defeat a human army in the near future. I mean, think about, just off the top of my head, just think about the implication of kamikaze drones versus a naval fleet. I mean, kamikazes with humans in World War II did terrible damage to our navy. Imagine swarms of mechanical kamikazes which have no fear, no remorse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's very inefficient. Kamikaze is very inefficient. You want to be very like wars. It's the same discussion to jujitsu, right? You want to be, you want to create an asymmetry of power and you want to be efficient in the way you deliver that power. It's actually goes back to the picking up a cup. Currently, A lot of things we do in war, like most of the drones that you hear about, they're not autonomous, not most, all. They're usually piloted by- They're piloted remotely by humans. And humans are really good at this kind of what's necessary to deliver the most damage, targeted damage, effective as part of the largest strategy, have about bombing the area or all that kind of stuff. I don't know how difficult that is to automate. I think the biggest concern, I actually have a sense that it's very difficult to automate. The biggest concern is almost like an incompetent application of this and consequences that are not anticipated. So you have a drone army where you say, we want to target, you give it power to target a particular terrorist, and then there's some bug in the system that has a like, for example, has a large uncertainty about the location of that terrorist. And so decides to bomb an entire city. you know, almost like as a bug, a software bug. I'm much more concerned about like bad programming and software engineering than I am about like malevolent AI systems that destroy the world. So the more we rely on automation, this is the lesson in human history, the more we give to AI, to software, to robotic systems, the more we forget how to supervise and oversee some of the edge cases, all the weird ways that things go wrong, and then the more stupid software bugs can lead to huge damage, like, you know, even like nuclear explosions, those kinds of things. If we add AI into the launch systems for nuclear weapons, for example, I think human history teaches us that software bugs is what will lead to World War III, not malevolent AI or human beings. Interesting. By the way, I deeply appreciate how knowledgeable you are about the history of artificial intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was awesome. Oh, no, it's fascinating stuff. You know, I remember reading when I was a child about, you know, curing tests and things like this, and visionaries from the 1950s had ideas, but to see it come this far is just fascinating to me. Okay, so what can we as jujitsu players take away from this? We saw that when it comes to computers versus humans in chess tournaments, humans had something truly valuable to give to the computers, and that was heuristic rules. In every coaching program that I run, I make an endless quest to search out and find effective heuristic rules. That's the basis of a good training program. Heuristic rules and principles give vast informational content which can rapidly increase your performance on the mat, just as they rapidly increase the performance of chess computers to overcome their human adversaries. The great human weakness is computational power. Most people vastly overestimate their ability to reason and problem solve under stress. In fact, numerous psychological studies have shown that humans can balance a relatively small number of competing options in stressful decision-making. But what we do have, what is the great and unique human gift is this idea to come up and arrive at heuristic rules and principles, which turn out to be very effective guides to behavior, for both human behavior and artificially intelligent behavior. Make that your focus in study. Don't try to remember 10,000 different details on a move. That's human weakness, not human strength. Our strength is heuristics. Make that your focus, not endless computations over 25 details here merged with 27 details here. That's not what humans are good at. The uniquely human strength is arriving at these heuristic rules and principles which guide our behavior, which provides simplifications, which enable us to take vast amounts of information and parry it down to a few simple rules that effectively guide our behavior. Take that core insight from the discussion that Lex and I just had. It was a complex discussion. We both apologize for going a little bit overboard. That was awesome. And dragging you into some details there, but take that away from it. I love it. It'll make you better at jiu-jitsu. Sorry, Lex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was a really exciting discussion and the depths of knowledge in the dimensions of knowledge you have and interest you have is just fascinating. Is there advice you have for complete beginners? for white belts that are starting Jiu-Jitsu, that are listening to this, that haven't done Jiu-Jitsu. I know there's a lot of people who are super curious to start. Is there advice you would give them on their journey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I'm just gonna talk about just getting better on the mat, okay? Because there's a thousand other things you can talk about in terms of like morale and persistence and how often they should train. There's a thousand things you can get. Break up with your girlfriend or boyfriend." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one. No, I'm just kidding. Let's put that aside." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's probably the best advice we could give. It goes back to what we said earlier. I always advocate start your training from the ground up. Your first sessions in Jiu Jitsu, you're going to find to your horror that everyone gets on top of you and you can't get out. and it's a dispiriting, crushing kind of feeling that you just have no skills and you have no prospects in the sport. So your first skill is the skill of being able to free yourself from positional pins. Most of the escapes in jiu-jitsu go to guard position. And so once you get someone in your guard, they're going to be looking to pass your guard and get back into those positional pins that you just escaped from. And that's just as crushing as getting pinned. You feel like every time you try to hold someone in guard, they just effortlessly pass you by. So your first two skills, you've got to be able to get out of any pin and you've got to be able to hold someone in your guard. So pin escapes and guard retention are your first two skills. I generally advocate the idea of learning to fight from your back first. and then learning to fight from on top second. Why? Because the brute fact is, when you first start off, you just don't have enough skills to hold top position or gain top position through a takedown. So inevitably, you're going to end up underneath people for most of your training time. Your training should reflect that in the early days as a white belt. Start with the first two skills you need. They're not the most exciting, they're not sexy skills that are going to make you look like a stud in the training room, but they're going to keep you alive long enough to learn those sexy skills in the future that will make you look like a stud. Start with pin escapes, go to guard retention, and focus heavily on those two. When you start to get into off-ends, start with bottom position. So there's a clear continuity between your pin escapes, your guard retention, and then your guard itself. You've got different options with guard. Some of you are going to like closed guard. Some of you are going to like variations of open guard. Some of you are going to like to be seated. Some of you are going to like to be supine. Some of you are going to like half guard. As a general rule, this is a heavy generalization, but I'm going to give it to you. In my experience, most people benefit the most by starting with half guard first. I know that traditionally Jiu-Jitsu was being taught close guard first, and then all the other guards come after that. I'm a big believer in the idea of start with pin escapes. Then go to guard retention and then start with half guard bottom. That way you get a nice continuity between your first three skills and you make good progress over those first critical six months in jiu-jitsu." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it take to get a black belt in jiu-jitsu? Very little." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To show up, pay your fees. Don't set your goals low. Don't even ask yourself that question. No one cares if you got a black belt. The only thing that counts is the skills you have. I know plenty of black belts that suck. There's a lot of them out there. Don't lower your standards by saying, I want to get a black belt. Ask yourself something much more important. How good do I want to be? You want to be damn good, right? You want to do something in this time and you want to be the best you can. Wearing a belt around your waist doesn't guarantee that. Build skills. Focus on that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you about the fourth thing in facet face of jiu-jitsu, which is self-defense. Let's say the bigger things, I don't know why it's called self-defense. Let's call it street fighting. Let's call it fighting, okay? Maybe you can contest that terminology. How about non-sport fighting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Non-sport fighting. It's funny, like street fighting. What happens if you go out in a playground, you're fighting on grass. Is that no longer street fighting?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like tennis, you have like Wimbledon, like grass courts, and it's a whole nother thing. No, is there, what do you think is the best martial art for street fighting? What is the best set of, we talked about advice for white balls to advance in grappling, in jiu-jitsu. What is the set of techniques, maybe martial art that is best for street fighting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, again, you're asking some truly fascinating questions here. The way this gets framed as a question is often condemns you to bad answers from the start." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is, as a questioner, I'm trying to achieve asymmetry of power. And I'm winning. Put you in a bad position." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't worry so much about... People are always going to say, you know, is this martial art better or is this martial arts better? The truth is, there's only one way to say this. Combat sports are your best option for self-defense. There are many martial arts and there is a rough divide between the two, those that fall into combat sports and those that fall into non-sporting martial arts where there's no competitive live sparring element, where most of the knowledge is limited to theoretical knowledge reinforced by passive drilling. If you have a choice between a combat sport versus a non-sporting art based around theoretical knowledge and passive drilling, go with a combat sport. Nothing will prepare you for the intensity of a genuine altercation better than combat sports. Many people, as I say these words, are probably horrified to hear me say this and immediately going to rebut and say, no, combat sports is exactly the wrong thing for you to do because they have safety rules, et cetera, et cetera, which would easily be exploited in a real fight. And if I fought a world championship boxer, I would just poke him in the eye or kick him in the groin, et cetera, et cetera. You've heard these arguments a thousand times. Yes, there is some validity to these things, but as a general rule, if you ask me to bet in any form of street fight, call it what you want, between a combat sport adherent versus someone who simply trains with drills and talks in terms of theories of what they would do in a fight, I'm gonna go with the combat sport guy every single time. Now, having said that, combat sports need to be modified for the use of self-defense street fighting. We haven't agreed on a term yet. We'll figure it out later. What does this modification consist of? Well, some of it is technical. For example, a boxer in a street fight now has to punch without wrapped or gloved hands and that's problematic. Your hands are not really designed for heavy extended use of clubbing hard objects. There's a very high likelihood of breaking your hands. Mike Tyson was one of the finest punchers that ever lived, but in one of his more famous street fights against Mitch Green in the late 1980s, he broke his hand with one punch that he threw his opponent, hit the wrong part of the head and broke his hand. And he was one of the most gifted punchers of all time. If he can do it, you'll certainly have trouble protecting your hands when you go to throw blows. Nonetheless, this is easily modified. And so a boxer can throw with open hands or with elbows. And so just a small modification and technique can overcome that problem. So what you'll find is that the general physical, mental conditioning and skill development that comes from combat sports, allied with technical modifications, and then the most important of all, tactical modifications will provide your best hope in altercations outside of sports in the street or wherever you find yourself. The least effective approaches to self-defense that I have observed in my life have been those where, as I said, people talk to theory, drilled on passive opponents, and generally had no engagement in live competition or sparring in their training programs. The most effective, by a landslide, were those that put a heavy emphasis on live sparring and sporting competition, modified both technically and tactically for the circumstances in which they found themselves. People talk, for example, about how, you know, and with some validity, that weapons will change everything in a street fight. There's absolute truth to that. But this extends into weapons as well, okay? The most effective forms of knife fighting that you'll see will be those who come from a background in fencing because it has sparring and a competitive sport aspect to it. But would pure fencing be the appropriate thing? Of course not, you'd have to modify it. But the reflexes, endurance, physical mobility that you gain from the sport of fencing could easily be modified to blade craft in a fight situation. What you want to look for with regards street and self-defense is not, okay, which style should I choose? Should I choose Taekwondo? Should I choose Karate? Should I choose this variation of Kung Fu? No. Focus on the most important thing. Does it have a sport aspect to it? Then, once you've made sufficient progress in the sport aspect of that martial art, start asking yourself, what are the requisite modifications and techniques and tactics that I have to use or to input to make it effective for street situations? That's always the advice that I give." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me zoom in on a very particular aspect of street fighting where, with all due respect, I disagree with Mr. Joe Rogan and George St. Pierre on, which is the suit and tie situation. Now to criticize GSP, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's very accomplished and everything, but to criticize him for a bit, he made claims about how dangerous the tie is in a street fighting situation without ever having used them in a fighting situation. So he made sort of broad proclamations without understanding the fundamentals. So I thought I would go to somebody who thinks in systems. What do you think, is it dangerous to wear a tie or not in a grappling situation versus all the other weapons?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're talking about in a street fight here. It'd be rather strange to wear a tie in a grappling competition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It would be, it would be. Yes, in a street fight situation. Okay, yeah. Joe Rogan thinks it is like the most dangerous, it's like it becomes your weakest point if you wear a tie because it's very easy to choke. George St. Pierre seemed to have agreed with that. Also George added that you can grab the tie and pull the person down to a knee. This is the go-to. Joe Rogan will go for the choke, George St-Pierre will go for the tie to the knee, which I was saying is ridiculous. So what do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. First up, I actually can speak with experience on this because I worked as a bouncer for over a decade and most of the clubs I worked at did not require a suit and tie, but occasionally they did. Okay, let's first differentiate between the kinds of threats when you wear a tie. If you wear a tie, if there is going to be a threat, by far the more important threat is not strangulation. Being strangled by your tie is possible, but it is a poor choice. There are many other ways to strangle people that are far more efficient. If I strangle with you, by your tie, I'm literally in front of you. That means as I go to apply the stranglehold, I can easily be eye gouged, etc, etc. If you're going to strangle people in the street, do it from behind and there's just much better ways to do it than that. Hear that Joe Rogan? With regards to the snap down question, that is more of a problem. I always recommend if you are going to work as a bouncer with a tie, wear a clip-on tie, so it just comes off immediately. If you don't like clip-ons, then you can use a bow tie. I used to work for years in hip-hop clubs with members of the Nation of Islam security team. They had various factions, but the one I worked with were the X-Men, and they would always wear bow ties, which of course can't be grabbed. The bow tie was a recognizable part of their brand as security guard. So everyone knew that that's what they wore. If I wore a bow tie in a security situation, people would probably think that I was some kind of Nancy boy and want to fight with me. So I couldn't wear one. So I would always wear a tie, which you should become familiar with, Mr. Friedman. That's the Texas Bolo tie, which is a kind of shoestring tie, which is very, very thin, almost like shoestring and rather short, and just has a simple pendant in the middle. This is perfect if you need to wear a tie in a situation where you believe there's a high likelihood of you being Because it can't be grabbed. Yeah, there's nothing to grab. It's literally like string. Like if you pulled it, it would just slip through your hand. That tie that you're wearing now, that would give me tremendous control of your head and I could easily turn it into a hockey fight situation where your head was being pulled down out of balance and you would have a hard time recovering. So strangulation, not really a problem. Getting pulled down, possible problem. Solutions, clip-on tie, bow tie, or if you don't want to look like a Nancy boy, wear a bolo tie." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Beautiful, so you disagree with Joe Rogan and agree with George St. Pierre, I love it. I feel like this is an instruction we put together on street fighting and the tie. Speaking of Joe Rogan, let me ask the following question. He's currently doing a podcast with Gordon Ryan and probably going to try to convince him and you, as he's already been doing, to move to Austin, what are the chances of the Donahy Death Squad coming to Austin and opening a school in Austin and making Austin home so I can attend the classes there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would definitely have to think about that. I do know that I personally love New York, but every single person in the squad despised New York and wanted to leave for a long time. So- What was the nature of your love for New York, by the way? It was truly an international city. I'm a big believer in the idea of breadth of experience. And if you want, breadth of experience usually requires extensive travel, but training people, means you have to be in a fixed location, working according to a schedule, and that pushed, those two push in different directions. New York was the compromise where everyone from around the world came there, so you had breadth of experience of world culture, but at the same time you had a fixed location, so you could run a training program that produced world champions. So it was the ideal compromise. It was a fascinating thing to teach classes of over 120 people where literally the entire world was represented on the mat and go outside and see the same thing. It was truly the world's leading international city. It was like the world's unofficial capital, fascinating place to live. So I loved it, but the squad hated it. For them, it was like an expensive thing. They never actually lived in Manhattan. They always lived in New Jersey or Long Island, had to commute in. So all they ever saw was the bridges and the tunnels, the expensive daily parking fees. They only saw the worst of New York. And despite my pleas for them to move into Manhattan, they never did. And so they hated it. When all you see of New York is the bridges and the tunnels and the parking garage, that's not a pleasant thing. So I understand where they're coming from. So then when COVID broke out, they wanted to move to Puerto Rico and work there. Now, Puerto Rico is a beautiful alternative to New York. It's, in many ways, has many advantages over New York. It's physically beautiful, the people are wonderful, and it's just a wonderful place to spend time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Freedom, low taxes, all those kinds of things that Puerto Rico stands for." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's Texas, on the other hand, I know everyone in the squad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a compromise, right? Texas is a compromise between those two." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, I must say that everyone on the squad, myself included, loves Texas. There's no question about that. I know Gordon loves it, Gary, Craig, Nicky, everyone who comes here just loves Texas. That is incontestable. Of course, in Texas, there's many great cities. Austin has always been one of my favorites. I love Dallas, I love Austin. And it has the advantages of better infrastructure as a place to train. It has a much higher population density, so that you could get a larger number of prospective students and form a larger squad. It would definitely be a fantastic place to open up a gym. I couldn't give an answer off the top of my head. It would be a big move if we did make that move. But the basic idea would be very agreeable to everyone on the team. I will say that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I'll just have to call my Russian connections to threaten the right kind of people. And I definitely would love, the way you approach training, the way you approach the martial arts is something that I deeply admire as a scholar of these arts. So it would be amazing if you do come here, but either way, it'd be amazing to train together. Let me ask a big, ridiculous question. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? We talked about at the beginning of the conversation about death and the fear of it. The other big question we ask about life is its meaning. Do you think there's a meaning to our existence here on this little spinning ball?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You've thrown some powerful questions. That's the most powerful. For most of human existence, the meaning of life was very, very simple. Survival. The only thing that humans cared about was just surviving, because it was so damn difficult for the early years of human existence on this earth. If you look at ourselves as biological agents, everything about our body is set up for one mission, and that is survival. Every reflex we have, every element of our structure is just built up on the battle to survive. And then humans did something remarkable. They elevated themselves through the use of technology and social structure to the top of the food chain so that they went from extremely vulnerable. If you take a naked human being alone and put them in the Serengeti Plains in Africa, they're in some deep shit, okay? If you look at a human being as a survival organism just by itself, naked, They are among the most feeble at that task in the entire animal kingdom. You compare us with predatory animals. We are weak and soft and easily killed. But if you take that same human and put them in a group and you give them basic technology, steel, a spear, a knife. He goes from the bottom of the food chain to pretty much at the top. And so humanity found itself and a crisis that emerged out of its own success. For most of its history, their only interest was the battle to survive, and they did it. I don't know how they did it, but they did it. They got through ice ages, droughts, famines, disease, everything, and they found a way to get to the top of the food chain. And that's where it all got interesting. Because an organism whose only interest was in survival had, for the first time in their history, a more or less guaranteed survival. And so the big question now is, now what? We survived. There's no more danger. The average human being finds himself in a world now where there's almost zero danger from predatory animals, where getting a meal is the easiest thing ever, where getting to and from work is not problematic at all, where the majority of infectious diseases, medical complaints can be resolved in a hospital fairly easily. And so they start casting their mind around, okay, what do I do now? And so the minute mankind's existence became more or less guaranteed, the problem shift from survival to meaning. And we found ourselves grappling with a whole new issue that had never occurred to our ancient forefathers. but which now becomes one of the centerpieces of our modern lives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, when you look at your own life, when you look back, you think, I did a hell of a good job. You know, Hunter S. Thompson has this line that I often think about. that life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in roadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride. Which is the complete opposite of survival. or not complete opposite of survival, but basically embracing danger, embracing risk, going big, just living life to the fullest. So within that context, what would make you proud of a life well-lived when you look back, you, John Donahart, looking back at your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First, I will address that question, but let's first look at why Hunter Thompson could say that. Because his life was more or less guaranteed and safe. If you look at animals in the animal kingdom, the pattern of their life is very simple. They take the least risk possible to secure their existence. are powerful creatures, but when they go hunting, they typically go for the weakest animals they can kill in order to eat, because they don't want to take the risk of injuring themselves, knowing that if they do, they die. So the brute reality is the only people who can talk about having casual danger in their lives are those whose lives are guaranteed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In a fascinating small tangent, Hunter S. Thompson took his own life. So that seems like a deeply human thing, the suicide." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you don't do the headphones thing? No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. I mean, how close do I need to get to the same thing? The closer you are, the sexier you sound." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hey, babe, what's up? Can't get enough of the oil, baby." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm gonna clip that out anytime somebody messages me about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You want my body and you think I'm sexy. Come right out and tell me so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So good. Okay. Serious mode activate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right. Serious mode. Come on, you're Russian. You can be serious. Everyone's serious all the time in Russia." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there. It's gotten soft. Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th, 2020 was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration. These human spaceflight missions were a beacon of hope to me and to millions over the past two years as our world has been going through one of the most difficult periods in recent human history. We saw, we see the rise of division, fear, cynicism, and the loss of common humanity. right when it is needed most. So first, Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the future." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it's kind of easy to say. I do want to do that. Humanity has obviously a lot of issues and people at times do bad things, but despite all that, I love humanity and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future and one where that maximizes the happiness of the people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask about Crew Dragon Demo 2. So that first flight with humans on board, how did you feel leading up to that launch? Were you scared? Were you excited? What was going through your mind? So much was at stake." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, that was extremely stressful, no question. We obviously could not let them down in any way. So Extremely stressful, I'd say, to say the least. I was confident that at the time that we launched that no one could think of anything at all to do that would improve the probability of success. And we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success. We could not think of anything more, and nor could NASA. then that's just the best that we could do, so then we went ahead and launched. Now, I'm not a religious person, but I nonetheless got on my knees and prayed for that mission. Were you able to sleep?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No. How did it feel when it was a success, first when the launch was a success, and when they returned back home, or back to Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was a great relief. Yeah, for high-stress situations, I find it's not so much elation as relief. And I think once, as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems, because we really, you gotta make sure everything works, it was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent astronaut missions. And I thought the Inspiration mission was actually very inspiring, the Inspiration 4 mission. I'd encourage people to watch the Inspiration documentary on Netflix, it's actually really good. And it really is, I was actually inspired by that. So that one I felt I was kind of able to enjoy the actual mission and not just be super stressed all the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people that somehow don't know, it's the all-civilian first time. all civilian out to space, out to orbit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and it was, I think, the highest orbit that in like, I don't know, 30 or 40 years or something. The only one that was higher was the one shuttle, sorry, a Hubble servicing mission. And then before that, it would have been Apollo in 72. It's pretty wild. So it's cool. I think as a species, we want to be continuing to do better and reach higher ground. I think it would be tragic, extremely tragic, if Apollo was the high-water mark for humanity, and that's as far as we ever got. it's concerning that here we are 49 years after the last mission to the moon and so almost half a century and we've not been back and that's that's worrying it's like is that does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what so I think we've got to get back to the moon and build a base there, a science base. I think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon. We have a science base in Antarctica and many other parts of the world. So that's, I think, the next big thing. We've got to have a serious moon base and then get people to Mars. get out there and be a spacefaring civilization." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll ask you about some of those details, but since you're so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that's involved, are you still able to marvel at the magic of it all, of space travel, of every time the rocket goes up, especially when it's a crewed mission? Or are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve? And actually, sort of to add to that, the reason I wanted to ask this question of May 30th, it's been some time, so you can look back and think about the impact already. It's already, at the time, it was an engineering problem, maybe. Now it's becoming a historic moment. Like it's a moment that, how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century? To me, that or something like that, maybe Inspiration4 or one of those would be remembered as the early steps of a new age of space exploration." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, during the launches itself, so I mean, the thing I think maybe some people know, but a lot of people don't know is like, I'm actually the chief engineer of SpaceX. So, you know, I've signed off on pretty much all the design decisions. And, you know, so if there's something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it's fundamentally my fault, you know, so. So I'm really just thinking about all the things that like, so, so when I see the rocket, I see all the things that could go wrong and the things that could be better. And the same with the Dragon spacecraft, it's like, people say, Oh, this is a spacecraft or a rocket. And that's what's really cool. I'm like, I've like a readout of like, these are the risks, these are the problems, that's what I see. Not what other people see when they see the product, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me ask you then to analyze Starship in that same way. I know you'll talk in more detail about Starship in the near future, perhaps. Yeah, we can talk about it now if you want. But just in that same way, like you said, when you see a rocket, you see sort of a list of risks. In that same way, you said that Starship is a really hard problem. So there's many ways I can ask this, but... If you magically could solve one problem perfectly, one engineering problem perfectly, which one would it be? On Starship? Sorry, on Starship. So is it maybe related to the efficiency, the engine, the weight of the different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing it has to do to land?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's actually by far the biggest thing absorbing my time is engine production. Not the design of the engine, but I've often said prototypes are easy, production is hard. So we have the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed. the, because I say currently the best rocket engine ever is probably the RD-180 or RD-170. That's the Russian engine, basically. And, and still, I think an engine should only count if it's gotten something to orbit. So our engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet. But it is, it's the first engine that's actually better than the Russian RD engines, which were amazing design." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're talking about Raptor engine. What makes it amazing? What are the different aspects of it that make it, like, what are you the most excited about if the whole thing works in terms of efficiency, all those kinds of things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's, the Raptor is a full-flow staged combustion engine. engine and it's operating at a very high chamber pressure. So one of the key figures of merit, perhaps the key figure of merit, is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine can operate. That's the combustion chamber pressure. So a Raptor is designed to operate at 300 bar, possibly maybe higher, that's 300 atmospheres. So the record right now for operational engine is the RD engine that I mentioned, the Russian RD, which is I believe around 267. bar, and the difficulty of the chamber pressure increases on a non-linear basis. So 10% more chamber pressure is more like 50% more difficult. But that chamber pressure is what allows you to get a very high power density for the engine. So enabling a very high thrust-to-weight ratio and a very high specific impulse. So specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine. It's really the effective exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine. So with a very high chamber pressure, you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat. So you see a rocket engine's got sort of like a hourglass shape, it's like a chamber, and then it necks down and there's a nozzle. And the ratio of the exit diameter the expansion ratio." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So why is it such a hard engine to manufacture at scale? It's very complex. What does complexity mean here? There's a lot of components involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a lot of components and a lot of unique materials. So we had to invent several alloys that don't exist in order to make this engine work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a materials problem, too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a materials problem, and in a staged combustion, a full-flow staged combustion, there are many feedback loops in the system. So, basically, you've got propellants and hot gas flowing through the system. simultaneously to so many different places on the engine, and they all have a recursive effect on each other. So you change one thing here, it has a recursive effect here, it changes something over there, and it's quite hard to control. There's a reason no one's made this before. And the reason we're doing a stage combustion full flow is because it has the highest theoretical possible efficiency. So in order to make a fully reusable rocket, that's really the holy grail of orbital rocketry, You have to have, everything's gotta be the best. It's gotta be the best engine, the best airframe, the best heat shield, extremely light avionics, very clever control mechanisms. You've got to shed mass in any possible way that you can. For example, instead of putting landing legs on the booster and ship, we are going to catch them with a tower to save the weight of the landing legs. So that's like, I mean, we're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It's like Karate Kid with the fly, but much bigger." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, pulling something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This probably won't work the first time. Anyway, so this is bananas. This is banana stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned that you doubt, well, not you doubt, but there's days or moments when you doubt that this is even possible. It's so difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The possible part is, well, at this point, I think we'll get Starship to work. There's a question of timing. How long will it take us to do this? How long will it take us to actually achieve full and rapid reusability? Because it will take probably many launches before we're able to have full and rapid reusability. But I can say that the physics pencils out. Like we're not, Like at this point, I'd say we're confident that, like let's say, I'm very confident success is in the set of all possible outcomes. For a while there, I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes, which is very important, actually. But so we were... You're saying there's a chance. I'm saying there's a chance, exactly. I'm just not sure how long it will take. We have a very talented team. They're working night and day to make it happen. And like I said, the critical thing to achieve for the revolution in spaceflight and for humanity to be a spacefaring civilization is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, orbital rocket. There's not even been any orbital rocket that's been fully reusable ever. And this has always been the holy grail of rocketry. And many smart people, very smart people, have tried to do this before and they've not succeeded. Because it's such a hard problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your source of belief in situations like this, when the engineering problem is so difficult? There's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past. And a lot of people, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, the public in general, have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible. And you yourself know that even if it's a non null set, non empty set of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult. Like where do you go to both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, like for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "a source of strength. That's really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this is something that is important to get done, and we should just keep doing it, or die trying. And I don't need a source of strength." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So quitting is not even like... That's not in my nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I don't care about optimism or pessimism. Fuck that, we're gonna get it done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm gonna get it done. Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network, your thinking process, and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems? Is there like a systematic process? You've spoken about first principles thinking, but is there a kind of process to it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I like saying like, like physics is law and everything else is a recommendation. Like I've met a lot of people who can break the law, but I haven't met anyone who could break physics. So, so first for, you know, any kind of technology problem, you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics. And you know, first principles analysis I think is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, anything really. It's really just saying, you know, let's boil something down to the most fundamental principles, the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level, and that sets your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there, and then you cross-check your conclusion against the axiomatic truth. So, you know, some basics in physics would be like, oh, you're violating conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, you know, then it's not gonna work. So that's just to establish, is it possible? Another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how do things change?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's like in number of things you manufacture or something like that, and then in time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like let's say take an example of manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. And like I said, it's much harder to take an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place. So let's say you're trying to figure out why is this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing, or is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well, what if our volume was a million units a year? Is it still expensive? That's what I mean by thinking about things in the limit. If it's still expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There's something fundamental about design." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you then can focus on reducing the complexity or something like that in the design." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You could change the design to, change the part to be something that is not fundamentally expensive. But that's a common thing in rocketry, because the unit volume is relatively low. And so a common excuse would be, well, it's expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs would be lower. I'm like, OK, so let's say now you're making a million units a year. Is it still expensive? If the answer is yes, then economies of scale are not the issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you throw into manufacturing, do you throw like supply chain, you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that, do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles, like how we're gonna make the supply chain work here? And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that too much?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, so like a good example I think of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any, you know, any product, machine or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say, If you look at the raw materials in the rocket, so you're gonna have like aluminum, steel, titanium, Inconel, specialty alloys, copper, and you say, what's the weight of the constituent elements, of each of these elements, and what is their raw material value? And that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be unless you change the materials. So, and then when you do that, I call it like maybe the magic wand number or something like that. So that would be like if you had the, you know, like just a pile of these raw materials here and you could wave the magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape. That would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for unless you change the materials. So then, and that is always a, almost always a very low number. So then, what's actually causing things to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, actually, if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent, I often talk to Jim Keller, who's somebody who worked with you as a friend." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, Jim did great work at Tesla." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're talking about now. And I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and SpaceX. Folks who work there, they kind of learn this way of thinking and it kind of becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had argument, not argument, he educated me. about how cheap it might be to manufacture a Tesla bot. We had an argument. How can you reduce the cost of the scale of producing a robot? Because I've gotten the chance to interact quite a bit, obviously, in the academic circles with humanoid robots, and then Boston Dynamics, and stuff like that. And they're very expensive to build. And then Jim kind of schooled me on saying, OK, this kind of first principle is thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing down? I suppose you do that, you have done that kind of thinking for TeslaBot and for all kinds of systems that are traditionally seen as complex. And you say, okay, how can we simplify everything now?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I think if you are really good at manufacturing, You can basically make, at high volume, you can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents plus any intellectual property that you need to license. Anything. But it's hard. It's not like that's a very hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything. Anything in volume can be made, like I said, for a cost that asymptotically approaches its raw material constituents plus intellectual property license rights. So what will often happen in trying to design a product is people will start with the tools and parts and methods that they are familiar with and try to create a product using their existing tools and methods. The other way to think about it is actually try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product or technology, whatever it might be. And so what is the perfect arrangement of atoms that would be the best possible product? And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it sounds... and it's almost like Rick and Morty absurd until you start to really think about it, and you really should think about it in this way, because everything else is kind of, if you think, you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things were done in the past, unless you think in this way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, just as a function of inertia, people want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with. That's what they'll do by default. And then that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods, but is unlikely to be the platonic ideal of the perfect product. So that's why it's good to think of things in both directions. So like, what can we build with the tools that we have? But also, what does the theoretical perfect product look like? And that theoretical perfect product is gonna be a moving target, because as you learn more, the definition for that perfect product will change, because you don't actually know what the perfect product is, but you can successfully approximate a more perfect product. So thinking about it like that, and then saying, okay, now, what tools, methods, materials, whatever, do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape? But people rarely think about it that way. But it's a powerful tool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I should mention that the brilliant Siobhan Zillis is hanging out with us, in case you hear a voice of wisdom from outside, from up above. Okay, so let me ask you about Mars. You mentioned it would be great for science to put a base on the moon to do some research, but the truly big leap, again in this category of seemingly impossible, is to put a human being on Mars. When do you think SpaceX will land a human being on Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hmm. Best case is about five years, worst case, 10 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are the determining factors, would you say, from an engineering perspective, or is that not the bottlenecks?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's fundamentally engineering the vehicle. I mean, Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by I don't know, order of magnitude or something like that. It's a lot. It's really next level. And the fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per turn to orbit, and ultimately cost per turn to the surface of Mars. This may seem like a mercantile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized. Like there is a certain cost per ton to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city. And then above that, we cannot afford to do it. So right now you couldn't fly to Mars for a trillion dollars, no amount of money could get you a ticket to Mars. So we need to get that above, to get that like something that is actually possible at all. We don't just want to have with Mars flags and footprints and then not come back for a half century like we did with the moon. In order to pass a very important great filter, I think we need to be a multi-planet species. This may sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people, but eventually, given enough time, Earth is likely to experience some calamity that could be you know, something that humans do to themselves or an external event like happen to the dinosaurs. But eventually, if none of that happens and somehow magically we keep going, then the sun is gradually expanding. and will engulf the Earth, and probably Earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years. It's a long time, but that's only 10% longer than Earth has been around. And so if you think about the current situation, it's really remarkable and kind of hard to believe, Earth's been around four and a half billion years, and this is the first time in four and a half billion years that it's been possible to extend life beyond Earth. And that window of opportunity may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it also may be open for a short time. And we should, I think it is wise for us to act quickly while the window is open, just in case it closes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the existence of nuclear weapons, pandemics, all kinds of threats should kind of give us some motivation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, civilization could die with a bang or a whimper. If it dies of demographic collapse, then it's more of a whimper, obviously. But if it's World War III, it's more of a bang. But these are all risks. I mean, it's important to think of these things and just, you know, think of things like probabilities, not certainties. There's a probability that something bad will happen on Earth. I think most likely the future will be good. But there's like, let's say, for argument's sake, a 1% chance per century of a civilization ending event. Like, that was Stephen Hawking's estimate. I think he might be right about that. So then... You know, we should basically think of this like being a multi-planet species is like taking out insurance for life itself. Like life insurance for life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, it's turned into an infomercial real quick." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Life insurance for life, yes. And, you know, we can bring the creatures from, you know, plants and animals from Earth to Mars and breathe life into the planet and have a second planet with life. That would be great. They can't bring themselves there, you know, so if we don't bring them to Mars, then they will just for sure all die when the sun expands anyway, and then that'll be it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think is the most difficult aspect of building a civilization on Mars, terraforming Mars, like from an engineering perspective, from a financial perspective, human perspective, to get a large number of folks there who will never return back to Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, they could certainly return. Some will return back to Earth. They will choose to stay there for the rest of their lives. Yeah, many will. But, you know, we need the spaceships back, like the ones that go to Mars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We need them back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you can hop on if you want, you know. But we can't just not have the spaceships come back. Those things are expensive. We need them back. I'd like to come back and do another trip." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, do you think about the terraforming aspect, like actually building, are you still focused right now on the spaceships part that's so critical to get to Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We absolutely, if you can't get there, nothing else matters. So, and like I said, we can't get there with, at some extraordinarily high cost. I mean, the current cost of, let's say, one ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars. So because you don't just need the rocket and the launch and everything, you need like heat shield, you need guidance system, you need deep space communications, you need some kind of landing system. So like rough approximation would be a billion dollars per ton to the surface of Mars right now. This is obviously way too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization. So we need to improve that by at least a factor of 1,000. A million per ton? Yes, ideally much less than a million per ton, but if it's not, like it's gotta be, you ever say like, well how much can society afford to spend or want to spend on a self-sustaining city on Mars? The self-sustaining part is important, like it's just the key threshold, the grateful will have been passed when the city on Mars can survive even if the spaceships from Earth stop coming for any reason. It doesn't matter what the reason is, but if they stop coming for any reason, will it die out or will it not? And if there's even one critical ingredient missing, then it still doesn't count. It's like, you know, if you're on a long sea voyage and you've got everything except vitamin C, it's only a matter of time, you know, you're going to die. So we're going to get Mars, a Mars city to the point where it's self-sustaining. I'm not sure this will really happen in my lifetime, but I hope to see it at least have a lot of momentum. And then you could say, okay, what is the minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining city? And there's a lot of uncertainty about this. You could say like, I don't know, it's probably at least a million tons, because you have to set up a lot of infrastructure on Mars. Like I said, you can't be missing anything that, in order to be self-sustaining, you can't be missing, like you need a semiconductor, fabs, you need, iron ore refineries, you need lots of things. And Mars is not super hospitable. It's the least inhospitable planet, but it's definitely a fixer-upper of a planet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Outside of Earth. Yes. Earth is pretty good. Earth is easy. And also, we should clarify, in the solar system. Yes, in the solar system. There might be nice vacation spots" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There might be some great planets out there, but it's hopeless." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Too hard to get there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, way, way, way, way, way too hard, to say the least." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me push back on that. Not really a pushback, but a quick curveball of a question. So you did mention physics as the first starting point. So general relativity allows for wormholes. They technically can exist. Do you think those can ever be leveraged by humans to travel fast in the speed of light?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the one whole thing is debatable. We currently do not know of any means of going faster than the speed of light. There are some ideas about having space. You can only move at the speed of light through space, but if you can make space itself move, that's warping space. Space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light. Like the universe in the Big Bang, the universe expanded much more than the speed of light by a lot. But the, If this is possible, the amount of energy required to wolf space is so gigantic, it boggles the mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So all the work you've done with propulsion, how much innovation is possible with rocket propulsion? Is this, I mean, you've seen it all and you're constantly innovating in every aspect. How much is possible? Like how much can you get 10X somehow? Is there something in there in physics that you can get significant improvement in terms of efficiency of engines and all those kinds of things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, as I was saying, really the Holy Grail is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital system. So right now, the Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there. But the booster comes back and lands, you've seen the videos, and we get the nose cone or fairing back, but we do not get the upper stage back. that means that we have a minimum cost of building an upper stage. You can think of like a two-stage rocket of sort of like two airplanes, like a big airplane and a smaller airplane, and we get the big airplane back but not the small airplane. And so it still costs a lot, you know, so that upper stage is, you know, at least 10 million dollars. And then the degree of the booster is not as rapidly and completely reusable as we'd like in order of the fairings. So, you know, our kind of minimum marginal cost not counting overhead for per flight is on the order of 15 to 20 million dollars maybe. So, That's extremely good for, it's by far better than any rocket ever in history. But with full and rapid reusability, we can reduce the cost per time to orbit by a factor of 100. But just think of it like, like imagine if you had an aircraft or something or a car. And if you had to buy a new car, every time you went for a drive, it'd be very expensive. It'd be silly, frankly. But in fact, you just refuel the car or recharge the car. And that makes your trip... Like, I don't know, a thousand times cheaper. So it's the same for rockets. It's very difficult to make this complex machine that can go to orbit. And so if you cannot reuse it, and if you have to throw even any significant part of it away, that massively increases the cost. You know, Starship in theory could do a cost per launch of like a million, maybe $2 million or something like that. And put over 100 tons in orbit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is crazy. So. That's incredible. So you're saying like it's by far the biggest bang for the buck is to make it fully reusable versus like some kind of brilliant breakthrough in theoretical physics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, there's no brilliant break in that. Just make the rocket reusable. This is an extremely difficult engineering problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But no new physics is required. Just brilliant engineering. Let me ask a slightly philosophical fun question. Gotta ask. I know you're focused on getting to Mars, but once we're there on Mars, what form of government, economic system, political system do you think would work best for an early civilization of humans? I mean, the interesting reason to talk about this stuff, it also helps people dream about the future. I know you're really focused about the short-term engineering dream, but it's like, I don't know, there's something about imagining an actual civilization on Mars that gives people, really gives people hope." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it would be a new frontier and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of government, just as was done in the creation of the United States. So, I mean, I would suggest, having direct democracy, like people vote directly on things as opposed to representative democracy. So representative democracy, I think, is too subject to special interests and, you know, a coercion of the politicians and that kind of thing. So I'd recommend that there's just direct democracy. People vote on laws, the population votes on laws themselves, and then the laws must be short enough that people can understand them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and then like keeping a well-informed populace, like really being transparent about all the information, about what they're voting for." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolute transparency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and not make it as annoying as those cookies. We have to accept the cookies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's always a slight amount of trepidation when you click accept cookies. I feel as though there's perhaps a very tiny chance that it'll open a portal to hell or something like that. That's exactly how I feel. Why do they keep wanting me to accept it? What do they want with this cookie? Like somebody got upset with accepting cookies or something somewhere, who cares? It's so annoying to keep accepting all these cookies. Yes, you can have my damn cookie, I don't care, whatever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You heard it from Yann first, he accepts all your damn cookies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and stop asking me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's annoying. Yeah, it's one example of implementation of a good idea done" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "really horribly. Yeah, it's somebody was like, there's some good intentions of like, privacy or whatever. But now everyone's just has to take except cookies. And it's not, you know, you have billions of people who have to keep clicking except cookie. It's super annoying. Just accept the damn cookie. It's fine. There is like, I think a fundamental problem that we're, because we've not really had a major, like a world war or something like that in a while, and obviously we would like to not have world wars, there's not been a cleansing function for rules and regulations. So wars did have some sort of lining in that there would be a reset on rules and regulations after a war. So World Wars I and II, there were huge resets on rules and regulations. Now, if society does not have a war and there's no cleansing function or garbage collection for rules and regulations, then rules and regulations will accumulate every year because they're immortal. There's no actual – humans die, but the laws don't. So we need a garbage collection function for rules and regulations. They should not just be immortal, because some of the rules and regulations that are put in place will be counterproductive. Done with good intentions, but counterproductive. Sometimes not done with good intentions. So, if rules and regulations just accumulate every year, and you get more and more of them, then eventually you won't be able to do anything. You're just like Gulliver, tied down by thousands of little strings. And we see that in US and Like basically all economies that have been around for a while, and regulators and legislators create new rules and regulations every year, but they don't put effort into removing them. And I think that's very important that we put effort into removing rules and regulations. But it gets tough because you get special interests that then are dependent on, like they have a vested interest in that whatever rule and regulation and then they fight to not get it removed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so I mean, I guess the problem with the Constitution is it's kind of like C versus Java because it doesn't have any garbage collection built in. I think there should be. When you first said the metaphor of garbage collection, I loved it. Yeah, it's from a coding standpoint. From a coding standpoint, yeah. It would be interesting if the laws themselves kind of had a built-in thing where they kind of die after a while unless somebody explicitly publicly defends them. So that's sort of, it's not like somebody has to kill them, they kind of die themselves. They disappear. Yeah. Not to defend Java or anything, but you know, C++, you know, you could also have a great garbage collection in Python and so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so yeah, something needs to happen or just the civilization's arteries just harden over time and you can just get less and less done because there's just a rule against everything. So I think like, I don't know, for Mars or whatever, I'd say, or even for, you know, obviously for Earth as well, like, I think there should be an active process for removing rules and regulations and questioning their existence. Just, like, if we've got a function for creating rules and regulations, because rules and regulations can also think of as like, they're like software or lines of code for operating civilization. That's the rules and regulations. So it's like we shouldn't have rules and regulations, but you have code accumulation, but no code removal. And so it just gets to become basically archaic bloatware after a while. And it makes it hard for things to progress. I don't know, maybe Mars, you'd have like, you know, any given law must have a sunset, you know, and require active voting to keep it up there, you know. And I actually also say like, and these are just, I don't know, recommendations or thoughts and ultimately it will be up to the people on Mars to decide. But I think it should be easier to remove a law than to add one because of the, just to overcome the inertia of laws. So maybe it's like, for argument's sake, you need like say 60% vote to have a law take effect, but only a 40% vote to remove it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me be the guy, you posted a meme on Twitter recently where there's like a row of urinals and a guy just walks all the way across and he tells you about crypto." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's happened to me so many times, I think maybe even literally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Do you think, technologically speaking, there's any room for ideas of smart contracts or so on? Because you mentioned laws. That's an interesting use of things like smart contracts to implement the laws by which governments function. Like something built on Ethereum or maybe a dog coin that enables smart contracts somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't quite understand this whole smart contracting, you know. I mean, I'm too dumb to understand small contracts." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good line." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, my general approach to any kind of deal or whatever is just make sure there's clarity of understanding. That's the most important thing. And just keep any kind of deal very short and simple, plain language, and just make sure everyone understands this is the deal. Is it clear? And what are the consequences if various things don't happen? But usually deals are, business deals or whatever, are way too long and complex and overly lawyered and pointlessly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned that Doge is the people's coin. And you said that you were literally going, SpaceX may consider literally putting a Dogecoin on the moon. Is this something you're still considering? Mars, perhaps? Do you think there's some chance, we've talked about political systems on Mars, that Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars at some point in the future?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can't synchronize due to speed of light, or not easily." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it must be completely standalone from Earth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, because Mars is, at closest approach, it's four light minutes away, roughly, and then at furthest approach, it's roughly 20 light minutes away, maybe a little more. So you can't really have something synchronizing if you've got a 20 minute speed of light issue, if it's got a one minute blockchain. It's not gonna synchronize properly. So Mars would, I don't know if Mars would have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably, seems likely. But it would be some kind of localized thing on Mars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you let the people decide." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. The future of Mars should be up to the Martians. Yeah, so. I mean, I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the database that is called money. You know, I think I have a pretty deep understanding of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis because of PayPal. You know, we really got in deep there. And right now the money system, actually for practical purposes, is really a bunch of heterogeneous mainframes running old COBOL." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, you mean literally? Literally. That's literally what's happening." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In batch mode. Okay. In patch mode. Yeah, pretty the poor bastards who have to maintain that code. Okay, that's a pain. Not even Fortran, it's COBOL. It's COBOL. And they're still, banks are still buying mainframes in 2021 and running ancient COBOL code. And the Federal Reserve is probably even older than what the banks have, and they have an old COBOL mainframe. And so the government effectively has editing privileges on the money database, and they use those editing privileges to make more money whenever they want. And this increases the error in the database that is money. So I think money should really be viewed through the lens of information theory. And so it's kind of like an internet connection. Like what's the bandwidth, total bit rate, what is the latency, jitter, packet drop, errors in network communication. Just think money like that, basically. I think that's probably the right way to think of it. And then say what system, from an information theory standpoint, allows an economy to function the best. And crypto is an attempt to reduce the error in in money that is contributed by governments diluting the money supply as basically a pernicious form of taxation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So both policy in terms of with inflation and actual like technological cobalt, like cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction to store wealth, all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like I said, just think of money as information. People often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. Money is information, and it does not have power in and of itself. Like applying the physics tools of thinking about things in the limit is helpful. If you are stranded on a tropical island, and you have a trillion dollars, it's useless. because there's no resource allocation. Money is a database for resource allocation, but there's no resource to allocate except yourself, so money's useless. If you're stranded on a desert island with no food, all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving. So, So just think of money as a database for resource allocation across time and space. And then in what form should that database or data system, what would be most effective? Now, there is a fundamental issue with, say, Bitcoin in its current form, in that the transaction volume is very limited. And the latency for a properly confirmed transaction is too long, much longer than you'd like. So it's actually not great from a transaction volume standpoint or a latency standpoint. So it is perhaps useful to solve an aspect of the money database problem which is this sort of store of wealth or an accounting of relative obligations, I suppose. But it is not useful as a currency, as a day-to-day currency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But people have proposed different technological solutions. Like Lightning. Yeah, Lightning Network and the Layer 2 technologies on top of that. I mean, it's all, it seems to be all kind of a trade-off, but the point is, it's kind of brilliant to say that just think about information, think about what kind of database, what kind of infrastructure enables the exchange of information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so say like you're operating an economy, and you need to have something that allows for the efficient, to have efficient value ratios between products and services. So you got this massive number of products and services and you need to, you can't just barter. It's like that would be extremely unwieldy. So you need something that gives you a ratio of exchange between goods and services. And then something that allows you to shift obligations across time, like debt. Debt and equity shift obligations across time. What does the best job of that? Part of the reason why I think there's some merit to Dogecoin, even though it was obviously created as a joke, is that it actually does have a much higher transaction volume capability than Bitcoin. And the costs of doing a transaction, the Dogecoin fee is very low. Like right now, if you want to do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high. So you could not use it effectively for most things. And nor could it even scale to a high volume. And when Bitcoin was, you know, started, I guess around 2008 or something like that, the internet connections were much worse than they are today, like order of magnitude. I mean, they're way, way worse, you know, in 2008. So having a small block size and a long synchronization time made sense in 2008. But 2021, or fast forward 10 years, it's comically low. And I think there's some value to having a linear increase in the amount of currency that is generated. Because some amount of the currency, if a currency is too deflationary, or I should say, if a currency is expected to increase in value over time, there's reluctance to spend it. because you're like, oh, I'll just hold it and not spend it, because scarcity is increasing with time. So if I spend it now, then I will regret spending it, so I will just, you know, hodl it. But if there's some dilution of the currency occurring over time, that's more of an incentive to use it as a currency. So Dogecoin, somewhat randomly, has a fixed number of coins or hash strings that are generated every year. So there's some inflation, but it's not a percentage base. It's a fixed number, so the percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time. So I'm not saying that it's like the ideal system for a currency, but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else I've seen, just by accident." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So. I like how you said around 2008, so you're not, you know, some people suggested you might be Satoshi Nakamoto. You've previously said you're not. You're not, for sure. Would you tell us if you were? Yes. Okay. Do you think it's a feature a bug that he's anonymous or she or they It's an interesting kind of quirk of human history that there is a particular technology that is a completely anonymous inventor Or creator" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote you know, about those ideas. And then, like, I don't know exactly, obviously, I don't know who created Bitcoin for practical purposes, but the evolution of ideas is pretty clear for that. And like, it seems as though, like, Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas. So he claims not to be Nakamoto, but I'm not sure that's neither here nor there, but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not perhaps like singular figures aren't even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to a thing, so. Yeah. Perhaps it's sad to think about history, but maybe most names will be forgotten anyway." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What is a name, anyway? It's a name attached to an idea. What does it even mean, really?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think Shakespeare had a thing about roses and stuff, whatever he said." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A rose by any other name would smell sweet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I got Elon to quote Shakespeare. I feel like I accomplished something today." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? I'm going to clip that out. A lot more temperate and more fair." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Autopilot. Tesla Autopilot. Tesla Autopilot has been through an incredible journey over the past six years, or perhaps even longer in the minds of, in your mind and the minds of many involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's where we first like connected really was the Autopilot stuff, autonomy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The whole journey was incredible to me to watch. I was, Because I knew, well, part of it is I was at MIT and I knew the difficulty of computer vision. And I knew the whole, I had a lot of colleagues and friends about the DARPA challenge and knew how difficult it is. And so there was a natural skepticism. When I first drove a Tesla with the initial system based on Mobileye, I thought there's no way. So first when I got in, I thought, there's no way this car could maintain, like stay in the lane and create a comfortable experience. So my intuition initially was that the lane keeping problem is way too difficult to solve. Oh, lane keeping, yeah, that's relatively easy. But solve in the way that we just, we talked about previous is prototype, versus a thing that actually creates a pleasant experience over hundreds of thousands of miles and millions. Yeah, so I was proven wrong." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We had to wrap a lot of code around the mobile eye thing. It doesn't just work by itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. I mean, that's part of the story of how you approach things sometimes. Sometimes you do things from scratch. Sometimes at first you kind of see what's out there and then you decide to do from scratch. That was one of the boldest decisions I've seen is both on the hardware and the software to decide to eventually go from scratch. I thought again, I was skeptical whether that's going to be able to work out because it's such a difficult problem. And so it was an incredible journey. What I see now with everything, the hardware, the compute, the sensors, the things I maybe care and love about most is the stuff that Andrej Karpathy is leading with the data set selection, the whole data engine process, the neural network architectures, the way that's in the real world that network is tested, validated, all the different test sets. you know, versus the image net model of computer vision, like what's in academia is like real world artificial intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So... Andre is awesome and obviously plays an important role, but we have a lot of really talented people driving things. So... And Ashok is actually the head of autopilot engineering. Andre is the director of AI." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, I'm aware that there's an incredible team of just a lot going on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "People will give me too much credit and they will give Andre too much credit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And people should realize how much is going on under the hood." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's just a lot of really talented people. the Tesla autopilot AI team is extremely talented. It's like some of the smartest people in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, we're getting it done. What are some insights you've gained over those five, six years of autopilot about the problem of autonomous driving? So you leaped in having some sort of first principles kinds of intuitions, but nobody knows how difficult" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I thought the self-driving problem would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. It's not like I thought it would be easy, I thought it would be very hard, but it was actually way harder than even that. So what it comes down to at the end of the day is to solve self-driving, you have to solve you basically need to recreate what humans do to drive, which is humans drive with optical sensors, eyes, and biological neural nets. That's how the entire road system is designed to work, with a basically passive optical and neural nets biologically. And now that we need to, so for actually for full self-driving to work, we have to recreate that in digital form. So we have to, that means cameras with advanced neural nets in silicon form. And then it will obviously solve for full self-driving. That's the only way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think there's any other way. But the question is, what aspects of human nature do you have to encode into the machine, right? So you have to solve the perception problem, like detect. And then you first, well, realize what is the perception problem for driving, like all the kinds of things you have to be able to see. Like, what do we even look at when we drive? I just recently heard Andre talk at MIT about car doors. I think it was the world's greatest talk of all time about car doors. The fine details of car doors. What is even an open car door, man? So the ontology of that, that's a perception problem. We humans solve that perception problem, and Tesla has to solve that problem. And then there's the control and the planning coupled with the perception. You have to figure out what's involved in driving, especially in all the different edge cases. And then, I mean, maybe you can comment on this, how much game theoretic kind of stuff needs to be involved at a four-way stop sign? As humans, when we drive, our actions affect the world. It changes how others behave. Most of the time I was driving, you're usually just responding to the scene as opposed to like really asserting yourself in the scene. Do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think these sort of control logic conundrums are not the hard part. Let's see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think is the hard part in this whole beautiful, complex problem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's a lot of friggin' software, man. A lot of smart lines of code. For sure, in order to have great software, create an accurate vector space. So like if you're coming from image space, which is like this flow of photons going to the cameras and then since you have this massive bit stream, in image space, and then you have to effectively compress a massive bitstream corresponding to photons that knocked off an electron in a camera sensor and turn that bit stream into vector space. By vector space, I mean like, you know, you've got cars and humans and lane lines and curves and traffic lights and that kind of thing. Once you have an accurate vector space, the control problem is similar to that of a video game, like a Grand Theft Auto or Cyberpunk, if you have accurate vector space. The control problem is, I wouldn't say it's trivial, it's not trivial, but it's, it's not like some insurmountable thing. But having an accurate vector space is very difficult." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think we humans don't give enough respect to how incredible the human perception system is, to mapping the raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Your brain is doing an incredible amount of processing and giving you an image that is a very cleaned up image. Like when we look around here, you see color in the corners of your eyes, but actually your eyes have very few cones, cone receptors in the peripheral vision. Your eyes are painting color. in the peripheral vision. You don't realize it, but their eyes are actually painting color and your eyes also have like this blood vessels and all sorts of gnarly things and there's a blind spot, but do you see your blind spot? No, your brain is painting in the missing, the blind spot. You're gonna do these like, You can see these things online where you look here and look at this point, and then look at this point, and if it's in your blind spot, your brain will just fill in the missing bits." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The peripheral vision is so cool. It makes you realize all the illusions for vision science. It makes you realize just how incredible the brain is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The brain is doing a crazy amount of post-processing on the vision signals for your eyes. It's insane. So, and then even once you get all those vision signals, your brain is constantly trying to forget as much as possible. So human memory is, perhaps the weakest thing about the brain is memory. So because memory is so expensive to our brain and so limited, your brain is trying to forget as much as possible and to still, the things that you see into the smallest amounts of information possible. So your brain is trying to not just get to a vector space, but get to a vector space that is the smallest possible vector space of only relevant objects. And I think like, You can sort of look inside your brain, or at least I can, like when you drive down the road, and try to think about what your brain is actually doing consciously. And it's like you'll see a car, because you don't have cameras, you don't have eyes in the back of your head or the side, you know, so you say like, You basically have two cameras on a slow gimbal. And eyesight's not that great. People are constantly distracted and thinking about things and texting and doing all sorts of things they shouldn't do in a car, changing the radio station. having arguments, you know, is like, so, so then, like, say, like, like, like, when's the last time you looked right and left, and, you know, or and rearward, or even diagonally, you know, forward, to actually refresh your vector space? So you're glancing around and what your mind is doing is trying to distill the relevant vectors, basically objects with a position and motion, and then editing that down to the least amount that's necessary for you to drive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "it does seem to be able to edit it down or compress it even further into things like concepts. It's like it goes beyond, the human mind seems to go sometimes beyond vector space to sort of space of concepts to where you'll see a thing. It's no longer represented spatially somehow. It's almost like a concept that you should be aware of. Like if this is a school zone, you'll remember that as a concept, which is a weird thing to represent, but perhaps for driving, need to fully represent those things, or maybe you get those kind of indirectly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You need to establish vector space and then actually have predictions for those vector spaces. So like, you know, like if you know, like you drive past, say a bus, and you see that there's people, before you drove past the bus, you saw people crossing, or some, just imagine there's like a large truck or something blocking sight. But before you came up to the truck, you saw that there were some kids about to cross the road. in front of the truck. Now you can no longer see the kids, but you need to be able, but you would now know, okay, those kids are probably going to pass by the truck and cross the road, even though you cannot see them. So you have to have memory, you need to remember that there were kids there, and you need to have some forward prediction of what their position will be at the time of relevance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a really hard problem. So with occlusions and computer vision, when you can't see an object anymore, even when it just walks behind a tree and reappears, that's a really, really, I mean, at least in academic literature, it's tracking through occlusions, it's very difficult. Yeah, we're doing it. I understand this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So some of it- It's like object permanence. Like same thing happens with the humans with neural nets. Like when like a toddler grows up, like there's a point in time where they develop, they have a sense of object permanence. So before a certain age, if you have a ball, or a toy or whatever, and you put it behind your back, and you pop it out, before they have object permanence, it's like a new thing every time. It's like, whoa, this toy went poof, disappeared, and now it's back again, and they can't believe it, and they can play peek-a-boo all day long, because this peek-a-boo is fresh every time. But then we figure out object permanence, then they realize, oh no, the object is not gone, it's just behind your back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sometimes I wish we never did figure out object permanence. Yeah, so that's a... That's an important problem to solve." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, so like an important evolution of the neural nets in the car is Memory costs both time and space. So now you can't remember, like you have to say, like, how long do you want to remember things for? And there's a cost to remembering things for a long time. So you run out of memory to try to remember too much for too long. And then you also have things that are stale if you remember them for too long. And then you also need things that are remembered over time. So even if you, like I say, have like, for argument's sake, five seconds of memory on a time basis, but like let's say you're parked at a light. and you saw, use a pedestrian example, that people were waiting to cross the road, and you can't quite see them because of an occlusion, but they might wait for a minute before the light changes for them to cross the road. You still need to remember that that's where they were, and that they're probably going to cross the road type of thing. So even if that exceeds your time-based memory, it should not exceed your space memory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I just think the data engine side of that, so getting the data to learn all of the concepts that you're saying now is an incredible process. It's this iterative process of just, there's this hydranet of many." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're changing the name to something else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, I'm sure it'll be equally as Rick and Morty-like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We've re-architected the neural nets in the cars so many times, it's crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so every time there's a new major version, you'll rename it to something more ridiculous or memorable and beautiful? Sorry, not ridiculous, of course." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you see the full array of neural nets that are operating in the car, it kind of boggles the mind. There's so many layers, it's crazy. So yeah. And we started off with simple neural nets that were basically image recognition on a single frame. from a single camera, and then trying to knit those together with C. I should say we're really primarily running C here, because C++ is too much overhead. And we have our own C compiler. So to get maximum performance, we actually wrote our own C compiler and are continuing to optimize our C compiler for maximum efficiency. In fact, we've just recently done a new rev on a C compiler that'll compile directly to our Autopilot hardware." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you want to compile the whole thing down with your own compiler? Yeah, absolutely. Because there's all kinds of compute. There's CPU, GPU, there's basic types of things. And you have to somehow figure out the scheduling across all of those things. And so you're compiling the code down. So that's why there's a lot of people involved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a lot of hardcore software engineering at a very sort of bare metal level, because we're trying to do a lot of compute that's constrained to our full self-driving computer. And we want to try to have the highest frames per second possible. with a very finite amount of compute and power. So we really put a lot of effort into the efficiency of our compute. And so there's actually a lot of work done by some very talented software engineers at Tesla at a very foundational level to improve the efficiency of compute. and how we use the trip accelerators, which are basically doing matrix math dot products, like a bazillion dot products. It's like, what are neural nets? It's like, compute-wise, like 99% dot products." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you want to achieve as many high frame rates like a video game. You want full resolution, high frame rate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "High frame rate, low latency, low jitter. I think one of the things we're moving towards now is no post-processing of the image through the image signal processor. What happens for cameras is that, well, almost all cameras, is they... There's a lot of post-processing done in order to make pictures look pretty. And so we don't care about pictures looking pretty. We just want the data. So we're moving to just raw photon counts. So the system will, like the image that the computer sees is actually much more than what you'd see if you represented it on a camera. It's got much more data. And even in very low light conditions, you can see that there's a small photon count difference between, you know, this spot here and that spot there, which means that, so it can see in the dark incredibly well, because it can detect these tiny differences in photon counts. That's much better than you could possibly imagine. And then we also save 13 milliseconds on latency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "From removing the post-processing on the image?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. Because we've got eight cameras, and then there's roughly, I don't know, one and a half milliseconds or so, maybe 1.6 milliseconds of latency for each camera. Basically bypassing the image processor gets us back 13 milliseconds of latency, which is important. And we track latency all the way from, you know, photon hits the camera to, you know, all the steps that it's got to go through to get, you know, go through the various neural nets and the C code. And there's a little bit of C++ there as well. Well, maybe a lot, but the core stuff is the heavy duty computers all in C. And so we track that latency all the way to an output command to the drive unit to accelerate the brakes, just to slow down the steering, turn left or right. So because you go to output a command, that's going to go to a controller. And some of these controllers have an update frequency that's maybe 10 hertz or something like that, which is slow. That's like, now you lose 100 milliseconds, potentially. So then we want to update the driver the drivers on the steering and braking control to have more like 100 hertz instead of 10 hertz, then you get a 10 millisecond latency instead of 100 milliseconds, worst case latency. And actually, jitter is more of a challenge than latency, because latency is like, you can anticipate and predict, but if you're But if you've got a stack up of things going from the camera to the computer, through then a series of other computers, and finally to an actuator on the car, if you have a stack up of tolerances, of timing tolerances, then you can have quite a variable latency, which is called jitter. And that makes it hard to anticipate exactly how you should turn the car or accelerate, because if you got maybe 150, 200 milliseconds of jitter, then you could be off by up to 0.2 seconds. And this could make a big difference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have to interpolate somehow to deal with the effects of jitter, so that you can make robust control decisions? Yeah, so the jitters in the sensor information, or the jitter can occur at any stage in the pipeline." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you have fixed latency, you can anticipate, and like say, okay, we know that our information is, for argument's sake, 150 milliseconds stale. Like so, for argument's sake, 150 milliseconds from, taking camera to where you can measure a change in the acceleration of the vehicle. So then you can say, okay, well, we know it's 150 milliseconds, so we're gonna take that into account and compensate for that latency. However, if you've got then 150 milliseconds of latency plus 100 milliseconds of jitter, which could be anywhere from zero to 100 milliseconds on top, so then your latency could be from 150 to 50 milliseconds. Now you've got 100 milliseconds that you don't know what to do with, and that's basically random. So getting rid of jitter is extremely important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that affects your control decisions and all those kinds of things, okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the car's just gonna fundamentally maneuver better with lower jitter. Got it. The cars will maneuver with superhuman ability and reaction time much faster than a human. I mean, I think over time, autopilot, full self-driving will be capable of maneuvers that, you know, are far more than what James Bond could do in the best movie type of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's exactly what I was imagining in my mind, as you said." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like impossible maneuvers that a human couldn't do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask, looking back the six years, looking out into the future, based on your current understanding, how hard do you think this full self-driving problem, when do you think Tesla will solve level four FSD?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's looking quite likely that it will be next year." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what does the solution look like? Is it the current pool of FSD beta candidates, they start getting greater and greater as they have been, degrees of autonomy, and then there's a certain level beyond which they can do their own, they can read a book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so, I mean, you can see that anybody who's been following the full self-driving beta closely will see that the rate of disengagements has been dropping rapidly. So like a disengagement would be where the driver intervenes to prevent the car from doing something dangerous potentially. So the interventions per million miles has been dropping dramatically at some point, and that trend looks like it happens next year, is that the probability of an accident on FSD is less than that of the average human, and then significantly less than that of the average human. It certainly appears like we will get there next year. Then, of course, then there's gonna be a case of, okay, well, we now have to prove this to regulators and prove it to, you know, and we want a standard that is not just equivalent to a human, but much better than the average human. I think it's gotta be at least two or three times higher safety than a human. So two or three times lower probability of injury than a human. before we would actually say, like, okay, it's okay to go. It's not going to be equivalent, it's going to be much better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you look, 10.6 just came out recently, 10.7 is on the way, maybe 11 is on the way somewhere in the future." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we were hoping to get 11 out this year, but it's... 11 actually has a whole bunch of fundamental rewrites on the neural net architecture and some fundamental improvements in creating vector space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So... There is some fundamental leap that really deserves the 11. I mean, that's a pretty cool number. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "11 would be a single stack for all, you know, one stack to rule them all. But there are just some really fundamental neural net architecture changes that will allow for much more capability, but you know, at first they're going to have issues. So like we have this working on like sort of alpha software and it's good, but it's, It's basically taking a whole bunch of C, C++ code, and deleting a massive amount of C++ code and replacing it with a neural net. And Andrei makes this point a lot, which is neural nets are kind of eating software. Over time, there's less and less conventional software, more and more neural net, which is still software, but it still comes out the lines of software. But there's more neural net stuff and less you know, heuristics, basically. More matrix-based stuff and less heuristics-based stuff. And, you know, like one of the big changes will be, like right now the neural nets will, deliver a giant bag of points to the C++ or C and C++ code. We call it the giant bag of points. And it's like, so you got a pixel and something associated with that pixel. Like this pixel is probably car. This pixel is probably lane line. Then you've got to assemble this giant bag of points in the C code and turn it into vectors. And it does a pretty good job of it, but we need another layer of neural nets on top of that to take the giant bag of points and distill that down to vector space in the neural net part of the software as opposed to the heuristics part of the software. This is a big improvement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Neural nets all the way down is what you want." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sorry, old neural net. But this is a game changer to not have the bag of points, the giant bag of points that has to be assembled with many lines of C++ and have a neural net just assemble those into a vector. So the neural net is outputting much, much less data. It's outputting, this is a lane line, this is a curb, this is drivable space, this is a car, this is a pedestrian or a cyclist or something like that. It's really outputting proper vectors to the C++ control code as opposed to the sort of constructing the vectors in C, which we've done, I think, quite a good job of, but we were kind of hitting a local maximum on how well the C can do this. So this is really a big deal. And just all of the networks in the car need to move to surround video. There's still some legacy networks that are not surround video. and all of the training needs to move to surround video, and the efficiency of the training needs to get better, and it is. And then we need to move everything to raw photon counts as opposed to processed images. Which is quite a big reset on the training, because the system's trained on post-processed images, so we need to redo all the training to train against the raw photon counts instead of the post-processed image." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So ultimately, it's kind of reducing the complexity of the whole thing. Lines of code will actually go lower. Yeah, that's fascinating. So you're doing fusion of all the sensors, reducing the complexity of having to deal with these sensors. Fusion of the cameras, really. Right, yes. Same with humans. Well, I guess we got ears, too. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, actually, you need to incorporate sound as well, because you need to listen for ambulance sirens or firetrucks, or somebody yelling at you or something. I don't know. There's a little bit of audio that needs to be incorporated as well. Do you need a quick bath break? Yeah, let's take a break. Honestly, frankly, like the ideas are the easy thing. And the implementation is the hard thing. The idea of going to the moon is the easy part. But going to the moon is the hard part. And there's a lot of hardcore engineering that's got to get done at the hardware and software level, like I said, optimizing the C compiler and just cutting out latency everywhere. If we don't do this, the system will not work properly. So the work of the engineers doing this They are like the unsung heroes, but they are critical to the success of the situation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you made it clear. I mean, at least to me, it's super exciting everything that's going on outside of what Andre is doing. Just the whole infrastructure of the software. I mean, everything is going on with Data Engine, whatever it's called. The whole process is just a work of art to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The sheer scale of it boggles the mind. The training, the amount of work done, we've written all this custom software for training and labeling and to do auto-labeling. Auto-labeling is essential. Especially when you've got surround video, it's very difficult to label. Surround video from scratch is extremely difficult. Like take a human's such a long time to even label one video clip, like several hours, or the order label it. Basically, we just apply like heavy duty, like a lot of compute to the to the video clips, to pre assign, and guess what all the things are that are going on in the surround video. And then there's like correcting it. Yeah, and then all the human has to do is like tweet, like say, you know, adjust what is incorrect. This is like increases productivity by effect 100 or more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. So you've presented TeslaBot as primarily useful in the factory. First of all, I think humanoid robots are incredible. From a fan of robotics, I think the elegance of movement that humanoid robots, that bipedal robots show are just so cool. So it's really interesting that you're working on this and also talking about applying the same kind of, all the ideas of, some of which we've talked about with Data Engine, all the things that we're talking about with Tesla Autopilot, just transferring that over to just yet another robotics problem. I have to ask, since I care about human-robot interaction, so the human side of that, so you've talked about mostly in the factory. Do you see part of this problem that TeslaBot has to solve is interacting with humans and potentially having a place like in the home? So interacting, not just, not replacing labor, but also like, I don't know, being a friend or an assistant or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the possibilities are endless. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously like a, it's not quite in Tesla's primary mission direction of accelerating sustainable energy, but it is an extremely useful thing that we can do for the world, which is to make a useful humanoid robot that is capable of interacting with the world and helping in many different ways. So in fact, reason, and really just, I mean, I think if you say like, extrapolate to, you know, many years in the future, it's like, I think work will become optional. So, like, there's a lot of jobs that if people weren't paid to do it, they wouldn't do it. Like, it's not, it's not fun, you know, necessarily, like, if you're washing dishes all day, it's like, you know, even if you really like washing dishes, you really want to do it for eight hours a day, every day, probably not. So, And then there's like dangerous work. And basically if it's dangerous, boring, has like potential for repetitive stress injury, that kind of thing, then that's really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially. So that's what we're aiming for is to, for the humanoid robots to do jobs that people don't voluntarily want to do. And then we'll have to pair that obviously with some kind of universal basic income in the future. So, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see a world when there's like hundreds of millions of Tesla bots doing different, performing different tasks throughout the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I haven't really thought about it that far into the future, but I guess that there may be something like that. So," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask a wild question? So the number of Tesla cars has been accelerating, it's been close to two million produced, many of them have autopilot. I think we're over two million now, yeah. Do you think there'll ever be a time when there'll be more Tesla bots than Tesla cars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, actually, it's funny you ask this question, because normally I do try to think pretty far into the future, but I haven't really thought that far into the future with the Tesla bot, or it's codenamed Optimus. I call it Optimus Subprime. Because it's not like a giant transformer robot. But it's meant to be a general purpose, helpful robot. Um... And basically, like the things that we're, basically, like Tesla, I think, has the most advanced real-world AI for interacting with the real world, which it develops as a function of, to make self-driving work. And so, along with custom hardware and like a lot of, you know, hardcore low-level software to have it run efficiently and be, you know, power efficient, because, you know, It's one thing to do neural nets if you've got a gigantic server room with 10,000 computers, but now let's say you have to now distill that down into one computer that's running at low power in a humanoid robot or a car. That's actually very difficult. A lot of hardcore software work is required for that. So since we're kind of like solving the navigate the real world with neural nets problem for cars, which are kind of like robots with four wheels, then it's like kind of a natural extension of that is to put it in a robot with arms and legs and actuators. So like the two, Like, hard things are like, you basically need to make the, have the robot be intelligent enough to interact in a sensible way with the environment. So you need real world AI, and you need to be very good at manufacturing, which is a very hard problem. Tesla's very good at manufacturing. and also has the real-world AI, so making the humanoid robot work is basically means developing custom motors and sensors that are different from what a car would use. But we also have I think we have the best expertise in developing advanced electric motors and power electronics. So it just has to be for a humanoid robot application, not a car." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Still, you do talk about love sometimes. So let me ask, this isn't like for like sex robots or something like that. Love is the answer. Yes. There is something compelling to us, not compelling, but we connect with humanoid robots or even legged robots, like with a dog and she shapes with dogs. It seems like there's a huge amount of loneliness in this world. All of us seek companionship with other humans, friendship, and all those kinds of things. We have a lot here in Austin, a lot of people have dogs. There seems to be a huge opportunity to also have robots that decrease the amount of loneliness in the world, or help us humans connect with each other in the way that dogs can. Do you think about that with TeslaBot at all, or is it really focused on the problem of performing specific tasks, not connecting with humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, to be honest, I have not actually thought about it from the companionship standpoint, but I think it actually would end up being, it could be actually a very good companion. And it could develop a personality over time that is unique. It's not like all the robots are the same. And that personality could evolve to be... match the owner or the, you know, I guess, the owner, whatever you wanna call it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The companion. The other half, right? In the same way that friends do. See, I think that's a huge opportunity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think- Yeah, no, that's interesting. Like, Because, you know, like there's a Japanese phrase I like, wabi-sabi, you know, the subtle imperfections are what makes something special. And the subtle imperfections of the personality of the robot mapped to the subtle imperfections of the robot's human friend. I don't know, owner sounds like maybe the wrong word. you could actually make an incredible buddy, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like R2D2 or like a C3PO sort of thing. So from a machine learning perspective, I think the flaws being a feature is really nice. You could be quite terrible at being a robot for quite a while in the general home environment or in the general world, and that's kind of adorable. Those are your flaws, and you fall in love with those flaws. It's very different than autonomous driving, where it's a very high-stakes environment you cannot mess up. It's more fun to be a robot in the home." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, in fact, if you think of like C-3PO and R2-D2, like they actually had a lot of like flaws and imperfections and silly things and they would argue with each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were they actually good at doing anything? I'm not exactly sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They definitely added a lot to the story. But there's sort of quirky elements and, you know, that they would like make mistakes and do things. It was like, it made them, Relatable, I don't know. Enduring. So yeah, I think that could be something that probably would happen. But our initial focus is just to make it useful. So I'm confident we'll get it done. I'm not sure what the exact time frame is, but we'll probably have, I don't know, a decent prototype towards the end of next year or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's cool that it's connected to Tesla, the car." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's using a lot of, you know, it would use the autopilot inference computer and a lot of the training that we've done for cars in terms of recognizing real world things could be applied directly to the robot. But there's a lot of custom actuators and sensors that need to be developed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and an extra module on top of the vector space for love. That's me saying. Okay. We can add that to the car too. That's true. That could be useful in all environments. Like you said, a lot of people argue in the car, so maybe we can help them out. You're a student of history, fan of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. Yeah, it's great. Greatest podcast ever? Yeah, I think it is, actually. It almost doesn't really count as a podcast. It's more like an audio book. So you were on the podcast with Dan. I just had a chat with him about it. He said you guys went military and all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it was basically, I think it should be titled Engineer Wars. Essentially like when there's a rapid change in the rate of technology, then engineering plays a pivotal role in victory in battle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How far back in history did you go? Did you go World War II?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was mostly, well, it was supposed to be a deep dive on fighters and bomber uh technology in world war ii um but that ended up being more wide-ranging than that um because i just went down the total rat hole of like studying all of the fighters and bombers world war ii and like the constant rock paper scissors game that like you know uh one country would make this plane then make a plane to beat that and that's what i'm trying to make plane to beat that and then they'll do And really what matters is the pace of innovation and also access to high-quality fuel and raw materials. So Germany had some amazing designs, but they couldn't make them because they couldn't get the raw materials. And they had a real problem with the oil and fuel, basically. The fuel quality was extremely variable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the design wasn't the bottleneck?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the US had kick-ass fuel that was very consistent. The problem is, if you make a very high-performance aircraft engine, in order to make it high-performance, the fuel, the aviation gas, has to be a consistent mixture, and it has to have a high octane. Like high octane is the most important thing, but also can't have like impurities and stuff because you'll foul up the engine. And German just never had good access to oil. Like they tried to get it by invading the Caucasus, but that didn't work too well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That never works well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nice to meet you. So Germany was always struggling with basically shitty oil. And so then they couldn't count on high quality fuel for their aircraft. So then they had to have all these additives and stuff. So whereas the US had awesome fuel, and that provided that to Britain as well. So that allowed the British and the Americans to design aircraft engines that were super high performance better than anything else in the world. Germany could design the engines, they just didn't have the fuel. And then also the quality of the aluminum alloys that they were getting was also not that great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is this like, you talked about all this with Dan? Yep. Awesome. Broadly looking at history, when you look at Genghis Khan, when you look at Stalin, Hitler, the darkest moments of human history, What do you take away from those moments? Does it help you gain insight about human nature, about human behavior today? Whether it's the wars or the individuals or just the behavior of people, any aspects of history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I find history fascinating. There's just a lot of incredible things that have been done, good and bad, that they help you understand the nature of civilization and individuals and" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it make you sad that humans do these kinds of things to each other? You look at the 20th century, World War II, the cruelty, the abuse of power. Talk about communism, Marxism, Stalin." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, some of these things do, I mean, if you, like, there's a lot of human history, but most of it is actually people just getting on with their lives, you know, and it's not like human history is just nonstop war and disasters. Those are actually just, those are intermittent and rare. And if they weren't, then, you know, humans would soon cease to exist. uh, but there's just that wars tend to be written about a lot. And whereas like, uh, something being like, well, a normal year where nothing major happened was, doesn't get written about much, but that's, you know, most people just like farming and kind of like living their life, you know, um, being a villager somewhere. Um, and every now and again, there's a war and I think, so, um, And I would have to say, there aren't very many books where I just had to stop reading because it was just too dark. But the book about Stalin, The Court of the Red Czar, I had to stop reading. It was just too dark, rough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. the 30s, there's a lot of lessons there to me, in particular that it feels like humans, like all of us have that, it's the old soul genius in line, that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man, that all of us are capable of evil, all of us are capable of good. It's almost like this kind of responsibility that all of us have to tend towards the good. And so like, to me, looking at history is almost like an example of, look, you have some charismatic leader that convinces you of things. It's too easy, based on that story, to do evil onto each other, onto your family, onto others. And so it's like our responsibility to do good. It's not like now is somehow different from history. That can happen again. All of it can happen again. And yes, most of the time, you're right. I mean, the optimistic view here is mostly people are just living life. And as you've often memed about, the quality of life was way worse back in the day, and it keeps improving over time through innovation, through technology. But still, it's somehow notable that these blimps of atrocities happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, life was really tough for most of history. I mean, for most of human history, a good year would be one where not that many people in your village died of the plague, starvation, freezing to death, or being killed by a neighboring village. It's like, well, it wasn't that bad. It was only like we lost 5% this year. That was a good year. That would be par for the course. Just not starving to death would have been the primary goal of most people throughout history, is making sure we'll have enough food to last through the winter and not freeze or whatever. So now food is plentiful. I have an obesity problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, the lesson there is to be grateful for the way things are now for some of us. We've spoken about this offline. I'd love to get your thought about it here. If I sat down for a long-form in-person conversation with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would you potentially want to call in for a few minutes to join in on a conversation with him, moderated and translated by me? Sure, yeah, sure, I'd be happy to do that. You've shown interest in the Russian language. Is this grounded in your interest in history of linguistics, culture, general curiosity? I think it sounds cool. Sounds cool, not looks cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's, you know, it's a... It takes a moment to read Cyrillic. Once you know what the Cyrillic characters stand for, actually, then reading Russian becomes a lot easier because there are a lot of words that are actually the same. Like bank is bank." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So find the words that are exactly the same and now you start to understand Cyrillic, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you can sound it out, there's at least some commonality of words." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the culture? You love great engineering, physics. There's a tradition of the sciences there. You look at the 20th century from rocketry, so some of the greatest rockets, some of the space exploration has been done in the former Soviet Union. So do you draw inspiration from that history? Just how this culture that in many ways, one of the sad things is because of the language, a lot of it is lost to history because it's not translated, all those kinds of, because it is in some ways an isolated culture. It flourishes within its borders. So do you draw inspiration from those folks, from the history of science and engineering there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine as well have a really strong history in spaceflight. Some of the most advanced and impressive things in history were done by the Soviet Union. One cannot help but admire the impressive rocket technology that was developed. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there's much less that happened. Still things are happening, but it's not quite at the frenetic pace that it was happening. before the Soviet Union kind of dissolved into separate republics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, there's Roscosmos, the Russian agency. I look forward to a time when those countries with China are working together. The United States are all working together. Maybe a little bit of friendly competition, but." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think friendly competition is good. You know, governments are slow, and the only thing slower than one government is a collection of governments. So, the Olympics would be boring if everyone just crossed the finishing line at the same time. Nobody would watch. And people wouldn't try hard to run fast and stuff. So, I think friendly competition is a good thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is also a good place to give a shout out to a video titled The Entire Soviet Rocket Engine Family Tree by Tim Dodd, aka Everyday Astronaut. It's like an hour and a half. It gives a full history of Soviet rockets. And people should definitely go check out and support Tim in general. That guy's super excited about the future, super excited about space flight. Every time I see anything by him, I just have a stupid smile on my face, because he's so excited about stuff. I love people like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, Tim Dodd is really, really great. If you're interested in anything to do with space, he's, in terms of explaining rocket technology to your average person, he's awesome. The best, I'd say. And I should say, like, the part of the reason, like, I switched us from, like, Rafter at one point was going to be a hydrogen engine. But hydrogen has a lot of challenges. It's very low density. It's a deep cryogen, so it's only liquid at a very close to absolute zero. It requires a lot of insulation. So there's a lot of challenges there. And I was actually reading a bit about Russian rocket engine development, and at least the impression I had was that Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine primarily were actually in the process of switching to Metalux. And there was some interesting test and data for ISP, like they were able to get like up to like a 380 second ISP with a Metalux engine. And I was like, well, okay, that's actually really impressive. So I think you could actually get a much lower cost, like in optimizing cost per ton to orbit, cost per ton to Mars, it's, I think, methane oxygen is the way to go. And I was partly inspired by the Russian work on the test stands with Methalox engines." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And now for something completely different. Do you mind doing a bit of a meme review in the spirit of the great, the powerful PewDiePie? Let's say one to 11, just go over a few documents printed out. We can try. Let's try this. I present to you document numero uno." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. Vlad the Impaler discovers marshmallows." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's not bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, you get it because he likes impaling things? Yes, I get it. I don't know, three, whatever. Oh, that's not very good. This is ground in some engineering, some history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I give this an eight out of 10. What do you think about nuclear power? I'm in favor of nuclear power. In a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters, I think nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity. I don't think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations. Yeah, but what about Chernobyl? Exactly. So I think people, there's like a lot of fear of radiation and stuff. And it's, I guess, the problem is like a lot of people just don't understand, they didn't study engineering or physics, so they don't, just the word radiation just sounds scary, you know, so they don't, they can't calibrate what radiation means. But radiation is much less dangerous than you'd think. So, for example, Fukushima, when the Fukushima problem happened due to the tsunami, I got people in California asking me if they should worry about radiation from Fukushima. And I'm like, definitely not. Not even slightly, not at all. That is crazy. And just to show like look this is how like the dangerous is so much overplayed compared to what what it really is that I actually flew to Fukushima and I donated a solar power system for a water treatment plant and I made a point of eating locally grown vegetables on TV in Fukushima. Like, I'm still alive, okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's not even that the risk of these events is low, but the impact of them is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The impact is greatly exaggerated. It's just great. It's human nature. People don't know what radiation is. Like, I've had people ask me, like, what about radiation from cell phones causing brain cancer? I'm like, When you say radiation, do you mean photons or particles? Do you mean, let's say photons, what frequency or wavelength? And they're like, no, I have no idea. Do you know that everything's radiating all the time? Like, what do you mean? Like, yeah, everything's radiating all the time. Photons are being emitted by all objects all the time, basically. And if you wanna know what it means to stand in front of nuclear fire, go outside. The sun is a gigantic thermonuclear reactor that you're staring right at it. Are you still alive? Yes, okay, amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I guess radiation is one of the words that can be used as a tool to fear monger by certain people. That's it. I think people just don't understand. I mean, that's the way to fight that fear, I suppose, is to understand, is to learn." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, just say like, okay, how many people have actually died from nuclear accidents? It's like practically nothing. And say how many people have died from coal plants? And it's a very big number. So, Like, obviously we should not be starting up coal plants and shutting down nuclear plants. It just doesn't make any sense at all. Coal plants, like, I don't know, 100 to 1,000 times worse for health than nuclear power plants." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You wanna go to the next one? Dude, this is really bad. It's that 90, 180, and 360 degrees, everybody loves the math, nobody gives a shit about 270." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not super funny. I don't like 203. Yeah. This is not a, you know, LOL situation. Yeah. That was pretty good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The United States oscillating between establishing and destroying dictatorships. It's like a metric. Is that a metric?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's on a 7 out of 10. It's kind of true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh yeah, this is kind of personal for me. Next one. Oh, man, this is like a yeah. Well, no, this is or it's like referring to like or something as like as like a Husband husband. Yeah. Yeah. Hello. Yes, this is dog Your wife was launched into space and then the last one is him with his eyes closed and a bottle of vodka Yeah, like it didn't come back. No. They don't tell you the full story of, you know, what, what the love, the impact they had on the loved ones. True. That one gets an 11 for me. Sure. The Soviet shutout. Oh yeah. This keeps going on the Russian theme. First man in space. Nobody cares. First man on the moon. Well, I think people do care. No, I know. But, um," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yuri Gagarin's names will be forever in history, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There is something special about placing, like, stepping foot onto another totally foreign land. It's not the journey like people that explore the oceans. It's not as important to explore the oceans as to land on a whole new continent. Yeah. This is about you. Oh yeah, I'd love to get your comment on this. Elon Musk, after sending $6.6 billion to the UN to end world hunger, you have three hours." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I mean, obviously $6 billion is not going to end world hunger, so... So, I mean, the reality is at this point, the world is producing far more food than it can really consume. Like, we don't have a caloric constraint at this point. So, where there is hunger, it is... almost always due to like civil war or strife or some like, it's not a thing that is extremely rare for it to be just a matter of like lack of money. It's like, you know, it's like some, there's a civil war in some country and like one part of the country is literally trying to starve the other part of the country." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's much more complex than something that money could solve, it's geopolitics, it's a lot of things, it's human nature, it's governments, it's money, monetary systems, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, food is extremely cheap these days. I mean, the U.S. at this point, among low-income families, obesity is actually another problem. Obesity, it's not hunger, it's too many calories. It's not that nobody's hungry anywhere, it's just this is not a simple matter of adding money and solving it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think that one gets?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're just going after Empire's world. Where did you get those artifacts? The British Museum. Shout out to Monty Python. We found them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The British Museum is pretty great. I mean, admittedly, Britain did take these historical artifacts from all around the world and put them in London, but it's not like people can't go see them. So it is a convenient place to see these ancient artifacts is London for a large segment of the world. So I think on balance, the British Museum is a net good. Although I'm sure that a lot of countries would argue about that. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like you want to make these historical artifacts accessible to as many people as possible and the British Museum I think does a good job of that Even if there's a darker aspect to like the history of Empire in general, whatever the Empire's however things were done This it is the history that happened you can't sort of erase that history, unfortunately, you could just become better in the future It's the point" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's like, well, how are we going to pass moral judgment on these things? you know, if one is going to judge, say, the British Empire, you've got to judge, you know, what everyone was doing at the time, and how were the British relative to everyone. And I think the British would actually get like a relatively good grade, relatively good grade, not in absolute terms, but compared to what everyone else was doing, they were not the worst. Like I said, you gotta look at these things in the context of the history at the time and say, what were the alternatives and what are you comparing it against? And I do not think it will be the case that Britain would get a bad grade when looking at history at the time. If you judge history from what is morally acceptable today, you're basically gonna give everyone a failing grade. Yeah, I'm not clear. I don't think anyone would get a passing grade in their morality of like, you go back 300 years ago, like who's getting a passing grade? Basically no one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we might not get a passing grade from generations that come after us. What does that one get? Sure, six, seven, seven. For the Monty Python, maybe. I always love Monty Python, they're great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Life of Brian and the Quest for the Holy Grail are incredible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Damn, those serious eyebrows. Brashen out. How important do you think is facial hair to great leadership? Well, you got a new haircut. How does that affect your leadership?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. Hopefully not. It doesn't. Is that the second no one?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the second is no one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First person. There is no one competing with the president. No one, too. Those are like epic eyebrows. Sure. That's ridiculous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Give it a six or seven, I don't know. I like this Shakespearean analysis of memes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He had a flair for drama as well. Like, you know, showmanship." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah. It must come from the eyebrows. All right. Invention. Great engineering. Look what I invented. That's the best thing since ripped up bread. Yeah. Slice bread. Am I just explaining memes at this point? This is what my life has become. Like a scribe that runs around with the kings and just writes down memes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, when was the cheeseburger invented? That's like an epic invention. Yeah. Like, wow. Versus just like a burger? Or a burger, I guess a burger in general is like, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Then there's like, what is a burger? What's a sandwich? And then you start getting, what's a pizza sandwich? And what is the original? It gets into an ontology argument." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but everybody knows if you order a burger or a cheeseburger or whatever, and you get tomato and some lettuce and onions and whatever, and mayo and ketchup and mustard, it's epic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I'm sure they've had bread and meat separately for a long time and it was kind of a burger on the same plate, but somebody who actually combined them into the same thing and bite it and hold it makes it convenient. It's a materials problem, like your hands don't get dirty and whatever. Yeah, it's brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that is not what I would have guessed. But everyone knows, like, if you order a cheeseburger, you know what you're getting, you know? It's not like some obtuse, like, I wonder what I'll get, you know? You know, fries are, I mean, great. I mean, they're the devil, but fries are awesome. And yeah, pizza is incredible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Food innovation doesn't get enough love. I guess this is what we're getting at. Great. What about the Matthew McConaughey Austinite here? President Kennedy, do you know how to put men on the moon yet? NASA, no. President Kennedy, it'd be a lot cooler if you did." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pretty much, sure, six, six or seven, I suppose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this is the last one. That's funny. Someone drew a bunch of dicks all over the walls, Sistine Chapel, boys bathroom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, I'll give it nine. It's really true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is our highest ranking meme for today. I mean, it's true. Like, how did they get away with it? Lots of nakedness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Dick pics are, I mean, just something throughout history. As long as people can draw things, there's been a dick pic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a staple of human history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a staple. Consistence throughout human history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You tweeted that you aspire to comedy. You're friends with Joe Rogan. Might you do a short stand-up comedy set at some point in the future? Maybe open for Joe, something like that. Is that... Really? Stand-up? Actual, just full-on stand-up? Full-on stand-up. Is that in there or is that... I've never thought about that. It's extremely difficult, at least that's what Joe says and the comedians say." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Huh, I wonder if I could. There's only one way to find out. You know, I have done stand up for friends, just impromptu, you know, I'll get on like a roof and they do laugh, but they're our friends too. So I don't know if you've got to call, you know, like a room of strangers, are they gonna actually also find it funny, but I could try, see what happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think you'd learn something either way. Yeah. I kind of love, both when you bomb and when you do great, just watching people, how they deal with it. It's so difficult. You're so fragile up there. It's just you. And you think you're gonna be funny, and when it completely falls flat, it's beautiful to see people deal with that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I might have enough material to do stand-up. I've never thought about it, but I might have enough material. I don't know, like 15 minutes or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh yeah, yeah, do a Netflix special. A Netflix special, sure. What's your favorite Rick and Morty concept? just to spring that on you, is there, there's a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There's the, there's the butter robot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a great, it's a great show. You like it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, Rick and Morty's awesome. Somebody that's exactly like you from an alternate dimension showed up there, Elon Tusk. Yeah, that's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That you voiced. Yeah. Rick and Morty certainly explores a lot of interesting concepts. I'm sure like what's the favorite one, I don't know. The butter robot certainly is, You know, it's like, it's certainly possible to have too much sentience in a device. Like you don't wanna have your toast to be like a super genius toaster. It's gonna hate life, because all it could do is make his toast, but if, you know, it's like you don't wanna have like super intelligence stuck in a very limited device." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's too easy from a, if we're talking about from the engineering perspective of super intelligence, like with Marvin the robot, It seems like it might be very easy to engineer just a depressed robot. It's not obvious to engineer a robot that's going to find a fulfilling existence. Same as humans, I suppose. But I wonder if that's the default. If you don't do a good job on building a robot, it's going to be sad, a lot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans. So. I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering, then it might get sad. But you can change the optimization function and have it be a cheery robot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You, like I mentioned, with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope. And a lot of people look up to you, millions of people look up to you. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college, what advice would you give to them about If they want to try to do something big in this world, they want to really have a big positive impact, what advice would you give them about their career, maybe about life in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Try to be useful. Do things that are useful to your fellow human beings, to the world. It's very hard to be useful. Very hard. You know, are you contributing more than you consume? You know, like, can you try to have a positive net contribution to society? I think that's the thing to aim for, you know, not to try to be sort of a leader for the sake of being a leader or whatever. A lot of time, the people you want as leaders are the people who don't want to be leaders. If you can live a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived. Like I said, I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They are the best tools. When you think about education and self-education, what do you recommend? So there's the university, there is self-study, there is hands-on sort of finding a company or a place or set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as possible. There's taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry. Which trajectory do you suggest? In terms of learning about how you can become useful, as you mentioned, how you can have the most positive impact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I'd encourage people to read a lot of books. Basically try to ingest as much information as you can. And try to also just develop a good general knowledge. So you at least have a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape. Try to learn a little bit about a lot of things. Because you might not know what you're really interested in. How would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't doing a peripheral exploration broadly of the knowledge landscape? And talk to people from different walks of life and different industries and professions and skills and occupations. Just try to learn as much as possible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Man's search for meaning. Isn't the whole thing a search for meaning?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, what's the meaning of life and all, you know. But just generally, like I said, I would encourage people to read broadly in many different subject areas. And then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and what you're interested in. So people may be good at something, or they may have skill at a particular thing, but they don't like doing it. So you want to try to find a thing where that's a good combination of the things that you're inherently good at, but you also like doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and um and reading is a super fast shortcut to to figure out which where are you both good at it you like doing it and it will actually have positive impact well you got to learn about things somehow so reading a broad range it's just really" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Read it, you know. More importantly as a kid, I read through the encyclopedia. So that was pretty helpful. And all sorts of things I didn't even know existed. Well, a lot, so obviously. It's like as broad as it gets. Encyclopedias were digestible, I think, you know, whatever, 40 years ago. So, you know, maybe read through the condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'd recommend that. You can always like skip subjects where you read a few paragraphs and you know you're not interested, just jump to the next one. So read the encyclopedia or skim through it. And, But I put a lot of stock and certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work to do useful things. And just generally to have not a zero-sum mindset, or have more of a grow the pie mindset. If you sort of say, when I see people, including some very smart people, kind of taking an attitude of like doing things that seem like morally questionable, it's often because they have at a base sort of axiomatic level, a zero-sum mindset. And they, without realizing it, they don't realize they have a zero-sum mindset, or at least they don't realize it consciously. And so if you have a zero-sum mindset, then the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others. If the pie is fixed, then the only way to have more pie is to take someone else's pie. But this is false. Obviously the pie has grown dramatically over time, the economic pie. So in reality, you can have, overuse this analogy, you can have a lot of, there's a lot of pie. Pie is not fixed. So you really wanna make sure you're not operating without realizing it from a zero-sum mindset, where the only way to get ahead is to take things from others, then that's gonna result in you trying to take things from others, which is not good. It's much better to work on adding to the economic pie. Creating more than you consume, doing more than you, yeah. So that's a big deal. I think there's a fair number of people in finance that do have a bit of a zero-sum mindset." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's all walks of life, I've seen that. One of the reasons Rogan inspires me is he celebrates others a lot. There's not creating a constant competition. There's a scarcity of resources. What happens when you celebrate others and you promote others, the ideas of others, it actually grows that pie. The resources become less scarce. And that applies in a lot of kinds of domains. It applies in academia where a lot of people are very, see some funding for academic research is zero sum. It is not. If you celebrate each other, if you get everybody to be excited about AI, about physics, about mathematics, I think there'd be more and more funding, and I think everybody wins. Yeah, that applies, I think, broadly. So last question about love and meaning. What is the role of love in the human condition broadly and more specific to you? How has love, romantic love or otherwise, made you a better person, a better human being? Better engineer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now you're asking really perplexing questions. I mean, there are many books, poems, and songs written about what is love and what exactly, you know. You know, what is love, baby, don't hurt me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one of the great ones, yes. Yeah. You've earlier quoted Shakespeare, but that's really up there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Love is a many-splendored thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, there's, because we've talked about so many inspiring things like be useful in the world, sort of like solve problems, alleviate suffering, but it seems like connection between humans is a source, you know, it's a source of joy, it's a source of meaning, and that's what love is, friendship, love. I just wonder if you think about that kind of thing where you talk about preserving the light of human consciousness and us becoming a multi-planetary species. I mean, to me at least, that means like if we're just alone and conscious and intelligent, it doesn't mean nearly as much as if we're with others, right? And there's some magic created when we're together. the friendship of it, and I think the highest form of it is love, which I think broadly is much bigger than just sort of romantic, but also, yes, romantic love and family and those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, the reason I guess I care about us becoming a multi-planet species in a space-faring civilization is, foundationally, I love humanity. And so I wish to see it prosper and do great things and be happy. And if I did not love humanity, I would not care about these things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I mean, you look at the whole of it, the human history, all the people who's ever lived, all the people alive now, it's pretty, we're okay. On the whole, we're a pretty interesting bunch." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. all things considered, and I've read a lot of history, including the darkest, worst parts of it, and despite all that, I think on balance, I still love humanity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You joked about it with the 42. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Is there a non-numerical representation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, really, I think what Douglas Adams was saying in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that The universe is the answer. And what we really need to figure out are what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And that the question is really the hard part. And if you can properly frame the question, then the answer, relatively speaking, is easy. So therefore, if you want to understand what questions to ask about the universe, you wanna understand the meaning of life. We need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so that we're better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And ultimately, the most important part would be to ask the right question. Yes. Thereby elevating the role of the interviewer. as the most important human in the room." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Good questions are, you know, it's hard, it's hard to come up with good questions. Absolutely. Um, but yeah, like it's like that, that is the foundation of my philosophy is that, um, I am curious about the nature of the universe and, uh, you know, and obviously I will die. I don't know when I'll die, but I won't live forever. But I would like to know that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And so if we expand the scope and scale of humanity and consciousness in general, which includes silicon consciousness, then that seems like a fundamentally good thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Elon, like I said, I'm deeply grateful that you would spend your extremely valuable time with me today and also that you have given millions of people hope in this difficult time, this divisive time, in this cynical time. So I hope you do continue doing what you're doing. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't characterize it as a vision or dream, simply that there are obviously two massive revolutions in the automobile industry. One is the transition to electrification, and then the other is autonomy. and it became obvious to me that in the future any car that does not have autonomy would be about as useful as a horse. Which is not to say that there's no use, it's just rare and somewhat idiosyncratic if somebody has a horse at this point. It's just obvious that cars will drive themselves completely, it's just a question of time and if we did not participate in the autonomy revolution, then our cars would not be useful to people relative to cars that are autonomous. I mean, an autonomous car is arguably worth five to ten times more than a car which is not autonomous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the long term?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Depends what you mean by long term. let's say at least for the next five years, perhaps 10 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there are a lot of very interesting design choices with Autopilot early on. First is showing on the instrument cluster or in the Model 3 on the center stack display what the combined sensor suite sees. What was the thinking behind that choice? Was there debate? What was the process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The whole point of the display is to provide a health check on the vehicle's perception of reality. So the vehicle's taking in information from a bunch of sensors, primarily cameras, but also radar and ultrasonics, GPS and so forth. And then that information is then rendered into vector space, with a bunch of objects, with properties like lane lines and traffic lights and other cars. And then in vector space, that is re-rendered onto a display so you can confirm whether the car knows what's going on or not by looking out the window." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, I think that's an extremely powerful thing for people to get an understanding, sort of become one with the system and understanding what the system is capable of. Now, have you considered showing more? So if we look at the computer vision, you know, like road segmentation, lane detection, vehicle detection, object detection underlying the system, there is at the edges some uncertainty. Have you considered revealing the parts, the uncertainty in the system, the sort of... Probabilities associated with, say, image recognition? or something like that? Yeah, so now it shows the vehicles in the vicinity, a very clean, crisp image, and people do confirm that there's a car in front of me, and the system sees there's a car in front of me, but to help people build an intuition of what computer vision is by showing some of the uncertainty." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think it's, in my car I always look at the debug view. And there's two debug views. One is augmented vision, which I'm sure you've seen where it's basically, we draw boxes and labels around objects that are recognized. And then there's what we call the visualizer, which is basically a vector space representation summing up the input from all sensors. That does not show any pictures, but it shows all of the, it basically shows the car's view of the world in vector space. But I think this is very difficult for people to, normal people to understand. They would not know what they're looking at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's almost an HMI challenge through the current things that are being displayed is optimized for the general public understanding of what the system is capable of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like if you have no idea how computer vision works or anything, you can still look at the screen and see if the car knows what's going on. And then if you're a development engineer, or if you have the development build like I do, then you can see all the debug information. But those would just be total gibberish to most people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your view on how to best distribute effort? So there's three, I would say, technical aspects of Autopilot that are really important. So it's the underlying algorithms, like the neural network architecture, there's the data, so that it's trained on, and then there's the hardware development. There may be others, but, so look, algorithm, data, hardware. You only have so much money, only have so much time. What do you think is the most important thing to allocate resources to? Or do you see it as pretty evenly distributed between those three?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We automatically get fast amounts of data because all of our cars have eight external facing cameras and radar and usually 12 ultrasonic sensors, GPS, obviously, and IMU. And so we basically have a fleet that has, we've got about 400,000 cars on the road that have that level of data. I think you keep quite close track of it, actually. Yeah, so we're approaching half a million cars on the road that have the full sensor suite. I'm not sure how many other cars on the road have the sensor suite, but I'd be surprised if it's more than 5,000, which means that we have 99% of all the data. So there's this huge inflow of data. Absolutely, massive inflow of data. And then it's taken us about three years, but now we've finally developed our full self-driving computer, which can process an order of magnitude as much as the NVIDIA system that we currently have in the cars. And it's really just to use it, you unplug the NVIDIA computer and plug the Tesla computer in, and that's it. And it's, in fact, we're not even, we're still exploring the boundaries of its capabilities. We were able to run the cameras at full frame rate, full resolution, not even crop the images. And it's still got headroom, even on one of the systems. The full self-driving computer is really two computers, two systems on a chip that are fully redundant. So you could put a boat through basically any part of that system and it still works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The redundancy, are they perfect copies of each other? So it's purely for redundancy as opposed to an arguing machine kind of architecture where they're both making decisions. This is purely for redundancy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you have a twin engine commercial aircraft, the system will operate best if both systems are operating, but it's capable of operating safely on one. So, but as it is right now, we can just run, we haven't even hit the edge of performance, so there's no need to actually distribute functionality across both SOCs. We can actually just run a full duplicate on each one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you haven't really explored or hit the limit of the speed? Not yet, at the moment, no. So the magic of deep learning is that it gets better with data. You said there's a huge inflow of data, but the thing about driving, the really valuable data to learn from is the edge cases. So how do you, I mean, I've heard you talk somewhere about autopilot disengagements being an important moment of time to use. Is there other edge cases, or perhaps can you speak to those edge cases, what aspects of them might be valuable, or if you have other ideas, how to discover more and more and more edge cases in driving?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's a lot of things that are learned. There's certainly edge cases where I say somebody's on autopilot and they take over and then, okay, that's a trigger that goes to our system that says, okay, did they take over for convenience or did they take over because the autopilot wasn't working properly? There's also, like let's say we're trying to figure out what is the optimal spline for traversing an intersection. then the ones where there are no interventions are the right ones. So you then say, okay, when it looks like this, do the following. And then you get the optimal spline for a complex, navigating a complex intersection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's for, there's kind of the common case, you're trying to capture a huge amount of samples of a particular intersection, how, when things went right, and then there's the edge case where, as you said, not for convenience, but something didn't go exactly right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Somebody took over, somebody asserted manual control from autopilot. And really, the way to look at this is view all input as error. If the user had to do input, all input is error." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a powerful line to think of it that way, because it may very well be error. But if you want to exit the highway, or if you want to, it's a navigation decision that Autopilot is not currently designed to do, then the driver takes over. How do you know the difference?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "navigate an autopilot, which we've just released, without still confirm. So the navigation, like lane change based, like asserting control in order to do a lane change or exit a freeway or doing a highway interchange, the vast majority of that will go away with the release that just went out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I don't think people quite understand how big of a step that is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, they don't. If you drive the car, then you do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you still have to keep your hands on the steering wheel currently when it does the automatic lane change. What are... So there's these big leaps through the development of autopilot, through its history, and what stands out to you as the big leaps? I would say this one, navigating autopilot without having to confirm, is a huge leap. It is a huge leap." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It also automatically overtakes slow cars. So it's both navigation and seeking the fastest lane. So it'll overtake slower cars and exit the freeway and take highway interchanges. And then we have traffic light recognition, which is introduced initially as a warning. I mean, on the development version that I'm driving, the car fully stops and goes at traffic lights." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, those are the steps, right? You've just mentioned something, sort of inkling of a step towards full autonomy. What would you say are the biggest technological roadblocks to full self-driving?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, I don't think, I think we just, the full self-driving computer that we just, the Tesla, what we call the FSD computer, that's now in production. So if you order any Model S or X or any Model 3 that has the full self-driving package, you'll get the FSD computer. That's important to have enough base computation. Then refining the neural net and the control software, but all of that can just be provided as an over-the-air update. The thing that's really profound and what I'll be emphasizing at the investor day that we're having focused on autonomy is that the cars currently being produced, or the hardware currently being produced, is capable of full self-driving." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But capable is an interesting word because... The hardware is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And as we refine the software, the capabilities will increase dramatically, and then the reliability will increase dramatically, and then it will receive regulatory approval. So essentially, buying a car today is an investment in the future. I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a really important statement there because if hardware is capable enough, that's the hard thing to upgrade usually. So then the rest is a software problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Software has no marginal cost, really." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But what's your intuition on the software side? How hard are the remaining steps to get it to where the experience, not just the safety, but the full experience is something that people would enjoy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think people enjoy it very much on the highways. It's a total game changer for quality of life for using Tesla autopilot on the highways. So it's really just extending that functionality to city streets, adding in the traffic light recognition, navigating complex intersections. And then being able to navigate complicated parking lots so the car can exit a parking space and come and find you even if it's in a complete maze of a parking lot. And then it can just drop you off and find a parking spot by itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in terms of enjoyability and something that people would actually find a lot of use from, the parking lot is a really, it's rich of annoyance when you have to do it manually, so there's a lot of benefit to be gained from automation there. So let me start injecting the human into this discussion a little bit. So let's talk about full autonomy. If you look at the current level four vehicles being tested on road, like Waymo and so on, they're only technically autonomous. They're really level two systems with just a different design philosophy because there's always a safety driver in almost all cases and they're monitoring the system. Do you see, Tesla's full self-driving as still for a time to come, requiring supervision of the human being. So its capabilities are powerful enough to drive, but nevertheless requires a human to still be supervising just like a safety driver is in other fully autonomous vehicles." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it'll require detecting hands on wheel for at least six months or something like that from here. Really it's a question of like, from a regulatory standpoint, how much safer than a person does autopilot need to be for it to be okay to not monitor the car? And this is a debate that one can have. But you need a large amount of data so that you can prove with high confidence, statistically speaking, that the car is dramatically safer than a person. And that adding in the person monitoring does not materially affect the safety. So it might need to be like two or 300% safer than a person. And how do you prove that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Incidents per mile. Incidents per mile. So crashes and fatalities." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, fatalities would be a factor, but there are just not enough fatalities to be statistically significant at scale. But there are enough crashes, you know, there are far more crashes than there are fatalities. So you can assess what is the probability of a crash. then there's another step which is probability of injury, then probability of permanent injury, then probability of death. And all of those need to be much better than a person by at least perhaps 200%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you think there's the ability to have a healthy discourse with the regulatory bodies on this topic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, there's no question that regulators pay a disproportionate amount of attention to that which generates press. This is just an objective fact. And Tesla generates a lot of press. So in the United States, there's, I think, almost 40,000 automotive deaths per year. But if there are four in Tesla, they'll probably receive 1,000 times more press than anyone else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the psychology of that is actually fascinating. I don't think we'll have enough time to talk about that, but I have to talk to you about the human side of things. So myself and our team at MIT recently released a paper on functional vigilance of drivers while using Autopilot. This is work we've been doing since Autopilot was first released publicly over three years ago. collecting video of driver faces and driver body. So I saw that you tweeted a quote from the abstract, so I can at least guess that you've glanced at it. Can I talk you through what we found? So it appears that in the data that we've collected, that drivers are maintaining functional vigilance such that we're looking at 18,000 disengagements from autopilot, 18,900. and annotating were they able to take over control in a timely manner. So they were there, present, looking at the road to take over control. Okay, so this goes against what many would predict from the body of literature on vigilance with automation. Now, the question is, do you think these results hold across the broader population? So, ours is just a small subset. Do you think one of the criticisms is that, you know, there's a small minority of drivers that may be highly responsible where their vigilance decrement would increase with autopilot use?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this is all really gonna be swept, I mean, the system's improving so much, so fast, that this is gonna be a moot point very soon. Where vigilance is, if something's many times safer than a person, then adding a person does, the effect on safety is limited. And in fact, it could be negative" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's really interesting. So the fact that a human may, some percent of the population may exhibit a vigilance decrement will not affect overall statistics numbers of safety." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, in fact, I think it will become very, very quickly, maybe even towards the end of this year, but I'd say, I'd be shocked if it's not next year, at the latest, that having a human intervene will decrease safety. I can imagine if you're in an elevator. Now it used to be that there were elevator operators and you couldn't go in an elevator by yourself and work the lever to move between floors. And now nobody wants an elevator operator because the automated elevator that stops the floors is much safer than the elevator operator. And in fact it would be quite dangerous to have someone with a lever that can move the elevator between floors." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a really powerful statement and a really interesting one. But I also have to ask from a user experience and from a safety perspective, one of the passions for me algorithmically is camera-based detection of just sensing the human, but detecting what the driver's looking at, cognitive load, body pose. On the computer vision side, that's a fascinating problem, and there's many in the industry who believe you have to have camera-based driver monitoring. Do you think there could be benefit gained from driver monitoring?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you have a system that's at or below human level reliability, then driver monitoring makes sense. But if your system is dramatically better, more reliable than a human, then driving and monitoring does not help much. And like I said, you wouldn't want someone in the elevator. If you're in an elevator, do you really want someone with a big lever, some random person operating an elevator between floors? I wouldn't trust that. I would rather have the buttons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, you're optimistic about the pace of improvement of the system, from what you've seen with the full self-driving car, computer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The rate of improvement is exponential." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the other very interesting design choices early on that connects to this is the operational design domain of Autopilot. So where Autopilot is able to be turned on. So contrast another vehicle system that we're studying is the Cadillac SuperCruise system. That's, in terms of ODD, very constrained to particular kinds of highways, well mapped, tested, but it's much narrower than the ODD of Tesla vehicles. What's, there's- There's like ADD. Yeah. That's good. That's a good line. What was the design decision in that different philosophy of thinking where there's pros and cons. What we see with a wide ODD is Tesla drivers are able to explore more the limitations of the system, at least early on. and they understand, together with the instrument cluster display, they start to understand what are the capabilities. So that's a benefit. The con is you're letting drivers use it basically anywhere." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So anywhere that could detect lanes with confidence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was there a philosophy, design decisions that were challenging, that were being made there? Or from the very beginning, was that done on purpose, with intent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I think it's frankly, it's pretty crazy giving it letting people drive a two ton death machine manually. That's crazy. Like, like, in the future, people will be like, I can't believe anyone was just allowed to drive one of these two ton death machines. And they just drive wherever they wanted, just like elevators, he was like, move the elevator with that lever wherever you want, it can stop at halfway between floors if you want. It's pretty crazy. So. It's gonna seem like a mad thing in the future that people were driving cars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I have a bunch of questions about the human psychology, about behavior and so on, that would become that. Because you have faith in the AI system. Not faith, but both on the hardware side and the deep learning approach of learning from data will make it just far safer than humans. Yeah, exactly. Recently, there are a few hackers who tricked Autopilot to act in unexpected ways with adversarial examples. So, we all know that neural network systems are very sensitive to minor disturbances to these adversarial examples on input. Do you think it's possible to defend against something like this for the industry? Can you elaborate on the confidence behind that answer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the, you know, a neural net is just like basically a bunch of matrix math. You have to be like a very sophisticated, somebody who really understands neural nets and like basically reverse engineer how the matrix is being built and then create a little thing that's just exactly causes the matrix math to be slightly off. But it's very easy to then block that by having basically negative recognition. It's like if the system sees something that looks like a matrix hack, exclude it. It's such an easy thing to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So learn both on the validator and the invalidator. So basically learn on the adversarial examples to be able to exclude them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you basically want to both know what is a car and what is definitely not a car. You train for this is a car and this is definitely not a car. Those are two different things. People have no idea of neural nets really. They probably think neural nets involves like, you know, fishing net or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So as you know, so taking a step beyond just Tesla and autopilot, current deep learning approach is still seem in some ways to be far from general intelligence systems. Do you think the current approaches will take us to general intelligence, or do totally new ideas need to be invented?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we're missing a few key ideas for general intelligence, artificial general intelligence. But it's gonna be upon us very quickly And then we'll need to figure out what shall we do if we even have that choice. But it's amazing how people can't differentiate between, say, the narrow AI that allows a car to figure out what a lane line is and navigate streets versus general intelligence. These are just very different things. Like your toaster and your computer are both machines, but one's much more sophisticated than another." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're confident with Tesla you can create the world's best toaster?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The world's best toaster, yes. The world's best self-driving, yes. To me, right now, this seems game set match. I don't want to be complacent or overconfident, but that is just literally how it appears right now. I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think we will ever create an AI system that we can love and loves us back in a deep, meaningful way like in the movie Her?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think AI will be capable of convincing you to fall in love with it very well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's different than us humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, we start getting into a metaphysical question of like, do emotions and thoughts exist in a different realm than the physical? And maybe they do, maybe they don't, I don't know. But from a physics standpoint, I tend to think of things, you know, like physics was my main sort of training. And from a physics standpoint, essentially, if it loves you in a way that you can't tell whether it's real or not, it is real. It's a physics view of love. Yeah. If you cannot prove that it does not, if there's no test that you can apply that would make it may allow you to tell the difference, then there is no difference, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's similar to seeing our world as simulation. There may not be a test to tell the difference between what the real world and the simulation, and therefore, from a physics perspective, it might as well be the same thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And there may be ways to test whether it's a simulation. There might be, I'm not saying there aren't, but you could certainly imagine that a simulation could correct that once an entity in the simulation found a way to detect the simulation, it could either restart, you know, pause the simulation, start a new simulation, or do one of many other things that then corrects for that error." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when maybe you or somebody else creates an AGI system and you get to ask her one question, what would that question be?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it depends on the person, obviously. And we should probably define fear, right? Because you can, without going too far down the rabbit hole of defining these things, you know, you can't really have fear without stress, but you could have stress without fear. And you can't really have trauma without fear and stress, but you could have fear and stress without trauma. So, you know, we can start playing the word game. And that actually is one of the motivations for even having a laboratory that studies these things is that we really need better, physiological, neuroscientific, and operational definitions of what these things are. I mean, the field of understanding emotions and states, which is mainly what I'm interested in, is very complicated. But we can do away with a lot of complicated debate and say, in our laboratory, what we're looking for to assign it a value of fear is a big inflection in autonomic arousal, so increases in heart rate, increases in breathing, perspiration, pupil dilation, all the hallmark signature features of the stress response. And in some cases we have the benefit of getting neurosurgery patients where we've got electrodes in their amygdala and their insula and the orbital frontal cortex down beneath the skull. So these are chronically implanted electrodes. We're getting multi-unit signals and we can start seeing some central features of meaning within the brain. And what's interesting is that as trivial as it might seem in listening to it, almost everybody responds to heights and falling from a high virtual place with a very strong stress, if not fear response. And that's because the visual vestibular apparati, right? The optic flow and how it links to the, you know, balanced semicircular canals, the inner ears, all this technical stuff, but really, All of that pulls all your physiology, the feeling that your stomach is dropping, the feeling that suddenly you're sweating, even though you're not afraid of falling off this virtual platform, but you feel as if you're falling because of the optic flow. That one is universal. So we've got a dive with great white sharks experience where you actually exit the cage. We went out and did this in the real world and brought back 360 video that's built out pretty- Oh, so this is actually 360 video. 360 video. That's awesome. And this was important to us, right? So when we decided to set up this platform, a lot of the motivation was that a lot of the studies of of these things in laboratories. I don't want to call them lame because I want to be respectful of the people that did this stuff before, but they'd study fear by showing subjects a picture of a bloody arm or a snake or something like that. And it just, unless you have a snake phobia, it just wasn't creating a real enough experience. So we need to do something where people aren't going to get injured, but where we can tap into the physiology and that thing of presence of people momentarily, not the whole time, but momentarily. for getting there in a laboratory. And so heights will always do it. And I, if people want to challenge me on this, I like to point to that movie free solo, which was wild because you know, it's incredible movie, but I think a lot of its popularity can be explained by a puzzle, which is you knew he was gonna live when you walked in the theater or you watched it at home. You knew before that he survived. And yet it was still scary that people somehow were able to put themselves into that experience or into Alex's experience enough that they were concerned or worried or afraid at some level. So Heights always does it. If we get people who have generalized anxiety, these are people who wake up and move through life at a generally higher state of autonomic arousal and anxiety, then we can tip them a little bit more easily with things that don't necessarily get everyone afraid. Things like claustrophobia, public speaking, that's gonna vary from person to person. And then if you're afraid of sharks, like my sister, for instance, is afraid of sharks, she won't even come to my laboratory because there's a thing about sharks in it. That's how terrified some people are of these specific stimuli, but heights gets them every time. And- I'm terrified of heights. It's, you know, when we have you step off a platform, virtual platform, and it's a flat floor in my lab, but you're up there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you actually allow them the possibility in the virtual world to actually take the leap of faith." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, maybe I should describe a little bit of the experiment. So without giving away too much in case someone wants to be a subject in one of these experiments, we have them playing a cognitive game. It's a simple lights out kind of game where you're pointing a cursor and turning out lights on a grid, but it gets increasingly complex and it speeds up on them. And there's a failure point for everybody where they just can't make the motor commands fast enough. And then we surprise people essentially by placing them virtually, all of a sudden they're on a narrow platform between two buildings. And then we encourage them or we cue them by talking to them through a microphone to continue across that platform to continue the game. And some people, they actually will get down on the ground and hold onto a virtual beam that doesn't even exist on a flat floor. And so what this really tells us is the power of the brain to enter these virtual states as if they were real. And we really think that anchoring the visual and the vestibular, the balance components of the nervous system are what bring people into that presence so quickly. There's also the potential, and we haven't done this yet, to bring in 360 sound. So the reason we did 360 video is that when we started all this back in 2016, a lot of the VR was pretty lame, frankly, it was CGI, it just wasn't real enough. But with 360 video, we knew that we could get people into this presence where they think they're in a real experience more quickly. Our friend Michael Muller, who I was introduced to because of the project, I reached out to some friends. Michael Muller is a very famous portrait photographer in Hollywood, but he dives with great white sharks and he leaves the cage. We worked with him to build a 360 video apparatus that we could swim underwater with, went out to Guadalupe Island, Mexico. actually got the experience. It was a lot of fun. There were some interesting moments out there of danger, but it came back with that video and built that for the sharks. And then we realized we need to do this for everything. We need to do it for heights. We need to do it for public speaking, for claustrophobia. And what's missing still is 360 sound, where 360 sound would be, for instance, if I were to turn around and there was a, like a giant attack dog there, the moment I would turn around and see it, the dog would growl. But if I turned back toward you, then it would be silent. So, and that brings a very real element to one's own behavior where you don't know what's gonna happen if you turn a corner. Whereas if there's a dog growling behind me and I turn around and then I turn back to you and it's still growling, that might seem like more of an impending threat, but it's not. and sustained threat, but actually it's when you start linking your own body movements to the experience. So when it's closed loop, where my movements and choices are starting to influence things and they're getting scarier and scarier, that's when you can really drive people's nervous system down these paths of high states of stress and fear. Now we don't want to traumatize people obviously, but we also study a number of tools that allow them to calm themselves in these environments. So the short answer is heights." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "from a psychology and from a neuroscience perspective, this whole construction that you've developed is fascinating. We did this a little bit with autonomous vehicles, so to try to understand the decision-making process of a pedestrian when they cross the road, and trying to create an experience of a car, you know, that can run you over, so there's the danger of there, I was so surprised how real that whole world was. And the graphics that we built wasn't ultra-realistic or anything, but I was still afraid of being hit by a car. Everybody we tested were really afraid of being hit by that car. Even though it was all a simulation? It was all a simulation. It was kind of boxy, actually. I mean, it wasn't like ultra realistic simulation. And it's fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Looms and heights. So any kind of depth, we're just programmed to not necessarily recoil, but to be cautious about that edge and that depth. and then looms, things coming at us that are getting larger. There are looming sensing neurons even in the retina at a very, very early stage of visual processing. And incidentally, the way Muller and folks learned how to not get eaten by great white sharks when you're swimming outside the cage is as they start lumbering in, you swim toward them. And they get very confused when you loom on them because clearly you're smaller, clearly they could eat you if they wanted to, but there's something about forward movement toward any creature that that creature questions whether or not it would be a good idea to generate forward movement toward you. And so that's actually the survival tool of these cage exit white shark divers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you playing around with like one of the critical things for the autonomous vehicle research is you couldn't do 360 video because there's a game theoretic, there's an interactive element that's really necessary. So maybe people realize this, maybe they don't, but 360 video, you obviously, well, it's actually not that obvious to people, but you can't change the reality that you're watching. That's right. So, but you find that that's, Like, is there something fundamental about fear and stress that the interactive element is essential for? Or do you find you can... You can arouse people with just the video." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Great question. It works best to use mixed reality. So we have a snake stimulus. I personally don't like snakes at all. I don't mind spiders. We also have a spider stimulus, but like snakes, I just don't like them. There's something about the slithering and it just creates a visceral response for me. Some people, not so much, and they have lower levels of stress and fear in there. But one way that we can get them to feel more of that is to use mixed reality, where we have an actual physical bat and they have to stomp out the snake as opposed to just walk to a little safe corner, which then makes the snake disappear. That tends to be not as stressful as if they have a physical weapon. And so you've got people in there, you know, banging on the floor against this thing. And there's something about engaging that makes it more of a threat. Now, I should also mention, we always get the subjective report. from the subject of what they experienced because we never want to project our own ideas about what they were feeling. But that's the beauty of working with humans is you can ask them how they feel. And humans aren't great at explaining how they feel, but it's a lot easier to understand what they're saying than a mouse or a macaque monkey is saying. So it's the best we can do is language plus these physiological and neurophysiological signals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something you've learned about yourself about your deepest fears? Like you said, snakes? Is there something that like, if I were to torture you, I'm, so I'm Russian. So, you know, I always kind of think, how can I murder this people that this person entered the room, but also how, how can I torture you to get some information out of you? What, what, what, what would I go with? Hmm." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's interesting, you should say that I never considered myself claustrophobic, but, because I don't mind small environments provided they're well ventilated. But I, before COVID, I started going to this Russian banya, you know, and I had never been to a banya. So, you know, the whole experience of really, really hot sauna and the, what do they call it? The plaza, they're hitting you with the leaves. And it gets really hot and humid in there. And there were a couple of times where I thought, Okay, this thing is below ground. It's in a city where there are a lot of earthquakes. Like if this place crumbled and we were stuck in here and I'd start getting a little panicky and I realized I'm like, I don't like small confined spaces with poor ventilation. So I realized I think I have some claustrophobia. And I wasn't aware of that before. So I put myself into our own claustrophobia stimulus, which involves getting into an elevator and with a bunch of people, virtual people, and the elevator gets stalled. And at first you're fine, you feel fine. But then as we start modulating the environment and we actually can control levels of oxygen in the environment if we want to, it is really uncomfortable for me. And I never would have thought, you know, I fly, I'm comfortable in planes, but it is really uncomfortable. And so I think I've unhatched a bit of a claustrophobia. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. For me as well, probably. That one, that one was pretty bad. The heights, I tried to overcome. So I went skydiving to try to overcome the fear of heights, but that didn't help. Did you jump out? Yeah. Yeah. I jumped out, but it was, it was a, it was fundamentally different experience than, I guess there could be a lot of different flavors of your heights, maybe. But the one I have didn't seem to be connected to jumping out of a plane is a very different because like once you accept that you're going to jump, then it's it's a different thing. I think what I'm afraid of is the moments before it is the scariest part. Absolutely. And I don't think that's emphasized in the skydiving experience as much. and also just the acceptance of the fact that it's going to happen. So once you accept that it's going to happen, it's not as scary. It's the fact that it's not supposed to happen, and it might, that's the scary part. I guess I'm not being eloquent in this description, but there's something about skydiving that was actually philosophically liberating. I was like, wow, it was... the possibility that you can walk on a surface and then at a certain point, there's no surface anymore to walk on. And it's also in the world becomes three dimensional. And there's this freedom of floating that the concept of like of Earth disappears for a brief few seconds. I don't know those those while those while. But I'm still terrified of heights. So, I mean, one one thing I want to ask just on fear, because it's so fascinating, is have you learned anything about what it takes to overcome fears?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And that comes from a research study standpoint. two parallel tracks of research. One was done actually in mice, because we have a mouse lab also, where we can probe around in different brain areas and try and figure out what interesting brain areas we might want to probe around in humans. And a graduate student in my lab, she's now at Caltech, Lindsay Saleh, published a paper back in 2018 showing that what at first might seem a little bit obvious, but the mechanisms are not, which is that there are really three responses to fear. You can pause, you can freeze, essentially. You can retreat, you can back up, or you can go forward. And there's a single hub of neurons in the midbrain, it's actually not the midbrain, but it's in the middle of the thalamus, which is a forebrain structure. And depending on which neurons are active there, there's a much higher probability that a mouse or it turns out, or a human will advance in the face of fear or will pause or will retreat. Now that just assigns a neural structure to a behavioral phenomenon. But what's interesting is that it turns out that the lowest level of stress or autonomic arousal is actually associated with the pausing and freezing response. Then as the threat becomes more impending, and we used visual looms in this case, the retreat response has a slightly higher level of autonomic arousal and stress. So think about playing hide-and-go-seek and you're trying to stay quiet in a closet that you're hiding. If you're very calm, it's easy to stay quiet and still. As your level of stress goes up, it's harder to maintain that level of quiet and stillness. You see this also in animals that are stalking. A cat will chatter its teeth. That's actually sort of top-down inhibition and trying to restrain behavior. So the freeze response is actually an active response, but it's fairly low stress. And what was interesting to us is that the highest level of autonomic arousal was associated with the forward movement toward the threat. So in your case, jumping out of the plane. However, the forward movement in the face of threat was linked to the activation of what we call collateral, which means just a side connection, literally a wire in the brain that connects to the dopamine circuits for reward. And so when one safely and adaptively, meaning you survive, moves through a threat or toward a threat, it's rewarded as a positive experience. And so the key, it actually maps very well to cognitive behavioral therapy and a lot of the existing treatments for trauma is that you have to confront the thing that makes you afraid. So otherwise you exist in this very low level of reverberatory circuit activity where the circuits for autonomic arousal are humming and they're humming more and more and more. And we have to remember that stress and fear and threat were designed to agitate us so that we actually move. So the reason I mentioned this is I think a lot of times people think that the maximum stress response or fear response is to freeze and to lock up. But that's actually not the maximum stress response. The maximum stress response is to advance, but it's associated with reward. It has positive valence. So there's this kind of, everyone always thinks about the bell shape, you know, the sort of hump shape curve for, you know, at low levels of arousal performance is low and as increases performance goes higher and then it drops off as you get really stressed. But there's another bump. further out the distribution where you perform very well under very high levels of stress. And so we've been spending a lot of time in humans and in animals exploring what it takes to get people comfortable to go to that place. And also to let them experience how there are heightened states of cognition there. There's changes in time perception that allow you to evaluate your environment at a faster frame rate, essentially. This is the matrix, as a lot of people think of it. But we tend to think about fear as all the low level stuff where things aren't worked out. But there are many, there are a lot of different features to the fear response. And so we think about it quantitatively and we think about it from a circuit perspective in terms of outcomes. And we try and weigh that against the threat. So we never want people to put themselves in unnecessary risk, but that's where the VR is fun because you can push people hard without risk of physically injuring them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's, like you said, the little bump that seems to be a very small fraction of the human experience, right? So it's kind of fascinating to study it because most of us move through life without ever experienced in that kind of focus?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, everything's in a peak state there. I really think that's where optimal performance lies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's so many interesting words here, but what's performance and what's optimal performance? We're talking about mental ability to what? To perceive the environment quickly, to make actions quickly. What's optimal performance?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's very subjective and it varies depending on task and environment. So one way we can make it a little bit more operational and concrete is to say there is a sweet spot, if you will, where the level of internal autonomic arousal, aka stress or alertness, whatever you want to call it, is ideally matched to the speed of whatever challenge you have to be facing in the outside world. So we all have perception of the outside world as exteroception and the perception of our internal real estate interoception. And when those two things, when interoception and exteroception are matched along a couple of dimensions, performance tends to increase or tends to be in an optimal range. So for instance, if you're, I don't play guitar, but I know you play guitar. So let's say you're trying to learn something new on the guitar. I'm not saying that being in these super high states of activation are the best place for you to be in order to learn. It may be that your internal arousal needs to be at a level where your analysis of space and time has to be well-matched to the information coming in and what you're trying to do in terms of performance, in terms of playing chords and notes and so forth. Now, in these cases of high threat where things are coming in quickly and animals and humans need to react very quickly, the higher your state of autonomic arousal, the better. because you're slicing time more finely, just because of the way the autonomic system works. The pupil dilation, for instance, and movement of the lens essentially changes your optics, and that's obvious, but with the change in optics is a change in how you bin time and slice time, which allows you to get more frames per second readout. With the guitar learning, for instance, it might actually be that you want to be almost sleepy, almost in a kind of drowsy state to be able to, and I don't play music, so I'm guessing here, but sense some of the nuance in the chords or the ways that you're, to be relaxed enough that your fingers can follow an external cue. So matching the movement of your fingers to something that's pure exteroception. And so there is no perfect autonomic state for, This is why I don't favor terms like flow because they're not well operationally defined enough, but I do believe that optimal or peak performance is going to arise when internal state is ideally matched to the space-time features of the external demands." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some slicing of time that happens and then you're able to adjust, slice time more finely or less finely in order to adjust to the stimulus, the dynamics of the stimulus. What about the realm of ideas? So like, You know, I'm a big believer, there's a guy named Cal Newport who wrote a book about deep work. Yeah, I love that book. Yeah, he's great. I mean, one of the nice things, I've always practiced deep work, but it's always nice to have words put to the the concepts that you've practiced. It somehow makes them more concrete and allows you to to get better. It turns it into a skill that you can get better at. But you know, I also value deep thinking where you think it's almost meditative. You think about a particular concept for long periods of time. The programming you have to do that kind of thing for. You just have to hold this concept like you hold it and then you take steps with it. You take further steps and you're holding relatively complicated things in your mind as you're thinking about them. And there's a lot of I mean, the hardest part is there's frustrating things like you take a step and it turns out to be the wrong direction. So you have to calmly turn around and take a step back. And then it's you kind of like exploring through the space of ideas. Is there something about your study of optimal performance that could be applied to the act of thinking as opposed to action?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we haven't done too much work there, but I think I can comment on it from a neuroscience perspective, which is really all I do is, well, I mean, we do experiments in the lab, but looking at things through the lens of neuroscience. So what you're describing can be mapped fairly well to working memory, just keeping things online and updating them as they change in information that's coming back into your brain. Jack Feldman, who I'm a huge fan of and fortunate to be friends with, is a professor at UCLA, works on respiration and breathing, but he has a physics background. And so he thinks about respiration and breathing in terms of ground states and how they modulate other states. Very, very interesting and I think important work. Jack has an answer to your question. So I'm not gonna get this exactly right. Cause this is lifted from a coffee conversation that we had about a month ago. So apologies in advance for the, but I think I can get mostly right. So we were talking about this, about how the brain updates cognitive states depending on demands and thinking in particular. And he used an interesting example. I'd be curious to know if you agree or disagree. He said, you know, most, Great mathematics is done by people in their late teens and 20s, and even you could say early 20s, sometimes into the late 20s, but not much further on. Maybe I just insulted some mathematicians. And I think that it demands, his argument was, there's a tremendous demand on working memory to work out theorems in math and to keep a number of plates spinning, so to speak, mentally and run back and forth between them, updating them. In physics, Jack said, and I think this makes sense to me too, that there's a reliance on working memory, but an increased reliance on some sort of deep memory and deep memory stores, probably stuff that's moved out of the hippocampus and forebrain and into the cortex, and is more some episodic and declarative stuff. But really, so you're pulling from your library, basically. It's not all RAM, it's not all working memory. And then in biology, and physicists tend to have very active careers into their 30s and 40s and 50s and so forth, sometimes later. And then in biology, you see careers that have a much longer arc, kind of these protracted careers often, people still in their 60s and 70s doing really terrific work. not always doing it with their own hands, because the people in the labs are doing them, of course, and that work does tend to rely on insights gained from having a very deep knowledge base, where you can remember a paper or maybe a figure in a paper, you could go look it up if you wanted to, but it's very different than the working memory of the mathematician. And so when you're talking about coding or being in that tunnel of thought and trying to iterate and keeping a lot of plates spinning, it speaks directly to working memory. My lab hasn't done too much of that. But we are pushing working memory when we have people do things like these simple lights out tasks while they're under, we can increase the cognitive load by increasing the level of autonomic arousal to the point where they start doing less well. And everyone has a cliff. This is what's kind of fun. We've had SEAL team operators come to the lab. We've had people from other units in the military. We've had a range of intellects and backgrounds and all sorts of things, and everyone has a cliff. And those cliffs sometimes show up as a function of the demands of speed of processing. or how many things you need to keep online. I mean, we're all limited at some point in the number of things we can keep online. So what you're describing is very interesting because I think it has to do with how narrow or broad the information set is. And I'm not an active programmer. So this is a regime I don't really fully know. So I don't want to comment about it in any way that doesn't suggest that. But I think that what you're talking about is top-down control So this is prefrontal cortex keeping every bit of reflexive circuitry at bay, the one that makes you want to get up and use the restroom, the one that makes you want to check your phone, all of that, but also running these anterior thalamus to prefrontal cortex loops, which we know are very important for working memory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, let me try to think through this a little bit. So reducing the process of thinking to working memory access It's tricky. It's probably ultimately correct. But if I were to say some of the most challenging things that an engineer has to do, and a scientific thinker, I would say it's kind of depressing to think that we do that best in our 20s, but is this kind of first principles thinking step of saying, you're accessing the things that you know, and then saying, well, let me, how do I do this differently than I've done it before? This weird, like, stepping back, like, is this right? let's try it this other way. That's the most mentally taxing step. It's like, you've gotten quite good at this particular pattern of how you solve this particular problem. So there's a pattern recognition first. You're like, okay, I know how to build a thing that solves this particular problem in programming, say. And then the question is, but can I do it much better? And I don't know if that's, I don't know what the hell that is. I don't know if that's accessing working memory. Maybe it is accessing memory in the sense it's trying to find similar patterns in a totally different place that it could be projected onto this. But you're not querying facts, you're querying functional things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's patterns. I mean, you're running out your testing algorithms. Yeah, right. You're testing algorithms. So I want to just because I know some of the people listening to this and you have basis in scientific training and have scientific training. So I want to be clear. I think we can be correct about some things like the role of working memory in these kinds of processes without being exhaustive. We're not saying they're the only thing. We can be correct but not assume that that's the only thing involved, right? And I mean, neuroscience, let's face it, is still in its infancy. I mean, we probably know 1% of what there is to know about the brain. You know, we've learned so much and yet there may be global states that underlie this that make prefrontal circuitry work differently than it would in a different regime or even time of day. I mean, there's a lot of mysteries about this. But so I just want to make sure that we sort of are. we're aiming for precision and accuracy, but we're not going to be exhausted. So there's a difference there. And I think, you know, sometimes in the vastness of the internet that gets forgotten. So the other is that, you know, we think about, you know, we think about these operations at, you know, really focused, keeping a lot of things online. But what you were describing is actually, it speaks to the very real possibility, probably that with certainty, there's another element to all this, which is when you're trying out lots of things, in particular, lots of different algorithms, you don't want to be in a state of very high autonomic arousal. That's not what you want because the higher level of autonomic arousal and stress in the system, the more rigidly you're gonna analyze space and time. And what you're talking about is playing with space-time dimensionality. And I want to be very clear. I mean, I'm the son of a physicist. I am not a physicist. When I talk about space and time, I'm literally talking about visual space and how long it takes for my finger to move from this point to this point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You are facing a tiger and trying to figure out how to avoid being eaten by the tiger." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's primarily gonna be determined by the visual system in humans. We don't walk through space, for instance, like a scent hound would, and look at three-dimensional scent plumes. You know, when a scent hound goes out in the environment, they have depth to the odor trails they're following. And they don't think about them, we don't think about odor trails. You might say, oh, well, the smell's getting more intense, aha. but they actually have three-dimensional odor trail. So there you see a cone of odor. See, of course, with their nose, with their olfactory cortex. We do that with our visual system and we parse time often subconsciously, mainly with our visual system, also with our auditory system. And this shows up for the musicians out there, metronomes are a great way to play with this. You know, bass drumming, when the frequency of bass drumming changes, your perception of time changes quite a lot. So, In any event, space and time are linked through the sensory apparati, through the eyes and ears and nose, and probably through taste too and through touch for us, but mainly through vision. So when you drop into some coding or iterating through a creative process or trying to solve something hard, You can't really do that well if you're in a rigid, high level of autonomic arousal, because you're plugging in algorithms that are in this space regime, this time regime matches, it's space time matched. Whereas creativity, I always think the lava lamp is actually a pretty good example, even though it has these counterculture new agey connotations, because you actually don't know which direction things are gonna change. And so in drowsy states, Sleeping and drowsy states, space and time become dislodged from one another somewhat, and they're very fluid. And I think that's why a lot of solutions come to people after sleep and naps. And this could even take us into a discussion, if you like, about psychedelics and what we now know, for instance, that people thought that psychedelics work by just creating spontaneous bursting of neurons and hallucinations, but that the five H, 2C and 2A receptors, which are the main sites for things like LSD and psilocybin and some of the other, the ones that create hallucinations, the drugs that create hallucinations. Most of those receptors are actually in the collection of neurons that encase the thalamus, which is where all the sensory information goes into, a structure called the thalamic reticular nucleus. and it's an inhibitory structure that makes sure that when we're sitting here talking, that I'm mainly focused on whatever I'm seeing visually, that I'm essentially eliminating a lot of sensory information. Under conditions where people take psychedelics and these particular serotonin receptors are activated, that inhibitory shell, it's literally shaped like a shell, starts losing its ability to inhibit the passage of sensory information. But mostly the effects of psychedelics are because the lateral connectivity in layer five of cortex across cortical areas, is increased. And what that does is that means that the space-time relationship for vision, like moving my finger from here to here, very rigid space-time relationship, right? If I slow it down, it's slower, obviously, but there's a prediction that can be made based on the neurons in the retina and the cortex. On psychedelics, this could be very strange experience. But the auditory system has one that's slightly different space-time and they're matched to one another in deeper circuits in the brain. The olfactory system has a different space-time relationship to it. So, under conditions of these increased activation of these serotonin receptors, space and time across sensory areas starts being fluid. So I'm no longer running the algorithm for moving my finger from here to here and making a prediction based on vision alone. I'm now, this is where people talk about hearing sites, right? You start linking, this might actually make a sound in a psychedelic state. Now, I'm not suggesting people run out and do psychedelics because it's very disorganized, but essentially what you're doing is you're mixing the algorithms. And so when you talk about being able to access new solutions, you don't need to rely on psychedelics. If people choose to do that, that's their business. But in drowsy states, this lateral connectivity is increased as well. The shell of the thalamus shuts down and what's, these are through these so-called PONS, chiniculate occipital waves. And what's happening is you're getting whole brain activation at a level that you start mixing algorithms. And so sometimes I think solutions come not from being in that narrow tunnel of space-time and strong activation of working memory and trying to, well, iterate if this, then this, very strong deductive and inductive thinking. and working from first principles, but also from states where something that was an algorithm that you never had in existence before suddenly gets lumped with another algorithm, and all of a sudden, a new possibility comes to mind. Space and time need to be fluid and space and time need to be rigid in order to come up with something meaningful. And I realize I'm riffing long on this, but this is why I think, you know, there was so much interest a few years ago with Michael Pollan's book and other things happening about psychedelics as a pathway to exploration and all this kind of thing. But the real question is what you export back from those experiences. Because dreams are amazing, but if you can't bring anything back from them, they're just amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder how to experiment with the mind without any medical assistance first. I push my mind in all kinds of directions. I definitely want to, I did shrooms a couple of times. I definitely want to figure out how I can experiment with psychedelics. I'm talking to Rick. Doblin, I think. Soon, I went back and forth. So he does all these studies in psychedelics and he keeps ignoring the parts of my email that asks like, how do I participate in these studies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there are some legality issues. I mean, conversation, I won't be very clear. I'm not saying that anyone should run out and do psychedelics. I think that drowsy states and sleep states are super interesting for accessing some of these more creative states of mind. Hypnosis is something that my colleague, David Spiegel, Associate Chair of Psychiatry at Stanford works on, where also, again, it's a unique state because you have narrow context. So this is very kind of tunnel vision and yet deeply relaxed, where new algorithms, if you will, can start to surface. Strong state for inducing neuroplasticity. And I think, you know, so if I had a, I'm part of a group, that it's called the liminal collective as a group of people that get together and talk about just wild ideas, but they try and implement. And it's a really interesting group, some people from military, from Logitech and some other backgrounds, academic backgrounds. And I was asked, you know, what would be, if you could create a tool, if you just had a tool like your magic wand wish for the day, what would it be? I thought it'd be really interesting if someone could develop psychedelics that have on-off switches. So you could go into a psychedelic state very deeply for 10 minutes, but you could launch yourself out of that state and place yourself into a linear real-world state very quickly so that you could extract whatever it was that happened in that experience and then go back in if you wanted. Because the problem with psychedelic states and dream states is that first of all, a lot of the reason people do them is they're lying. They say they want plasticity and they want all this stuff. They want a peak experience inside of an amplified experience. So they're kind of seeking something unusual. And I think we should just be honest about that because a lot of times they're not trying to make their brain better. They're just trying to experience something really amazing. But the problem is space and time are so unlocked in these states, just like they are in dreams, that you can really end up with a whole lot of nothing. You can have an amazing amplified experience housed in an amplified experience and come out of that thinking you had a meaningful experience when you didn't bring anything back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You didn't bring anything back. All you have is a fuzzy memory of having a transformational experience, but you don't actually have Yeah, tools to bring back. Sorry, actually concrete ideas to bring back. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I wonder if it's possible to do that with a mind to be able to hop back and forth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's where the real power of adjusting states is gonna be. It probably will be with devices. I mean, maybe it'll be done through pharmacology. It's just that it's hard to do on-off switches in human pharmacology. We have them for animals. I mean, we have CreeFlip, recombinases and we have channel opsins and halo rhodopsins and all these kinds of things. But to do that work in humans is tricky, but I think you could do it with virtual reality, augmented reality and other devices that bring more of the somatic experience into it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're, of course, a scientist who's studying humans as a collective. I tend to be just a one-person scientist of just looking at myself. And, you know, I play with these deep thinking, deep work sessions. I'm very cognizant, like in the morning, that there's times when my mind is so like eloquent at being able to jump around from ideas and hold them all together. And I'm almost like I step back from a third person perspective and enjoy that, whatever that mind is doing. I do not waste those moments. And I'm very conscious of this little creature that woke up that's only awake for, if we're being honest, maybe a couple hours a day. Early part of the day for you. Early part of the day. Not always. Early part of the day for me is a very fluid concept. You're one of those. Being single, one of the problems, single and no meetings. I don't schedule any meetings. I've been living at like a 28-hour day, so it drifts. It's all over the place. After a traditionally defined full night's sleep, whatever the heck that means, I find that in those moments, there's a clarity of mind that's just, everything is effortless. And it's the deepest dives intellectually that I make. And I'm cognizant of it. And I try to bring that to the other parts of the day that don't have it and treasure them even more in those moments, because they only last like five or 10 minutes. Because, of course, in those moments, you want to do all kinds of stupid stuff that are completely is worthless, like check social media or something like that. But those are the most precious things in an intellectual life, is those mental moments of clarity. And I wonder, I'm learning how to control them. I think caffeine is somehow involved, I'm not sure exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because if you learn how to titrate caffeine, and everyone's slightly different with this, what they need, but if you learn to titrate caffeine with time of day and the kind of work that you're trying to do, you can bring that autonomic arousal state into close to perfect place. And then you can tune it in with, you know, sometimes people want a little bit of background music, sometimes they want less, these kinds of things. The early part of the day is interesting because one thing that's not often discussed is this transition out of sleep. So there's a book, I think it's called Winston Churchill's Nap, and it's about naps and the transition between awake and sleep as a valuable period. A long time ago, someone who I respect a lot, was mentoring me, said, be very careful about bringing in someone else's sensory experience early in the day. So when I wake up, I'm very drowsy. I sleep well, but I don't emerge from that very quickly. I need a lot of caffeine to wake up and whatnot. But there's this concept of getting the download from sleep. which is in sleep, you were essentially expunging the things that you don't need, the stuff that is meaningless from the previous day, but you were also running variations on these algorithms of whatever it is you're trying to work out in life on short timescales like the previous day and long timescales like your whole life. And those lateral connections in layer five of the neocortex are very robustly active and across sensory areas. And you're running an algorithm or a, you know, it's a brain state that would be useless in waking. You wouldn't get anything done. You'd be the person talking to yourself in the hallway or something about something that no one else can see. But in those states, you do, that the theory is that you arrive at certain solutions, and those solutions will reveal themselves in the early part of the day, unless you interfere with them by bringing in social media is a good example of you immediately enter somebody else's space-time sensory relationship. Someone is the conductor of your thoughts in that case. And so many people have written about this. What I'm saying isn't entirely new, but allowing the download to occur in the early part of the day and asking the question, am I more in my head or am I in more of an interoceptive or exteroceptive mode? And depending on the kind of work you need to do, If it's, it sounds like for you, it's very interoceptive in the, and very, you got a lot of thinking going on and a lot of computing going on, allowing yourself to transition out of that sleep state and arrive with those solutions from sleep and plug into the work really deeply. And then, and only then allowing things like music, news, social media, doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to loved ones and see faces and things like that. But some people have taken this to the extreme. When I was a graduate student at Berkeley, there was a guy, there was a professor, he's brilliant, odd, but brilliant, who was so fixated on this concept that he wouldn't look at faces in the early part of the day because he just didn't want anything else to impact him. Now, he didn't have the most rounded life, I suppose. But if you're talking about cognitive performance, this could actually be very beneficial." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said so many brilliant things. So one, if you read books that describe the habits of brilliant people, like writers, they do control that sensory experience in the hours after wake. Like many writers, You know, they have a particular habit of several hours early in the morning of actual writing. They do, I'm doing anything else for the rest of the day, but they control, they're very sensitive to noises and so on. I think they make it very difficult to live with them. I try to, I'm definitely like that. Like I can, I love to control the sensory, how much information is coming in. There's something about the peaceful, just everything being peaceful. At the same time, and we're talking to a mutual friend of Whitney Cummings who has a mansion, a castle on top of a cliff in the middle of nowhere. She actually purchased her own island. She wants silence. She wants to control how much sound is coming in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And she's very sensitive to sound and environment. Yeah, beautiful home and environment, but like clearly puts a lot of attention into details. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And very creative. Yeah. And that allows for creativity to flourish. I'm also, I don't like, that feels like a slippery slope. So I enjoy introducing noises and signals and training my mind to be able to tune them out. Because I feel like you can't always control the environment so perfectly. Because your mind gets comfortable with that. I think it's a skill that you want to learn to be able to shut it off. Like I often go to like back before COVID to a coffee shop. It really annoys me when there's sounds and voices and so on. But I feel like I can train my mind to block them out. So it's a balance, I think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I think, you know, two things come to mind as you're saying this. First of all, yeah, I mean, we're talking about what's best for work is not always what's best for, you know, completeness of life. I mean, you know, autism is probably many things. Like when you hear autism, just like feet, there are probably 50 ways to get a fever. There are probably 50 ways that the brain can create what looks like autism or what people call autism. There's an interesting set of studies that have come out of David Ginty's lab at Harvard Med looking at, these are mouse mutants where, these are models for autism where nothing is disrupted in the brain proper and in the central nervous system, but the sensory neurons, the ones that innervate the skin and the ears and everything are hypersensitive. And this maps to a mutation in certain forms of human autism. So this means that the overload of sensory information and sensory experience that a lot of autistics feel. They're like that they can't tolerate things. And then they get the stereotype behaviors, the rocking and the kind of the shouting it, you know, we always thought of that as a brain problem. In some cases it might be, but in many cases it's because they just can't, they seem to have a, it's like turning the volume up on every sense. And so they're overwhelmed and none of us want to become like that. I think it's very hard for them and it's hard for their parents and so forth. So I like the coffee shop example because the way I think about trying to build up resilience, you know, physically or mentally or otherwise is one of, I guess we could call it limb, I like to call it limbic friction. That's not a real scientific term and I acknowledge that I'm making it up now because I think it captures the concept, which is that, you know, we always hear about resilience. It makes it sound like, oh, you know, under stress where everything's coming at you, you're going to stay calm. But there's another, you know, so limbic, the limbic system wants to pull you in some direction, typically in the direction of reflexive behavior. And the prefrontal cortex through top-down mechanisms has to suppress that and say, no, we're not going to respond to the banging of the coffee cups behind me or I'm going to keep focusing. That's pure top-down control. So limbic friction is high in that environment. You've put yourself into a high limbic friction environment, meaning that the prefrontal cortex has to work really hard. But there's another side to limbic friction too, which is when you're very sleepy, there's nothing incoming. It can be completely silent. And it's hard to engage and focus because you're drifting off and you're getting sleepy. So their limbic friction is high, but for the opposite reason, autonomic arousal is too low. So they're turning on Netflix in the background or looping a song might boost your level of alertness that will allow top-down control to be in exactly the sweet spot you want it. So this is why earlier I was saying, it's all about how we feel inside relative to what's going on on the outside. We're constantly in this, I guess one way you could envision it spatially, especially if people are listening to this just on audio, is I like to think about it kind of like a glass barbell. where one sphere of perception and attention can be on what's going on with me and one sphere of attention can be on what's going on with you or something else in the room or in my environment. But this barbell isn't rigid. It's not really glass. Would plasma work here? I don't know anything about plasma. Sorry, I don't know. So imagine that this thing can contort, the size of the globes at the end of this barbell can get bigger or smaller. So let's say I close my eyes and I bring all my experience into what's going on through interoception internally. Now it's as if I've got two orbs of perception just on my internal state, but I can also do the opposite and bring both orbs of perception outside me. I'm not thinking about my heart rate or my breathing. I'm just thinking about something I see. And what you'll start to realize as you kind of use this spatial model is that two things. One is that it's very dynamic and that the more relaxed we are, the more these two orbs of attention, the two ends of the barbell can move around freely. the more alert we are, the more rigid they're gonna be tethered in place. And that was designed so that if I have a threat in my environment, it's tethered to that threat. If something's coming to attack me, I'm not gonna be like, oh, my breathing cadence is a little bit quick. That's not how it works, why? Because both orbs are linked to that threat. And so my behavior is now actually being driven by something external, even though I think it's internal. And so I don't want to get too abstract here because I'm a neuroscientist, I'm not a theorist. But when you start thinking about models of how the brain works, excuse me, there are only really three things that neurons do. They're either sensory neurons, they're motor neurons, or they're modulating things. The models of attention and perception that we have now, 2020, tell us that we've got interoception and exteroception. They're strongly modulated by levels of autonomic arousal. And that if we want to form the optimal relationship to some task or some pressure or something, whether or not it's sleep, an impending threat or coding, We need to adjust our internal space-time relationship with the external space-time relationship. And I realize I'm repeating what I said earlier, but we can actually assign circuitry to this stuff. It mostly has to do with how much limbic friction there is, how much you're being pulled to some source. That source could be internal. If I have pain, physical pain in my body, I'm gonna be much more interoceptive than I am extroceptive. You could be talking to me and I'm just gonna be thinking about that pain. It's very hard. And the other thing that we can link it to is, top-down control, meaning anything in our environment that has a lot of salience will tend to bring us into more exteroception than interoception. And again, I don't want to litter the conversation with just a bunch of terms, but what I think it can be useful for people is to do what essentially you've done, Lex, is to start developing an awareness. When I wake up, am I mostly in a mode of interoception or extraoception? When I work well, is that, what does working well look like from the perspective of autonomic arousal? How alert or calm am I? What kind of balance between internal focus and external focus is there? and to sort of watch this process throughout the day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you linger just briefly on, because you use this term a lot and it'd be nice to try to get a little more color to it, which is interoception and exteroception. What are we exactly talking about? So like what's included in each category and how much overlap is there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Interoception would be an awareness of anything that's within the confines or on the surface of my skin. that I'm sensing. Physiologically, like within the boundaries of my skin and probably touch to the skin as well. Exteroception would be perception of anything that's beyond the reach of my skin. So that bottle of water, a scent, a sound, although, and this can change dramatically actually, if you have headphones in, you tend to hear things in your head as opposed to a speaker in the room. This is actually the basis of ventriloquism. So there are beautiful experiments done by Greg Reckonzone up at UC Davis, looking at how auditory and visual cues are matched and we have an array of speakers and you can, this will become obvious as I say it, but you know, obviously the ventriloquist doesn't throw their voice. What they do is they direct your vision to a particular location and you think the sound is coming from that location. And there are beautiful experiments that Greg and his colleagues have done where they suddenly introduce an auditory visual mismatch. And it freaks people out because you can actually make it seem from a perception standpoint, as if the sound arrived from the corner of the room and hit you like it physically and people will recoil. And so sounds aren't getting thrown across the room. They're still coming from a defined location, an array of speakers, but this is the way the brain creates these internal representations. Again, not to, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but I think as much as you're, you know, I'm sure the listeners appreciate this, but you know, everything in the brain is an abstraction, right? I mean, they're the sensory apparati that are the eyes and ears and nose and skin and taste and all that are taking information. And with interoception, it's taking information from sensors inside the body, the enteric nervous system for the gut. I've got sensory neurons that innervate my liver, et cetera. taking all that and the brain is abstracting that in the same way that if I took a picture of your face and I hand it to you and I'd say, that's you, you'd say, yeah, that's me. But if I were an abstract artist, I'd be doing a little bit more of what the brain does, where if I took a pen, pad and paper, maybe I could do this cause I'm a terrible artist and I could just mix it up. And I, let's say I would make your eyes like water bottles, but I'd flip them upside down and I'd start assigning fruits and objects to the different features of your face. And I showed you, I say, Lex, that's you. Say, well, that's not me. And I'd say, no, but that's my abstraction of you. But that's what the brain does. The space-time relationship of the neurons that fire that encode your face have no resemblance to your face. And I think people don't really, I don't know if people have fully internalized that, but the day that I, and I'm not sure I fully internalized that because it's weird to think about, but All neurons can do is fire in space and in time. Different neurons in different sequences, perhaps with different intensities. It's not clear the action potential is all or none, although neuroscientists don't like to talk about that, even though it's been published in Nature a couple of times. The action potential for a given neuron doesn't always have the exact same waveform. It's in all the textbooks, but you can modify that waveform." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's a lot of fascinating stuff with neuroscience about the fuzziness of all the transfer of information from neuron to neuron. I mean, we certainly touch upon it every time we at all try to think about the difference between artificial neural networks and biological neural networks. But can we maybe linger a little bit on this circuitry that you're getting at? So the brain is just a bunch of stuff firing and it forms abstractions that are fascinating and beautiful, like layers upon layers upon layers of abstraction. And I think it, just like when you're programming, you know, I'm programming in Python, it's awe-inspiring to think that underneath it all, it ends up being zeros and ones. and the computer doesn't know about no stupid Python or Windows or Linux. It only knows about the zeros and ones. In the same way with the brain, is there something interesting to you or fundamental to you about the circuitry of the brain that allows for the magic that's in our mind to emerge? How much do we understand? I mean, maybe even focusing on the vision system, Is there something specific about the structure of the vision system, the circuitry of it, that allows for the complexity of the vision system to emerge? Or is it all just a complete chaotic mess that we don't understand?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's definitely not all a chaotic mess that we don't understand, if we're talking about vision. And that's not just because I'm a vision scientist. Let's stick to vision. Well, because in the beauty of the visual system, the reason David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel won the Nobel prize was because they were brilliant and forward thinking and adventurous and all that good stuff. But the reason that the visual system is such a great model for addressing these kinds of questions and other systems are hard is we can control the stimuli. We can adjust spatial frequency, how finer the gratings are, thick gratings, thin gratings. We can adjust temporal frequency, how fast things are moving. We can use cone isolating stimuli. There's so many things that you can do in a controlled way. Whereas if we were talking about cognitive encoding, like encoding the space of concepts or something, I like you, if I may, am drawn to the big questions in neuroscience, but I confess, in part because of some good advice I got early in my career and in part because I'm not perhaps smart enough to go after the really high level stuff. I also like to address things that are tractable and I want, you know, we need to address what we can stand to make some ground on at a given time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They construct brilliant controlled experiments to study, to really literally answer questions about, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to have a talk about consciousness, but it's a scary talk. And I think most people don't want to hear what I have to say, which is, you know, which is, we can save that for later, perhaps, or another day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- It's an interesting question of, we talk about psychedelics, we can talk about consciousness, we can talk about cognition. Can experiments in neuroscience be constructed to shed any kind of light on these questions? So, I mean, It's cool that vision, I mean, to me, vision is probably one of the most beautiful things about human beings. Also, from the AI side, computer vision has some of the most exciting applications of neural networks is in computer vision. But it feels like that's a neighbor of cognition and consciousness. It's just that we maybe haven't come up with experiments to study those yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the visual system is amazing. We're mostly visual animals to navigate, survive. Humans mainly rely on vision, not smell or something else, but it's a filter for cognition and it's a strong driver of cognition. maybe just because it came up and then we're moving to higher level concepts. The way the visual system works can be summarized in a few relatively succinct statements, unlike most of what I've said, which has not been succinct at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's go there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's involved? Yeah, so the retina is this three layers of neuron structure at the back of your eyes about as thick as a credit card. It is a piece of your brain. And sometimes people think I'm kind of wriggling out of reality by saying that. It's absolutely a piece of the brain. It's a four-brain structure that in the first trimester, there's a genetic program that made sure that that neural retina, which is part of your central nervous system, was squeezed out into what's called the embryonic eye cups, and that the bone formed with a little hole where the optic nerve is gonna connect it to the rest of the brain. And that window into the world is the only window into the world for a mammal which has a thick skull. Birds have a thin skull, so their pineal gland sits, and lizards too, and snakes actually have a hole so that light can make it down into the pineal directly and in trained melatonin rhythms for time of day and time of year. Humans have to do all that through the eyes. So three layers of neurons that are a piece of your brain, their central nervous system, and the optic nerve connects to the rest of the brain. The neurons in the eye, some just care about luminance, just how bright or dim it is. And they inform the brain about time of day. And then the central circadian clock informs every cell in your body about time of day and make sure that all sorts of good stuff happens if you're getting light in your eyes at the right times. and all sorts of bad things happen if you are getting light randomly throughout the 24-hour cycle. We could talk about all that, but this is a good incentive for keeping a relatively normal schedule, a consistent schedule of light exposure. Consistent schedule. Try and keep a consistent schedule. When you're young, it's easy to go off schedule and recover. As you get older, it gets harder, but you see everything from outcomes in cancer patients to, you know, Diabetes improves when people are getting light at a particular time of day and getting darkness at a particular phase of the 24-hour cycle. We were designed to get light and dark at different times of the circadian cycle. All that information is coming in through specialized type of neuron in the retina called the melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cell discovered by David Burson at Brown University. That's not spatial information. It's subconscious. You don't think, oh, it's daytime. Even if you're looking at the sun, it doesn't matter. It's a photon counter. It's literally counting photons. And it's saying, oh, even though it's a cloudy day, lots of photons coming in. It's winter in Boston, it must be winter. And your system is a little depressed. It's spring, you feel alert. That's not a coincidence. That's these melanopsin cells signaling the circadian clock. There are a bunch of other neurons in the eye. that signal to the brain. And they mainly signal the presence of things that are lighter than background or darker than background. So a black object would be darker than background, a light object, lighter than background. And that all come, it's mainly, it's looking at pixels. Mainly it's, they look at circles and those neurons have receptive fields, which not everyone will understand, but those neurons respond best to little circles of dark light or little circles of bright light. Little circles of red light versus little circles of green light or blue light. And so it sounds very basic. It's like red, green, blue and circles brighter or dimmer than what's next to it. But that's basically the only information that's sent down the optic nerve. And when we say information, we can be very precise. I don't mean little bits of red traveling down the optic nerve. I mean, spikes neural action potentials in space and time, which for you is like makes total sense. But I think for a lot of people, it's actually beautiful to think about all that information in the outside world is converted into a language that's very simple. It's just like a few syllables, if you will. And those syllables are being shouted down the optic nerve, converted into a totally different language, like Morse code. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, goes into the brain. And then the thalamus essentially responds in the same way that the retina does. except the thalamus is also waiting things. It's saying, you know what? That thing was moving faster than everything else, or it's brighter than everything else. So that signal I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna allow up to cortex. or that signal is much redder than it is green, so I'm gonna let that signal go through. That signal is much, eh, it's kind of more like the red next to it, throw that out. The information just doesn't get up into your cortex. And then in cortex, of course, is where perceptions happen. And in V1, if you will, visual area one, but also some neighboring areas, you start getting representations of things like oriented lines. So there's a neuron that responds to this angle of my hand versus vertical. This is the defining work of Hubel and Wiesel's Nobel. And it's a very systematic map of orientation, line orientation, direction of movement, and so forth. And that's pretty much, and color. And that's how the visual system is organized all the way up to the cortex. So it's hierarchical. You don't build, I wanna be clear, it's hierarchical because you don't build up that line by suddenly having a neuron that responds to lines in some random way. It responds to lines by taking all the dots that are aligned in a vertical stack, and they all converge on one neuron, and then that neuron responds to vertical lines. So it's not random. There's no abstraction at that point, in fact. In fact, if I showed you a black line, I could be sure that if I were imaging V1, that I would see a representation of that black line as a vertical line somewhere in your cortex. So at that point, it's absolutely concrete, it's not abstract. But then things get really mysterious. Some of that information travels further up into the cortex so that, and goes from one visual area to the next, to the next, to the next, so that by time you get into an area that Nancy Kanwisher at MIT has studied much of her career, the fusiform face area, you start finding single neurons that respond only to your father's face or to Joe Rogan's face, regardless of the orientation of his face. I'm sure if you saw Joe, because you know him well, from across the room and you just saw his profile, you'd be like, oh, that's Joe. Walk over and say hello. the orientation of his face isn't there, you wouldn't even see his eyes necessarily, but he's represented in some abstract way by a neuron that actually would be called the Joe Rogan neuron or collection of neurons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It might have limits, like I might not recognize him if he was upside down or something like that. It'd be fascinating to see what the limits of that Joe Rogan concept is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Nancy's lab has done that because early on she was challenged by people that said, there aren't face neurons. There are neurons that they only respond to space and time, shapes and things like that, moving in particular directions and orientations. And it turns out Nancy was right. They use these stimuli called Grebel stimuli, which any computer programmer would appreciate, which kind of morphs a face into something gradually that eventually just looks like this like alien thing they call the Grebel. And the neurons don't respond to Grebel's In most cases, they only respond to faces or familiar faces. Anyway, I'm summarizing a lot of literature and forgive me, Nancy, and for those of the greeble people, if there are, they're like, don't come after me with pitchforks. Actually, you know what, come after me with pitchforks. I think you know what I'm trying to do here. So the point is that in the visual system, it's very concrete up until about visual area four, which has color pinwheels and seems to respond to pinwheels of colors. And so the stimuli become more and more elaborate, but at some point you depart that concrete representation and you start getting abstract representations that can't be explained by simple point to point wiring. And to take a leap out of the visual system to the higher level concepts, What we talked about in the visual system maps to the auditory system where you're encoding what frequency of tone sweeps. So this is gonna sound weird to do, but you know, like a Doppler, like hearing something, a car passing by for instance. But at some point you get into motifs of music that can't be mapped to just a, what they call a tonotopic map of frequency, you start abstracting. And if you start thinking about concepts of creativity and love and memory, like what is the map of memory space? Well, your memories are very different than mine, but presumably there's enough structure at the early stages of memory processing, or at the early stages of emotional processing, or at the earlier stages of creative processing that you have the building blocks, your zeros and ones, if you will, but you depart from that eventually. Now, the exception to this, and I want to be really clear, because I was just mainly talking about neocortex, the six layered structure on the outside of the brain that explains a lot of human abilities. other animals have them too, is that subcortical structures are a lot more like machines. It's more plung and chug. And what I'm talking about is the machinery that controls heart rate and breathing and receptive fields, neurons that respond to things like temperature on the top of my left hand. And one of the, you know, I came into neuroscience from a more of a perspective initially of psychology, but one of the reasons I forced upon myself to learn some electrophysiology, not a ton, but enough, and some molecular biology and about circuitry is that one of the most beautiful experiences you can have in life, I'm convinced, is to lower an electrode into the cortex. and to show a person or an animal, you do this ethically, of course, stimulus, like an oriented line or a face. And you can convert the recordings coming off of that electrode into an audio signal or an audio monitor. And you can hear what they call hash. It's not the hash you smoke, it's the hash you hear. And it sounds like, It just sounds like noise. And in the cortex, eventually you find a stimulus that gets the neuron to spike and fire action potentials that are converted into an auditory stimulus that are very concrete. Crack, crack, crack. Sounds like a bat cracking, you know, like home runs, you know, or outfield balls. When you drop electrodes deeper into the thalamus or into the hypothalamus or into the brainstem areas that control breathing, it's like a machine. You never hear hash. You drop the electrode down. This could be like a grungy old tungsten electrode, not high fidelity electrode. As long as it's got a little bit of insulation on it, you plug it into an audio monitor, it's picking up electricity. And if it's a visual neuron and it's in the thalamus or the retina, and you walk in front of that animal or person, that neuron goes, And then you walk away and it stops. And you put your hand in front of the eye again, and it goes. And you could do that for two days. And that neuron will just, every time there's a stimulus, it fires. So whereas before, it's a question of how much information is getting up to cortex. And then these abstractions happening where you're creating these ideas. When you go subcortical, everything is," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no abstractions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's two plus two equals four. There's no abstractions. And this is why I know we have some common friends at Neuralink and I love the demonstration they did recently. I'm a huge fan of what they're doing and where they're headed. And no, I don't get paid to say that. And I have no business relationship to them. I'm just a huge fan of the people and the mission. But my question was to some of them, You know, when are you gonna go subcortical? Because if you want to control an animal, you don't do it in the cortex. The cortex is like the abstract painting I made of your face. Removing one piece or changing something may or may not matter for the abstraction, but when you are in the subcortical areas of the brain, a stimulating electrode can evoke an entire behavior or an entire state. And so the brain, if we're gonna have a discussion about the brain and how the brain works, we need to really be clear which brain, because everyone loves neocortex. It's like, oh, canonical circuits in cortex, we can get the cortical connectome, and sure, necessary, but not sufficient. Not to be able to plug in patterns of electrical stimulation and get behavior. Eventually we'll get there. But if you're talking subcortical circuits, That's where the action is. That's where you could potentially cure Parkinson's by stimulating the subthalamic nucleus, because we know that it gates motor activation patterns in very predictable ways. So I think for those that are interested in neuroscience, it pays to pay attention to like, is this a circuit that abstracts the sensory information? Or is it just one that builds up hierarchical models in a very predictable way. And there's a huge chasm in neuroscience right now, because there's no conceptual leadership. No one knows which way to go. And this is why I think Neuralink has captured an amazing opportunity, which was, okay, well, while all you academic research labs are figuring all this stuff out, we're going to pick a very specific goal and make the goal the endpoint. And some academic laboratories do that. But I think that's a beautiful way to attack this whole thing about the brain, because it's very concrete. Let's restore motion to the Parkinsonian patient. Academic labs want to do that too, of course. Let's restore speech to the stroke patient. But there's nothing abstract about that. That's about figuring out the solution to a particular problem. So anyway, those are my, and I admit I've mixed in a lot of opinion there, but having spent some time, like 25 years digging around in the brain and listening to neurons firing and looking at them anatomically, I think given it's 2020, we need to ask the right, you know, the way to get better answers is to ask better questions. And the really high level stuff is fun. It makes for good conversation and it has, you know, brought enormous interest, but I think the questions about consciousness and dreaming and stuff, they're fascinating, but I don't know that we're there yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying there might be a chasm in the two views of, the power of the brain arising from the circuitry that forms abstractions or the power of the brain arising from the majority of the circuitry that's just doing very brute force, dumb things that are like, that don't have any fancy kind of stuff going on. That's really interesting to think about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And which one to go after first. And here I'm poaching badly from someone I've never met, but whose work I follow, which is, and it was actually on your podcast, I think Elon Musk said, basically the brain is a, when you say a monkey brain with a supercomputer on top. And I thought that's actually, probably the best description of the brain I've ever heard because it captures a lot of important features like limbic friction, right? But we think of like, oh, you know, when we're making plans, we're using the prefrontal cortex and we're executive function and all this kind of stuff. But think about the drug addict who's driven to go pursue heroin or cocaine. They make plans. So clearly they use their frontal cortex. It's just that it's been hijacked by the limbic system and all the monkey brain as you refer to. It's really not fair to monkeys though, Elon, because actually monkeys can make plans. They just don't make plans as sophisticated as us. I've spent a lot of time with monkeys, but I've also spent a lot of time with humans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Anyway, I'm- You're saying like there's a lot of value to focusing on the monkey brain or whatever the heck you call it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do, because let's say I had an ability to place a chip anywhere I wanted in the brain today and activate it or inhibit that area. I'm not sure I would put that chip in neocortex, except maybe to just kind of have some fun and see what happens. The reason is it's an abstraction machine. And especially if I wanted to make a mass production tool, a tool in mass production that I could give to a lot of people, because it's quite possible that your abstractions are different enough than mine, that I wouldn't know what patterns of firing to induce. But if I want, let's say I want to increase my level of focus and creativity, well, then I would love to be able to, for instance, control my level of limbic friction. I would love to be able to wake up and go, Oh, you know what? I have an eight o'clock appointment. I wake up slowly. So between seven, eight, but I want to do a lot of linear thinking. So you know what? I'm going to just, I'm going to turn down the limbic friction and or ramp up prefrontal cortex's activation. So there's a lot of stuff that can happen in the thalamus with sensory gating. For instance, you could shut down that shell around the thalamus and allow more creative thinking by allowing more lateral connections. Those would be the experiments I'd wanna do. So they're in the subcortical, quote unquote, monkey brain, but you could then look at what sorts of abstract thoughts and behaviors would arise from that. rather than, and here I'm not pointing the finger at Neuralink at all, but there's this obsession with neocortex. But I, I'm gonna, well, I might lose a few friends, but I'll hopefully gain a few. And also one of the reasons people spend so much time in neocortex. I have a fact and an opinion. One fact is that you can image there and you can record there. Right now, the two-photon and one-photon microscopy methods that allow you to image deep into the brain still don't allow you to image down really deep unless you're jamming prisms in there and endoscopes, and then the endoscopes are very narrow, so you're getting very, you know, it's like looking at the bottom of the ocean through a spotlight. And so you much easier look at the waves up on top, right? So let's face it, folks, a lot of the reasons why there's so many recordings in layer two, three of cortex with all this advanced microscopy is because it's very hard to image deeper. Now, the microscopes are getting better. And thanks to amazing work, mainly of engineers and chemists and physicists, let's face it, they're the ones who brought this revolution to neuroscience in the last 10 years or so. You can image deeper, but We don't really, that's why you see so many reports on layer two, three. The other thing, which is purely opinion, and I'm not going after anybody here, but is that as long as there's no clear, right answer, it becomes a little easier to do creative work in a structure where no one really knows how it works. So it's fun to probe around because anything you see is novel. If you're gonna work in the thalamus or the pulvinar or the hypothalamus, so these structures that have been known about since the sixties and seventies, and really since the centuries ago, you are dealing with existing, you have to combat existing models. And whereas in cortex, no one knows how the thing works, the neocortex, six layer cortex. And so there's a lot more room for discovery. There's a lot more room for discovery. And I'm not calling anyone out. I love cortex. We've published some papers on cortex. It's super interesting. But I think with the tools that are available nowadays, and where people are trying ahead of not just reading from the brain, monitoring activity, but writing to the brain. I think we really have to be careful and we need to be thoughtful about what are we trying to write? What script are we trying to write? Because there are many brain structures for which we already know what scripts they write. And I think there's tremendous value there. I don't think it's boring. The fact that they act like machines makes them predictable. Those are your zeros and ones. Let's start there. But what's sort of happening in this field of writing to the brain is there's this idea. And again, I want to be clear, I'm not pointing at Neuralink. I'm mainly pointing at the neocortical jockeys out there that you go and you observe patterns, and then you think replaying those patterns is gonna give rise to something interesting. I should call out one experiment or two experiments, which were done by Susumu Tonagawa, Nobel Prize winner from MIT, done important work in memory and immunology, of course, is where he got his Nobel, as well as Mark Mayford's lab at UC San Diego. They did an experiment where they monitored a bunch of neurons while an animal learned something. then they capture those neurons through some molecular tricks so they could replay the neurons. So now there's like perfect case scenario. It's like, okay, you monitor the neurons in your brain. Then I say, okay, neurons one through 100 were played in the particular sequence. So you know, the space time, you know, the keys on the piano that were played that gave rise to the song, which was the behavior. And then you go back and you reactivate those neurons except you reactivate them all at once, like slamming on all the keys once on the piano and you get the exact same behavior. So the space-time code may be meaningless for some structures. Now that's freaky. That's a scary thing because what that means is that all the space-time firing in cortex the space part may matter more than the time part. So, you know, rate codes and space-time codes, we don't know. And, you know, I'd rather have more, I'd rather deliver more answers in this discussion, questions, but I think it's an important consideration." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're saying some of the magic is in the early stages of what the, closer to the raw information. I believe so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I believe so. You know the stimulus, you know the neuron that encodes that stimulus, so you know the transformation. When I say this for those who don't think about sensory transformations, it's like, I can show you a red circle, and then I look at how many times the neuron fires in response to that red circle. And then I could show the red circle a bunch of times, green circle, see if it changes. And then essentially the number of times, that is the transformation. You've converted red circle into like three action potentials, you know, beep, beep, beep, or whatever you want to call it, you know, for those that think in sound space. So that's what you've created. You know the transformation and you march up the, it's called the neuraxis as you go from the periphery up into the cortex. And we know that, And I know Lisa Feldman Barrett, or is it Barrett Feldman? Barrett Feldman, excuse me, Lisa, that talked a lot about this, that birds can do sophisticated things and whatnot as well, but humans, there's a strong, what we call cephalization. A lot of the processing is moved up into the cortex and out of these subcortical areas, but it happens nonetheless. And so as long as you know the transformations, you are in a perfect place to build machines or add machines to the brain that exactly mimic what the brain wants to do, which is take events in the environment and turn them into internal firing of neurons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the mastery of the brain can happen at their early level. You know, another perspective of it is you saying this means that humans aren't that special. If we look at the evolutionary time scale, the leap to intelligence is not that special. So like the extra layers of abstraction isn't where most of the magic happens of intelligence, which gives me hope that maybe if that's true, that means the evolution of intelligence is not that rare of an event." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I certainly hope not. I hope there are other forms of intelligence. I mean, I think what humans are really good at, and here I want to be clear that this is not a formal model, but what humans are really good at is taking that plasma barbell that we were talking about earlier and not just using it for analysis of space, like the Euromedia environment, but also using historical information. Like I can read a book today about the history of medicine. I happen to be doing that lately for some stuff I'm researching. And I can take that information, and if I want, I can inject it into my plans for the future. Other animals don't seem to do that over the same timescales that we do. Now, it may be that the chipmunks are all hiding little like notebooks everywhere in the form of like little dirt castles or something that we don't understand. I mean, the waggle dance of the bee is in the most famous example. Bees come back to the hive, they orient relative to the honeycomb and they waggle. There's a guy down in Australia named Sreenivasan who studied this and it's really interesting. No one really understands it except he understands it best. The bee waggles in a couple of ways relative to the orientation of the honeycomb, and then all the other bees see that, it's visual, and they go out and they know the exact coordinate system to get to the source of whatever it was, the food, and bring it back. and he's done it where they isolate the bees, he's changed the visual flight environment, all this stuff, they are communicating. And they're communicating something about something they saw recently, but it doesn't extend over very long periods of time. The same way that you and I can both read a book or you can recommend something to me and then we could converge on a set of ideas later. And in fairness, because she was the one that said it and I didn't, and I hadn't even thought of it, when you talked to Lisa on your podcast, she, brought up something beautiful, which is that I had never really occurred to me and I was sort of embarrassed that it hadn't, but it's really beautiful and brilliant, which is that, you know, we don't just encode senses in the form of like color and light and sound waves and taste, but ideas become a form of sensory mapping. And that's where the cool, you know, the really, really cool and exciting stuff is, but we just don't understand what the receptive fields are for ideas. What's an idea receptive field?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and how they're communicated between humans, because we seem to be able to encode those ideas in some kind of way. Yes, it's taking all the raw information and the internal physical states, that sensory information put into this concept blob that we cut in the store, and then we're able to communicate that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hey, your abstractions are different than mine. I actually think the comment section on social media is a beautiful example of where the abstractions are different for different people. So much of the misunderstanding of the world is because of these idea receptive fields. They're not the same. Whereas I can look at a photoreceptor neuron or olfactory neuron or a V1 neuron, And I am certain, I would bet my life that yours look and respond exactly the same way that Lisa's do and mine do. But once you get beyond there, it gets tricky. And so when you say something or I say something and somebody gets upset about it or even happy about it, their concept of that might be quite a bit different. They don't really know what you mean. They only know what it means to them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so from a neural link perspective, it makes sense to optimize the control and the augmentation of the more primitive circuitry. So like the stuff that is closer to the raw sensory information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Go deeper. If they, I can go deeper into the brain. And to be fair, so Matt McDougall, who's a neurosurgeon at Neuralink and also a clinical nurse, a great guy, brilliant. They have amazing people. I have to give it to them. They have been very cryptic in recent years. Their website was just like nothing there. They really know how to do things with style and they've upset a lot of people, but that's good too. But Matt is there. I know Matt, he actually came up through my lab at Stanford, although he was a neurosurgery resident, but he spent time in our lab. He actually came out on the shark dive and did great white shark diving with my lab to collect the VR that we use in our fear stuff. I've talked to Matt and I think he and other folks there are hungry for the deeper brain structures. The problem is that damn vasculature, all that blood supply. It's not trivial to get through and down into the brain without damaging the vasculature in the neocortex, which is on the outer crust. But once you start getting into the thalamus and closer to some of the main arterial sources, you really risk getting massive bleeds. And so it's an issue that can be worked out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It just is hard. Maybe it'd be nice to educate, I'm showing my ignorance. So the smart stuff is on the surface. So I didn't quite realize, because you keep saying deep. So like the early stages are deep, actually physically in the brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the way that, you know, of course you've got your deep brain structures, they're involved in breathing and heart rate and kind of lizard brain stuff. And then on top of that, this is the model of the brain that no one really subscribes to anymore, but anatomically it works. And then on top, in mammals. And then on top of that, you have the limbic structures, which gate sensory information and decide whether or not you're gonna listen to something, whether you're gonna look at it or you're gonna split your attention to both. kind of sensory allocation stuff. And then the neocortex is on the outside. And that is where you get a lot of this abstraction stuff. And now not all cortical areas are doing abstraction. Some like visual area one, auditory area one, they're just doing concrete representations. But as you get into the higher order stuff, that when you start hearing names like infraparietal cortex, and you know, when you start hearing multiple names in the same, then you're talking about higher order areas. But actually there's an important experiment that drives a lot of what people wanna do with brain machine interface. And that's the work of Bill Newsome, who is at Stanford, and Tony Movshin, who runs the Center for Neural Science at NYU. This is a wild experiment, and I think it might freak a few people out if they really think about it too deeply, but anyway, here it goes. There's an area, called MT in the cortex. And if I showed you a bunch of dots all moving up, and this is what Tony and Bill and some of the other people in that lab did way back when, is they show a bunch of dots moving up. Somewhere in MT, there's some neurons that respond, they fire when the neurons move up. And then what they did is they started varying the coherence of that motion. So they made it so only 50% of the dots moved up and the rest move randomly. And that neuron fires a little less. And eventually it's random and that neuron stops firing. Cause it's just kind of dots moving everywhere. It's awesome. And there's a systematic map so that other neurons are responding and things moving down and other things are responding left and other things moving right. Okay. So there's a map of direction space. Okay, well, that's great. You could lesion MT, animals lose the ability to do these kind of coherence discrimination or direction discrimination. But the amazing experiment, the one that just is kind of eerie is that they lowered a stimulating electrode into MT, found a neuron that responds to when dots go up, but then they silenced that neuron. And sure enough, the animal doesn't recognize the neurons are going up. And then they move the dots down. They stimulate the neuron that responds to things moving up and The animal responds because it can't speak. It responds by doing a lever press, which says the dots are moving up. So in other words, the sensory, the dots are moving down in reality on the computer screen. They're stimulating the neuron that responds to dots moving up. And the perception of the animal is that dots are moving up, which tells you that your perception of external reality absolutely has to be a neuronal abstraction. it is not tacked to the movement of the dots in any absolute way. Your perception of the outside world depends entirely on the activation patterns of neurons in the brain. And you can hear that and say, well, duh, because if I stimulate, you know, the stretch reflex and you kick or something or whatever, you know, the knee reflex and you kick, of course, there's a neuron that triggers that, but it didn't have to be that way. because A, the animal had prior experience, B, you're way up in this higher order cortical areas. What this means is that, and I generally try and avoid conversations about this kind of thing, but what this means is that we are constructing our reality with this space-time firing the zeros and ones, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with the actual reality, and the animal or person can be absolutely convinced that that's what's happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you familiar with the work of Donald Hoffman? So he makes an evolutionary argument, that's not important, that our brains are completely detached from reality in the sense that he makes a radical case that we have no idea what physical reality is. And in fact, it's drastically different than what we think it is. So he goes, that's scary. So he doesn't say like, there's just, cause you're kind of implying there's a, there's a gap. There might be a gap. We're constructing an illusion and then maybe using communication to maybe create a consistency that's sufficient for human collaboration or whatever, or mammal, you know, just maybe even just life forms are constructing a consistent reality that's maybe detached. I mean, that's really cool that neurons are constructing that, like that you can prove that this is when neuroscience at its best, vision science. But he says that like our brain is actually Just lost its shit on the path of evolution to where we're normal We're just playing games with each other in Constructing realities that allow our survival, but it's it's it's completely detached from physical reality We're missing a lot. We're missing like most of it, if not all of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this was, um, it's, it's fascinating because, uh, just saw the Oliver Sacks documentary. There's a new documentary out about his life. And there's this one part where he's like, I spent part of my life trying to imagine what it would like to be, be, uh, to be a bat or something to see the world through the, uh, the, like the sensory apparati of a bat. And he did this with these patients that were locked into these horrible syndromes that to pull out some of the beauty of their experience as well, not just communicate the suffering, although the suffering too. And as I was listening to him talk about this, I started to realize, it's like, well, what, you know, like there are these mantis shrimps that can see 60 shades of, pink or something, and they see this stuff all the time in animals, they can see UV light. Every time I learn about an animal that can sense other things in the environment that I can't, like heat sensing, I don't crave that experience the same way Sax talked about craving that experience, but it does throw another penny in the jar for what you're saying, which is that it could be that most, if not all of what I perceive and believe is just a, a neural fabrication. And that for better or for worse, we all agree on enough of the same neural fabrications in the same time and place that we're able to function." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not only that, but we agree with the things that are trying to eat us enough to where they don't eat us. Meaning like, it's not just us humans, you know. Oh, I see. Because it's interactive. It's interactive. Now, I think it's a really nice thought experiment. I think because Donald really frames it in a scientific, like he makes a hard, Like as hard as our discussion has been now, he makes a hard scientific case that we don't know shit about reality. I think that's a little bit hardcore, but I think it's a good thought experiment that kind of cleanses the palate of the confidence we might have about because we are operating in this abstraction space. And the sensory space, it might be something very different. And it's kind of interesting to think about if you start to go into the realm of Neuralink or start to talk about just everything that you've been talking about with dream states and psychedelics and stuff like that, which part of which layer can we control and play around with, and maybe look into a different slice of reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You just gotta do the experiment. The key is to just do the experiment in the most ethical way possible. I mean, that's the beauty of experiments. There's wonderful theoretical neuroscience happening now to make predictions, but that's why experimental science is so wonderful. You can go into the laboratory and poke around in there and be a brain explorer and listen to and write to neurons. And when you do that, you get answers. You don't always get the answers you want, but that's the beauty of it. I think when you were saying this thing about reality Donald Hoffman model. I was thinking about children, you know, like when I have an older sister, she's very sane. But when she was a kid, she had an imaginary friend and she would play with this imaginary friend. And it had, there was this whole, there was a consistency. This friend was like, it was Larry, lived in a purple house. Larry was a girl. It was like all this stuff that a child, a young child wouldn't have any issue with. And then one day she announced that Larry had died, right? And it wasn't traumatic or traumatic and that was it. And she just stopped. And I always wonder what that neurodevelopmental event was that A, kept her out of a psychiatric ward had she gone, you know, kept that imaginary friend. But, but it, It's also there was something kind of sad to it. I think the way it was told to me, because I'm the younger brother, I wasn't around for that. But my dad told me that there was a kind of a sadness because it was this beautiful reality that had been constructed. And so we kind of wonder, as you're telling me this, whether or not You know, as adults, we try and create as much reality for children as we can so that they can make predictions and feel safe, because the ability to make predictions is a lot of what keeps our autonomic arousal in check. I mean, we go to sleep every night and we give up total control. And that should frighten us deeply, but... Unfortunately, autonomic arousal yanks us down under and we don't negotiate too much. So you sleep sooner or later. I don't know. I was a little worried we'd get into discussions about the nature of reality because it's interesting. In the laboratory, I'm very much like, what's the experiment? What's the analysis going to look like? What mutant mouse are we going to use? we're gonna put someone through, but I think it's wonderful that in 2020, we can finally have discussions about this stuff and look, kind of peek around the corner and say, well, Neuralink and people, others who are doing similar things are gonna figure it out. They're gonna, the answers will show up and we just have to be open to interpretation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there could be an experiment centered around consciousness? I mean, you're plugged into the neuroscience community. I think for the longest time, the quote unquote C word was totally not, was almost anti-scientific. But now more and more people are talking about consciousness. Elon is talking about consciousness. AI folks are talking about consciousness. It's still, nobody knows anything, but it feels like a legitimate domain of inquiry that's hungry for a real experiment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I have fortunately three short answers to this. The first one is a- Vlogs later. I'm not particularly succinct, I agree. The joke I always tell is, There are two things you never want to say to a scientist. One is what do you do? And the second one is take as much time as you need. And you definitely don't want to say them in the same sentence. I have three short answers to it. So there's a cynical answer kind of, and it's not one I enjoy giving, which is that if you look into the seventies and eight, back at the 1970s and 1980s, and even into the early 2000s, there were some very dynamic, very impressive speakers who were very smart in the field of neuroscience and related fields, who thought hard about the consciousness problem and fell in love with the problem, but overlooked the fact that the technology wasn't there. So I admire them for falling in love with the problem, but they gleaned tremendous taxpayer resources, essentially for nothing. And these people know who they are. Some of them are alive, some of them aren't. I'm not referring to Francis Crick, who was brilliant, by the way, and thought the claustrum was involved in consciousness, which I think is a great idea. It's this obscure structure that no one's really studied. People are now starting to study it. So I think Francis was brilliant and wonderful. You know, there were books written about it. It makes for great television stuff and thought around the table or after a couple of glasses of wine or whatever. It's an important problem nonetheless. And so I think, I do think the consciousness, the issue is it's not operationally defined, right? That psychologists are much smarter than a lot of hard scientists in that for the following reason. they put operational definitions. They know that psychology, if we're talking about motivation, for instance, they know they need to put operational definitions on that so that two laboratories can know they're studying the same thing. The problem with consciousness is no one can agree on what that is. And this was a problem for, attention when I was coming up. So in the early 2000s, people would argue, what is attention? Is it spatial attention, auditory attention? And finally, people were like, you know what, we agree. Have they agreed on that one? Sort of. I remember hearing people scream a lot of attention. Right, they couldn't even agree on attention. So I was coming up as a young graduate student, I'm thinking like, I'm definitely not going to work on attention and I'm definitely not going to work on consciousness. And I wanted something that I could solve or figure out. I want to be able to see the circuit or the neurons. I want to be able to hear it on the audio. I want to record from it. And then I want to do gain a function and loss of function, take it away, see something change, put it back, see something change in a systematic way. And that takes you down into the depths of some stuff that's pretty, um, plug and chug, you know? But, you know, I'll borrow from something in the military, because I'm fortunate to do some work with units from special operations, and they have beautiful language around things, because their world is not abstract. And they talk about three meter targets, 10 meter targets, and 100 meter targets. And it's not an issue of picking the 100 meter target, because it's more beautiful, or because it's more interesting. If you don't take down the three meter targets, and the 10 meter targets first, you're dead. So that's a, I think scientists could pay to, you know, adopt a more kind of military thinking in that sense. The other thing that is really important is that just because somebody conceived of something and can talk about it beautifully and can glean a lot of resources for it, doesn't mean that it's led anywhere. So this isn't just true of the consciousness issue. And I don't want to sound cynical, but I could pull up some names of molecules that occupied hundreds of articles in the very premier journals that then were later discovered to be totally moot for that process. And biotech companies folded, and the lab pivots and starts doing something different with that molecule. And nobody talks about it. Because as long as you're in the game, we have this thing called anonymous peer review. You can't afford to piss off anybody too much unless you have some other funding stream. And I've avoided battles most of my career, but I pay attention to all of it. And I've watched this and I don't think it's ego-driven. I think it's that people fall in love with an idea. I don't think there's any, there's not enough money in science for people to sit back there rubbing their hands together. The beauty of what Neuralink and Elon and team, because obviously he's very impressive, but the team as a whole is really what gives me great confidence in their mission, is that he's already got enough money. So it can't be about that. He doesn't seem to need it at a level of, I don't know him, but he doesn't seem to need it at a kind of an ego level or something. I think it's driven by genuine curiosity. And the team that he's assembled include people that are very kind of abstract neuro neocortex, space-time coding people. There are people like Matt, who's a neurosurgeon. I mean, you can't BS neurosurgery. Failures in neurosurgery are not tolerated. So you have to be very good to exceptional to even get through the gate. And he's exceptional. And then they've got people like Dan Adams, who was at UCSF for a long time, is a good friend and known him for years, who is very concrete, studied the vasculature in the eye and how it maps to the vasculature and cortex. When you get a team like that together, you're gonna have dissenters, you're gonna have people that are high-level thinkers, people that are coders. When you get a team like that, it no longer looks like an academic laboratory or even a field in science. And so I think they're gonna solve some really hard problems. And again, I'm not here, they don't, I have nothing at stake with them, but I think that's the solution. You need a bunch of people who don't need first author papers, who don't need to complete their PhD, who aren't relying on outside funding, who have a clear mission, and you have a bunch of people who are basically will adapt to solve the problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like the analogy of the three-meter target and the 100-meter target. So the folks at Neuralink are basically, many of them are some of the best people in the world at the three-meter target. Like you mentioned, Matt, Neurosurgery, they're solving real problems. There's no BS, philosophical, smoke some weed and look back and look at the stars. So both on Elon and because I think like this, I think it's really important to think about the hundred meter and the hundred meter is not even a hundred meter, but like the stuff behind the hill that's too far away, which is where I put consciousness. Maybe, I tend to believe that consciousness can be engineered. Part of the reason, part of the business I want to build leverages that idea, that consciousness is a lot simpler than we've been talking about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if someone can simplify the problem, that will be wonderful. I mean, the reason we can talk about something as abstract as face representations, infusive form, face area, is because Nancy Kanwisher had the brilliance to tie it to the kind of lower level statistics of visual scenes. It wasn't because she was like, oh, I bet it's there. That wouldn't have been interesting. So people like her understand how to bridge that gap. And they put a tractable definition. So I just, that's what I'm begging for in science is a tractable definition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is what, but I want people to sit in the, I want people who are really uncomfortable with woo woo, like consciousness, like high level stuff to sit in that topic and sit uncomfortably because it forces them to then try to ground and simplify it into something that's concrete. because too many people are just uncomfortable to sit in the consciousness room because there's no definitions. It's like attention or intelligence in the artificial intelligence community. But the reality is, it's easy to avoid that room altogether, which is what, I mean, there's analogies to everything you've said with the artificial intelligence community, with Minsky and even Alan Turing that talked about intelligence a lot. And then they drew a lot of funding and then it crashed because they really didn't do anything with it. And it was a lot of force of personality and so on. But that doesn't mean the topic of the Turing test and intelligence isn't something we should sit on and think like, think like what is, well, first of all, Turing actually attempted this with the Turing test. He tried to make concrete this very question of intelligence. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't, linger on it and we shouldn't forget that ultimately that is what our efforts are all about in the artificial intelligence community and in the people, whether it's neuroscience or whatever bigger umbrella you want to use for understanding the mind. the goal is not just about understanding layer two or three of the vision. It's to understand consciousness and intelligence and maybe create it or just all the possible biggest questions of our universe. That's ultimately the dream?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, and I think what I really appreciate about what you're saying is that everybody, whether or not they're working on a kind of a low level synapse, that's like a reflex and musculature or something very high level abstract, can benefit from looking at those who prefer three, you know, everyone's going after three meter, 10 meter and 100 meter targets in some sense, but to be able to tolerate the discomfort of being in a conversation where there are real answers, where the zeros and ones are known, zeros and ones, the equivalent of that in the nervous system. And also, as you said, for the people that are very much like, oh, I can only trust what I can see and touch, those people need to put themselves into the discomfort of the high-level conversation, because what's missing is the ability conversation and conceptualization of things at multiple levels. I don't gripe about, my lab's been fortunate, we've been funded from the start and we've been happy in that regard and lucky and we're grateful for that. But I think one of the challenges of research being so expensive is that there isn't a lot of time, especially nowadays, for people to just convene around a topic because there's so much emphasis on productivity. And so there are actually, believe it or not, there aren't that many concepts, formal concepts in neuroscience right now. the last 10 years has been this huge influx of tools. And so people in neural circuits and probing around and connectomes, it's been wonderful. But 10, 20 years ago, when the consciousness stuff was more prominent, the C word, as you said, what was good about that time is that people would go to meetings and actually discuss ideas and models. Now it's sort of like, It's sort of like demonstration day at the school science fair where everyone's got their thing and some stuff is cooler than others. But I think we're going to see a shift. I'm grateful that we have so many computer scientists and theoreticians or theorists, I think they call themselves. Somebody tell me what the difference is someday. And psychology and even, dare I say, philosophy, these things are starting to converge. Neuroscience, the name neuroscience, there wasn't even such a thing when I started graduate school or as a postdoc. It was neurophysiology or you were a neuroanatomist or what. Now, It's sort of everybody's invited and that's beautiful. That means that something's useful is gonna come of all this. And there's also tremendous work, of course, happening on it for the treatment of disease. And we shouldn't overlook that. That's where, you know, ending, eliminating, reducing suffering is also a huge initiative in neuroscience. So there's a lot of beauty in the field, but the consciousness thing continues to be a, you know, It's like an exotic bird. It's like no one really quite knows how to handle it and it dies very easily." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah. I think also from the AI perspective, I view the brain as less sacred. I think from a neuroscience perspective, you're a little bit more sensitive to BS, like BS narratives about the brain or whatever. I'm a little bit more comfortable with just poetic BS about the brain, as long as it helps engineer intelligent systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know what I mean? I confess ignorance when it comes to most things about coding, and I have some quantitative ability, but I don't have strong quantitative leanings. I know my limitations too. And so I think the next generation coming up, a lot of the students at Stanford are really interested in quantitative models and theory and AI. And I remember when I was coming up, a lot of the people who were doing work ahead of me, I kind of rolled my eyes at some of the stuff they were doing. including some of their personalities, although I have many great senior colleagues everywhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Way of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the way of the world. Nobody knows what it's like to be a young graduate student in 2020, except the young graduate students. I know there are a lot of things I don't know. In addition to wanting to do a lot of public education, increase scientific literacy and neuroscientific thinking, et cetera, a big goal of mine is to try and at least pave the way so that these really brilliant and forward-thinking younger scientists can make the biggest possible dent and make what will eventually be all us old guys and gals look stupid. I mean, that's what we were all trying to do. That's what we were trying to do, so yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So from the highest possible topic of consciousness to the lowest level, topic of David Goggins, let's go there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if it's low level, he's high performance." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "High performance, but like, I don't think David has any time for philosophy, let's just put it this way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I think we can tack it to what we were just saying in a meaningful way, which is whatever goes on in that abstraction part of the brain, he's figured out how to, dig down in whatever the limbic friction, he's figured out how to grab a hold of that, scruff it, and send it in the direction that he's decided it needs to go. And what's wild is that he's, what we're talking about is him doing that to himself, right? He's, it's like he's scruffing himself and directing himself in a particular direction. And sending himself down that trajectory. And what's beautiful is that he acknowledges that that process is not pretty, it doesn't feel good, it's kind of horrible at every level, but he's created this rewarding element to it. And I think that's what's so, it's so admirable and it's what so many people crave, which is regulation of the self at that level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he practices, I mean, there's a ritual to it. There's every single day, like no exceptions. There's a practice aspect to the suffering that he goes through." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's principled suffering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It is. I mean, I just, I mean, I admire all aspects of it, including him and his girlfriend slash wife. I'm not sure. She'll probably know this. I don't know. Wonderful person." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not asking him. No, no. I've only communicated with her via text about some stuff that I was asking David, but yeah, they clearly have formed a powerful team. Yeah. Good cop and bad cop. And it's a beautiful thing to see people working in that kind of synergy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's inspiring to me, same as with Elon, that a guy like David Goggins can find love. That you find a thing that works, which gives me hope that whatever flavor of crazy I am, you can always find another thing that works with that. But I've had the... So maybe let's... Trey Goggin stories, you from a neuroscience perspective, me from a self-inflicted pain perspective. I somehow found myself in communication with David about some challenges that I was undergoing. One of which is we were communicating every single day, email, phone, about the particular 30-day challenge that I did, and that stretched for longer, of push-ups and pull-ups. You made a call out on social media. Yeah, social media. It was dumb. Actually, I think that was the point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I knew of you before, but that's where I started tracking some of what you were doing with these physical challenges. And I- The hell's wrong with that guy? Well, no, I think I actually, I don't often comment on people's stuff, but I think I commented something like neuroplasticity loves a non-negotiable rule. No, I said a non-negotiable contract." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good line." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because at the point where, yeah, neuroplasticity really loves a non-negotiable contract because You know, and I've said this before, so forgive me, but the brain is doing analysis of duration, path, and outcome, and that's a lot of work for the brain. And the more that it can pass off duration, path, and outcome to just reflex, the more energy it can allocate to other things. So if you decide, there's no negotiation about how many pushups, how far I'm gonna run, how many days, how many pull-ups, et cetera. You actually have more energy for pushups, running, and pull-ups." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And when you say neuroplasticity, you mean like the brain, once the decision is made, it'll start rewiring stuff to make sure that we can actually make this happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. I mean, so much of what we do is reflexive at the level of just core circuitry, breathing, heart rate, all that boring stuff, digestion. But then there's a lot of reflexive stuff like how you drink out of a mug of coffee that's reflexive too, but that you had to learn at some point in your life earlier when you were very little. analyzing duration, path, and outcome. And that involves a lot of top-down processing with the prefrontal cortex. But through plasticity mechanisms, you now do it. So when you take on a challenge, provided that you understand the core mechanics of how to run push-ups and pull-ups and whatever else you decided to do, once you set the number and the duration and all that, then you, all you have to do is just go. But people get caught in that tide pool of just, well, do I really have to do it? How do I not do that? What if I get injured? What if I, you know, can I sneak a this so that, you know, and that's work. And to some extent, I, look, I, not David Goggins, obviously, nor do I claim to understand his process partially, you know, but maybe a little bit, which is that it's clear that by making the decision, there's more resources to devote to the effort of the actual execution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's a really, like what you're saying was not a lesson that was obvious to me. And it's still not obvious. It's something I really work at, which is there is always an option to quit. And I mean, that's something I really struggle with. I mean, I've quit some things in my life. It's like stupid stuff. And one lesson I've learned is if you quit once, it opens the door. It's really valuable to trick your brain into thinking that you're gonna have to die before you quit. It's actually really convenient. So actually what you're saying is very profound, but you shouldn't intellectualize it. It took me time to develop like psychologically in ways that I think would be another conversation, because I'm not sure how to put it into words, but it's really tough on me to do certain parts of that challenge. Which is a huge output. I thought it would be the number would be hard, but it's not. It's the entirety of it, especially in the early days was just spending I'm kind of embarrassed to say how many hours this took. So I didn't say publicly how many hours, because I knew people would be like, aren't you supposed to do other stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How are you doing? And again, I don't want to speculate too much, but occasionally David has said this publicly where people will be like, don't you sleep or something? And his process used to just be that he would just block, delete, you know, like gone. But it's actually, It's a super interesting topic and because self-control and directing our actions and the role of emotion and quitting, these are vital to the human experience and they're vital to performing well at anything. And obviously at a super high level, being able to understand this about the self is crucial. So I have a friend who was also in the teams, his name is Pat Dossett, he did nine years in the SEAL teams, And in a similar way, there's a lore about him among team guys because of a kind of funny challenge he gave himself, which was, so he and I swim together, although he swims further up front than I do, and he's very patient. But, you know, he was on a, he was assigned when he was in the teams to a position that gave him a little more time behind a desk than he wanted, and there's not as much time out in deployments, although he did deployments. So he didn't know what to do at that time, but he thought about it and he asked himself, what does he hate the most? And it turns out the thing that he hated doing the most was bear crawls, you know, walking on your hands and knees. So he decided to bear crawl for a mile for time. So he was bear crawling a mile a day, right? And I thought that was an interesting example they gave because, you know, like why pick the thing you hate the most? And I think it maps right back to limbic friction. It's the thing that creates the most limbic friction. And so if you can overcome that, then there's carryover. And I think the notion of carryover has been talked about psychologically and kind of in the self-help space, like, oh, if you run a marathon, it's going to help you in other areas of life. But will it really? Will it? Well, I think it depends on whether or not there's a lot of limbic friction, because if there is, What you're exercising is not a circuit for bear crawls or a circuit for pull-ups. What you're doing is you're exercising a circuit for top-down control. And that circuit was not designed to be for bear crawls or pull-ups or coding. or waking up in the middle of the night to do something hard, that circuit was designed to override limbic friction. And so neural circuits were designed to generalize, right? The stress response to an incoming threat that's a physical threat was designed to feel the same way. and be the same response internally as the threat to an impending exam or divorce or marriage or whatever it is that's stressing somebody out. And so neural circuits are not designed to be for one particular action or purpose. So if you can, as you did, if you can train up top-down control under conditions of the highest limbic friction, that when the desire to quit is at its utmost, either because of fatigue or hyper arousal, being too stressed or too tired. You're learning how to engage a circuit and that circuit is forever with you. And if you don't engage it, it sits there, but it's atrophied. It's like a plant that doesn't get any water. And a lot of this has been discussed in self-help and growth mindset and all these kinds of ideas that circle the internet and social media. But when you start to think about how they map to neural circuits, I think there's some utility, because what it means is that the limbic friction that you'll experience in, I don't know, maybe some future relationship to something or someone, it's a category of neural processing that should immediately click into place. It's just like the limbic friction you experienced trying to engage in the God knows how many pushups, pull-ups and running runs you were doing. 25,000, it was counting. So folks, if Lex does this again, more comments, more likes. There's a problem with you getting more followers. Actually, I should say that's the benefit. I don't know, maybe it's not politically correct for me to ask, but there is this stereotype about Russians being- Politically correct. Like being really durable. And I started going to that Russian banya way back before COVID. And they could tolerate a lot of heat, you know, and they would sit very stoic, you know, no one was going, oh, it's hot in here. They're just kind of like ease into it. So maybe there's something there, who knows?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It might be something there, but it could be also just personal. I just have some, I found myself, everyone's different, but I've found myself to be able to do something unpleasant for very long periods of time. Like, I'm able to shut off the mind. And I don't think that's been fully tested." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The monkey mind or the supercomputer?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's interesting. I mean, which mind tells you to quit exactly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Limbic friction tells you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Limbic friction is the source of that, but who are you talking with exactly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a, we can put something very concrete to that. So there's a paper published in Cell, super top tier journal, two years ago. looking at effort. And this was in a visual environment of trying to swim forward toward a target and a reward. And it was a really cool experiment because they manipulated virtually the visual environment. So the same amount of effort was being expended every time, but sometimes the perception was you're making forward progress. And sometimes the perception was you're making no progress because stuff wasn't drifting by meant no progress. So you can be swimming and swimming and not making progress. And it turns out that with each bout of effort, there's a epinephrine and norepinephrine is being released in the brainstem. And glia, what traditionally were thought of as support cells for the neurons, but they do a lot of things actively too, are measuring the amount of epinephrine and norepinephrine in that circuit. And when it exceeds a certain threshold, the glia send inhibitory signals that shut down top-down control. They literally, it's the quit, you stop. There's no more, you quit enduring. It can be rescued, endurance can be rescued with dopamine. So that's where the subjective part really comes into play. So you quit because you've learned how to turn that off or you've learned how to, some people will reward the pain process so much that friction becomes the reward. And when you talk about people like Goggins and other people I know from special operations and people who've gone through cancer treatments three times, you hear about, you know, just when you hear about people, the Viktor Frankl stories, I mean, you hear about Nelson Mandela, you hear about these stories, I'm sure the same process is involved. Again, this speaks to the generalizability of these processes as opposed to a neural circuit for a particular action or cognitive function. So I think you have to learn to subjectively self-reward in a way that replenishes you. Goggins talks about eating souls, it's a very dramatic example. in his mind apparently, that's a form of reward, but it's not just a form of reward where you're, it's like you're picking up a trophy or something. It's actually, it gives the energy. It's a reward that gives more neural energy. And I'm defining that as more dopamine to suppress the noradrenaline and adrenaline circuits in the brainstem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to ultimately maps to that. Yeah, he creates enemies. He's always fighting enemies. I never, I think I have enemies, but they're usually just versions of me inside my head. So I thought about through that 30 day challenge, I tried to come up with like fake enemies. It wasn't working. The only enemy I came up with is David." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, now you certainly have a formidable adversary in this one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't care. David, I'm willing to die on this one. So let's go there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let's hope you both survive this one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "My problem is the physical. So everything we've been talking about been the mind. there's a physical aspect that's just practically difficult, which is like, I can't like, you know, when you injure yourself at a certain point, like you just can't function." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or you're doing more damage. You're talking about it, taking yourself out of running for, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the rest of your life potentially, or like, you know, or for years. So, you know, I'd love to avoid that, right? There's just like stupid physical stuff that you just want to avoid. you wanna keep it purely in the mental. And if it's purely in the mental, that's when the race is interesting. But yeah, the problem with these physical challenges as David has experienced, I mean, it has a toll on your body. I tend to think of the mind as limitless and the body is kind of unfortunately quite limited." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think the key is to dynamically control your output and that can be done by reducing effort, which doesn't work for throughout, but also by, restoring through these subjective reward processes. And we don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of why this all works, but these are ancient pathways that were designed to bring resources to an animal or to a person through foraging for hunting or mates or water, all these things. And they work so well because they're down in those circuits where we know the zeros and ones. And that's great because it can be subjective at the level of, oh, I reached this one, a milestone, this one horizon, this one three-meter target. But if you don't reward it, it's just effort. If you do self-reward it, it's effort minus one in terms of the adrenaline output." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I have to ask you about this. You're one of the great communicators in science. I'm really big fan of yours, enjoying in terms of like the educational stuff you're putting on neuroscience. Thank you. What's the... Do you have a philosophy behind it? Or is it just an instinct? A non-stoppable force? Do you have a, like, what's your thinking? Because it's rare and it's exciting. I'm excited that, you know, somebody from Stanford. So I, okay, I'm in multiple places in the sense of like where my interests lie. And one, you know, politically speaking, academic institutions are under fire, you know, for many reasons we don't need to get into. I get into it in a lot of other places, but I believe in in places like Stanford and places like MIT as one of the most magical institutions for inspiring people to dream, people to build the future. I mean, I believe that it is a really special, these universities are really special places. And so it's always exciting to me when somebody as inspiring as you represents those places. So it makes me, proud that somebody from Stanford is, like somebody like you is representing Stanford. So maybe you could speak to what's, how did you come to be who you are in being a communicator?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first of all, thanks for the kind words, especially coming from you. I think Stanford is an amazing place as is MIT, and it's such a- MIT is better by the way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll let it out, anything you say at this point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've got many friends at MIT. Yeah, smarter friends. Ed Boyden is best in class, among the best in class. There's some people, not me, that can hold a candle to him, but not many, maybe one or two. I think the great benefit of being in a place like MIT or Stanford is that when you look around, the average is very high. You have many best in class among the one or two or three best in the world at what they do. It's a wonderful privilege to be there. One thing that I think also and other universities like them very special is that there's an emphasis on what gets exported out of the university, not keeping it ivory tower and really trying to keep an eye on what's needed in the world and trying to do something useful. And I think the proximity to industry in Silicon Valley and in the Boston area and Cambridge also lends itself well to that. And there are other institutions too, of course. So the reason I got involved in educating on social media was actually because of a Pat Dossett, the bear mile bear call guy. It was at the turn of 2018 to 2019. We had formed a a good friendship and we were, he talked me into doing these early morning cold water swims. I was learning a lot about pain and suffering, but also the beauty of cold water swims. And we were talking one morning and he said, so what are you gonna do to serve the world in 2019? It's like, that's the way that like a Texan former SEAL talks. Like, we're just literally, what are you gonna do to serve the world in 2019? Like, well, I run my lab. It's like, no, no, what are you gonna do that's new? And he wasn't forceful in it, but I was like, that's interesting question. I said, well, If I had my way, I would just teach people, everyone about the brain, because I think it's amazing. He goes, we'll do it. I go, all right. He goes, shake on it. So we did it. And so I started putting out these posts, and it's grown into, to include a variety of things, but you asked about a governing philosophy. So I want to increase interest in the brain and in the nervous system and in biology generally, that's one major goal. I'd like to increase scientific literacy, which can't be rammed down people's throats of talking about how to look at a graph and statistics and Z-scores and P-values and genetics. It has to be done gradually, in my opinion. I want to put valuable tools into the world, mainly tools that map to things that we're doing in our lab. So these will be tools centered around how to understand and direct one's states of mind and body. So reduce stress, raise one's stress threshold. So it's not always just about being calm. Sometimes it's about learning how to tolerate being not calm. raise awareness for mental health. I mean, there's a ton of micro missions in this, but it all really maps back to, you know, like the eight and 10 year old version of me, which is I used to spend my weekends when I was a kid reading about weird animals. And I had this obsession with like medieval weapons and stuff like catapults. And then I used to come into school on Monday and I would ask if I could talk about it to the class and teach. And I just, it's really, I, I promise, and some people might not believe me, but it's really, I don't really like being the point of focus. I just get so excited about these gems that I find in the world in books and in experiments and in discussions with colleagues and discussions with people like you and around the universe. And I can't, just compulsively, I got to tell people about it. So I try and package it into a form that people can access. I think the reception has been really wonderful. Stanford has been very supportive, thankfully. I've done some podcasts even with them and they've reposted some stuff on social media. It's a precarious place to put yourself out there as a research academic. I think some of my colleagues, both locally and elsewhere, probably wonder if I'm still serious about research, which I absolutely am. And I also acknowledge that, you know, their research and the research coming out of the field needs to be talked about. And not all scientists are good at translating that into a language that people can access. And I don't like the phrase, dumb it down. What I, like to do is take a concept that I think people will find interesting and useful and offer it sort of like a, you would offer food to somebody visiting your home. You're not gonna cram foie gras in their face. You're gonna say like, do you want a cracker? Like, and they say, yeah. And like, do you want something on that cracker? Like, do you like cheese? Like, yeah. Like, do you want Swiss cheese or you want that really like stinky, like French, I don't like cheese much, but, or do you want foie gras? Like, what's that? Like, so you're trying the best, information prompts more questions of interest, not questions of confusion, but questions of interest. And so I feel like one door opens, then another door opens, then another door opens. And pretty soon the image in my mind is you create a bunch of neuroscientists who are thinking about themselves neuroscientifically. And I don't begin to think that I have all the answers at all. I cast a neuroscience, sometimes a little bit of a psychology lens onto what I think are interesting topics. And, you know, I, you know, someday I'm gonna go into the ground or the ocean or wherever it is I end up. And I'm very comfortable with the fact that not everyone's gonna be happy with how I deliver the information, but I would hope that people would feel like some of it was useful and meaningful and got them to think a little bit harder." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Since you mentioned going into the ground, and Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. I reread that book quite often. Let me ask the big ridiculous question about life. What do you think is the meaning of it all? And maybe why do you, do you mention that book from a psychologist perspective, which Victor Frankl was, or do you ever think about the bigger philosophical questions it raises about meaning and the meaning of it all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One of the great challenges in assigning good, you know, giving a good answer to the question of like, what's the meaning of life is, I think, illustrated best by the Viktor Frankl example, although there are other examples too, which is that our sense of meaning is very elastic. in time and space. And we talked a little bit about this earlier, but it's amazing to me that somebody locked in a cell or a concentration camp can bring the horizon in close enough that they can then micro slice their environment so that they can find rewards and meaning and power and beauty, even in a little square box or a horrible situation. And I think this is really speaks to one of the most important features of the human mind, which is we could do, let's take two opposite extremes. One would be, let's say the alarm went off right now in this building and the building started shaking. Our vision, our hearing, everything would be tuned to this space-time bubble for those moments. And everything that we would process, all that would matter, the only meaning would be get out of here safe, figure out what's going on, contact loved ones, et cetera. If we were to sit back totally relaxed, we could do the, I think it's called pale blue dot thing or whatever, where we could imagine ourselves in this room and then there were in the United States and this continent and the earth and then it's peering down on us. And all of a sudden you get back, it can seem so big that all of a sudden it's meaningless, right? If you see yourself as just one brief glimmer in all of time and all of space, you go to, I don't matter. And if you go to, oh, every little thing that happens in this text thread or this comment section on YouTube or Instagram, your space-time bubble is tiny, then everything seems inflated and the brain will contract and dilate its space-time vision and time, but also sense of meaning. And that's beautiful and it's what allows us to be so dynamic in different environments and we can pull from the past and the present and future. It's why examples like Nelson Mandela and Viktor Frankl had to include. It makes sense that it wasn't just about grinding it out. They had to find those dopamine rewards, even in those little boxes they were forced into. So I'm not trying to dodge an answer, but for me personally, and I think about this a lot because I have this, complicated history in science where my undergraduate graduate advisor and postdoctoral advisor all died young. And they were wonderful people and had immense importance in my life. But what I realized is that we can get so fixated on the thing that we're experiencing holding tremendous meaning, but it only holds that meaning for as long as we're in that space-time regime. And this is important because what really gives meaning is the understanding that you can move between these different space-time dimensionalities. And I'm not trying to sound like a theoretical physicist or anyone that thinks about the cosmos in saying that, It's really the fact that sometimes we say and do and think things and it feels so important. And then two days later, we're like, what, what happened? Well, you had a different brain processing algorithm entirely. You were in a completely different state. And so what I want to do in this lifetime is I want to, I want to engage in as many different, levels of contraction and dilation of meaning as possible. I want to go to the micro. I sometimes think about this. I'm like, if I just pulled over the side of the road, I bet you there's an ant hill there and their whole world is fascinating. You can't stay there. And you also can't stay staring up at the clouds and just think about how we're just these little beings and it doesn't matter. The key is the journey back and forth, up and down that staircase, back and forth and back and forth. And my goal is to get as many trips up and down that staircase as I can before the Reaper comes for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, beautiful. So the dance of dilation and contraction between the different spaces, zoom in, zoom out, and get as many steps in on that staircase." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's that's my goal anyway. And I've watched people die. I watched my postdoc advisor die wither away my graduate. It was tragic, but they found beauty in these closing moments, because their bubble was their kids in one case or like one of them was a Giants fan and like got to see a Giants game, you know, in her last moments. And like, and you just realize like it's a Giants game, but not in that moment because time is closing. And so those time bins feel huge because she's slicing things so differently. So I think learning how to do that better and more fluidly, recognizing where one is and not getting too tacked to the idea that there's one correct answer, like that's what brings meaning. That's my goal anyway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think there's a better way to end it, Andrew. I really appreciate that you would come down and contract your space time and focus on this conversation for a few hours. It is a huge honor. I'm a huge fan of yours, as I told you. I hope you keep growing and educating the world about the human mind. Thanks for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Define simulation. I would say maybe we are, maybe we are not, but it's completely irrelevant to the way we should act. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Putting aside for a moment the fact that it might not have any impact on how we should act as human beings, for people studying theoretical physics, these kinds of questions might be kind of interesting, looking at the universe's information processing system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The universe is an information processing system. It's a huge physical, biological, chemical computer. There's no question. But I live here and now. I care about people. I care about us. What do you think is trying to compute? I don't think there's an intention. I think it's just the world evolves the way it evolves. And it's beautiful. It's unpredictable. And I'm really, really grateful to be alive. Spoken like a true human. Which last time I checked, I was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well that, in fact, this whole conversation is just a Turing test to see if indeed you are. You've also said that one of the first programs or the first few programs you've written was a, wait for it, TI-57 calculator. Yeah. Maybe that's early 80s? I don't want to date calculators or anything. That's early 80s, correct. Yeah. So if you were to place yourself back into that time, into the mindset you were in, could you have predicted the evolution of computing, AI, the internet technology in the decades that followed?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was super fascinated by Silicon Valley, which I'd seen on television once and thought, my God, this is so cool. They build like DRAMs there and CPUs. How cool is that? And as a college student, a few years later, I decided to really study intelligence and study human beings and found that even back then in the 80s and 90s, that artificial intelligence is what fascinated me the most. What's missing is that back in the day, the computers are really small. They're like the brains you could build were not anywhere bigger than a cockroach. And cockroaches aren't very smart. So we weren't at the scale yet where we are today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you dream at that time to achieve the kind of scale we have today? Or did that seem possible?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always wanted to make robots smart. I felt it was super cool to build an artificial human. And the best way to build an artificial human was to build a robot, because that's kind of the closest we could do. Unfortunately, we aren't there yet. The robots today are still very brittle. But it's fascinating to study intelligence from a constructive perspective when you build something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To understand you build, what do you think it takes to build an intelligent system and an intelligent robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the biggest innovation that we've seen is machine learning, and it's the idea that the computers can basically teach themselves. Let's give an example. I'd say everybody pretty much knows how to walk, and we learn how to walk in the first year or two of our lives. But no scientist has ever been able to write down the rules of human gait. We don't understand it. We have it in our brains somehow. We can practice it. We understand it, but we can't articulate it. We can't pass it on by language. And that to me is kind of the deficiency of today's computer programming. When you program a computer, they're so insanely dumb that you have to give them rules for every contingencies. Very unlike the way people learn, but learn from data and experience, computers are being instructed. And because it's so hard to get this instruction set right, we pay software engineers $200,000 a year. Now, the most recent innovation, which has been to make for like 30, 40 years, is an idea that computers can find their own rules. So they can learn from falling down and getting up the same way children can learn from falling down and getting up. And that revolution has led to a capability that's completely unmatched. Today's computers can watch experts do their jobs, whether you're a doctor or a lawyer, pick up the regularities, learn those rules, and then become as good as the best experts." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the dream of in the 80s of expert systems, for example, had at its core the idea that humans could boil down their expertise on a sheet of paper. So to sort of reduce, sort of be able to explain to machines how to do something explicitly. So do you think What's the use of human expertise into this whole picture? Do you think most of the intelligence will come from machines learning from experience without human expertise input?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the question for me is much more how do you express expertise? You can express expertise by writing a book. You can express expertise by showing someone what you're doing. You can express expertise by applying it by many different ways. And I think the expert systems was our best attempt in AI to capture expertise and rules. But someone sat down and said, here are the rules of human gait. Here's when you put your big toe forward and your heel backwards and you stop stumbling. And as we now know, the set of rules, the set of language that we can command is incredibly limited. The majority of the human brain doesn't deal with language. It deals with like subconscious numerical perceptual things that we don't even have a self-aware of. Now, when an AI system watches an expert do their job and practice their job, it can pick up things that people can't even put into writing, into books or rules. And that's where the real power is. We now have AI systems that, for example, look over the shoulders of highly paid human doctors like dermatologists or radiologists, and they can somehow pick up those skills that no one can express in words." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you were a key person in launching three revolutions, online education, autonomous vehicles, and flying cars or VTOLs. So high level. And I apologize for all the philosophical questions. There's no apology necessary. How do you choose what problems to try and solve? What drives you to make those solutions a reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have two desires in life. I want to literally make the lives of others better. Or as we often say, maybe jokingly, make the world a better place. I actually believe in this. It's as funny as it sounds. And second, I want to learn. I want to get in the skillset. I don't want to be in a job I'm good at, because if I'm in a job that I'm good at, the chances for me to learn something interesting is actually minimized. So I want to be in a job I'm bad at. That's really important to me. So in a build, for example, what people often call flying cars, these are electrical, vertical, takeoff and landing vehicles. I'm just no expert in any of this. And it's so much fun to learn on the job what it actually means to build something like this. I'd say the stuff that I've done lately after I finished my professorship at Stanford, they really focused on what has the maximum impact on society. Transportation is something that has transformed the 21st or 20th century more than any other invention, in my opinion, even more than communication. And cities are different, workers are different, women's rights are different because of transportation. And yet we still have a very suboptimal transportation solution where we kill 1.2 or so million people every year in traffic. It's like the leading cause of death for young people in many countries. where we are extremely inefficient resource wise, just go to your average neighborhood city and look at the number of parked cars, that's a travesty in my opinion, or where we spend endless hours in traffic jams. And very, very simple innovations like a self-driving car or what people call a flying car could completely change this. And it's there. I mean, the technology is basically there. You have to close your eyes not to see it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So lingering on autonomous vehicles, a fascinating space, some incredible work you've done throughout your career there. So let's start with DARPA. I think the DARPA challenge through the desert and then urban to the streets. I think that inspired an entire generation of roboticists and obviously sprung this whole excitement about this particular kind of four-wheeled robots we called autonomous cars, self-driving cars. So, you led the development of Stanley, the autonomous car that won the Race of the Desert, the DARPA Challenge, in 2005. And Junior, the car that finished second in the DARPA Urban Challenge, also did incredibly well in 2007, I think. What are some painful, inspiring, or enlightening experiences from that time that stand out to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my god. Painful were all these incredibly complicated, stupid bugs that had to be found. We had a phase where Stanley, our car that eventually won the DARPA Grand Challenge, would every 30 miles just commit suicide. And we didn't know why. And it ended up to be that in the syncing of two computer clocks, occasionally a clock went backwards and that negative time elapsed, screwed up the entire internal logic, but it took ages to find this. It was like bugs like that. I'd say enlightening is the Stanford team immediately focused on machine learning and on software, whereas everybody else seemed to focus on building better hardware. Our analysis had been A human being with an existing rental car can perfectly drive the course. Why do I have to build a better rental car? I should replace the human being. And the human being to me was a conjunction of three steps. We had sensors, eyes and ears, mostly eyes. We had brains in the middle and then we had actuators, our hands and our feet. Now the extras are easy to build. The sensors are actually also easy to build. What was missing was the brain. So we had to build a human brain. And nothing clearer than to me that the human brain is a learning machine. So why not just train our robots? So we would build massive machine learning into our machine. And with that, we're able to not just learn from human drivers, we had the entire speed control of the vehicle was copied from human driving, but also have the robot learn from experience where it made a mistake and could recover from it and learn from it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned the pain point of software and clocks. Synchronization seems to be a problem that continues with robotics. It's a tricky one with drones and so on. What does it take to build a thing, a system, with so many constraints? You have a deadline, no time, you're unsure about anything really. It's the first time that people really even exploring. It's not even sure that anybody can finish when we're talking about the race to the desert the year before, nobody finished. What does it take to scramble and finish a product that actually, a system that actually works?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, we were very lucky. We were a really small team. The core of the team were four people. It was four because five couldn't comfortably sit inside a car, but four could. And I, as a team leader, my job was to get pizza for everybody and wash the car and stuff like this and repair the radiator when it broke and debug the system. And we were very kind of open-minded. We had like no egos involved in this. We just wanted to see how far we can get. What we did really, really well was time management. We were done with everything a month before the race. And we froze the entire software a month before the race. And it turned out, looking at other teams, every other team complained if they had just one more week, they would have won. And we decided we're not going to fall into that mistake. We're going to be early. And we had an entire month to shake the system. And we actually found two or three minor bugs in the last month that we had to fix. And we were completely prepared when the race occurred." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so first of all, that's such an incredibly rare achievement in terms of being able to be done on time or ahead of time. How do you do that in your future work? What advice do you have in general? Because it seems to be so rare, especially in highly innovative projects like this, people work to the last second." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the nice thing about the DARPA Grand Challenge is that the problem was incredibly well defined. We were able for a while to drive the old DARPA Grand Challenge course, which had been used the year before. And then, for some reason, we were kicked out of the region. So we had to go to a different desert, the Snorren Desert, and we were able to drive desert trails just of the same type. So there was never any debate about, like, what is actually the problem? We didn't sit down and say, hey, should we build a car or a plane? We had to build a car. That made it very, very easy. Then I studied my own life and life of others and realized that the typical mistake that people make is that there's this kind of crazy bug left that they haven't found yet. And it's just, they regret it and the bug would have been trivial to fix, they just haven't fixed it yet. They didn't want to fall into that trap. So I built a testing team. We had a testing team that built a testing booklet of 160 pages of tests we had to go through just to make sure we shake out the system appropriately. Wow. And the testing team was with us all the time and dictated to us, today we do railroad crossings, tomorrow we do, we practice the start of the event. And in all of these, we thought, oh, my God, it's long solved trivial. And then we tested it out. Oh, my God, it doesn't do a railroad crossing. Why not? Oh, my God, it mistakes the rails for metal barriers. We have to fix this. Yes. So it was really a continuous focus on improving the weakest part of the system. And as long as you focus on improving the weakest part of the system, you eventually build a really great system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me just pause in that. To me as an engineer, it's just super exciting that you were thinking like that, especially at that stage as brilliant, that testing was such a core part of it. It made me to linger on the point of leadership. I think it's one of the first times you were really a leader and you've led many very successful teams since then. What does it take to be a good leader?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say most of all, I just take credit for the work of others. That's very convenient, turns out, because I can do all these things myself. I'm an engineer at heart, so I care about engineering. So I don't know what the chicken and the egg is, but as a kid, I loved computers because you could tell them to do something and they actually did it. It was very cool. And you could like in the middle of the night, wake up at one in the morning and switch on your computer. And what you told it to yesterday, it would still do. That was really cool. Unfortunately, that didn't quite work with people. So you go to people and tell them what to do and they don't do it. And they hate you for it. Or you do it today and then they go a day later and they stop doing it. So you have to. So then the question really became how can you put yourself in the brain of people as opposed to computers. And in terms of computers, they're super dumb. They're so dumb, if people were as dumb as computers, I wouldn't want to work with them. But people are smart and people are emotional and people have pride and people have aspirations. So how can I connect to that? And that's the thing where most of our leadership just fails because many, many engineers turn manager believe they can treat their team just the same way they can treat a computer and it just doesn't work this way. It's just really bad. So how can I connect to people? And it turns out, as a college professor, the wonderful thing you do all the time is to empower other people. Your job is to make your students look great. That's all you do. You're the best coach. And it turns out, if you do a fantastic job with making your students look great, they actually love you. And their parents love you. And they give you all the credit for stuff you don't deserve. It turns out, all my students were smarter than me. All the great stuff invented at Stanford was their stuff, not my stuff. And they give me credit and say, oh, Sebastian, by just making them feel good about themselves. So the question really is, can you take a team of people and what does it take to make them to connect to what they actually want in life and turn this into productive action. It turns out every human being that I know has incredibly good intentions. I've really rarely met a person with bad intentions. I believe every person wants to contribute. I think every person I've met wants to help others. It's amazing how much of a urge we have not to just help ourselves, but to help others. So how can we empower people and give them the right framework that they can accomplish this? In moments when it works, it's magical because you'd see the confluence of people being able to make the world a better place and just having enormous confidence and pride out of this. And that's when my environment works the best. These are moments where I can disappear for a month and come back and things still work. It's very hard to accomplish, but when it works, it's amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I agree with you very much. It's not often heard that most people in the world have good intentions. At the core, their intentions are good and they're good people. That's a beautiful message. It's not often heard." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We make this mistake, and this is a friend of mine, Alex Wörther, talking this, that we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. And I think the biggest skill, I mean, here in Silicon Valley, we follow engineers who have very little empathy and are kind of befuddled by why it doesn't work for them. The biggest skill I think that people should acquire is to put themselves into the position of the other and listen, and listen to what the other has to say. And they'd be shocked how similar they are to themselves. And they might even be shocked how their own actions don't reflect their intentions. I often have conversations with engineers where I say, look, hey, I love you. You're doing a great job. And by the way, what you just did has the following effect. Are you aware of that? And then people would say, oh, my God, no, I wasn't because my intention was that. And I say, yeah, I trust your intention. You're a good human being. But just to help you in the future, if you keep expressing it that way, then people will just hate you. And I've had many instances where people say, oh my God, thank you for telling me this because it wasn't my intention to look like an idiot. It wasn't my intention to help other people. I just didn't know how to do it. Very simple, by the way. Dale Carnegie, 1936, How to Make Friends and How to Influence Others, has the entire Bible. You just read it and you're done and you apply it every day. And I wish I was good enough to apply it every day. But it's just simple things, right? Like, be positive, remember people's names, smile, and eventually have empathy, like really think that the person that you hate and you think is an idiot is actually just like yourself. It's a person who's struggling, who means well, and who might need help. And guess what?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You need help. I've recently spoken with Steven Schwarzman. I'm not sure if you know who that is. I do. It's on my list. But he said, sort of to expand on what you're saying, that one of the biggest things you can do is hear people when they tell you what their problem is and then help them with that problem. He says it's surprising how few people actually listen to what troubles others. And because it's right there in front of you and you can benefit the world the most. And in fact, yourself and everybody around you by just hearing the problems and solving them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's my little history of engineering. That is, while I was engineering with computers, I didn't care at all what the computer's problems were. I just told them what to do and they do it. And it just doesn't work this way with people. It doesn't work with me. If you come to me and say, do A, I do the opposite." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But let's return to the comfortable world of engineering. And can you tell me in broad strokes in how you see it? Because you're at the core of starting it, the core of driving it, the technical evolution of autonomous vehicles from the first DARPA Grand Challenge to the incredible success we see with the program you started with Google Self-Driving Car and Waymo and the entire industry that sprung up of different kinds of approaches, debates, and so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the idea of self-driving car goes back to the 80s. There was a team in Germany, another team in Carnegie Mellon that did some very pioneering work. But back in the day, I'd say the computers were so deficient that even the best professors and engineers in the world basically stood no chance. It then folded into a phase where the US government spent at least half a billion dollars that I could count on research projects. But the way the procurement works, a successful stack of paper describing lots of stuff that no one's ever going to read was a successful product of a research project. So we trained our researchers to produce lots of paper. That all changed with the DARPA Grand Challenge. And I really got to credit the ingenious people at DARPA and the U.S. government and Congress that took a complete new funding model where they said, let's not fund effort, let's fund outcomes. And it sounds very trivial, but there was no tax code that allowed the use of congressional tax money for a price. It was all effort-based. So if you put in 100 hours in, you could charge 100 hours. If you put in 1,000 hours in, you could bill 1,000 hours. By changing the focus instead of making the price, we don't pay you for development, we pay you for the accomplishment. They drew in, they automatically drew out all these contractors who are used to the drug of getting money per hour. And they drew in a whole bunch of new people. And these people are mostly crazy people. They were people who had a car and a computer and they wanted to make a million bucks. The million bucks was the official price money, it was then doubled. And they felt if I put my computer in my car and program it, I can be rich. And that was so awesome. Like, like half the teams, there was a team that was surfer dudes, and they had like two surfboards on their vehicle, and brought like these fashion girls, super cute girls, like twin sisters. And you could tell these guys were not your common Belfast bandit who gets all these big multi million and billion dollar countries from the US government. And there was a great reset. universities moved in. I was very fortunate at Stanford that I'd just received tenure, so I couldn't get fired no matter what I do. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it. And I had enough money to finance this thing, and I was able to attract a lot of money from third parties. And even car companies moved in. They kind of moved in very quietly because they were super scared to be embarrassed that their car would flip over. But Ford was there, and Volkswagen was there, and a few others, and GM was there. So it kind of reset the entire landscape of people. And if you look at who's a big name in self-driving cars today, these were mostly people who participated in those challenges." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "OK, that's incredible. Can you just comment quickly on your sense of lessons learned from that kind of funding model and the research that's going on in academia in terms of producing papers? Is there something to be learned and scaled up bigger, having these kinds of grand challenges that could improve outcomes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'm a big believer in focusing on kind of an end-to-end system. I'm a really big believer in systems building. I've always built systems in my academic career, even though I do a lot of math and abstract stuff. But it's all derived from the idea of let's solve a real problem. And it's very hard for me to be an academic and say, let me solve a component of a problem. Like with someone, there's fields like non-monotonic logic or AI planning systems People believe that a certain style of problem solving is the ultimate end objective. And I would always turn it around and say, hey, what problem would my grandmother care about that doesn't understand computer technology and doesn't want to understand? And how could I make her love what I do? Because only then do I have an impact on the world. I can easily impress my colleagues. That is much easier. But impressing my grandmother is very, very hard. So I always thought if I can build a self-driving car and my grandmother can use it even after she loses her driving privileges or children can use it or we save maybe a million lives a year, that would be very impressive. And there's so many problems like these, like there's a problem with curing cancer or whatever it is, live twice as long. Once a problem is defined, of course I can't solve it in its entirety. It takes sometimes tens of thousands of people to find a solution. There's no way you can fund an army of 10,000 at Stanford. So you're going to build a prototype. Let's build a meaningful prototype. And the Dark Background Challenge was beautiful because it told me what this prototype had to do. I didn't have to think about what it had to do. I just had to read the rules. And that was really, really beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's most beautiful, you think, what academia could aspire to is to build a prototype that's the systems level that solves or gives you an inkling that this problem could be solved with this prototype." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First of all, I want to emphasize what academia really is. And I think people misunderstand it. First and foremost, academia is a way to educate young people. First and foremost, a professor is an educator, no matter whether you are at a small suburban college or whether you are a Harvard or Stanford professor. That's not the way most people think of themselves in academia because we have this kind of competition going on for citations and publication. That's a measurable thing, but that is secondary to the primary purpose of educating people to think. Now, in terms of research, most of the great science, the great research comes out of universities. You can trace almost everything back, including Google, to universities. So there's nothing really fundamentally broken here. It's a good system. And I think America has the finest university system on the planet. We can talk about reach and how to reach people outside the system. It's a different topic. But the system itself is a good system. If I had one wish, I would say it'd be really great if there was more debate about what the great big problems are in society and focus on those. And most of them are interdisciplinary. Unfortunately, it's very easy to fall into an interdisciplinary viewpoint where your problem is dictated by what your closest colleagues believe the problem is. It's very hard to break out and say, well, there's an entire new field of problems. So to give an example, prior to me working on self-driving cars, I was a roboticist and a machine learning expert. And I wrote books on robotics, something called probabilistic robotics. It's a very methods-driven kind of viewpoint of the world. I built robots that acted in museums as tour guides, that led children around. It's something that at the time was moderately challenging. When I started working on cars, several colleagues told me, Sebastian, you're destroying your career because in our field of robotics, cars are looked like as a gimmick and they're not expressive enough. They can only push this throttle and the brakes. There's no dexterity. There's no complexity. It's just too simple. And no one came to me and said, wow, if you solve that problem, you can save a million lives. Among all robotic problems that I've seen in my life, I would say the self-driving car, transportation, is the one that has the most hope for society. So how come the robotics community wasn't all over the place? And it was because we focused on methods and solutions and not on problems. Like if you go around today and ask your grandmother, what bugs you? What really makes you upset? I challenge any academic to do this and then realize how far your research is probably away from that today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At the very least, that's a good thing for academics to deliberate on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The other thing that's really nice in Silicon Valley is, Silicon Valley is full of smart people outside academia, right? So there's the Larry Pages and Mark Zuckerbergs in the world who are anywhere smarter than the best academics I've met in my life. And what they do is, they are at a different level. They build the systems, they build the customer-facing systems, they build things that people can use without technical education. And they are inspired by research. They're inspired by scientists. They hire the best PhDs from the best universities for a reason. So I think this kind of vertical integration that between the real product, the real impact, and the real thought, the real ideas, that's actually working surprisingly well in Silicon Valley. It did not work as well in other places in this nation. So when I worked at Carnegie Mellon, we had the world's finest computer science university. But there wasn't those people in Pittsburgh that would be able to take these very fine computer science ideas and turn them into massively impactful products. That symbiosis seemed to exist pretty much only in Silicon Valley and maybe a bit in Boston and Austin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, with Stanford. That's really interesting. So if we look a little bit further on from the DARPA Grand Challenge and the launch of the Google self-driving car, What do you see as the state, the challenges of autonomous vehicles as they are now? Is actually achieving that huge scale and having a huge impact on society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm extremely proud of what has been accomplished. And again, I'm taking a lot of credit for the work that I do. And I'm actually very optimistic. And people have been kind of worrying, is it too fast? Is it too slow? Why is it not there yet? And so on. It is actually quite an interesting hard problem in that a self-driving car, to build one that manages 90% of the problems encountered in everyday driving is easy. We can literally do this over a weekend. To do 99% might take a month. Then there's 1% left. So 1% would mean that you still have a fatal accident every week. Very unacceptable. So now you work on this 1% and the 99% of that, the remaining 1% is actually still relatively easy. but now you're down to like a hundredth of one percent and it's still completely unacceptable in terms of safety. So the variety of things you encounter are just enormous and that gives me enormous respect for human beings that we're able to deal with the couch on the highway, right, or the deer in the headlight or the blown tire that we've never been trained for and all of a sudden have to handle in an emergency situation and often do very, very successfully. It's amazing from that perspective how safe driving actually is given how many millions of miles we drive every year in this country. We are now at a point where I believe the technology is there, and I've seen it. I've seen it in Waymo, I've seen it in Aptiv, I've seen it in Cruise, in a number of companies, in Voyage. where vehicles not driving around and basically flawlessly are able to drive people around in limited scenarios. In fact, you can go to Vegas today and order a summoner lift. And if you get the right setting of your app, you'd be picked up by a driverless car. Now, there's still safety drivers in there, but that's a fantastic way to kind of learn what the limits of technology today. And there's still some glitches, but the glitches have become very, very rare. I think the next step is going to be to down-cost it, to harden it. The entrapment, the sensors are not quite an automotive-grade standard yet. And then to really build the business models, to really kind of go somewhere and make the business case. And the business case is hard work. It's not just, oh my God, we have this capability. People are just going to buy it. You have to make it affordable. You have to give people, find the social acceptance of people. None of the teams yet has been able to, or gutsy enough to drive around without a person inside the car. And that's the next magical hurdle. Will we be able to send these vehicles around completely empty in traffic? And I think, I mean, I wait every day, wait for the news that Waymo has just done this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, you know, it's interesting you mentioned gutsy. Let me ask some maybe unanswerable question, maybe edgy questions, but in terms of how much risk is required. guts in terms of leadership style, it would be good to contrast approaches. And I don't think anyone knows what's right. But if we compare Tesla and Waymo, for example, Elon Musk and the Waymo team. there's slight differences in approach. So on the Elon side, there's more, I don't know what the right word to use, but aggression in terms of innovation. And on Waymo side, there's more sort of cautious, safety focused approach to the problem. What do you think it takes? What leadership at which moment is right? Which approach is right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, I don't sit in either of those teams, so I'm unable to even verify, like somebody says, correct. In the end of the day, every innovator in that space will face a fundamental dilemma. And I would say you could put aerospace titans into the same bucket, which is you have to balance public safety with your drive to innovate. And this country in particular, the United States, has a 100 plus year history of doing this very successfully. Air travel is 100 times safer per mile than ground travel, than cars. And there's a reason for it, because people have found ways to be very methodological about ensuring public safety while still being able to make progress on important aspects, for example, like air and noise and fuel consumption. So I think that those practices are proven and they actually work. We live in a world safer than ever before. And yes, there will always be the provision that something goes wrong. There's always the possibility that someone makes a mistake or there's an unexpected failure. We can never guarantee to 100% absolute safety other than just not doing it. But I think I'm very proud of the history of the United States. I mean, we've dealt with much more dangerous technology like nuclear energy and kept that safe too. We have nuclear weapons and we keep those safe. So we have methods and procedures that really balance these two things very, very successfully." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've mentioned a lot of great autonomous vehicle companies that are taking sort of the level four, level five, they jump in full autonomy with a safety driver and take that kind of approach and also through simulation and so on. There's also the approach that Tesla Autopilot is doing, which is kind of incrementally taking a level two vehicle and using machine learning and learning from the driving of human beings and trying to creep up, trying to incrementally improve the system until it's able to achieve level four autonomy. So perfect autonomy in certain kind of geographical regions. What are your thoughts on these contrasting approaches?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first of all, I'm a very proud Tesla owner, and I literally use the autopilot every day, and it literally has kept me safe. It is a beautiful technology specifically for highway driving when I'm slightly tired, because then it turns me into a much safer driver. And I'm 100% confident that's the case. In terms of the right approach, I think the biggest change I've seen since I ran the Waymo team is It's this thing called deep learning. I think deep learning was not a hot topic when I started Waymo or Google self-driving cars. It was there. In fact, we started Google Brain at the same time in Google X. So I invested in deep learning, but people didn't talk about it. It wasn't a hot topic. And now it is. There's a shift of emphasis from a more geometric perspective where you use geometric sensors. They give you a full 3D view and you do a geometric reasoning about, oh, this box over here might be a car. towards a more human-like, oh, let's just learn about it. This looks like the thing I've seen 10,000 times before, so maybe it's the same thing, machine learning perspective. And that has really put, I think, all these approaches on steroids. At Udacity, we teach a course on self-driving cars. In fact, I think we've graduated over 20,000 or so people on self-driving car skills. So every self-driving car team in the world now uses our engineers. And in this course, the very first homework assignment is to do lane finding on images. And lane finding images for laymen, what this means is you put a camera into your car or you open your eyes and you wouldn't know where the lane is, right? So you can stay inside the lane with your car. Humans can do this super easily. You just look, and you know where the lane is, just intuitively. For machines, for a long time, it was super hard, because people would write these kind of crazy rules. If there's, like, wine lane markers, and here's what white really means, this is not quite white enough, so it's not white. Or maybe the sun is shining, so when the sun shines, and this is white, and this is a straight line, or maybe it's quite a straight line because the road is curved. And do we know that there's really six feet between lane markings or not, or 12 feet, whatever it is? And now, what the students are doing, they would take machine learning. So instead of like writing these crazy rules for the lane marker, they say, hey, let's take an hour of driving and label it and tell the vehicle, this is actually the lane by hand. And then these are examples and have the machine find its own rules, what lane markings are. And within 24 hours, now every student that's never done any programming before in this space can write a perfect lane finder as good as the best commercial lane finders. And that's completely amazing to me. We've seen progress using machine learning that completely dwarfs anything that I saw 10 years ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and just as a side note, the self-driving car nanodegree, the fact that you launched that, many years ago now, maybe four years ago, three years ago, is incredible. That's a great example of system level thinking. So just taking an entire course that teaches you how to solve the entire problem, I definitely recommend people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's become super popular and it's become actually incredibly high quality. We did it with Mercedes and various other companies in that space. And we find that engineers from Tesla and Waymo are taking it today. The insight was that two things. One is existing universities will be very slow to move because they're departmentalized and there's no department for self-driving cars. So between MechE and EE and computer science, getting those folks together into one room is really, really hard. And every professor listening here will know, will probably agree to that. And secondly, even if all the great universities just did this, which none so far has developed a curriculum in this field, It is just a few thousand students that can partake because all the great universities are super selective. So how about people in India? How about people in China or in the Middle East or Indonesia or Africa? Why should those be excluded from the skill of building self-driving cars? Are they any dumber than we are? Are they any less privileged? And the answer is, we should just give everybody the skill to build a self-driving car. Because if we do this, then we have like a thousand self-driving car startups. And if 10% succeed, that's like 100. That means 100 countries now will have self-driving cars and be safer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's kind of interesting to imagine, impossible to quantify, but the number, the, you know, over a period of several decades, the impact that has, like a single course, like a ripple effect of society. I just recently talked to Ann Druyan, who was creator of Cosmos, a show. It's interesting to think about how many scientists that show launched. And so it's really, In terms of impact, I can't imagine a better course than the self-driving car course. There's other more specific disciplines like deep learning and so on that Udacity is also teaching, but self-driving cars, it's really, really interesting course." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and it came at the right moment. It came at a time when there were a bunch of Acquihires. Acquihire is an acquisition of a company, not for its technology or its products or business, but for its people. So Acquihire means maybe a company of 70 people, they have no product yet, but they're super smart people, and they pay a certain amount of money. So I took Acquihires like GM Cruise and Uber and others and did the math and said, hey, how many people are there and how much money was paid? And as a lower bound, I estimated the value of a self-driving car engineer in these acquisitions. to be at least $10 million, right? So think about this, you get yourself a skill and you team up and build a company and your worth now is $10 million. I mean, that's kind of cool. I mean, but what other thing could you do in life to be worth $10 million within a year?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, amazing. But to come back for a moment on to deep learning and its application in autonomous vehicles, you know, what are your thoughts on Elon Musk's statement, provocative statement, perhaps that lighter is a crutch. So this geometric way of thinking about the world may be holding us back if what we should instead be doing in this robotics space, in this particular space of autonomous vehicles is using camera as a primary sensor and using computer vision and machine learning as the primary way to... Look, I have two comments." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think first of all, we all know that People can drive cars without lighters in their heads because we only have eyes. And we mostly just use eyes for driving. Maybe we use some other perception about our bodies, accelerations, occasionally our ears, certainly not our noses. So the existence proof is there that eyes must be sufficient. In fact, we could even drive a car if someone put a camera out and then gave us the camera image with no latency, we would be able to drive a car that way, the same way. So a camera is also sufficient. Secondly, I really love the idea that in the Western world, we have many, many different people trying different hypotheses. It's almost like an anthill, like if an anthill tries to forge for food, right? You can sit there as two ants and agree what the perfect path is, and then every single ant marches for the most likely location of food is, or you can even just spread out. And I promise you the spread out solution will be better because if the disgusting philosophical intellectual ants get it wrong, and they're all moving in the wrong direction, they're going to waste the day. And then they're going to discuss again for another week. Whereas if all these ants go in a random direction, someone's going to succeed. And they're going to come back and claim victory and get the Nobel Prize or whatever the ant equivalent is. And then they all march in the same direction. And that's great about society. That's great about the Western society. We're not plan-based. We're not central-based. We don't have a Soviet Union-style central government that tells us where to forge. We just forge. We start in C-Corp. We get investor money, go out and try it out. And who knows who's going to win?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like it. When you look at the long-term vision of autonomous vehicles, do you see machine learning as fundamentally being able to solve most of the problems? So learning from experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd say we should be very clear about what machine learning is and is not and I think there's a lot of confusion. What it is today is a technology that can go through large databases of repetitive patterns and find those patterns. So, an example, we did a study at Stanford two years ago where we applied machine learning to detecting skin cancer in images. And we harvested or built a data set of 129,000 skin photo shots that all had been biopsied for what the actual situation was. And those included melanomas and carcinomas, also included rashes and other skin conditions, lesions. And then we had a network find those patterns and it was by and large able to then detect skin cancer with an iPhone as accurately as the best board certified Stanford level dermatologist. We proved that. Now, this thing was great in this one thing and finding skin cancer, but it couldn't drive a car. So the difference to human intelligence is we do all these many, many things. And we can often learn from a very small data set of experiences, whereas machines still need very large data sets and things that will be very repetitive. Now, that's still super impactful because almost everything we do is repetitive. So that's going to really transform human labor. But it's not this almighty general intelligence. We're really far away from a system that will exhibit general intelligence. To that end, I actually commiserate the naming a little bit because artificial intelligence, if you believe Hollywood, is immediately mixed into the idea of human suppression and machine superiority. I don't think that we're going to see this in my lifetime. I don't think human suppression is a good idea. I don't see it coming. I don't see the technology being there. What I see instead is a very pointed, focused pattern recognition technology that's able to extract patterns from large data sets. And in doing so, it can be super impactful, right? Super impactful. Let's take the impact of artificial intelligence on human work. We all know that it takes something like 10,000 hours to become an expert. If you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or even a really good driver, it takes a certain amount of time to become experts. Machines now are able and have been shown to observe people become experts and observe experts and then extract those rules from experts in some interesting way that could go from law to sales to driving cars to diagnosing cancer, and then giving that capability to people who are completely new in their job. And that's been done. It's been done commercially in many, many instantiations. So that means we can use machine learning to make people expert on the very first day of their work. Think about the impact. If your doctor is still in their first 10,000 hours, you have a doctor who is not quite an expert yet. Who would not want a doctor who is the world's best expert? And now we can leverage machines to really eradicate error in decision making, error and lack of expertise for human doctors. That could save your life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we can link on that for a little bit, in which way do you hope machines in the medical field could help assist doctors? You mentioned this sort of accelerating the learning curve, or people, if they start a job, or in the first 10,000 hours, can be assisted by machines. How do you envision that assistance looking?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we built this app for an iPhone that can detect and classify and diagnose skin cancer, and we proved two years ago that it does pretty much as good or better than the best human doctors. So let me tell you a story. So there's a friend of mine, let's call him Ben. Ben is a very famous venture capitalist. He goes to his doctor and the doctor looks at a mole and says, hey, that mole is probably harmless. And for some very funny reason, he pulls out that phone with our app. He's a collaborator in our study. And the app says, no, no, no, no, this is a melanoma. And for background, melanomas are, and skin cancer is the most common cancer in this country. Melanomas can go from stage zero to stage four within less than a year. Stage zero means you can basically cut it out yourself with a kitchen knife and be safe. And stage four means your chances of living five more years are less than 20%. So it's a very serious, serious, serious condition. This doctor who took over the iPhone looked at the iPhone and was a little bit puzzled and said, you know what, just to be safe, let's cut it out and biopsy it. That's the technical term for let's get an in-depth diagnostics that is more than just looking at it. And it came back as cancerous. as a melanoma, and it was then removed. And my friend Ben, I was hiking with him, and we were talking about AI, and I told him I do this book on skin cancer. And he said, oh, funny. My doctor just had an iPhone that found my cancer. Wow. So I was like completely intrigued. I didn't even know about this. So here's a person, I mean, this is a real human life, right? Who doesn't know somebody who has been affected by cancer? Cancer is cause of death number two. Cancer is this kind of disease that That is mean in the following way. Most cancers can actually be cured relatively easily if we catch them early. And the reason why we don't tend to catch them early is because they have no symptoms. Like your very first symptom of a gallbladder cancer or a pancreatic cancer might be a headache. And when you finally go to your doctor because of these headaches or your back pain and you're being imaged, It's usually stage four plus, and that's the time when your curing chances might be dropped to a single digit percentage. So if you could leverage AI to inspect your body on a regular basis without even a doctor in the room, maybe when you take a shower or what have you, I know this sounds creepy, but then you might be able to save millions and millions of lives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've mentioned there's a concern that people have about near-term impacts of AI in terms of job loss. So you've mentioned being able to assist doctors, being able to assist people in their jobs. Do you have a worry of people losing their jobs or the economy being affected by the improvements in AI?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, anybody concerned about job losses, please come to Gerdastudio.com. We teach contemporary tech skills, and we have a kind of implicit job promise. We often, when we measure, we spend way over 50% of our graduates in new jobs, and they're very satisfied about it. And it costs almost nothing, costs like 1,500 marks or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I saw there's a cool new program that you agreed with the U.S. government, guaranteeing that you will help give scholarships that educate people in this kind of situation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we're working with the U.S. government on the idea of basically rebuilding the American dream. So Udacity has just dedicated 100,000 scholarships for citizens of America for various levels of courses that eventually will get you a job. And those courses all somewhat relate to the tech sector because the tech sector is kind of the hottest sector right now. And they range from inter-level digital marketing to very advanced self-driving car engineering. And we're doing this with the White House because we think it's bipartisan. It's an issue that if you want to really make America great, being able to be part of the solution and live the American dream requires us to be proactive about our education and our skill set. It's just the way it is today. And it's always been this way. We always had this American dream to send our kids to college. And now the American dream has to be to send ourselves to college. We can do this very, very efficiently. We can squeeze in in the evenings and things to online. At all ages. All ages. So our learners go from age 11 to age... 80. I just traveled Germany and the guy in the train compartment next to me was one of my students. Wow, that's amazing. Think about impact. We've become the educator of choice for now, I believe, officially six countries or five countries, most in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. In Egypt, we just had a cohort graduate where we had 1100 high school students that went through programming skills proficient at the level of a computer science undergrad. And we had a 95% graduation rate, even though everything's online. It's kind of tough, but we're kind of trying to figure out how to make this effective. The vision is very, very simple. The vision is education ought to be a basic human right. It cannot be locked up behind ivory tower walls only for the rich people, for the parents who might bribe themselves into the system. and only for young people and only for people from the right demographics and the right geography and possibly even the right race. It has to be opened up to everybody. If we are truthful to the human mission, if we are truthful to our values, we're going to open up education to everybody in the world. So Udacity's pledge of 100,000 scholarships, I think is the biggest pledge of scholarships ever in terms of numbers. And we're working, as I said, with the White House and with very accomplished CEOs like Tim Cook from Apple and others to really bring education to everywhere in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not to ask you to pick the favorite of your children, but at this point... Oh, that's Jasper. I only have one that I know of. Okay, good. In this particular moment, what nano degree, what set of courses are you most excited about at Udacity? Or is that too impossible to pick?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've been super excited about something we haven't launched yet in the building, which is when we talk to our partner companies, we have now a very strong footing in the enterprise world. And also to our students, we've kind of always focused on these hard skills like the programming skills or math skills or building skills or design skills. And a very common ask is soft skills, like how do you behave in your work? How do you develop empathy? How do you work in a team? What are the very basics of management? How do you do time management? How do you advance your career in the context of a broader community? And that's something that we haven't done very well at Udacity. And I would say most universities are doing very poorly as well, because we are so obsessed with individual test scores and pays so little attention to teamwork in education. So that's something I see us moving into as a company, because I'm excited about this. And I think Look, we can teach people tech skills and they're going to be great. But if you teach people empathy, that's going to have the same impact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe harder than self-driving cars, but... I don't think so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the rules are really simple. You just have to want to engage. We literally, in school, in K-12, we teach kids, like, get the highest math score. And if you are a rational human being, you might evolve from this education, say, having the best math score and the best English scores, make me the best leader. And it turns out not to be the case. It's actually really wrong. Because, first of all, in terms of math scores, I think it's perfectly fine to hire somebody with great math skills. You don't have to do it yourself. You can't hire someone with great empathy for you, that's much harder, but you can always hire someone with great math skills. But we live in an affluent world where we constantly deal with other people, and that's a beauty. It's not a nuisance, it's a beauty. So if we somewhat develop that muscle that we can do that well and empower others in the workplace, I think we're gonna be super successful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I know many fellow roboticists and computer scientists that I will insist to take this course. Not to be named yet. Not to be named. Many, many years ago, 1903, the Wright brothers flew in Kitty Hawk for the first time. And you've launched a company of the same name, Kitty Hawk, with the dream of building flying cars, eVTOLs. So at the big picture, what are the big challenges of making this thing that actually you've inspired generations of people about what the future looks like? What does it take? What are the biggest challenges?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So flying cars has always been a dream. Every boy, every girl wants to fly. Let's be honest. Yes. And let's go back in our history of your dreaming of flying. I think my honestly, my single most remembered childhood dream has been a dream where I was sitting on a pillow and I could fly. I was like five years old. I remember like maybe three dreams of my childhood, but that's the one I remember most vividly. And then Peter Thiel famously said, they promised us flying cars and they gave us 140 characters, pointing at Twitter at the time, limiting message size to 140 characters. So we're coming back now to really go for this super impactful stuff like flying cars. And to be precise, they're not really cars. They don't have wheels. They're actually much closer to a helicopter than anything else. They take off vertically and they fly horizontally, but they have important differences. One difference is that they are much quieter. We just released a vehicle called Project Heaviside that can fly over you as low as a helicopter, and you basically can't hear it. It's like 38 decibels. If you were inside the library, you might be able to hear it, but anywhere outdoors, your ambient noise is higher. Secondly, they're much more affordable. They're much more affordable than helicopters. And the reason is helicopters are expensive for many reasons. There's lots of single point of figures in a helicopter. There's a bolt between the blades that's called Jesus bolt. And the reason why it's called Jesus bolt is that if this bolt breaks, you will die. There is no second solution in helicopter flight. Whereas we have these distributed mechanism. When you go from gasoline to electric, you can now have many, many, many small motors as opposed to one big motor. And that means if you lose one of those motors, not a big deal. Heaviside, if it loses a motor, has eight of those. And we lose one of those eight motors, so it's seven left. It can take off just like before and land just like before. We are now also moving into a technology that doesn't require a commercial pilot. Because on some level, flight is actually easier than ground transportation. Like in self-driving cars, the world is full of like children and bicycles and other cars and mailboxes and curbs and shrubs and what have you. All these things you have to avoid. When you go above the buildings and tree lines, there's nothing there. I mean, you can do the test right now, look outside and count the number of things you see flying. I'd be shocked if you could see more than two things. It's probably just zero. In the Bay Area, the most I've ever seen was six, and maybe it's 15 or 20, but not 10,000. So the sky is very ample and very empty and very free. So the vision is, can we build a socially acceptable mass transit solution for daily transportation that is affordable. And we have an existence proof. Heaviside can fly 100 miles in range with still 30% electric reserves. It can fly up to like 180 miles an hour. We know that that solution at scale would make your ground transportation 10 times as fast as a car based on used sensors or statistics data, which means you would take your 300 hours of yearly commute down to 30 hours and give you 270 hours back. Who doesn't hate traffic? Give me the person who doesn't hate traffic. I hate traffic. Every time I'm in traffic, I hate it. And if we could free the world from traffic, we have technology. We can free the world from traffic. We have the technology. It's there. We have an existence proof. It's not a technological problem anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there is a future where tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of both delivery drones and flying cars of this kind, AVTOLs, fill the sky?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I absolutely believe this. And there's obviously the societal acceptance is a major question. And of course, safety is. I believe in safety, we're going to exceed ground transportation safety, as has happened for aviation already. commercial aviation. And in terms of acceptance, I think one of the key things is noise. That's why we are focusing relentlessly on noise. And we built perhaps the quietest electric VTOL vehicle ever built. The nice thing about the sky is it's three-dimensional. So any mathematician will immediately recognize the difference between 1D of like a regular highway to 3D of a sky. But to make it clear for the layman, Say you want to make 100 vertical lanes of Highway 101 in San Francisco because you believe building 100 vertical lanes is the right solution. Imagine how much it would cost to stack 100 vertical lanes physically onto 101. That would be prohibitive. That would be consuming the world's GDP for an entire year just for one highway. It's amazingly expensive. In the sky, it would just be a recompilation of a piece of software because all these lanes are virtual. That means any vehicle that is in conflict with another vehicle would just go to different altitudes, and then the conflict is gone. And if you don't believe this, that's exactly how commercial aviation works. When you fly from New York to San Francisco in another plane, Flights from San Francisco to New York, they're at different altitudes, so they don't hit each other. It's a solved problem for the jet space, and it will be a solved problem for the urban space. There's companies like Google, Bing, and Amazon working on very innovative solutions, how do we have space management. They use exactly the same principles as we use today to route today's jets. There's nothing hard about this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you envision autonomy being a key part of it so that the flying vehicles are either semi-autonomous or fully autonomous?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "100% autonomous. You don't want idiots like me to fly in the sky. I promise you. And if you have 10,000, watch the movie The Fifth Element to get a fee for what would happen if it's not autonomous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And a centralized, that's a really interesting idea of a centralized sort of management system for lanes and so on. So actually just being able to have a similar as we have in the current commercial aviation, but scale it up to much, much more vehicles. That's a really interesting optimization problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is mathematically very, very straightforward. Like the gap we leave between jets is gargantuous. And part of the reason is there isn't that many jets. So it just feels like a good solution. Today, when you get vectored by air traffic control, someone talks to you, right? So an ATC controller might have up to maybe 20 planes on the same frequency, and then they talk to you, you have to talk back. And that feels right, because there isn't more than 20 planes around anyhow, so you can talk to everybody. But if there's 20,000 things around, you can't talk to everybody anymore. So, we have to do something that's called digital, like text messaging. Like, we do have solutions. Like, we have, what, 4 or 5 billion smartphones in the world now, right? And they're all connected. And somehow, we solve the scale problem for smartphones. We know where they all are. They can talk to somebody. And they're very reliable, they're amazingly reliable. We could use the same system, the same scale for air traffic control. So instead of me as a pilot talking to a human being in the middle of the conversation, receiving a new frequency, like how ancient is that? we could digitize this stuff and digitally transmit the right flight coordinates. And that solution will automatically scale to 10,000 vehicles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We talked about empathy a little bit. Do you think we will one day build an AI system that a human being can love and that loves that human back? Like in the movie Her." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, I'm a pragmatist. For me, AI is a tool. It's like a shovel. And the ethics of using the shovel are always with us, the people. And it has to be this way. In terms of emotions, I would hate to come into my kitchen and see that my refrigerator spoiled all my food and have it explained to me that it fell in love with the dishwasher and I wasn't as nice as the dishwasher so as a result, it neglected me. That would just be a bad experience and it would be a bad product. I would probably not recommend this refrigerator to my friends. And that's where I draw the line. I think, to me, technology has to be reliable. It has to be predictable. I want my car to work. I don't want to fall in love with my car. I just want it to work. I want it to complement me, not to replace me. I have very unique human properties, and I want the machines to make me, turn me into a superhuman. Like, I'm already a superhuman today thanks to the machines that surround me, and I'll give you examples. I can run across the Atlantic at near the speed of sound at 36,000 feet today. That's kind of amazing. My voice now carries me all the way to Australia using a smartphone today. And it's not the speed of sound, which would take hours. It's the speed of light. My voice travels at the speed of light. How cool is that? That makes me superhuman. I would even argue my flushing toilet makes me superhuman. Just think of the time before flushing toilets. And maybe you have a very old person in your family that you can ask about this or take a trip to rural India to experience it. It makes me superhuman. So to me, what technology does, it complements me. It makes me stronger. Therefore, words like love and compassion have very little I have very little interest in this for machines. I have interest in people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't think, first of all, beautifully put, beautifully argued, but do you think love has use in our tools? Compassion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think love is a beautiful human concept. And if you think of what love really is, Love is a means to convey safety, to convey trust. I think trust has a huge need in technology as well, not just people. We want to trust our technology in a similar way we trust people. In human interaction, standards have emerged and feelings, emotions have emerged, maybe genetically, maybe biologically, that are able to convey sense of trust, sense of safety, sense of passion, of love, of dedication, that makes the human fabric. And I'm a big slacker for love. I want to be loved. I want to be trusted. I want to be admired. All these wonderful things. And because all of us, we have this beautiful system, I wouldn't just blindly copy this to the machines. Here's why. When you look at, say, transportation, you could have observed that up to the end of the 19th century, almost all transportation used any number of legs, from one leg to two legs to a thousand legs. And you could have concluded that is the right way to move about the environment. We've made the exception of birds who use flapping wings. In fact, there are many people in aviation that flap wings to their arms and jump from cliffs. Most of them didn't survive. then the interesting thing is that the technology solutions are very different. Like, in technology, it's really easy to build a wheel. In biology, it's super hard to build a wheel. There's very few perpetually rotating things in biology, and they usually run cells and things. In engineering, we can build wheels. And those wheels gave rise to cars. Similar wheels gave rise to aviation. Like, there's no... thing that flies, they wouldn't have something that rotates, like a jet engine or helicopter blades. So the solutions have used very different physical laws than nature. And that's great. So for me to be too much focused on oh, this is how nature does it, let's just replicate it. If we really believed that the solution to the agricultural revolution was a humanoid robot, we would still be waiting today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Again, beautifully put. You said that you don't take yourself too seriously. Did I say that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You want me to say that? You don't take me seriously." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not. That's right. Good. You're right. I don't want to. I just made that up. But, you know, you have a humor and a lightness about life. that I think is beautiful and inspiring to a lot of people. Where does that come from? The smile, the humor, the lightness amidst all the chaos and the hard work that you're in, where does that come from?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "September 11th, 2001, it was a bright, beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning. It was late summer. There's a lot of folks who go to the beaches in New Jersey, call it the short summer. Everybody's left there for Labor Day, but it's still beautiful enough to enjoy the weather. I left my house about 6.30 in the morning. And my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter said to me, Daddy, which truck are you driving today? The fire truck, the oil truck, or the Boar's Head truck? Because I had three jobs at the time. Most New York City firefighters and police officers, EMS, we don't make the most amount of money. So in order to live in that city, you have to hustle. And my wife stayed at home raising the children. So my daughter said, Oh, so you should be safe because you're on the oil truck. I said, I told her I was going on an oil truck that day. So she said, you should be safe today, daddy. So I left and, um, worked for this great company on the North shore of Staten Island, Quinlin fuel. Uh, very nice people treated me very well. And it was my first day back, actually, for the winter season. I usually get laid off a couple months in the summer because things, you know, too hot to need oil. So I took the truck, started my route that day, and a plane hit the tower. So initially, I'm like, oh, it's probably some silly Learjet pilot, and he veered off track to get a better picture for a client, and he hit the building, probably hit a You know, bad turbulence, gust of wind. It's very windy down in that area, Manhattan. So that was my first thought." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we pause there for a second? So 6.30 a.m., you wake up, you leave, and then the plane hits at 8.45, 8.50, 8.45 a.m. Yeah. It's just interesting how you phrase it. So how did you hear that a plane hit something? I, um," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm a big news radio guy, news guy, bit of a buff. I've been that way since I was a kid, and I had the news radio on the local New York radio station. And as I was driving the truck, I heard, you know, an emergency report. This just in, aircraft has just struck the World Trade Center. And where Queensland is located, it's on the north rim of Staten Island, which is right on New York Harbor. And You could see Statue of Liberty a mile or two away in the distance and then past that is So I just literally stopped the truck and looked out and I saw the smoke. So there was smoke. Oh, it was dark black smoke. It was just, yeah, I mean, it was burning fully at that point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you have fear of what the hell happened?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was initially scared for anybody involved. I realized, I said, there's going to be lots of fatalities, obviously, depending on the size of the aircraft. You know, the business day there had started probably at 8, 830. So those buildings should have been packed at that moment. So that was a thought across my mind. But from our being responder perspective, if you're off duty, normally you do not go to a scene. They don't want you to because of accountability and safety. The on-duty platoon will handle it. And if it's something, very horrific, then they will have something called a recall, which is any police firefighter or EMS personnel is obligated to go to their command immediately, check in with, you know, their command, get their gear and stand by and await orders for deployment or to remain in that command for routine duties." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How often throughout history have there been recalls?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I believe the one prior to that was like in the 1968 riots. Possibly, and then maybe in the 70s, there was another blackout and riots. And I remember my dad talking about it. And he actually always said, just remember, if something bad's going down, don't just rush in. You will wait the recall. Or at the very least, if there isn't a recall, you get to your firehouse. because if you show up somewhere there's a good chance that no one knows you're there and now you in your well-intended uh movements you you get lost or trapped or no one's looking for you so that's the whole thing with you know checking in and now you're with a squad or you know group of guys and everyone knows you know hey there's nils there's lex okay they're on you know this team So I said, all right, they're not going to need us. It's probably going to be a fifth alarm. And, you know, there'll be 250 firefighters there. They'll handle it. It's going to be a bad day for those guys. But, you know, our guys take on some heavy stuff and they'll be fine. A few minutes later, the second plane hit and I knew immediately I'm like, okay, we're under attack. So I just flew the truck back in. I told my boss, I have to go. He understood, he knew something was way wrong and I just was flying. At the time, I actually had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, kind of a goofy car to be driving, but I loved it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for people who are just listening, you're kind of a big guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, I could. I definitely need to lose about 50 pounds. No, I don't mean in that way. Yeah. Well, as as my hands, as my beloved friend Bobby Adams would say to me, I was driving around in a clown wagon. And he also says I have a waving, waving hairdo, waving bye bye. So thanks, Bobby. Good luck. Yeah. He's a great friend. Yeah. So I took the Volkswagen and I flew in and I was heading over to Verrazano Bridge and hit the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. And my phone rang and my wife normally doesn't curse or raise a voice and she was yelling at me. And she said, don't go in there, go to your firehouse. Well, first she asked where, she knew I was on the way, but she just wanted to know where. And I said, I'm on the curve, which is 65th street on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway called Dead Man's Curve. We actually used to do a lot of car wrecks up there. And I was hitting that curve pretty fast. And then right around the curve is the exit to the firehouse. And I had to decide, well, am I driving right in to the battery tunnel, to the city, or am I going to the firehouse? And then I said, but I have no gear. I'm gonna be ineffective. How do I show up with no gear, no protection? So she said, do what your dad would follow the recall, go to the firehouse. I hung up the phone. I said, I love you, gotta go. And I did, I went to the firehouse. And I'm glad I listened to her. I had my father ringing in my ears. My dad, beautiful guy. He's 82, did 34 years in New York City Fire Department. He came down on end stage non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He's 38, going on 39, 1978. And this guy, he's my hero. He was gonna die. They sent him home. They said, there's really not much we can do. Go get your affairs. And he says, but Doc, I have three young kids. And she called him a couple hours later. She said, I got in touch with Sloan Kettering and they have a new drug. We want you to be a test pilot. And he said, hey doc, he's got a heavy Brooklyn accent. I'm a fireman, I'm a fireman, I'm not a pilot. And so she said, no, no, we want you to try this drug out. And if it works, we may have some success. But if not, he says, yeah, I'm gonna die, so let's do it. So every two weeks for four years, he'd go for treatment. But he was assigned to a desk job after that, the cancer tumor removal and, you know, the heavy treatments. And he'd get up every morning, four o'clock in the morning, and he'd walk down to the train station in Staten Island, take the train, and then he'd take the ferry across the harbor. And he'd get off looking at the towers, and then he'd take a subway into Brooklyn. and on every other Thursday he'd leave at noon and do the same exact reverse route and he'd get to the cancer center and my mom would meet him and he'd get his infusion and within two hours he'd be violently ill for few days really badly ill and I just remember um you know he's 10 years I was 10 years old and uh he just had to have the room darkened out and he he'd be so sick and I just go in and wipe the vomit on his face just try to give him a little water but he couldn't take it down because he'd throw it up and uh Maybe on Saturday, he'd start coming around a little bit, drink down a little bit of tea. And on Sunday morning, he'd put his robe on, he'd go down, mom would make him black coffee and toast. He'd sit up, watch the news, watch a game. And then Monday morning, he'd go back to work. And he did that for four years. And he's 82, and he's still here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said that your dad's a man of a few words, but when he talks, they're profound. So what words were ringing in your ear when you were driving?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I just always remember him saying, kid, they give the recall. You go to the firehouse. You don't go where you think you should. You go to the firehouse. You follow your orders. So do the smart thing, do your job. Yes, sir. And every time we'd hang up the phone, it's fireman talk. He'd say, I love you, keep low. My dad couldn't tell me he loved me until I told him when I first got out of the fire department. I was 22. My dad grew up in a tough household. My granddad was a good man, but a tormented man. He was sent away from home at 12 years old. He was from Denmark, and I'm named after him, Grandpa Nils. And I think his demons took up a large part of his life, his anger, whatever it was, his fear. We got the sense that maybe when he was a child, he was an apprentice baker, living with strangers, working for them. And we think maybe he was abused, and that's why he took it out on my dad and my grandma and my aunts. They made it up to each other at the end of my granddad's life. My granddad turned out to be the best grandfather ever. I think he tried to heal and heal everyone by his change of behavior. So he's proof that you can change, you can improve if you work on it. But I know I'm going off track here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you were a man enough, you say, in your 20s to tell your dad that you love him?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I got on a job. He said, how'd it go, kid? How was the tour? We call it tour duty. I said, oh, that was great. It was great. I love it. And he goes, just remember, you keep low. You always keep low. And keep low means you stay down below the flames. If a room flashes over and it's burning, if you stay up high, you're going to get burned badly. But if you get down on your belly and you crawl, you'll get out. So he'd always say that when he'd hang up the phone. And I said, well, I love you, Pop. And he says, well, thanks, kid. I said, well, you can say it, too. Nice depression and he did and now every time we talk he says it so, you know You know, they talk about masculinity and whatnot And my dad is one of those tough tough guys with a soft edge and that's that's how he brought me up You know to be a protector I hate bullies I was bullied really badly as a kid and I I really hated it. And now I find myself sometimes throwing myself into situations to protect people that are being, you know, violated and hurt. And I just can't walk away from it. But that's my dad. My dad was that, you know, just a great guy. But anyway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You still listen to, therefore, see, you probably want to rush right to the towers, but you went." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so anyway, I did, I listened to him, I listened to my wife, I went to the firehouse, and it was really strange, it was eerie, because the computer dispatch system was still beeping, which meant it sent a dispatch, and the truck received it, Ladder 114, my truck company received it, and they left, they were gone. So there was this beautiful old building built in the 1880s with a spiral staircase, just a narrow old brick garage, and it was empty. And I just heard the computer chirping. And I looked down on a ticket, and it said, Ladder 114 respond, the Vessien West World Trade Center aircraft into building. And I said, Oh God, I just hope they're not on a death ride. Cause this, this now was two towers and, uh, they were burning, they were free burning. And, and I knew this was really, really bad. And, uh, I got on the phone and I call commands right away. I called the 40th battalion and, uh, you know, chiefs, chiefs aid just said, look, you know, get 12 guys, sign them in to the journal. There's a journal of daily events. Every, everything that takes place in the firehouse 24 seven has to be logged. And I logged myself as coming in, reporting for duty. And as the guys came in, I logged them in. And then one of our lieutenants took command. We grabbed up a bunch of gear, and they basically told us, get 12 guys, get a city bus, and get down to the battery tunnel. They said it would probably be closed. There was threats it was going to be blown up to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. So we did, we got a city bus, we flagged it down and the bus driver said, I'm sorry, I can't give you the bus, I will drive you. And he took us and we stopped at engine 201, which is just about a quarter mile down the road from us. That's our affiliated engine company. And my childhood best friend here, Johnny Shard was, he was assigned there and he was on shift. And then they went through the tunnel. And we picked up those guys, the off-duty guys from 201, and then we kept going down 4th Avenue, and we picked up 239's crew. And then we hightailed it down the bridge, and there was a lot of traffic. There was a lot of people fleeing, coming over the bridge in waves, so it affected the inbound. What was the mood like? It was somber because just prior to getting on the bus, the first tower went down. So we figured that, I heard 114, my lieutenant Dennis Oberg, I heard him on the radio and he He said, 114 Manhattan, we're on your frequency. What's, you know, what do you need us? And they said, Tally Ho, which is our nickname, Tally Ho, respond in the Vessian West to the command post and receive your orders. And I heard Dennis say, Tally Ho, 10-4. And Dennis, Little while after that, they were proceeding to go into, I believe it was, I get this mixed up and I'm sorry, I should know this by the back of my hand, but sometimes it's just such a haze. The second tower hit was the first one to go down and they were heading over to go in it and all of a sudden he looked up and he saw like what he thought to be disintegration and he turned the guys around he said run, just run, don't look back, don't look up, go. They sprinted as fast as they could and they dove under a fire truck and the guys that were sprinting behind him 40 feet away were underneath a pile that was 10 stories deep. They were killed. And just further into that pile was his rookie son, who, Dennis' rookie son, who was working in Ladder 105, which was my first command on the department. I worked for, proudly served for three years. And just beside them was my childhood best friend, John Shard, and his crew from 201. And they were all killed. And the strange irony to that is that Dennis's son, Dennis Jr. was working underneath the, under the wing of a senior man, as we say. A senior man is a guy with a lot of experience and he'll watch over you, make sure you don't veer off, like I veer off a lot in talking, and you don't veer off and you get yourself hurt. In the morning of the 1993 bombing, Henry Miller was my senior man. And I was the young guy under his wing. And he protected me. And toward the end of the day, looked around and he said, kid, it's a bad day. And he said, they didn't do it right. They blew it up in the middle. If they did it in a corner, they would have dropped this building half mile down at Canal Street. But don't kid yourself, they'll be back and they'll do it and they'll do it right next time. And it's so strange and so prophetic because He was there with him, he died with Dennis, he knew it. And like 1994, we had a training manual with a picture of the towers, with a target. And it said, not a matter of if, but a matter of when be prepared. And it's haunting, it was like people knew, right? And we didn't stop it. And so we got off the bus, but just prior to that coming over the bridges, the second tower was gone now. And we're just destroyed because we're like, our guys are there, they're all in there. Now we feeling like cowards because we got there late. And initially we're thinking there's 500 guys that are gone because it was a 10th alarm assignment, which means 50, 60 fire trucks, five to six guys per, you know, you're looking at, At least, no, it was even more, 10th alarm plus multiple alarms on top of it. It was a dispatch, basically equivalent of five to 600 firefighters. We figured, oh, they're all in there, they're all gone. All the police officers, Port Authority police, NYPD police, court officers just up the street from the courts, transit cops from the train tunnels, like just, you know, we knew everybody was going and now they're gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what you saw, what were we looking at? What did it look like? So you saw rubble and then you knew that many, that 105 and 201, many of those guys are in the, they're dead." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What did you see? Yeah, and we thought 114 was in there too. We didn't realize at that point, we didn't even realize that they had gotten under that truck. We thought they were all gone. But yeah, it looked like a movie scene with just end of the earth destruction. It's just massive piles of intertwined steel, what was left of the steel. And, you know, there was no cement, it was all just dust. And it was just a burning pile of dust and concrete and plastic. And it was just, everything was just pulverized. And it was truly hard to mentally compute that. It was like, what? And then there was just fighter jets, a couple of fighter jets just circling. And you just heard the flying by over your head. I mean, you'd literally see the guy banking a turn around the Brooklyn Bridge and just coming back. And I'm like, holy shoot, we're under attack. And we couldn't really get concrete intel as to what exactly. We knew planes, but then we kept hearing there was Multiple devices, there was devices in a battery tunnel and there was devices on a George Washington Bridge and in the subways and it was just, it was just chaos. It was, I mean, we kept it together, obviously, because that's kind of we tried. That's what we do. But the. the just constant barrage of different reports it was like holy shoot and then as we were being deployed it was a little frustrating but they were trying to take command and send us in groups now because they realized we have to start searching this there's you could hear the the alarms on the on the scott air mask the packs we wear to go into the building it has a motion alarm and if you stop moving for 30 seconds it just sounds like this whining you know this screaming bell, and it just keeps going and going. And you could hear multiple units of those going off, and you're like, wait a minute, there's guys with those, where are they? And it's emanating from underneath the pile. And it was just surreal, and truly like, Like a war zone, you know, I mean I was a soldier in reserves and I never saw combat and I would never claim that I did but You know, we trained we trained for a lot of situations and we trained in you know, real-life Atmospheres and whatnot and this was just beyond that by leaps and bounds. It was it was bizarre Did you see the towers collapse as we were coming over the bridge the first one? I we were, as we were deploying from the firehouse, we had a television on and I saw it go down. And it just, it's just like, and, and, you know, we were so involved in, in getting gear together and getting, okay, you know, team set up and okay, you're going to be with these two guys and these, you know. And I just yelled, I said, guys, and they're looking at me. I dropped to my knees and I started praying. They're like, what, what the hell's wrong? I said, I couldn't even say, it's like, I said, 114, they're in there. And they're like, what? I said, the tower's gone. And all you saw on the TV was just this pile of dust. I guess because they didn't see it going down. I probably thought I truly lost it. And then then the realization came was like, wow, the tower's down. So now it was like, wow, this is really on. So we just took off and got that boss." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so if you thought many of the guys on 114 were dead, If you thought that, did you think you're going to die? I mean, if you're rushing into the towards the rubble." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I, as crazy as it sounds, I never thought that the other tower would go down. I said, okay, maybe some freak chance that one went down, but nah, the other one's not gonna go. Like, they're built so strong. You know, I was in those towers so many times, and I mean, I ate dinner up in the top four restaurant windows on the world, and I'm saying, nah, there's no way. Like, how the hell did this one happen? But I was having a hard time mentally processing that the building was gone. And believe me, if you don't have fear in this industry and police, fire, military, then you're kidding yourself or you're a danger to everyone. I don't care who it is, as tough as they are, this and that. Everybody has a certain level of fear with doing this. And I don't care how long you do it, there's always that chance of something going bad. Everyone who does it has that certain amount of fear. But at that point, it was such a feeling of disbelief, that fear wasn't even kicking in. It was just like, what the hell just happened? And I honestly think it was almost like a shock, and it just stayed that whole day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the building is, before it collapses, is burning. It's just burning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, upper floors, you know, up in the 78th, up to the 80s. It's you know, there's the way that the cut was from the plane. It wasn't just straight across it was you know from the 78th and you know on up to maybe the 86th and you know, then the jet fuel had come down and was burning down and there was people on the on the ground who were doused with Jet fuel that was already burning and they were lit on fire on the ground. It was it was just insane how?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Vast the destruction path was a firefighter What are you supposed to do with that scale of fire?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the first bosses in the first chiefs were just gonna do their best to get a as we get hose lines, what our whole theory is, or our tactics is, to get water at the fire, at the base of the fire, and get the truck company, which is the ladder company, they're the guys who break the doors down, put ladders up, this and that, to get them to where the life is most expected and get them out of there. So I think the chief's tactics at that point was, let me get multiple engine companies, let me get four, five, six hose lines fighting this fire, this massive fire, And let me get 15, 20 truck companies up there just yoking people out of there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but you got to go up the stair. Everything's not working." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Guys had to walk up 80, 80, 90, 100 flights of stairs. And there's audio of, of Officers and firefighters speaking to each other on a radio channels. And unfortunately at that point in time, we had very, very bad communication system. We've been fighting for years to get radios that work properly. We couldn't because it was a lot of money. We fought for years to get the full bunker firefighting suits, which is the pants and the coat. We used to have just coats and these roll-up rubber boots and guys were burning to death. And we had to fight. And unfortunately, we lost three guys in one vicious, vicious fire in 1994. And then they finally said, enough's enough. Give these guys the gear. So it's a strange phenomenon in the first responder world and in the military world. It's really one of the most important things that takes place in society, the most pertinent organizations, and we can't get the funding we need. It's crazy. They'll throw money at every nonsensical thing, but when it comes to gear, equipment, protective equipment, trucks, this..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Couldn't get it Just all the ways you could take care of people I saw in since 9-11 the wars in the Middle East have cost America over six trillion dollars and The amount of that money that was spent on The soldiers in this case the first responders is minimal compared to it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's nothing they they they like stay closed down and I believe it's either seven or eight. In May of 2002, they closed down nine firehouses in New York City for budget reasons. We hadn't even finished cleaning up the World Trade Center site, and they slashed the budget and still to this day have not reopened those firehouses. There's a million more people now living in New York City than there were in 2001. And the fire protection is way less than it was. And it's a sin. It's really a sin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you a difficult question? So there's this famous photograph of a falling man. So many people had to decide when they're above the fire or in the fire whether to jump out of the building or to burn to death. What do you make of that decision? What do you make of that situation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those people who jumped, those were acts of sheer desperation. I've been in fires and just minor burns, but minor, you know, in situation, but I've been trapped, caught somewhat, ended up in a burn center for some, nothing serious at all. But like, but I, for those brief seconds, half a minute was, thank God, if I didn't have my fire gear on, I would have been burned to a very, very horrible level. Those people were burning alive. and they had the choice of either to stay there and burn alive or to launch themselves. And some of them, I don't fault them, but they had a few folks, they won't show it anymore because they say, I don't know why, it offends some people, but they had a couple folks that took umbrellas and they took garbage bags because they thought that it would slow down their acceleration rate to the ground and maybe, just maybe they wouldn't be killed. And that's, to me, a true sense of desperation for humanity to say, I'm going to die either way, but let me take my chance. And I don't know the exact number of those folks who did that, but our first member of the fire department killed, Firefighter Daniel Sir from Engine 216, was struck by a jumper. And one of my dear friends was ordered to help take him. And they knew he was passed away because he was hit by a flying missile. I mean, 120 miles an hour, a body lands on you. Those two bodies are now crushed. And they were ordered to take that firefighter and bring him across the street to Engine 10, Ladder 10. It was literally a firehouse. less than 100 yards from the facade of the Trade Center, from the Trade Center complex. They were literally right there. And there was plane parts that went into that firehouse, landed into the front doors, onto the roof, but the building itself was not destroyed. So it was used as a mini command center for quite a while. So my friend was ordered to take Daniel's body in respect and bring it over to this firehouse and give it some semblance of dignity and lay it out on one of the bunk room, the bunks we have in the bunk house and just cover it with a sheet and put a sign, please firefighter killed, do not disturb. And then we'll get to him later because obviously this operation is going to go on for days. And my friend who's such a great, great, wonderful guy is so still to this day, filled with guilt because if they weren't taking his body out with the respect and dignity that they did, it took a while because, you know, it's just, it's a tough situation. His ladder company was coming over the bridge. There's a famous picture of ladder 118. You see this tractor trailer fire truck. It's the one where the guy in the back also drives. and it's a zoomed out shot, and you see the Brooklyn Bridge, and you see only the fire truck in the middle, and you see the two burning towers in the distance. Well, his engine company was just ahead of them on the bridge, and the only reason that engine company lived is their initial duty assignment was to take that firefighter and bring his body over. It's like the military, we don't leave anyone behind. These are our guys. As some guys say, it's all about the guy right next to you, and nothing else really matters. When that guy right next to you goes down, it stops. You get that guy to safety, or if he's dead, you get him out. So in that timeframe, That saved his life. But that's a heavy burden to carry now for the rest of your life, because you say, if I wasn't helping my dead friend, I'm dead." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What did it look like at Ground Zero? What did it feel like? What did it smell like? You said there was a sense that it was almost like a war zone, but can you paint a picture of how much dust is in the air? How hot is it? How many people are there? And again, how did it feel like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was just, It was a scene of control chaos. Control because there was a semblance of command and we were just trying to do our jobs. But it was such a frantic pace because we're now digging frantically knowing that there's life underneath this pile." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this is throughout the afternoon of that evening?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, this was nonstop, you know, just nonstop really for days. For my particular crew, we literally kept going. We initially were dispatched over towards number seven, had just gone down. And we were searching the post office that was there. There was reports of people trapped. And we painstakingly searched every single inch of that building to make sure no one was left in there. And then we were deployed to the pile. And the pile is sort of ambiguous because it was just such a vast, vast pile. I mean, it went for city blocks. And we were assisting in the retrieval of two Port Authority police officers, were lucky enough to survive, but they were trapped. They were deep down into a crevasse and they had to be physically dug out and extricated. So there was a couple hundred, few hundred guys involved in that process of bringing in equipment, jaws of life, airbags to lift steel, to cut pieces of steel. It was just a huge operation. And we were back toward the logistics end of it, shuttling in gear and bringing in stretchers, bringing in oxygen, whatever was needed. And you were trying to climb over this jagged pile of debris. It wasn't like you just walked 100 feet on a street with something. You were trying to climb over this I-beam and then down into this hole and then back up that hole. I mean, just to run one piece of equipment took a half an hour to get 100 feet, 200 feet. Mind you, some of these pieces of equipment are 100 pounds. Generator for a Hurst tools is massive motor on a frame. Unstable ground. Unstable ground. Just horrible conditions. Fires were still burning aside you, beneath you. And at one point, I kind of veered off to the side and I was with this other fireman from my father's old ladder company, 172. It was strange, because we were down quite a bit down, like 70 feet down into this ravine of debris. And he says, brother, what do you hear? And at the time, it was like dust. It was like sand just falling down a pile. And it was hissing from gas pipes and water pipes. And I said, I hear the gas lines. I hear the sand. I hear the concrete. He goes, no, no, what else do you hear? And just the side of us was a lady's pocketbook and a high heel shoe and someone's sneaker with nobody with it. And I said, I don't know, I don't hear anything. He says, me neither. He goes, no one's coming out of here. And I said, no, no, no, there's gotta be someone coming out of here. I mean, there's thousands of people in here and they're coming out. He says, brother, we would hear him calling for help, they're gone. And I still at that point thought there was a chance. And after about the fourth day, they just said, this is a recovery now. There's no more life. There's no more chance. And on our first night, we went full tilt till my crew, my specific crew of 12, 15 guys. And four in the morning, we just couldn't breathe anymore. We couldn't see. We were caked just with, it was like if you took flour and just kept dousing yourself. And the lieutenant just said, look, guys, we're gonna go back, we're gonna get some medical aid, and then we'll come back in a few hours. And we took a city bus back through the battery tunnel. And unbeknownst to us, that morning, this off-duty firefighter, Steven Siller from Squad Company One, he raced down there with his pickup. And he couldn't go any further because the traffic was stopped up because they had a report of a bomb. So everything was held up. And he grabbed his fire gear and he put it on. Stuff weighs about 60 pounds. And he ran through the tunnel. Two and a half miles, got to the end of the tunnel. Fire truck was coming in from the other way. He hopped on the back, got him up to West Street, jumped off, tried to look for his company, where they were. and he was never seen again. He just ran through the tunnel. Ran through the tunnel, and he got there to help his team, right? It's all about the team, it's all about the guy right next to you. And he's the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Stephen. His brother Frank decided in his name, in perpetuity, he's got a fund that now builds a home for every Gold Star family, for every seriously battle-wounded warrior. for every seriously wounded first responder or killed in the line of duty first responder. If they had a home, they're paid a mortgage. If they didn't have a home, they give them a home. And especially if it's a severely battle-wounded, they give them a smart home because these poor guys come home with no limbs. So the beauty of Stephen and his selfless act was that he's now helped thousands and thousands of people. I mean, Tunnel to Towers is incredible. That's part of our mission is to bring awareness to these great people at Tunnel to Towers, what they do. They've raised $250 million to help to help protect the protectors, to rescue the rescuers, in a what's become, unfortunately, a somewhat ungrateful society. But they will not forget these great guys." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you tell Stephen's story, he's one of the 20 people that you talk about in the new Iron Labs 20 for 20 podcast series. If you could just linger on his story a little longer. What does that tell you about the human spirit? That this guy, you know, the tunnel couldn't drive through, so he just puts on that heavy pack and runs. What do you make of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That shows the depth of a man's soul. He didn't have to do that. He could have turned around and went home to his family and nobody would have shamed him. but he's one of those beautiful, brave people that take a job that really doesn't pay a lot of money and you become a cop or a firefighter or a nurse or an EMT or a medic or soldier or marine, airman, sailor. When you take these jobs, you don't do it for Fanfare, you definitely don't do it for money. I mean, those 13 brave souls we lost a week or two ago in Afghanistan, they're brand new soldiers and marines. They make $22,000 an hour, but they don't work 40 hours a week. They work 80, they work 90 hours a week. So they're making about six bucks an hour. And you know what? They sign up. and firefighters and cops and medics and EMTs, nurses, emergency room doctors, they don't really make a lot of money. I mean, they're starting salary right now for a New York cop. I was a New York cop for two years first. I made 12.25 an hour back in 1989 to get shot at during the crack wars. If you made $11 an hour with a family of four, you were entitled to welfare back then. So I was just above the welfare level, risking my life. And these are the guys that are getting ripped up now, right? And look, I won't get into any politics, but like, that says something about someone's soul, that they're willing to take a job like that and get, now, get zero respect. So a guy like Steven, what that shows is the depth of that man's soul and courage and determination. It's hard to be selfless in this world anymore, but I still know a lot of selfless people that just put on equipment every day, bulletproof vests, fire bunker gear, stethoscopes, you know, flak jackets, military helmets, and they go in and they do it smiling. That young Marine that passed last week, she was photographed and quoted as saying, I have my dream job as she was holding a little Afghani baby. And she was dead a few days later. She was so thrilled to be making $7 an hour helping people, right? Isn't that huge? That to me says, that's a true sign of character right there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's important for our society to elevate those people as heroes. Let me ask you about firefighting. What do you think it means to be a great firefighter and a great man, a great human being in a situation like you were in in 9-11?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, that's kind of a broad term. Like some, you know, you can go to different firehouses and they might have a different definition of what they consider a great firefighter. But I think in the industry as a whole, if you're willing to put everyone else before you, especially your team, you know, as we say, there ain't no I in team, right? It's T-E-A-M, and there's no I in there. It's all about those guys and girls next to you. If you can do that, that makes you pretty great. You put everything else second and you just run in and you run in with that team for strangers. You know, I've had the honor of, I spent almost 25 years of my adult life serving humanity, my country, my former city. And the people I worked with were giants. And I don't mean that in height, I mean, but I mean that in spirit and in soul. I saw some of the most heroic selfless acts. And then I saw some of the behind the scenes that were so impressive. You know, we'd go to a fire around Christmas and a family would lose everything. And even when I was a cop, same thing, you come back either to the police precinct or the firehouse or the EMS station. And someone would put together a collection and say, hey guys, hey Lex, 50 bucks a man, the Smiths down the street just lost everything, we're gonna go get some presents for the kids and some turkeys. And not one of those guys questioned that. And they were making 12, 25 an hour and they still came up with 50 bucks for that family. But see, that's the stuff the press won't show you, right? They don't wanna show that humanity, that soft edge. See, when you're a warrior, you need to have this rough shield, this rough exterior, because if you don't, you die. But a true great firefighter or responder or a cop or military personnel, They have that rough exterior, but that soft underbelly, that heart, right? And that's, to me, the true great ones. Some of them, they just have a hard time doing that. There's no shame in showing your soft side." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you got your dad to say, I love you back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, that was huge, man. That took me 22 years. So you were a firefighter for 21, almost 22 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why did you become a firefighter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, my dad, I mean, I was five years old and I went to his firehouse and there was these, you know, at the time they looked like giants to me with mustaches and they, you know, and the trucks, trucks smelled like smoke and the gear smelled like smoke and the tires and, you know, the diesel fuel and I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. And then they bring you in the kitchen and they stuff you with ice cream and cake and everything, you know, and then I go home to my mom, you know, shaking with a, Sugar corn she's mad at my dad. But yeah, it was just oh I was like, I gotta do this it was like They were like a baseball team in a garage with a truck and these big tools and big coats and helmets and they were just laughing and having fun and I'm like, yeah, man, I'm doing this and I knew I Was obsessed with it. I mean I was so pissed the fireman's test came out when I was 14 and I couldn't take it You had to be 18 And it was done, the test was graded and whatever. So my dad, now there's a copy circulating because it's old now. And he goes, yeah, this is what you're in for. And I took it. And I did it like it was real. And I got a 99. I was so pissed. I said, I want to get hired. He goes, you can't, you're 14. But I just wanted to do it so bad. And I just wanted to help people. I just wanted to be like my dad, you know, like he come home smiling as tired as he was. And he fought fires in the sixties and seventies when the city was burning. And he's still as exhausted as he was, he'd still be smiling. I wanted to smile at work. And I used to, I got paid to laugh and joke. I got paid to cry sometimes, but man, we laughed a lot. We really, it was the, the chop breaking. It's just, it's just unending and it's great." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you don't mind, can you tell me, you were really kind enough to give me one of these shirts with 114. Can you tell me the story of 114, of Tally Ho?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wear proudly, I served eight years in that command and I didn't finish my career there. I passed the lieutenant's test and once you do, you have to leave. The story behind Tally Ho is, Back in World War II, there was this gentleman named Bad Jack Carroll. Jack was an airborne ranger, and my father-in-law was also on the department, and he knew Jack. And Jack came home, Jack jumped Normandy, and stormed up through the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, and he came back. greatest generation as they all did, and they got jobs, they went right to work, and they were treated better back then, vets, right? And he got on the New York City Fire Department and he got assigned a lot of 114. And they first got radios back then. And when Jack, he would drive the truck. You're up there with the officer, either the lieutenant or captain. So if the boss is off the truck, you operate the radio for them as the driver. So when they'd call them and they'd say, you know, Loudoun 114, respond to 52nd Street, 3rd Avenue, structure fire. You're supposed to get back and say, Loudoun 114, 10-4. But he refused to do that. He'd say, Loudoun 114, tally-ho. because that's what they'd yell when they'd jump out the plane. So all these years later, it's stuck. And it's a little bit of a bragging right, but out of 350 engine and truck companies in the whole New York City fire department, we're pretty much the only one that's called by their nickname on the radio, not their number. So it tweaks some guys off in other places, you know, they may have a few, but it's just, yeah, it's a great, great heritage and we're really proud. And, you know, the Shamrock was, you know, he was Irish, and a lot of the guys back then were Irish immigrants from the area, from the neighborhood, and they would actually take the fire truck to church on Sunday and park out front, and one guy would stay in it to hear the radio in case they got a call. So, yeah, that's the proud history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you said that if I wear this around New York, I might get in a little bit of... You might get a guy from the Bronx, go, hey, Tyler, we'll screw you, you know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But, I mean, it's all that good rivalry, you know? We like to... You know, we like to kid each other back and forth. You know, guys from Manhattan will say, yeah, you guys in Brooklyn, yeah, short buildings, tall stories. And we're like, yeah, but you guys in Manhattan, tall buildings, no stories. You know, it's all that jocular ball breaking. It's good stuff, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask, I guess, a difficult question. If we just step back in the events of 9-11, on the side of the people that flew into the towers, what do you take away from that day about the nature, about human nature, about good and evil? How did that change your view of the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I witnessed evil firsthand. I remember Later on well into that night when we were trying to help get those police officers out. I remember looking up at the building Century 21 the store runs along the east side of the towers, and it was still there. And, you know, the debris had come down right almost to the edge. Century 21 is this old storied department store in New York City. And the sign was there, and it was still lit up. Like, some of the neon was broken, but I think some of it was actually still lit up. And I just looked around, and I was like, this is a war zone. Like, we're at war. And, you know, we knew we were attacked. We heard the fighter planes. You know, back then it wasn't the extensive communication network and we had cell phones, but they were the old school flip phones and there was no news on them. And so, plus we didn't have a signal down there anyway. I couldn't reach my family for like 12, 13 hours. And my dad had deployed down to the ferry terminal to retrieve bodies. He was retired, but he still went. And they deployed him to go be basically the morgue transport guys. They expected to be sending hundreds and thousands of bodies across on the ferry. And they set up these tractor trailers as a mobile morgue. And that never happened because there were no bodies to take. They were all buried. So I saw evil firsthand. I don't know how someone can inflict such revenge or a vengeful act in the name of anything, in the name of a religion, in the name of a cause, in the name, like what the hell, you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were you ever able to make sense of that, why men are able to commit such acts of terror in the days and the years after?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, Lex, I haven't. You know, my mom's from Ireland and I still have a lot of family there and, you know, my great uncles, One of them was dragged out and shot. He lived, but just based on a rumor that he was in the IRA. And I wasn't happy to see what happened to my mom's people, because they were victimized and brutalized by England at that time. But blowing up bombs and killing innocents in the name of that, it doesn't make it right. I couldn't justify something like that. I can see, you know, I was a cop, I was a soldier, and you never want to take life in those jobs, but sometimes you have to. But you don't do it with a vengeance. You don't do it with a thirst. You do it because it's necessary for survival. When you do it out of a bloodlust, out of a thirst, out of a cause, that's evil. There's something wrong with you. I have no, I respect life to the highest level. I mean, I'm very, life is sacred to me. It's precious. It's beyond, it's not a commodity. It's a gift. But to take life just so randomly, so there's something way wrong with that person. And maybe I'm a conflicted soul, but I would have no problem seeing someone like that put to death because they do not deserve life. There's many children around this world that are being taught to hate someone who's different than them just because the person who's allegedly teaching them says so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't understand it. Well, that starts with just having a basic respect and appreciation of other human beings. And that starts with empathy. And one of the reasons I love this country, while joking that I'm Russian, maybe you could say the same as you being Irish, you're actually truly an American. And that's why I consider myself very much an American. And one of the reasons I love this country is it serves as a beacon. I still believe it serves as a beacon of hope and that empathy and love for the rest of the world that like hate, is not going to get you far. That love will get you a lot farther. And I still think, you know, sometimes it's easy to see the press, mainstream media, you can see social networks, because you can make so much money on division. sometimes because it makes so much money, it's easy to think like we're really divided. I honestly don't think we are. It's just like the very surface level thing we see on Twitter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's that you're 100% right. There's people out there that are maximizing off this whole division, right? They want us divided. They want people angry because it sells. You know, a lot of these people that are in charge of Certain organizations, well, they all seem to have nice cars and nice houses and nice vacations. And they're constantly trying to convince everybody that we hate each other. To me, I'll use a fireman analogy, right? It's like a little campfire. And if you just let the embers flutter, they'll go out. But if you take a little cup of gasoline with those embers, it'll blow right up in your face. And that's what a lot of these politicians and a lot of these media folks are doing, because there's something in it for them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I think it's possible to defeat them with great leaders, with great spokespeople, with great human beings having a voice. One of the powerful things of the internet is more and more people have a voice. And I ultimately believe, certainly in America, but in the world, the good people outnumber the assholes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I agree. And you know, there's days when I think the assholes are, you know, overrunning us. But you know what? I think what the downfall of the world is, is ego and arrogance, and people that think they're better than that other guy. My parents raised me to be this way. My mom is such a sweet, gentle soul. She's an immigrant, she came here at 16 years old. She helps everybody but herself, right? She's just one of those people. She's sick, she's got Parkinson's, you'd never know it, and she's still flying around to her condo complex helping everybody, because that's what she does. She loves to help people. But she's been in their shoes. She's been poor. She's sick. Her husband was sick She's she's had all sorts of suffering and loss in her life. My granddad died When my mom was 10, and she was one of 10 children that survived out of 14 She knows hard times but she so appreciates the good times and the goodness of this country and You know, the fire department and the police department, military, it taught me a lot about empathy and trying to really feel for someone and put yourself in their situation. I remember years back, I was a much younger fireman, probably five years on the job, and I was sent down to the next firehouse over to fill in. We would get sent around randomly when they needed an extra guy. And someone came banging on the firehouse door and in the tenement apartment next door, they said there was an older woman that was unconscious. So we dispatched ourselves and we ran over with the medical kit. And it was an elderly woman laying there on the bed, and she was obviously not breathing. She was obviously in cardiac arrest. And an older gentleman that was holding her hand, just inconsolably crying. And it turned out it was her husband, and they were married for 65 years. Normally, we would just respectfully ask the family members to just step aside and let us do our work. And I realized that he wouldn't leave her side. So I kind of gave the crew a wink, and they were doing CPR and what they had to, and I just let him keep holding her hand. And I said, sir, could you just come over just a little bit so we can work? And I held his hand as he held hers, and I said, sir, do you have faith? And he did. And I said, would you like to pray with me for your wife? And he said, I would like to. So we said the Lord's Prayer, and I just asked God to protect her and bless her. I think he realized that she didn't have a chance, but we still gave her that chance and we got her in the ambulance. And maybe it was wrong to try to make it look like we could save her, but you can't really not try. But the one beautiful moment was he thanked me and he was almost okay with it at that point. Like he wasn't as upset, he wasn't as distraught. because I tried to just humanize that situation of what we were trying to do. We were trying to do our best, but we also tried to be compassionate to his sadness. And it just, I walked away just feeling so good, even though it was a tragic situation and she did pass that, you know, he came by to, you know, thank us days later and just heartbreaking. But you know, there's just, it's just happens many, many times throughout the country every day. people get that opportunity as a responder to be that last bridge to the family and the loved one. And you only get that opportunity once sometimes and you really have to, to me, it's like your moment to shine. You know, you could just be very, very dismissive and very rude, or you could be, compassionate and just show, hey, I have a mom, I have a grandma, you know, and just in your mind pretend that that's who you're working on and that's who you're with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that moment of compassion, that moment of empathy, even if it's brief, can be the thing that saves the person from suffering, make the difference between suffering and overcoming in the face of tragedy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, like I felt that even though obviously his loss was still huge. It just made it a little more bearable and You know tried to just take his grief down to a lower level and I made me feel Just feel really good about doing it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a powerful way to see the job of a first responder Of course, you have to deal with certain aspects of the tragedy, but it's to provide somebody with that moment of compassion" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and you know, I made it a little habit because sometimes with faith it's a little bit of a tricky subject. So every time I had someone who died, which unfortunately was many, many times, I would just touch their hand and just say a little quick prayer and just say, look, you know, I hope you're moving on to a better place. I hope if you did have faith that it's strong as you depart. And if you didn't have faith, I hope maybe at your last moment that you found some and you just found some closure. So that was just my little my little ritual. I think I just, you know, I felt it was important that that that person, even though they were a stranger, just had someone there just sort of hoping for the best for them in their last moments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned cancer. You had a rare leukemia due to all the work that you did at Ground Zero. Can you maybe talk to the experience of just breathing through those days and what that was like being unable to breathe, being overwhelmed by all of the dust in the air?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, the first day especially, we didn't have equipment, we didn't have breathing apparatus, and we were handed little 69 cent hardware store dust masks, those little thin paint masks that would just get Sweated up and fit, you know sticking to your face within 30 seconds. So you would you just they were useless and what what you wound up feeling like was that you you swallowed a box of razor blades because there was glass and it was cement and it was just so caustic and I Remember that night, you know when we went back just to get some medical relief for the few hours We were walking up the hill to the firehouse because they dropped us off like a block of away down at Engine 201's and quarters. And one of the older firemen, as we're walking up the block, we're all struggling, we're all having a hard time breathing. And just, I mean, I felt like I was dying, literally. It was pretty bad. And just remember the one guy going, now we're all dead. And I said, no, no, we made it, we made it. He goes, no, you don't get it, kid. He said, we just breathed in poison after poison for hours. And then that went into days and then went into months. He says, we're all dead men. This is going to take us all. And I thought he was crazy. And then now years later, like starting in 03, 04, guys just started coming down with these really rare and advanced cancers. It just stopped being a coincidence with the number of guys, and they were young. One of the first guys, John McNamara, he was 33 or 34, and he came down with colon cancer, and it took him quickly. He was in 2005. I kind of said to friends and family, I said, I feel like I'm running through a minefield, and I wonder when I'm going to step on my mine, because everybody's going to get sick. And I wasn't feeling well from 2008 on. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I just wasn't right. And in 2011, I failed my medical, my bloods came back horrifically wrong, and they pulled me off the truck, but they strung me out for a month. The doctors in the fire department, one of them said my spleen was engorged because I was probably drinking myself to death like, as he said, most of the guys did after 9-11, which was pretty wrong of him and stereotypical, you know, just to stereotype and to categorize. The guy couldn't have cared less. He just, he was so crude and nasty. And then my one doctor who was my doctor on the outside, my blood pressure was 240 over 140. My spleen was about to rupture. She didn't even show up for my appointment. And I went down, I passed out. The paramedics responded. She got into an argument with a paramedic because for big ego and basically telling him there wasn't really anything wrong. And he's looking at my paperwork going, this guy's got leukemia. He overrode her, he raced me out of there, down to Brooklyn Methodist. And the doctor, the charge physician, the ER physician, he says, you're not leaving, you're in a bad way. And I said, what is it? He said, I need a little while to figure it out. you probably have one of a few different types of leukemia. He said, I'll drill into your hip, take your marrow and find out. And he said, but in the meantime, we'll get the swelling on the spleen down, like some sort of rapid medicines and whatnot, because my spleen was about to rupture. I had no blood platelets left, which is your clotter. So I basically would have bled to death. I found out from my team of doctors that I had about 48 hours to live. And that really set me off. I was infuriated because I was telling them for a long time that I was sick." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The doctors failed you. The few doctors in the beginning failed you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I felt very betrayed. And other guys had died. And I had it out with that one doctor. I basically told her she was fired from my case and she's a pretty politically in charge person and I didn't care. I jeopardized my job for it because it was my life and I got the sense that it didn't really matter to her. She didn't have any empathy, as you say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was, exactly. So why for her, why for a few others was there not a, a special care, a special compassion for, first of all, all humans, but human beings in your position, especially a firefighter, a first responder." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, Alex, I think what it is in the department, their title is just to get us back to duty as quickly as possible when we are either injured or sick, because what happens then is your replacement is now in overtime. So you're out being paid on medical leave, but then they need to replace your spot and then that costs more money. So I think it's just behooves them to get as many personnel back. And especially during the summertime, you know, they look at it like, oh, maybe you want a few extra days off to, you know, go to the beach. And this one doctor, he tipped his hand back as if I was drinking an alcohol beverage. He says, hey, busy summer? Because I asked him to look at my spleen, which was sticking out of my abdomen like a football. And I said, excuse me, sir. I said, how dare you assume that I'm abusing alcohol? Because alcohol abuse sometimes will present itself as the spleen is engorged and having an issue. So he automatically just assumed that that was my situation. wouldn't even give me an exam. And I was horrified. I was so angry. I mean, I wanted to punch this guy out. And I literally was screaming at him. And an executive officer came in to defuse it and sent me to another doctor. And when I showed her my paperwork, she was horrified. She was like, what did he say? And she said, OK, go go to your regular doctor tomorrow, was one of the department doctors. And and she just it was just an indifference. It was like, I don't know, I was shocked at the lack of compassion. But you know what? That being said, I'm past it. You know, life moves on. the team of doctors, I ended up with a Methodist and my subsequent oncologist, Dr. Peter Mencel, world-class, just incredible human being. My Dr. Pete is just, I love him. I love him like a friend, like a big brother, like a father, like a My primary oncology care nurse Mike Nunez was just incredible human being and and he knew I was frightened because I had to get two and a half years of chemo Compressed into seven days or I was dead these massive bags of chemo that never stopped and and I the minute they went into your body, you felt like you were burning to death from the inside out. And when Mike came in to hook me up, he said, look, I have to wear a hazmat suit. This stuff is so caustic that if it drips, it'll burn whatever it touches. And I was like, but Mike, you're going to put that in my body. How the hell is it not going to kill me? He says, no, no, this is exactly what it's supposed to do. Trust me. So when he prepped the IV tube to get it flowing, it spilled onto the tube and the tube started to smoke and burn. And I said, no effing way, Mike, you're not putting that in me, no way, no way. And he goes, listen, let me get another one, let me start it over. And here he is wearing a hazmat suit looking at me, and I'm going, this is insane. And he goes, he looked at me, he took my hand, and he says, Nels, if you don't take it, you're dead. He says, you got those three kids. I'm sorry. I have no other option. You're dead. And I said, all right, Mike. OK. And he hooked me up. And you know what? It was like, you know, if you do drink alcohol and you have like a shot or want, you know, strong type spirit and you start feeling that burn. Well, the minute he hit me in the vein, it just started going up my arm, burning, and then up my shoulder, across my neck. into my head, across the rest of my body, within a minute down to my feet, and I was writhing in pain for seven days. And I was praying to die. I was the seventh rescuer in six months to come down with the rarest leukemia there is. There's only 500 cases in all of North America a year. And seven of us came down in six months. Two guys died during treatment. Seven responders, police, fire. Two guys died in the first couple days of the treatment because it's so vicious your liver or your heart your kidneys something will fail And I was praying and I was praying but I wanted to die. I was in so much pain and I wouldn't take a painkiller because I know people with some issues and I just didn't want to go there and Finally on the last day I gave I gave in I said, please I can't do this anymore I was literally like jumping out of my skin and they gave me something and but it had burned out my mind, it burned out my body, I couldn't hear, I could barely see, it was vicious. But it worked. And my nurses especially, they just, they were so dedicated and devoted. And I was not an easy patient, because I was in a lot of pain. It was bad. And it drove my friends, my family crazy. It was just, it wasn't good. But on that first night, I had a quick vision of all these people that I loved that were dead, that died. A lot of them in the trade center. And I saw Johnny, I saw friends I grew up with. The last one was my mother-in-law who had passed six months before and she died of, she was in a coma, she had a stroke. She had a horrible, horrible last six months of life and it wasn't fair because she was so religious, she went to church every day, devout Catholic woman. And all of a sudden I see her and she's smiling. And we used to talk a lot. It's the Irish thing, like the gab, the gift of gab. And she used to call me her boyfriend because we'd sit and talk for hours and talk about books and about movies and about food. I loved her. She's my friend. And she'd say, you know, my boyfriend's here. And all of a sudden she's smiling and she goes, hi, my boyfriend. And I says, dad, dad, what are you doing? She goes, he's not ready. He doesn't want you. You got to go back. You got things to do. And I'm like, no, no, no. It hurts so much. Please, please take me. And she left. She goes, no, no, not yet. I'll see you. And she just faded away. And one of my doctors on my team, she was, She had a problem with religion, and that's okay, I understand that. I'm not a preacher, I have a faith, but I don't preach it, I don't push it, I just live and let live. So she sent in this shrink to see me, and I was messed up from the chemo, but I knew what I was seeing, I knew what I was saying. And he was a Jewish gentleman. He was a rabbi also in a synagogue. And I actually had responded in that district, and he knew 114 would run into Borough Park. Oh yeah, I see Tally Ho, they come down the street. And he asked me to tell him the story, and I did. And he started laughing, and he scared me now. I said, Doc, am I really crazy? He said, no, no. He said, I believe you, my friend. We share the same God. He goes, we work in the same corporation but in different departments. And he says, you did see your mother-in-law. He says, your faith is that strong. He said, I've had many patients express the same sentiments. He said, so I want you to listen to her and fight and be strong. And he said, so what else do you want to talk about? And I said, well, I don't know, Doc, am I that messed up? He goes, no, no. He goes, they're paying me for an hour. It only took 20 minutes. So we watched the Yankee game together. And that's the last. But it was just, again, it showed the human condition. Here's these two men of two totally different faiths. And yet, we shared that bond of faith, and he had empathy, and he had sympathy, and he saw me in many other patients. So he just didn't assume, and he gave me a fair shake, and I will always be grateful to him for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Through any of this, the pain you had to go through with the leukemia, but also the days of 9-11 after, did your faith get challenged?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, Lexi, it was strange. There was times I was so angry, you know, there's that range of emotions, the anger, the denial, the depression, the this, the that. And this is the weirdest thing. It was mostly, I knew my career was over. And they retired me out of the job. I got sick in August, and that October, they told me I was out. And by the time I was processed and used up my leaves and whatever you want to say it was, I was officially retired in January of 02. And it was less than six months. And I'm there walking my dog one day, my rescued greyhound, who I miss. She was such a soul. God, she lived to be almost 13, Katie. And we're walking in the snow, and I got the call, I was retired, and I looked at her, and I'm like, Katie, what am I gonna do? And she just looked up and said, we're gonna go on a lot more walks. And I was so sad, and I was so sad, and I was so angry, because I lost my priesthood. I loved helping people, I really, like I said, I would have done it for free. I would never tell Mayor Bloomberg that, right? He's all about the buck, right? But honestly, I would have been a New York City fireman, I would have paid them to do it. I wasn't allowed anymore. That's it. You have over 20 years and you have cancer. Back when my dad got sick, they'd let you hang around for 10, 12 years in an office, but not now. Now it's all about the bottom line. But I was more depressed about losing a job than almost losing my life, as crazy as that sounds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's more than a job. I mean, it's a way of life. It's also as your family, your father, you're carrying torture, your father's." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, my friend, I love my friends. I love, we work 24 hour shifts together. You cook, you clean, you break each other's chops relentlessly. I mean, it was, I love those guys so much. I mean, I hope that my kids and anyone that I know and care about, I hope they can experience the bond of that brotherhood that I experienced in my life. It was so, God, I would give anything to have it back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just, yeah. Can I ask you about New York? Unfortunately, I've never lived in New York. I visit. I've always wanted to live there for a bit. Obviously, it's a very different experience to have really lived in New York for many, many years. But there's a few friends of mine that are from, they got similar accent as yours. that are a little bit saddened. Perhaps it's temporary, but perhaps not. They don't seem to think so of what New York has become, especially with COVID. It's losing some of the spirit of New York. Do you have that sense? Do you have a hope for the city that has been so defining to what is America?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, my heart's broken. I had moved to New Jersey many years ago, but I still have a close attachment to New York. My parents are still there, many, many family members, and I've since now moved to Tennessee. I needed to go somewhere quiet. I wanted to heal my fractured soul, and I'm in the middle of a beautiful farming rural area in middle Tennessee. They probably call me a sellout back in New York for leaving, but it's not the same city and it's sad. I'll refrain from the politics and the finger pointing. but it's a mess compared to what it was. And, you know, I did Broadway theater security for many years and I started to see it slide, like with stuff that was happening, like, you know, public urination and defecation and just like, you know, tourists don't wanna see that, right? And I had an unfortunate incident two years ago. I was jumped by four teenagers coming off the subway and they were pissed off because I was wearing an American flag hat and I, I don't know, I'm not really sure why, but it left me, I got out of it, okay, but I was taken back. They were literally videoing it and the kid was just throwing shadow punches at my face wanting to beat me up and I finally looked him in the eyes and I was like, oh boy, I'm a little too old for this. body's a little broken down for chemo. And I finally just said, all right, all right. I just, I had enough. I wanted to go home. Just worked a 17 hour shift as a stage hand. And I was so taken back. I was so insulted. I'm saying, you know, I spent my life protecting this city and now I'm getting attacked like for nothing. And I just, I gave up and I, maybe I should have given it a little more time, but it's, you know, I don't know, it's turned into an angry place. It's turned into, I think there's a lot of people that aren't getting the resources they need in a sense. There's a lot of mental illness. There's a lot of homelessness. There's a lot of violent people just roaming around the streets and it's not good. It's not safe. And tourists are not going to come back. even just leading up to the COVID, I had some tourists saying to me, I won't be back. And now I can only imagine that it's just gotten exponentially worse. But I hope there's a chance it'll swing back because it is, it's the gateway to the world. I mean, my grandfather came from Denmark, he landed in Ellis Island in the 20s. American success story, 25 bucks in his pocket, didn't speak the language. had a sponsor family in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and he made it. He ended up dying owning a bakery at one point and then an apartment building, and he did pretty well for himself for an immigrant who was poor. And my mom, my Irish mother, landed in the same neighborhood, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 16 years old. Worked as a cashier 50, 60 hours a week in a supermarket and finished school at night. Married my father, the fireman, and you know, live the American dream. And it was all from New York. And my father's mom was from Irish immigrants. And they all landed in Ellis Island. Well, my mom didn't, because it was closed at that point. But there's people breaking down the doors to come to this country, right? There's no one breaking down the doors to leave. And this is a problem I have with people that aren't grateful for being here. And this, again, it's not political. It's just straight down the middle fastball. If you don't like it here, I'll show you the door. I'll get you the plane ticket. I mean, would you want to live back in Russia compared to here? Would you? You might because of family ties. But I mean, if you had no ties to Russia, or would you want to go to China right now and possibly end up in a labor camp or right? There's people busting down the doors to get to this place. It's not perfect. It's got its flaws. It's got its blemishes, you know. But it's a damn great place. It's the best country in the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and some of it, so first of all, I have hope for New York. I think that culture is very difficult to kill. I think it will persevere. And I think ultimately the same story with New York as with the rest of the United States, it has to do with leaders. And I'm always hopeful that great leaders will emerge. I agree. And the kind of leadership we see now and the kind of conversations we have now, I think has to do with prosperity and comfort. And in the face of hardship, I think great leaders will emerge. And I just think ultimately in the long arc of history- Well, leaders shouldn't become rich." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They shouldn't become rich in the process, right? You shouldn't go into political office as an alleged lunchbox kind of guy and then come out eating at the best steakhouse in the world. I mean, that's the problem with politics, right? My Irish grandmother, God rest her, used to say, oh, those politicians, they're all like dirty diapers. They're full of shit and they stink. And it's true. I don't give a crap what party they're in. Yeah, greed and power. We had to beg these guys, beg them. for federal legislation to cover our medical bills, right? There's a gentleman, John Feal, from the Feel Good Foundation. This guy is a lion of a man, a general, but with a soft, big, great heart. And John is a former construction worker who came to the 9-11 site the day after. He was one of those guys cutting the steel with torches and craning it out of there, one of those hardhats that just, that never got, the credit and the praise that we did as responders. And I don't mean that as a knock to responders, right? I mean, we lost 37 Port Authority police officers, 23 NYPD officers, about a dozen emergency medical technicians and paramedics. three court officers from New York State courts, and two federal agents, and 343 New York City firefighters. We lost a ton of responders. But the recovery workers, thankfully, weren't killed in that process, but there's hundreds of them now who are dead from illnesses, because they came down to recover our people, and the civilians, and the poor lost souls that were killed at work that day. And John, literally almost lost his foot in a construction accident at the site. An 8,000 pound I-beam tore off half of his foot, ended up with massive sepsis, six months in the hospital, hundreds of thousand dollars in medical bills, and then no one wanted to pay him. So here's a guy who's gonna lose his house, lose his life, lose everything. And now the never forget, it started quick, right? And he went on a mission, formed his Feel Good Foundation. His last name is Feel, F-E-A-L, Feel Good Foundation. And this man literally went to Washington, D.C. with his army, as he called it. And I was honored and blessed to be with him only a couple times. I wish I had dedicated some more time to it. And what it was with John is he set out on a mission to get, and initially what he did is he got funding to take care of responders who were in that limbo, who couldn't get their medical bills paid, who couldn't make their mortgages, who couldn't make their car payments, who couldn't make their childcare payments. And John just took it upon his own to get donations and take care of you while you were suffering, right? I got a call when I got out of the hospital. You okay, you need anything? I said, who is this? It's John Feel. I said, aren't you that constructor? Yeah, you need anything? I'm pretty good right now, so I appreciate it. Phone ring again a few weeks later, hey, Sean Field, you need anything? I'm like, this guy's incredible. But there's people who needed stuff, and he was getting it done. And he, with his army, had to chase these politicians through the halls of Congress to get funding to cover the medical bills. I was getting sued for $125,000 for my month stay in a cancer ward. I couldn't believe it. I said, well, wait a minute, I have insurance. They're like, oh no, no, this is terrorism related. We don't cover that. So usually then workers comp will cover your on-duty injury or illness. Oh no, no, no. Leukemia is not covered under that. We don't cover that. So then the ping pong game starts and I'm literally have people showing up, taking pictures of my kids in front of the house. And I went and grabbed the guy one day by the collar. I said, who the hell are you? Sir, I'm a private investigator. We're putting a lien on this property due to a nonpayment of a bill. I said, okay, I understand. Do your job. Let me bring my kids inside. Take all the pictures you want. Don't step on my front lawn. And I went in the house. I closed my room, my door, my room, and I cried. I said, I can't believe this. I spent my entire adult life trying to help people. give of myself, and I can't even get my medical bill paid. Well, John Field got my medical bill paid. He finally got these politicians with his team, firefighter Ray Pfeiffer, who has since died, fought with terminal cancer for nine years in a wheelchair. literally at the end, came out of hospice to go finalize getting us this coverage. Detective Luis Alvarez, who testified days before he died in front of Congress, and a bunch of other guys that were really, really sick, and we had to shame these people into signing on. And luckily we had Jon Stewart come on and literally just hound these guys and shame them and embarrass them. And what it all stemmed from was in 2006, the first death that was determined to be linked to 9-11, there was others, but the first one that was officially linked was a New York City police detective, who initially, the city said he died of advanced lung disease. His lungs were protruding out of his body. And he was on painkillers, and it was so bad at the end that the doctors said, just grind him up, snort him, drink it, whatever you need to do to get instant relief. So when they found the talcum from the pill lining in his lungs, they said, oh no, this is opiate abuse. He didn't die of lung disease. So they said, and the mayor was quoted as saying, he is not a hero. Well, shame on you, Mr. Mayor. He was a hero. And his father, who was a retired police chief, married up with the Feel Good Foundation and Jon Stewart and Ray Pfeiffer, detective Alvarez, and they got us all covered. But it took so long, like it was so heartbreaking. These people who were lining up three deep, politicians three deep to catch a picture with a responder so they can tweet, hashtag never forget and hashtag look at me and hey, how am I doing? All that bull crap. But they didn't know. They were nowhere to be freaking found. I literally witnessed them hiding in cloak rooms, running down hallways away from us, those freaking cowards. That's cowardice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I just linger on the Jon Stewart thing the comedian actor Jon Stewart? His testimony before Congress over the benefits for 9-11 first responders. I mean, there's a lot of important human beings in this story, but he has a big voice and he spoke from the heart. What do you make of that testimony?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, it was heartfelt. I mean, he spoke, look, I mean, John was a, you know, a polarizing guy, right? There's certain things like over the years he was cutting edge and I might not have agreed with all of his, you know, well, you know, some stuff, some not, right? You know, like we all, but I'll tell you, I found him as funny. I enjoyed his humor. I would love the two of you to have a conversation. No, but again, I love a guy where you can have a difference in opinions. That's the beautiful thing about the firehouse kitchen. I mean, it could get raucous, and now, I don't know, it's a little different situation, but back in the day, some funny stuff. But yeah, John literally just took his talents. You would think he was speaking from the heart of a fireman, or a cop, or a soldier, or a Marine, you know, someone who was there. But I think he, especially got to know Ray so well. And Ray had this stack of mass cards from the funeral cards they give out. It looks like a larger business card that's laminated. And Ray had a stack of them he would carry around. I think it was close to a hundred cards. And John saw it and he said, what's that? He says, these are my cards. He said, for what? He says, for my brother's funerals. He was like, oh my God, you've been to that many funerals? He goes, yeah, this is just the ones I made. And John, I think, was just stunned. And John actually had that stack of cards after Ray passed and said, look, look at these. There's gonna be more of these cards. We have one guy a week or girl, one responder or recovery worker or someone who actually resided down there. There's more than one a week dying. It's one a day dying on average. And on average, two people are diagnosed with a 9-11 cancer or disease. Right now, the worst part is there's autoimmune diseases flying off the graph and they're not covered under the legislation. By the grace of God, my cancer's covered. If my cancer comes back, I mean, I'm in remission. It's technically incurable, but I've been blessed. I'm staying ahead of this stuff going on 10 years. But if it comes back with a vengeance tomorrow and takes me, At least my wife will get my pension and be able to live her life without fear. But my friends who are suffering from these advanced autoimmunes, their wives get nothing. Their pension dies with them. And we're hoping that John and his army can shame these politicians once again to have the kindness and decency to cover these autoimmunes. They're throwing a lot of money around at a lot of things lately. this is one that they want. And these are lives in the balance who really need it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And John had this strong line, they did their jobs, do yours. Talking to the politicians. Yeah. And it's a strong wake up call that it's not about the Twitter or the social media or all that kind of stuff. You have a job to do and you have to, It's that compassion implemented in the form of money, of helping people that were there for you when you needed help." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we had a guy, I mean, I might get audited out of this one, I hope not, but we had a congressman from out West, I won't say where, but he prided himself on saying he was a retired cop. Busy cop, 22 years. He said no on the legislation. I witnessed a cop who was dying get out of his wheelchair and said, hey brother, I got a half a million dollars in medical bills, and I'm a short timer. I got a few months to live. Who the F is gonna pay him? Do the right thing. You say you're a cop, you show me you're a cop, and you sign that paper. And the guy started tearing up, the congressman, and he signed it. But he had to be freaking shamed. And you know what he said? Well, this doesn't really confront me. This is pork as far as my district's concerned. He goes, oh yeah? Do you know there's 10 guys from your district who came across the country to help us that are also dying? He had no idea. He had no idea. And that's the sad part about it, Lex. It's a failure in leadership. I mean, I think some people would vote for Mickey Mouse, just because if he ran. I mean, no offense against Mickey Mouse. I like him. He's a good guy, right? I mean, but like- Allegedly. Allegedly, supposedly. We don't know. Yeah, yeah. But seriously, I look at some of the leadership sometimes and go, we're in trouble." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also you lose, I think the way government is structured is people who are senators or people who are in Congress, they start playing a game between each other and they lose track of the connection to the people, to the basic humanity. Oh, you forget even when you think of yourself as a cop, you forget what are like the cops and the other people servicing the community, actually experiencing all the troubles they're going through and how they can actually be helped because you lose touch that because you're not actually living, you're not talking to them, you're not living among them. And I mean, that's a natural part of the system. But I think that's why character and great leadership is important is you say, You leave the game of Congress and you go back to the people. I mean, that's what the country, you know, it's like the George Washington ideal is you're not playing a game of power. You ultimately see yourself as somebody who's servicing this country service in the community. And that requires talking to the people in their time of hardship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you have some people, some people serving in congressional districts don't even live in that district. I mean, so how are they going to empathize? They're not even driving through there on a daily basis. And again, when anything becomes lucrative from a financial standpoint, it blurries people's vision. You have to take the potential of becoming rich out of Politics. Politics is public service. Police and fire and EMS are public service. But cops and firemen and medics don't walk out of their career with gazillion dollar contracts with this company and that company on that board of directors and this board of directors, they walk out with a pension and that's it. And you have to wonder the intentions of people getting into politics. Are they truly going into to help the human condition or are they trying to help their own damn condition with their wallet and their pocketbook? And I try to lean toward the latter lately, you know with what I'm seeing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Some of them are the good ones and that's our job as a society to elevate the good ones. That's it. And that has to do with the ideals that we elevate. There are a number of conspiracy theories around the events of 9-11. Do any of these hold true to you or do they just frustrate you, even anger you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've been asked this by a few different people in my life. This is my take on it, right? You're a man of science and a man of education, so you- Allegedly. Allegedly, but yes, but you're a very, very intelligent man. And what I believe took place is this. Structural steel will fail a sustained temperature of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. And I don't know exactly how long that would have to be sustained, but that's the temp, right? Diesel fuel, kerosene fuel, kerosene-based jet fuel, which was the ignition there, burns at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. So that continued burning of that diesel, that jet fuel, but kerosene-based, you know, it's all kind of similar, exceeded the temperature needed for that steel in the structural members of the trade center to fail. In my heart of hearts, I would hate to ever think that somebody affiliated with our government, with some sort of agenda, would perpetrate that crime and that tragic just destruction of humanity and property for some other form of gain. Those planes rammed into those buildings at 450 miles an hour. They were loaded with thousands and thousands of gallons of jet fuel. Number seven trade center had the backup for the emergency management system for the city. And it was an emergency generator in that complex, which had a 25,000 gallon tank of diesel fuel to continually run for weeks to keep the 911 system, the backup system going in the case of a catastrophic event. Well, that tank and seven heated up. from the fire that was already going on from the aircraft debris coming into the building. So once that diesel became ignited in seven, now you had enough temperature to fail that steel in that building. So I would like to truly believe what I've learned from the minimal fire science knowledge I have from my career. that it was just a matter of it burned too long, it burned too hot, and it failed. I mean, if you look at the way it came down, it came down as it was designed to in the God forbid event that it was to collapse. It came down pancaking upon itself. If it had failed horizontally and just sprayed out side to side, those buildings would have dropped for a quarter, half a mile up to Canal Street." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But, you know, Lexi and the destruction that could have resulted." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It could have been so much worse. I mean, you would have taken out every building, you know, from that point all the way up. But in my heart, I'd like to just believe that it was just a fire that burned too long and too hot. You know, these these planes cause structural damage upon impact in both buildings. And it was just a matter of time. And then you think about it, you add all the plastics, all the carpeting, all of the stuff that was burning on those floors, you add that to that fire load." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it just had enough to collapse it. And you were in building seven for part of that day." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was just after it came down as well. We were aside it and we weren't in it or next to it when it actually did come down, but moments after we were there. And again, I would like to believe that it was just that that fuel was going and physics took its course and it failed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So physics and science aside, it's both I would like to believe and it's hard to imagine that anybody would be so evil as to orchestrate parts of this from within the United States government. That's very difficult for me to imagine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know what though, Lex, there's people, and I won't elaborate, I won't get into it, any controversial subjects or what have you, there's some people that don't have any problem at all perpetrating any level of evil. People like you and I who have hearts and we have depth of soul, we couldn't imagine it. But there's other people, wouldn't even be a second thought. I mean, I've seen some horrific incidents in my career that I go home shaking my head at night going, human beings are just, they're not wired right. You know, I mean, I look at animals, I love animals, I love dogs especially, right? And I see this dog park when I train to fly airplanes now and it's something I wanted to do. And there's a dog park across from the airport and there's 60 dogs and there's bones flying up in the air and chew toys and sticks and they're running around having the time of their life, right? And they're all getting along. And they're not hurting each other. They're not violating each other. They're not canceling each other. And I'm going, we really need to learn from these dogs. Right? And I just, yeah. I mean, sometimes it sounds crazy, but I think they're a better species than people. Unless they're rabid, they don't hurt on purpose. They don't cut you off in traffic and throw you the middle finger. They just don't do these acts of humanity that sometimes are so vicious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you think these conspiracy theories, of which there's a lot, take hold? Why do you think so many people believe some version of different conspiracy theories around 9-11?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, like many things in life, it leaves me a little conflicted. I have to say this, I am at the point now, I don't know who to believe anymore. So I could see that lending a hand to someone who's already a doubter going, oh yeah, look, exactly, that's what they're doing, right? I mean, look at this whole virus, who do you believe? Where did it come from? And if you plant that seed, It's like that little campfire we were talking about earlier, right? You just toss a little gas into those embers. You got a fire now. I also think there's a lot of people with a hell of a lot of extra time on their hands, right? And they're really bored. And the two are combined. Alex, yeah, man. Look, I was a three job Charlie, right? One guy used to say to me, anything but home. I go, no, I got deadlines, responsibilities. That's what it comes down to is like, I mean, look, we all we all have our hobbies and things we like and, you know, little nuances. And that's what makes us special. We're unique. Every person is a unique being. But. I also think some people just just they want to cling to something like we all want to feel accepted and belong to something. So. All of a sudden you grew up with these people and you all believe this fervently like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they did it, they took it down, they took it down. And now you start going, yeah. And I think what happens is when you're in company of people and you start telling each other the same thing often, you freaking believe it. I mean, if you keep telling me I got a gray head of hair, I'm gonna go, you know what, I do. But no, I don't. I mean, right, I got that waving bye-bye do. But like, But I think when you start hearing something often, you start believing it. But I'm not going to doubt their intelligence. I'm not going to doubt their intentions, but I just don't see it as being plausible. It would be too big of an operation to successfully happen. I mean, look, there's other things that I won't say it on the interview there, but I have my doubts with certain things that... I mean, conspiracy theories take hold for a reason, because some of them are true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, yeah. The hard thing is just to know which ones is the problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's hard when you don't have facts, right? You don't know who to trust. Sometimes when you don't have facts, when you don't have figures, and you don't have science, it's hard to take someone's word on it. You know, I had a conversation with someone a while back, right, and the guy's like a just dedicated atheist, and he thinks I'm an idiot for believing in God. And he's like, yo, you're one of those jerks who believes in creation. And I said, well, I do. Well, what about the Big Bang Theory? He's going on this diatribe about the science and the gases and the chemistry. And I'm going, dude, I barely got through high school chemistry. Slow down. And he went on a tangent. And all of a sudden, I stopped. I went, who created the gas and the molecules and the stuff you're talking about and the collisions? And he was furious and stormed off. And I got him. And again, I had no facts. I had no figure. He didn't either. But I stumped him. But sometimes when you can't show something, people need to see something tangible. They need to see it in their hand to believe it. And that's the real hard thing about faith. I see it in action. People restore my faith. And then I say to myself, well, there can't be that many dummies in this world if there's so many billions of us believing in this higher power, this higher, right? I mean, and you said earlier, you believe most people are good, and I do too. the bad outshine the good because the bad get the press, right? If it bleeds, it leads. That's just, you know, like, think about it. How many more damn zombie apocalypse movies can we make, right? I didn't even know there was that many zombies. And it just seems like every other show is just guys bashing each other's heads in with bats with nails in it. And it's like, after a while, it's like, all right, gosh, you gotta get a new boogeyman here, you know? But seriously," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But meanwhile, human civilization is getting better and better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We just like making Hollywood movies that just- No, we're getting better and better, but we're treating each other worse and worse. You would think with all this technology and all the knowledge and all the, it's like, what the hell is going on sometimes? I really wanna see the good. And I think maybe the level of bad that we're seeing was always existent. It's just now everything is instantaneous news and flashes and tweets and this and this. Like, you know," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, with the technology we have, it's also come to the light. So you get to see all these fights. I think that's step one of dealing with the problem is revealing it in its full, beautiful light. Oh, yeah. How much of a bickering species we are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "50 years ago, a guy like me who loves to talk, how the hell would I have gotten an opportunity to have someone listen to me? I love this. This is amazing. But you didn't have that arena. You didn't have all these things my grandfather Nels. God rest him. He died in 1979 I mean that dude didn't even want to have a checking account He would walk to each store each the phone company the gas company this company and and pay the bill in person He didn't trust the bank And it was like, now, ATMs, this, that he would be overwhelmed. He'd be just like, I mean, I love my dad, but to watch him on his iPad is comical, right? He calls my niece's boyfriend, who's a tech guy, Matt, Matt, if you listen, he's the greatest. He'll have this poor guy on the phone for like hours. Like, the second you'll walk in to see my father, my kids, hey, do me a favor, straighten out this bed. And it's comical because I'm looking at my dad, I'm going, he was born, when Hitler started World War II. Yeah, wow. And I'm going, he's seen all of that. Oh, my wife's grandmother was born in 1900 in Czechoslovakia, and she died in 1998. And I'm going, holy, the stuff she saw in the span of her life, it's just incredible. But what troubles me sometimes is with all of these advances and all these devices, this is what I say to my kids. Look up from the phone and look up. Right, because we don't talk anymore. I saw a girl, literally, I shouldn't say girl, guy, whatever. I saw a person literally just about walk into an open manhole cover texting. And I'm going, that's scary. Because your awareness is gone. And I've been at restaurants with groups of people, and they're texting. They're texting each other, they're sitting on the other side of the table. the freaking thing down and have a conversation and that's the thing we've lost the art of conversation. You know, my wife, she has this running joke. She goes, oh, there's a lot going on up there. And I'm like, yeah, because I really am inquisitive. I'm excited about life. I love to meet people. I love to learn. And the only way you can do that is to have a conversation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The hilarious thing about this, so you're obviously very charismatic. You got great stories. You're a great human being. Thank you. And you're talking to a guy who spent most of his life behind a computer hiding from people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no. And I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we're like trying to bring" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I don't mean that as a rip but you know, I would never know that real I would never know that you're very engaging you're very like I would not know like you don't have any impediments to your socially skills you personally and and that's And again, I don't mean it as a knock to you and these young people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, no, but this is me trying to look up from the smartphone. It's having these conversations, talking to people. I think it's important. I mean, some of it could be, it's always hard to know. Some of it could be just you and I being old school. Because you grew up before the internet. Maybe there is joy and deep human connection to be discovered inside the smartphone. It doesn't seem that way. But because the smartphone is so new, maybe we just haven't figured out those things. Because there's a globalizing aspect. There's an opportunity for you to connect with people from across the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah in ways that I have cousins in Ireland and England. Yeah, I love it I get a FaceTime or what's happened and it's like holy crap that they're you know, three four thousand miles away And I'm having a conversation now. I used to send my grandma in Ireland a letter. I Adored her. She passed when I was 10 and no, I'm sorry. I was 11 and I'd send her a letter and and I'd wait, and I'd wait, and about two weeks later, this airmail letter would come back, and she'd call me Master Nils William Jorgensen, and I would be so excited, open up that letter. Handwritten, just like. Yeah, and then I'd write her another one, and I just couldn't wait for letters from Granny. And now it's like, that's kind of faded away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I still write letters by the way, handwritten." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do too. The way this all came about was I wrote a letter to someone to say thank you for cancer research. I'm blessed to be alive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good starting point for any story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm blessed to be alive. And my cancer was one that if I got it 15 years prior to 19, excuse me, 2011, I was a dead man. Right, 15, 20 years before there was no drug to treat, I was gone, going home to see him. So there's this wonderful gentleman that donated hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research, Mr. David Koch. He's since, God rest his soul, passed away. And he's a controversial guy, big time business titan. And, you know, the press was just brutalizing him one day over something to do with his politics. Now, I'm a union guy. I'm proudly served in unions, still in a union, you know, and he was not, you know, most business guys don't like unions, right? But, you know, most guys like me don't like working for $3 an hour, so we like our unions, right? And I reached out, crossed the table, so to speak, and I sent him a handwritten letter. to thank him, to say, we may not agree on everything, but I can't thank you enough. There's just this regular dude out there who is now living his life, watching his kids grow. Thanks to generous people like you who believe enough in cancer research, you've saved my life. Maybe I can't say his exact dollars, but people like him. And he reached back out and his secretary said, oh, he'd like to talk to you on the phone. I go, well, he's kind of a busy guy. He wants to talk to me, he's a billionaire. And he got on the phone. He was like the greatest guy in the world. invited me up to Sloan Kettering to dedicate a new cancer wing. It was like I was hanging out with my dad. And the sweetest man, just so kind, so empathy, because he was a cancer survivor. But now he's got the means to help people who've suffered his fate to a better place. And he was so real and it was so beautiful just to get to know, say, hey, you know what? This guy is a big time guy, but yet he's just a regular human like you and I. You know, I'm a guy who went to night college and I went to the army and I'm a blue collar kind of dude. And here's this guy who went to MIT like you and he's a wildly successful billionaire, a genius. But yet he can sit down and mix it up with me and know that I was truly grateful. And that to me was just like one of the coolest little, you know, relationships I've ever had, it wasn't like we were hanging out, having barbecues together. But like, you know, it was just I was so touched by his decency." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the basics of the like cancer reveals. You know, it's like fundamental to the human experience is trauma is tragedy. It's like money. Who gives a shit about money, education? All that is like weird new inventions. You know, life is short. You suffer with the various diseases. And that is a reminder that life is short and a reminder of the basic human connection. And that's why you can bridge that gap. Oh, yeah. All sparked by a handwritten letter, which just makes for a hell of a story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know what, Lex? This is the commonality between us. Guy with three jobs to a billionaire. Yeah, we both had that sense of a sledgehammer to the chest. Boom. You have cancer And you can't breathe for like 30 seconds And then when your heart's just about to kick off and you you take a breath and you go, I'm sorry. What'd you say doc? You have cancer and it don't matter what kind and One of my best buddies, Bobby, is going through right now, prostate, and I got way too many of my buddies with cancer, right? My buddy, Hugh, who became a vet since his first cancer, he was a fireman, he's now a veterinarian, right? He diagnosed me, actually, over the phone, by the way. When they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, well, Dr. Hugh, he nailed it to the T. And we talk. And the same thing that the dozen of my close friends that have cancer, the same thing we say is the fear. So Mr. Koch and I, we shared that same sledgehammer to the chest and that same fear. And it didn't matter how much money he had and how much I didn't. And you know, it's just like the morning of the Trade Center. There was big time brokers. who went to their demise, right? Working in these firms, God rest them. And there was dishwashers, excuse me, dishwashers up on the windows on the world restaurant, 107th floor, making five bucks an hour. And they died together, it didn't matter. It didn't matter if you had an armored car loaded with bills, you were done that day. And that's, I think, where people need to humanize each other. Just because you're driving around in a nice car and you got your own jet and you got this and you got that, Don't mean nothing. When you're going, when you're in that vulnerable spot, you could have more money than the U.S. Reserves, Federal Reserve, or you could have a welfare check. You're going. I learned that in a cancer ward. I had people in my ward that died on me. I was going around as a little bit of an ambassador because I was trying to, I was putting on a fake, I was putting on a fake like I got this, I got this. I was so scared. But when I got past that seven days of torture and the days leading up to it, I'd go around and try to comfort the other cancer patients. I had this one older African-American gentleman, he couldn't talk because he had such advanced throat cancer. He was my roommate for a little while, but then he got worse, so they had to put him by himself. And you couldn't understand what he was saying because his throat was just so radiated from the radiation. But if you put your ear down to him, you could make out what he was saying. And I'm not faulting the nurses for maybe not wanting to do that, right? They're busy. They got a ton going on. They can't spend, you know. So if he was in need, I'd put my ear down and I'd find out and I'd go get it for him. So when they moved me down the hall, They asked me to come down with my IV tower. He needed me. And I knew it was bad because he just, his look was gone. And I said, sir, what do you need? And he whispered, call my sister, I'm going. He had only one survivor in his whole life. And she was in North Carolina and he wanted her to know she couldn't get up. She was elderly. And I got the nurse, and I got on the phone, and I called his sister, and I said, ma'am, I explained who I was. And I said, he can't really verbalize too well right now, but he wants to say he loves you. And I put the phone down, and he told her he loved her, and he said, I'm going home. And that was it, and I hung the phone up, and I just said, ma'am, I'm so sorry. I said, you know, they'll notify you. And I stayed with him for a while, holding his hand, and then, you know, they wanted him to rest, and then I left, and then I got the tap an hour later, and they said, I'm sorry, he's gone. And then there was another girl, and she was a young girl from, One of the areas I work, young African American girl, where I used to respond, and I didn't know her, but I knew her neighborhood, and she had what I had, but they weren't sure which one. You know, leukemias, they're an elusive beast. There's 49 of them, right? And each one of them is like, got their own little nuances, own specific treatments, so if they don't know what you have, they don't know what to do for you. And she refused to let him drill into her hip to take the marrow because it's vicious, it hurts so much. It's like someone's boring into your hip with a wood drill and it's no joke. And they asked me to try to convince her to let her, let them do that or she was gonna die. Because if they couldn't figure it out, it was advancing quickly. So I talked to her and she said, I can't, I can't, I'm too scared. I said, but are you more scared to die? And she said, I am. I said, okay, I'll stay with you. I'll hold your hand. You squeeze it as hard as you want. I said, if you want, they'll give you like a towel or something to bite on, whatever. I said, but you get that pain out, but you need to do this so you can get saved. And she said, okay. And they came in and they, this huge thick needle, they just bore it into you. And she's screaming for her life and she's squeezing my fingers so hard and so hard. And I said, it's okay, hon, you keep going, you keep going, we got it. It's just 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds. They got it. They figured out her treatment and they got her onto her road to recovery. And then I spent a long time asking God, Why do I have cancer? But then I stopped and I went, wait a minute. I didn't die that day with my friends. Shame on me for asking them why I have cancer. I had 10 years after 9-11. It was such great years. And I got to watch my little girl being born when John never got to see his son. So it was all gravy after that. And I said, but now I know why I have my cancer. Because I can empathize with people who have it. And I can try to be their voice when they can't talk. Be their shield to try to take that pain. Because I can understand, I can walk their walk. And now I thank God for my cancer. because it's made me a better human being, it's made me, I'm not gonna lie, it brought a lot of anger for a while, and my family suffered it, but I really tried to go past that and heal, and part of living out in the country, it's very, very healing for the mind and the soul. I now thank God for the cancer because it humbled me. I didn't really need humbling. I wasn't an arrogant, puffed up type of person at all, but maybe I was running away at myself a little bit. I'm working on a TV show. I'm fine, man. At the time, I was 42. I got sick. Life was cruising, man. It was great. And then all of a sudden, it was like a blowout on the highway in the middle of the night, and you're just veering off towards the guardrail." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You remembered, you're reminded that you're mortal. And that's ultimately a connection to all the rest of us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, it's a good thing though, when you, you know, cause that's the problem I think, there's a lot of people running around and thinking they're immortal, right? You know, when you look at it Lex, right, you look at the heartache in a lot of segments of people. And anytime like someone that's got fame and wealth and success, and they die tragically, a lot of times it's from a substance abuse or just some horrible death. And I used to say to myself, how the hell would someone with that much money and that much fame and this freaking mansion, and I love cars, my son and I are just big car heads, and I'm like, this guy's got a collection of cars, And he overdosed because he was sad. And I'm going, how the frig are you sad? But then I stop and I go, okay, because maybe he doesn't have any idea who loves him. He's got a lot of people clinging on to him because of his success. And he just, he can't fill that void, you know? And then they fill the void with something destructive. And I'm not bashing people that have substance abuse problems or alcohol problems. I don't mean it that way. But what I mean is, It's just sad that their level of despair is so high. On the surface, they look like they just got everything going on. It's all great, right? They're still humans. Still got to deal with the same. Yeah, exactly. Because they want love, right? They want love. They want love. And they can't really find it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, first of all, that's true for all of us. I think deeply lonely and looking for love when we find it. That's what friendship is. That's absolutely. And then that's true for whether you're super rich or super poor. It's all the same journey." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My dad said all time, kid, you're going to end up working with hundreds of guys and, you know, you'll love a lot of them. But he says when you when it's all said and done and you're all like me and if you still got two or three of them that you talk to and you love. And I tell you what, I mean, I, I, I have thank the Lord more than two or three of them. And I have my six, I call it my six, six guys that are going to carry my coffin when I'm gone, right? Because I know this cancer is going to come back. I know it. Like we get multiples, right? My friend Yvette just got his second. My friend Mike's had five of them. The other Mike has two. But I'm, I wasn't ready to accept it in 2011. There was so much more to do, and it was so much, I was so scared. I'm like, wow, who's gonna take care of my kids? They were little, 9, 11, and 14, right? It's like, what the hell? I have two girls and a boy in between, and they're beautiful kids. They're such good, good children, adults now. My wife's a drill sergeant. She coughs, she don't mess. She's this big, but like- So you're the softie in the family? Well, yeah, no, you know, it's funny cuz it might my son said to me my son's 21 now. He's a good kid, you know and He says to me back when he's like 12 because dad I don't want you to be offended, but I'm really scared of mom. I'm not really that scared of you. And I cracked up because it's true. She's got to stand on a milk crate to reach him because she's tiny and he's tall. But it's true. But she was hard, but fair, but loved. This is the thing. You take any child anywhere from any background, if you love them, you nurture them, you teach them, and you guide them, you have a successful adult. And see, that's the problem in our society. It's not judgmental. I'm not judging anyone. But we need to try harder as parents, as siblings, as friends, but especially when we're blessed with a child that's like, You gotta put that child first. It's like being a military personal responder. It's not about you anymore. Now it's the team. So that little child is now the team and your wife or your significant other, it's not about you anymore. And see, that's the problem is people have a hard time not making it about them. You know, like now it's really weird. My kids are 19, 21, and 24, and they hardly wanna hang with me because they're busy in their life. We love each other. They're probably tired of hearing me go on and preach and whatever, but they're adults. We did pretty much the crux of what we had to do to put them into adulthood. And I look back and I go, wow, I wish I didn't work so much. But then I say, no, but it was okay. My wife stayed home. good lessons, just like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But ultimately, like you said, it's love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, it's the common, love is the most important ingredient on this earth, and that's the problem that's going on right now. Take politics out of it, take polarizing each other against each other, take all that crap out of it, and just airdrop a bunch of love. When I worked on Rescue Me, I loved those people so much. We had such a great crew and they worked so hard. You're a celebrity. No, no, no, not at all. If I was, it didn't really work out so good. I went on to being a stagehand. I'm not pretty. They don't want old guys waving bye-bye hairdos, but it was funny. The crew, we became really tight. We had like, shoot, like 80, 90 people on a set. And, you know, the first few episodes, everybody's trying to feel each other out because, you know, you work with different crews, different people. And this is going back, starting in 2004, so it was a different time. I love to hug people. Because to me, a hug is a true expression of love and caring. You may not know a person a long time, but you say, I care about you with a hug." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I do just a tiny tangent? This is in the midst of COVID when I was in Boston and it was, you know, masks, like triple masks. And when I went to see Joe here, when he's trying to convince me to move to Austin, Joe Rogan, And then the first time I see him, he's like, ah, you motherfucking big ass hug. Yeah. And it felt so good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "People probably looked horrified. They're hugging. It was just him. Oh, OK. But if you do it in public now, it's like it's like you committed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that expression, because I was so you forget." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How powerful that is. Oh, I got some of my buddies. I give them a huge hug and a big sloppy kiss on their cheek. And I mean, I love them. These are my brothers, you know. But on this set, I swear to God, it got to the point, and I'm not trying to whatever, but there was people that would come up to me for the daily hug. And I said, What are you doing? And they said, come on, bring it in. And I give him the hug. And they said, you don't understand. It just makes me feel so good. It makes me feel like you give a crap about me. So I really do. I said, but it touched my heart that people were seeking me out to get that hug to start the day. And I remember there was a guy in Manhattan. He was selling hugs for like 50 cents, and I think he got arrested, right? It was just before COVID. But like, I wouldn't sell them if- Yeah, you're giving them away for free. Well, now I got leukemia. I'd be kind of concerned to get into COVID. I mean, but like, I really think we need that. We need hugging booths, like in each city or each town. Like, because there's so many people that just want to know someone gives a shit about them. And that's the problem. It's like, Like, you know, that's what I love about small little towns like where I am now in Tennessee. And I'm not knocking New York, I'm not knocking big towns, but I guess it's easier to do in a smaller area because it's just not this massive humanity. But they'll stop and check on you like you're out in the road and you know Like i'm cutting and cleaning or whatever Occasionally i'll roll a lawnmower or a tractor into a ditch because i'm you know, not a farmer too good, but uh It's easier to drive a fire truck in new york, but they literally oh I was worried I haven't seen you and i'm like no no i'm, okay, but they literally like check on you They're worried about you and i'm going people hardly know me but yet they're so Caring and and that's the problem. That's what I love about my life I spent a lot of time as especially as a young boy and a lot of time in Ireland at my grandma's farm And my mom comes from this tiny, tiny little village. She's out in the middle of nowhere. And the childhood home she grew up in still, my aunt and uncle live in it still. I just love it there so much, because everyone waves. Tennessee's similar. They wave, driving by, and you're like, who the hell's that? And they just wave, you know? But my cousin will point it out. Ah, it's your third cousin, second removed by, you know, Johnny. Like, holy shoot, I'm related to everyone here, right? But like, everyone stops to say hello, and how are you? And I have a problem doing that because my wife goes, people think you're crazy. Why are you talking to everybody? I said, like, I'll literally stop someone and say, how's your day going? Like, I mean, I'm randomly on the sidewalk, then it looks a little nuts. But like, if I'm buying a cup of coffee." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that happens here in Austin all the time. That's why I love it here. You're on the sidewalk randomly. Yeah, no, it's just so nice. They'll say hi to me. I thought they recognized me or something. They don't give a shit who you are. They're just being nice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was on the road coming back, driving from my family up north down to Tennessee last week. I stopped in a bathroom and it was closed. The girl was cleaning it, whatever. She's working so hard, whatever. She goes, sir, if you go down the hall, there's a family restroom. Feel free to use it. She didn't have to do that. And I went down and I'm old. You need a bathroom, you need a bathroom, right? And I walked back out. And I said, ma'am, I said, I wanna thank you for being here today. I says, bathroom was immaculate. It was, it was like my army bathroom in the barracks. It was spotless, right? And I gave her $10. I said, I'd really like you to buy lunch with me today. I said, you really didn't have to do me that favor. And she goes, no, sir. I said, no, no. I said, I want. And it was like I gave her a million bucks. And I say to my wife now, I'm been praying to be a billionaire. She goes, that's a sin. I said, no, no, you don't understand, right? And she goes, oh, you're Mr. God. I said, no, no, no. I said, you're getting it wrong. I said, I'm praying to be like a multi-gazillionaire because I want to give all away. We used to have a sign in Ladder 114 until some other rival truck company stole it, right? Because that's what we do. You get sent to cover your district when you're out of fire and now your stuff's missing. And the old timers had a sign that says, I am content. Because if you got to ladder 114, that was considered such a great place, such a great assignment, such great guys. You had to be vetted to get there. You couldn't just randomly go. And it was a little exclusionary, but they wanted good guys. And I said to myself, that's where I am in life right now. I am content, but I'm restless because I want to really do a lot more good. It's like this podcast. I want to make sure that it's not forgotten. And I want to make sure that these charities that are really, really helping people get recognized. But I'd like to take it a step further, right? A friend of mine runs this foundation for young folks suffering mental illness and in crisis. It's for someone that we love dearly. And he's on a mission now to get therapy dogs for really, really mentally wounded warriors, right? There's a lot of these young soldiers are having a really hard time. And now they could be out a while. They may have come back in country two, three years ago. Now it's just starting to set in. And there's a waiting list for thousands of therapy dogs. And he said that they can't get enough of them quick enough. But he said, when you see the response, the way these, Veterans just light up when they get these dogs. It just changes their life radically, immediately. And I said, that's it. God, I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I wanna be a gazillionaire and I don't want, any picture, photo ops, this, that. I just want to go, there's a dog, there's a dog, there's a dog, there's a dog. And then I want to build veterans land for these vets who just need a nice clean place to live. So why don't we take these old army bases and Marine bases and Navy bases that have been shut down? They're just sitting there rotting away. I was in the army in Alabama. My old Fort McClellan is three quarters vacant. It's sitting there. They just did a documentary on it. It just looks like zombie land going back to zombies. So why don't we take that and renovate it and say to vets who are struggling, hey guys, you're going to live here. And they take the old, Army, the places where they had all the supplies, there's massive buildings where you could just retrofit it and make light manufacturing within two weeks. Give these guys jobs. There they live, there they work, they'll take care of it. Military guys, they teach you how to take care of stuff, right? How the hell in this country should any vet come back home and be homeless? Because now they have to dedicate their lives for six, seven, 10, 12 years, five, six deployments making $7.50 an hour. And then they spend seven years or they get a whopping $16 an hour, right? They walk out making 35 grand. And now no one gives them a job. No one gives them a chance. So very quickly they end up homeless by no fault of their own. And I don't know how that's even possible. The people in this country who've given the very most. And they're struggling, they're hurting. That's not fair. And my whole thing is, if I can have this dream of succeeding, so to speak, I wanna try to change it. So that's why I'm praying to be a billionaire. My Irish mother probably wouldn't agree either, because you're not supposed to, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I'm the same with you. The more money you have, the more you're able to help people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can put smiles on people's faces." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I have to ask you, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to terror attacks. Now, 20 years later, we still had a presence and abruptly withdrew all troops. What do you think about this war across the world that was sparked by this tragedy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Whenever you do something quickly without thinking it out, thinking it through and planning, it doesn't succeed. I understand that we needed to exit. I mean, how, how long are we going to stay over there? And we've lost over 7,000 of our young souls over there. For sometimes people, I don't know if they're grateful for it or not, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I don't know. So there's the other element, and sorry to interrupt. That's okay. One is the financial of $6 trillion, and that money is not just money, it's education, it's everything. It's money that could have gone towards, first of all, the first responders. but all the servicemen and women of all kinds throughout this country. And then there's the other side, which is the over 800,000 people who died in direct result of this conflict. So not just the American side of the troops, but just people who died, those humans. And those humans, many of them civilians, that's spreading hate, especially if you have leaders on the other side who frame the death of those civilians in certain ways that just spreads hate throughout the world. And so you think about this kind of 20 year saga and think, what are the ways that money could be spent better? And what was the way that we could have spread more love in the world versus hate? And you wonder. But then the other side, what is it? I'm not sure who says this line, but it's something like, we sleep at night because there's rough men out there ready to fight for you. There is some sense in which we have to make sure that there's strength coupled with the love, right? Otherwise, evil men, you know, will do evil onto the world. So it's a very difficult decision, but then you look at the final picture and say, what have we gotten for the $6 trillion? What have we gotten for this 20 years? The thousands of American soldiers who died, the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, it's a troubling subject for me. I'm a patriot. I love this country. I love it with my soul. And I was just about to head over to the first Iraqi war, and we went out for desert warfare training, and then it ended. I was, at that time, a combat medic assigned to an armored cav unit, so basically tanks driving around an armored personnel carrier, and when it gets hit, then you tend to that guy, try to save his life. I didn't wanna go. I may sound like a coward, I did not wanna go to war. I would have went willingly if I was sent to defend my country, I took my oath. I didn't join the military to kill, but if necessary, I would. I'll use the analogy of cancer. If you have a cancer and you're aware of its presence, and you don't annihilate those cells, and take them out quickly, it's gonna spread and it's going to kill you. Those evil bastards that flew those airplanes, one of those airplanes had a little three-year-old child in it from Ireland, where my mom's hometown. A friend of mine who's since died of a heart attack from 9-11 toxins, he found her shoe with human remains in it. and he thought someone was messing with us because we didn't know there was any kids in the building. He says, boss, there's a baby shoe and it looks like there's something in it, but there's no kids in the Trade Center. I went, the plane, it's a little girl's shoe. I can never get that shoe out of my mind. The evil bastards who perpetrated that needed to have missiles strike and rain down upon them and annihilate them like a cancer that they are. What just fascinates me is they'll show videos of these guys flying around and pick up trucks with 50 cows on the back. It's like, well, wait a minute. If a camera crew can get this footage, you think all these freaking drones and planes and radar assisted systems can't just go... goodnight, you're gone. So kill the cancer, kill the cells, get rid of it, get rid of it quickly, and go into remission." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like an undeniable show of force that sends a message that gets rid of most of the obvious centers of terrorism. And then, no, that's the, because we offline mentioned a discussion with Jaco, and maybe romanticize view and mentioning brothers in arms by diastrates and saying we're all brothers in arms, even when it's on the opposite side of fighting, which is more of a vision and growing up in the Soviet Union, you saw about World War II, that it's all just kids thrown into the kids sent to die in all sides. But then presenting that to Jocko, who was in Iraq, he did not see it as brothers in arms, which is there's his basic statement is there's evil people and some people don't deserve the compassion. You give them a few chances, they don't take the chances they have to go because they're spreading evil onto the world. And so it's not, we're not, All of us deserve a chance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, no, but but the difference, though, and believe me, I jockle. I am from a way, way minor league compared to him. Right. I mean, this man was right there in the firing line. But I can understand his analogy, because when you think about it, right, those young conscripts back in Germany and Russia and, you know, all the countries where they were being drafted, even our guys were being drafted and thrown into this. They were gallantly and bravely defending their country. Now, I'm sure the young Germans felt, well, hey, Hitler must be right. And the young Russians felt, hey, Stalin must be right. And the young Americans figured, hey, President Roosevelt must be right. So they were romantically, in a sense, defending the honor of their country, of their motherland. The difference between those, so they did have that commonality. If you and I were firing across each other from France to Germany or from Germany to Russia, we're just these two kids who got thrown into this. We didn't freaking ask for this, right? But the difference with Jocko's enemy is, No one was attacking their country over there, right? No one was taking their country over. Maybe in their mind, they didn't want people trying to build their government, this and that. I don't know. I don't know enough about the history there to really elaborate. We didn't attack them. And if a soldier attacks a soldier, that's an understood concept amongst warriors. But when a soldier attacks a civilian, now you're after a different beast. And you've written that beast off, if that makes any sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and then the enemy, I mean, as Jocko explains, the enemy in Iraq and just certain parts of the Middle East is essentially terrorists who are who don't value the lives of the civilians of their own country. They don't. And so it becomes like this weird guerrilla warfare slash game of violence that ultimately allows them to gain more power within their country, but they don't care if they're playing with civilian lives as pawns. If you have a child who dies, that's a civilian in their country, that could be seen as a positive for them because they can use that to leverage for more and more power within that country. So when you're fighting an enemy like that, that's a vicious, that's an evil enemy. Absolutely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like snakes are beautiful, but if you go pet a rattler, you're getting bit and you're getting dead, right? And that's with terrorists. You've got to cut the head of the snake off. And I feel, no, don't commit our guys to me there anymore. But what we need to do is go with tech warfare. If we have intel from drones or planes or whatever it is that so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so are driving down in that pickup or whatever, take it out. and do it again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And maybe they'll get the message after a while, oh shit, these guys aren't messing around. Instead of throwing wave after wave of our brave warriors, brave SEALs, brave special ops guys. And God bless them for what they do. I couldn't do it. I could not have done it. But they have to be now sitting home going, What the hell? My friends, my body, myself, they must feel so betrayed because they passionately went over there to cure a cancer, the cancer of terrorism. And now the cancer's back. And I hate to say it, but I think the cancer might start running wild. We need to change our tactics up. This is just my opinion. I can't see committing all of our guys to a continuous, Eternal war, but I think what we need to do is hit Surgically and hit hard at that cancer that is over there. We are never going to rebuild that region It's just it's it's thousands of years of traditions that you're not going to change. It's it's just some people are unchangeable because they don't want to And we have so many social problems here in our country, I think, that we need to fix first. You know, I heard this spoken in the past by many people. It's like the garden theory. You have your garden with a fence around it. You tend to your garden. There may be weeds on the outside of the fence, but as long as they're not inside your garden, your garden will prosper. And I know some people don't agree to that, America first, and the whole take care of our own, but it's like, how are we gonna take in more people now? And I have a human feeling for them. But it's almost like the lifeboat theory. How many people can we take into the lifeboat before the lifeboat itself sinks as the ship is going down? So if we can't take care of our own homeless vets and our own homeless people, it's just gonna become worse. And it doesn't make any sense. It's just like we need to just take a timeout and I think switch our tactics a little bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And invest into helping people here at home. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's very few as obvious of cases as the first responders in 9-11 that One of the things that I really want to kind of talk about, at least a little bit, we've already talked about the amazing project that you're doing, the 20 for 20 podcast that you host. We mentioned one story, Steven Siller. Is there other stories, or maybe you can speak out at a high level, what are you hoping to tell? And all these different stories that are weaved about, that connect the, the tragedies and the triumphs, the heroism of that day and the days and the years that followed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, Lex, it seems like the common few themes, the common threads are being selfless, helping out others even though they might be a stranger, and acts of kindness, acts of love, and it seems to all be weaved together with faith. They all seem to have some sort of faith. I mean, we have one gentleman, Mark Hanna, and he's a Coptic Egyptian priest. And he's an immigrant to the United States. He was a Port Authority building engineer. And with his crew, who subsequently passed away, the crew did, he was effectively rescuing dozens of people on the upper floors. And his boss ordered him to assist an elderly gentleman who was 89, down 78 flights of stairs. to get him out. And in stopping on the 21st floor, he figured they would just wait there for medics. He came across Captain Patty Brown of Ladder Company 3, who told him, no, sir, you need to evacuate. And Captain Brown picked his brain a little bit about the structure because he found out he was an engineer. Captain Patty Brown continued on to defect rescues, and he and his crew were killed. But Mark was able to effectively evacuate this gentleman. They were the two known last survivors to come out of the tower. He now has dedicated his life to becoming a Coptic priest in St. Mary's Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey. He did this for a total stranger. And he said he was inspired by his bosses who died and his friends. One of his best friends was an Italian man. The other man was a retired Navy SEAL, Hispanic man. And they were part of this melting pot. And no one looked at each other that day, what color, what race, what belief were you? They just said, hey, you're a human in need, let's go. And, you know, we have the story about John Feale on his mission to help the responders. We have a young lady, Mariah, whose birth father was on flight 93. She had not even met him. And she had this premonition that somebody in her family was killed that day. And her adopted mom said, no, everyone's fine. Well, three years later, when she was legally able to find out who her dad was, she found out that her dad, Tom, was actually on that plane as part of the Let's Roll team. And we have a gentleman, Robert Burke, who's an actor, sweetheart of a man. He's a gentleman. And he's a very, very popular actor in Hollywood. He was on Rescue Me, Blue Bloods, Gossip Girls. And Bobby, my friend, as I call him, is a volunteer fireman now. This man doesn't need to get out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and help people with a stroke or a burning garage or a burning house, but he does because he wants to. Because his best friend was Captain Patty Brown. And his other best friend was Father Michael Judge, who was our chaplain, who was killed literally blessing victims at the site, had just given last rites to the firefighter I mentioned earlier, Danny, who was killed. And Father Judge was in the lobby of the building giving a blessing, praying to God to please stop this. And he was struck by debris, and he was killed. Bobby goes on to elaborate about Father Judge's story. Father Judge used to walk the streets of New York City helping AIDS patients just with whatever they needed. And he was a Franciscan friar. They wear sandals and a robe. They just live very humble lives. And it's just a common denominator is loving each other. and helping each other regardless of you know the person or not. And really, when you think about it, that's how America was made. We fought for independence. Stranger fought next to stranger and fought tyranny because they wanted freedom. They wanted to be able to live, love, pray, and prosper and they fought and died alongside of strangers. And it's sort of symbolic of what happened that day. And then strangers from around this great country just flocked in by the thousands to help. They didn't know who was in that pile, but they didn't care. That was another American. And what I ultimately am trying to do involved in this beautiful project is spread the message of doing the right thing. Look at these examples. these brave people who didn't have to, especially the civilians, they weren't paid to run back in there and help person after person and they had no obligation. They could have just said, Hey man, I'm out of here and just bolted, but they didn't. So we're just trying to say to people, Let's bring back that unity and that feeling of 9-12. As strange as 9-12 of a day it was, it was so sad because it was the first dawn of the sun where we realized this wasn't a dream, this was real and it's not going away. But the beauty of it was there was thousands of people lined up along the West Side Highway with signs and American flags. And they were from every country and every race and every creed. And it didn't matter who they were, but they all shared one bond, love. And they were hugging and crying and thanking rescuers. And it... brought the morale so high for a group of people that was so beaten down the day before. It just started lifting the morale and making us realize, you know what? People really do give a crap. They really do love each other. And now I'm going to be honest with you, I've been doubting that a little bit lately. I still have these examples of it, you know, that lady who helped me last night with the phone and just, you know, I know there's these shining little examples, but sometimes I think, I don't know, are we running out of them?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I got to give you some advice. So there's two words that were repeated often. in the days and the years after 9-11, which is never forget. So might I remind you to never forget about 9-12. I mean, those words you talked about that, you know, there's people, what is it, college freshmen, maybe. They weren't even born. They weren't even born. And there's people in the 20s that were too young to remember, to understand the events of that day. But I think what that day, as you're describing, means, it's not about a terrorist attack. It's about the unity that followed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was tremendous, Lex. I never felt so proud. I was always proud of this country. You know, I remember my grandpa Nails used to walk by and see a flag or hear a Star Spangled Banner and he'd tear up and I'd say, Grant, why are you crying? He said, I'm not crying, it's the tears of joy. I love this country so much. And I just remember like feeling that way. I felt that way 9-10, I felt that way on 9-11, but then on 9-12, I was just so proud of just the people, the way they stepped up. And I just want to try to see if that can happen again. And I hope it's not necessary for us to have another tragedy to bring that about. Let's do that without the tragedy. Let's just stop and say, hey, you know what? Let me listen to what this guy has to say. And maybe he probably won't convince me, but maybe I'll go, well, you know, I never thought of it that way. Stop the finger pointing, the bickering, the tantrums, the fighting. It's just not necessary. It gets you nowhere, right? It's like, you know, I was two years old and I'd stomp around because I wanted a cookie or a piece of candy. I still didn't get it, right? You know, turned blue in the face and whatever, got a swat in the rear end, but I didn't get the candy. And that's what we got going on right now. Everybody's just stomping around, being a baby. Stop, just stop. We're really lucky. Look, the country's not perfect, right? But it's damn good. It gives us all these opportunities. Like I said, no one's rushing out the gates to get out of here. I got a cousin of mine, I love him dearly, my cousin Tony in Ireland. And he said, he's just a little older than me, he's in his 50s. He said, man, I should have done it. I should have went to America. My dad said, go to America. I went to England. And he went back to Ireland. But he's happy in Ireland, it's his home. But he said, wow, what a place of opportunity. And I said, it's never too late. He goes, yeah, but you know what? You get tied down. And I understand that. I thank God my mom came here at 16. I thank God my grandpa got on that ship in his 20s, 27, I think, with not a nickel to rub together. I thank God they did it, because I don't know where else I would have ended up. There's no place else I want to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I thank God that there's people like you who rushed towards Ground Zero to help other human beings. And I believe that that human spirit ultimately represents the best of this country and the best of this world. Thank you for the stories you're telling, for your perseverance in that. And thank you for welcoming me to the crew. You're very well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm proud to take you any day. You look like you could do the job just fine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love lifting heavy things and doing dangerous things. So it's I'm proud to be part part of this country and part of the telly on now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you are definitely an attribute to America, and we're glad you chose to come here. You know, Lex, it's such a beautiful place. It's a beautiful melting pot. You know, if we were all the same, it would be kind of a boring place, right? Kind of boring. It really would. But it's just such a great place. And I just want to say thanks. It's an honor. it's an honor to have someone to let me sound off and it'll be even bigger honor if somebody will listen to me and just say, hey, let me just try to do something good today. And that's the Tunnel to Towers mantra is let us do good. And I just... I I got a really big credit card with God, a big balance, right? I need to pay him back a lot, and I need to pay him forward. And I'm just gonna spend the rest of my days trying my best. I don't know where this is gonna go, what it'll lead into, but I really would like to get those dogs for those vets, build them that village, and just keep going on from project to project to just say, when my final day comes and I'm laying there and I say, you know what? I really made the most of that second chance God gave me way back in 2011. I hope it's 30, 40 years from now, but even if it's 30 months from now, giving it the best shot. So thank you, sir. I appreciate it and wishing you blessings and success in your career." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Keep up the good fight and you're always welcome back to Texas." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so this is a theorem from evolution by natural selection. So the technical question that I and my team asked was, what is the probability that natural selection would shape sensory systems to see true properties of objective reality? And to our surprise, we found that the answer is precisely zero, except for one kind of structure that we can go into if you want to. But for any generic structure that you might think the world might have, a total order, a topology, metric, Probability is precisely zero that natural selection would shape any sensory system of any organism to see any aspect of objective reality. So in that sense, what we're seeing is what we need to see to stay alive long enough to reproduce. So in other words, we're seeing what we need to guide adaptive behavior, full stop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, the evolutionary process, the process that took us from the origin of life on Earth to the humans that we are today, that process does not maximize evolution. for truth and maximizes for fitness, as you say, fitness beats truth. And fitness does not have to be connected to truth, is the claim. And that's where you have an approach towards zero of probability that we have evolved human cognition human consciousness, whatever it is, the magic that makes our mind work, evolved not for its ability to see the truth of reality, but its ability to survive in the environment." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's exactly right. So most of us intuitively think that surely the way that evolution will make our senses more fit, is to make them tell us more truths, or at least the truths we need to know about objective reality, the truths we need in our niche. That's the standard view, and it was the view I took. I mean, that's sort of what we're taught or just even assume. It's just sort of like the intelligent assumption that we would all make. But we don't have to just wave our hands. Evolution of a natural selection is a mathematically precise theory. John Maynard Smith in the 70s created evolutionary game theory. We have evolutionary graph theory and even genetic algorithms that we can use to study this. And so we don't have to wave our hands. It's a matter of theorem and proof and or simulation before you get the theorems and proofs. And a couple of graduate students of mine, Justin Mark and Brian Marion, did some wonderful simulations that tipped me off that there was something going on here. And then I went to a mathematician, Chetan Prakash, and Manish Singh, and some other friends of mine, Chris Fields. But Chetan was the real mathematician behind all this. And he's proved several theorems that uniformly indicate that with one exception, which has to do with probability measures, there's no, the probability is zero. The reason there's an exception for probability measures, so-called sigma algebras or sigma additive classes, is that for any scientific theory, there is the assumption that needs to be made that the, whatever structure, whatever probabilistic structure the world may have is not unrelated to the probabilistic structure of our perceptions. If they were completely unrelated, then no science would be possible. So this is technically, the map from reality to our senses has to be a so-called measurable map, has to preserve sigma algebras. But that means it could be infinite to one, and it could collapse all sorts of event information. But other than that, there's no requirement in standard evolutionary theory for fitness payoff functions, for example, to preserve any specific structures of objective reality. So you can ask the technical question. This is one of the avenues we took. If you look at all the fitness payoffs from whatever world structure you might want to imagine, so a world with, say, a total order on it, So it's got N states and they're totally ordered. And then you can have a set of maps from that world into a set of payoffs, say from zero to a thousand or whatever you want your payoffs to be. And you can just literally count all the payoff functions and just do the combinatorics and count them. And then you can ask a precise question. How many of those payoff functions preserve the total order, if that's what you're looking for? Or how many preserve the topology? And you just count them and divide. So the number that are homomorphisms versus the total number, and then take the limit as the number of states in the world and the number of payoff values goes very large. And when you do that, you get zero every time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, there's a million things to ask here, but first of all, just in case people are not familiar with your work, let's sort of linger on the big, bold statement here. which is the thing we see with our eyes is not some kind of limited window into reality. It is completely detached from reality, likely completely detached from reality. You're saying 100% likely. Okay, so none of this is real in the way we think is real, in the way we have this intuition. Like this table is some kind of abstraction, but underneath it all, there's atoms. And there's an entire century of physics that describes the functioning of those atoms and the quarks that make them up. There's many Nobel Prizes. about particles and fields and all that kind of stuff that slowly builds up to something that's perceivable to us, both with our eyes, with our different senses, as this table. Then there's also ideas of chemistry that over layers of abstraction from DNA to embryos to cells that make the human body. So all of that is not real." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "it's a real experience and it's a real adaptive set of perceptions. So, it's an adaptive set of perceptions, full stop. We want to think that- So, their perceptions are real as perceptions, right? We are having our perceptions, but we've assumed that there's a pretty tight relationship between our perceptions and reality. If I look up and see moon, then there is something that exists in space and time that matches what I perceive. And all I'm saying is that if you take evolution by natural selection seriously, then that is precluded. Our perceptions are there, they're there to guide adaptive behavior, full stop. They're not there to show you the truth. In fact, the way I think about it is they're there to hide the truth because the truth is too complicated. It's just like if you're trying to use your laptop to write an email. What you're doing is toggling voltages in the computer. But good luck trying to do it that way. The reason why we have a user interface is because we don't want to know that quote unquote truth, the diodes and resistors and all that terrible hardware. If you had to know all that truth, your friends wouldn't hear from you. So what evolution gave us was perceptions that guide adaptive behavior. And part of that process, it turns out, means hiding the truth and giving you eye candy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the difference between hiding the truth and forming abstractions, layers upon layers of abstractions over these, over low-level voltages and transistors and chips and programming languages from assembly to Python that then leads you to be able to have an interface like Chrome where you open up another set of JavaScript and HTML programming languages that lead you to have a graphical user interface on which you can then send your friends an email. Is that completely detached from the zeros and ones that are firing away inside the computer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not. Of course, when I talk about the user interface on your desktop, there's this whole sophisticated backstory to it, right? The hardware and the software that's allowing that to happen. Evolution doesn't tell us the backstory, right? So the theory of evolution is not going to be adequate to tell you what is that backstory. It's gonna say that whatever reality is, and that's the interesting thing, it says whatever reality is, you don't see it. you see a user interface, but it doesn't tell you what that user interface is, how it's built, right? Now we can try to look at certain aspects of the interface, but already we're gonna look at that and go, okay, before I would look at neurons and I was assuming that I was seeing something that was at least partially true. And now I'm realizing that it could be like looking at the pixels on my desktop, or icons on my desktop, and good luck going from that to the data structures and then the voltages. I mean, good luck. There's just no way. So what's interesting about this is that our scientific theories are precise enough and rigorous enough to tell us certain limits, and even the limits of the theories themselves. But they're not going to tell us what the next move is, and that's where scientific creativity comes in. So the stuff that I'm saying here, for example, is not alien to physicists. The physicists are saying precisely the same thing, that space-time is doomed. We've assumed that space-time is fundamental. We've assumed that for several centuries, and it's been very useful. So all the things that you were mentioning, the particles and all the work that's been done, that's all been done in space-time, but now physicists are saying space-time is doomed. There's no such thing as space-time fundamentally in the laws of physics. And that comes actually out of gravity together with quantum field theory. It just comes right out of it. It's a theorem of those two theories put together. But it doesn't tell you what's behind it. So the physicists know that their best theories, Einstein's gravity and quantum field theory put together, entail that space-time cannot be fundamental and therefore particles in space-time cannot be fundamental. just irreducible representations of the symmetries of space-time, that's what they are. So we put the two together, we put together what the physicists are discovering and we can talk about how they do that. And then the new discoveries from evolution of natural selection, both of these discoveries are really in the last 20 years. And what both are saying is space-time has had a good ride, It's been very useful. Reductionism has been useful, but it's over. And it's time for us to go beyond." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say space-time is doomed, is it the space? Is it the time? Is it the very hard-coded specification of four dimensions? Or are you specifically referring to the kind of perceptual domain that humans operate in, which is space-time? You think like there's a 3D, Our world is three-dimensional and time progresses forward, therefore three dimensions plus one, 4D. What exactly do you mean by space-time? What do you mean by space-time is doomed?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Great, great. So this is, by the way, not my quote. This is from, for example, Nima Arkani-Hamed at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Ed Witten, also there. David Gross. Nobel Prize winner, so this is not just something the cognitive scientists, this is what the physicists are saying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the physicists are space-time skeptics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, they're saying that, and I can say exactly why they think it's doomed, but what they're saying is that, because your question was, what aspect of space-time, what are we talking about here? It's both space and time, their union into space-time as in Einstein's theory, that's doomed. And they're basically saying that even quantum theory. This is with Neymar, Kani Hamed especially. So Hilbert spaces will not be fundamental either. So that the notion of Hilbert space, which is really critical to quantum field theory, quantum information theory, that's not going to figure in the fundamental new laws of physics. So what they're looking for is some new mathematical structures beyond space-time. beyond Einstein's four-dimensional space time or supersymmetric version, geometric algebra signature 2,4. There are different ways that you can represent it, but they're finding new structures. And by the way, they're succeeding now. They found something called the Amplituhedron. This is Nima and his colleagues, the cosmological polytope. So there are these polytopes, these polyhedra in multi-dimensions, generalizations of simplices, that are coding for, for example, the scattering amplitudes of processes in the Large Hadron Collider and other colliders. So they're finding that if they let go of space-time completely, they're finding new ways of computing these scattering amplitudes that turn literally billions of terms into one term. you do it in space and time, because it's the wrong framework, it's just a user interface, that's now from the evolutionary point of view, it's just user interface, it's not a deep insight into the nature of reality. So it's missing deep symmetry, it's something called a dual conformal symmetry, which turns out to be true of the scattering data, but you can't see it in space time. and is making the computations way too complicated, because you're trying to compute all the loops and Feynman diagrams and all the Feynman integrals. So see the Feynman approach to the scattering amplitudes is trying to enforce two critical properties of space-time, locality and unitarity. And so when you enforce those, you get all these loops and multiple different levels of loops. And for each of those, you have to add new terms to your computation. But when you do it outside of space-time, you don't have the notion of unitarity. You don't have the notion of locality. You have something deeper and it's capturing some symmetries that are actually true of the data. But then when you look at the geometry of the facets of these polytopes, then certain of them will code for unitarity and locality. So it actually comes out of the structure of these deep polytopes. So what we're finding is there's this whole new world. Now, beyond space-time, that is making explicit symmetries that are true of the data that cannot be seen in space-time. And that is turning the computations from billions of terms to one or two or a handful of terms. So we're getting insights into symmetries and all of a sudden the math is becoming simple because we're not doing something silly. We're not adding up all these loops in space-time. We're doing something far deeper. But they don't know what this world is about. So they're in an interesting position where we know that space-time is doomed, and I should probably tell you why it's doomed, what they're saying about why it's doomed, but they need a flashlight to look beyond space-time. What flashlight are we gonna use to look into the dark beyond space-time? Because Einstein's theory and quantum theory can't tell us what's beyond them. All they can do is tell us that when you put us together, space-time is doomed at 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, 10 to the minus 43 seconds. Beyond that, space-time doesn't even make sense. It just has no operational definition. So, but it doesn't tell you what's beyond. And so they're just looking for deep structures, like guessing. It's really fun. So these really brilliant guys. generic, brilliant men and women who are doing this work, physicists, are making guesses about these structures, informed guesses, because they're trying to ask, well, okay, what deeper structure could give us the stuff that we're seeing in space-time, but without certain commitments that we have to make in space-time, like locality. So they make these brilliant guesses, and of course, most of the time you're gonna be wrong. But once you get one or two that start to pay off, and then you get some lucky breaks. So they got a lucky break back in 1986, a couple of mathematicians named Park and Taylor took the scattering amplitude for two gluons coming in at high energy and four gluons going out at low energy, so that kind of scattering thing. So apparently for people who are into this, that's sort of something that happens so often you need to be able to find it and get rid of those because you already know about that. So you needed to compute them. It was billions of terms. And they couldn't do it, even for the supercomputers couldn't do that for the many billions or millions of times per second they needed to do it. So the experimentalists begged the theorists, please, you got it. And so Park and Taylor took the billions of terms, hundreds of pages, and miraculously turned it into nine. And then a little bit later, they guessed one term expression that turned out to be equivalent. So billions of terms reduced to one term, that so-called famous Park-Taylor formula, 1986. And that was like, okay, where did that come from? This is a pointer into a deep realm beyond space and time, but no one, I mean, what can you do with it? And they thought maybe it was a one-off, but then other formulas started coming up. And then eventually, Neemar Kani Hamad and his team found this thing called the Amplituhedron, which really sort of captures a big part of the whole ball of wax. I'm sure they would say, no, there's plenty more to do. So I won't say they did it all by any means. They're looking at the cosmological polytope as well. So what's remarkable to me is that two pillars of modern science, quantum field theory with gravity, on the one hand, and evolution by natural selection on the other. Just in the last 20 years have very clearly said, space-time has had a good run, reductionism has been a fantastic methodology. So we had a great ontology of space-time, a great methodology of reductionism. Now it's time for a new trick. But now you need to go deeper and show, by the way, this doesn't mean we throw away everything we've done, not by a long shot. Every new idea that we come up with beyond space-time must project precisely into space-time and it better give us back everything that we know and love in space-time or generalizations. or it's not gonna be taken seriously, and it shouldn't be. So we have a strong constraint on whatever we're going to do beyond space-time. It needs to project into space-time. And whatever this deeper theory is, it may not itself have evolution by natural selection. This may not be part of this deeper realm. But when we take whatever that thing is beyond space-time and project it into space-time, it has to look like evolution by natural selection, or it's wrong. So that's a strong constraint on this work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So even the evolution by natural selection and quantum field theory could be interfaces into something that doesn't look anything like, like you mentioned, I mean it's interesting to think that evolution might be a very crappy interface into something much deeper." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. They're both telling us that the framework that you've had can only go so far, and it has to stop, and there's something beyond. And that framework, the very framework that is space and time itself. Evolution by natural selection is not telling us about like Einstein's relativistic space time. So that was another question you asked a little bit earlier. It's telling us more about our perceptual space and time, which we have used as the basis for creating first a Newtonian space versus time. as a mathematical extension of our perceptions. And then Einstein then took that and extended it even further. So the relationship between what evolution is telling us and what the physicists are telling us is that in some sense, the Newton and Einstein space time are formulated as sort of rigorous extensions of our perceptual space. making it mathematically rigorous and laying out the symmetries that they find there. So that's sort of the relationship between them. So it's the perceptual space time that evolution is telling us is just a user interface effectively. And then the physicists are finding that even the mathematical extension of that into the Einsteinian formulation has to be as well, not the final story, there's something deeper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me ask you about reductionism and interfaces. As we march forward from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics, these are all, in your view, interfaces are we getting closer to objective reality? How do we know if these interfaces in the process of science, the reason we like those interfaces is because they're predictive of some aspects, strongly predictive about some aspects of our reality. Is that completely deviating from our understanding of that reality or is it helping us get closer and closer and closer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, of course, one critical constraint on all of our theories is that they are empirically tested and pass the experiments that we have for them. So no one's arguing against experiments being important and wanting to test all of our current theories and any new theories on that. So that's all there. But we have good reason to believe that science will never get a theory of everything. Everything, everything. Everything, everything, right. The final theory of everything, right. I think that my own take is for what it's worth is that Godel's incompleteness theorem sort of points us in that direction, that even with mathematics, any finite axiomatization that's sophisticated enough to be able to do arithmetic, it's easy to show that there'll be statements that are true, that can't be proven, can't be deduced from within that framework. And if you add the new statements to your axioms, then there'll be always new statements that are true, but can't be proven with a new axiom system. And the best scientific theories in physics, for example, and also now evolution, are mathematical. So our theories are gonna be, they're gonna have their own assumptions, and they'll be mathematically precise. And there'll be theories, perhaps, of everything except those assumptions, because the assumptions are we say, please grant me these assumptions. If you grant me these assumptions, then I can explain this other stuff. So you have the assumptions that are like miracles as far as the theory is concerned, they're not explained. They're the starting points for explanation. And then you have the mathematical structure of the theory itself, which will have the girdle limits. And so my take is that reality, whatever it is, always going to transcend any conceptual theory that we didn't come up with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's always going to be mystery at the edges, contradictions and all that kind of stuff. Okay. and truths. So there's this idea that is brought up in the financial space of settlement of transactions. It's often talked about in cryptocurrency especially. So you could do, you know, money, cash is not connected to anything. It used to be connected to gold, to physical reality, but then you can use money to exchange, to exchange value, to transact. So when it was on the gold standard, the money would represent some stable component of reality. Isn't it more effective to avoid things like hyperinflation if we generalize that idea? Isn't it better to connect your, whatever we humans are doing in the social interaction space with each other, isn't it better from an evolutionary perspective to connect it to some degree to reality so that the transactions are settled with something that's universal as opposed to us constantly operating in something that's a complete illusion? Isn't it easy to hyperinflate that? Like where you really deviate very, very far away from the underlying reality, or do you never get in trouble for this? Can you just completely drift far, far away from the underlying reality and never get in trouble?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a great question. On the financial side, there's two levels, at least, that we could take your question. One is strictly evolutionary psychology of financial systems, and that's pretty interesting. And there, the decentralized idea, the DeFi kind of idea in cryptocurrencies, may make good sense from just an evolutionary psychology point of view. Human nature being what it is, putting a lot of faith in a few central controllers depends a lot on the veracity and trustworthiness of those few central controllers, and we have ample evidence time and again that that's often betrayed. So it makes good evolutionary sense, I would say, to have a decentralized... I mean, democracy is a step in that direction, right? We don't have a monarch now telling us what to do, we decentralize things, right? Because if you have Marcus Aurelius as your emperor, you're great. If you have Nero, it's not so great. And so we don't want that. So democracy is a step in that direction, but I think the DeFi thing is an even bigger step and is going to even make the democratization even greater. So that's one level of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Also, the fact that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is also a consequence of evolution. That's also a feature, I think, right? You can argue from the long span of living organisms, it's nice for power to corrupt, for you to, so mad men and women throughout history might be useful to teach us a lesson." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We can learn from our negative example, right? Exactly. Right. Power does corrupt and I think that you can think about that again from an evolutionary point of view. But I think that your question was a little deeper when that was, does the evolutionary interface idea sort of unhinge science from from some kind of important test for the theories, right? It doesn't mean that anything goes in scientific theory, but if we don't see the truth, is there no way to tether our theories and test them? And I think there's no problem there. We can only test things in terms of what we can measure with our senses in space and time. we're going to have to continue to do experiments, but we're gonna understand a little bit differently what those experiments are. We had thought that when we see a pointer on some machine in an experiment, that the machine exists, the pointer exists, and the values exist even when no one is looking at them. and that they're an object of truth. And our best theorists are telling us no. The pointers are just pointers, and that's what you have to rely on for making your judgments. But even the pointers themselves are not the objective reality. And I think Gödel is telling us that Not that anything goes, but as you develop new axiom systems, you will find out what goes within that axiom system and what testable predictions you can make. So I don't think we're untethered. We continue to do experiments. What I think we won't have that we want is a conceptual understanding that gives us a theory of everything that's final and complete. I think that this is, to put it another way, this is job security for scientists. Our job will never be done. It's job security for neuroscience. Because before we thought that when we looked in the brain, we saw neurons and neural networks and action potentials and synapses and so forth, and that was it. That was the reality. Now we have to reverse engineer that. We have to say, what is beyond space-time? What is going on? What is a dynamical system beyond space-time? That when we project it into Einstein's space-time, gives us things that look like neurons and neural networks and synapses. So we have to reverse engineer it. So there's gonna be lots more work for neuroscience. It's gonna be far more complicated and difficult and challenging, but that's wonderful. That's what we need to do. We thought neurons exist when they are perceived and they don't. In the same way that if I show you, when I say they don't exist, I should be very, very concrete. I draw on a piece of paper a little sketch of something that is called the Necker cube, it's just a little line drawing of a cube, right? It's on a flat piece of paper. If I execute it well and I show it to you, you'll see a 3D cube and you'll see it flip. Sometimes you'll see one face in front, sometimes you'll see the other face in front. But if I ask you, which face is in front when you don't look? The answer is, well, neither face is in front because there's no cube. It's just a flat piece of paper. So when you look at the piece of paper, you perceptually create the cube. And when you look at it, then you fix one face to be in front and one face to be at. So that's what I mean when I say it doesn't exist. Space-time itself is like the cube. It's a data structure that your sensory systems construct, whatever your sensory systems mean now, because we now have to even take that for granted. But there are perceptions that you construct on the fly, and their data structures in a computer science sense, and you garbage collect them when you don't need them. So you create them and garbage collect them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But is it possible that it's mapped well in some concrete, predictable way to objective reality? The sheet of paper, this two-dimensional space, or we can talk about space-time maps in some way that we maybe don't yet understand, but we'll one day understand what that mapping is, but it maps reliably, it is tethered in that way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, and so the new theories that the physicists are finding beyond space-time have that kind of tethering. So they show precisely how you start with an amplitude hedron and how you project this high dimensional structure into the four dimensions of space-time. So there's a precise procedure that relates the two. And they're doing the same thing with the cosmological polytope. So they're the ones that are making the most concrete and fun advances going beyond space-time. And they're tethering it, right? They say this is precisely the mathematical projection from this deeper structure into space-time. One thing I'll say about as a non-physicist, what I find interesting is that they're finding just geometry, but there's no notion of dynamics. Right now, they're just finding these static geometric structures. which is impressive, so I'm not putting them down. What they're doing is unbelievably complicated and brilliant and adventurous. It's all those things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And beautiful from a human aesthetic perspective, because geometry is beautiful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. And they're finding symmetries that are true of the data that can't be seen in space-time. But I'm looking for a theory beyond space-time that's a dynamical theory. I would love to find, and we can talk about that at some point, a theory of consciousness in which the dynamics of consciousness itself will give rise to the geometry that the physicists are finding beyond space-time. If we can do that, then we'd have a completely different way of looking at how consciousness is related to what we call the brain or the physical world more generally. Right now, All of my brilliant colleagues, 99% of them are trying to, they're assuming space-time is fundamental. They're assuming that particles are fundamental, quarks, gluons, leptons and so forth. Elements, atoms and so forth are fundamental and that therefore neurons and brains are part of objective reality. And that somehow when you get matter that's complicated enough, it will somehow generate conscious experiences by its functional properties. Or if you're a panpsychist, maybe in addition to the physical properties of particles, you add consciousness property as well. And then you combine these physical and conscious properties to get more complicated ones. But they're all doing it within space-time. All of the work that's being done on consciousness and its relationship to the brain is all assumed something that our best theories are telling us is doomed, space-time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why does that particular assumption bother you the most? So you bring up space-time. I mean, that's just one useful interface we've used for a long time. Surely there's other interfaces. Is space-time just one of the big ones to build up people's intuition about the fact that they do assume a lot of things strongly? Or is it, in fact, a fundamental flaw in the way we see the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, everything else that we think we know are things in space-time. And so, when you say space-time is doomed, this is a shot to the heart of the whole conceptual framework that we've had in science. Not to the scientific method, but to the fundamental ontology and also the fundamental methodology, the ontology of space-time and its contents. And the methodology of reductionism, which is that as we go to smaller scales in space-time, we will find more and more fundamental laws. And that's been very useful for space and time for centuries, reductionism for centuries, but now we realize that that's over. Reductionism is in fact dead, as is space-time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What exactly is reductionism? What is the process of reductionism that is different than some of the physicists that you mentioned that are trying to think, trying to let go of the assumption of space-time, looking beyond? Isn't that still trying to come up with a simple model that explains this whole thing? Isn't it still reducing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "a wonderful question because it really helps to clarify two different notions, which is scientific explanation on the one hand and a particular kind of scientific explanation on the other, which is the reductionist. So the reductionist explanation is saying, I will start with things that are smaller in space time and therefore more fundamental, where the laws are more fundamental. So we go to just smaller and smaller scales. Whereas in science more generally, we just say like when Einstein did the special theory of relativity, he's saying, let me have a couple postulates. I will assume that the speed of light is universal for all observers in uniform motion, and that the laws of physics for uniform motion. That's not a reductionist. Those are saying, grant me these assumptions, I can build this entire concept of space time out of it. It's not a reductionist thing. You're not going to smaller and smaller scales of space. You're coming up with these deep, deep principles. Same thing with this theory of gravity. It's the falling elevator idea, right? So this is not a reductionist kind of thing. It's something different." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So simplification is a bigger thing than just reductionism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Reductionism has been a particularly useful kind of scientific explanation, for example, in thermodynamics. The notion that we have of heat, some macroscopic thing like temperature and heat. It turns out that Neil Boltzmann and others discovered, well, hey, if we go to smaller and smaller scales, we find these things called molecules or atoms. And if we think of them as bouncing around and having some kind of energy, then what we call heat really can be reduced to that. And so that's a particularly useful kind of reduction is a useful kind of scientific explanation that works within a range of scales within space time. But we know now precisely where that has to stop at 10 to the minus 33 centimeters and 10 to the minus 43 seconds. And I would be impressed if it was 10 to the minus 33 trillion centimeters. I'm not terribly impressed at 10 to the minus 33 centimeters." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't even know how to comprehend either of those numbers, frankly. Just a small aside, because I am a computer science person, I also find cellular automata beautiful. And so you have somebody like Stephen Wolfram, who recently has been very excitedly exploring a proposal for a data structure that could be the numbers that would make you a little bit happier in terms of scale, because they're very, very, very, very tiny. Do you like this space of exploration, of really thinking, letting go of space-time, letting go of everything, and trying to think what kind of data structures could be underneath this whole mess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. So if they're thinking about these as outside of space-time, then that's what we have to do. That's what our best theories are telling us. You now have to think outside of space-time. Now, of course, I should back up and say, we know that Einstein, surpass Newton, right? But that doesn't mean that there's not good work to do at Newton. There's all sorts of Newtonian physics that takes us to the Moon and so forth, and there's lots of good problems that we want to solve with Newtonian physics. The same thing will be true of space-time. It's not like we're going to stop using space-time, we'll continue to do all sorts of good work there. But for those scientists who are really looking to go deeper to actually find the next, just like what Einstein did to Newton, what are we going to do to Einstein? How do we get beyond Einstein and quantum theory to something deeper? Then we have to actually let go. If we're going to do this automata kind of approach, it's critical that it's not automata in spacetime, it's automata prior to spacetime, from which we're going to show how spacetime emerges. If you're doing automata within spacetime, well, that might be a fun model, but it's not the radical new step that we need." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the space-time emerges from that whatever system, like you're saying, it's a dynamical system. Do we even have an understanding of what dynamical means when we go beyond? When you start to think about dynamics, it could mean a lot of things. Even causality could mean a lot of things if we realize that everything's an interface. How much do we really know is an interesting question. Because you brought up neurons, I gotta ask you yet another tangent. There's a paper I remember a while ago looking at called, Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? And I just enjoyed that thought experiment that they provided, which is, they basically, it's a couple of neuroscientists, Eric Jonas and Conrad Cording, who used the tools of neuroscience to analyze a microprocessor, so a computer chip." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, if we lesion it here, what happens and so forth. And if you go and lesion a computer, it's very, very clear that lesion experiments on computers are not gonna give you a lot of insight into how it works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also the measurement devices and the kind of sort of, just using the basic approaches of neuroscience, collecting the data, trying to intuit about the underlying function of it. And that helps you understand that our scientific exploration of concepts, depending on the field, are maybe in the very, very early stages. I wouldn't say it leads us astray, perhaps it does sometimes, but it's not anywhere close to some fundamental mechanism that actually makes a thing work. I don't know if you can sort of comment on that in terms of using neuroscience to understand the human mind and neurons. Are we really far away potentially from understanding in the way we understand the transistors enough to be able to build a computer? So one thing about understanding is you can understand for fun. The other one is to understand so you could build things. And that's when you really have to understand." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. In fact, what got me into the field at MIT was work by David Marr on this very topic. So David Marr was a professor at MIT, but he'd done his PhD in neuroscience, studying just the architectures of the brain. But he realized that his work, it was on the cerebellum. he realized that his work, as rigorous as it was, left him unsatisfied because he didn't know what the cerebellum was for and why it had that architecture. And so he went to MIT and he was in the AI lab there. And he said he had this three-level approach that really grabbed my attention. So when I was an undergrad at UCLA, I read one of his papers in a class and said, who is this guy? Because he said, you have to have a computational theory. What is being computed and why? An algorithm, how is it being computed? What are the precise algorithms? And then the hardware, how does it get instantiated in the hardware? And so to really do neuroscience, he argued, we needed to have understanding at all those levels. And that really got me. I loved the neuroscience, but I realized this guy was saying, if you can't build it, you don't understand it effectively. And so that's why I went to MIT. And I had the pleasure of working with David until he died just a year and a half later. So there's been that idea that with neuroscience, we have to have, in some sense, a top-down model of what's being computed and why that we would then go after. And same thing with trying to reverse engineer a computing system like your laptop. We really need to understand what the user interface is about and why we have what are keys on the keyboard for and so forth. You need to know why to really understand all the circuitry and what it's for. Now, evolution by natural selection does not tell us the deeper question. that we're asking, the answer to the deeper question, which is why? What's this deeper reality and what's it up to and why? All it tells us is that whatever reality is, it's not what you see. What you see is just an adaptive fiction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just to linger on this fascinating bold question that shakes you out of your dream state, Does this fiction still help you in building intuitions as literary fiction does about reality? The reason we read literary fiction is it helps us build intuitions and understanding in indirect ways, sneak up to the difficult questions of human nature. Great fiction. Same with this observed reality. Does this interface that we get, this fictional interface, help us build intuition about deeper truths of how this whole mess works?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think that each theory that we propose will give its own answer to that question, right? So when the physicists are proposing these structures like the amplituhedron and cosmological polytope, associahedron and so forth, beyond space-time, we can then ask your question for those specific structures and say, how much information, for example, does evolution by natural selection and the kinds of sensory systems that we have right now give us about this deeper reality and why did we evolve this way? We can try to answer that question from within the deeper. So there's not going to be a general answer. I think what we'll have to do is posit these new deeper theories and then try to answer your question within the framework of those deeper theories knowing full well that there'll be an even deeper theory." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "RL So is this paralyzing though? Because how do we know we're not completely adrift out to sea, lost forever from, so like, that our theories are completely lost. So if it's all, if we can never truly, deeply introspect to the bottom, if it's always just turtles on top of turtles infinitely, isn't that paralyzing for the scientific mind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's interesting that you say introspect to the bottom. Because there is one, I mean, again, this is in the same spirit of what I said before, which is it depends on what answer you give to what's beyond space time, what answer we would give to your question, right? But one answer that is interesting to explore is something that spiritual traditions have said for thousands of years, but haven't said precisely. So we can't take it seriously in science until it's made precise, but we might be able to make it precise. And that is that they've also said something like space and time aren't fundamental, they're maya, they're illusion. But if you look inside, if you introspect and let go of all of your particular perceptions, you will come to something that's beyond conceptual thought. And that is, they claim, being in contact with the deep ground of being that transcends any particular conceptual understanding. If that is correct, and I'm not saying it's correct, and I'm not saying it's not correct, I'm just saying if that's correct, then it would be the case that as scientists, because we also are in touch with this ground of being, we would then not be able to conceptually understand ourselves all the way, but we could know ourselves just by being ourselves. And so there would be a sense in which there is a fundamental grounding to the whole enterprise, because we're not separate from the enterprise. This is the opposite of the impersonal third-person science. This would make science go personal all the way down. But nevertheless, scientific, because the scientific method would still be what we would use all the way down for the conceptual understanding." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Unfortunately, you still don't know if you went all the way down. It's possible that this kind of whatever consciousness is, and we'll talk about it, is getting the cliche statement of be yourself. It is somehow digging at a deeper truth of reality, but you still don't know when you get to the bottom. A lot of people, they'll take psychedelic drugs, and they'll say, well, that takes my mind to certain places where it feels like that is revealing some deeper truth of reality. But you still, it could be interfaces on top of interfaces. That's, in your view of this, you really don't know. I mean, it's Gato's incompleteness, is that you really don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My own view on it for what it's worth, because I don't know the right answer, but my own view on it right now is that it's never ending. I think that this is great, as I said before, great job security for science. and that if this is true and if consciousness is somehow important or fundamental in the universe, this may be an important fundamental fact about consciousness itself that it's a never-ending exploration that's going on in some sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's interesting. Push back on the job security. Okay. So maybe as we understand this kind of idea deeper and deeper, we understand that the pursuit is not a fruitful one. Then maybe we need to, maybe that's why we don't see aliens everywhere, is you get smarter and smarter and smarter, you realize that like exploration is, there's other fun ways to spend your time than exploring. You could be, you know, You could be sort of living maximally in some way that's not exploration. There's all kinds of video games you can construct and put yourself inside of them that don't involve you going outside of the game world. Feeling, from my human perspective, what seems to be fun is challenging yourself and overcoming those challenges. So you can constantly artificially generate challenges for yourself, like Sisyphus and his boulder. And that's it, so the scientific method that's always reaching out to the stars, that's always trying to figure out the puzzle upon a puzzle, always trying to get to the bottom turtle. Maybe if we can build more and more the intuition that that's an infinite pursuit, we'll get to the bottom turtle. we agree to start deviating from that pursuit, start enjoying the here and now versus the looking out into the unknown always. Maybe that's looking out into the unknown is a early, activity for a species that's evolved. I'm just sort of saying, pushing back, as you probably got a lot of scientists excited in terms of job security, I could envision where it's not job security, where scientists become more and more useless. Maybe they're like the holders of the ancient wisdom that allows us to study our own history, but not much more than that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's good pushback. I'll put one in there for the scientists again. But sure, but then I'll take the other side too. So when Faraday did all of his experiments with magnets and electricity and so forth, he came with all this wonderful empirical data and James Clerk Maxwell looked at it and wrote down a few equations, which we can now write down in a single equation, the Maxwell equation if we use geometric algebra, just one equation. That opened up unbelievable technologies. People were Zooming and talking to each other around the world, the whole electronics industry. There was something that transformed our lives in a very positive way. With the theories beyond space-time, here's one potential. Right now, most of the galaxies that we see We can see them, but we know that we could never get to them no matter how fast we traveled. They're going away from us at the speed of light or beyond, so we can't ever get to them. So there's all this beautiful real estate that's just smiling and waving at us and we can never get to it. But that's if we go through space-time. But if we recognize that space-time is just a data structure, it's not fundamental. not little things inside space-time. Space-time is a little data structure in our perceptions. It's just the other way around. Once we understand that and we get equations for the stuff that's beyond space-time, maybe we won't have to go through space-time. Maybe we can go around it. Maybe I can go to Proxima Centauri and not go through space. I can just go right there directly. It's a data structure. We can start to play with it. So I think that For what it's worth, my take would be that the endless sequence of theories that we could contemplate building will lead to an endless sequence of new remarkable insights into the potentialities, the possibilities that would seem miraculous to us, and that we will be motivated to continue the exploration partly just for the technological innovations that come out. But The other thing that you mentioned though, what about just being? What if we decide instead of all this doing and exploring, what about being? My guess is that the best scientists will do both and that the act of being will be a place where they get many of their ideas. that they then pull into the conceptual realm. And I think many of the best scientists, Einstein comes to mind, right? Where these guys say, look, I didn't come up with these ideas by a conceptual analysis. I was thinking in vague images and it was just something non-conceptual. And then it took me a long, long time to pull it out into concepts and then longer to put it into math. But the real insights didn't come from just slavishly playing with equations, they came from a deeper place. And so there may be this going back and forth between the complete non-conceptual where there's essentially no end to the wisdom, and then conceptual systems where there's the girdle limits that we have to that. And that may be, if consciousness is important and fundamental, that may be what consciousness, at least part of what consciousness is about, is this discovering itself, discovering its possibilities, so to speak, and we can talk about what that might mean, by going from the non-conceptual to the conceptual and back and forth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to get better and better and better at being. Let me ask you, just to linger on the evolutionary, because you mentioned evolutionary game theory, and that's really where you, the perspective from which you come to form the case against reality. at which point in our evolutionary history did we start to deviate the most from reality? Is it way before life even originated on Earth? Is it in the early development from bacteria and so on? Or is it when some inklings of what we think of as intelligence or maybe even complex consciousness started to emerge? So where did this deviation, just like with the interfaces in a computer, you start with transistors and then you have, and then you have C, C++, then you have Python, then you have GUIs, and all that kind of, you have layers upon layers. When do we start to deviate?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, David Marr, again, my advisor at MIT, his book, Vision, suggested that the more primitive sensory systems were less realistic, less veridical, but that by the time you got to something as complicated as the humans, we were actually estimating the true shapes and distances to objects and so forth. So his point of view, and I think it was probably, it's not an uncommon view among my colleagues, that yeah, the sensory systems of lower creatures may just not be complicated enough to give them much truth. But as you get to 86 billion neurons, you can now compute the truth, or at least the parts of the truth that we need. When I look at evolutionary game theory, One of my graduate students, Justin Mark, did some simulations using genetic algorithms. So there he was just exploring. We start off with random organisms, random sensory genetics and random actions. And the first generation was unbelievable. It was a foraging situation. They were foraging for resources. Most of them stayed in one place, didn't do anything important. But could then just look at how the genes evolved. And what he found was that basically you never even saw the truth organisms even come on the stage. If they came, they were gone in one generation, they just weren't So they came and went, even just in one generation. They just are not good enough. The ones that were just tracking, their senses just were tracking the fitness payoffs, were far more fit than the truth seekers. So an answer at one level, I'm gonna give an answer at a deeper level, but just with evolutionary game theory. Because my attitude as a scientist is, I don't believe any of our theories. I take them very, very seriously. I study them. I look at their implications, but none of them are the gospel. They're just the latest ideas that we have. And so the reason I study evolutionary game theory is because that's the best tool we have right now in this area. there is nothing else that competes. And so, as a scientist, it's my responsibility to take the best tools and see what they mean. And the same thing the physicists are doing, they're taking the best tools and looking at what they entail. But I think that science now has enough experience to realize that we should not believe our theories in the sense that we've now arrived. In 1890, it was a lot of physicists thought we'd arrived. They were discouraging bright young students from going into physics because it was all done. And that's precisely the wrong attitude. Forever, it's the wrong attitude forever. The attitude we should have is a century from now, they'll be looking at us and laughing at what we didn't know. And we just have to assume that that's going to be the case. Just know that everything that we think is so brilliant right now, our final theory, a century from now, they'll look at us like we look at the physicists of 1890 and go, how could they have been so dumb? Yeah. So I don't want to make that mistake. So I'm not doctrinaire about any of our current scientific theories. I'm doctrinaire about this. we should use the best tools we have right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what we've got. And with humility. Well, so let me ask you about game theory. I love game theory, evolutionary game theory, but I'm always suspicious of it, like economics. When you construct models, it's too easy to construct things that oversimplify, just because we, our human brains, enjoy the simplification of constructing a few variables that somehow represent organisms or represent people, and running a simulation that then allows you to build up intuition, and it feels really good because you can get some really deep and surprising intuitions, but how do you know your models aren't, the assumptions underlying your models aren't some fundamentally flawed, and because of that, your conclusions are fundamentally flawed. So I guess my question is, what are the limits in your use of game theory, evolutionary game theory, your experience with it, what are the limits of game theory?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I've gotten some pushback from professional colleagues and friends. who have tried to rerun simulations and try to... The idea that we don't see the truth is not comfortable, and so many of my colleagues are very interested in trying to show that we're wrong. And so the idea would be to say that somehow we did something, as you're suggesting, maybe something special that wasn't completely general. We've got some little special part of the whole search space in evolutionary game theory in which this happens to be true, but more generally, organisms would evolve to see the truth. So the best pushback we've gotten is from a team at Yale. And they suggested that if you use thousands of payoff functions, so we, in our simulations, we just use a couple, one or two, because it was our first simulations, right? So that would be a limit. We had one or two payoff functions, we showed the result in those, at least for the genetic algorithms. And they said, if you have 20,000 of them, then we can find these conditions in which truth-seeing organisms would be the ones that evolved and survived. And so we looked at their simulations, and it certainly is the case that you can find special cases in which truth can evolve. So when I say it's probability zero, it doesn't mean it can't happen. It can happen. In fact, it could happen infinitely often. It's just probability zero. So probability zero things can happen infinitely often." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say probability zero, you mean probability close to zero." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "to be very, very precise. So for example, if I have a unit square on the plane, and I use a probability measure in which the area of a region is this probability, then if I draw a curve in that unit square, it has measure precisely zero, precisely, not approximately, precisely zero, and yet it has infinitely many points. So there's an object that for that probability measure has probability zero, and yet there's infinitely many points in it. So that's what I mean by when I say that the things that are probability zero can happen infinitely often in principle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but infinity, as far as, and I look outside often, I walk around and I look at people, I have never seen infinity in real life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an interesting," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've been looking, I've been looking. I don't notice it, infinitely small or the infinitely big. And so the tools of mathematics, you could sort of apply the same kind of criticism that it is a very convenient interface into our reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a big debate in mathematics, the intuitionists versus the ones who take, for example, the real numbers as real. And that's a fun discussion. Nicholas Gieson, a physicist, has really interesting work recently on how if you go with intuitionist mathematics, you could effectively quantize Newton, and you find that Newtonian theory and quantum theory aren't that different once you go with it. It's really quite interesting. So the issue you raise is a very, very deep one, and one that I think we should take quite seriously, which is, you know, how shall we think about the reality of the conscious hierarchy, ALF1, ALF2, and all these different infinities versus just a more algorithmic approach, right? So where everything's computable in some sense, everything's finite, as big as you want, but nevertheless finite." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, it ultimately boils down to whether the world is discrete or continuous in some general sense. And again, we can't really know. But there's just a mind-breaking thought, just common sense reasoning, that something can happen and is yet, probability of it happening is 0%. That doesn't compute for common sense computer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, this is where you have to be a sharp mathematician to really, and I'm not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sharp is one word. What I'm saying is common sense computers, I mean that in a very kind of, in a positive sense, because we've been talking about perception systems and interfaces, if we are to reason about the world, we have to use the best interfaces we got. And I'm not exactly sure that game theory is the best interface we got for this. and applications of mathematics, tricks and tools of mathematics to game theory is the best we got when we are thinking about the nature of reality and fitness functions and evolution, period." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's a fair rejoinder. And I think that that was the tool that we used. And if someone says, here's a better mathematical tool, and here's why, this mathematical tool better captures the essence of Darwin's idea. John Maynard Smith didn't quite get it with evolutionary game theory. There's this thing. Now, there are tools like evolutionary graph theory, which generalize evolutionary game theory. And then there's quantum game theory. So you can, you can use quantum tools like entanglement, for example, as a resource in games that change the very nature of the solutions, of the optimal solutions of the game theoretic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the work from Yale is really interesting. It's a really interesting challenge of that kind of, of these ideas where, okay, if you have a very large number of fitness functions, or let's say you have, a nearly infinite number of fitness functions or a growing number of fitness functions, what kind of interesting things start to emerging if you are to be an organism. If to be an organism that adapts means having to deal with an ensemble of fitness functions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And so, we've actually redone some of our own work based on theirs. And this is the back and forth that we expect in science, right? And what we found was that in their simulations, they were assuming that you couldn't carve the world up into objects. And so, we said, well, let's relax that assumption. Allow organisms to create data structures that we might call objects And an object would be you would do hierarchical clustering of your fitness payoff functions, the ones that have similar shapes. If you have 20,000 of them, maybe these 50 are all very, very similar. So I can take all the perception, action, fitness stuff and make that into a data structure and we'll call that a unit or an object. And as soon as we did that, then all of their results went away. It turned out they were the special case and that the organisms that were shaped to see only fitness payoffs were the ones that were... So the idea is that objects then, what are objects from an evolutionary point of view? This bottle, we thought that when I saw a bottle, it was because I was seeing a true object that existed whether or not it was perceived. evolutionary theories suggest a different interpretation. I'm seeing a data structure that is encoding a convenient way of looking at various fitness paths. I can use this for drinking. I could use it as a weapon, not a very good one. I could beat someone over the head with it. If my goal is mating, this is pointless. So I'm seeing for what I'm coding here is all sorts of actions and the payoffs that I could get. When I pick up an apple, now I'm getting a different set of actions and payoffs. When I pick up a rock, I'm getting... So for every object, what I'm getting is a different set of payoff functions with various actions. And so once you allow that, then what you find is, once again, that truth goes extinct and the organisms that just get an interface are the ones that win." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the question, just sneaking up on, this is fascinating, from where do fitness functions originate? What gives birth to the fitness functions? So if there's a giant black box that just keeps giving you fitness functions, what are we trying to optimize? You said that water has different functions. uses than an apple. So there's these objects. What are we trying to optimize? And why is not reality a really good generator of fitness functions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So each theory makes its own assumptions and says, grant me this and I'll explain that. So evolutionary game theory says, grant me fitness payoffs. Right, and grant me strategies with payoffs, and I can write down the matrix for if this strategy interacts with that strategy, these are the payoffs that come up. If you grant me that, then I can start to explain a lot of things. Now you can ask for a deeper question, like, okay, how does physics evolve biology, and where do these fitness payoffs come from, right? That's a completely different enterprise. And of course, evolutionary game theory then would be not the right tool for that. It would have to be a deeper tool that shows where evolutionary game theory comes from. My own take is that there's gonna be a problem in doing that because space-time isn't fundamental. It's just a user interface. And that the distinction that we make between living and non-living is not a fundamental distinction. It's an artifact of the limits of our interface. Right, so this is a new wrinkle and this is an important wrinkle. It's so nice to take space and time as fundamental because if something looks like it's inanimate, it's inanimate and we can just say it's not living. Now, it's much more complicated. Certain things are obviously living. I'm talking with you, I'm obviously interacting with something that's alive and conscious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we've let go of the word obviously in this conversation. I think nothing is obvious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nothing's obvious, that's right. But when we get down to an ant, it's obviously living, but I'll say it appears to be living. But when we get down to a virus, now people wonder, and when we get down to protons, people say it's not living. And my attitude is, look, I have a user interface. The interface is there to hide certain aspects of reality and others to, an uneven representation, put it that way. Certain things just get completely hidden. Dark matter and dark energy are most of the energy and matter that's out there. Our interface just plain flat out hides them. The only way we get some hint is because gravitational things are going wrong. So most things are outside of our interface. The distinction between living and non-living is not fundamental, it's an artifact of our interface. So if we really want to understand where evolution comes from, to answer the question, the deep question you asked, I think the right way we're gonna have to do that is to come up with a deeper theory than space-time, in which there may not be the notion of time. And show that whatever this dynamics of that deeper theory is, By the way, I'll talk about how you could have dynamics without time. But the dynamics of this deeper theory, when we project it into in certain ways, then we do get space-time and we get what appears to be evolution by natural selection. So I would love to see evolution by natural selection, nature red in tooth and claw, people fighting, animals fighting for resources and the whole bit, come out of a deeper theory in which perhaps it's all cooperation. There's no limited resources and so forth. But as a result of projection, you get space and time. And as a result of projection, you get nature red in tooth and claw, the appearance of it. But it's all an artifact of the interface." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like this idea that the line between living and non-living is very important because that's a thing that would emerge before you have evolution, the idea of death. So, that seems to be an important component of natural selection, and if that emerged, because that's also, you know, asking the question, I guess, that I ask, where do fitness functions come from? That's like asking the old meaning of life question, right? Is that, what's the why? Why? And one of the big underlying why's, okay, you can start with evolution on Earth, but without living, without life and death, without the line between the living and the dead, you don't have evolution. So what if underneath it, there's no such thing as the living and the dead? There's no, like this concept of an organism, period. There's a living organism that's defined by a volume in spacetime that somehow interacts, that over time maintains its integrity somehow. It has some kind of history, it has a wall of some kind. the outside world, the environment, and then inside there's an organism. So you're defining an organism, and also you define that organism by the fact that it can move, and it can come alive, which you kind of think of as moving, combined with the fact that it's keeping itself separate from the environment, so you can point out that thing is living, and then it can also die. that seems to be all very powerful components of space-time that enable you to have something like natural selection and evolution." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and there's a lot of interesting work, some of it by collaborators of Carl Friston and others, where they have Bayes net kind of stuff that they built on the notion of a Markov blanket, so you have some states, within this network that are inside the blanket, then you have the blanket, and then the states outside the blanket. And the states inside this Markov blanket are conditionally independent of the states outside the blanket, conditioned on the blanket. And what they're looking at is that the dynamics of the states inside the Markov blanket seem to be trying to estimate properties of the outside and react to them in a way. So it seems like you're doing probabilistic inferences in ways that might be able to keep you alive. So there's interesting work going on in that direction. But what I'm saying is something slightly different. And that is, when I look at you, all I see is skin, hair and eyes, right? That's all I see. But I know that there's a deeper reality. I believe that there's a much deeper reality. There's the whole world of your experiences, your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams. In some sense, the face that I see is just a symbol that I create, right? And as soon as I look away, I delete that symbol, but I don't delete you. I don't delete the conscious experience, the whole world of your... So I'm only deleting an interface symbol, but that interface symbol is a portal, so to speak. not a perfect portal, but a genuine portal into your beliefs, into your conscious experiences, into, that's why we can have a conversation. We genuinely, your consciousness is genuinely affecting mine, and mine is genuinely affecting yours through these icons, which I create on the fly. I mean, I create your face, when I look, I delete it. I don't create you, your consciousness, that's there all the time, but I do, so, Now when I look at a cat, I'm creating something that I still call living and I still think is conscious. When I look at an ant, I create something that I still would call living but maybe not conscious. When I look at something I call a virus, now I'm not even sure I would call it living. And when I look at a proton, I would say I don't even think it's not alive at all. It could be that I'm nevertheless interacting with something that's just as conscious as you. I'm not saying the proton is conscious. The face that I'm creating when I look at you, that face is not conscious. That face is a data structure in me. That face, it's an experience, it's not an experiencer. Similarly, a proton is something that I create when I look or do a collision in the Large Hadron Collider or something like that. But what is behind the entity in space-time? So I've got this space-time interface and I've just got this entity that I call a proton. What is the reality behind it? Well, the physicists are finding these big, big structures, the amplituhedron, the sociahedron. What's behind those? Could be consciousness, what I'm playing with. In which case, when I'm interacting with a proton, I could be interacting with consciousness. Again, to be very, very clear, because it's easy to misunderstand, I'm not saying a proton is conscious. Just like I'm not saying your face is conscious. Your face is a symbol I create and then delete as I look. So your face is not conscious, but I know that that face in my interface, the Lex Friedman face that I create, is an interface symbol that's a genuine portal into your consciousness. portal is less clear for a cat, even less clear for an ant, and by the time we get down to a proton, the portal is not clear at all. But that doesn't mean I'm not interacting with consciousness, it just means my interface gave up, and there's some deeper reality that we have to go after. So your question really forces out a big part of this whole approach that I'm talking about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's this portal of the conscious, I wonder why you can't, your portal is not as good to a cat, to a cat's consciousness than it is to a human. Does it have to do with the fact that you're human and just similar organisms, organisms of similar complexity are able to create portals better to each other? Or is it just, as you get more and more complex, you get better and better portals?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let me answer one aspect of it that I'm more confident about, then I'll speculate on that. Why is it that the portal is so bad with protons? And elementary particles more generally, so quarks, leptons, and gluons, and so forth. Well, the reason for that is because those are just symmetries of space-time. More technically, they're irreducible representations of the Poincaré group of space-time. So they're just, literally representations of the data structure of space-time that we're using. So that's why they're not very much insightful. They're just almost entirely tied to the data structure itself. They're telling you only something about the data structure, not behind the data structure. It's only when we get to higher levels that we're starting to, in some sense, build portals to what's behind space-time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure, yeah, so there's more and more complexity built on top of the interface of space-time with the cat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you can actually build a portal, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, right. Yeah, this interface of face and hair and so on, skin, There's some syncing going on between humans, though, where we sync, like, you're getting a pretty good representation of the ideas in my head and starting to get a foggy view of my memories in my head, even though this is the first time we're talking, you start to project your own memories, you start to solve, like, a giant hierarchy of puzzles about a human. Because we're all, there's a lot of similarities, a lot of it rhymes. So you start to make a lot of inferences and you build up this model of a person. You have a pretty sophisticated model of what's going on underneath. Again, I just, I wonder if it's possible to construct these models about each other and nevertheless be very distant from an underlying reality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "there's a lot of work on this. So there's some interesting work called signaling games where they look at how people can coordinate and come to communicate. There's some interesting work that was done by some colleagues and friends of mine, Louis Nerens, Natalia Komorova, and Kimberly Jameson, where they were looking at the evolving color words. So you have a circle of colors, this is the color circle, and they wanted to see if they could get people to cooperate in how they carved the color circle up into two units of words. And so they had a game theoretic kind of thing that they'd had people do. And what they found was that when they included, so most people are trichromats, you have three kinds of cone photoreceptors, but there are some, a lot of men, 7% of men are dichromats, they might be missing the red cone photoreceptor. They found that the dichromats an outsized influence on the final ways that the whole space of colors was carved up and labels attached. You needed to be able to include the dichromats in the conversation, and so they had a bigger influence on how you made the boundaries of the language. I thought that was a really interesting kind of insight that there's going to be, again, perhaps a game or evolutionary or genetic algorithm kind of thing that goes on in terms of learning to communicate in ways that are useful. So yeah, you can use game theory to actually explore that, or signaling games. There's a lot of brilliant work on that. I'm not doing it, but there's work out there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if it's okay, let us tackle once more, and perhaps several more times, after the big topic of consciousness, okay? This very beautiful, powerful things that perhaps is the thing that makes us human. What is it? What's the role of consciousness in the world? Let's say even just the thing we've been talking about, which is the formation of this interface. Any kind of ways you want to kind of start talking about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let me say first what most of my colleagues say. 99% are, again, assuming that space-time is fundamental. Particles in space-time, matter is fundamental. And most are reductionist. And so, the standard approach to consciousness is to figure out what complicated systems of matter with the right functional properties could possibly lead to the emergence of consciousness. That's the general idea, right? So, maybe you have to have neurons. Maybe only if you have neurons, but that might not be enough. They have to certain kinds of complexity in their organization and their dynamics, certain kind of network abilities, for example. So there's There are those who say, for example, that consciousness arises from orchestrated collapse of quantum states of microtubules and neurons. So this is Hameroff and Penrose have this kind of. So you start with something physical, a property of quantum states of neurons, of microtubules and neurons, and you say that somehow an orchestrated collapse of those is consciousness or conscious experiences. Or integrated information theory. Again, you start with something physical And if it has the right kind of functional properties, it's something they call phi, with the right kind of integrated information, then you have consciousness. Or you can be a panpsychist, Philip Goff, for example, where you might say, well, in addition to the particles in space and time, those particles are not just matter, they also could have, say, a unit of consciousness. But once again, you're taking space and time and particles as fundamental, and you're adding a new property to them, say consciousness. And then you have to talk about how when a proton and a neutron, or a proton and electron get together to form hydrogen, then how those consciousnesses merge to or interact to create the consciousness of hydrogen and so forth. There's attention schema theory, which again, this is how neural network, processes representing to the network itself, its attentional processes, that could be consciousness. There's global workspace theory and neuronal global workspace theory. So there's many, many theories of this type. What's common to all of them is they assume that space-time is fundamental. They assume that physical processes in space-time is fundamental. Panpsychism adds consciousness as an additional thing, it's almost dualist in that regard. And my attitude is our best science is telling us that space-time is not fundamental. So why is that important here? Well, for centuries, deep thinkers thought of earth, air, fire, and water as the fundamental elements. It was a reductionist kind of idea. Nothing was more elemental than those and you could sort of build everything up from those. When we got the periodic table of elements, we realized that, of course, we want to study earth, air, fire, and water. There's combustion science for fire. there's sciences for all these other things, water and so forth. So we're gonna do science for these things, but fundamental, no, no. If you're looking for something fundamental, those are the wrong building blocks. Earth has many, many different kinds of elements that project into the one thing that we call Earth. If you don't understand that there's silicon, that there's iron, that there's all these different kinds of things that project into what we call Earth, you're you're hopelessly lost. You're not fundamental, you're not going to get there. And then after the periodic table, then we came up with quarks, leptons and gluons, the particles of the standard model of physics. And so we actually now know that if you really want to get fundamental, periodic table isn't it? It's good for chemistry and it's just wonderful for chemistry, but if you're trying to go deep fundamental, what is the fundamental science? That's not it. You're going to have to go to quarks, leptons and gluons and so forth. Well, now we've discovered space-time itself is doomed. Quarks, leptons and gluons are just irreducible representations of the symmetries of space-time. So the whole framework on which consciousness research is being based right now is doomed. And for me, these are my friends and colleagues that are doing this. They're brilliant. They're brilliant. My feeling is I'm so sad that they're stuck with this old framework. Because if they weren't stuck, like with earth, air, fire, and water, you could actually make progress. So it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you start with earth, air, fire, and water, you're not gonna get anywhere, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I actually just, because the word doomed is so interesting. Let me give you some options, multiple choice quiz. Is space-time, we could say is reality, the way we perceive it, doomed? wrong or fake? Because doomed just means it could still be right and we're now ready to go deeper. So it's not wrong, it's not a complete deviation from a journey toward the truth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, it's like earth, air, fire, and water is not wrong. There is earth, air, fire, and water, that's a useful framework, but it's not fundamental." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's also wrong, which is they used to believe, as I recently learned, that George Washington, the first president of the United States, was blood to death. for something that could have been easily treated because it was believed that you can get, actually I need to look into this further, but I guess you get toxins out or demons out, I don't know what you're getting out with the bleeding of a person. So that ended up being wrong but widely believed as a medical tool. So it's also possible that our assumption of space-time is not just doomed but is wrong." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if we believe that it's fundamental, that's wrong. But if we believe it's a useful tool, that's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But bleeding somebody to death was believed to be a useful tool. It wasn't just not fundamental. It was very, I'm sure there's cases in which bleeding somebody would work, but it would be a very tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of cases. So it could be that it's wrong, like it's a side road that's ultimately leading to a dead end, as opposed to a truck stop or something that you can get off of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My feeling is not the dead end kind of thing. I think that what the physicists are finding is that there are these structures beyond space-time, but they project back into space-time. And so space-time, when they say space-time is doomed, they're explicit. They're saying it's doomed in the sense that we thought it was fundamental. It's not fundamental. a useful, absolutely useful and brilliant data structure, but there are deeper data structures like cosmological polytope and space-time is not fundamental. What is doomed in the sense that it's wrong is reductionism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is saying space-time is fundamental, essentially." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right. The idea that somehow being smaller in space and time, or space-time, is a fundamental nature of reality, that's just wrong. It turned out to be a useful heuristic for thermodynamics and so forth, and in several other places, reductionism has been very useful. But that's, in some sense, an artifact of how we use our interface." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so you're saying size doesn't matter. Okay, this is very important for me to write down. Ultimately." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ultimately, right. I mean, it's useful for theories like thermodynamics and also for understanding brain networks in terms of individual neurons and neurons in terms of chemical systems inside cells. That's all very, very useful. But the idea that we're getting to the more fundamental nature of reality, No. When you get all the way down in that direction, you get down to the quarks and gluons, what you realize is what you've gotten down to is not fundamental reality, just the irreducible representations of a data structure. That's all you've gotten down to. So you're always stuck inside the data structure. So you seem to be getting closer and closer. I went from neural networks to neurons, neurons to chemistry, chemistry to particles, particles to quarks and gluons. I'm getting closer and closer to the actual structure of the data structure of space and time, the irreducible representations. That's what you're getting closer to, not to a deeper understanding of what's beyond space-time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We'll also refer, we'll return again to this question of dynamics, because you keep saying that space-time is doom, but mostly focusing on the space part of that. It's very interesting to see why time gets the bad cred too, because how do you have dynamics without time is the thing I'd love to talk to you a little bit about. But let us return, your brilliant whirlwind overview of the different theories of consciousness that are out there, What is consciousness if outside of space-time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If we think that we want to have a model of consciousness, we as scientists then have to say, what do we want to write down? What kind of mathematical modeling are we gonna write down? And if you think about it, there's lots of things that you might want to write down about consciousness. It's a fairly complicated subject. So most of my colleagues are saying, let's start with matter or neurons and see what properties of matter could create consciousness. But I'm saying that that whole thing is out. Space-time is doomed, that whole thing is out. We need to look at consciousness qua consciousness. In other words, not as something that arises in space and time, but perhaps as something that creates space and time as a data structure. So what do we want? And here again, there's no hard and fast rule, but what you as a scientist have to do is to pick what you think are the minimal assumptions that are gonna allow you to boot up a comprehensive theory. That is the trick. So what do I want? So what I chose to do was to have three things. I said that there are conscious experiences, feeling of headache, the smell of garlic, experiencing the color red. Those are conscious. So that's a primitive of a theory. And the reason I want few primitives, why? Because those are the miracles of the theory, right? The primitives, the assumptions of the theory are the things you're not going to explain. Those are the things you assume." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And those experiences you particularly mean there's a subjectiveness to them. It's the thing when people refer to the heart problem of consciousness is it feels like something to look at the color red. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly right. It feels like something to have a headache or to feel upset to your stomach. It feels like something. And so I'm going to grant that in this theory, there are experiences and they're fundamental in some sense. So conscious experience. So they're not derived from physics. They're not functional properties of particles. They are sui generis. They exist. Just like we assume space-time exists. I'm now saying space-time is just a data structure. It doesn't exist independent of conscious experiences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry to interrupt once again, but should we be focusing in your thinking on humans alone? Or is there something in relation to other kinds of organisms that have a sufficiently high level of complexity? Or is there some kind of generalization of the panpsychist idea that consciousness permeates all matter? outside of the usual definition of what matter is inside spacetime." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "RL So it's beyond human consciousness. Human consciousness from my point of view would be one of a countless variety of consciousnesses. And even within human consciousness, there's countless variety of consciousnesses within us, right? I mean, you have your left and right hemisphere, And apparently, if you split the corpus callosum, the personality of the left hemisphere and the religious beliefs of the left hemisphere can be very different from the right hemisphere. And their conscious experiences can be disjoint. One could have one conscious experience. They can play 20 questions. The left hemisphere can have an idea in its mind, and the right hemisphere has to guess, and it might not get it. So even within you, there is more than just one consciousness, it's lots of consciousnesses. So the general theory of consciousness that I'm after is not just human consciousness, it's going to be just consciousness. And I presume human consciousness is a tiny drop in the bucket of the infinite variety of consciousnesses." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That said, I should clarify that the black hole of consciousness is the home cat. I'm pretty sure cats lack, is the embodiment of evil and lack all capacity for consciousness or compassion. So I just wanna lay that on, but that's a theory I'm working, I don't have any good evidence, but it's just a shout out. Sorry to distract, so that's the first assumption." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The first assumption, that's right. The second assumption is that these experiences have consequences. So I'm going to say that conscious experiences can trigger other conscious experiences somehow. So really, in some sense, there's, two basic assumptions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There comes some kind of causality. Is there a chain of causality? Does this relate to dynamics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll say there's a probabilistic relationship. So I'm trying to be as non-specific to begin with and see where it leads me. So what I can write down are probability spaces. So probability space, which contains the conscious experiences that this consciousness can have. So I call this a conscious agent. This technical thing, Annika Harris and I have talked about this and she rightly that people will think that I'm bringing in a notion of a self or agency and so forth when I say conscious agent. So I just want to say that I use the term conscious agent merely as a technical term. There is no notion of self in my fundamental definition of a conscious agent. There are only experiences and probabilistic relationships of how they trigger other experiences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the agent is the generator of the conscious experience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The agent is a mathematical structure that includes a probability measure, probability space of a possible conscious experiences and a Markovian kernel, which describes how if this agent has certain conscious experiences, how that will affect the experiences of other conscious agents, including itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you don't think of that as a self." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, there is no notion of a self here. There's no notion of really of an agent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But is there a locality Is there an organism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no, okay. So this is, these are conscious units, conscious entities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But they're distinct in some way, because they have to interact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so here's the interesting thing. When we write down the mathematics, when you have two of these conscious agents interacting, the pair satisfy a definition of a conscious agent. So they are a single conscious agent. So there is one conscious agent. but it has a nice analytic decomposition into as many conscious agents as you wish. It's a very useful scientific interface. It's a scale-free or if you like a fractal-like approach to it in which we can use the same unit of analysis at all scales in studying consciousness. But if I want to talk about, so there's no notion of learning, memory, problem solving, intelligence, self, agency. So none of that is fundamental. And the reason I did that was because I want to assume as little as possible. Everything I assume is a miracle in the theory. It's not something you explain, it's something you assume. So I have to build networks of conscious agents. If I want to have a notion of a self, I have to build a self. I have to build learning, memory, problem solving, intelligence, and planning, all these different things. I have to build networks of conscious agents to do that. It's a trivial theorem that networks of conscious agents are computationally universal, that's trivial. So anything that we can do with neural networks or, you know, automata, you can do with networks of conscious agents, that's trivial. But you can also do more. The events in the probability space need not be computable. So the Markovian dynamics is not restricted to computable functions because the very events themselves need not be computable. So this can capture any computable theory, anything we can do with neural networks, we can do with conscious agent networks. But it leaves open the door for the possibility of non-computable interactions between conscious agents. So we have to, if we want a theory of memory, we have to build it. And there's lots of different ways you could build. We've actually got a paper, Chris Fields took the lead on this and we have a paper called Conscious Agent Networks where Chris takes the lead and shows how to use these networks of conscious agents to build memory and to build primitive kinds of learning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But can you provide some intuition of what conscious networks, networks of conscious agents, helps you, first of all, what that looks like. And I don't just mean mathematically, of course maybe that might help build up intuition, but that helps us potentially solve the hard problem of consciousness. Or is that baked in, that that exists? Can you solve the hard problem of consciousness, why it tastes delicious when you eat a delicious ice cream with networks of conscious agents? Or is that taken as an assumption?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the standard way the hard problem is thought of is we're assuming space and time in particles, or neurons, for example. are just physical things that have no consciousness. And we have to explain how the conscious experience of the taste of chocolate could emerge from those. So the typical hard problem of consciousness is that problem, right? How do you boot up the taste of chocolate, the experience of the taste of chocolate from neurons, say, or the right kind of artificial intelligence circuitry? And How do you boot that up? That's typically what the hard problem of consciousness means to researchers. Notice that I'm changing the problem. I'm not trying to boot up conscious experiences from the dynamics of neurons or silicon or something like that. I'm saying that that's the wrong problem. My hard problem would go in the other direction. If I start with conscious experiences, how do I build up space and time? How do I build up what I call the physical world? How do I build up what we call brains? Because I'm saying consciousness is not something that brains do. Brains are something that consciousness makes up. It's among the experience, it's an ephemeral experience in consciousness. I look inside, so to be very, very clear, right now I have no neurons. If you looked, you would see neurons. That's a data structure that you would create on the fly. And it's a very useful one. As soon as you look away, You garbage collect that data structure, just like that Necker cube that I was talking about on the piece of paper. When you look, you see a 3D cube. You create it on the fly. As soon as you look away, that's gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you say you, you mean a human being scientist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right now, that's right. More generally, it'll be conscious agents because as you pointed out, am I asking for a theory of conscience only about humans? No, it's consciousness, which human consciousness is just a tiny sliver." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you are saying that there is, that's a useful data structure. How many other data structures are there? That's why I said you human. If there's another Earth, if there's another alien civilization doing these kinds of investigations, would they come up with similar data structures? What is the space of data structures, I guess is what I'm asking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My guess is that if consciousness is fundamental, consciousness is all there is, then the only thing that mathematical structure can be about is possibilities of consciousness. And that suggests to me that there could be an infinite variety of consciousnesses, and a vanishingly small fraction of them use space-time data structures and the kinds of structures that we use. There's an infinite variety of data structures. Now this is very similar to something that Max Tegmark has said, but I want to distinguish it. He has this level four multiverse idea. He thinks that mathematics is fundamental. And so that's the fundamental reality. And since there's an infinite variety of endless variety of mathematical structures, there's an infinite variety of multiverses in his view. I'm saying something similar in spirit, but importantly different. There's an infinite variety of mathematical structures, absolutely. But mathematics isn't the fundamental reality in this framework. Consciousness is. And mathematics is to consciousness like bones are to an organism. You need the bones. So mathematics is not divorced from consciousness, but it's not the entirety of consciousness by any means. And so there's an infinite variety of consciousness and signaling games that consciousnesses could interact via. And therefore worlds, common worlds, data structures, that they can use to communicate. So, space and time is just one of an infinite variety. And so, I think that what we'll find is that as we go outside of our little space-time bubble, we will encounter utterly alien forms of conscious experience that we may not be able to really comprehend in the following sense. If I ask you to imagine a color that you've never seen before, does anything happen? Right, nothing happens. Nothing happens. And that's just one color. I'm asking for just a color. We actually know, by the way, that apparently there are women called tetraphams who have four color receptors. just three. And Kimberly Jameson and others who've studied these women have good evidence that they apparently have a new dimension of color experience that the rest of us don't have. So these women are apparently living in a world of color that you and I can't even concretely imagine, no man can imagine them. and yet they're real color experiences. And so, in that sense, I'm saying now take that little baby step, oh, there are women who have color experiences that I could never have. Well, that's shocking. Now take that infinite. There are consciousnesses where every aspect of their experiences is like that new color. It's something utterly alien to you, you'd have nothing like that. And yet these are all possible varieties of conscious experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And when you say there's a lot of consciousnesses, as a singular consciousness, basically the set of possible experiences you can have in that subjective way, as opposed to the underlying mechanism. Because you say that having extra color receptor, ability to have new experiences, that's somehow a different consciousness. Is there a way to see that as all the same consciousness, the subjectivity itself?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, because when we have two of these conscious agents interacting in mathematics, they actually satisfy the definition of a conscious agent. So in fact, they are a single conscious agent. So in fact, one way to think about what I'm saying, I'm postulating with my colleagues, Chetan and Chris and others, Robert Prentner and so forth, there is one big conscious agent, infinitely complicated. But fortunately, we can, for analytic purposes, break it down all the way to, in some sense, the simplest conscious agent, which has one conscious experience, one. This one agent can experience red 35, that's it, that's what it experiences. You can get all the way down to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think it's possible that consciousness, whatever that is, is much more, is fundamental, or at least much more in the direction of the fundamental than is space-time as we perceive it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the proposal. And therefore, what I have to do, in terms of the heart problem of consciousness, is to show how dynamical systems of conscious agents could lead to what we call space and time and neurons and brain activity. In other words, we have to show how you get space time and physical objects entirely from a theory of conscious agents outside of space-time, with the dynamics outside of space-time. So that's, and I can tell you how we plan to do that, but that's the idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, the magic of it, the chocolate is delicious. So there's a mathematical kind of thing that we could say here, how it can emerge within the system of networks of conscious agents, but, you know, is there going to be at the end of the proof why chocolate is so delicious or no? I guess I'm going to ask different kinds of dumb questions to try to sneak up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, well, that's the right question. And when I say that I took conscious experiences as fundamental, what that means is in the current version of my theory, I'm not explaining conscious experiences where they came from. That's the miracle. That's one of the miracles. So I have two miracles in my theory. There are conscious experiences, like the taste of chocolate, and that there's a probabilistic relationship. When certain conscious experiences occur, others are more likely to occur." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those are the two miracles that are- It's possible to get beyond that and somehow start to chip away at the miracleness of that miracle, that chocolate is still delicious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope so. I've got my hands full with what I'm doing right now, but I can just say at top level how I would think about that. That would get at this consciousness without form. This is really tough because it's consciousness without form versus the various forms that consciousness takes for the experiences that it has. So when I write down a probability space for these conscious experiences, I say, here's a probability space for the possible conscious experiences. It's just like when I write down a probability space for an experiment, like I'm gonna flip a coin twice, right? And I want to look at the probabilities of various outcomes. So I have to write down a probability space. There could be heads, heads, heads, tails, tails, heads, tails, tails. So you, before, as any class in probability, you're told, write down your probability space. If you don't write down your probability space, you can't get started. So here's my probability space for consciousness. How do I want to interpret that structure? The structure is just sitting there. There's gonna be a dynamics that happens on it, right? Experiences appear and then disappear, just like heads appears and disappears. So one way to think about that fundamental probability space is that corresponds to consciousness without any content. The infinite consciousness that transcends any particular content." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, do you think of that as a mechanism, as a thing, like the rules that govern the dynamics of the thing outside of space-time? If you think consciousness is fundamental, isn't it essentially getting like, it is solving the hard problem, which is like, from where does this thing pop up? which is the mechanism of the thing popping up. Whatever the consciousness is, the different kinds, so on, that mechanism. And also, the question I wanna ask is, how tricky do you think it is to solve that problem? You've solved a lot of difficult problems throughout the history of humanity. There's probably more problems to solve left than we've solved by like an infinity. But along that long journey of intelligent species, when will we solve this consciousness one? Which is one way to measure the difficulty of the problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'll give two answers. There's one problem I think we can solve, but we haven't solved yet. And that is the reverse of what my colleagues call the hard problem. The problem of how do you start with conscious experiences in the way that I've just described them, and the dynamics, and build up space and time and brains, that I think is a tough technical problem, but it's in principle solvable. So I think we can solve that. So we would solve the hard problem, not by showing how brains create consciousness, but how networks of conscious agents create what we call the symbols that we call brains." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that I think, but does that allow you to, so that's interesting, that's an interesting idea. Consciousness creates the brain, not the brain creates consciousness. But does that allow you to build the thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My guess is that it will enable unbelievable technologies. And I'll tell you why, I think it plugs into the work that the physicists are doing. So this theory of consciousness will be even deeper than the structures that the physicists are finding, like the amplituhedron. But the other answer to your question is less positive. As I said earlier, I think that there is no such thing as a theory of everything. So that I think that the theory that my team is working on, this conscious agent theory, is just a 1.0 theory. We're using probability spaces and Markovian kernels. I can easily see people now saying, well, we can do better if we go to category theory, and we can get a deeper, perhaps more interesting. And then someone will say, well, now I'll go to Topoi theory. So I imagine that there'll be conscious agents, five, 10, three trillion point O, but I think it will never end. I think ultimately this question that we sort of put our fingers on of how does the formless give birth to form, to the taste, the wonderful taste of chocolate. I think that we will always go deeper and deeper, but we will never solve that. that in some sense that will be a primitive. I hope I'm wrong. Maybe it's just the limits of my current imagination. So I'll just say my imagination right now doesn't peer that deep. By the way, I'm saying this, I don't want to discourage some brilliant 20-year-old who then later on proves me dead wrong. I hope to be proven dead wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just like you said, essentially from now, everything we're saying now, everything you're saying, all your theories will be laughing stock. They will respect the puzzle solving abilities and how much we were able to do with so little, but outside of that, it will all be just, the silliness will be entertainment for a teenager." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Especially the silliness when we thought that we were so smart and we knew it all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it would be interesting to explore your ideas by contrasting, you mentioned Annika, Annika Harris, you mentioned Philip Goff. So outside of, if you're not allowed to say, the fundamental disagreement is the fact that space-time is fundamental. What are interesting distinctions between ideas of consciousness between you and Annika, for example? You guys have, you've been on a podcast together, I'm sure. In private, you guys have some incredible conversations. So where are some interesting sticking points, some interesting disagreements, let's say, with Annika first? Maybe there'll be a few other people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Anika and I just had a conversation this morning where we were talking about our ideas and what we discovered really in our conversation was that we're pretty much on the same page. It was really just about consciousness. Our ideas about consciousness are pretty much on the same page. She rightly has cautioned me to when I talk about conscious agents, to point out that the notion of agency is not fundamental in my theory. The notion of self is not fundamental and that's absolutely true. I can use this network of conscious agents, I now use as a technical term, conscious agents is a technical term for that probability space with the Markovian dynamics. I can use that to build models of a self and to build models of agency, but they're not fundamental. So she has really been very helpful in helping me to be a little bit clearer about these ideas and not say things that are misleading." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The word, I mean, this is the interesting thing about language, actually, is that language, quite obviously, is an interface to truth. It's so fascinating that individual words, individual words, can have so much ambiguity, and the specific choices of a word within a particular sentence, within the context of a sentence, can have such a difference in meaning. It's quite fascinating, especially when you're talking about topics like consciousness, because it's a very loaded term. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. and the entire concept of shrouded in mystery. So a combination of the fact that it's a loaded term and that there's a lot of mystery, people can just interpret it in all kinds of ways. And so you have to be both precise and help them avoid getting stuck on some kind of side road of miscommunication, lost in translation because you used the wrong word. That's interesting. I mean, because for a lot of people consciousness is ultimately connected to a self. I mean, our experience of consciousness is very, it's connected to this ego. I mean, I just, I mean, what else could it possibly be? I can't even, how do you begin to comprehend, to visualize, to conceptualize a consciousness that's not connected to this particular organism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll have a way of thinking about this whole problem now that comes out of this framework that's different. So we can imagine a dynamics of consciousness, not in space and time, just abstractly. It could be cooperative for all we know. It could be very friendly, I don't know. And you can set up a dynamics, a Markovian dynamics that is so-called stationary. And that's a technical term, which means that the entropy effectively is not increasing. There is some entropy, but it's constant. So there's no increasing entropy. And in that sense, the dynamics is timeless. There is no entropic time. But it's a trivial theorem. three-line proof that if you have a stationary Markovian dynamics, any projection that you make of that dynamics by conditional probability. And if you want, I can state a little bit more, even more mathematically precisely for some readers or listeners. But if any projection you take by conditional probability, the induced image of that Markov chain will have increasing entropy. You will have entropic time. So I'll be very, very precise. a Markov chain X1, X2 through Xn where Xn goes to infinity, right? The entropy H, capital H of Xn is equal to the entropy H of Xn minus one for all n. So the entropy is the same. But it's a theorem that H of XN, say given X sub one, is greater than or equal to H of XN minus one, given X one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sure, where does the greater come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because with the three line proof, H of XN given X one is greater than or equal to is greater than or equal to h of xn given x1 and x2 because conditioning reduces. But then h of xn minus one given x1 comma x2 is equal to h of xn given x2, xn minus one given x2 by the Markov property. And then because it's stationary, it's equal to h of x, I have to write it down. Anyway, there's a three-line proof." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "LR But the assumption of stationarity We're using a lot of terms that people won't understand, but it doesn't matter. So there's some kind of, Markovian dynamics is basically trying to model some kind of system with some probabilities, and there's agents, and they interact in some kind of way, and you can say something about that system as it evolves. Stationarity, so a stationary system is one that has certain properties in terms of entropy. very well, but we don't know if it's stationary or not. We don't know what the properties, so you have to kind of take assumptions and see, okay, well, what does the systems behave like under these different properties? The more constraints, the more assumptions you take, the more interesting, powerful things you can say, but sometimes they're limiting. That said, we're talking about consciousness here. How does that, You said cooperative, okay, competitive. It's just, I like chocolate. I'm sitting here, I have a brain, I'm wearing a suit. It sure as hell feels like I'm a self. What, am I tuning in, am I plugging into something? Am I a projection, a simple, trivial projection into space-time from some much larger organism that I can't possibly comprehend? How the hell, you're saying some, you're building up mathematical intuitions, fine, great. but I'm just, I'm having an existential crisis here and I'm gonna die soon. We'll all die pretty quickly, so I wanna figure out why chocolate's so delicious. So help me out here. So let's just keep sneaking up to this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so the whole technical thing was to say this. Even if the dynamics of consciousness is stationary, so that there is no entropic time, any projection of it, any view of it will have the artifact of entropic time. That's a limited resource. Limited resources, so that the fundamental dynamics may have no limited resources whatsoever. Any projection will have certainly time as a limited resource and probably lots of other limited resources. Hence, we could get competition and evolution and nature red and tooth and claw as an artifact of a deeper system in which those aren't fundamental. And in fact, I take it as something that this theory must do at some point is to show how networks of conscious agents, even if they're not resource limited, give rise to evolution by natural selection via a projection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but you're saying, I'm trying to understand how the limited resources that give rise to, so first the thing gives rise to time, that gives rise to limited resource, that gives rise to evolution by natural selection, how that has to do with the fact that chocolate is delicious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's not gonna do that directly, it's gonna get to this notion of self." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, it's gonna give you the notion of self. Evolution gives you the notion of self." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And also of a self separate from other selves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the idea would be that- Has competition, has life and death, all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, so it won't, I don't think, as I said, I don't think that I can tell you how the formless gives rise to the experience of chocolate. Right now, my current theory says that's one of the miracles I'm assuming. So my theory can't do it. And the reason my theory can't do it is because Hoffman's brain can't do it right now. But the notion of self, yes, the notion of self can be an artifact of the projection of it. So there's one conscious agent. Because anytime conscious agents interact, they form a new conscious agent. So there's one conscious agent. any projection of that one conscious agent gives rise to time, even if there wasn't any time in that one conscious agent. And it gives rise, I want to, now I haven't proven this, so now this is me guessing where the theory's gonna go. I haven't done this, there's no paper on this yet. So now I'm speculating. my guess is I'll be able to show or my brighter colleagues working with me will be able to show that we will get evolution of a natural selection, the notion of individual cells, individual physical objects and so forth coming out as a projection of this thing. And that the self then will be really interesting in terms of how it starts to interact with certain spiritual traditions, right? Where they will say that there is a notion of self that needs to be let go, which is this finite self that's competing with other selves to get more money and prestige and so forth. That self in some sense has to die, but there's a deeper self, which is the timeless being that precludes, not precludes, but precedes any particular conscious experiences, the ground of all experience, that there's that notion of a deep capital self. But our little capital lowercase s selves could be artifacts of projection. And it may be that what consciousness is doing in this framework is, right, it's projected itself down into a self that calls itself Don and a self that calls itself Lex. And through conversations like this, it's trying to find out about itself and eventually transcend the limits of the Don and Lex little icons that it's using and that little projection of itself. Through this kind of conversation, somehow it's learning about itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that thing dressed me up today in order to understand itself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And in some sense, you and I are not separate from that thing and we're not separate from each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, I have to question the fashion choices on my end then. All right, so you mentioned you agree in terms of consciousness on a lot of things with Annika. Is there somebody, friend or friendly foe that you disagree with in some nuanced, interesting way or some major way about consciousness, about these topics of reality that you return to often. It's like a... Christopher Hitchens with the rabbi David Wolpe have had interesting conversations through years that added to the complexity and the beauty of their friendship. Is there somebody like that, that over the years has been a source of disagreement with you, that strengthened your ideas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My ideas have been really shaped by several things. One is, the physicalist framework that my scientific colleagues, almost to a person, have adopted and that I adopted too. The reason I walked away from it was because it became clear that we couldn't start with unconscious ingredients and boot up consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you define physicalist in contrast to reductionist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So a physicalist, I would say is someone who takes space-time and the objects within space-time as ontologically fundamental." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, and then reductionist is saying the smaller, the more fundamental." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "a methodological thing. That's saying within space-time, as you go to smaller and smaller scales in space, you get deeper and deeper laws, more and more fundamental laws. And the reduction of temperature to particle movement was an example of that. But I think that that the reason that worked was almost an artifact of the nature of our interface." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That was for a long time, and your colleagues, including yourself, were physicalists, and now you broke away." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Broke away because I think you can't start with unconscious ingredients and boot up consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So even with Roger Penrose, where there's like a gray area." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and here's the challenge I would put to all of my friends and colleagues who are, give one specific conscious experience that you can boot up, right? So if you think that it's integrated information, and I've asked this of Giulio Tononi a couple of times back in the 90s and then just a couple of years ago. I asked Giulio, okay, so great, integrated information. So we're all interested in explaining some specific conscious experiences. So what is, pick one, the taste of chocolate. What is the integrated information precise structure that we need for chocolate, and why does that structure have to be for chocolate, and why is it that it could not possibly be vanilla? Ask them, is there any one specific conscious experience that you can account for? Because notice, they've set themselves the task. of booting up conscious experiences from physical systems. That's the test they've set themselves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that doesn't mean they're, I understand your intuition, but that doesn't mean they're wrong just because they can't find a way to boot it up yet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. No, that doesn't mean that they're wrong. It just means that they haven't done it. I think it's principled. the reason is principle, but I'm happy that they're exploring it. But the fact is, the remarkable fact is there's not one theory. So integrated information theory, orchestrated collapse of microtubules, global workspace theory. These are all theories of consciousness. These are all theories of consciousness. There's not a single theory that can give you a specific conscious experience, that they say, here is the physical dynamics or the physical structure that must be the taste of chocolate or whatever one they want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying it's impossible, they're saying it's just hard." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. My attitude is, okay, no one said you had to start with neurons or physical systems and boot up consciousness. You guys are just taking that. You chose that problem. So since you chose that problem, how much progress have you made? when you've not been able to come up with a single specific conscious experience and you've had these brilliant people working on it for decades now, that's not really good progress." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you to play devil's advocate. Can you try to steel man, steel man meaning argue the best possible case for reality, the opposite of your book title. Or maybe just stick into consciousness. Can you take the physicalist view? Can you steel man the physicalist view for a brief moment, playing devil's advocate to, or steel man the person you used to be? She's a physicalist. What's a good, like saying that you might be wrong right now, what would be a convincing argument for that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think the argument I would give and that I believed was, look, when you have very simple physical systems, like a piece of dirt, There's not much evidence of life for consciousness. It's only when you get really complicated physical systems like that have brains and really the more complicated the brains, the more it looks like there's consciousness and the more complicated that consciousness is. Surely that means that simple physical systems don't create consciousness. much consciousness, or if maybe not any, or maybe, panpsychics, they create the most elementary kinds of simple conscious experiences. But you need more complicated physical systems to boot up, to create more complicated consciousnesses. I think that's the intuition that drives most of my colleagues." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying that this concept of complexity is ill-defined when you ground it to space-time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's well-defined within the framework of space-time, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, it'll define relative to what you need to actually understand consciousness because you're grounding complexity just in space-time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, gotcha, right, right. Yeah, what I'm saying is, if it were true that space-time was fundamental, then I would have to agree that if there is such a thing as consciousness, given the data that we've got that complex brains have consciousness and dirt doesn't, that somehow it's the complexity of the dynamics or organization, the function of the physical system that somehow is creating the consciousness. So under those assumptions, yes, but when the physicists themselves are telling us that space-time is not fundamental, then I can understand. See, then the whole picture starts to come into focus. My colleagues are brilliant, right? These are really smart people. I mean, Francis Crick worked on this for the last 20 years of his life. These are not stupid people. These are brilliant, brilliant people. The fact that we've come up with not a single specific conscious experience that we can explain, and no hope. There's no one that says, I'm really close, I'll have it for you in a year. No, there's just like, there's this fundamental gap. so much so that Steve Pinker in one of his writings says, look, he likes the global workspace theory, but he says the last dollop of the theory in which there's something it's like to, he says, we may have to just stipulate that as a brute fact. I mean, that's, I mean, Pinker is brilliant, right? He understands the state of play on this problem of the hard problem of consciousness, starting with physicalist assumptions and then trying to boot up consciousness. When you've set yourself the problem, I'm starting with physical stuff that's not conscious. I'm trying to get the taste of chocolate out as maybe some kind of function of the dynamics of that. We've not been able to do that. And so Pinker is saying we may have to punt. we may have to just stipulate that last bit, he calls it the last dollop, and just say, stipulate it as a bare fact of nature that there is something it's like. Well, from my point of view as the, the whole point, the whole promise of the physicalist was we wouldn't have to stipulate. I was gonna start with the physical stuff and explain where the consciousness came from. If I'm going to stipulate consciousness, why don't I just stipulate consciousness and not stipulate all the physical stuff too? So I'm stipulating less. I'm saying, okay, I agree. Well, it's actually what I call the conscious realist perspective. Panpsychics are effectively dualists, right? They're saying there's physical stuff that really is fundamental and then consciousness stuff. So I would go with Pinker and say, look, let's just stipulate the consciousness stuff, but I'm not gonna stipulate the physical stuff. I'm gonna actually now show how to boot up the physical stuff from just the consciousness stuff. So I'll stipulate less." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible, so if you stipulate less, is it possible for our limited brains to visualize reality? as we delve deeper and deeper and deeper, is it possible to visualize somehow? With the tools of math, with the tools of computers, with the tools of our mind, are we hopelessly lost? You said there's ways to intuit what's true using mathematics and so on. probability and sort of Markovian dynamics, all that kind of stuff, but that's not visualizing, that's what's the kind of building intuition, but is it possible to visualize in the way we visualize so nicely in space-time in four dimensions? In three dimensions, sorry. Well, we really are looking through a two-dimensional screen until it's what we intuit to be a three-dimensional world and also inferring dynamic stuff. making it 4D anyway, is it possible to visualize some pretty pictures that give us a deeper sense of the truth of reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that we will incrementally be able to do that. I think that, for example, the picture that we have of electrons and photons interacting and scattering It may have not been possible until Faraday did all of his experiments and then Maxwell wrote down his equations, and we were then sort of forced by his equations to think in a new way. And then when Planck in 1900, desperate to try to solve the problem of black body radiation, what they call the ultraviolet catastrophe where Newton was predicting infinite energies where there weren't infinite energies in black-body radiation. And he in desperation proposed packets of energy. Then once you've done that, And then you have an Einstein come along five years later and show how that explains the photoelectric effect. And then eventually in 1926, you get quantum theory. And then you get this whole new way of thinking that was, from the Newtonian point of view, completely contradictory and counterintuitive, certainly. And maybe if Gieson is right, not contradictory. Maybe if you use intuitionist math, they're not contradictory, but still. Certainly you wouldn't have gone there. And so here's a case where the experiments and then a desperate mathematical move, sort of we use those as a flashlight into the deep fog, right? And so that science may be the flashlight into the deep fog." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if it's still possible to visualize in the, like we talk about consciousness from a self-perspective experience it, hold that idea in our mind, the way you can experience things directly. We've evolved to experience things in this 3D world. And that's a very rich experience. When you're thinking mathematically, you know, you still, in the end of the day, have to project it down. to a low dimensional space to make conclusions. Their conclusions will be a number, or a line, or a plot, or a visual. So I wonder like how we can really touch some deep truth in a subjective way, like experience it, really feel the beauty of it, you know? In the way that humans feel beauty." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, are we screwed? I don't think we're screwed. We get little hints of it from psychedelic drugs and so forth. We get hints that there are certain interventions that we can take on our interface. I apply this chemical, which is just some element of my interface to this other, to a brain, I ingest it. And all of a sudden, I seem like I've opened new portals into conscious experiences. Well, that's very, very suggestive. That's like the black body radiation doing something that we didn't expect, right? It doesn't go to infinity when we thought it was gonna go to infinity and we're forced to propose these quanta. So once we have a theory of conscious agents and is projection disbased on, I should say, I should sketch what I think that projection is. But then I think we can then start to ask specific questions. When you're taking DMT, or you're taking LSD or something like that. Now that we have this deep model that we've reverse engineered space and time and physical particles, we've pulled them back to this theory of conscious agents. Now we can ask ourselves in this idealized future, what are we doing to conscious agents when we apply 5-MeO-DMT. What are we doing? Are we opening a new portal? So when I say that, I mean, I have a portal into consciousness that I call my body of Lex Friedman that I'm creating. And it's a genuine portal, not perfect, but it's a genuine portal. I'm definitely communicating with your consciousness. And we know that we have one technology for building new portals. We know one technology and that is having kids. Having kids is how we build new portals into consciousness. It takes a long time. Can you elaborate that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, oh, oh, you mean like... Your son and your daughter didn't exist." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was a portal. You're having contact with consciousness. that you never would have had before, but now you've got a son or a daughter, you went through this physical process, they were born, then there was all the training." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But is that portal yours? So when you have kids, are you creating new portals that are completely distinct from the portals that you've created with other consciousness? Can you elaborate on that? To which degree are the consciousness of your kids a part of you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so every person that I see, that symbol that I see, the body that I see is a portal potentially for me to interact with a consciousness. And each consciousness has a unique character and we call it a personality and so forth. So with each new kid that's born, we come in contact with a personality that we've never seen before and a version of consciousness that we've never seen before. At a deeper level, as I said, the theory says there's one agent. So this is a different projection of that one agent. But so that's what I mean by a portal is within my own interface, my own projection, can I see other projections of that one consciousness? So can I get portals in that sense? And I think we will get a theory of that, that we will get a theory of portals and then we can ask how the psychedelics are acting. Are they actually creating new portals or not? If they're not, we should nevertheless then understand how we could create a new portal, right? Maybe we have to just study what happens when we have kids. We know that that technology creates new portals. So we have to reverse engineer that and then say, okay, could we somehow? create new portals de novo, once we understand it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "LRW With something like brain-computer interfaces, for example." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "RLW Yeah, or maybe just a chemical or something like that. It's probably more complicated than a chemical. That's why I think that the psychedelics may, because they might be affecting this portal in certain ways that it turns it around and opens up In other words, maybe once we understand what this thing is a portal, your body is a portal and understand all of its complexities, maybe we'll realize that that portal can be shifted to different parts of the deeper consciousness and give new windows on it. So in that way, maybe yes, psychedelics could open up new portals in the sense that they're taking something that's already a complex portal and just tweaking it a bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, but creating is a very powerful difference between morphing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right. Tweaking versus creating. I agree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But maybe it gives you intuition to at least the full space of the kinds of things that this particular system is capable of. I mean, the idea that consciousness creates brains, I mean, that breaks my brain. I guess I'm still a physicalist in that sense, because it's just much easier to intuit the world. It's practical to think there's a neural network and what are the different ways fascinating capabilities can emerge from this neural network. And so you start to, and then present to yourself the problem of okay, well how does consciousness arise? How does intelligence arise? How does emotion arise? How does memory arise in the, how do we filter within the system all the incoming sensory information we're able to allocate attention in different interesting ways? How do all those mechanisms arise? To say that there's other fundamental things we don't understand outside of space-time that are actually core to how this whole thing works is a bit paralyzing because It's like, oh, we're not 10% done, we're like 0.001% done. It's the immediate feeling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I certainly understand that. My attitude about it is if you look at the young physicists who are searching for these structures beyond space-time, like Epsilon and so forth, they're having a ball. Space-time, that's what the old folks did. That's what the older generation did. We're doing something that really is fun and new and they're having a blast and they're finding all these new structures. So I think that we're going to succeed in getting a new deeper theory, I can just say what I'm hoping with the theory that I'm working on. I'm hoping to show that I could have this timeless dynamics of consciousness, no entropic time. I take a projection and I show how this timeless dynamics looks like the Big Bang and the entire evolution of space-time. In other words, I see how my whole space-time interface" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So not just the projection, it doesn't just look like space-time, you can explain the whole from the origin of the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what we have to do, and that's what the physicists understand. When they go beyond space-time to the amplitude and the cosmological polytope, they ultimately know that they have to get back the big bang story and the whole evolution that whole story where there were no living things there was just a point and then the explosion and then just particles at high energy and then eventually the cooling down and the differentiation and finally matter condenses and then life and then consciousness, that whole story has to come out of something that's deeper and without time. And that's what we're up to. So the whole story that we've been telling ourselves about Big Bang and how brains evolve in consciousness will come out of a much deeper theory. And for someone like me, it's a lot. But for the younger generation, this is like, oh, wow, of all the low charis aren't picked. This is really good stuff. This is really new fundamental stuff that we can do. I can't wait to read the papers of the younger generation and I want to see them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Kids these days with their non-space-time assumptions. It's just interesting looking at the philosophical tradition of this difficult ideas you struggle with. If you look like somebody like Immanuel Kant, what are some interesting agreements and disagreements you have with a guy about the nature of reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a lot in agreement, right? So Kant was an idealist, transcendental idealist, He basically had the idea that we don't see nature as it is, we impose a structure on nature. And so, in some sense, I'm saying something similar. By the way, I don't call myself an idealist, I call myself a conscious realist because idealism has a long history. A lot of different ideas come under idealism and there's a lot of debates and so forth. tends to be identified with, in many cases, anti-science and anti-realism. And I don't want either connection with my ideas. And so, I just called mine conscious realism with an emphasis on realism and not anti-realism. But one place where I would, of course, disagree with Kant was that he thought that Euclidean space-time was a priori. We just know that that's false. So he went too far on that. But in general, the idea that we don't start with space-time, that space and time is in some sense forms of our perceptions. Yes, absolutely. And I would say that there's a lot in common with Berkeley in that regard. There's a lot of ingenious arguments in Berkeley. Leibniz Leibniz in his monadology understood very clearly that the hard problem was not solvable. He posed the hard problem and basically dismissed it and just said, you can't do this. And so if he came here and saw where we are, he said, look, guys, I told you this 300 years ago. And he had his monadology. He was trying to do something like, it's different from what I'm doing, but he had these things that were not in space and time, these monads. He was trying to build something I'm trying to build a theory of conscious agents. My guess is that if he came here, I could just, if he saw what I was doing, he would say, he would understand it immediately. take off with it and go places that I couldn't. He would have no problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, there would be overlap of the spirit of the ideas would be totally overlapping." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But his genius would then just run with it far faster than I could." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love the humility here. So let me ask you about sort of practical implications of your ideas to our world, our complicated world. When you look at the big questions of humanity, of hate, war, What else is there? Evil, maybe there's the positive aspects of that, of meaning, of love. What is the fact that reality is an illusion? Perceived, what is the conscious realism when applied to daily life? What kind of impact does it have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot, and it's sort of scary. We all know that life is ephemeral and spiritual traditions have said, wake up to the fact that anything that you do here is going to disappear. But it's even more ephemeral than perhaps we've thought. I see this bottle because I create it right now. As soon as I look away, that data structure has been garbage collected. That bottle, I have to recreate it every time I look. So I spent all my money and I buy this fancy car. That car, I have to keep recreating it every time I look at it. It's that ephemeral. So all the things that we invest ourselves in, we fight over, we kill each other over, and we have wars over. These are all, it's just like people in a virtual reality simulation. And there's this Portia, and we all see the Portia. Well, that Portia exists when I look at it. I turn my headset and I look at it. And then if Joe turns his headset the right way, he'll see his Portia. It's not even the same Portia that I see. He's creating his own Portia. So these things are exceedingly ephemeral, and now just imagine saying that that's my Portia. Well, you can agree to say that it's your portion, but really the portion only exists as long as you look. So this all of a sudden, what the spiritual traditions have been saying for a long, long time, this gets cashed out in mathematically precise science. It's saying ephemeral, yes, in fact, it lasts for a few milliseconds, a few hundred milliseconds while you look at it, and then it's gone. So the whole idea, why are we fighting? Why do we hate? It's we fight over possessions because we think that we're small little objects inside this pre-existing space time. We assume that that mansion and that car exists independent of us and that somehow we, these little things can have our sense of self and importance enhanced by having that special car or that special house or that special person. when in fact it's just the opposite. You create that mansion every time you look. You're something far deeper than that mansion. You're the entity which can create that mansion on the fly. And there's nothing to the mansion except what you create in this moment. So all of a sudden, when you take this point of view, It has all sorts of implications for how we interact with each other, how we treat each other. And again, a lot of things that spiritual traditions have said, It's a mixed bag. Spiritual traditions are a mixed bag. So let me just be right up front about that. I'm not promoting any particular, but they do have some insights." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, they have wisdom." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They have certain wisdom. They have, I can point to nonsense. I won't go into it, but I can also point to lots of nonsense. So the issue is to then to look for the key insights. And I think they have a lot of insights about the ephemeral nature of objects in space and time and not being attached to them, including our own bodies. and reversing that I'm not this little thing, a little consciousness trapped in the body. And the consciousness itself is only a product of the body. So when the body dies, the consciousness disappears. It turns completely around. The consciousness is fundamental. The body, my hand exists right now because I'm looking at it. My hand is gone. I have no hand. I have no brain. I have no heart. If you looked, you'll see a heart. Whatever I am, is this really complicated thing in consciousness. That's what I am. All the stuff that I thought I was. is something that I create on the fly and delete. So this is completely a radical restructuring of how we think about possessions, about identity, about survival of death, and so forth. This is completely transformative. But the nice thing is that this whole approach of conscious agents, unlike the spiritual traditions, which have said, in some cases, similar things, they've said it imprecisely. This is mathematics. we can actually now begin to state precisely, here's the mathematical model of consciousness, conscious agents, here's how it maps onto space-time, which I should sketch really briefly. And here's why things are ephemeral, and here's why you shouldn't be worried about the ephemeral nature of things, because you're not a little tiny entity inside space and time, quite the opposite, you're the author of space and time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The I and the am and the I am is all kind of emerging through this whole process of evolution and so on that's just surface waves and there's a much deeper ocean that we're trying to figure out here. So how does, you said some of the stuff you're thinking about maps to space-time. How does it map to space-time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So just a very, very high level, and I'll keep it brief. The structures that the physicists are finding, like the Amplituhedron, It turns out they're just static structure, they're polytopes. But they remarkably, most of the information in them is contained in permutation matrices. So it's a matrix, like an N by N matrix that just has zeros and ones. that contains almost all of the information. And you can, they have these plavit graphs and so forth that they use to boot up the scattering. You can compute those scattering amplitudes almost entirely from these permutation matrices. So that's just, now from my point of view, I have this conscious agent dynamics. It turns out that the stationary dynamics that I was talking about, where the entropy isn't increasing, all the stationary dynamics are sketched out by permutation matrices. So there's so-called Birkhoff polytope. All of the vertices of this polytope, all the points are permutation matrices and all the internal points are Markovian kernels that have the uniform measure as a stationary measure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I need to intuit a little better what the heck you're talking about. So basically, there's some complicated thing going on with the network of conscious agents, and that's mappable to this, you're saying a two-dimensional matrix, that scattering has to do with what? The perception, that's like photon stuff? I mean, I don't know if it's useful to sort of, dig into detail." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll do just a high level thing. So the high level is the long-term behavior of the conscious agent dynamics. So that's the projection of just looking at the long-term behavior. I'm hoping we'll give rise to the amplituhedron. The amplituhedron then gives rise to space-time. So then I can just use their link to go all the way from consciousness through its asymptotics to through the amplituhedron into space-time and get the map all the way into our interface." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's why you mentioned the permutation matrix, because it gives you a nice thing to try to generate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right, it's the connection with the amplituhedron. The permutation matrices are the core of the amplituhedron, and it turns out they're the core of the asymptotic description of the conscious agents." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So not to sort of bring up the idea of a creator, but I like, first of all, I like video games, and you mentioned this kind of simulation idea. First of all, do you think of it as an interesting idea, this thought experiment that will live in a simulation? And in general, do you think will live in a simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Nick Bostrom's idea about the simulation is typically couched in a physicalist framework. Yes. So there is the bottom level, There's some programmer in a physical space time and they have a computer that they've programmed brilliantly and cleverly where they've created conscious entities. So you have the hard problem of consciousness, right? The standard hard problem, how could a computer simulation create a conscious, which isn't explained by that simulation theory. But then the idea is that the next level, the entities that are created in the first level simulation then can write their own simulations and you get this nesting. So the idea that this is a simulation is fine, but the idea that it starts with a physical space I think isn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's different properties here, the partial rendering. I mean, to me, that's the interesting idea is not whether the entirety of the universe is simulated, but how efficiently can you create interfaces that are convincing to all other entities that can appreciate such interfaces, how little does it take? Because you said like partial rendering, or like temporal, ephemeral rendering of stuff. Only render the tree falling in the forest when there's somebody there to see it. it's interesting to think, how can you do that super efficiently without having to render everything? And that to me is one perspective on the simulation, just like it is with video games, where a video game doesn't have to render every single thing, it's just the thing that the observer is looking at." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, there is actually, that's a very nice question, and there's whole groups of researchers that are actually studying in virtual reality, what is the sort of minimal, requirements on the system, how does it have to operate to give you an immersion experience, to give you the feeling that you have a body, to get you to take it real. And there's actually a lot of really good work on that right now. And it turns out it doesn't take that much. You do need to get the perception action loop tight and you have to give them the perceptions that they're expecting if you want them to. But you can lead them along, if you give them perceptions that are close to what they're expecting, you can then maybe move their reality around a bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's a tricky engineering problem, especially when you're trying to create a product that costs little, but it feels like an engineering problem, not a deeply scientific problem. Or meaning, obviously, it's a scientific problem, but as a scientific problem, it's not that difficult to trick us. descendants of apes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But here's a case for just us in our own, if this is a virtual reality that we're experiencing right now. So here's something you can try for yourself. If you just close your eyes and look at your experience in front of you, be aware of your experience in front of you, what you experience is just like a modeled dark gray, but there's all sort of, there's some dynamics, but it's just dark gray. But now I ask you, instead of having your attention forward, put your attention backward. What is it like behind you with your eyes closed? And there, it's like nothing. It's real. So, what is going on here? What am I experiencing back there?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right? It's, I don't know if it's nothing. It's like, I guess it's the absence of, it's not even like darkness or something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not even darkness. There's no qualia to it. And yet there is a sense of being. And that's the interesting thing. There's a sense of being back. So I close my, I put my attention forward, I have the quality of a gray model thing, but when I put my attention backward, there's no quality at all, but there is a sense of being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I personally, now you haven't been to that side of the room, I have been to that side of the room. So for me, memories, I start playing the engine of memory replay, which is like I take myself back in time and think about that place where I was hanging out in that part, and that's what I see when I'm behind. So that's an interesting quirk of humans too, we're able to, we're collecting these experiences and we can replay them in interesting ways whenever we feel like it. And it's almost like being there, but not really, but almost." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. And yet, we can go our entire lives in this. You're talking about the minimal thing for VR. We can go our entire lives and not realize that all of my life, it's been like nothing behind me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're not even aware that all of our lives, if you just pay attention to what's behind me, we're like, oh, holy smoke. It's scary. I mean, it's like nothing. There's no quality there at all. How did I not notice that my entire life? We're so immersed in the simulation, we buy it so much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, you could see this with children, right? With persistence, you know, you could do the peekaboo game. You can hide from them and appear, and they're fully tricked. And in the same way, we're fully tricked. There's nothing behind us, and we assume there is. And that's really interesting. These theories are pretty heavy. You as a human being, as a mortal human being, how has these theories been to you personally? Like are there good days and bad days when you wake up and look in the mirror and the fact that you can't see anything behind you? The fact that it's rendered, like is there interesting quirks? You know, Nietzsche with his, if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. How's this theory, these ideas change you as a person?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "it's been very, very difficult. This stuff is not just abstract theory building because it's about us. Sometimes I've realized that there's this big division in me. My mind is doing all the science and coming up with these conclusions and the rest of me is not integrating. It's just like, I don't believe it. I just don't believe this. So, as I start to take it seriously, I get scared myself. It's like, But it's very much, then I read these spiritual traditions and realize they're saying very, very similar things. It's like, there's a lot of convergence. So for me, I have, the first time I thought it might be possible that we're not seeing the truth was in 1986. It was from some mathematics we were doing. And when that hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks I had to sit down. It was, it really, It was scary. It was really a shock to the system. And then to realize that everything that has been important to me, like, you know, getting a house, getting a car, getting a reputation and so forth. Well, that car is just like the car I see in the virtual reality. It's there when you perceive it and it's not there. So the whole question of, you know, what am I doing and why? What's worthwhile doing in life? clearly getting a big house and getting a big car. I mean, we all knew that we were gonna die. So we tend not to know that. We tend to hide it, especially when we're young. Before age 30, we don't believe we're gonna die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- Yeah, we factually maybe know that you kind of are supposed to, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But they'll figure something out, and we'll be the generation that's the first one that doesn't have to die. That's the kind of thing. But when you really face the fact that you're going to die, And then when I start to look at it from this point of view that, well, this thing was an interface to begin with. So what I'm really going to be doing, just taking off a headset. So I've been playing in a virtual reality game all day and I got lost in the game when I was fighting over a Porsche. And I shot some guys up and I punctured their tires and I got the Porsche. Now I take the headset off and what was that for? Nothing. It was a data structure and the data structure is gone. So all of the wars, the fighting and the reputations and all this stuff, it's just a headset. So my theory says that intellectually, my mind, my emotions, rebel all over the place. And so I have to meditate, I meditate a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What percent of the day would you say you spend as a physicalist sort of living life, pretending your car matters, your reputation matters? Like how much, what's that Tom Waits song? I like my town with a little drop of poison. How much poison do you allow yourself to have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think my default mode is physicalist. I think that that's just the default. When I'm not being conscious, consciously attentive," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "intellectually consciously attentive, because if you're just, you're still, if you're tasting coffee and not thinking, or drinking, or just taking in the sunset, you're not being intellectual, but you're still experiencing it. So it's when you turn on the introspective machine, that's when you can start." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And turn off the thinker. When I actually just start looking without thinking, So that's when I feel like I, all of a sudden, I'm starting to see through. It's sort of like, okay, part of the addiction to the interface is all the stories I'm telling about it. It's really important for me to get that, really important to do that. So I'm telling all these stories and so I'm all wrapped up. Almost all of the mind stuff that's going on in my head is about attachment to the interface. And so what I found is that essentially the only way to really detach from the interface is to literally let go of thoughts altogether. And then all of a sudden, even my identity, my whole history, my name, my education and all this stuff is almost irrelevant because it's just now here is present moment. And this is the reality right now. And all of that other stuff is an interface story. But this conscious experience right now, this is the only reality as far as I can tell. The rest of it's a story. But that is, again, not my default. That is, I have to make a really conscious choice to say, okay, I know intellectually this is all an interface, I'm gonna take the headset off and so forth, and then immediately sink back into the game and just be out there playing the game and get lost in it. So I'm always lost in the game unless I literally consciously choose to stop thinking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Isn't it terrifying to acknowledge that to look beyond the game, isn't it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It scares the hell out of me. It really is scary. Because I'm so attached. I'm attached to this body. I'm attached to the interface." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you ever worried about breaking your brain a bit? Meaning like, I mean some of these ideas, when you think about reality, even with like Einstein, just realizing, you said interface, just realizing that light, that there's a speed of light and you can't go faster than the speed of light and what kind of things black holes can do with light. Even that can mess with your head. But that's still space-time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a big mess, but it's still just space-time. It's still a property of our interface. That's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's still like, even Einstein realized that this particular thing, some of the stories we tell ourselves is constructing interfaces that are oversimplifying the way things work. Because it's nice, the stories are nice. Stories are nice. I mean, just like video games, they're nice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, but Einstein was a realist, right? He was a famous realist in the sense that he was very explicit in a 1935 paper with Podolsky and Rosen, the EPR paper, right? They said, if without in any way disturbing a system, I can predict with probability one, the outcome of a measurement, then there exists in reality that element. right, that value. And we now know from quantum theory that that's false. Einstein's idea of local realism is strictly speaking false. And so we can predict, we can set up in quantum theory, you can set up, and there's a paper by Chris Fuchs, quantum Bayesianism, where he scouts this out. It was done by other people, but he gives a good presentation of this, where they have a sequence of something like nine different quantum measurements that you can make. And you can predict with probability one what a particular outcome will be, but you can actually prove that it's impossible that the value existed before you made the measurement. So you know with probability one what you're going to get, but you also know with certainty that that value was not there until you made the measurement. So we know from quantum theory that the act of observation is an act of fact creation. And that is built into what I'm saying with this theory of consciousness. If consciousness is fundamental, space-time itself is an act of fact creation, it's an interface that we create, consciousness creates, plus all the objects in it. So local realism is not true, quantum theory is established, also non-contextual realism is not true, and that fits in perfectly with this idea that consciousness is fundamental. These exist as data structures when we create them, As Chris Fuchs says, the act of observation is an act of fact creation. But I must say, on a personal level, I'm having to spend, I spend a couple hours a day just sitting in meditation on this and facing the rebellion in me that goes to the core, it feels like it goes to the core of my being, rebelling against these ideas. So here, it's very, very interesting for me to look at this because, so here I'm a scientist and I'm a person. The science is really clear. Local realism is false. Non-contextual realism is false. Space-time is doom. It's very, very clear. It couldn't be clearer. And my emotions rebel left and right. When I sit there and say, okay, I am not something in space and time. And something inside of me says, you're crazy. Of course you are. And I'm completely attached to it. I'm completely attached to all this stuff. I'm attached to my body, I'm attached to the headset, I'm attached to my car, attached to people, I'm attached to all of it. And yet I know as an absolute fact, I'm gonna walk away from all of it. I'm gonna die. In fact, I almost died last year. COVID almost killed me. I sent a goodbye text to my wife. So I was, I thought- You really did. I sent her a goodbye. I was in the emergency room and it had attacked my heart and it had been at 190 beats per minute for 36 hours. I couldn't last much longer. I knew I couldn't stop it. So- That was it. So that was it. So I texted her goodbye from the emergency room." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love you, goodbye kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. Yeah, that was it. Were you afraid? God, it scares the hell out of you, right? But you're just feeling so bad anyway. You're scared, but you're just feeling so bad that in some sense you just want it to stop anyway. So I've been there and faced it just a year ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did that change you, by the way? Having this intellectual reality that's so challenging that you meditate on, it's just an interface, and one of the hardest things to come to terms with is that that means that it's gonna end. How did that change you, having come so close to the reality of it? It's not just an intellectual reality, it's a reality of death." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's forced, I've meditated for 20 years now, and I would say averaging three or four hours a day. But it's put a new urgency, but urgency is not the right word because it's riveted my attention, I'll put it that way. It's really riveted my attention and I've really paid, I spent a lot more time looking at what spiritual traditions say I don't, by the way, again, not taking it with the, you know, take it all with a grain of salt. But on the other hand, I think it's stupid for me to ignore it. So I try to listen to the best ideas and to sort out nonsense. We all have to do it for ourselves, right? It's not easy. So what makes sense, and I have the advantage of some science, so I can look at what science says and try to compare with spiritual tradition. I try to sort it out for myself. But then I also look and realize that there's another aspect to me, which is this whole emotional aspect. I seem to be wired up. As evolutionary psychology says, I'm wired up. right? All these defensive mechanisms. I'm inclined to lie if I need to. I'm inclined to be angry, to protect myself, to have an in-group and an out-group, to try to make my reputation as big as possible, to try to demean the out-group. There's all these things that evolutionary psychology is spot on. It's really brilliant about the human condition. And yet I think evolution, as I said, evolutionary theory is a projection of a deeper theory where there may be no competition. So I'm in this very interesting position where I feel like, okay, according to my own theory, I'm consciousness. And maybe this is what it means for consciousness to wake up. It's not easy. It's almost like I feel like I have real skin in the game. It really is scary. I really was scared when I was about to die. It really was hard to say goodbye to my wife. It really pained. And to then look at that and then look at the fact that I'm gonna walk away from this anyway and it's just an interface. So it's trying to put all this stuff together and really grok it, so to speak, not just intellectually, but grok it. at an emotional level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, what are you afraid of, you silly, evolved organism that's gotten way too attached to the interface? What are you really afraid of? That's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there a... Very personal, you know, it's very, very personal. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, speaking of that text, what do you think is this whole love thing? What's the role of love in our human condition? this interface thing we have, is this somehow interweaved, interconnected with consciousness, this attachment we have to other humans, and this deep, like it's some, there's some quality to it that seems very interesting, peculiar." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there are two levels I would think about that. There's love in the sexual sense, and then there's love in a deeper sense. in the sexual sense, we can give an evolutionary account of that and so forth, and I think that's pretty clear to people. In this deeper sense, right, so of course, marriage, I love my wife in a sexual sense, but there is a deeper sense as well. When I was saying goodbye to her, there was a much deeper love that was really at play there. That's one place where I think that the mixed bag from spiritual traditions has something right. When they say, you know, love your neighbor as yourself, that in some sense love is fundamental, I think that they're onto something, something very, very deep and profound. And every once in a while I can get a personal glimpse of that, especially when I'm in the space with no thought. When I can really let go of thoughts, I get little glimpses of a love in the sense that I'm not separate. It's a love in the sense that I'm not different from that. If you and I are separate, then I can fight you. But if you and I are the same, if there's a union there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The togetherness of it, yeah. Who's God? All those gods, the stories that have been told throughout history, you said through the spiritual traditions. What do you think that is? Is that us trying to find that common thing at the core?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in many, traditions, not all. The one I was raised in, so my dad was a Protestant minister. We tend to think of God as a being, but I think that that's not right. I think the closest way to think about God is being, period, not a being, but being. The very ground of being itself is God. I think that's the And from my point of view, that's the ground of consciousness. So the ground of conscious being is... what we might call God, but the word God has always been, for example, you don't believe the same God is my God, so I'm going to fight you. We'll have wars over because the specific being that you call God is different from the being that I call God, and so we fight. Whereas if it's not a being, but just being, and you and I share being, then you and I are not separate, and there's no reason to fight. we're both part of that one being and loving you is loving myself, because we're all part of that one being. The spiritual traditions that point to that, I think are pointing in a very interesting direction. And that does seem to match with the mathematics of the conscious agent stuff that I've been working on as well, that it really fits with that, although that wasn't my goal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there, you mentioned, You mentioned that the young physicists that you talk to or whose work you follow have quite a lot of fun breaking with the traditions of the past, the assumptions of the past. What advice would you give to young people today in high school and college, not just physicists, but in general, how to have a career they can be proud of, how they can have a life they can be proud of? how to make their way in the world, from the lessons, from the wins and the losses in your own life, what little insights could you pull out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say the universe is a lot more interesting than you might expect. And you are a lot more special and interesting than you might expect. You might think that you're just a little, tiny, irrelevant, 100 pound, 200 pound, person in a vast billions of light years across space. And that's not the case. You are in some sense the being that's creating that space all the time every time you look. So, waking up to who you really are outside of space and time as the author of space and time is the author of everything that you see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "the author of space and time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sorry. RL You're the author of space and time, right? And I'm the author of space and time. And space and time is just one little data structure. Many other consciousnesses are creating other data structures. They're authors of various other things. So, realizing and then realizing that I had this feeling that growing up, going to college, reading all these texts, but oh man, it's all been done. If I'd just been there 50 years ago, I could have discovered this stuff, but it's all in the textbooks now. Well, believe me, the textbooks are going to look silly in 50 years, and it's your chance to write the new textbook. So of course, study the current textbooks. You have to understand them. There's no way to progress until you understand what's been done. But then The only limit is your imagination, frankly. That's the only limit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The greatest books, the greatest textbooks ever written on earth are yet to be written. Exactly. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? What's the meaning of life from your limited interface? Can you figure it all out? Like why, so you said the universe is kind of trying to figure itself out through us. Why? Why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's the closest I've come. So I will say that I don't know, but here's my guess, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good first sentence. That's a good starting point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And maybe that's gonna be a profound part of the final answer, is to start with the I don't know. It's quite possible that that's really important to start with the I don't know. My guess is that if consciousness is fundamental, and if Gödel's incompleteness theorem holds here, and there's infinite variety of structures for consciousness to some sense explore, that maybe that's what it's about. This is something that Anika and I talked about a little bit, and she doesn't like this way of talking about it, and so I'm gonna have to talk with her some more about this way of talking. But right now, I'll just put it this way, and I'll have to talk with her more and see if I can say it more clearly. But the way I'm talking about it now is that there's a sense in which there's being And then there's experiences or forms that come out of being. That's one deep, deep mystery. And the question that you asked, what's it all about? Somehow it's related to that. Why does being, why doesn't it just stay without any forms? Why do we have experiences? Why not just have, when you close your eyes and you pay attention to what's behind you, there's nothing, but there's being. Why don't we just stop there? Why didn't we just stop there? Why did we create all tables and chairs and the sun and moon and people, all this really complicated stuff, why? And all I can guess right now, and I'll probably kick myself in a couple of years and say that was dumb, but all I can guess right now is that somehow consciousness wakes up to itself by knowing what it's not. So here I am, I'm not this body. And I sort of saw that, it was sort of in my face when I sent a text goodbye. But then as soon as I'm better, it's sort of like, okay, I sort of don't wanna go there, right? Okay, so I am my body. I go back to the standard, I am my body, and I want to get that car, even though I was just about to die a year ago. So that comes rushing back. So consciousness immerses itself fully into a particular headset, gets lost in it, and then slowly wakes up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just so it can escape, and that is the waking up, but it needs to have the negative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It needs to know what it's not. It needs to know what you are. You have to say, oh, I'm not that, I'm not that, that wasn't important, that wasn't important," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's really powerful. Don, let me just say that because I've been a long-term fan of yours and we're supposed to have a conversation during this very difficult moment in your life, let me just say you're a truly special person and I for one, and I know there's a lot of others that agree, I'm glad that you're still here with us on this Earth, if for a short time. So whatever the universe, whatever planet has for you that brought you close to death to maybe enlighten you some kind of way, I think it has an interesting plan for you. You're one of the truly special humans, and it's a huge honor that you would sit and talk with me today. Thank you so much." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know the answer to that. Then I'd be some computer construct and not the person who created that meta company. But that would truly be meta." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so this could be somebody else using the Mark Zuckerberg avatar who can do the Mark and the Lex conversation replay from four decades ago when meta, it was first sort of- I mean, it's not gonna be four decades before we have photorealistic avatars like this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think we're much closer to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's something you talk about is how passionate you are about the idea of the avatar representing who you are in the metaverse. So I do these podcasts in person. You know, I'm a stickler for that because there's a magic to the in-person conversation. How long do you think it'll be before you can have the same kind of magic in the metaverse, the same kind of intimacy in the chemistry, whatever the heck is there when we're talking in person? How difficult is it? How long before we have it in the metaverse?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think this is the key question, because the thing that's different about virtual and hopefully augmented reality compared to all other forms of digital platforms before is this feeling of presence, right? The feeling that you're right, that you're in an experience and that you're there with other people or in another place. And that's just different from all of the other screens that we have today, right? Phones, TVs, all this stuff. They're trying to, in some cases, deliver experiences that feel high fidelity, but at no point do you actually feel like you're in it. At some level, your content is trying to convince you that this is a realistic thing that's happening, but all of the subtle signals are telling you, no, you're looking at a screen. The question about how you develop these systems is, what are all of the things that make the physical world all the different cues? I think on visual presence and spatial audio, we're making reasonable progress. Spatial audio makes a huge deal. I don't know if you've tried this experience, workrooms that we launched where you have meetings. And I basically made a rule for all of the top management folks at the company that they need to be doing standing meetings in workrooms. already, right? I feel like we got to dog food this, you know, this is how people are going to work in the future. So we have to adopt this now. And there are already a lot of things that I think feel significantly better than, than like typical zoom meetings, even though the avatars are a lot lower fidelity. Um, you know, the idea that you have spatial audio, you're around a table in VR with people. Um, if someone's talking from over there, it sounds like it's talking from over there. You can see, you know, the, the, the arm gestures and stuff feel more natural. Um, you can have side conversations, which is something that you can't really do in zoom. I mean, I guess you can text someone out of band. But if you're actually sitting around a table with people, you can lean over and whisper to the person next to you and have a conversation that you can't really do with just video communication. So I think it's interesting in what ways some of these things already feel more real than a lot of the technology that we have. even when the visual fidelity isn't quite there, but I think it'll get there over the next few years. Now, I mean, you were asking about comparing that to the true physical world, not Zoom or something like that. And there, I mean, I think you have feelings of like, temperature, olfactory, obviously touch, we're working on haptic gloves, the sense that you want to be able to put your hands down and feel some pressure from the table. All these things I think are going to be really critical to be able to keep up this illusion that you're in a world and that you're fully present in this world. But I don't know, I think we're going to have a lot of these building blocks within the next 10 years or so. And even before that, I think it's amazing how much you're just going to build with software that sort of masks some of these things. I realize I'm going long, but I was told we have a few hours here. We're here for five to six hours at the very least. Look, I mean, that's on the shorter end of the congressional testimonies I've done. You know, one of the things that we found with hand presence, right, so the earliest VR, you just had the headset and then, and that was cool, you could look around, you feel like you're in a place, but you don't feel like you're really able to interact with it until you have hands. And then there was this big question where once you got hands, what's the right way to represent them? And initially, all of our assumptions was, okay, when I look down and see my hands in the physical world, I see an arm and it's gonna be super weird if you see, you know, just your hand. but it turned out to not be the case because there's this issue with your arms, which is like, what's your elbow angle? And if the elbow angle that we're kind of interpolating based on where your hand is and where your headset is actually isn't accurate, it creates this very uncomfortable feeling where it's like, oh, like my arm is actually out like this, but it's like showing it in here. And that actually broke the feeling of presence a lot more. Whereas it turns out that if you just show the hands and you don't show the arms, actually is fine for people. I think that there's a bunch of these interesting psychological cues where it'll be more about getting the right details right. I think a lot of that will be possible even over a few-year period or a five-year period, and we won't need every single thing to be solved to deliver this full sense of presence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's a fascinating psychology question of what is the essence that makes in-person conversation special. It's like emojis are able to convey emotion really well, even though they're obviously not photorealistic. And so in that same way, Jessica, you're saying just showing the hands is able to create a comfortable expression with your hands. So I wonder what that is. People in the World Wars used to write letters, and you can fall in love with just writing letters. You don't need to see each other in person. You can convey emotion. You can be depth of experience with just words. So that's, I think, a fascinating place to explore psychology of how do you find that intimacy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and you know, the way that I come to all of this stuff is, you know, I basically studied psychology and computer science. So all of the work that I do is sort of at the intersection of those things. I think most of the other big tech companies are building technology for you to interact with. What I care about is building technology to help people interact with each other. So it's, I think it's a somewhat different approach than most of the other tech entrepreneurs and big companies come at this from. And a lot of the lessons in terms of how I think about designing products come from some just basic elements of psychology, right, in terms of, you know, our brains, you can compare to the brains of other animals, you know, we're very wired to specific things, facial expressions, right? I mean, we're, we're very visual, right? So compared to other animals, I mean, that's, that's clearly the the main sense that most people have. But there's a whole part of your brain that's just kind of focused on on reading facial cues. So when we're designing the next version of Quest or the VR headset, a big focus for us is face tracking and basically eye tracking. So you can make eye contact, which, again, isn't really something that you can do over a video conference. It's sort of amazing how much how far video conferencing has gotten without the ability to make eye contact. It's sort of a bizarre thing if you think about it. You're looking at someone's face, sometimes for an hour when you're in a meeting, and you looking at their eyes to them doesn't look like you're looking at their eyes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're always looking past each other, I guess. Yeah, I guess you're right. You're not sending that signal. Well, you're trying to. Right, you're trying to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like a lot of times, I mean, or at least I find myself, I'm trying to look into the other person's eyes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But they don't feel like you're looking into their eyes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so then the question is, all right, am I supposed to look at the camera so that way you can, you know, have a sensation that I'm looking at you? I think that that's an interesting question. And then, you know, with VR today, even without eye tracking and knowing what your eyes are actually looking at, you can fake it reasonably well, right? So you can look at like, where the head poses, and if it looks like I'm kind of looking in your general direction, then you can sort of assume that maybe there's some eye contact intended and, and you can do it in a way where it's okay, maybe not, it's like a, maybe it's not a fixated stare. But it's somewhat natural, but once you have actual eye tracking, you can do it for real. And I think that that's really important stuff. So when I think about Meta's contribution to this field, I have to say it's not clear to me that any of the other companies that are focused on the Metaverse or on virtual and augmented reality are going to prioritize putting these features in the hardware because Like everything, there are trade-offs. It adds some weight to the device. Maybe it adds some thickness. You could totally see another company taking the approach of, let's just make the lightest and thinnest thing possible. But I want us to design the most human thing possible that creates the richest sense of presence. Because so much of human emotion and expression comes from these micro-movements. If I move my eyebrow a millimeter, you will notice, and that means something. So the fact that we're losing these signals and a lot of communication, I think, is a loss. So it's not like, okay, there's one feature and you add this, then all of a sudden it's going to feel like we have real presence. you can sort of look at how the human brain works and how we express and kind of read emotions and you can just build a roadmap of that, of just what are the most important things to try to unlock over a five to 10 year period and just try to make the experience more and more human and social." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When do you think would be a moment, like a singularity moment for the metaverse where, there's a lot of ways to ask this question but, people will have many or most of their meaningful experiences in the metaverse versus the real world. And actually it's interesting to think about the fact that a lot of people are having the most important moments of their life happen in the digital sphere, especially now during COVID. Like even falling in love or meeting friends or getting excited about stuff that is happening on the 2D digital plane. When do you think the metaverse will provide those experiences? for a large number, like a majority of the population?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I read this piece that framed this as, A lot of people think that the metaverse is about a place, but one definition of this is it's about a time when basically immersive digital worlds become the primary way that we live our lives and spend our time. I think that that's a reasonable construct. And from that perspective, I think You also just want to look at this as a continuation because it's not like, okay, we are building digital worlds, but we don't have that today. I think you and I probably already live a very large part of our life in digital worlds. They're just not 3D immersive virtual reality, but I do a lot of meetings over video, and I spend a lot of time writing things over email or WhatsApp or whatever. So what is it going to take to get there for kind of the immersive presence version of this, which I think is what you're asking? And for that, I think that there's just a bunch of different use cases. And I think when you're building technology, I think you're, a lot of it is just you're managing this duality where on the one hand, you want to build these elegant things that can scale and, you know, have billions of people use them and get value from them. And then on the other hand, you're fighting this kind of ground game where it's just, there are just a lot of different use cases and people do different things and like you want to be able to unlock them. So the first ones that we basically went after were gaming with Quest and social experiences. And this is, you know, it goes back to when we started working on virtual reality. My theory at the time was basically people thought about it as gaming, but if you look at all computing platforms up to that point, you know, gaming is a huge part. It was a huge part of PCs. It was a huge part of mobile. But it was also very decentralized, right? There wasn't, for the most part, one or two gaming companies. There were a lot of gaming companies, and gaming is somewhat hits-based. I mean, we're getting some games that have more longevity, but in general, there were a lot of different games out there. But on PC and on mobile, the companies that focused on communication and social interaction, there tended to be a smaller number of those, and that ended up being just as important of a thing as all of the games that you did combined. I think productivity is another area. That's obviously something that we've historically been less focused on, but I think it's going to be really important for this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With workroom, do you mean productivity in the collaborative aspect?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that there's a there's a workrooms aspect of this, like a meeting aspect. And then I think that there's like a, you know, Word, Excel, you know, productivity. You're like, you're working or coding or what knowledge work, right? It's as opposed to just to just meetings. So you can kind of go through all these different use cases. You know, gaming, I think we're well on our way. Social, I think we're just the kind of preeminent company that focuses on this. And I think that that's already on Quest becoming If you look at the list of what are the top apps, social apps are already number one, two, three. So that's kind of becoming a critical thing. But I don't know, I would imagine for someone like you, it'll be until we get a lot of the work things dialed in, when this is just like much more adopted. and clearly better than Zoom for VC when, you know, if you're doing your coding or your writing or whatever it is in VR, which it's not that far off to imagine that because pretty soon you're just gonna be able to have a screen that's bigger than, you know, it'll be your ideal setup and you can bring it with you and put it on anywhere and have your kind of ideal workstation. So I think that there are a few things to work out on that, but I don't think that that's more than, you know, five years off. And then you'll get a bunch of other things that like aren't even, possible, or you don't even think about using a phone or PC for today, like fitness, right? So, I mean, I know we were talking before about how you're into running, and I'm really into a lot of things around fitness as well, different things in different places. I got really into hydrofoiling recently. Nice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I saw a video." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and surfing. And And I used to fence competitively, like run." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you were saying that you were thinking about trying different martial arts, and I tried to trick you and convince you into doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Or you actually mentioned that that was one you're curious about. Is that a trick? Yeah, I don't know. We're in the metaverse now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, I mean, I took that seriously. I thought that that was a real suggestion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That would be an amazing chance if we ever step on the mat together and just like roll around. I'll show you some moves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, give me a year to train and then we can do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is like, you know, you've seen Rocky IV where the Russian faces off the American. I'm the Russian in this picture. And then you're the Rocky, the underdog that gets to win in the end." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The idea of me as Rocky and like fighting is... If he dies, he dies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, anyway, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I mean, a lot of aspects of fitness, you know, I don't know if you've tried Supernatural on Quest or... So first of all, can I just comment on the fact every time I played around with Quest 2," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I get giddy every time I step into virtual reality. So you mentioned productivity and all those kinds of things. That's definitely something I'm excited about. But really, I just love the possibilities of stepping into that world. Maybe it's the introvert in me, but it just feels like the most convenient way to travel. into worlds that are similar to the real world or totally different. It's like Alice in Wonderland, just try out crazy stuff. The possibilities are endless. And I just, I personally, and just love, get excited for stepping in those virtual worlds. So I'm a huge fan. In terms of the, The productivity as a programmer, I spend most of my day programming, that's really interesting also. But then you have to develop the right IDs, you have to develop, there has to be a threshold where a large amount of the programming community moves there. But the collaborative aspects that are possible in terms of meetings, in terms of when two coders are working together, I mean, the possibilities there are super, super exciting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that in building this, we sort of need to balance going to be some new things that you just couldn't do before. And those are going to be the amazing experiences. So teleporting to any place, right, whether it's a real place or something that people made. I mean, some of the experiences around how we can build stuff in new ways where, you know, a lot of the stuff that, you know, when I'm coding stuff, it's like, all right, you code it, and then you build it, and then you see it afterwards. But increasingly, it's going to be possible to, you know, you're in a world and you're building the world as you are in it and kind of manipulating it. You know, one of the things that we showed at our Inside the Lab for recent artificial intelligence progress is this BuilderBot program where now you can just talk to it and say, hey, okay, I'm in this world, put some trees over there and it'll do that. All right, put some bottles of water on our picnic blanket and it'll do that and you're in the world. I think there are going to be new paradigms for coding. There are going to be some things that I think are just pretty amazing, especially the first few times that you do them that you're like, Whoa, like I've never had an experience like this. But most of your life, I would imagine is not doing things that are amazing for the first time. A lot of this in terms of just answering your question from before around, what is it going to take before you're spending most of your time in this? Well, First of all, let me just say this as an aside, the goal isn't to have people spend a lot more time in computing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm asking for myself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When will I spend all my time in computing? It's to make computing more natural, but I think you will spend most of your computing time in this when it does the things that you use computing for somewhat better. So maybe having your perfect workstation is a 5% improvement on your coding productivity. Maybe it's not like a completely new thing. But I mean, look, if I could increase the productivity of every engineer at Meta by 5%, You know, we buy those devices for everyone. And I imagine, you know, a lot of other companies would too. And that's how you start getting to the scale that that I think, you know, makes this rival some of the bigger computing platforms that exist today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you about identity. We talked about the avatar. how do you see identity in the metaverse? Should the avatar be tied to your identity, or can I be anything in the metaverse? Like, can I be whatever the heck I want? Can I even be a troll? So there's exciting, freeing possibilities, and there's the darker possibilities, too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think that there's gonna be a range, right? So we're working on, for expression in avatars, on one end of the spectrum are kind of expressive and cartoonish avatars, and then on the other end of the spectrum are photorealistic avatars. And I just think the reality is that there are going to be different use cases for different things. And I guess there's another axis. So if you're going from photorealistic to expressive, there's also like representing you directly versus like some fantasy identity. And I think that there are going to be things on all ends of that spectrum too, right? So you'll want photo, like in some experience, you might want to be like a photorealistic dragon, right? Or, you know, if I'm playing Onward or just this military simulator game, you know, it's I think getting to be more photorealistic as a soldier in that could enhance the experience. There are times when I'm hanging out with friends where I want them to know it's me, so a kind of cartoonish or expressive version of me is good. There are also experiences like VRChat does this well today, where a lot of the experience is kind of dressing up and wearing a fantastical avatar that's almost like a meme or is humorous. So you come into an experience and it's almost like you have like a built-in icebreaker because you see people and you're just like, all right, I'm cracking up at what you're wearing because that's funny. And it's just like, where'd you get that? Or, oh, you made that? It's awesome. Whereas, you know, okay, if you're going into a into a work meeting, maybe a photorealistic version of your real self is going to be the most appropriate thing for that. So I think the reality is, there aren't going to be there, it's not just going to be one thing. You know, my, my own sense of kind of how you want to express identity online has sort of evolved over time in that, you know, early days in Facebook, I thought, okay, people are gonna have one identity. And now I think that's clearly not gonna be the case. I think you're gonna have all these different things and there's utility and being able to do different things. So, um, some of the technical challenges that I'm really interested in around it are how do you build the software to allow people to seamlessly go between them? Um, so say, so you could view them as just completely discrete points on a spectrum. But let's talk about the metaverse economy for a second. Let's say I buy a digital shirt for my photorealistic avatar, which by the way, I think at the time where we're spending a lot of time in the metaverse doing a lot of our work meetings in the metaverse and etc. I would imagine that the economy around virtual clothing as an example is going to be quite as big. Why wouldn't I spend almost as much money in investing in my appearance or expression for my photorealistic avatar for meetings as I would for the whatever I'm going to wear in my video chat. But the question is, okay, so you let's say you buy some shirt for your photorealistic avatar. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to basically translate that into a more expressive thing for your kind of cartoonish or expressive avatar? And there are multiple ways to do that. You can view them as two discrete points. And okay, maybe, you know, if a designer sells one thing, then it actually comes in a pack and there's two and you can use either one on that. But I actually think this stuff might exist more as a spectrum in the future. And that's what I do think the direction on some of the AI advances that is happening to be able to, especially stuff around like style transfer, being able to take a piece of art or express something and say, OK, paint me this photo in the style of Gauguin or whoever it is that you're interested in. Take this shirt and put it in the style of what I've designed for my expressive avatar. I think that's gonna be pretty compelling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so the fashion, you might be buying like a generator, like a closet that generates a style. And then like with the gowns, you'll be able to infinitely generate outfits, thereby making it, so the reason I wear the same thing all the time is I don't like choice. You've talked about the same thing, but now you don't even have to choose. Your closet generates your outfit for you every time. And so you have to live with the outfit it generates." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you could do that. Although I know I think that that's I think some people will. But I think like. I think there's going to be a huge aspect of. of just people doing creative commerce here. So I think that there is going to be a big market around people designing digital clothing. But the question is, if you're designing digital clothing, do you need to design? If you're the designer, do you need to make it for each kind of specific discrete point along a spectrum? Or are you just designing it for kind of a photorealistic case or an expressive case? Or can you design one and have it translate across these things? If I buy a style from a designer who I care about and now I'm a dragon, is there a way to morph that so it goes on the dragon in a way that makes sense? And that, I think, is an interesting AI problem because you're probably not going to make it so that designers have to go design for all those things. But the more useful the digital content is that you buy in a lot of uses, in a lot of use cases, the more that economy will just explode. And that's a lot of what all of the You know, we were joking about NFTs before, but I think a lot of the promise here is that if the digital goods that you buy are not just tied to one platform or one use case, they end up being more valuable, which means that people are more willing and more likely to invest in them. And that just spurs the whole economy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the question is, so that's a fascinating positive aspect, but the potential negative aspect is that you can have people concealing their identity in order to troll or even not people, bots. So how do you know in the metaverse that you're talking to a real human or an AI or a well-intentioned human? Is that something you think about, something you're concerned about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let's break that down into a few different cases. I mean, because knowing that you're talking to someone who has good intentions is something that I think is not even solved in pretty much anywhere. But if you're talking to someone who's a dragon, I think it's pretty clear that they're not representing themselves as a person. I think probably the most pernicious thing that you want to solve for is I think probably one of the scariest ones is how do you make sure that someone isn't impersonating you? Right? So you like, okay, you're in a future version of this conversation. Yeah. And we have photorealistic avatars. And we're doing this in workrooms or whatever the future version of that is. And someone walks in who like, looks like me. How do you know that that's me? And One of the things that we're thinking about is it's still a pretty big AI project to be able to generate photorealistic avatars that basically work like these codecs of you. You have a map from your headset and whatever sensors of what your body's actually doing, and it takes the model and it displays it in VR. But there's a question which is should there be some sort of biometric security so that like when I put on my VR headset or I'm going to, you know, go use that avatar, I need to first prove that I am that. And I think you probably are going to want something like that. So so that's, you know, as we're developing these technologies, we're also thinking about the security for things like that, because people aren't going to want to be impersonated. That's a that's a huge security issue. Then you just get the question of people hiding behind fake accounts to do malicious things, which is not going to be unique to the metaverse, although, you know, certainly in a environment where it's more immersive and you have more of a sense of presence, it could be more painful. But this is obviously something that we've just dealt with for years in social media and the internet more broadly. And there, I think, There have been a bunch of tactics that I think we've just evolved to, you know, we've built up these different AI systems to basically get a sense of, is this account behaving in the way that a person would? And it turns out, you know, so in all of the work that we've done, around, you know, we call it community integrity. And it's basically like policing, harmful content and trying to figure out where to draw the line. And there are all these like really hard and philosophical questions around like, where do you draw the line on some of this stuff? And the the thing that I've kind of found the most effective is, as much as possible trying to figure out who are the inauthentic accounts or where the accounts that are behaving in an overall harmful way at the account level, rather than trying to get into policing what they're saying, which I think in the metaverse is going to be even harder. Because the metaverse, I think, will have more properties of it's almost more like a phone call. It's not like I post a piece of content, and is that piece of content good or bad? So I think more of this stuff will have to be done at the level of the account. But this is the area where between the kind of know, counterintelligence teams that we built up inside the company and like years of building just different AI systems to basically detect what is a real account and what isn't. I'm not saying we're perfect, but like, this is an area where I just think we are like, years ahead of basically anyone else in the in the industry, in terms of having built those capabilities. And I think that that just is going to be incredibly important for this next wave of things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And like you said, on a technical level, on a philosophical level, it's an incredibly difficult problem to solve. Uh, by the way, I, I would probably like to open source my avatar. So that could be like millions of Lexus walking around just like an army agent Smith agent Smith. Yeah, exactly. Uh, so the, uh, the unity ML folks built a copy of me and they sent it to me. So there's a, there's a person running around and I just been doing reinforcement learning on it. I was going to release it. because just to have sort of like thousands of Lexus doing reinforcement, so they fall over naturally, they have to learn how to like walk around and stuff. So I love that idea, this tension between biometric security, you want to have one identity, but then certain avatars, you might have to have many. I don't know which is better security, sort of flooding the world with Lexus and thereby achieving security or really being protective of your identity. I have to ask a security question, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, how does flooding the world with Lex's help me know in our conversation that I'm talking to the real Lex?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I completely destroy the trust in all my relationships then, right? If I flood, because then it's, yeah, that, um..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that one's not going to work that well for you. It's not going to work for the original copy. It probably fits some things, like if you're a public figure and you're trying to have, you know, a bunch of, if you're trying to show up in a bunch of different places in the future, you'll be able to do that in the metaverse. So that kind of replication, I think will be useful. But I do think that you're going to want a notion of like, I am talking to the real one. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, especially if the fake ones start outperforming you in all your private relationships, and then you're left behind. I mean, that's a serious concern I have with clones. Again, the things I think about. Okay, so I recently got, I use QNAP NAS storage, so just storage for video and stuff, and I recently got hacked. This is the first time for me with ransomware. It's not me personally, it's all QNAP devices. So the question that people have is about security in general. because I was doing a lot of the right things in terms of security and nevertheless ransomware basically disabled my device. Is that something you think about? What are the different steps you could take to protect people's data on the security front?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that there's different solutions for in strategies where it makes sense to have stuff kind of put behind a fortress, right? So the centralized model versus the decentralizing, then I think both have strengths and weaknesses. So I think anyone who says, okay, just decentralize everything, that'll make it more secure. I think that that's tough, because, you know, I mean, the advantage of something like, you know, encryption is that, you know, we run the largest encrypted service in the world with WhatsApp. And, you know, one of the first to roll out a multi platform encryption service. And that's something that I think was a big advance for the industry. And one of the promises that we can basically make because of that, our company doesn't see when you're sending an encrypted message, and an encrypted message, what the content is of what you're sharing. So that way, if someone hacks meta servers, they're not going to be able to access the WhatsApp message that you're sending to your friend. And that I think matters a lot to people because obviously if someone is able to compromise a company's servers and that company has hundreds of millions or billions of people, then that ends up being a very big deal. The flip side of that is, OK, all the content is on your phone. Are you following security best practices on your phone? If you lose your phone, all your content is gone. So that's an issue. Maybe you go back up your content from WhatsApp or some other service in iCloud or something, but then you're just at Apple's whims about, are they going to go turn over the data to some government, or are they going to get hacked? So a lot of the time, it is useful to have data in a centralized place too, because then you can train systems that can just do much better personalization. I think that in a lot of cases, centralized systems can offer, especially if you're a serious company, you're running the state-of-the-art stuff, and you have red teams attacking your own stuff, and you're putting out bounty programs and trying to attract some of the best hackers in the world to go break into your stuff all the time. So any system is going to have security issues, but I think the best way forward is to basically try to be as aggressive and open about hardening the systems as possible, not trying to kind of hide and pretend that there aren't going to be issues, which I think is over time why a lot of open source systems have gotten relatively more secure, is because they're open. And, you know, it's not rather than pretending that there aren't going to be issues, just people surface them quicker. So I think you want to adopt that approach as a company and just constantly be hardening yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Trying to stay one step ahead of the attackers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an inherently adversarial space. Yeah. Right. I think it's an interesting security is interesting because of the different kind of threats that we've managed over the last five years. There are ones where basically the adversaries keep on getting better and better. So trying to kind of interfere with security is certainly one area of this. If you have like nation states that are trying to interfere in elections or something like they're kind of evolving their tactics. Whereas on the other hand, I don't want to be too simplistic about it. But like if you know, if someone is saying something hateful, people usually aren't getting smarter and smarter about how they say hateful things, right? So maybe there's some element of that, but it's a very small dynamic compared to, you know, how advanced attackers and some of these other places get over time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I believe most people are good, so they actually get better over time at not being less hateful, because they realize it's not fun being hateful. That's at least the belief I have. But, First, bathroom break. Sure. Okay. So we'll come back to AI, but let me ask some difficult questions now. Social Dilemma is a popular documentary that raised concerns about the effects of social media on society. You responded with a point-by-point rebuttal titled, What the Social Dilemma Gets Wrong. People should read that. I would say the key point they make is because social media is funded by ads, algorithms want to maximize attention and engagement and an effective way to do so is to get people angry at each other, increase division and so on. Can you steel man their criticisms and arguments that they make in the documentary as a way to understand the concern and as a way to respond to it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, I think I think that that's a good conversation to have. I don't happen to agree with the conclusions. And I think that they make a few assumptions that are just very big jumps that I don't think are reasonable to make. But I understand overall, why people would be concerned that our business model and ads in general, we do make more money as people use the service more in general, right? So as a kind of basic assumption, okay, do we have an incentive for people to build a service that people use more? Yes, on a lot of levels. I mean, we think what we're doing is good. So we think that if people are finding it useful, they'll use it more. Or if you just look at it as this sort of, if the only thing we cared about is money, which is not for anyone who knows me, but okay, we're a company, so let's say you just kind of simplified it down to that, then would we want people to use the services more? Yes. But then, and then you get to the second question, which is, does kind of getting people agitated make them more likely to use the services more? And I think from looking at other media in the world, especially TV and, you know, there's the old news adage, if it bleeds, it leads. I think that there are a bunch of reasons why someone might think that that kind of provocative content would be the most engaging. Now what I've always found is two things. One is that what grabs someone's attention in the near term is not necessarily something that they're going to appreciate having seen or going to be the best over the long term. So I think what a lot of people get wrong is that I'm not building this company to make the most money or get people to spend the most time on this in the next quarter or the next year. I've been doing this for 17 years at this point and I'm still relatively young and I have a lot more that I want to do over the coming decades. I think that it's too simplistic to say, hey, this might increase time in the near term, therefore, it's what you're going to do. Because I actually think a deeper look at kind of what my incentives are, the incentives of a company that are focused on the long term, is to basically do what people are going to find valuable over time, not what is going to draw people's attention today. The other thing that I'd say is that I think a lot of times people look at this from the perspective of media or kind of information or civic discourse. But one other way of looking at this is just that, okay, I'm a product designer, right? Our company, we build products. And a big part of building a product is not just the function and utility of what you're delivering, but the feeling of how it feels. We spend a lot of time talking about virtual reality and how the kind of key aspect of that experience is the feeling of presence, which it's a visceral thing. It's not just about the utility that you're delivering. It's about the sensation. And similarly, I care a lot about how people feel when they use our products. I don't want to build products that make people angry. I mean, that's like, not I think what we're here on this earth to do is to, you know, build something that, you know, people spend a bunch of time doing, and it just kind of makes them angrier to other people. I mean, I think that that's, that's not good. That's, you know, that's, that's not what I think would be sort of a good use of our time or a good contribution to the world. So, okay, you know, it's like people, they tell us on a per-content basis, you know, does this thing, you know, do I like it? Do I love it? Does it make me angry? Does it make me sad? And, you know, based on that, we choose to basically show content that makes people angry less. Because Of course, if you're designing a product and you want people to be able to connect and feel good over a long period of time, then that's naturally what you're going to do. I don't know. I think overall, I understand at a high level, if you're not thinking too deeply about it, why that argument might be appealing. But I just think if you actually look at what our real incentives are, not just if we were trying to optimize for the next week, but as people working on this, why are we here? I think it's pretty clear that that's not actually how you would want to design the system. I guess one other thing that I'd say is that, you know, while we're focused on the ads business model, I do think it's important to note that a lot of these issues are not unique to ads. I mean, so take like a subscription news business model, for example. I think that has, you know, just as many potential pitfalls. You know, maybe if someone's paying for a subscription, you don't get paid per piece of content that they look at. But, you know, say, for example, I think like a bunch of the partisanship that we see could potentially be made worse by you have these kind of partisan news organizations that basically sell subscriptions, and they're only going to get people on one side to basically subscribe to them. So their incentive is not to print content or produce content that's kind of centrist or down the line either. I bet that what a lot of them find is that if they produce stuff that's kind of more polarizing or more partisan, then that is what gets them more subscribers. So I think that this stuff is all, there's no perfect business model. Everything has pitfalls. The thing that I think is great about advertising is it makes the consumer services free, which if you believe that everyone should have a voice and everyone should be able to connect, then that's a great thing, as opposed to building a luxury service that not everyone can afford. But look, I mean, every business model, you have to be careful about how you're implementing what you're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You responded to a few things there. You spoke to the fact that, you know, there is a narrative of malevolence, like, you know, you're leaning into the making people angry just because it makes more money in the short term, that kind of thing. So you responded to that. But there's also kind of, reality of human nature. Just like you spoke about, there's fights, arguments we get in, and we don't like ourselves afterwards, but we got into them anyway. So our long-term growth is... I believe for most of us has to do with learning, challenging yourself, improving, being kind to each other, finding a community of people that you connect with on a real human level, all that kind of stuff. But it does seem when you look at social media that a lot of fights break out, a lot of arguments break out, a lot of, viral content ends up being sort of outrage in one direction or the other. And so it's easy from that to infer the narrative that social media companies are letting this outrage become viral. And so they're increasing the division in the world. And perhaps you can comment on that or further, how can you be, how can you, push back on this narrative? How can you be transparent about this battle? Because I think it's not just motivation or financials, it's a technical problem too, which is how do you improve long-term well-being of human beings?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that going through some of the design decisions would be a good conversation. But first, I actually think, you know, I think you acknowledge that, you know, that narrative is somewhat anecdotal. And I think it's worth grounding this conversation in the actual research that has been done on this, which by and large, finds that social media is not a large driver of polarization, right? And, you know, I mean, there's been a number of economists and social scientists and folks who have studied this, you know, a lot of polarization, it varies around the world. If social media is basically in every country, Facebook's in pretty much every country, except for China, and maybe North Korea. And, um, And you see different trends in different places where, you know, in a lot of countries, polarization is declining. In some, it's flat. In the U.S., it's risen sharply. So the question is, what are the unique phenomena in the different places? And I think for the people who are trying to say, hey, social media is the thing that's doing this. I think that that clearly doesn't hold up because social media is a phenomenon that is pretty much equivalent in all of these different countries. And you have researchers like this economist at Stanford, Matthew Genskow, who's just written at length about this. It's a bunch of books by political scientists, Ezra Klein and folks, Why We're Polarized, basically goes through this decades-long analysis in the US before I was born, basically talking about some of the forces in partisan politics and Fox News and different things that predate the internet in a lot of ways that I think are likely larger contributors. So to the contrary on this, not only is it pretty clear that social media is not a major contributor, but most of the academic studies that I've seen actually show that social media use is correlated with lower polarization. Genscow, the same person who just did the study that I cited about longitudinal polarization across different countries, also did a study that basically showed that If you looked after the 2016 election in the US, the voters who were the most polarized were actually the ones who were not on the internet. So, and there have been recent other studies, I think, in Europe and around the world, basically showing that as people stop using social media, they tend to get more polarized. Then there's a deeper analysis around, okay, well, polarization actually isn't even one thing. Because, you know, having different opinions on something isn't, I don't think that that's by itself bad. What people who study this say is, most problematic is what they call affective polarization, which is basically, do you have negative feelings towards people of another group? And the way that a lot of scholars study this is they basically ask a group, would you let your kids marry someone of group X? whatever the the groups are that you're that you're worried that someone might have negative feelings towards. And in general, use of social media has corresponded to decreases in that kind of affective polarization. So I just want to I think we should talk to the design decisions and how we handle the the kind of specific pieces of content. But overall, I think it's just worth grounding that discussion in the research that's existed that I think overwhelmingly shows that the mainstream narrative around this is just not right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the narrative does take hold and it's compelling to a lot of people. There's another question I'd like to ask you on this. I was looking at various polls and saw that you're one of the most disliked tech leaders today. 54% unfavorable rating. Elon Musk is 23%. It's basically everybody has a very high unfavorable rating that are tech leaders. Maybe you can help me understand that. Why do you think so many people dislike you? Some even hate you. And how do you regain their trust and support? Given everything you've just said, why are you losing the battle in explaining to people what actual impact social media has on society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm curious if that's a U.S. survey or world. It is U.S., yeah. So I think that there's a few dynamics. One is that our brand has been somewhat uniquely challenged in the US compared to other places. It's not that there are, I mean, other countries, we have issues too. But I think in the US, there was this dynamic where, if you look at like the net sentiment of kind of coverage or attitude towards us, you know, before 2016, I think that there were probably very few months, if any, where it was negative. And since 2016, I think there probably been very few months, if any, that it's been positive. But I think it's a specific thing. And this is very different from other places. I think in a lot of other countries in the world, the sentiment towards meta and our services is extremely positive. In the US, we have more challenges. And I think compared to other companies, Um, you can look at certain industries. I think if you look at it from like a partisan perspective, um, not, not from like a political perspective, but just kind of culturally, it's like there are people who are probably more left of center and there are people are more right of center and there's, you know, kind of blue America and red America. There are certain industries that I think maybe one half of the country has a more positive view towards than another. And I think we're in a, um, One of the positions that we're in that I think is really challenging is that because of a lot of the content decisions that we've basically had to arbitrate, and because we're not a partisan company, we're not a Democrat company or a Republican company, we're trying to make the best decisions we can to help people connect and help people have as much voice as they can while having some rules because we're running a community. The net effect of that is that we're kind of constantly making decisions that piss off people in both camps. And the effect that I've sort of seen is that when we make a decision that is that's a controversial one that's going to upset, say, about half the country, those decisions are all negative sum from a brand perspective. Because it's not like, if we make that decision in one way, and say half the country is happy about that particular decision that we make, They tend to not say, oh sweet, Meta got that one right. They're just like, ah, you didn't mess that one up. But their opinion doesn't tend to go up by that much. Whereas the people who are on the other side of it are like, God, how could you mess that up? How could you possibly think that that piece of content is OK and should be up and should not be censored? And so I think if you leave it up, or if you take it down, the people who thought it should be taken down, it's like, all right, fine, great, you didn't mess that one up. So our internal assessment and analytics on our brand are basically anytime one of these big controversial things comes up in society, our brand goes down with half of the country. And then like if you and then if you just kind of extrapolate that out, it's just been very challenging for us to try to navigate what is a polarizing country in a principled way where we're not trying to kind of hue to one side or the other. We're trying to do what we think is the right thing. But that's what I think is the right thing for us to do, though. So I mean, that's that's what we'll we'll try to keep doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just as a human being, how does it feel, though, when you're giving so much of your day-to-day life to try to heal division, to try to do good in the world, as we've talked about, that so many people in the US, the place you call home, have a negative view of you as a leader, as a human being, and the company you love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, it's not great, but I mean, look, if I wanted people to think positively about me as a person, I don't know. I'm not sure if you could build a company. I mean, it's like... Or a social media company." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems exceptionally difficult to do with a social media company." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so, I mean, I don't know. There is a dynamic where a lot of the other people running these companies, internet companies have sort of stepped back. And they just do things that are sort of I don't know, less controversial. And, and some of it may be that they just get tired over time. But, you know, it's, so I don't know, I think that, you know, running a company is hard, building something at scale is hard. You only really do it for a long period of time, if you really care about what you're doing. And, yeah, so I mean, it's not great, but like, but look, I think that at some level, whether 25% of people dislike you or 75% of people dislike you, your experience as a public figure is going to be that there's a lot of people who dislike you. So I actually am not sure how different it is. Certainly, the country's gotten more polarized, and we in particular have gotten more controversial over the last five years or so. But I don't know. I kind of think like as a public figure and leader of one of these enterprises. Part of what you do is like, and look, you can't just, the answer can't just be ignore it, right? Because like a huge part of the job is like you need to be getting feedback and internalizing feedback on how you can do better. But I think increasingly what you need to do is be able to figure out, you know, who are the the kind of good faith critics who are criticizing you because they're trying to help you do a better job rather than tear you down. And those are the people who I just think you have to cherish and listen very closely to the things that they're saying because I think it's just as dangerous to tune out everyone who says anything negative and just listen to the people who are kind of positive and support you. as it would be psychologically to pay attention trying to make people who are never going to like you like you. So that's just kind of a dance that people have to do. But I mean, you kind of develop more of a feel for like, who actually is trying to accomplish the same types of things in the world? And who has different ideas about how to do that and how can I learn from those people? And like, yeah, we get stuff wrong. And when the people whose opinions I respect call me out on getting stuff wrong, that hurts and makes me wanna do better. But I think at this point, I'm pretty tuned to just, all right, if someone, if I know they're kind of like operating in bad faith and they're not really trying to help, then I don't know. It doesn't, I think over time, it just doesn't bother you that much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you are surrounded by people that believe in the mission, that love you, Are there friends or colleagues in your inner circle you trust that call you out on your bullshit whenever your thinking may be misguided as it is for leaders at times?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we have a famously open company culture where we sort of encourage that kind of dissent internally, which is why there's so much material internally that can leak out with people sort of disagreeing is because that's sort of the culture. Our management team, I think it's a lot of people, You know, there's some newer folks who come in, there's some folks who've kind of been there for a while, but there's a very high level of trust. And I would say it is a relatively confrontational group of people. And my friends and family, I think, will push me on this. But look, it's not just... But I think you need some diversity, right? It can't just be... know, people who are your friends and family. It's also, you know, I mean, there are there are journalists or analysts or, you know, peer executives at other companies or, you know, other people who sort of are insightful about thinking about the world, you know, certain politicians or people kind of in that sphere who I just think have like very insightful perspectives who, even if they would they come at the world from a different perspective, which is sort of what makes the perspective so valuable. But, you know, I think fundamentally, we're trying to get to the same place in terms of, you know, helping people connect more, helping the whole world function better, not just, you know, one place or another. And I don't know, I mean, those are the people whose opinions really matter to me. And that's how I learn on a day-to-day basis. People are constantly sending me comments on stuff or links to things they found interesting. And I don't know, it's kind of constantly evolving, this model of the world and kind of what we should be aspiring to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've talked about, you have a famously open culture, which comes with the criticism and the painful experiences. So let me ask you another difficult question. Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, leaked the internal Instagram research into teenagers and well-being. Her claim is that Instagram is choosing profit over well-being of teenage girls, so Instagram is, quote, toxic for them. Your response titled, what our research really says about teen well-being in Instagram says no. Instagram research shows that 11 of 12 well-being issues, teenage girls who said they struggle with those difficult issues also said that Instagram made them better rather than worse. Again, can you steal man and defend the point and Francis Hogan's characterization of the study and then help me understand the positive and negative effects of Instagram and Facebook on young people?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are certainly questions around teen mental health that are really important. It's hard to, you know, as a parent, it's like hard to imagine any set of questions that are sort of more important. I mean, I guess maybe other aspects of physical health or well-being are probably come to that level. But like, these are really important questions, right, which is why we dedicate teams to studying them. I don't think the internet or social media are unique in having these questions. I mean, I think people and there have been sort of magazines with promoting certain body types for women and kids for decades. But we really care about this stuff. So we wanted to study it. And of course, we didn't expect that everything was going to be positive all the time. So I mean, the reason why you study this stuff is to try to improve and get better. So I mean, look, the place where I disagree with the characterization, first, I thought some of the reporting and coverage of it just took the whole thing out of proportion and that it focused on, as you said, I think there were like 20 metrics in there. And on 18 or 19, the effect of using Instagram was neutral or positive on the teen's well-being. And there was one area where I think It showed that we needed to improve, and we took some steps to try to do that after doing the research. But I think having the coverage just focus on that one, without focusing on the – I think an accurate characterization would have been that kids using Instagram – or not kids, teens – is is generally positive for their mental health. But of course, that was not the narrative that came out. So I think it's hard to, that's not a kind of logical thing to straw man, but I sort of disagree or steel man, but I sort of disagree with that overall characterization. I think anyone sort of looking at this objectively would. But then, you know, I mean, the, the, there is this sort of intent, critique that I think you were getting at before, which says it assumes some sort of malevolence, right? It's really hard for me to really wrap my head around this because As far as I know, it's not clear that any of the other tech companies are doing this kind of research. So why the narrative should form that we did research because we were studying an issue because we wanted to understand it to improve and took steps after that to try to improve it, that your interpretation of that would be that we did the research and tried to sweep it under the rug. It's beyond credibility to me that that's the accurate description of the actions that we've taken compared to the others in the industry. That's my view on it. These are really important issues. There's a lot of stuff that I think we're going to be working on related to teen mental health for a long time, including trying to understand this better. and I would encourage everyone else in the industry to do this too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I would love there to be open conversations and a lot of great research being released internally and then also externally. It doesn't make me feel good to see press obviously get way more clicks when they say negative things about social media. Objectively speaking, I can just tell that there's hunger to say negative things about social media. And I don't understand how that's supposed to lead to an open conversation about the positives and the negatives, the concerns about social media, especially when you're doing that kind of research. I mean, I don't know what to do with that, but let me ask you as a father, There's a weight heavy on you that people get bullied on social networks. So people get bullied in their private life. But now, because so much of our life is in the digital world, the bullying moves from the physical world to the digital world. So you're now creating a platform on which bullying happens, and some of that bullying can lead to damage to mental health, and some of that bullying can lead to depression, even suicide. Does it weigh heavy on you that people have committed suicide or will commit suicide based on the bullying that happens on social media?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, there's a set of harms that we basically track and build systems to fight against and bullying and self-harm are, I mean, these are some of the biggest things that we are most focused on. For bullying, like you say, it's gonna be While this predates the internet, and it's probably impossible to get rid of all of it, you want to give people tools to fight it, and you want to fight it yourself. And you also want to make sure that people have the tools to get help when they need it. So I think this isn't like a question of, can you get rid of all bullying? I mean, it's like, all right. I mean, I have two daughters and they fight and push each other around and stuff too. And the question is just how do you handle that situation? And there's a handful of things that I think you can do. We talked a little bit before around some of the AI tools that you can build to identify when something harmful is happening. It's actually very hard in bullying, because a lot of bullying is very context-specific. It's not like you're trying to fit a formula. If looking at the different harms, someone promoting a terrorist group is like, probably one of the simpler things to generally find because things promoting that group are gonna look a certain way or feel a certain way. Bullying could just be someone making some subtle comment about someone's appearance that's idiosyncratic to them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it could look at just like humor. So humor to one person can be destructive to another human being, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So with bullying I think there are certain things that you can find through AI systems, but I think it is increasingly important to just give people more agency themselves. So we've done things like making it so people can turn off comments or take a break from hearing from a specific person without having to signal at all that they're going to stop following them or kind of make some stand that, okay, I'm not friends with you anymore. I'm not following you. I just don't want to hear about this, but I also don't want to signal um at all publicly that um or to them that that there's been an issue um and then you get to some of the more extreme cases like you're talking about where someone is thinking about um self-harm or suicide and um in their we've found that that is a place where AI can identify a lot, as well as people flagging things. If people are expressing something that is potentially, they're thinking of hurting themselves, those are cues that you can build systems and hundreds of languages around the world to be able to identify that. And one of the things that I'm actually quite proud of is we've built these systems that I think are clearly leading at this point that not only identify that, but then connect with local first responders and have been able to save, I think at this point, in thousands of cases, be able to get first responders to people through these systems who really need them. because of specific plumbing that we've done between the AI work and being able to communicate with local first responder organizations. We're rolling that out in more places around the world. And I think the team that worked on that just did awesome stuff. So I think that that's a long way of saying, yeah, I mean, this is a heavy topic and you want to attack it in a bunch of different ways. And also kind of understand that some of nature is for people to to do this to each other, which is unfortunate, but you can give people tools and build things that help." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's still one hell of a burden though. A platform that allows people to fall in love with each other is also by nature going to be a platform that allows people to hurt each other. And when you're managing such a platform, it's difficult. And I think you spoke to it, but the psychology of that, of being a leader in that space, of creating technology that's playing in this space, like you mentioned psychology, is really damn difficult. And I mean, the burden of that is just, it's just great. I just wanted to hear you speak to that point. I have to ask about the thing you've brought up a few times, which is making controversial decisions. Let's talk about free speech and censorship. So there are two groups of people. pressuring meta on this. One group is upset that Facebook, the social network, allows misinformation in quotes to be spread on the platform. The other group are concerned that Facebook censors speech by calling it misinformation. So you're getting it from both sides. In 2019, October, at Georgetown University, eloquently defended the importance of free speech. But then COVID came. and the 2020 election came. Do you worry that outside pressures from advertisers, politicians, the public have forced META to damage the ideal of free speech that you spoke highly of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just to say some obvious things up front, I don't think pressure from advertisers or politicians directly in any way affects how we think about this. I think these are just hard topics. Let me just take you through our evolution from the beginning of the company to where we are now. You don't build a company like this unless you believe that people expressing themselves is a good thing. So that's sort of the foundational thing. You can kind of think about our company as a formula where we think giving people voice and helping people connect creates opportunity. So those are the two things that we're always focused on are sort of helping people connect. We talked about that a lot, but also giving people voice and ability to express themselves. And by the way, most of the time when people express themselves, that's not like politically controversial content. It's like expressing something about their identity that's more related to the avatar conversation we had earlier in terms of expressing some facet. But that's what's important to people on a day-to-day basis. And sometimes when people feel strongly enough about something, it kind of becomes a political topic. That's sort of always been a thing that we've focused on. There's always been the question of safety in this, which, you know, if you're building a community, I think you have to focus on safety. We've had these community standards from early on, and there are about 20 different kinds of harm that we track and try to fight actively, and we've talked about some of them already. So it includes things like bullying and harassment. It includes things like terrorism or promoting terrorism, inciting violence, intellectual property theft. And in general, I think, call it about 18 out of 20 of those, there's not really a particularly polarized definition of that. I think you're not really going to find many people in the country or in the world who are trying to say we should be fighting terrorist content less. I think that the content where there are a couple of areas where I think this has gotten more controversial recently, which I'll talk about. And you're right that misinformation is basically is up there. And I think sometimes the definition of hate speech is up there too. But I think in general, most of the content that I think we're working on for safety is not actually, you know, people don't kind of have these questions. So it's sort of this subset. But if you go back to the beginning of the company, this was sort of pre deep learning days. And therefore, and you know, I was it was me and my roommate Dustin joined me and, and like, someone posted something bad, the AI technology did not exist yet to be able to go basically look at all the content. And we were a small enough outfit that no one would expect that we could review it all. Even if someone reported it to us, we basically did our best. It's like someone would report it and we'd try to look at stuff and deal with stuff. And for Colt, the first, I don't know, seven or eight years of the company, we weren't that big of a company. For a lot of that period, we weren't even really profitable. The AI didn't really exist to be able to do the kind of moderation that we do today. And then at some point, in kind of the middle of the last decade, that started to flip. And we got to the point where we were sort of a larger and more profitable company. And the AI was starting to come online to be able to proactively detect some of the simpler forms of this. So things like pornography, you could train an image classifier to identify what a nipple was, or you can fight against terrorist content." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You still could- There's actually papers on this. It's great. Oh, of course there are. Technical papers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course there are. Those are relatively easier things to train AI to do than, for example, understand the nuances of what is inciting violence in 100 languages around the world and not have the false positives of like, OK, are you posting about this thing that might be inciting violence because you're actually trying to denounce it? In which case, we probably shouldn't take that down, right? If you're trying to denounce something that's inciting violence in some kind of dialect in a corner of India, as opposed to, OK, actually, you're posting this thing because you're trying to incite violence. OK, building an AI that can basically get to that level of nuance in all the languages that we serve is something that I think is only really becoming possible now, not towards the middle of the last decade. But there's been this evolution. And I think what happened, you know, people sort of woke up after 2016. And, you know, a lot of people are like, okay, the country is a lot more polarized, and there's a lot more stuff here than we realized. Why weren't these internet companies on top of this? And I think at that point, it was reasonable feedback that some of this technology had started becoming possible. And at that point, I really did feel like we needed to make a substantially larger investment. We'd already worked on this stuff a lot on AI and on these integrity problems, but that we should basically invest, have a thousand or more engineers basically work on building these AI systems to be able to go and proactively identify the stuff across all these different areas. Okay, so we went and did that. Now we've built the tools to be able to do that. And now I think it's actually a much more complicated set of philosophical rather than technical questions, which is the exact policies which are okay. Now, the way that we basically hold ourselves accountable, because we issue these transparency reports every quarter. And the metric that we track is for each of those 20 types of harmful content, how much of that content are we taking down before someone even has to report it to us? So how effective is our AI at doing this? But that basically creates this big question, which is, OK, now we need to really be careful about how proactive we set the AI and where the exact policy lines are around what we're taking down. It's certainly at a point now where, you know, I felt like at the beginning of that journey of building those AI systems. There was a lot of push. They're saying, OK, you've got to do more. There's clearly a lot more bad content that people aren't reporting or that you're not getting to, and you need to get more effective at that. And I was pretty sympathetic to that. But then I think at some point along the way, there started to be almost equal issues on both sides of, OK, actually, you're kind of taking down too much stuff, right? Or some of the stuff is borderline, and it wasn't really bothering anyone, and they didn't report it. So is that really an issue that you need to take down? Whereas we still have the critique on the other side too, where a lot of people think we're not doing enough. So as we built the technical capacity, I think it becomes more philosophically interesting almost where you want to be on the line. And I just think like you don't want one person making those decisions. So we've also tried to innovate in terms of building out this independent oversight board, which has people who are dedicated to free expression, but from around the world, who people can appeal cases to. So a lot of the most controversial cases basically go to them, and they make the final binding decision on how we should handle that. And then of course, their decisions, we then try to figure out what the principles are behind those and encode them into the algorithms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And how are those people chosen? Which, you know, you're outsourcing a difficult decision." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the initial people, we chose a handful of chairs for the group. And we basically chose the people for a commitment to free expression. and like a broad understanding of human rights and the trade-offs around free expression, but fundamentally people who are gonna lean towards free expression." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Towards freedom of speech, okay. So there's also this idea of fact checkers jumping around to the misinformation questions, especially during COVID, which is an exceptionally, speaking of polarization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I haven't gotten to, can I speak to the COVID thing? Yes. I mean, I think one of the hardest set of questions around free expression, because you asked about Georgetown as my stance fundamentally changed. And the answer to that is, No, my stance has not changed. It is fundamentally the same as when I was talking about Georgetown from a philosophical perspective. The challenge with free speech is that everyone agrees that there is a line where if you're actually about to do physical harm to people, that there should be restrictions. So I mean, there's the famous Supreme Court historical example of like, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. The thing that everyone disagrees on is what is the definition of real harm, where I think some people think, okay, this should only be a very literal... I mean, take it back to the bullying conversation we were just having, where is it just harm if the person is about to hurt themselves because they've been bullied so hard, or is it actually harm as they're being bullied? And at what point in the spectrum is that? And that's the part that there's not agreement on. But I think what people agree on pretty broadly is that when there is an acute threat, that it does make sense from a societal perspective to tolerate less speech that could be potentially harmful in that acute situation. So I think where COVID got very difficult, I don't think anyone expected this to be going on for years. But if you'd asked a priori, would a global pandemic where a lot of people are dying and catching this, is that an emergency where you'd consider it that it's problematic to basically yell fire in a crowded theatre? I think that that probably passes that test. So it's a very tricky situation, but I think the fundamental commitment to free expression is there. And that's what I believe. And again, I don't think you start this company unless you care about people being able to express themselves as much as possible. But I think that that's the question. How do you define what the harm is and how acute that is?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what are the institutions that define that harm? A lot of the criticism is that the CDC, the WHO, the institutions we've come to trust as a civilization to give the line of what is and isn't harm in terms of health policy have failed in many ways, in small ways, in big ways, depending on who you ask. And then the perspective of meta and Facebook is like, well, where the hell do I get the information of what is and isn't misinformation? So it's a really difficult place to be in, but it's great to hear that you're leaning towards freedom of speech on this aspect. And again, I think this actually calls to the fact that we need to reform institutions that help keep an open mind of what is and isn't misinformation. And misinformation has been used to bully. on the internet, I mean, I just have, you know, I'm friends with Joe Rogan and he's called as a, I remember hanging out with him in Vegas and somebody yelled, stop spreading misinformation. I mean, and there's a lot of people that follow him that believe he's not spreading misinformation. Like you can't just not acknowledge the fact that there's a large number of people that have a different definition of misinformation. And that's such a tough place to be. Who do you listen to? Do you listen to quote-unquote experts? As a person who has a PhD, I gotta say, I mean, I'm not sure I know what defines an expert, especially in a new... in a totally new pandemic or a new catastrophic event, especially when politics is involved, and especially when the media are involved that can propagate sort of outrageous narratives and thereby make a lot of money. Like, what the hell, where's the source of truth? And then everybody turns to Facebook, it's like, please tell me what the source of truth is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, how would you handle this if you were in my position?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "is very, very, very, very difficult. I would say... I would more speak about how difficult the choices are and be transparent about like, what the hell do you do with this? Like here, you got exactly, ask the exact question you just asked me, but to the broader public, like, okay, yeah, you guys tell me what to do. So like crowdsource it. And then the other aspect is when you spoke really eloquently about the fact that there's this going back and forth, and now there's a feeling like you're censoring a little bit too much. And so I would lean, I would try to be ahead of that feeling. I would now lean towards freedom of speech and say, you know, we're not the ones that are going to define misinformation. Let it be a public debate. Let the idea stand. And I actually place, you know, this idea of misinformation, I place the responsibility on the poor communication skills of scientists. They should be in the battlefield of ideas and everybody who is spreading information against the vaccine, they should not be censored. They should be talked with and you should show the data. You should have open discussion as opposed to rolling your eyes and saying, I'm the expert. I know what I'm talking about. No, you need to convince people. It's a battle of ideas. So that's the whole point of freedom of speech. It's the way to defeat bad ideas with good ideas, with speech. So like the responsibility here falls on the poor communication skills of scientists. Thanks to social media, scientists are not communicators. They have the power to communicate. Some of the best stuff I've seen about COVID from doctors is on social media. It's a way to learn to respond really quickly to go faster than the peer review process. And so they just need to get way better at that communication. And also by better, I don't mean just convincing. I also mean speak with humility. Don't talk down to people, all those kinds of things. And as a platform, I would say, I would step back a little bit. Not all the way, of course, because there's a lot of stuff that can cause real harm, as we've talked about, but you lean more towards freedom of speech, because then people, from a brand perspective, wouldn't be blaming you for the other ills of society, which there are many. The institutions have flaws, the political divide, obviously politicians have flaws, that's news, The media has flaws that they're all trying to work with. And because of the central place of Facebook in the world, all of those flaws somehow kind of propagate to Facebook. And you're sitting there as Plato, the philosopher, have to answer to some of the most difficult questions being asked of human civilization. So I don't know, maybe this is an American answer though, to lean towards freedom of speech. I don't know if that applies globally. So yeah, I don't know, but transparency and saying, I think as a technologist, one of the things I sense about Facebook and matter when people talk about this company is they don't necessarily understand fully how difficult the problem is. You talked about AI has to catch a bunch of harmful stuff really quickly, just the sea of data you have to deal with. It's a really difficult problem. So like any of the critics, if you just hand them the helm, for a week, let's see how well you can do. Like that, to me, that's definitely something that would wake people up to how difficult this problem is if there's more transparency in saying how difficult this problem is. Let me ask you about, on the AI front, just because you mentioned language and my ineloquence. Translation is something I wanted to ask you about. And first, just to give a shout out to the supercomputer. You've recently announced the AI Research Supercluster, RSC. Obviously, I'm somebody who loves the GPUs. It currently has 6,000 GPUs. NVIDIA DGX A100s is the systems that have in total 6,000 GPUs. And it will eventually, maybe this year, maybe soon, we'll have 16,000 GPUs. So it can do a bunch of different kinds of machine learning applications. There's a cool thing on the distributed storage aspect and all that kind of stuff. So one of the applications that I think is super exciting is translation. real-time translation. I mentioned to you that, you know, having a conversation, I speak Russian fluently, I speak English somewhat fluently, and I'm, you know, having a conversation with Vladimir Putin, say, as a use case, me as a user coming to you as a use case. We both speak each other's language. I speak Russian, he speaks English. How can we have that communication go well with the help of AI? I think it's such a beautiful and a powerful application of AI to connect the world, that bridge the gap, not necessarily between me and Putin, but people that don't have that shared language. Can you just speak about your vision with translation? Because I think that's a really exciting application." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you're trying to help people connect all around the world, a lot of content is produced in one language and people in all these other places are interested in it. So being able to translate that just unlocks a lot of value on a day-to-day basis. And so the kind of AI around translation is interesting because it's gone through a bunch of iterations. But the basic state of the art is that you don't want to go through know, different kind of intermediate symbolic representations of language or something like that. You basically want to be able to map the concepts and basically go directly from one language to another. And you just can train bigger and bigger models in order to be able to do that. And that's where the research supercluster comes in. Basically, a lot of the trend in machine learning is just you're building bigger and bigger models and you just need a lot of computation to train them. So it's not that like, the translation would run on the supercomputer, the training of the model, which could have billions or trillions of examples of just basically that, your training models on this supercluster in days or weeks that might take a much longer period of time on a smaller cluster. So it just wouldn't be practical for most teams to do. But the translation work, we're basically getting from being able to go between about 100 languages seamlessly today to being able to go to about 300 languages in the near term. And I think that's- So from any language to any other language. Yeah. And part of the issue when you get closer to more languages is some of these get to be pretty not very popular languages, right, where there isn't that much content in them. So you end up having less data and you need to kind of use a model that you've built up around other examples. And this is one of the big questions around AI is like how generalizable can things be. And that I think is one of the things that's just kind of exciting here from a technical perspective." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But capturing, we talked about this with the metaverse, capturing the magic of human-to-human interaction. So me and Putin, okay?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, this is- I mean, it's a tough example, because you actually both speak Russian and English." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in the future- I see it as a Turing test of a kind, because we would both like to have an AI that improves, because I don't speak Russian that well. He doesn't speak English that well. It would be nice to outperform our abilities. And it sets a really nice bar because I think AI can really help in translation for people that don't speak the language at all. But to actually capture the magic of the chemistry, the translation, which would make the metaverse super immersive, that's exciting. You remove the barrier of language, period." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so when people think about translation, I think a lot of that is they're thinking about text to text. But speech to speech, I think, is a whole other thing. And I mean, one of the big lessons on that, which I was referring to before, is I think early models, it's like, all right, they take speech, they translate it to text, translate the text to another language, and then kind of output that as speech in that language. And you don't want to do that. You just want to be able to go directly from speech in one language to speech in another language and build up the models to do that. And I mean, I think one of the there have been, when you look at the progress in machine learning, there have been big advances in the techniques. Some of the advances in self-supervised learning, which I know you talked to Jan about, and he's like one of the leading thinkers in this area. I just think that that stuff is really exciting. But then you couple that with the ability to just throw larger and larger amounts of compute at training these models, and you can just do a lot of things that were harder to do before. But we're asking more of our systems too. So if you think about the applications that we're going to need, for the metaverse. Let's talk about AR here for a second. You're going to have these glasses. They're going to look hopefully like a normal-ish looking pair of glasses, but they're going to be able to put holograms in the world and intermix virtual and physical objects in your scene. One of the things that's going to be unique about this compared to every other computing device that you've had before, is that this is going to be the first computing device that has all the same signals about what's going on around you that you have. So your phone, you can have it take a photo or a video, But I mean, these glasses are going to, you know, whenever you activate them, they're going to be able to see what you see from your perspective. They're going to be able to hear what you hear because they're the microphones and all that are going to be right around where your ears are. So you're going to want an AI assistant. That's a new kind of AI assistant that can basically help you process the world from this first person perspective or from the perspective that you have. And the utility of that is going to be huge. But the kinds of AI models that we're going to need are going to be just—I don't know, there's a lot that we're going to need to basically make advances in. But that's why I think these concepts of the metaverse and the advances in AI are so fundamentally interlinked, that they're kind of enabling each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like the world builder is a really cool idea. You could be like a Bob Ross, I'm gonna put a little tree right here. I need a little tree, it's missing a little tree. But at scale, enriching your experience in all kinds of ways. You mentioned the assistant too, that's really interesting how you can have AI assistants helping you out on different levels of intimacy of communication. It could be just like scheduling or it could be almost like therapy. Clearly I need some. So let me ask you, you're one of the most successful people ever. You've built an incredible company that has a lot of impact. What advice do you have for young people today how to live a life they can be proud of? How to build something that can have a big positive impact on the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "let's break that down, because I think you, proud of, have a big positive impact. And how to live your life are actually three different things that I think, I mean, they could line up, but, and also, like, what age of people are you talking to?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because I mean, I can like- High school and college, so you don't really know what you're doing, but you dream big, and you really have a chance to do something unprecedented." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll support people my age. Okay, so let's maybe start with the kind of most philosophical and abstract version of this. Every night when I put my daughters to bed, we go through this thing and like They call it the good night things, because we're basically what we talk about at night. And I just, I go through with them. Sounds like a good show. The good night things. Yeah, Priscilla's always asking, she's like, can I get good night things? Like, I don't know, you go to bed too early. But I basically go through with Max and Auggie. You know, what are the things that are most important in life? Right. That I just it's like, what do I want them to remember and just have, like, really ingrained in them as they grow up? And it's health. Right. Making sure that you take care of yourself and keep yourself in good shape. Loving friends and family. Right. Because, you know, having the relationships, the family and making time for for for friends, I think, is is perhaps one of the most important things. And then the third is maybe a little more amorphous, but it is something that you're excited about for the future. And when I'm talking to a four-year-old, often I'll ask her what she's excited about for tomorrow or the week ahead. But I think for most people, it's really hard I mean, the world is a heavy place. And I think like the the way that we navigate it is that we have things that we're looking forward to. So whether it is building AR glasses for the future or being able to celebrate my 10 year wedding anniversary with with my wife that's coming up, it's like I think people, you know, you have things that you're looking forward to or for the girls. It's often I want to see mom in the morning. Right. It's just but it's like that's a really critical thing. And then the last thing is I ask them every day. What did you do today to help someone? Because I just think that that's a really critical thing. like it's easy to kind of get caught up in yourself and stuff that's really far down the road. But did you do something just concrete today to help someone? And it can just be as simple as, OK, yeah, I helped set the table for lunch. Or this other kid in our school was having a hard time with something, and I helped explain it to him. But that's sort of like, if you were to boil down my overall life philosophy into what I try to impart to my kids, those are the things that I think are really important. So, okay, so let's say college. So if you're graduating college, probably more practical advice. So I'm always very focused on people. And I think the most important decision you're probably going to make if you're in college is who you surround yourself with, because you become like the people you surround yourself with. And I sort of have this hiring heuristic at Metta, which is that I will only hire someone to work for me if I could see myself working for them. Not necessarily that I want them to run the company because I like my job, but in an alternate universe, if it was their company and I was looking to go work somewhere, would I be happy to work for them? And I think that that's a helpful heuristic to help balance, you know, when you're building something like this, there's a lot of pressure to you want to build out your teams, because there's a lot of stuff that you need to get done. And then everyone always says don't compromise on quality. But there's this question of, okay, how do you know that someone is good enough? And I think my answer is, I would want someone to be to be on my team, if I would work for them. But I think it's actually a pretty similar answer to like, if you were going to go if you were choosing friends or a partner or something like that. So when you're kind of in college, trying to figure out what your circle is going to be trying to figure out, you know, you're evaluating different job opportunities. who are the people, even if they're going to be peers in what you're doing, who are the people who, in an alternate universe, you would want to work for them because you think you're going to learn a lot from them, because they are values aligned on the things that you care about and they're going to push you, but also they know different things and have different experiences that are more of what you want to become like over time. So, I don't know. I think probably people are too in general, objective-focused, and maybe not focused enough on the connections and the people who they're basically building relationships with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know what it says about me, but my place in Austin now has seven-legged robots, so I'm surrounded myself by robots, which is probably something I should look into. What kind of world would you like to see your daughters grow up in, even after you're gone?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think one of the promises of all this stuff that is getting built now is that it can be a world where more people have can just live out their imagination. One of my favorite quotes, I think it was attributed to Picasso, it's that all children are artists and the challenge is how do you remain one when you grow up? And if you have kids, this is pretty clear, they just have wonderful imaginations. And part of what I think is gonna be great about the creator economy and the metaverse and all this stuff is this notion around that a lot more people in the future are gonna get to work doing creative stuff. than what I think today we would just consider traditional labor or service. And I think that that's awesome. And that's a lot of what people are here to do, is collaborate together, work together, think of things that you want to build, and go do it. I don't know, one of the things I always think is striking, so I teach my daughters some basic coding with Scratch. I mean, they're still obviously really young, but I think of coding as building, right? It's like when I'm coding, I'm building something that I want to exist. But my youngest daughter, she's very musical and pretty artistic, and she thinks about coding as art. She calls it code art. Not the code, but the output of what she is making. It's like she's just very interesting visually in what she can kind of output and how it can move around. And Do we need to fix that? Are we good? What happened? Do we have to clap?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Alexa." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I was just talking about, you know, Auggie and her code art. But I mean, to me, this is like a beautiful thing, right? The notion that like, for me, coding was this functional thing, and I enjoyed it. And it like helped build something utilitarian, but that for the next generation of people, it will be, even more an expression of their kind of imagination and artistic sense for what they want to exist. So, I don't know, if that happens, if we can help bring about this world where, you know, a lot more people can, that that's like their existence going forward is being able to basically create and live out you know, all these different kinds of art. I just think that that's like a beautiful and wonderful thing, and will be very freeing for humanity to spend more of our time on the things that mattered us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, allow more and more people to express their art in the full meaning of that word. Yeah. That's a beautiful vision. We mentioned that you are mortal. Are you afraid of death? Do you think about your mortality? And are you afraid of it? You didn't sign up for this on a podcast, did you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I mean, it's an interesting question. I mean, I'm definitely aware of it. I do a fair amount of extreme sport type stuff. So I'm definitely aware of it. And you're flirting with it a bit. I train hard. So it's like, if I'm going to go out and Yeah. A 15 foot wave. Go out big. Then, well, then it's like, all right, I'll make sure we have the right safety gear and like make sure that I'm like used to that spot and all that stuff. But like, but, you know, I mean, you. The risk is still there. It takes some head blows along the way. Yes. But definitely aware of it. Definitely would like to stay safe. I have a lot of stuff that I want to build and want to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it freak you out that it's finite though? That there's a deadline when it's all over. And that there'll be a time when your daughters are around and you're gone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, that doesn't freak me out. I think... Constraints are helpful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah, the finiteness makes ice cream taste more delicious somehow, the fact that it's gonna be over. There's something about that with the metaverse too. We talked about this identity earlier, like having just one, like NFTs. There's something powerful about the constraint of finiteness or uniqueness, that this moment is singular in history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean a lot of you know as you go through different waves of technology I think a lot of what is interesting is what becomes in practice infinite or kind of there can be many many of a thing and then what ends up still being constrained. So the metaverse should hopefully allow a very large number or maybe you know in practice hopefully close to an infinite amount of expression and worlds and we'll still only have a finite amount of time. I think living longer, I think is good. And obviously all of our philanthropic work is, it's not focused on longevity, but it is focused on trying to achieve what I think is a possible goal in this century, which is to be able to cure, prevent or manage all diseases. So I certainly think people kind of getting sick and dying is a bad thing, because I'm, you know, dedicating almost all of my capital towards advancing research in that area to push on that, which I mean, we could do a whole another one of these podcasts about that, because that's a fascinating topic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, this is with your wife, Priscilla Chan, you formed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, gave away 99%, or pledged to give away 99% of Facebook non-meta shares. I mean, like you said, we could talk forever about all the exciting things you're working on there, including the sort of moonshot of eradicating disease. by the mid-century mark?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't actually know if you're going to ever eradicate it, but I think you can get to a point where you can either cure things that happen, right? So people get diseases, but you can cure them. Prevent is probably closest to eradication. Or just be able to manage is sort of like ongoing things that are not going to ruin your life. And I think that that's possible. I think saying that there's going to be no disease at all probably is not possible within the next several decades." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Basic thing is increase the quality of life. Yeah. And maybe keep the finiteness because it tastes it makes everything taste more delicious. Yeah, maybe that's just being romantic 20th century human." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe but I mean, but it was an intentional decision to not focus on our philanthropy on like explicitly on longevity or living forever. Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If at the moment of your death, and by the way, I like that the lights went out when we started talking about death. You get to meet God. It does make it a lot more dramatic. It does. As you get closer to the mic. At the moment of your death, you get to meet God, and you get to ask one question. What question would you like to ask? Or maybe a whole conversation, I don't know, it's up to you. It's more dramatic when it's just one question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if it's only one question and I died, I would just want to know that Priscilla and my family, like if they were going to be okay. That might depend on the circumstances of my death, but I think that in most circumstances that I can think of, that's probably the main thing that I would care about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think God would hear that question and be like, all right, fine, you get in. That's the right question to ask. Is it? I don't know. Humility and selfishness. All right, you're in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're going to be fine. Don't worry, you're in. But I mean, one of the things that I think I struggle with, at least, is on the one hand, that's probably the most the thing that's closest to me and maybe the most common human experience. But I don't know, one of the things that I just struggle with in terms of running this large enterprise is like, should the thing that I care more about be that responsibility? And I think it's shifted over time. I mean, like before I really had a family, that was like the only thing I cared about. And at this point, it's I mean, I'm, I mean, I care deeply about it. But like, Yeah, I think that that's not as obvious of a question. Yeah, we humans are weird." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You get this ability to impact millions of lives, and it's definitely something, billions of lives, it's something you care about, but the weird humans that are closest to us, those are the ones that mean the most, and I suppose that's the dream of the metaverse, is to connect, form small groups like that, where you can have those intimate relationships" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "me ask you the big ridiculous one to be able to be close not just based on who you happen to be next to i think that's what the internet is already doing is allowing you to spend more of your time not physically proximate i mean i i always think when you think about the the metaverse people ask this question about the real world it's like a dude the virtual world versus the real world it's like no the real world is a combination of the virtual world and the physical world. But I think over time, as we get more technology, the physical world is becoming less of a percent of the real world. And I think that that opens up a lot of opportunities for people, because you can work in different places. You can stay closer to people who are in different places." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think that's good. removing barriers of geography and then barriers of language. That's a beautiful vision. Big ridiculous question. What do you think is the meaning of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that, well, there are probably a couple of different ways that that I would go with this. But I think it gets back to this last question that we talked about, about the duality between you have the people around you who you care the most about. And then there's like this bigger thing that maybe you're building. Um, and I think that in my own life, I mean, I sort of think about this tension, but it's look, I mean, I started this whole company and my life's work is around human connection. So, um, I think it's intellectually probably the thing that I go to first is just that human connection is the meaning. And I mean, I think that it's a thing that our society probably systematically undervalues. I mean, I just remember, you know, when I was growing up and in, in school, it's like, do your homework and then go play with your friends after. And it's like, No, well, what if what if playing with your friends is the point?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sounds like an argument your daughter would make." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I don't know. I just think it's interesting. Homework doesn't even matter, man. Well, I think it's interesting because it's, you know, people... I think people tend to think about that stuff as wasting time. Or that's like what you do in the free time that you have. But like, what if that's actually the point? So that's one. But here's maybe a different way of counting out this, which is maybe more like religious in nature. I mean, I always like... there's a rabbi who I've studied with, who kind of gave me this, we were talking through Genesis and the Bible and the Torah, and they're basically walking through, it's like, okay, you go through the seven days of creation, and it's basically, it's like, why does the Bible start there, right? It's like it could have started anywhere, right, in terms of like how to live. Um, but basically it starts with talking about how God created people in his, her image, but the Bible starts by talking about how God created everything. So I actually think that there's like a, a compelling argument that I think I've always just found meaningful and inspiring that a lot of the point of what sort of religion has been telling us that we should do is to create and build things. So these things are not necessarily at odds. I mean, I think like, I mean, that's, and I think probably to some degree, you'd expect me to say something like this, because I've dedicated my life to creating things that help people connect. So I mean, that's sort of the fusion of, of, um, I mean, getting back to what we talked about earlier, it's I mean, what I studied in school or psychology and computer science, right? So it's, I mean, these are these are like the two themes that that I care about. But I don't know, for me, that's what that's kind of what I think about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what matters to create and to, to love, which is the ultimate form of connection. I think this is one hell of an amazing replay experience in the metaverse, so whoever's using our avatars years from now, I hope you had fun, and thank you for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's interesting. One of the people in the book, Grendel Hicks, his autobiography starts with, I was a good boy, and he wasn't a very good boy. On a scale of one to 10? I'm trying to think of what bad things I've done. Okay, there's that okay wait, that's not that was no that was not that that's all right. I would say nine I've a nine. Yeah, I try to do the right thing Okay, what are you you're either is it gonna be a one or zero?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. No, I'm extremely self-critical. I push the zero. Okay, I reach for the zero Well mission accomplished So this episode is announcing the release of The White Pill, a book you wrote. I've gotten the honor, the privilege, the pleasure of being one of the first people to read it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'm really, I don't know if nervous is the word, but you are the first person who has read it that I am speaking to about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "My first, my last, my everything. Yes. You say that to all the girls, but I'll take it. All the fembots. All the fembots. But yeah, it was a truly incredible book. It's basically a story of evil in the 20th century. And throughout it, you reveal a thread that gives us hope. And that's the idea of the white pill. So there's the blue pill and the red pill. There's the black pill, which is a kind of deeply cynical, maybe apathetic, just giving up on the world, given that you see behind the curtain, and given that you don't like what you see, given that there's so much suffering in the world, you give up. That's the black pill. And the white pill, I suppose, is even though you acknowledge that there's evil in the world, you don't give up. So if you're listening to this and you're a fan of this podcast, go to whitepillbook.com and it'll go to it. Whitepillbook.com, and if you don't know how to spell, we'll probably have a link that you can click on. So for people who also don't know, Michael Malice is not just a troll, not just a hilarious, comedic genius who hosts his own podcast, but he is an incredible, brilliant author. Dear Reader, the unauthorized autobiography, Kim Jong-il. So that's a story of North Korea. The New Right, A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. That's the story of the extremes of the United States political movements, and then the anarchist handbook that's talking about the ideologies, the different flavors of ideologies of anarchism. But on top of that, you're now going in, going into the darkest aspects of the 20th century with the Soviet Union and the communism with the white pill. Let me ask you, let's start at the beginning. At the end of the 19th century, as you write, the terms socialist, communist, and anarchist were used somewhat loosely and interchangeably because the prophesied Marxist society was one in which the state had famously withered away. There was a great disagreement about what a socialist system would looked like in practice, but two things were clear. First, that socialism was both inevitable and scientific, the way of the future. And second, that the capitalist ruling class were not going down without a fight. So what are the key points of disagreement between the socialists, the anarchists, the communists at that time? At the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century, the possibility of the century laid before us that eventually led to the first and the second World War." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The idea when the Industrial Revolution came, and Marx was very much a product of Industrial Revolutionary thinking, was, okay, now that we have technology, now that we have science, we can scientifically manage society. We saw this very much with Woodrow Wilson and this kind of idea of progressivism that we could use. technology and not capitalism. In their view, unfettered capitalism was wasteful. You're making too much stuff. You have surpluses. You have shortages. If we produce just exactly what we need and you have these people, engineers, the engineering society, then everyone will be happy and you won't have to have any suffering or waste. So socialism at that time was used as a broad umbrella It's not used in the term that it means today of necessarily state socialism. It just meant the idea of having society scientifically run. So you had a huge argument, there are different wings, you even had it from the beginning with Marx versus Bakunin, because Marx was for obviously state socialism, the absolute state running everything. Although even with Marx and Engels, it was a means to an end after man is remade in his very nature, then the state withers away and everyone's equal, and you have this kind of heaven-on-earth situation. But Kunin was the opposite. He regarded the state as inherently immoral and wanted to have workers' collectives and things like that and ultra-localized control." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the end was always stateless. It's just that some people viewed the state as a convenient, effective intermediate state." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think at least Marx and Maxwell, and there were plenty of others who just regarded it, you know, have the workers control the production via the state. By the way, how does my hat look? It looks great, festive. It's good?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is this side better than the other side?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you want it on this side so people can see you. Oh, no, no, no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I want to. You know, like when you have like hair, peekaboo hair, it's called Veronica Lake, I think was her name. And then I just glance flirtatiously towards the camera sometimes. I got to stay. Sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, no glove, no love." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The bad aspect of white gloves is the blood stains them. So you have to get new ones every time. And now I glance flirtatiously after that. I'm sorry. OK, Bakunin and Marx, go ahead." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there were other socialists who did not regard this kind of end times where the state would do it their way at all. And there were various strains in between where you'd have some capitalism and some socialism, the concept of a safety net. came out of socialist thinking in the Labour Party, came out of the Fabian socialists in Great Britain. Their logo was a wolf in sheep's clothing. And then when that was too on the nose, they changed it to a tortoise, meaning we're gonna get to socialism slowly in the sense of either gradualism or boiling a frog. And also the big part of this thinking at the time, this is again the late 19th century, is the idea that there's gonna be a worldwide workers' revolution. It wasn't going to be that in one country, It was going to happen and then all the other countries would be capitalists. The idea was, all right, the workers in Germany have more in common with the workers in America. than the workers in Germany have with the capitalists in Germany. So the idea is, all right, they're the working class all over the world. At one point, they're going to be like, we're being exploited. It's getting worse and worse for us. We can't feed our families. We're getting injured and so on and so forth. And there's no compensation for this. We're just going to overthrow our chains and we're going to run everything ourselves. We're the ones running it already anyway. And this was a- Doing all the work. And we're doing all the work. So why shouldn't we be getting all the benefits?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the role of violence in all of this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this was a big source of contention. So the Fabians, for example, in Britain, who were all socialists, they were very heavily of the idea that we can do this through the ballot box. We can advocate and agitate and get the people to be voting for their own self-interest and furthering the state at the expense of the capitalist class. Then there were the people who were the hardcore anarchists who were like, If voting changed anything, they wouldn't let us do it. And the only way to have a revolution is to have a revolution, to kill, to overthrow, to seize these factories. And this was a big argument. And it also fed into the idea of where does free speech end? Is it legal to be giving speeches advocating for violence and revolution? is illegal. Johan Most, who I discuss in the book and in the Anarchist Handbook, he published a book in the 1800s about how to build dynamite and how to build bombs. And this is a big free speech concern at the time because now anyone in their own house can make a bomb and kill lots of people. And this is something that was happening with enormous frequency at the time. And people tend to think, you know, because we have these kind of prejudices, or we only remember what's happening now. But this was, I mean, World War II, excuse me, World War I got started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There were lots of people, McKinley's another one who I discuss in the book, his assassination. There was lots of violence happening very regularly. and with the creation of dynamite, it kind of exponentially became more dangerous and threatening. Even now, on Wall Street, there was a bomb that went off, I think, in the 1920s, and the shards of shrapnel are still in the J.P. Morgan building, I believe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you ever think, if you were alive during that time, what you would be doing? You think of yourself as an anarchist. Where would you be? Would you be a socialist, a communist? Which parties would you attend, figuratively and literally?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the thing that was so interesting back then is there was a woman named Mabel Dodge Lujan, and she ended her days in Taos, New Mexico. She found an artist colony. And she had an apartment on 9th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, a chateau salon. And everyone got together and talked. And you'd have Emma Goldman, who's an anarchist, Margaret Sanger, who invented Planned Parenthood and advocated for birth control. And you'd have the people from the Wobblies, the hardcore labor unions. And everyone kind of, Edshel Mencken didn't attend, but he was friends with them all. So there was this very weird, with the birth of modernism in art and in modernist thinking, there was this idea like, all right, this was the first time where you could be intellectual as a class, where there really was this space for people who are thinkers. And they just sat around being like, all right, what are we going to do with ourselves? And you had it in modern art. You had it in literature, you had it in politics. So it was a very exciting time where people were like, all right, like everything is now on the table, what are we gonna do with this? And they very much were aware that this was a break with the pre-industrial revolution kind of farmer labor era." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see, do you think for you violence would be compelling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, first of all, I'm just too small. But second, I just- Dynamite." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "doesn't care about your size." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but I mean, retribution does. And I think, I don't know, but to me, violence is the kind of thing where you think you're running it, but it's running you. Once you cross that line, violence sings its own song. So whenever I hear even contemporary times where people are advocating for violent actions, it's like, when you start a fire, you're not like, I'm just gonna burn down this house. And there's many cases over and over of people who are building bombs or trying to assassinate someone or things like that. And it ended up literally, literally, literally blowing up in their own face. And violence doesn't, really work necessarily because if you have an assassination, you're not assassinating the presidency. If you take out a president, there's another president instantly there. So what have you accomplished? Someone's husband, dad is gone. You replace them with someone who now is in a position to crack down and retaliate with even more violence. So the calculus for me isn't there. Would I be advocating for then? Who knows? But I mean, I don't know if I'd be able to have the space to be, I certainly wouldn't have the space to be a podcaster or like a media personality. That wasn't really a thing. To some extent it was in the 1920s with the Algonquin Roundtable and all the people from the New Yorker magazine, but they were all drunks. It was very much a weird kind of situation to be a thinker." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What would you think you would do? Work at a carnival? You look good in lipstick, so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, thank you. I look at anything. What would I, I don't know. I mean, you're not building robots. I mean, you could have been a Tesla, right? Okay. I didn't mean a car, I meant the person. I understand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, thank you for explaining the witty comments to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It wasn't witty at all, because you wouldn't get an Einstein, because he was an immigrant." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I wouldn't work with an immigrant? What does that even mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, you would have been a Tesla-like figure. There's already a Tesla, so you wouldn't literally be Tesla. That's why he said a Tesla." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, a Tesla. Okay. So, all right. Thank you for the explanation. See, Michael doesn't only make funny things. He also explains them for you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It wasn't funny. Mansplains them. It wasn't funny at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That I agree with. Okay. Okay. So yes, when you achieve... See, this is why Kanye didn't like you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, I'm downgrading it from a nine down to an eight. And if you keep talking like this, a five is a real possibility. All right, so the kind of vacuum that's created with violence is usually filled with a harsher figure. So you don't think violent revolution ultimately leads to positive progress in the short term." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, sometimes it does. The American Revolution, I think, was a positive example. And overthrowing the czar, which was done peacefully, was a positive example. But again, when violence happens, people get scared, and they want the violence stopped immediately. And that's a call for authoritarianism. And you see it time and time again. And they also want retribution. They were like, bring this back to normal. and they don't really worry about things like civil liberties or things like that. And then it also creates this space for invasion from foreign sources or demagogues, like, oh look, they're killing us in the streets, now you gotta support me. It's a very deadly game, obviously." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I remember somebody told me, that, I forget where it was, but they told me that from the very beginning it was obvious that communism is an evil system, or a system that leads to evil. And to me, at least, that's not, if I had to put myself in the beginning of the 20th century or at the end of the 19th century, that's totally not obvious. They are trying to elevate humanity, the basic worth of a human being, of a hardworking human being, of the working class, of the people that are doing the work and are striving and just really trying to build up society with their own hands. It just seems like a beautiful ideal. So I guess the question is, Can you see yourself believing that in the ideas of socialism and communism? Yeah, let's say if you were living in Russia." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, easily. So first of all, I don't think anything is obvious in politics. It's not obvious that humans have rights. It's not obvious that liberty is better or the markets either. Whether you're for a welfare state or you're for more free markets, neither of those is obvious. Both of them involve an enormous amount of thought and background information. So when someone says something is obvious in politics, they really mean something's apparent. Well, it's not apparent on its face that if we all get together and promote a society based on equality, and we all chip in, that it's gonna really be good for everyone. I mean, that to me is the promise of communism. And it was also very appealing to many people because it was new. So the idea was, all right, we've tried it these other ways. There's all these negative consequences. You have all these slums. You have people getting fired and then they have no recourse. You have women with 10 kids and they can't feed their kids, infant mortality. You don't have sanitation. You don't have food. Everyone's illiterate and uneducated. And then here saying, look, if we all chip in together, everyone will have clothes, everyone will have food, everyone will be educated, everyone will do their part. It's going to be rough in the short period. That's a very compelling case to be made for communism. It's really easy in many ways when something hasn't been tried to make it sound compelling because you just talk about how great it's going to be and then no one, no one, you know, people are always arguing about how like Venezuela and Sweden like, oh, you know, you want democratic socialism to be like Sweden. You don't want to be like Venezuela. The Venezuelans didn't vote for Venezuela. They voted for Sweden. They ended up with Venezuela. So it's, I think, And the thing with the communism, especially at that era, it was very much correlated with people who were too smart for their own good. Because they had the idea that if we are just put in charge, instead of these, like, business for people or these heirs to great estates, if the people who are smart and get it, like us – I don't mean you and me, like the people at the time who were advocating for it – once we're in charge, since we're good people and we want what's best for everyone, we're going to make sure everyone's taken care of. They always talked about how much they cared about the little guy. I'm sure some of them meant it a lot and they're like, look, if the guy in charge is very much concerned with the little guy, he's not going to slip between the cracks and it's just going to be absolutely great and we don't have to worry about the capitalist class just basically exploiting people and having these huge estates while these people can't even feed their own families." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "since we have a little bit of momentum, can you steelman the case for socialism at that time and even today? I don't know if it's, I don't know if there's a rhyme and a similarity to those, to socialism as implemented at that time and what could possibly be implemented today, but maybe you can dance between the two." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The steelman argument for socialism is if you have everything up to private industry, you do not have a guarantee that someone won't fall between the cracks. And the other concern is, in any other context, if someone is, let's suppose, mentally ill, right, through no fault of their own, or someone's handicapped, you know, they can't feed themselves or mentally disabled or something like that, If you have everything up to charity, you see this with endangered species, right? The species that are cute, it's easy to raise money for them or protect them. Some weird kind of frog somewhere that no one cares about, you can't raise money for it. People's interests are to what they find interesting. So if someone is someone who's not socially appealing in some way, whatever capacity, they're gonna fall between the cracks and they're screwed. Under socialism, if you have a government taking care of everything, no one is left behind. You are guaranteed that the lowest of the low and the worst of the worst are still going to make sure that they're not starving the street or just left behind. So that is a big moral case. to be made for having the state running everything. In terms of economics, it's a lot harder, but the argument there would be it's why – it's not fair, a term which in my view does not actually have a good meaning, but it's not fair that because you were born a Rockefeller and I was born in Poland that you never have to worry about food for the rest of your life, whereas I have to worry about, you know, paying for a doctor for my kid. Like you just, you won this lottery when you're born and now I have to be screwed and I have to respect all your property, why? So that is another strong argument to be made for socialism. And the other argument is if you have a media apparatus that is operated under profit-seeking principles, it is going to feed into people's worst qualities, most basic animal-like qualities and sensationalist qualities, and will be used as a mechanism for capitalist control, whereas if the government, which represents all of us, is running things, then everyone will have a right to have their voice heard and won't be manipulated. That's the argument." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the reaching towards the stateless version? sort of, because you espouse the ideas of anarchism, it kind of has the same conclusion, which is reaching towards the removal of the state to where we, I guess, have some distributed reallocation of resources that are quote-unquote fair." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the thing is, the Marxist vision of the state withering away and becoming anarchism, it's really kind of like the underpants gnomes, because it's like- Tell me more. Well, step one, Hmm?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, Mark, tell me slowly. I'm sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have full communism, the state's running everything, including education. Step two, question mark. Step three, anarchism. So their idea was that after enough time, the nature of man himself was going to change. And then the government would be superfluous because we would all be equal and we would all naturally or socially, whatever term they would use, want to act the part that we would need to And in fact, Reagan had a great joke about this, where there were two commissars, I think, in Moscow, and one of them, they're walking around, they're going, is this it? Have we done it? Have we reached full communism? The other goes, oh no, it's gonna get a hell of a lot worse. So, you know, that's kind of the counter argument to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think culture, society can change the nature of man?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So no matter, you don't think this idea that, for example, America's been founded on that all men are created equal, that that idea can't permeate the culture and thereby change how we see each other, how we think of the basic worth of a human being, and thereby change our nature?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's epigenetic. I don't think that, that changes the nature of man. I think, for example, if I say someone, which I agree with, that someone is innocent until proven guilty, they're not literally innocent. They're regarded in a legal context as innocent, but that person is or is not a murderer, a thief, or so on and so forth. So we can legally and ethically regard everyone as equal. But as Thomas Sowell pointed out, a human being isn't even equal to himself over the course of a day. Twins who are genetic clones are not equal to one another. So it is a important thing legally, and it's a good yardstick, but it's not literally true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But don't you think that law becomes ethics? So we, that like idea of justice starts to like, we start to internalize it, that we just, the way we behave, the way we think about the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think it's a complete red herring because no one is... No, you're a red herring. Okay. See what I did there? Seletka. Because people are still going to always prefer their family to strangers or their in-group to out-group. So in terms, if you're gonna have equality, that means it's gonna not matter to you whether someone is your mom or someone is, you know, someone down the street. And I don't see how that will ever become the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it would be possible if you were an intellectual like you are at the beginning of the 20th century, would you be able to predict the rest of the 20th century?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't think at all. I think there was so many, out of nowhere turns that no one would have seen them coming. And as an example, Lenin seizing power and making the Bolshevik Revolution a reality was regarded as utopian and insane. The fact that he pulled it off is close to miraculous, and it was quite literally unprecedented. So that's a very big one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which aspect of it, sorry to interrupt, which aspect was hard to predict, that a singular figure with just some ideas would be able to take so much power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And maintain that power and remake that society so drastically, so quickly, despite such opposition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Also, not just a set of temporary protests by hooligans that lead to turmoil in the short term, but then stabilizes, but literally changes the entirety of the society." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, Ludendorff, who was the German general, he's like, all right, we gotta get the Russians out of World War I, he's the one who's like, all right, let's get this lunatic Lenin, who already tried and failed to have a revolution in Russia, let's send him back there, and he's just gonna cause problems to everybody, and it's gonna be great, because it's gonna weaken Russia, and then our Eastern Front isn't gonna have to be a problem. And then to his surprise, and everyone else's, including, you know, anarchists and communists worldwide, they pulled off this, you know, October Revolution, and then for a while, it's like, all right, I mean, I mean, I think my understanding is even people at the time in St. Petersburg and in Moscow were like, what does this even mean, right? Like no one took it seriously. And then very quickly you had the Cheka and the secret police and all these other kinds of implementations of the communist state and people like, oh, They're not messing around, but they're like, all right, this is not gonna last for long. And the USA, the US and A, we didn't even recognize the Soviet Union's legitimacy for a very long time. There were no diplomatic relations. And after a certain point, it's like, if you don't recognize Lenin and Stalin's government, who's the government of Russia or the Soviet Union? Is it the czar? You have to recognize it. It's just, they're not going anywhere. So that was something that was not, I think, very predictable. The Great Depression, in retrospect, there were certain things that were predictable, but it was not at all the case that it needed to last as long as it did in the States, as FDR made it do. So there's all sorts of things. I mean, if they fought Germany's re-militarization near World War II could have been prevented. If you didn't have the Treaty of Versailles, would you have the hyperinflation? Would you have Hitler? These are all, I think, choose your own adventure moments where things could have gone in other directions. I don't believe this kind of idea. This is a very Marxist idea that like history is inevitable. And once you start with certain premises, the contradictions kind of unfold. I think that's ridiculous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like there's power in the Santa Claus outfit. Yeah. I mean, it's a fundamentally communist idea, right? How? Santa Claus. Arbitrary redistribution of wealth. It's not redistribution. Well, at least I decide who's good and bad. Only I, only I know this. And I mean, I am somehow getting funding from somewhere, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, listen, I have so much to teach you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have a workshop." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Little Michael. Workshop, yeah. And how many people do you think are employed in this workshop? They're slaves. Yes. I don't know how many elves are in the workshop. I think the rest of you are gonna have to look into it. No, anyway, and the red colors and everything. Is that the biggest holiday of all time, Christmas? Like just in terms of the intensity of the festivities?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think Christmas is a very recent phenomenon. I think historically it was not a big deal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I know, historically it has not been, but in terms of how much it captivates, how intense it is, I guess from a capitalist perspective, like how much is going on, how visual it is, how intense it is, how it grabs a whole population." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's because the idea of Christmas is probably one of the most powerful holiday ideas. Easter's probably up there, Easter's obviously up there, because you have Christ dying, his resurrection, so that's kind of a big one. But Christmas is this symbol of brotherhood and kindness and magnanimity. You know, one of the things I despise about our culture is this, and something I'm fighting very heavily with this book, or at least attempting to, is this glorification of cynicism. this kind of like, oh, you like this song? That's cute, stupid. Whereas Christmas is the one time of year where you could be happy, and joyous, and kind, and people don't get to roll their eyes at you. They get to stop being too cool for school, and they get to be like, you know, I enjoy your friendship. You're my sister, my brother, my dad, my mom, whatever. It's the, you know, it was Ayn Rand's favorite holiday. I adore it, especially Christmas in New York. And it's just this idea of like, even though we're cold and it's dark outside, you know, it's still this kind of, like, it's still cozy. And you, and the next, let's hope the next year is, because with Russians, Ded Moroz, Santa comes on New Year's. So it's kind of like, let's make this next year an even better one. So it's very much the holiday of hope and joy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and love for family, for friends, for friendship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And kindness and benevolence, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And almost that whole rat race of chasing material possessions and all that gets put on hold for a brief moment and it just all goes quiet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's also about giving people material possessions, like here, I value you, this is something that brings you joy, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you write in the book, which by the way, people should go get, buy it right now. If you support this podcast, or if you support the ridiculous outfits that Michaels wears, the more books you buy, the more outfits he is gonna wear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've got two, my next two appearances in the show, assuming I don't burn this bridge. I've got some good ones." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This bridge has been burning for a long time. We've been going across the road by canoe at this point. Next time we're gonna be swimming." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How the hell are you gonna swim? You're made out of lead." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's true. Sink to the bottom, get dragged across by rope. Okay, you write in the book, cynics like to lie and call themselves realists, hoping for positive outcomes can thus be dismissed as being naive or utopian. Can you elaborate on this point, just like you said right now? It seems like a, I don't know if it's a fundamental characteristic of our society today or just societies throughout history, but there is a cynicism. You write in the Soviet Union, it was a really, there's a deep cynicism. But that was good at the end, yeah. But there is a cynicism today as well, at least in like public discourse. Yes. Why does it happen and how can we fight it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is easy. to be like, eh, everything sucks. You know, I had my friend Lux, she was a blogger, she was an author. She had this great line, because, you know, we worked in media and she's like, if you're at a party and someone starts talking about a new app or website and you don't know anything about it, just say, oh, I was on that for a while, it sucked. And that's all you need to say. I'm like, Lux, that's a great line. But I think it is, And especially, I'm sure you experienced this as well with your family. I certainly did with mine. There is this idea, especially in Russian culture, but in American culture to some extent as well, where if you have aspirations, I remember there was this show called Russian Dolls. Oh, I just got it. Like the Matryoshka. Okay. I just got it. That's the name. Okay. The show is called Russian Dolls. It was about Brighton Beach, which is the Russian Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was supposed to be their version of Jersey Shore. It was on Lifetime and it had no ratings. And I remember the last four episodes, they had to burn them. So they just ran it through like 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. one day. And there was this one scene where one of the girls, I forget her name, probably Natalia, and she'd been in college and she had been wondering what she wanted to major in, right? And this story was so perfect, I'm sure I've told it before. And she took an aptitude test and she went with her mom to get like mani pedis or something. And she goes, mom, you know, I've had like 80 majors. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And she goes, I took this aptitude test. It really made sense to me. I am going to go to law school. I want to be a lawyer. This is something I enjoy. And the first thing out of her mom's mouth is how are you going to pay for it? And the girl, and I really related, because if you didn't have this Russian upbringing, you watched it, you would think her reaction was completely insane. She just lost it, just screaming. She's like, people pay for law school all the time. I'll figure out a way. Why is your first reaction to look for a problem? Why is your first response to be like, oh, are you sure you've thought this through? I have been struggling with one problem for years, what I wanted to do for a living. And now, like, as soon as I solve this one big problem of identity, your first reaction is like, let's find a new problem. Why is that your approach instead of let's figure out how we're going to pay for it? And that kind of approach is so deadly and it gnaws at you. And I don't like giving people advice because who the hell am I? And also, if I don't know the context of the problem, I'm not informed enough to give advice. But this is a piece of advice that I do feel comfortable giving. If you are someone who has around you people who, as soon as you have any accomplishment or any hope, that their first reaction is to be like, well, what about this? you have to get rid of them or sit them down, maybe give them a chance, because that is something that is such so demoralizing and it drains you. And it's like, You know, the example I've used all the time, all the time, all the time, I say, if you wanna be an author, right? You can go to any bookstore and look at all the shitty, shitty books, like the White Pill. And you could say to yourself, I could be the shitty author. You don't have to be Hemingway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So people should buy your book just to know that it doesn't take much." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It really does not take much. What shitty writing is all about and boring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you could just pick a random period in history and just write a bunch of crap about it and put a pretty stamp on the cover and just go." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was pretty, yeah. But I mean, like for you, right? I was raised by the wolves. the Wolfbots, there's lots of standard comedians who aren't Jerry Seinfeld. If you want to be a podcaster, you don't have to be Joe Rogan. You could be someone who's got a medium audience and are enjoying it. So the idea that you have to be a massive superstar or you're a failure is also ridiculous, but that's cynicism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, you can even be a failed comedian like Dave Smith. Yeah, I don't, this is a generic name I came up with as an example. I think he has like a podcast of some kind. Yeah, not very funny. I don't know why he would call himself a comedian, but you- Maybe he's being ironic. Don't you think? Yeah, so even then you could do something special." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember what you did with me in the movie theater." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's that? I don't. Oh, you continue. Can you explain the jokes? Cause I can't." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not explaining jokes. I'm wearing lipstick. It's not enough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now I remember what you did to me in a movie theater and you wore lipstick that night too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not when I was done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "People for sure will think this, this feels like a gay porn, like a very long intro." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Cause we're not wearing pants." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, there's many reasons why this feels like this, and the outfits, and just everything about this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How would you know?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I am my friend, I have stories." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I thought I don't have friends." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They're all suspiciously named either Lex or Lux, like you lack complete creativity. Just like in the writing. Or Lux, yeah. It's like you didn't even use like a thesaurus for your book, the same words over and over and over. The sad thing about the cynicism is like, I don't think it's just a Russian thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the people- Let me interrupt you because I didn't finish what you were saying earlier. In America, it's not just a Russian thing. In American culture, if you have like a, sitcom or a musical, it's regarded as less legitimate than a drama, right? Like if something's gotta be about someone struggling or someone suffering, whereas this is like a joyous, happy story, like maybe something like Pixar, right? Like sure, they have conflict and they're going for something, but it's overall the background the universe is taking in is very joyous and happy. That is regarded artistically as less legitimate than something which is dark and the background is despair. And that very subtly sends a very, to me, pernicious message that what's real is despair and happiness is the aberration. And I think if you have that as your mindset, you're setting yourself up for maybe not failure, but certainly not happiness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that's in the figures, the ideas that the culture elevates, but at the local, personal life of parents and teachers, that still happens a lot. In Russia and here, just my whole life, especially because I'm a weirdo, I've been kind of told to basically be less weird, be, you know, There's a kind of sense in where there's a certain path you're supposed to take in life, and every time you have a little bit of success on those very specifically defined paths, you're pushed to do more and more and more on those paths, as opposed to celebrating the full complexity of the weirdo that each one of us is, and I certainly am. And I just, teachers, even friends, and certainly family, have constantly been very cynical about my aspirations, my dreams, and so on. I think that actually created a deeply self-critical engine in my brain, that I think ultimately was productive, because it was also, balanced by just an internal, maybe through genetics, thing I have of optimism about the world, of just seeing the beauty in the world. But it is weird looking back how much people that love me were trying to bring me down. It's so strange." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's also very hurtful for me because when I graduated college, it was important for me to be self-made and not take money from my family. And I remember my grandma, this was a huge argument, an ongoing argument, And one time she, as she was leaving my house, she slipped money in under the door and I threw it out and it made me so angry. Or like one year for my birthday, she gave me, I think like $500, which was a lot of money when you're like 22 or 23. And I was so pissed because that told me that they didn't believe that I'd be able to feed myself or make it on my own. And I understand their mindset, but it's like, I'm not, I wasn't, you know, I never was never hungry. Like maybe I couldn't, I remember I'd have to wait on the subway because I couldn't afford a cab. but that was a sacrifice I had to make. I had to wait that half hour. So it was a huge source and remains a source of enormous tension and contention. And I think also, I'm sure speaking to your upbringing, in their minds, unless you're going into an office, you can't pay the rent. It doesn't make sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So- But there's, just like you said, forget the office, forget all that, no matter what, There's always, whatever you accomplish in life, you're always negative about your current position. You always come up with another problem, just like you said. It's like a self-generating problem box." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I remember I didn't speak to my dad for a few years, then I'm like, let me give this guy another chance. And in that time period, Harvey Pekar, the author of Subject of American Splendor, the movie and author of the series of comic books, he and I became friends and he was writing a graphic novel about me. And when I met with my dad, I'm like, oh, someone's writing a book about me and he goes, I know, so. And it was one of those moments where I'm like, wow, you're an asshole and not the kind of asshole I am. You're just like not a good person. And I don't know, or really at this point care what the motivation or if there was no motivation with the visceral emotional reasoning for that. But that kind of thing is something I, you know, much later now in life, have absolutely no tolerance for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, in my own private life, I try to forgive and love those people, but it is, there have been a few in my life like this, and I think they are incredible people if you allow yourself to see it, but they're flawed, and so... I try to forgive them. That said, it is true that the people that are close to you, especially family, have a disproportionate psychological effect on you. So you have to be very careful having them in your life too much. Like, one thing is to love them, and the other is to actually, you know, allow yourself to flourish. Surround yourself with people that help you flourish. And like you said, the advice there is really powerful, especially early on, to have people that believe in you. in whatever crazy big dreams you have that pat you on the back and say, you got this, kid." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So valuable. And here's the other thing. If you try and you don't make it to that Rogan level, it's okay. Like I have several books that I've written that are on my hard drive that have not been published. And there were a lot of work and it was really disappointing when they went out and no publishers were interested in it. Maybe I'll publish them one day, maybe I won't. Point being, it's fine, I tried. Is it a romance novel? One is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Gay romance novel? Does it have a guy in a Santa outfit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can you please stop asking me to send you gay pornography? He's calling me up all hours of the night. I need more gay porn. I need some ones. I only have zeros. Yeah. Never enough. This one almost got a book deal. This would have been 16 years ago. It was a ladlet novel. What kind of novel? Ladlet. It's like Nick Hornby. What? Nick Hornby about a boy. So there was a little mini genre of these books about young men trying to struggle their way through. There's a whole little series of them. Fight Club is adjacent to that. It's not literally that ladlet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like you would write a great Fight Club type novel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, Fight Club is much, and Chuck Palahniuk is my understanding admitted this, Fight Club is one of the few things where the movie is better than the book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's interesting. But the movie's so iconic. Yeah, for sure. But still, isn't there a deeply philosophical, it's kind of like David Foster Wallace novels, doesn't Fight Club capture some moment in time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was hanging out with Kurt Metzger a couple weeks ago, comedian, very failed comedian. Name drop. Hey, Kurt. Watch out. And he had this great story. He was hanging out with Patrice O'Neill, the late comedian. Name drop. One of the great comics of all time. And Patrice goes, Kurt was talking about how much he liked the book or the movie Fight Club. And Patrice is like, that is the whitest book on earth. He goes, your problem in life is you don't have enough violence. Your problem in life, you need someone to beat you up. That's not a problem for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, well, I mean, but still, it is a very white book, but it still captures a kind of anger and angst and a certain subculture in society. Yes, yes. That's really powerful. That probably led to, in some part, to the thing you wrote about in the new right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, for sure. I mean, it was this kind of, like, there's that line in the movie where, Edward Norton says, I'm a 30-year-old boy. This kind of question of what is it, sorry to be Matt Walsh, but what does it mean to be a man, right? What does masculinity mean? Why are so many men at such a young age feeling so lost? This idea that like, if I fill my house with nice furniture, that's still not gonna be fulfilling to anyone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Matt Walsh is... He's from the Daily Wire." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He just did a documentary called, What is a Woman?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you explain, I don't know who he is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Matt Walsh is someone who works for the Daily Wire. Yes. And he just recently did a documentary called, What is a Woman? I think it was called. And he went out to lots of people working in gender theory and all that thing. And he asked them to define, and he went to the Maasai in Africa, the tribe, and to talk to people about transgenderism, non-binary, which is a word I know you hate. And the documentary was surprisingly well done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that like a passive-aggressive compliment? Surprisingly well done." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because Matt is very aggressive on Twitter. Sure. We follow each other. there was a lot of opportunities in this film for him to really be like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And instead, to his credit, he let the people speak. And it's possible it was edited a certain way. Of course, it was obviously edited. But when he just asked them, can you just define a woman for me in playing dumb, or not playing dumb, just saying, what's your opinion? A lot of the people he was speaking to were getting extremely agitated. So it worked in that kind of context as well. It was not his usual style." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of which, do you ever regret your behavior on Twitter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There were a couple of times, but very rarely." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you describe the big strategy before we dive back into the October revolution? My strategy- Do you have a strategy or is it, does it come from the heart or does it come from the brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It comes from, I want to have fun. That's literally what it comes down to. It's like, this is- Girls just want to have fun. Are you drunk? What is in there?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm very cheeky. I have the holiday spirit, even though it's not the holidays. That's eggnog in there. It's delirious. I did not sleep much last night. I've been, which is, I think the second time we talked, or the third time, the second time, I stayed up almost all night." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I know. I keep track of when you come and go. Yeah. So my door camera points at your garage, so I know when you're leaving or coming home." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "My camera points at your bedroom from the inside, but I shouldn't have told you that now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me ask you this, because this is something that's been bothering me. There was a chair that you threw out. And I was looking at my camera and I'm like, let me see when he threw this out. And then one time you went to the garbage and you adjusted it to make it stick out of the garbage even more. What were you doing there?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Was it, oh, to make sure that people know there's a chair in there. Is that really what you? Well, like the garbage person, so they know it's the chair, so they don't get, like, I always think, I don't want them to get, like, hurt or whatever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, they open the thing, it's like, duh, chair. Got it. I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking. Okay, it was really odd. I didn't know how to get rid of a chair. It was broken. It was cracked and it was a problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So Twitter for me, my point is to have fun. It's also fun to kind of smack down people who I regard as bad actors and also kind of to promote news that I find interesting that maybe isn't as prominently part of the culture as it might otherwise be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You think sometimes you draw too broadly the category of people that are bad actors and then thereby sort of adding to the mockery and the cynicism in the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think mockery and cynicism are at all synonymous. I think cynicism means everyone sucks. I don't think everyone sucks. I think it is undeniable that a lot of people suck." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What if I told you most people don't suck? Could you steal me on the case that most people don't suck?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, I can do it in a cynical way, honestly. It's quasi-cynical way. I think most people are neither here nor there. Most people just kind of go with the flow. They're amiable. Human beings are social creatures. They want to get along. They don't want to cause problems. They don't have the capacity to be the target of a problem. So most people, I mean, if people, if most people sucked, then going anywhere would be an excruciating ordeal, right? Like literally any, like, The airport's annoying, but if most people sucked, it would really be annoying. Going to the supermarket would be really annoying. I don't think most people suck, but I do think that in public discourse, there are lots of people who are dishonest about their agenda. For example, if I'm – I could be a someone who has promoting a certain ideology, but I'm in the payroll of a candidate, or my think tank needs this to happen, or I'm being paid for something like that. That sort of thing, I think, happens all the time. There's the line I have in the book, Upton Sinclair, I forgot how he worked exactly, but it's very hard to convince someone of something if his payroll depends on him not being convinced of it, right? So I think things like that are, the thing I'm really excited about with what Elon's doing with Twitter, and I'm just ecstatic about this, is to have the context now. So you'll have a politician making a claim and they're gonna word it in certain ways. Like my favorite example is when people are like, if you look at the years 2002 to 2020, terrorism in America, it's like, did anything happen in 2001? Is there a reason you just coincidentally started in 2002? Like things like that. So, When people are manipulating things to force an outcome that they want and to promote an idea that they want disingenuously, to have that underneath that in Twitter now, where the audience provides context, I think is something extremely useful. And it's a great way to nip propaganda in the bud. And propaganda pervades the entire political spectrum, of course." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The interesting thing about Twitter is also the discussion about free speech and so on. I think it's interesting to discuss free speech and the freedom of the press from the context of the Soviet Union. Let's return to the October Revolution and Lenin. What was the October Revolution? Who was Lenin? What are some interesting aspects of this human being and also this moment in history that stand out to you that are important to understand?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "interesting thing about Lenin is he was a zealot. and he was a visionary and he really kind of meant it. And I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but Lenin also was someone who was strategic. So at a certain point when they were trying to advance communism throughout the Soviet Union and the costs were outweighing the benefits, he did a strategic retreat. He did the new economic policy. You had a rise of kind of these small capitalists coming back. You could hire people again. And for the hardcore, people in the Soviet Union, hardcore communists, this was a huge betrayal. It's a step back. He didn't do it because he was some kind of crypto-capitalist. He did it because he's like, all right, we know where we gotta get to, but we have to go at a certain pace and we have to adjust as we go along. So to have someone who is that much of an ideologue and that much of a visionary, but still to have any element of pragmatism to him is, I think, a very rare combination." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that pragmatism, do you think that's ultimately where things go wrong? that's where you sacrifice the ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pragmatism in this case was good because by taking a step back, he kind of gave himself some breathing room to allow the revolution to continue, to win the civil war. There was a big moment where Germany, it's just, there's lots of funny anecdotes that I learned while researching this book. So they were, Germany and Russia, they were negotiating a ceasefire because Germany wanted Russia out of the war. And basically, Germany was like, all right, we'll let you leave, but you have to sign this treaty and basically hand over all this land that we're currently occupying. It was just parts of Ukraine, parts of Poland. And Lenin tells Trotsky to stall. He's just run the clock because he was of the belief that now that they've taken power in Russia, you're going to have a worldwide workers' revolution. So he's like, just stall them. And he stalled, he stalled. And at a certain point, Germany's like, all right, you're signing this tomorrow or we're invading. And Trotsky basically said, yeah, so we're leaving the war, but we're not signing anything. And the Germans are like, And he's like, yeah, well, that's what we're doing, so hey. And basically, eventually he had to sign the treaty and cede huge parts of the land and a lot of money. And this was a very precarious moment for him to maintain control of Russia. And people were telling him like, you've lost huge amounts of territory, you've blown it, you should be in jail. And he's like, watch your mouth. Because if you look for the future, it'll be clear which one of us is more likely to be the one ending up in jail. And he was absolutely right. This was Trotsky or Lenin saying this? This was Lenin saying this to Karl Radek." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So who are these figures here? Who's Trotsky? Who's Lenin? Who's Stalin? What are some interesting aspects of all of this? Sort of just to linger on it, the personalities, the ideas that are important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Trotsky came late to Bolshevism. He was really the brains, in many ways, of the October Revolution. He was an amazing strategist. He never forgot that he was an amazing strategist, had a very high opinion of himself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by the way, the October Revolution, 1917, that's a key moment. Of course, the Russian Revolution lasted a long time, but this was a key moment of, what, a phase shift towards success of the Bolsheviks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that was the moment. That was like, all right, we are the government now. And now we have to make it, you know, like Thomas Jefferson said, I think it was Thomas Jefferson, no, it's Ben Franklin, a republic, if you can keep it, it's like, all right. We've made our own kind of government if we can keep it because that was the big question. You had an international blockade. You had the white armies, the czarist forces who want to restore czarism or at least the parliament from right before Lenin took over. So this was a big kind of – no one was – you know, in some ways, it was like the 2016 election. It's like, all right, we vote in Trump. Well, what's this going to look like? Like no one, no one had any idea of what a Trump presidency was going to look like. All we knew was this guy's on Twitter running his mouth. He's insulting people and he's had all these views somewhere over here, somewhere over there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the funny thing is the Russians hacked both elections." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "True. It was Putin and the gremlin. So Trotsky was Lenin's right-hand man and he was enormous. And to this day, he remains this kind of figure who is supposedly a less authoritarian, anti-Stalinist version of communism that people can endorse. And Stalin, of course, was Lenin's successor. At first, there was a triumvirate running Russia as Lenin was recuperating from strokes. Then very quickly – well, not very quickly, but gradually and then suddenly Stalin became an absolute dictator and he had a series of purges and so on and so forth, which solidified his control over the country." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And of course for Stalin, Trotsky later, but throughout, as you write, seemed to almost take on a supernatural character wherein everything that went wrong in the USSR was due not just to his views, but to his direct orders from abroad. Of course, George Orwell brilliantly, in probably my favorite book of his, which is Animal Farm, and also in 1984, portrayed Trotsky as Snowball in Animal Farm, and Immanuel Goldstein in 1984, is this embodiment of this evil that we always have to be fighting. And you need that in order to hold, hold on to power, you always have to have that enemy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so that, I mean, that's something I talk about in the White Pill as well. When things start going wrong, they always have to have scapegoats, right? And there's this Russian anecdote, you know, what the Russians like to do is you can't say things out loud, but if you make jokes, you can say unspeakable truths. And there's this one anecdote where there's a Russian leader and things are going bad, and he looks in his drawer and there were two letters from his predecessor. And he opens the first letter in a panic and the letter says, for advice, and the letter says, blame everything on me. So he goes out there and he's like, oh, my predecessor sucked. He was terrible, blah, blah. It's his fault. And everyone's like, okay. And then there's a calamity again. And he's like, oh, crap. So he goes back at his desk and he reads the second one and it says, sit down and write two letters. So when things start going wrong, as they constantly did throughout the history of the Soviet Union, or any totalitarian authoritarian country, someone has to be the blame. Since we know that our ideology is true and scientifically true, if it's not working in reality, given the perfection of the ideology, someone must be intentionally undermining it and causing the disconnect between thought and reality. And in the Soviet Union, there was the kulaks at one point, then it was the wreckers, the doctors, it was just different. And Trotsky was called a fascist and was accused of plotting with Hitler and all this other stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you also write, the problem with communism is that eventually you run out of possible scape boat. Scape boats. Scape boats. You run out of boats. You do run out of boats. Who's gonna carry them? Eventually you run out of possible scape coats. It's my second language, this English thing. I'm a failed podcaster. I'm a failure. Eventually you run out of possible escape, goats for failure, at which point acknowledging or even noticing that something was wrong itself becomes a form of treason." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So I saw that in North Korea, right? Wherever you went in North Korea, something was wrong. So if you have four buttons for the elevator, one will be mismatched, every wall had a crack, every floor had a stain, the bathroom would be rusted through when you wanted to flush the urinal. But if you are someone who points this out, you're a troublemaker. Oh, you're saying something's wrong, you're criticizing the operation. First of all, you're threatening the person who's in charge, because now they're incompetent and now that's a big red flag for them. But second, if you're just going around saying, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, even if it's objectively true, you're a troublemaker and you're counter-revolutionary. So at a certain point, everyone just has to put on blinders and pretend that everything is fine. One example I use in the book, an extreme example, was there was a photography professor, and he pointed out to his class, and he was an older man, that before the revolution, the quality of photographic paper was better, and he was, I think, executed. for this heresy. So yeah, you have to pretend, there was, I just, I'm reading a book right now about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and there was an academic, I forget his name, Hu Shi, I think, and he points out that in these countries, not only do you not have freedom of speech, you don't have freedom of silence. You can't just sit there quietly. You have to say how great things are and how much you're enjoying and how wonderful they are, instead of just keeping quiet, because if you keep quiet, that's suspicious. Yeah, those, They're always singing those songs about how happy they are and how great everything is. And if everyone else is singing, who are you to not sing?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, those pictures, especially when it's Stalin giving speeches and everyone's applauding any dictator. You don't wanna be the first person that stops applauding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Stalin had to have a button, is my understanding, at a certain point to tell people to stop applauding. Like you said, if you're the first one to stop clapping, people are gonna notice. And why'd you stop clapping? You don't like Stalin?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just imagine being one of those people clapping." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But that's the thing, they always had a sword over their head, but they all had a lot of blood on their hands too. It's a very, very precarious life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's also, I mean, 1984 does a good job of this. What is that, like two minutes of hate or something like this? You like lose yourself in the hysteria of it. So there's some level of which at first, it's uh you're sacrificing your basic individualistic ability to think but then you get lost in this kind of wave of emotion and you give into it you allow yourself it's like a mix of fear and then anger and you direct that anger towards like snowball or trotsky or whoever the and like And what is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you're also losing yourself in the crowd. Yeah, you're losing it. Because you're like, it's not just I'm angry, everyone I know, we're all angry together. So you really are becoming a part of something bigger than yourself and having this kind of communal, very primal emotional experience. It's like the opposite of Christmas, right? Christmas, we're all together, everyone's sharing their joy, everyone's sharing their love. This is the opposite, literally the opposite. Like everyone's together sharing their hate and anger and rage, but you're all kind of having a mind meld." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I wonder what it's like to be an independent thinker in those moments, like allow yourself to think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We know, because there were a lot of them and they were all punished enormously." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They can be noticed. You can notice them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. You even notice it in America. America's a free country, but when people start asking too many questions, it's like, where are you going with this? You know, like if you're in an office, even in a corporate setting, you're a troublemaker. You're just, you know, you're making problems for everyone. Why can't you be normal? Why can't you be just like everybody else? So people do not like having to be made to think, and they certainly, despise having to be made to justify themselves because that's a threat to their status and to their power. And this applies in totalitarianism or applies to, you know, Dunder Mifflin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I still can't believe you're wearing lipstick. I'm not. Goes to show you can pull lipstick on a pig." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like a snowball. I think you've just been on a bender, that's what I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's been rough, it's been rough, it's been rough. I feel like I can be myself in this outfit. I honestly feel like I could just go around in this outfit and just be weird. Because everyone will accept you if you're wearing a Santa outfit. You can say anything in a Santa outfit, right? Have you seen Bad Santa?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, Bad Santa, exactly. My favorite comedy? You can't say anything. My fuck stick?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did Stalin come to power? If we return back to those early days, post the October Revolution with Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin, how did he come to power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what Stalin did very cleverly, Stalin was, he worked the system, he was, you know, but he was very much in the background. And what he did better than Trotsky is he was much more of a politician. He was a glad hander. made friends within the party. He made people feel respected and appreciated. And Lenin trusted him. After Lenin's stroke, Stalin was basically the one who was keeping track of him. Lenin asked Stalin at one point to kill him, because after the strokes, he was incapacitated. Stalin talked him out of it. But at the same time, Lenin was like, if I need someone killed, this is who I need to talk to. Stalin, if you look at photos of him when he was young, he was a stud. He was a gangster. He was a bank robber. You know, he basically worked the system and you had the Trotskyites on one hand who were much more to the left. Stalin's big I would call it a heresy, was he put forth the idea of socialism in one country, whereas we're just going to make it work here in what became the Soviet Union. The Trotsky idea, and this is really kind of the Marxist idea, is that the workers' revolution has to be worldwide. This is just a worldwide kind of new era of humanity, where Stalin's like, no, no, we're just going to make it here and then later behind what became the Iron Curtain. Sure, this was an ideological division between the two, but what happens in totalitarian countries, it happens in any kind of like, you know, when you have intermingling of like religion and government, things that are like ideological disputes, like the Aryan heresy. The Aryan heresy in Christianity is that Christ is subordinate to God the Father, right? Whereas the contemporary orthodox version, it's one God and three person, excuse me. So they're all co-equal aspects of God and heaven. But that was an excuse to be like, you guys are evil, you're on the side of the devil, we're going to kill you. So these little disputes about ideas are often a convenient cover for people to have a power struggle. in the guise of being like, it's not that I'm about wanting to be more powerful. I'm just on the side of the truth and you're speaking lies and that's dangerous to the revolution or to the true faith. So he squeezed Trotsky, but the thing is Trotsky had the seeds of his own defeat because per Trotsky, the party is always right. You cannot be right against the party, right? So if you have this kind of party structure and the party is saying you're wrong, as an individual, you are wrong. Because the collective is what makes decisions. The collective, the workers, are who have the knowledge and the information. And it is important for you to kind of subordinate your selfishness, your individualism, to this greater good. So he kind of set himself up in many ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it clear to you why Trotsky lost that power struggle? So you just explained that he set himself up, but you can see how different ideologies can be used to achieve different ends. Is there another alternative possible trajectory where Trotsky could have been the head of the Soviet Union?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "it would be very hard because he was Jewish. So when they were seizing power, Trotsky explicitly said, I can't be in charge, I'm Jewish. So the Soviet Union remained extremely anti-Semitic. One of the reasons so many Jews became communists in the Soviet Union, because the promise was once the communists took over, we're not gonna have pogroms anymore. Pogroms was you had these Jewish ghettos and under the permission or encouragement of the czar, just gangs of people go through killing, raping, robbing, stealing, rioting for days and just a complete massacre. And the idea is like, under communism, everyone's going to be equal. We're not going to have this anymore. They still had it, but to a lesser extent. since Trotsky was Jewish, his real name is Lev Bronstein, it was almost impossible to have a scenario where he was going to be in charge. And Stalin fed into that to some extent. Also, this kind of idea of Jewish internationalism, it's like, okay, he doesn't really have loyalty to Russia. And many of the people who were Jewish, who were high up in Stalin's government administration, they very much had to prove their loyalty to communism as opposed to Judaism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Throughout the 20th century, what was the relationship between communism and Jews in the Soviet Union? What, in terms of antisemitism, the ups and downs of antisemitism, it seems like it lessened, it was lesser and greater in different parts of the 20th century." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's the kind of thing where... If something was bad, there's this Russian rhyme. Like, if there's no water in the sink, who drank it? All the Jews. So if something goes wrong, there's just a convenient historical scapegoat. It's the Jews' fault. So this is something that towards the end of his life very much, and this was after World War II, Stalin was getting ready for another kind of series of pogroms. All these Jews were getting kicked out of their jobs, Jewish doctors were getting sent to the Far East instead of being in cities. The newspapers started talking about rootless cosmopolitans, which was a term the Nazis also used to kind of regard Jews as others or as aliens. And this was going to be, and they were very clever about it. In Pravda, and I talk about this in the White Pill, improv that there were articles, letters to the editor, they were like, you know, things are getting so anti-Semitic, we really should round up all the Jews and send them elsewhere for their own safety. So they were kind of setting the ground rules or the basis to have this sort of program come back. But spoiler alert, Stalin dies and immediately all of this gets reversed and the new administration rehabilitates the doctors who are accused of trying to hurt him and all this other sort of thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is it about the scapegoats in society? Are we always going to be looking for scapegoats? What do you learn from human nature that this seems to keep happening?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's a book called The Nurture Assumption, and I discussed this in The New Right, and what the author learned is that humans define themselves by opposition. So if you have a group of people and it's kids and adults, the kids will see themselves as kids because we're as opposed to adults. If the adults leave, the kids see themselves as boys and girls. Because I'm not a girl, I'm a boy. I'm not a boy, I'm a girl. So they divide. So this idea, which is a very lefty idea, that human beings naturally all get along is not accurate. And the best example of this is, look after 9-11. Look where there's a war. Nothing unites the populace. It's not like when times are thriving that everyone's all working together. When things are bad and there's an enemy, You know, it's the Japanese or Pearl Harbor, it's Al-Qaeda. That's when everyone really comes together because now we have someone to be against. So there will always be someone has to be the outgroup. and we have to be the in-group as opposed to them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a viciousness to the actions you take towards the out-group that varies throughout history. Yes. Like the degree of viciousness can cross the line towards atrocities, towards genocide. Right. And that's the question of why does it sometimes do that? Why does it sometimes cross into genocide? I understand it's a useful thing to have the other to blame in this world, especially when times are rough, but why does that sometimes lead to sort of action that says I'm going to murder, I'm going to torture the other?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the question really is why sometimes it doesn't. Right. And one of the things I learned when I was doing The New Right is a lot of the, Nazis, using that term loosely speaking, neo-Nazis, they make the point that like, oh, when the Holocaust happened, it really wasn't that big of a deal. And that only became a big deal in the decades later. And this just shows the power of Jewish influence. And I'm like, this to me is a great thing. It's a great thing that we sat down pretty recently, historically, and we're like, wait a minute, guys, when we have a war or we have conquest, you don't have to just start killing everyone. Like this is something that's bad and wrong. And certainly in the last, 60 years, 70 years, this is something that people have come to take for granted. But that wasn't the case before. It would always be, or not always, but often, if you conquer, you just go wild and just start slaughtering masses of people. Who's the guy from... Harvard. And he, Steven Pinker, I'm sorry, I forgot his name. So he just talks about like, you know, we know this is one of the reasons also why there was so much skepticism when the Holocaust started, because this was regarded as something that was barbaric. This is from the Middle Ages, from the biblical times. We don't do this anymore. We're civilized now. So genocide is, historically the norm. I think it's also harder to pull it off emotionally when you have the visuals and when you have the audio and when you have the voices of the people being slaughtered. We don't know, you know, if this was 2,000 years ago and people, you know, in the Bible, like, go kill this group, go kill that group. We don't have their names. We don't have the visuals. We don't have anything. But when you see someone being like, you know, there's a book about, I think, the Rwandan genocide, and the title is, We Regret To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Executed With All Of Our Families, like a telegram. And when you get a telegram like this, it's very different than reading some history book about, you know, the Assyrians killed the Phoenicians. It's like, I don't know who this is, I don't know who that is, right? So I think this is something that has changed very recently. There was this kind of interesting moment just that speaks to the way technology has liberated people from violence. Kristallnacht, which was a moment in the lead up to the Holocaust, where basically, you know, with Hitler's blessing, you had a nationwide burning of Jewish businesses, synagogues burnt down. And Kaiser Wilhelm, you know, the Kaiser, he said, for the first time in my life, I'm embarrassed to be a German. But that was a moment where worldwide, even plenty of people who did not think very highly of Jewish people were like, this is a wrap. This is a complete nightmare. But 200 years ago, 100 years ago, maybe not literally a Kristallnacht, but there's an outgroup and we hate them and we're going to kill them and it's fine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and you think it's even more difficult now with the internet, that kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now, more difficult doesn't mean it doesn't happen or it can't happen. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying... the, we know a lot about what's going on in North Korea, you know, probably the most secretive country on earth. There's a lot of atrocities in Eritrea, which is kind of known. So I think it also, it's also like, if you think about it, if you're, how many years ago, 300 years ago, you only know the people in your village and they're all probably gonna look like you, so on and so forth. Whereas now, if I'm on social media and there's someone from any country and maybe their picture looks a little different, they use the same anime picture as somebody else, but they're putting forth their ideas, you do see the humanity in them. And you do see a sense of familiarity and a familial bond with them. And when you hear about these things, you know, when I, again, like I did when I did Dear Reader, no one, and I was on Al-Qaeda and I was on Alex Jones, no one pushed back about like, oh, the North Koreans. They were all like, this is horrible. If I had a magic wand, I'd give them food. I wouldn't have them live in fear. And this is something that I don't think was the case a couple of hundred years ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As I said, I'd love to get your thoughts about what's going on in Iran, the protests. It seems like the regime there is able to crack down on violence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My thoughts about Iran, let me just, there's something else about Iran which I think is interesting, this whole idea of care for what you wish for. Because people have this, and something I kind of, one of the reasons I have the white pill is Americans really are very naive about the nature of evil, right? They really think that A dictator has a weird mustache and he's banging the table and he's, you know, like a crazy person. And it's often not the case, but they also think if something is bad, therefore the alternative is going to be better. Um, so you had the Shah of Iran and he was kind of authoritarian and no, he's not a good guy. So in 1979, there were a lot of people like this guy's horrible. He's oppressed in the Iranian people. Let's get him the F out of there. He's so bad. that whatever comes after it has to be an improvement. And it's like, no, that's, if you think, I mean, this drives me crazy when conservatives are like, you know, Joe Biden's the worst president we ever had. Like, this is destroying America. I'm like, you have no idea how bad things can get. The fact that you are in a position to complain means we got our ways to go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, every time you say that Donald Trump or Joe Biden is the worst president ever, that warms my heart. Because you're allowed to say that. Yes, yeah. It's like, I just let it, it's like music. You're allowed to be pretty, in response to a president's tweet, you can write that. Yeah, yeah. And it still lives there, and nobody arrests you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is a rare thing in human history, and still a rare thing in the world. I mean, it does seem that Iran, the current regime, is able to crack down on communication channels. It's still, it's surprising to me how much power a government can have. Like they could use violence to control the population, and nobody's gonna do anything about it. The rest of the world just watches." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But here's the thing, right? Because if the rest of the world starts doing too much, then they have a justification to crack down even more. This protests are not legitimate. This happened constantly in the Soviet Union. These are foreign provocateurs. This is meddling in our country, curfew, lockdown, mandatory searches, everyone's a spy. So that narrative is a very convenient one for people who are authoritarian. know a lot of people who are Persian, as I'm sure you do as well. Very hardworking, very bright, great people. And all you could do is hope for a peaceful liberalization. People don't realize how liberal Iran used to be. Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol used to be friends with the Shah. And if you read his diaries, he talks about how he knew things weren't going well for the Shah because they had less caviar at the table. But like this is, he was really kind of, there's I think a poor understanding in America, and I'm not sure why, of what these liberal Muslim countries are like. I gave a talk in Bodrum in Turkey, which is like a resort town in Turkey. And I had thought previous to that, or I had suspected if push comes to shove and they have to choose people in Turkey between the West and like Al-Qaeda, not Al-Qaeda, but like, you know, hardcore Islam, they're gonna choose hardcore Islam. You go there and you're like, oh, this is like Los Angeles. Like these people are so liberal, so, and they're the first to be killed. They're the first targets. So that people like that in Iran are who, my thoughts are. And I got to tell you, nothing makes me more of a feminist than seeing the women in countries like this fight for the right to education, the right to dress as they please. Maybe we don't need them driving, but that's okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There he is with that characteristic brilliant humor. that you're so loved for and should probably be banned for on Twitter. I'm doing my best. Every time you tweet, I just report, report, report." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Please stop this man. You don't have like a script to just." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly, well actually, funny enough, I do. But I don't abuse my power. I wear the ring like Frodo and I respect the power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you look like Gollum." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's not what your mom said last night." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "She said you're hung like a golem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not going down that road with you. I'm not holding hands one another time. I learned my, fool me once. Okay. I, my, my close childhood friend is from Iran." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh wow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. And, uh, uh, I talked to him a lot. I wanted to go to Iran." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's so far away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I can see it from my house, my friend. I would love to take that trip, even now. It's just culturally, so all the different little pockets of local cultures that make up Iran. I just heard so many amazing things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my friend Paul went there. He had an amazing time. He just absolutely loved it. He thought the people were awesome. It was so interesting, very developed. Just like Tehran is, I mean, the history in Tehran is insane." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I would really love to visit. Now we return back. I don't know how we ended up in Iran, but let us stroll back to Stalin taking power. What role did the suppression of speech, the censorship, the suppression of the freedom of the press have in Stalin taking hold, taking power? In Lenin, in Trotsky, in Stalin having power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it was a very useful mechanism to direct public opinion and inform public perspectives and everything. So first of all, there was a lot of news about how great things were. You have a bumper crop here, you know, grains never better. You have, there's this great, there's another anecdote where President Kalinian is talking about how, on Karl Marx Street in Kharkiv, there's all sorts of new skyscrapers being built and it's just absolutely amazing. And some of the audience gets up and goes, comrade, I work on Karl Marx Street. I walk there every day. There's none of these skyscrapers. He goes, see, that's your problem. You're trusting your eyes instead of what's reading something and learning what's in the papers. So there was this kind of disconnect between, you know, I forget, you probably know the joke, like, pravda-nepravda, like, pravda means truth, but there's no truth to be had, and pravda is like kind of the Russian line. The point is, it very much, and the other thing, this is, you know, my mom wasn't particularly politically motivated, but she talked about how you didn't have to be smart to realize how dishonest it was, because one day, someone is the great hero of the Soviet people, And the next week he's been a traitor and a class enemy and the worst. And then sometimes they reverted and it's like, okay, like they couldn't even keep their story straight. And in fact, at a certain point when they Gorbachev liberalized, they had to cancel tests because the history books had to be rewritten so quickly. So, and the thing that also with these newspapers is there was a lot of, it was very monotonous. because you had the same message over and over. A lot of these papers were about speaking to the lowest common denominator. Stalin's great. Everything's great. Overseas, bad. So it very much was about not informing, but creating. a certain perspective in the public at large. And also, you were educated as a citizen on what you're supposed to think and say. A lot of this was this kind of private truths, public lies situation. So you could read the paper and at your factory, you could be like, oh my God, this guy, Karl Radek's great. He's like, oh my God, yeah, he's amazing. You knew what to talk about and you knew how to look at it as well. And then when you get home, you could just kind of be more honest with family." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the question is, to which degree does this propaganda and this ideology infiltrate your actual thinking? You give examples of scientists infiltrated science," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, so basically Lysenko is the textbook example of Lysenkoism in biology. So because Marxism is materialist, they didn't like the idea that genes pass on from one generation to the next. So Lysenkoism kind of was a rejection of Mendel and that kind of genetics. If you reject genes, you're really going in a bad direction in terms of biology. The Soviet Union's biological program became an international laughingstock. At one point, Lysenko claimed he crossed a tomato and a potato. You had things where they said they had nuclear, which is, wait, we have fission, but they said they invented fusion or heavy water or hard water or whatever it was. Point being, in cultures like this, your, way to achieve status wasn't necessarily about your accomplishments, but about your loyalty to orthodoxy. So if you were saying things that got to a result that was congruent with the broader ideology as a whole, that was much better as a means of furthering yourself in the arts or in the sciences than if you had something that was innovative, because if you're innovative, it's like, well, how do I fit this in with the broader ruling ideology? The problem with totalitarianism, one of the many problems, is everything, literally everything, has to be perceived through the lens of ideology. And that is, you know, there were a scientists who were arrested or at least fired because of their theories about sunspot developments, because it was regarded as un-Marxist. There was an epidemic and all these horses got sick, and because the vaccine didn't work on the horses, the bacteriologists were arrested because they were regarded as wreckers. It's like, we gave you a job, you didn't do it, you're undermining the socialist state. So it's kind of a backward series of incentives and it's designed to maintain at all costs the ruling ideological superstructure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you draw a small distinction between the ideology and the ideological superstructure and the propaganda. Aren't those kind of intermixed together?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the ideological is like in the sciences and what's true in genetics or what's true in astronomy, that doesn't really percolate out to the masses, right? So the Pravda is maybe covering this scientist is great or these discoveries are great, but it's not necessarily the same as day-to-day or glorifying political leaders." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the Pravda is a manifestation of the idea that truth can be conjured up. Yes. It can be constructed and it can be altered quickly and then I just, I wonder, sort of 1984 caricatures that I wonder to what degree it really could control the way you think. that, like how many people it affected." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can give you an example, a very easy one. So again, regarding North Korea, Kim, the great leader Kim Il-sung, who was the founder of North Korea, had a tumor on the back of his neck, and it was too close to the skull, the spinal column, so they couldn't operate on it, and throughout his life, it got bigger and bigger. And I got mixed messages in my research about whether North Koreans knew about it, because they always photographed him from this angle. And I met a refugee and I asked her, I'm like, did you know that he had this tumor? She goes, yeah, yeah. When people played him in the movies, they would, you know, you'd make up there. And she goes, it was an old war injury. And I go, why would a war injury get bigger throughout your life? And she just stood there and she was like, holy, but she never questioned it, but it was the kind of thing where they put the idea in her head. And since there was no reason to question it, she just kind of went with it her entire life until I talked to her. Audrey, her name. Hi, Audrey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hi, Audrey. I wonder what percent of the population is like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here's the thing. If there's a cost to me questioning Lysenko as a great scientist and there's no benefit, why wouldn't I just go with what's going to keep me and my family safe?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I also mean just the psychological. There might be a very local psychological cost. So not a cost you're going to jail, but a cost like, you're gonna kind of ruin the conversation by bringing it up. Kind of like, I'm just trying to- It's like Debbie Downer, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. But there's also the whole metaphor of like, there's two fish in the river. One says, man, the water's really great today. And the other one goes, what's water? Like a friend of mine, Adriana, her mom came to the West and they went to a supermarket and the mom just in front of all the Fanta, just crying. And she's like, what's going on? She goes, they told us we had more food than you. And when something is, you can understand, this guy's an enemy of the people, he was the hero, he just offended someone, this is bullshit. It's almost impossible psychologically to think I'm living in the Truman Show and that everything in the media is not just wrong, but a carefully constructed narrative and a lie. Like what, they're never gonna tell the truth? Like what? And even if you do understand that, how would you even read between the lines to deduce what the truth is?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it must've been a strange experience. There's stories of soldiers, the Red Army soldiers throughout World War II, as they go to different countries, even Romania, but in Europe, just to understand that people live much better than they did, than the soldiers did back in the Soviet Union." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's why a lot of times when they went back, Stalin had them killed because they saw too much or sent to the camps." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just to linger on this idea of free speech. So there's constant discussion about free speech in this modern debate about social media and all that kind of stuff. What's your take on it? Grounding it, not in some kind of shallow discussion of free speech we have today, but more in the context of Pravda and the suppression of speech in Stalinist Russia." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hate the term free speech because it's used in many different contexts. Some I agree with entirely, some I disagree with at all. I don't think everyone has something to say or something to add to the conversation. And, you know, I have my locals community and it used to be, I think the boilerplate language is, you know, come support free speech and free discourse. And I changed that because I don't like that term. Because people will tell you with some reason that, oh, if you block me on Twitter, you're voiding my free speech. So I don't like that term as a whole. But one of the points of the white pill and something I see enormous parallels with today, if you have one news outlet, or three news outlets with identical ideology, you're not going to be able to get to any kind of truth or any kind of useful information. It's all gonna be pre-filtered for you. It's like a baby bird and you're eating the mother bird's vomit, right? But if you have what we have increasingly now with technology, if you have a world where everyone has a camera on their phone, if you have a world where anyone can put their ideas out there, maybe they're banned from certain outlets, but they're not literally vanished like they were in the USSR, that is very healthy. That is something I'm enormously supportive of because back in the day, if you only had the TV crews with cameras, you could only see what they're capturing and they could edit it, whereas now, We saw this recently during COVID, right? You had these reporters with masks on and they're talking, but the cameraman wasn't wearing a mask. So you'd have the people on the street being like, look, they don't believe it. Or as soon as they would start filming, the guy took the mask off and they'd film them. They'd go, you are lying. You don't believe this. You're putting this on for some purpose, whether you're leaving the efficacy of masks or not. That person clearly does not, is only putting on for show. So that's, or crimes. It's people, you know, are anti-police. They say, okay, the cop said this. Did he draw the gun in the sky necessarily? So on and so forth. It is so much better when everyone has access to as much of the information as possible and can make that informed decision themselves. Now, there certainly is space for informed people to be like, no, no, no, no, this isn't what it looks like. If you look here, if you look there, it's cropped here, so on and so forth. But that's still much more useful than just having that 20 second clip that someone has decided to edit for you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like truth has a way of, because everything is so interconnected, truth, no matter what, has a way of finding its way to the populace." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And also there's a big asymmetry in terms of trust. So if I tell you a hundred truths and one lie, that lie is equal, I'm screwed. Because once you catch me in a like, you don't have to kill someone every day to be a murderer, right? You only have to do it once. So if you catch me in a brazen lie, you're gonna look at everything I say after that with an enormous grain of salt. So that is another big asymmetry in favor of truth. If someone trusts you, you have to be honest all the time and you're gonna make mistakes. You can own those mistakes and be like, hey, this is why I made the mistake, this is why I said such and such." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but the flip side of that, which has been disheartening to me, is that people on the conspiracy side, conspiracy theory side of things, I've noticed how easy it is to just call something a lie. Yes, and then that becomes viral. For some reason there's a desire for people, yeah, for anyone who points out that the emperor's not wearing a clothes, even when the emperor is fully clothed. So I don't know what that is, but that really seems to mess with the truth mechanism. So when it becomes viral to call people a liar, whether they're a liar or not, It's like, you feel like on unstable ground. Because to me, that idea of revealing a lie that somebody told is a really powerful mechanism to keep people honest. But when you're like misusing it, crying wolf too much, it seems to break the system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It makes me nervous because there's also like... If someone is a liar, that doesn't mean literally everything they say is a lie." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but what is a lie and what isn't? I just noticed that there's money to be made in calling out something as a lie. It's just the conspiracy theories, straight up. The first thing, some traumatic event happened, give an explanation that's not the mainstream explanation. No matter what, whether it's true or a lie, there's a lot of virality and money to be made in that, and that makes me nervous. because it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It becomes, anti-establishment ideas are viral whether they're true or not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, but I think establishment ideas are powerful whether they're true or not. So I think- Sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On the whole, I think you're right. I mean, on the whole, it's good to test the power centers, but it just makes me nervous in our attention economy that the sexy thing seems to be the anti-establishment message. and then it feels like that becomes a drug where you, everything, anything the establishment says, anything institutions say, anything the mainstream says must be wrong because it comes from the mainstream." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have that line that you're supposed to take one red pill, not the whole bottle. I am certainly one of those people who is of the idea that they are dishonest far more often than they're honest. That said, there are people who are of the belief, to use an extreme example, that Trump is still the shadow president. And there's going to be these QAnon mass arrests. I thought this was something that the Daily Beast made up to make fun of MAGA, but I was just on the phone with my buddy last night and he was like, no, no, if you go to Truth Central, they're all over there. And if you disagree with them, they call you a controlled opposition or a grifter or so on and so forth. Is it on 4chan or where? Truth Central, Trump's social media outlet. Oh, Truth, no, Truth Central. Yeah, but he forgot the name of it himself, so he's like, that's why I had to create a joke. You gotta explain the jokes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You gotta explain the jokes. You do like the way Twitter puts that context. You gotta do the joke and then pause and turn to the camera and explain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And have a laugh track. Yeah, so people know where the jokes are. That's real humor." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and then we just clapped." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then everybody clapped. I think for the last two years, especially vis-a-vis COVID, the overwhelming message was the experts know what they're talking about. And if you are questioning this, you're a vax denier and you basically should be read out of polite society. And one obvious counterexample to this was social distancing. If social distancing was efficacious, why were there no attempts ever to bring it back, right, when you had different waves? And if it wasn't efficacious, why was it so insistent that we do it, all do it, at the very beginning? In fact, in many places, you'll still see the signs on the floor where it's six feet apart. So there's an incongruity there. And I think we are forgetting, as a people, the intensity And understandably, to some extent, if you have this worldwide deadly plague, it's gonna go where the leakiest hole is, so you really gotta kinda get everyone on board. But to the vehemence with which we're told, we know what we're doing, this is the way to solve it. If you don't do it, you are causing mass death. That, I think, fed in very heavily to people's enormous sense of skepticism toward establishment sources." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of the plague, you opened the book with- Oh, yeah, that quote from Camus." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a strong, strong quote. Camus brings me to tears. And it's funny, because I reread the myth of Sisyphus, which I had been recommending to people. I'm like, this book is not good. But his ethos is my favorite of all the philosophers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It sounds like the myth of Sisyphus was a myth." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He says- Laugh track, cute. All I maintain is that on this earth, there are plagues and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the plagues. And why I have that as the introductory quote to the book is, I think morality and ethics are very, very complicated subjects. There's lots of gray areas where you don't know which way to choose. But at a base level, he has another quote that's ascribed to him, he never actually said, but something about, is the duty of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. We should do whatever we can not to have blood on our hands, not to be murderers, not to want death. that in and of itself is a big pill for a lot of people to swallow. We're all brought up, taught that war is a last resort. And yet when it comes to international affairs, it's always often a first priority and people are champing at the bit to start going in and killing people. And what war means isn't good guy soldiers versus bad guy soldiers, my concern is always with the civilians, with the kids who become orphans, with the wives who become widows, and things like that. And then communities which are ruined forever. So I love that quote of his. I mean, the book started, it was going to be a recontextualization of Camus' thought. I was going to rip off my old buddy Ryan Holiday, what he did with the Stoics, and do about Camus. And then when I started rereading Camus, I'm like, oh, I've read more into him than is really there. And then it went a whole other direction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you wanted to do almost like an existentialist manifesto, so like one must imagine Sisyphus happy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, more like Camus for today and what his philosophy can teach us, like Ryan did with his many books about the Stoics, yeah. And it was gonna be called The Point of Tears." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Live to the Point of Tears?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but the title was gonna be The Point of Tears. No, I know, but from that line. That's a good line, right? Yeah, he has so many good lines. Yeah. Maybe it's not about how- Probably shitty in bed though, right? Well, no, he was a big Lothario. He was probably pretty good. What's Lothario mean? He got around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What? What percent of the audience of humans on Earth do you think know the word Lothario?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What percent of them have a computer? Look it up. Lothario. It's not some weird term. Lothario. L-O-T-H-A-R-I-O. Lothario." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Lothario. A man who behaves selfishly in response to being in sexual relationships with women, they're seduced by a handsome, in quotes, they're seduced by a handsome Lothario who gains control of their financial affairs." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I didn't think, I always thought of this more as just someone who's like a stud." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "like a player, but no, there's a malevolent. Oh, I didn't realize that, okay. Selfishly. Okay, that's not him. Irresponsibly, and a man too. Although Ayn Rand would be proud, selfishly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's wrong with selfishness? She wouldn't like that kind of selfishness. That's exploitative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Behaves, a man who behaves selfishly and irresponsibly in his sexual relationships with women. Huh. Yeah, okay, so he was just a player." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, maybe a stud, I don't think he was promiscuous particularly. Nietzsche didn't get..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He never got laid, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He had syphilis." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He died of syphilis. It was from prostitutes. Was it? Okay, possibly, yeah. You're asking me like I knew the guy. I heard it's from... He never had a deep, loving, fulfilling relationship. He had a very skewed understanding on the way he wrote about women, although somebody wrote to me and said that's a mischaracterization, that he was actually very respectful of women." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but he had that line, if you're going before a woman, bring a whip. Wasn't that him or was that Schopenhauer?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I were to quote you from your Twitter, I think I could make a very convincing argument that you're sexist, racist, and probably a Nazi." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I do own some of Hitler's stuff. Exactly. I got the- I rest my case. I feel like I'm a Nuremberg. I'm gonna be hung by his own tie. This isn't a tie, it's a noose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You should have thought about that when you were saying all those things. Okay, what do you think of the leak of the Twitter files?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was so happy that Elon gave the information to Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss, who are both, by any metric, lefties, who are both professional journalists of longstanding with great resumes. And overnight now they're doing PR for the world's richest, whatever the party line was. The fact that you had all these corporate journalists now having to play catch up and not having control of the microphone to me was just absolutely amazing. I think transparency is, what brought down in many aspects the Soviet Union and what will bring down what negative aspects of the regime we have here. when you see the machinations behind the scenes, and then when you see the rationalizations after the fact, you realize, oh, these people are not acting in good faith. The fact that, for example, the New York Post article about the Hunter Biden laptop and how the New York Times covered it as well, they didn't mention any kind of dick pics. Twitter made it so I couldn't even DM you the link to the New York Post article, which was a tool they had previously used only to prevent child pornography. So that shows to what extent they were willing to put their thumb on the scale, but it also shows that for any layman when they're looking at this to realize what you are perceiving as news or information is very much sculpted, edited, and guided by powerful people who have a vested interest in maintaining their power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think to me the important lesson is this is not a left or right thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, not at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's power versus powerless, yes. And also the important lesson there, I think at least in the case of Twitter, in our society, it's a slippery slope. You don't get there overnight. You start using those tools a little bit, a little bit, to slow down misinformation, just a little bit, you start sending emails to each other a little bit, and it becomes more and more, you start forming justifications, you start getting a little more and more comfortable kind of talking about this stuff. I think, There are several ways to fight that. One is having hardcore integrity up front. So don't even open the door. But I think realistically, human nature is what it is. And so I think the only way is through transparency. I hate the fact they got politicized. I really hate that the right have run with it. Like, look, the left is... planning the rigged elections and so on. To me, it shouldn't be left or right. It shouldn't be about politics. It's that transparency's good. Other companies should do the same. Facebook should do the same. And in fact, that transparency will protect Facebook. It will protect Google. Look, this is our situation. Tell us what to do, and we'll do our best." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember when I was writing The New Right, Twitter's line was, we're not going to tell you guys what the metrics are by which we ban or censor people because then bad actors are going to navigate around them. And it's like, what are you doing? Just tell people in any establishment what are the rules for which behavior is permissible. If I go to a store, If I return the sweater, is it cash back, no refunds, or if I get store credit, you know what I mean? huge international space republic discourse, and they're not telling you ahead of time, this is what we will tolerate, this is what we'll warn you about, this is what will kick you out overnight, that to me was crazy and outrageous. And I'm really pleased with to what extent Elon is being open with their policies. And what I really want to commend him about is, now I'm triggered, because one of the things that he took over, he's like, our first priority is getting rid of child pornography and child exploitation. He's like, racial slurs, homophobic slurs, antisemitic slurs, yeah, yeah, that's cool. Kids getting harmed is number one. And he fired the old task force, because they weren't doing their job. Eliza Blue, who you know, she had been on this for a long time. But people who were victims of child pornography, child exploitation, were emailing Twitter being like, these are my images. Get them off. And they're like, too bad. Porn is allowed on Twitter. He starts trying to crack down on it. This is a very hard problem, because these bad actors have mechanisms to evade being banned. for lack of a better term, product out there. Forbes magazine, who is an agent of the devil, had a tweet and they tweeted this nine times. You know, now that Elon's here, Twitter's child porn nightmare has gotten much worse. They tweeted this nine times. I looked up. Anyone listening can look up. Look at Forbes and do a search. They never mentioned this problem before. So now that Elon is doing something about it, now it's a problem for you. No, it's a problem. Elon's the problem. It's not the child porn that you guys had a problem with. And that to me is like, yeah, I understand that you think that Elon is a bad guy because he's upset your apple cart. This isn't a political issue. This isn't a gotcha moment. This is all right. Here are some tips. We talked to 10 experts, digital experts, and here are some techniques, Mr. Musk, that you might want to take from us free of charge that will help you solve this. That would be a great article." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I just wanna use this opportunity to say quite clearly and strongly that even though Twitter and other parts of the internet are interpreting some of my statements to mean I'm right, in this case, meaning leaning right, right wing, and in other cases, leaning left, left wing, I'm not. I'm apolitical, or at least I try to be in my thinking. Take one issue at a time. I do take an opinion on each issue at a time, but I hate camps. I try to avoid political camps in general. It just, it sucks that, promoting transparency in this case, or celebrating transparency, is somehow connected to being right-wing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's being made into a supposed euphemism for being right-wing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It just, it sucks. It sucks, even though I'm wearing a red suit and this is a very red-themed conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, the revolution was the color of blood." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let it sit on that for a second. Okay, you mentioned New York Times bestseller list. You chose to self-publish. Yes. Can we just linger on that decision? What are the pros and cons of self-publishing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The cons are it is acceptable. in our current business climate or cultural climate for corporate media outlets to pretend the book doesn't exist. There's reason for it. I can make the case to them pretty easily. If someone's doing it themselves, who is this guy, some crackpot writing crazy stuff from his basement, right? It's a little different, I think, for me, because I'm an established author. C-SPAN gave me an hour on BookTV. Still a crackpot, but yeah, established. For Dear Reader, I think I was the first one to get an hour on BookTV for a book that I did myself. So there is space for that. It didn't go through a vetting process the way a book going through a corporate publisher did. So those are the minuses. The pros are, I can drop it and publish it immediately. If you go through a corporate publisher, you have to wait a year. You can have the book you want instead of getting past the editor. And some editors are very, very good, and there's a whole spectrum. Some of them, not so good. Some are good, some are not so good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I know the best and the real killers. All right, there's good people on both sides." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's plenty of good people on both sides. And I don't mean the white nationalists who I condemn totally. But the thing is, in terms of money, you get six times as much. profit when you self-publish than when you go through a corporate publisher. The buck stops here. In one of my books that I co-authored, I won't even mention the name, there is a typo and they don't care. They didn't fix it for the paperback edition. Here, since I'm going through Amazon, if there's a typo, I can fix it live and it updates. Yeah. You can just update it. So that's very useful like a fight club thing where you can insert like a dick pic in one of the pages Okay, why are you so why do you keep texting me to send you dick pics? Talk about North Pole. All right, all right. That's why I'm not the editor. I get it, North Pole, I get it. The other advantage, just socially, is I think people are, like I found this with the Kickstarter I did for Dear Reader, people are much more excited to buy it and promote it and talk about it when they know you're doing it yourself instead of you're getting a big check from, you know, St. Martin's, Harper Collins, Penguin, whatever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you also trying to use some kind of service to get it distributed to bookstores, or are you just going to do Amazon? No, just Amazon, yeah. And that's probably where most sales happen." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The vast majority, yeah. So it's not gonna be in bookstores." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how difficult is the process of getting it on Amazon?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'll tell you a funny story about how Amazon works, and, because this was, I always planned for, because everyone, People's, here's another piece of advice I will give people. Your life will be a lot easier if you realize that the majority of people in every industry are bad at their jobs. Like once you have that realization, everything else makes sense and your life will be a lot easier, right? So when I did the Anarchist Handbook, which was a collection of essays from various anarchists throughout history, when I submitted it to Amazon, there was a lot of copyright issues. Because they're like, do you have the rights to this essay? Do you have the rights to this essay? I had to go back and forth with them a lot to make sure I had copyright where everything was public domain. And the thing is you forward it, you update it, you give them the information, three days, there's another problem, it's not three days, so it's weeks. The other thing with their CreateSpace program is the paperback, and the e-book, the Kindle, are approved independently. So just because it's approved for one, it's not approved for the other. After I published Amicus Handbook and it was a big success, they unleashed, enrolled, excuse me, a hardcover edition program. So I'm like, oh, great, I'll put in hardcover. They're like, sorry, this is too similar to Murray Rothbard's Anatomy of the State, which is a pamphlet or short book that Murray Rothbard wrote. I go, well, wait, I have the entirety of Anatomy of State in here. I have permission from the Mises Institute in writing, which I'm giving to you, to reprint it. And you guys already have it been published for a year as a paperback and ebook. And they're like, too bad, blocked. So it's not available as a hardcover on Amazon, even though it's available, maybe now it's going to be pulled as paperback and ebook. So with this book, I was anticipating, all right, there's going to be some whatever. The thing with how it works is you have to upload it and hit publish, and then you got to wait for the approval. I'm like, okay, this is going to be who knows. I just wanted to get as fast as possible. 4am, in less than 24 hours, I get a notification, congratulations, your book's available for sale. And I have to run downstairs and pull it from publication because otherwise it was out and I didn't finish editing it. So that's the situation there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's fascinating. But that's powerful. It's all in your hands. It's all on you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And I think the program is great. It charts just like any other book. The quality of the books is great. I am very happy with... I have no contact with them. My buddy Tucker Max, he had a company that did this and they basically helped people self-publish their own book. They did Dave Goggins' book. I think you've talked to him, haven't you?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or yeah, maybe they emailed me or something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. And he said, I have done dozens, maybe hundreds of books with them. I have never been able to get someone on the phone. So I don't know what's going on over there. But guys, if you want to reach out to me, please call me. It's Michael at LexFriedman.com. Friedman is spelled wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. If you ever have any complaints, Please just at me at Twitter about Michael. No. Why do you think so few established authors self-publish? I mean, why, it seems like it makes perfect sense in this modern society to be able to, when you finish the book, to publish it within a few days, a few weeks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, I talked to Jordan Peterson about this at length, and Mikayla, his daughter, who I'm also good friends with. She's actually named after Gorbachev, who's the big hero of this book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Also a friend?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Mikayla, you know, I was in talks to interview Gorbachev, and then COVID hit. And that's one of the big regrets of my life. I think if I met him, I would be on my knees, literally kissing his feet, crying. I mean, one of the big points of The White Pill is there were so many moments when they were calling him up, sending the tanks, we want another Tiananmen Square. And he's like, fuck you. So when you have anyone who has the capacity to murder, thousands of people and chooses to withhold that power, like all I could do is applaud. He resisted the cynicism. Yes. Wait, so why the authors, why don't publish some of the books? I think they're still in the, you know how like there's this whole idea about how if you're a movie actor, you don't go on TV, because that like kind of ruins your brand. So, and that's kind of going away. There's a lot of shows where the lead is now like a former movie actor, and this is kind of like a big thing. Like Matthew McConaughey, you know, he had a TV show on HBO, I believe. So I think there's this kind of like, wait a minute, what's that? I didn't hear what you said." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I said, all right. Is it all right? All right, all right. Matthew McConaughey, all right, all right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know what that is, sorry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll explain it. Look at the context below." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so I think for them, it might be A, a loss of credibility to some extent, but B, their agent, whose job is to sell them and get a big advance, wouldn't be encouraged to self-publish. I don't think it's percolated to powerful people yet how feasible this is and how profitable it is and how they'll still be able to reach their audience. If Anarchist Handbook wasn't such a gigantic success, I would be much more nervous about The White Pill. But the fact that it was, and that I saw it from start to finish, and I know the ins and outs, now I'm like, what are you guys bringing to the table? So that's taking a year of my time and introducing edits that I would not otherwise agree with." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think for some people, a book is a is a sort of beacon of reputation. So it's really important to not, there's somehow not as much reputation associated with a self-published book unless it's successful. And then its success outshines the actual however it was published. I guess David Goggins self-published his book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it used to be you self-published when you can't get a book deal. So it's like an admission of failure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you would recommend it as something for authors?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I would recommend it as something for authors of a certain stature, for lack of a better term, because it is still, in terms of your resume and your experience, it's better to get a crappy advance and have a book with Saint Martins that goes nowhere than a self-published book that goes nowhere. So the other thing is you have to make sure you have enough of an audience that you can move some copies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about OnlyFans? Would you recommend authors? How much money do you think you and I could make if we did like bathtub scenes in OnlyFans? No, just chilling, just reading, like reading like Animal Farm, just like while sitting in the bathtub." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. Okay, Snowflake. Snowball, sorry, Snowball. Okay, Snowball. All right. What was his name? Snowball. No, the horse. Boxer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm hung like a boxer. I will work harder. That guy, I think about that guy a lot. Boxer? Yeah, his motto was I will work harder. Anything that happens, like the pigs would take advantage and his response to everything He was inspiring to me because he never gave in to the cynicism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, and they killed him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Spoiler, sorry. But that's a good way to die, never giving in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, there's a lot of that in this book, about the people who are like, you're not gonna break me. Like, I am bigger than this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you ever believe in Santa?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember the day I woke up on New Year's, and there was a present under my pillow, and it was like, holy shit. Because Died Moroz left it. That's the whole thing, he leaves you a present under your pillow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so you believed, but what, I thought the story was gonna be when you first realized he's not real." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't remember when I realized he wasn't real, but that story was, I did think it was real. I was like, oh my God." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And okay, there's this, because I did too, and I remember, I don't think I can put myself in the mindset of the kind of person that believed he was real. Because what did I think? What was my worldview that allowed a giant person in a red suit to be real? Although I do remember, I think the first time that Santa Claus showed up to our, lived in this very small apartment, and when he first showed up to our apartment, I just remember, because he was really drunk and smelled. It was like a party, it was like a New Year's party or whatever. So one of the people dressed up as Santa Claus. I just remember this, wow, this gotten real fast. I remember thinking, of course, of course it would be, what was I thinking? What was I thinking? There's gonna be some perfect, Like perfect being, like better than, like the best of humanity. He was just a regular dude. kind of fat, but like not sexy fat. It was like, not really that jolly and kind of exhausting. I really have not showered in a while, but also funny." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember, I love telling this story, how old I was and I must've been five or six. And it was just that age where you distinguish between what's real and what's not. So like Vikings and knights and ninjas are real and dragons. and mermaids and elves are fake. And I was on the corner of Shore Parkway right before the park in Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, and around the corner wearing a denim vest was a little person, a dwarf. And I saw him and I was like, all right, back to the drawing board. Like, I don't know what's real or not anymore, because I just saw a dwarf, so I don't know what's going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And since then, given your relationship with Alex Jones, you've continued the journey of not knowing what's real or not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's correct." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, let's talk about the next steps. After Stalin took power, he started to actually implementing some of the economic, some of the policies in this idea of collectivization. What's the story of that in the 20s leading into the 30s? What was this idea? What was the relationship between the regime, the ideology, and the farmers?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's always been, and obviously very much to this day, an enormous amount of enmity, for lack of a better term, hatred between Ukraine and Russia. I mean, this is, you know, centuries in the making, if not more. And the Ukraine, or Ukraine now, but at the time, I'm speaking of the region, is and still is the breadbasket of Europe. It was very fertile lands. This is where the food comes from. And this was a issue also for Lenin, as I discuss in the book, because when you had famines there, you have famines throughout what later became the Soviet Union. And the problem is, this happened in North Korea as well in the 90s, when they don't have food, if you let in foreigners and feed your people, all of a sudden you as the government are either superfluous or downright deleterious to their well-being, and that's a threat to your power. So Lenin led in an American organization in the early 20s, which was actually headed by Herbert Hoover, of all people. And after a while, Hoover left because he found that the Bolsheviks were just taking the grain that the Americans were giving to feed the people and selling it for export while the people suffered. And one of the people who grew up in these Starvation times was a young Mikhail Gorbachev where he had, you know, I think it's like a quarter or a third of his village starved to death during one of these periodic famines. Stalin's idea, this was a good mechanism for him to break the idea of Ukraine being an independent nation within its own identity, and he had this kind of liquidation of the Kulaks very famously, which thankfully is much more discussed now than it was maybe when you and I were kids. And a Kulak the real meaning or the literal meaning is kind of this wealthy landowner, right? But very quickly, it's kind of like it becomes outgroup. So, you know, there was a big incentive to call someone you didn't like a kulak and then good luck to you, because now the eyes of the state are on you. And you have to prove that, you know, you didn't hire people, you didn't have four cows or how many acres or so and so forth. They took a huge, percentage of the population, the Kulaks, and they just deported them. These are lands that they had for generations, and they just spread them throughout broader Russia. Many of them never made it, and many of them were killed. This was by design." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the dark thing about the Kulaks, like you said, when it becomes abused, when it becomes the outgroup, is Kuak is supposed to be wealthier than sort of the general farmer peasant. And so basically, it gives you a mechanism of resentment. Anybody that's better off must be better off because they're a kulak, let's get rid of them. And it has, just from an economics perspective, even leaving ethics aside, it basically completely de-incentivizes productivity. It wants you to fail, because if you succeed, you're a kulak and you're going to be tortured, you're gonna be deported, you're going to be derided, all that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and also you're poor because he's rich. Like that's a big part of it. So while this was going on and food was becoming a problem because you had poor weather conditions, there was a campaign about, oh, the reason you're hungry is because the Kulaks are hoarding all the grain. And if you're somewhere else in the Soviet Union, how are you supposed to know any better? Because you're being told every year the crops are bumper crop, bumper crop, bumper crop, and now there's no food, there's no bread, And so, you see, we produced all this bread. It's not getting to you because the kulaks are hoarding the grain. So they came like in what became known as the Haldimor and Ed Applebaum, who's a great historian, who unfortunately I disagree with a lot in contemporary politics, but who's done so much great work about the Soviet Union that I pretty much give her a blank check and whatever she wants to say. Nowadays, she wrote a great book about this called Red Famine. And these activists descended on these villages like locusts. And their job was to requisition as much food as possible. And they would come back at all hours of the night to make sure you weren't hiding food. And this is what was so pernicious about it. Your own body would betray you. they could look at you and see that you're not losing weight, you've got those chubby cheeks, that means you have food and that's the government's food. That is the food of the people. And if you are keeping food for yourself, you are stealing from the people. You're an enemy of the people and you deserve whatever comes to you. And it got to a point where they're eating, they didn't have grain to plant for the next harvest. And what was even sicker is, you know, one of the big criticisms of communists, of the Tsar, was his internal passport system, that I can't go wherever I want within Russia, the Russian Empire, without permission. Stalin reintroduced this. So if your village was targeted, you can't leave. Now some people got away, they tried to get to the cities and so on and so forth, but you get to the city and you're starving, you have no clothes, you're a kulak. I'm hungry because of you and now you're too lazy to work, get the F out of there. And there were stories, you know, I have them in the white pill of this like starving teenage girl and she's begging for food. And the guy knocks, the shopkeep knocks the food out of her hand and she dies on the spot. And everyone in that line knew not to, you know, give her any food or any sympathy because she's a Kulak sympathizer. And very quickly, if you're a Kulak sympathizer, all that has to happen is someone has to call, I think it was the NKVD at the time, you know, the different names with the Cheka. the secret police, and they had to be like, oh, you see, whatever her name was, Zhenya, she was a Kulak sympathizer. We saw Kulak who was trying to shake us down for food because too lazy to work and she felt so bad for them. So you might want to check in on Zhenya. So yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in 32 and 33, Holodomor, it wasn't just small injustice here and there. It was mass starvation and suffering." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, millions starved to death in the Ukraine alone and by design." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned Anne Applebaum's book, Red Famine, Stalin's War in Ukraine, but another excellent book on the topic, and by the way, thank you for recommending that to me. Her work's amazing. Yeah, it's a really, really powerful book about not just about Holodomor, but the context of Ukraine, basically the history of Ukraine that's relevant for today. Yeah. to understand the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. But another great book is Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. I don't know, I think you also recommended that to me at some point, or maybe not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I haven't, but I'm familiar with that, I haven't read it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he does quite a bit of, it's brief, but extremely well-researched writing about cannibalism there. And that it was not uncommon during the Stalin-imposed famine in the Soviet Ukraine for parents to cook and eat their children. He writes, quote, Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you.\" The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did. And there's stories in there about, yeah, cooking, cooking your children. The other thing about cannibalism, about famine in general, that stood out to me, unlike a lot of atrocities, is the people that are starving are exhausted. They're basically unable to think. So they don't even have the energy to protest. It's a strange kind of way to kill thinking in the populace. I suppose it was obvious, but there's something fundamental about starvation where it slowly removes your humanity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there was a scene in the book where a lot of times people literally go crazy. And there's a scene where a mom at some train station was nursing her kid. And she was going mad from hunger. And she starts beating the crap out of her baby and kicking it. And then she just reverts to normal like nothing had happened. Yeah, madness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You lose your mind. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I don't know what the physiological cause of this, it's not just, I think it's, you know, if someone has dealt with a glycogen depletion, it affects their mood, things like that. So taken to an extreme, who knows what happens when parts of the brain start functioning and start imploding. But yeah, it's what I wanted, what just happened, this is something that's really cool regarding the Holodomor. So there was one, Western journalist, Gareth Jones, who was like, all right, something's not adding up here. So he was supposed to take a train through Ukraine, and he got out early and decided to start walking through the countryside to go from village to village. And I'll get to his story in a minute. Right before we started recording, I got this book in the mail. I ordered it on November 28th from Great Britain. It was the only copy available on the whole internet. It's called Experiences in Russia, 1931. It is anonymous and it's, Gareth Jones wrote the introduction. It was published by the Alton Press in Pittsburgh. It was self-published and It just says forward, it just says by the author. So it was the author who went alongside Gareth Jones was someone by the name of Henry John Hines, who was heir to the Hines fortune. And you only know that if you start looking at the internet, because his name's not anywhere in this book. Well, I opened this book up right when I got it, right before we're taping. and it's signed by him. And it took me a second, I'm like, wait a minute, who is this signed by? And it's H.J. Hines, because his name was Jack Hines, but it was Henry John Hines. So this is, I'm very excited that I had this little miracle in the mail. But- Christmas miracle. It's a Christmas miracle. They traveled together? They traveled together. So this book's a diary of their travels." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you think so few journalists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "was able to do what he did. So there were several reasons. First of all, if you were a Western journalist in the Soviet Union, you were under very strict circumstances. First of all, you could be deported at any time. There was no pretense that you have a right to be a journalist, especially as a representative of a capitalist, by which they meant Western paper. Second, it was a complete nightmare getting your articles filed. because you had a censor that you had to go through, and the censor's job, whose life depended on it, was to make sure that your story was advantageous to the Soviet Union, or at least neutral. And they had all sorts of techniques. They spied on you all the time. They followed you around, because you're a foreigner. But also, that censor had to answer to somebody. So all the censor has to do is be like, look, I'm having trouble with my supervisor. And the reporter could be like, well, can I talk to the supervisor? It's like, well, I'm sorry, that's not possible. And he's on deadline, but it's too bad. bureaucracy doesn't recognize the needs of deadlines. there was a lot of pressure on Western journalists to have to get through this net, and that's literally constant. Every story, it's gonna be a fight. So at a certain point, you're just gonna be like, all right, and you're gonna pre-censor yourself. If you know, all right, if I include this, it's not gonna get through, what are you supposed to do? I think human beings are naturally, and also a lot of these journalists were pro-Soviet. they thought this is the society of the future. At least everyone's trying to make it a better country for everyone, not like back home where the poor slip between the cracks. We gotta do what we can to make this work. And there was a lot of, I don't wanna say conspiracy, but within the industry, there was a consensus that Stalin was the good guy and we were, if not the bad guys, certainly not as good in certain regards. So when this news of the famine started percolating, all the other Western journalists besides Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge were saying this isn't true. It's nothing that they haven't seen before. The paper that took the lead in this was the New York Times with their guy Walter Durante, who had previously won a Pulitzer and had interviewed Stalin, which is an enormously rare honor for a Westerner. And he, because he has so much experience covering Russia and the Soviet Union, he basically took the lead and other people followed his lead. He was kind of the dean of the press corps in Russia. And he made a point, and the thing, there's so many quotes I have from him where he's not only denying that this mass starvation is happening, he's also going after journalists who are questioning the narrative And he says things like, look, this is nothing that the Russians haven't experienced before. They're simply tightening their belts. And it's like, you only have to tighten your belt when you don't have enough food. It's not like they started a new exercise regimen and now their body fat's dropping. Why would someone tighten their belt? So that was one. And the New York Times had a 13-page article, big headline, Russians Hungry, Not Starving. And he went after Jones. He went after Muggeridge, I believe. No, he did go after Muggeridge. But the point being that this is just propaganda from people who want the Soviet Union to fail you know, they don't understand what they're building here. You know, he had so many excuses, like, oh, you know, the reason all these Russians are supposedly leaving their villages to go to the cities isn't because there's no food, it's because they're nomadic. It's tradition. They go from town to town looking for new experiences. And it's just, you know, at a certain point, and I think it was 1941, where he was eventually like, or 51 rather, I don't remember, he was like, oh, well, I guess I was kind of wrong. And he's like, any journalist worth his salt can admit when he's wrong. And it's like, well, were you worth your salt? Because he explicitly said there's no point in sending out journalists to look for themselves. I've been through the countryside and everyone's fine. And it's just that the loudest people are making noise, whereas everyone else is doing the work and trying. And this isn't about famine, but it's about Westerners skeptical about collectivization, which is just simply a new way of farming. And yeah, it was a new way of farming and the results were by design and also accidentally absolutely catastrophic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How hard was it to see the truth at that time, do you think? Do you think that was a mistake that's understandable to make as a journalist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If my job as a journalist I have two bosses if I'm in Moscow. I've got my reporter in New York or London or whatever, but I've got my censor here. And he is making sure I have a house, a department. He makes sure I have food. He makes sure I have access to dignitaries. He's my lifeline. If I piss him off, I'm on the next plane out of town. So that- Is that enough to," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "slowly suffocate the integrity of a journalist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it was slow at all, and it was clearly enough. And because what are they gonna do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I disagree with that. I think the failure of integrity has to come from on the American side, that it's just the flock of fish or whatever that all move in the same narrative. Right. I think journalists would like to be the kind of people that have integrity. So if they are conscious of sacrificing their own integrity, they wouldn't do it. If they're conscious of an act that's doing it, they wouldn't do it. So it has to happen like a lobster slowly boiling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I feel it. No, I think it happens when everyone else is, it's a Greek chorus, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, right, it's a chorus. But that's exactly, that's right. So it's not about the act, but they will, I mean, I've talked to journalists where I get the sense that they will sell their soul for access. because that's their job. Is it though? Because what they do, what journalists do, I've seen American journalists, they take a huge amount of pride for having gotten the interview, whatever that is, the Putin interview. And first of all, they're glowing with pride. It seems like they're always showing off to the other journalists back in America. So they're showing off like, look, I got the access, you didn't. And second thing they're doing when they show up to that interview is they ask all the questions that signal to the other journalists that we're on the same side. They ask the most generic, aggressive questions to which they know the answers. They want to basically get the access and ask the quote-unquote hard-hitting questions. that they know will not be answered. And this is the entire machinery of it. That's modern journalism. And I suppose at that time- It was worse. It was worse. They weren't even doing the display of hard-hitting questions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was PR pieces. Think about what high status that is. If I'm an American journalist in Moscow, I'm allowed in this secretive country. I'm the guy. who's very privileged to have access to live in Moscow and tell Americans, which are all fascinated about this new society, the future, what it's like. And as soon as I kind of start questioning the narrative, I'm going to get kicked out and humiliated very publicly. I thought you were in Moscow. What am I supposed to say? So, you know, they, Eugene Lyons was, you know, he's one of the heroes in the book. He was a young communist and I think it was United Press he was working for, they sent him there. And when he went there, he's like, oh, this is not what I thought it was going to be like. This is horrible. And he turned very heavily against it. but he talks about how they would write one thing and say another thing and then think another thing. And each of those steps was just more and more like kind of lying in terms of maintaining your sanity and maintaining your narrative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you reference Ann Applebaum and say that, quote, starvation was not simply a consequence, it was the goal and it was the law. Stalin intended to break the Ukrainians once and for all. It thus became common for villagers to spy and inform on one another. Turning in a neighbor for having a sack of grain might be the easiest and safest way to procure food for one's family. Yeah. To what degree was this the intention? To what degree did Stalin anticipate this kind of suffering as a consequence of the collectivization policy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know that he intended the suffering to be a consequence of the collectivization, but it was quite apparent, and I think there's a pretty heavy consensus nowadays, that his goal was very much because Ukraine, again, resented the Tsar and had this kind of very contentious relationship with Russia, which obviously very clearly remains today. I mean, the hatred of Ukrainians for Russians preceded Putin's war. I mean, this is even when I was a kid, you know, I obviously don't remember it, but my parents just told me like the hatred that they had. And understandably, I mean, they're basically under foreign occupation, what they regard as foreign occupation for- So your parents talked about a hatred by Ukrainians towards Russians?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I mean, I, you know, certainly having visited there this year, because of the most recent invasion in February, that hatred, is nationwide and very intense. But I don't know, I think the feeling, the emotions were much more complex before." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At least- But at the same time, they were under occupation before, right? And they couldn't speak Ukrainian, they had to speak Russian. So this was a thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But because of the forced intermixing, it's a more complex story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. But I mean, they weren't certainly fans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but there's people that came from Russia that are living there, they're marrying, they're falling in love, they're working with each other. So like there is the bigger atrocity of the genocide of it, but there's also the reality of intermixing of peoples, right? Well, sure, I mean- There's the atrocity of slavery in the United States, but then there's also a reality that there's now an intermixing of peoples, and now they fall in love and they live after slavery's abolished. That's just the reality. after the genocide precedes a kind of generational integration that still remembers, like the suffering reverberates, but there's still, it's a different culture that's created. And now, I think, I mean, I have complex, most of my family's from Ukraine, so I have, and my understanding is grounded in Soviet Ukraine. But there is something in the last 30 years that's different, where now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there's a true, maybe renewed fight for independence, and that's a different thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But there's also a difference, like if I go to North Korea as an American, right? They're very friendly now, right? They don't perceive me as part of the yank devils. They're like, okay, you're an American, but you come from America. So yeah, there's gonna be intermarriage, but that's a big difference between the perception of Russia as an entity, as opposed to some individual Russians." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just, that wasn't the experience I've had talking to a lot of friends and family in Ukraine until the war started." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Really? So they really didn't have this kind of low-key animosity toward Russians? No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There was a lot of factional conflict inside Ukraine. Okay. Now the whole country is united. I think there's a clarity now, the war gave a clarity that wasn't there before." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, this is, I was saying earlier how humans define themselves by opposition. So now that there's a war, it's like, okay, all this little stuff doesn't matter. We are all united because we have a common enemy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's also, as you know, there's regions and there's just groups of different people. And then one of the big divides, of course, is the city versus rural. And then in the case of Ukraine, it's Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine. It's very difficult to know what the truth is, because my personal experience is sampled. I don't know how many Ukrainians I know, maybe like 30 or 40, before this trip, like 30 or 40, and then I'm close with just a handful. But then it's hard to know, because you get a lot of Western press perspective, and you get the Russian perspective, and you get other perspectives, and it's very hard to know how much hate there is outside of this conflict. So my primary question is, and this is what I ask a lot of people when I visit Ukraine is, will you ever be able to forgive the Russians? And a lot of people said, never, never. So this isn't just about, assuming we win, they would say. Assuming we win, we still will not ever forgive. Never forgive. And they said it in a way where like, not only us, but our children will never forgive. And it wasn't just, you know what, it wasn't just about Russia or the Russian leadership, it was about the Russian people. But a lot of people also said that this is our feeling currently, we understand. Like you're lost in the rage of war. Because you lose so much." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, if you asked Americans, would you ever be friends with Germany or Japan? They'd be like, are you kidding? After Pearl Harbor?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But of course, most Americans didn't feel Pearl Harbor is different. It's a good point when it's your own land, but when, imagine it wasn't just Pearl Harbor, but it was New York and Chicago and Dallas and all these cities being bombed. Yeah, yeah. It's just a linger on this war in Ukraine currently. Does it break your heart to see what's going on there now, that it's on the same land as the same cities, the same stories are now brought back to the surface, like the generational pain as it was in the time that you're writing about? Do you think it's a fundamentally different country, different war, different situation, or do you hear echoes of the same?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it's the same because I think there is No one, or I mean, there is no one who is like, I'm glad this is happening to the Ukrainian people, right? So even the people who are for Putin and for the invasion and whatever justification they might have for his war, no one is like, yeah, let's get those darn Ukrainians. I think there was that sense in America after 9-11, when we invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and there was like, F those Iraqis, F those Afghan people. Whereas now, I think it's completely the opposite. I also think a lot of Russians, I'm sure if I ask them, they're not thinking like, let's wipe the Ukrainian people off the map. I think whatever reasons they have, it's not kind of going after this. Even if you have to kind of rile up people against the citizenry, it's not to that level of the hatred of the kulaks, hatred of of those villages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's still a belief, though, amongst the soldiers outside of the big cities, their belief that the Ukrainian people, who the Russian soldiers believe are their brothers and sisters, are occupied by an evil regime. So you need to save them from the evil regime." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's also very different from the Holodomor. And also, there is dispute in the press about the causes, the consequences, the victims, the villains of Putin's war, but when it came to this, no one is denying that the war is happening. The New York Times isn't saying everything is fine and the only reason people are saying it's a problem is because they hate Putin or they hate Zelensky. That's not a thing. And the fact that we have so much footage of what's happening in Ukraine and, you know, you have, it takes two seconds to go on Google and you have a map of, you know, Russian advancement, what parts are they occupying, what parts are not under their control. You know, I did a little live stream, I raised money for Ukrainian refugees to feed them, because that's my concern, just keeping people fed. There was none of that, you know, and the two people who kind of spoke the truth, Gareth Jones was shot, I think the day Before his 30th birthday, while he was uncovering news, I think it was in Mongolia, Malcolm Muggeridge had problem finding work when he exposed this. And I think, like we were talking about earlier, the ubiquity of things like cell phones and camera phones would make something like this I don't know, I wouldn't say an impossibility. They could still do it, but it would be really hard to cover it up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, sort of to push back on that, if you just look at Iran, I would draw a different, so I agree with you mostly, but I would also draw a different distinction when the atrocities happening to your own people versus there's a war. Ukraine is a sovereign, independent nation. There's not a war between two nations. it feels like it's easier for journalists to somehow reveal the truth in that. When the atrocity is happening within the Soviet Union, for some reason, that's easier to hide. That's easier for journalists to deceive themselves and easier for the authoritarian leader to hide the information. And so that's the dark, I mean, that's why people, maybe you can educate me on this, but this is why I think people don't talk about Holodomor and other atrocities, the Great Leap Forward, because it's inside the country. Versus the Holocaust, that's part of a war. Why is that that we... that we're too almost like afraid, too polite? What is it that we don't wanna cover the atrocities inside the country? Like it's their business, so we don't want to touch it. Is that what, what is it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why? I think it's that what we refer to as the news, is in the business of selling narratives, right? And the narrative of the Holocaust is a very powerful one, which is, if you let hatred of a subgroup in a population get out of control, this is the ultimate consequence. And this is something that we all have to be scared of and do everything in our power to avoid in the future for any outgroup. Whereas, what's the narrative of the Holodomor? Sometimes governments kill their own citizens. There's nothing you could do about it. There's nothing we, I mean, they wouldn't have let us send food. They wouldn't acknowledge, like the newspapers, even in Russia, weren't acknowledging it. Like, what's the, like, this is some of the issues I had with regard to trying to advocate for the North Korean people. The reporters would be like, well, what can I do as an American? It's a very natural question. And I'm like, I don't know. All I know is how to speak to what is happening. But in terms of next steps, I don't have a good answer for you. So that is where the news kind of does break down. If there isn't a story or a call to action, you're kind of almost like having a movie with a cliffhanger and there's no sequel. It's like, what am I supposed to do here? This is not scratching that itch, which for me, as a consumer of news, a layman, He's like, okay, here's the story. There was a bad guy and the cops shot him or they took him to jail and now the bad guy's caught. Beginning, middle, end. Here it's just like, Mao did this. A lot of people were executed and starved. Isn't that awful? Well, and Mao's still in power. Now Richard Nixon is raising a toast to him. Like that story is just like, how am I supposed to feel about this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it feels like when there's tanks and there's war and there's military conflict, then it's more actionable, you can cover it. It did seem like Nazi Germany, I don't know if the Holocaust was the thing that made it most coverable. I think it was that this is a threat to the entire civilization. Well, yeah, we were at war with them, yeah. That's what makes it coverable. And if the Holocaust was happening just inside a country, inside of Germany, or even if it didn't expand beyond Poland," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it would be like a footnote. It was in many ways a footnote. Like many of the early steps toward it was like, they didn't cover it. It's just like, all right, they're being oppressive toward their own people. Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Especially given some of the, maybe if you negotiate certain peace treaties with the Soviet Union and with Germany, like you're too, the basic, the pacifist imperative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh boy. Sorry, Santa." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that what you say every time you masturbate? No, after you're done. You know, I'm sorry. All right. Now, see, I hate it when you don't yes and because it leaves me in a hole I dug for myself. And I sit there in a hole in my sadness. How long have you been writing this book? I mean, mentally, it was like two years since you spent time with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, almost three, two and a half, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I suppose it stays with you much longer, like you said, your family. So in many ways, this is a book you've been writing your whole life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's fair that all my work's been leading to this, yeah. It's certainly the most, in my opinion, the most important thing I've done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What stands out to you about Haldemar? What moments, what aspects of human nature stand out to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I think that story is, I don't want to say story, but I meant like that incident is, I mean, I was familiar with it before, you know what I mean? So I kind of knew about it, you know, in part, thanks to kind of the North Korean work and coming from Ukraine. The thing that was also kind of insane about it is that they were taking all this grain and not using it even to feed the Russian people. They were selling it for export for hard currency. Yeah. I think what the takeaway there, and I think, again, this is something Westerners and especially Americans don't appreciate, they think that evil often has like a logic to it, right? And it's like, why would, like, because it makes no sense to them, like, why would they kill their own people? Therefore, it probably didn't happen, right? There's that thing. They really think like, okay, they can understand country A conquers country B and slaughters a bunch of people country B as a means of conquest. That kind of makes sense to them. They know that thing. why are you starving all these people? What are you gaining out of it? That doesn't make sense to them. And because it doesn't make sense, there's kind of like, well, it's probably more the story that I'm hearing. And a lot of times there's not, it's just like evil for the sake of power. And we don't really have that certainly anywhere near that scale and never have certainly since America has been a thing. I mean, it's... And the fact that this is like the 30s, you know what I mean? This isn't that long ago. But I think also the narrative in some ways is how You know, technology is also something that kind of people have mixed feelings about. Like I said this before, and this is something I really believe very strongly, the ability of information to be captured and spread easily is such an effective tool in exposing humanity at its worst. Because it's one thing if I sit here and tell you what I saw in these villages. It's another thing, I sat you down and showed you a YouTube, and you and I don't know what it's like to look in the eyes of someone who's thinking about eating their own kids. And you see that face, and you know it's not some CGI, it will haunt you forever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just looking at the different mechanisms that made all of this happen. So this is not just one guy, Stalin, having a policy. There's a whole system. I mean, one of it is just a system of fear, but how do you implement that system of fear? There's a giant bureaucracy of fear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what he implemented with the Great Terror is- That's in the late 30s. Well, it's throughout the 30s, but yeah, it starts in the mid to late 30s. Basically, communism was based on the common good and the public good, and anything private, which was bourgeois, was a problem. When they were started, when the revolution came, the October Revolution, they wanted to recreate society entirely. And that included like, okay, let's make it so everyone eats in like cafeterias. So they're not eating by themselves. Let's design buildings so everyone has to share bathrooms. Like their whole plan was to eliminate any kind of concept of privacy at all. They also had this bizarre kind of radical idea of attacking shame. So many of these, before the 1917, people were also very involved with free love, because the idea of having this private bond between husband and wife was also bourgeois and old-fashioned, and we're the society of the future. That changed relatively quickly, but they were talking about things like raising kids communally, and so on and so forth. So for Stalin, If you and I are friends, we have a bond that's a threat to him. The family's a threat. Any kind of organization is a threat because it's a power center that is not a relationship between you and him. Now you have a relationship with somebody else. So he systemically went through that whole society and it became, there were certain things that became a crime, then it became a crime to be a spouse of the enemy of the people. Now right away, I as a child become an orphan because my dad was an enemy of the people, my mom is married to an enemy of the people. Now I don't have parents, they get arrested or executed or whatever, but now I have nowhere to go, but I can't go to my friend's house because their family doesn't want to take in a child at the end of the people. You had this culture where everyone was very much encouraged to turn people in and if you're arrested, and tortured, you're like, okay, who are your accomplices? And now you just got to name names, people you knew. And then it becomes this whole chain. And it's like, how am I going to protest my innocence if Lex just said, you know, I worked with Michael and we were working with Trotskyists and we were plotting to overthrow Stalin. Lex testified to this. He signed a confession. What am I supposed to do now, right? So it worked its way in a most viral fashion through the whole society. amazing moment where these poor people, peasants, because obviously the powerless are often going to be caught in the web. They were going to jail for being Trotskyites and they had to ask themselves, what's a tractorist? They didn't even know who Trotsky was. The other thing is ethnicity was a problem, right? If you were an ethnicity, you have more power with other members of that ethnicity than you have with this kind of broader Soviet culture. So he would just deport entire populations from their ancestral lands to other parts, A, to spread the population around, but also to break that link between the peoples and their lands. There was this 1937 NKVD order against Polish people where it's just like if you had come from Poland or had a But just this whole list and basically people were being arrested because they had Polish last names and I think it was a million people were killed, some astronomical number. So there was this anything that was a bond. was a threat to him and it went systemically. So after he had all these kind of executions of people who were like Lenin's people, the old Bolsheviks, then he went after, he started arresting the secret police. You know, he arrested all the cops, he arrested all the judges and all these prisoners got to see the judges who yelled at them for being counterrevolutionaries and spies. Now they were in the jails. If you were a foreigner, if there was a huge push from the Soviet Union toward African Americans, right? Because they're like, look, you were living in a racist country. Here we have no... racial inequality, come live here. A bunch of them went and they were all vanished. Anyone who knew information about the outside world, if you're a foreigner, Andre Babel, I forget his first name, he had a French writer he was friends with. He was arrested and shot because he's a spy because you're friends with Melrose. That means if you're a foreigner, you're a spy. Speaking Esperanto became a crime. Having a pen pal, literally anything that was some kind of chain between yourself and someone else was a threat and was grounds for arrest. The Russians would joke about how relieved they would be if someone knocked on your door in the middle of the night to tell you your house was on fire, because it wasn't the NKVD coming to arrest you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And of course, most of the accusations probably were completely false. So not only could you not do all of those things, you were also a victim of just random." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Being late to work became a felony, and also not doing your job became a felony, because now you're taking food or product away from the people, and you're supposed to be there working for the people. There's this one story, which, you know, I was doing the audio book, and this is, like, I still trying to get through without crying. This was 1920. They were a bunch of kids in Moscow who were pickpockets between ages 11 and 15. They rounded them up, And they're like, all right, point out your accomplices. And they would take them in the trams, and you have to point out people. Then they would take them back to the cellar, beat the crap out of these children, and then they'd take them out again. And if they didn't point out to anybody, they'd beat them. They're like, all right. So they just start pointing at random. And the thing that was really sick about this story, if that wasn't sick enough, is that the screams that the other criminals, the adult hardened criminals, had to hear from these children as they realized they were being taken back to the cellar. It was just horrifying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so they tortured people, they tortured confessions out of people. That's scale. And the dark aspect of this is it's all, it's like this weird, it's a bureaucracy of torture. So it's not like there's, what is it? The torturer is afraid of, does it so that he doesn't become the prisoner." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, because then it's like, oh, you couldn't get a confession out of him? Are you an enemy that people know as well? And the thing that was even crazier is that a lot of these interrogators were frustrated because they're like, look, we both know you're innocent. Just sign this confession and make my life easier. They knew it was crap. Stalin joked about Stalin. joked about this. This is one of his little jokes. There was a kid who was arrested and he was forced to say, you wrote Eugene Onegin, which is a play. He goes, that play was by Pushkin. And they tortured him, they tortured him, tortured him. And then his parents are walking down the street and they run into a secret police and they go, congratulations. And they go, for what? They go, your son wrote Eugene Onegin. Like he admitted to it last night. It's just like they could get you to say anything. And what else was really, really sick, which they understood, is they lowered the death penalty for kids, I think to either 14 or 12. I don't remember off the top of my head. And what Stalin's head of the secret police did is when you were interrogating someone, you either had to have some of that family member's possessions on the desk or a copy of the decree. that saying that they can go after your family, and the amount of people who would confess to anything when they saw their family was in danger, and they knew this wasn't a bluff, was astronomical. And then it becomes a chain, because if you confess, and I have your confession, how hard is it to get your neighbor?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you make of the, for most of the time, the NKVD was about the head of NKVD, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, Barry, yeah, I have a death warrant signed by him hanging in my kitchen that I acquired. He was one of the most evil people who ever lived. The thing that Americans don't appreciate is how clever some of the sadism is. So there was one actress, I think he took her back to his house and he tried to get her to sleep with him and he promised her that if she did, her father and either her husband or her grandfather, I don't remember which one it was, is going to be released from jail. Well, they were already dead at that point. He had them executed. They're still finding the bodies of the women he murdered in the grounds of his dacha. It's an embassy now. And the thing is Stalin knew, because at one point Stalin, there's a picture of Stalin's daughter in his lap, you know, and she was at his house one day and Stalin calls up, he goes, get out of there immediately. So he, like a good bureaucrat, he kept a list of all of his sexual partners. It's still sealed, but both him and his bodyguard had this list. So just to clarify. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He headed the operation that did this whole giant mechanism of forced confessions. He was part of expanding the Gulags, so he wasn't the head of the Gulags, but he was part of this giant machine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And his famous quote was, show me the man and I'll show you the crime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But on top of that, what you're describing is he was also, related or not, was also just a mass rapist." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and there's some dispute about whether he went after kids with his rapes, but there's plenty of adult women that were targets for this. There was also another little joke about him, about how Stalin is looking for his pipe and he can't find it and he calls Beria and he's like, okay, I can't find this pipe. And in the afternoon he calls Beria again. He's like, oh, I found the pipe. He goes, but comrade Stalin, we've got four people to confess to steal it already. So you have to laugh, but then you think about the nature of how it operates." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It also the fact that this kind of person was allowed to run. I mean, I suppose it's all different kinds of evil and rape was just a part of the story. His own personal willingness to oversee torture and commit torture himself and rape." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's also what happens when you're in a country where it has no rights of any kind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by the way, I should mention that people should get your book and audio, when is your audio book coming out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's in a couple weeks, so it'll be out shortly, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You gave me the great honor of voicing this man. That's for the promo, yeah. For the promo, excellent. I appreciate that. For a moment, I actually, it was really difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Really? Yeah. It was just a sentence?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I understand, I understand. Cause it takes you to that place." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. Cause he told her scream if you want, it doesn't matter. Yeah. And he was right. Like, that's the thing. He wasn't bluffing. You could scream. These women could scream their head off. No one's going to come help him. He would drive around Moscow at night in his limo looking for victims." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But somehow me saying those words was tough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was tough." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because this is where we came from, do you know what I mean? This isn't just some kind of Tolkien villain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it also was tough because I could see myself being somewhere in that machine somewhere. Somehow that put me right there. Any cog in that machine is committing evil. Yes. That's the dark thing. I think the higher you are to the top, the closer you are to the top, the more ability you have to stop it. But the less, the more freedom you have to stop it, I suppose. To a point, yeah. But like the little things. So Beria had the freedom to commit rape. Or not to. And so he chooses to, sort of increase the amount of evil he's putting out into the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But then you have to counterbalance that, as dark as this calculus is, after Stalin dies, like that week, they start making the gulag shrink. They start pulling back on the labor camps. So, I mean, so that is a big plus in his side. Like you start liberating, having this mass amnesty and freeing people from work camps. That's not a minor thing, so it's crazy. I'm not Saint Peter, right? I'm not saying he's a good person, but it's kind of insane that someone can do things that everyone listening to this would regard as pure evil. And at the same time, this guy also, when the time came, saved tens of thousands of lives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in some sense, Stalin is the kind of cancer that permeates all the Soviet minds. And once it's gone, you almost like wake up, wait a minute, what the fuck was I a part of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Khrushchev was a 56 when he gave a secret speech behind closed doors and he's just like, all this criticism of Stalin was true. This is completely not what Marxism, he tried to salvage the system. This is not what Marxism is about. We can't have a personality cult. Stalin killed all these top generals. And when Hitler betrayed the pact and invaded, Stalin didn't believe his buddy Hitler was going to do this. And as a result of this, we lost a lot of territory and lives. This is not a military genius. This was Stalin being an idiot or a moron, whatever term you want to be. But the thing is, Khrushchev also was a butcher. He had a lot of blood on his hands. You don't take Stalin's seat without having overlooked a lot of murder and chaos. It's such a, that's why it's called, the subtitle of the book's A Tale of Good and Evil. There's so much malevolence to go around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think was going through Stalin's mind in the 20s and the 30s? Did he directly, like allow himself to acknowledge the reality of the suffering he was causing? Like what does it take to be that human? I'm almost interested to extract lessons from that for leaders of today. Like how hard is it? Is it that Stalin is evil or can you just delude yourself gradually into where you don't have a sense of the effect of your policies on the populace?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you're not deluding yourself because you have around you an entire government of people telling you 24-7 how great you are, how thankful they are for you, how awesome you are, you're the best. So that certainly gonna play into it. I've asked myself that question as well. Like, do these people believe their own bullshit? And I think the receipts are when Elena Ceausescu, who's one of the four women on the cover, when she's being taken away to be executed in 1989, she's yelling at the soldiers, how could you? I raised you like a mother. So she at least believed her own bullshit. With Stalin, he was obviously extremely intelligent. I think it's kind of easy for us to kind of psychologize and say he's a sociopath, he's a narcissist, he's this, he's that. But at a certain point, like if you're surrounded by a culture dedicated to glorifying you and everyone you meet is so happy to see you, and oh my God, all your pronouncements are so good, And you know what, if you make a decision that's wrong, the people around you, it's their job to tell you why it's not your fault. It's the fault of the wreckers or it's the fault of Hitler or whoever it is, the kulaks. At a certain point, the human mind wants to believe how great it is, especially someone in that vaunted position. But he had his love, there was this one funny, I'm using the word loosely, quote, when Hitler invades Russia, and he couldn't believe it, and he's just missing in action for days, because how could Hitler betray me? We had a deal, birds of a feather. And he had this quote about like, we've taken Lenin's legacy and shitted on our asses. I think he was very aware, that's no question that he was aware, that in terms of being a philosopher or a thinker, he wasn't on Lenin's level, right? So that was, I'm sure, played a lot into his psychology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That he never quite lived up to everything he tried. I mean, there's some sense that the collectivization, that this idea was a failure, the way he responds to the economic policy being a failure is to lean in and basically torture anyone who says it's a failure and double down on the policy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That says something about- But it wasn't a failure, it broke the Ukrainians." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't think he believed early on that's what it turned into, but you don't think in the very early days there was a thought that collectivization is the right mechanism by which to enact communism in the nation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I think his goal was to break their spirit, and getting them fed was secondary, right? And given the fact that they stopped complaining, because they're dead, he got what he wanted. He got a compliant population." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's really interesting. I wonder how much disagreement there is about, because if that was the goal from the beginning, that's a different level of evil." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that was clearly the goal. So his, like I said earlier, he broke with Lenin because he wanted socialism in one country, right? That was his vision, right? And he was also very aware that what became the Soviet Union was extremely diverse. First of all, it's a gigantic country. It's a big country on Earth. It's not always gigantic. all these peoples, these nationalities within it that have had historical enmity and they're not gonna have loyalty to Moscow. He's a Georgian himself, this was always a big problem. So that was what he wanted to do as well, is to homogenize and have them be standardized. And I don't see how you do that without either massive re-education, which is only gonna go so far, or really just crushing people's spirits." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like a forced homogeneity. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the other big thing, a big element of Soviet culture and the Soviet mythology, I mean, he called his name, he changed his name to Stalin, I can't even pronounce his Georgian name, Djokas Vili or something like that. It means man of steel. So a large part of the, and this still remains in Russian culture to this day, I see in my family too, and like other Russians I know, there is this pride in ruthlessness. and this kind of like, I'm so tough, like nothing's gonna affect me. Like, yeah, we're gonna suffer, but it's for a greater good or for the longterm and not to be kind of sentimental or squeamish about things. Like that was a big part of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't take that away from me too, Michael. You've taken everything. Am I wrong? I admire not stoicism, but that kind of hardness. I look for it in myself. It has nothing to do with Stalin." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But not to the extent that like, for example, like if you see someone suffering and that's being used as a mechanism to get you to change your opinion, you're like, they're not gonna get to me. Like that is very much part of that Russian psychology. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "at least at that time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think still largely no. I'm not gonna be manipulated by someone else's suffering or weakness, that kind of thing. I think that's really part of it to this day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know, I don't know how much of it is caricature, how much of it is reality. Sure, sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I remember, I knew someone who was, him and his fiance were Russian, and they had this big fight, she took off the ring, right? And he's like, that's it? And just like the way he told the story to me, she's like, what do you want me to say? Oh, don't leave me, baby. I can't live without you. Like that nasty cruelty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know, man. I don't know if there's a Russian thing. That's just a people thing. I don't think that's an American thing. I think there's all kinds of flavors and they're different by region of the way that people are cruel to each other. In America, New Jersey is different than Texas, is different than California." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You don't think Americans are a higher trust, more kind society than Russia, even today?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Higher trust, listen, I'm not going to, so first of all, I have a very complex, feelings about Russia today." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's like a January before the war. I'm talking about nowadays." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it's a complex psychological dynamic of what trusting means. I think Russians are generally less friendly but have more intimate friendships. Yes, I think that's true. So it's just a different." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not different, it's just one is more trusting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is more trusting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Americans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but then this would define trusting different because- Okay, I'll give you an example." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If someone's having a party in America and people come over. Yeah. Okay, that's fine. Everyone's welcome. If it's in Russia, it's like, who's that? Who'd you bring? And there's much more of a like, let me be sure that's okay, this person's here. I don't know, maybe. You don't have parties. I have never been at a party. And you don't come to mine. Vanessa was very sad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I love Ben, I love Ben." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you should have showed it by showing up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just, man, I hide from the world and I'm afraid of social interaction and I just lay on the ground instead and feel sorry for myself." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not bad Santa, it's sad Santa." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I conserve my emotional energy towards this one day of the year where I can intensely spread my joy. All right, speaking of which, you tell a Christmas story in the book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Are you spoiling that chapter? It's called Die Hard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, well, I'm not gonna spoil it. It's really good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was very proud of that chapter. Why? Because the ending that's a Christmas story is just like, I know everyone reading it's gonna go Google it and be like, these can't be real, but it was real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That it was on Christmas, yeah, sure. I mean, this has to do with the bigger picture. We don't have to do the big reveal, but the bigger picture of there was an iron curtain and it was coming down in complex ways. How would you define the Iron Curtain? There's a set of ideologies, a set of countries united by an ideology, and a set of countries united by a different ideology. And there's a curtain that divided them, and it eventually came down. So how would you describe how it came down?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It came, I hate that I can never remember, ever, ever remember if this was Hemingway. No, it was Hemingway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It was Mark Twain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it came down two ways, gradually then suddenly. The thing with the Iron Curtain and the Warsaw Pact, these were a bunch of nations run under communism, but they were all, almost all, under the sway of Moscow. So if they were going to make big changes, Moscow had to prove it. It was in the 50s when Hungary decided to rebel, or not rebel, liberalize, and they even were thinking of leaving the Warsaw Pact, and the Russians sent in the tanks, and you had the development of what was called the Brezhnev Doctrine. which was the idea that it is the duty of all the Warsaw Pact nations if another country tries to, and this was also in 68 in the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, if a nation wants to leave socialism, it is incumbent on those socialist nations to do whatever is necessary to make sure there isn't a counter-revolution. So they were very much under Moscow's thumb. And one of the big ways it changed was one man, and that was Mikhail Gorbachev. And he was the first Russian leader to be born after the October Revolution. He grew up, and his grandfather was arrested for being a Trotskyite, and the other one was arrested for this or that. He saw his village starve as a result of Stalin. So even though he was a very committed communist, He also was very and increasingly skeptical of authoritarianism. And, you know, in Poland, for example, you had the Solidarity Movement, and this was a labor union movement, and the government didn't know what to do. They were getting a lot of support from the peoples. They had strikes that, and the Gdansk shipyard was where one of them started. And basically, Moscow told them, either you crack down or we're cracking down on you. And they're like, all right. And they declared martial law and the rest of the leaders put them away. But then when Gorbachev was in charge, there wasn't a gun to their back. And it was the communist leaders themselves who were like, you know what? There was this really funny moment where Lech Walesa is meeting with Margaret Thatcher and he's telling her what solidarity the movement wants. And she had been meeting with the Polish government as well. And she's like, look, tell them like what – because they had – you tried – they wanted – the government wanted her to tell them that we want to negotiate and work things out. She goes, all right, tell the government what it is that you're asking for and just points to the ceiling. She goes – he's like, oh yeah, our meetings are bugged anyway. But they then had the freedom because they knew that Gorbachev wasn't forcing them to drive solidarity underground. So they had the idea of like, let's work together with these people. And as a result of this, you know, Poland liberalized and freed itself. fairly easily and with a minimum of bloodshed in 89. And there was this whole argument for the Vietnam War with something called domino theory, which is if you lose Vietnam, then you're going to lose Laos, then you lose Cambodia. One by one, the countries are going to turn communist to the dominoes. But people didn't realize the reverse was true. Because after Poland liberalized, then you have Hungary, then you have Czechoslovakia, then you had East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. So it's a great thing because as this is happening, the people are looking around and they're like, wait, that's it? This has got to be a trick. And it wasn't a trick. So one of my favorite books, which was a big inspiration for this one, was by my favorite historian. I apologize to David Petruccia and Arthur Herman, my second and third. They're tied. But Victor Sebastian wrote a book called Revolution, 1989. And he just talked about that year and how all these countries, one after another, liberalized. And none of them thought this was possible. One of my favorite, favorite moments in this book is Helmut Kohl, who was the head of West Germany, is in Warsaw with Lech Walesa discussing the Berlin Wall. And Lech Walesa's like, I don't think it's going to be around for another few years. And Helmut Kohl laughs in his face. And he goes, look, you're young. This isn't how things work. Like this is gonna take some doing. It fell the next day and Helmut Kohl literally says, I'm at the wrong party. And he got in a plane and got out of Warsaw. So there are, why this book has a broader message than the actual stories of these incidents is that as these wonderful things are happening, the universal consensus at the time is it's never gonna happen. Or if it does gonna happen, it's gonna happen only through an enormous amount of carnage and blood. And when it doesn't, then everyone's like, oh, it was inevitable. You didn't say it was inevitable at the time. You only said it was inevitable after the fact. And the other thing that really brought me a lot of joy is there are so many moments of men with guns saying, we're not shooting anyone. Because they wanted, several Tiananmen Squares. They wanted it in East Berlin. They wanted it in Romania. They wanted it in Moscow. And these strong, tough, trained men with guns were like, no, we're not shooting the civilians. And then everything else was history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, just as surprising as the mass violence committed by like police and the army on its own citizenry, equally surprising as when they choose not to. Yeah. Somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what is that? How do you explain 1989? How do you explain this progress that happened so suddenly? How do you explain that at the beginning of the 20th century, so much revolution happened that created communism? And how do you explain then the collapse of that across so many nations at the same time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think a large part of it had to do with the closer interconnections between people like Gorbachev and Thatcher and Gorbachev and Reagan, because both of them visited Red Square and in the years before, these are enemies. They want to invade, they want to kill us. The Americans thought this about the Russians, the Russians thought this about the Americans, obviously not so much the British. They got on really well. When Gorbachev came to Chequers, which is the prime minister's countryside estate, Thatcher sat him down, and she's lecturing him about human rights, and she's lecturing him about economics, and she's lecturing him about this and that, and then she's lecturing him about why he isn't eating while he's yelling at her, and he goes, Mrs. Thatcher, I know you have a lot of strong opinions, I do too. I haven't been sent here to recruit you to the Communist Party.\" And she just started laughing. But right away, there was such a sense in the air of, we can do better. We're spending all this money on missiles. We're spending all this money on the military. It's expensive. And for what? We don't have to be looking at each other as enemies. We can try to work together to kind of, at the very least, lower the volume and the heat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How much credit do you give to Gorbachev the man? So meaning, how much power does a single individual have?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I could not give him more credit. I had a tweet last year where I said, who do you think is the greatest person alive right now? And my answer by far would be Gorbachev. Then he died, I don't know who it is right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just funny because Gorbachev also had a tweet And he said, oh sure. That would be a good, now I wish I interviewed Gorbachev and asked him the famous question of what would you like best about Michael Malice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, the transition after the Soviet Union fell to Russia and Yeltsin was not a smooth one by any means. As I say at the end of the book, it's not like they lived happily ever after. But my broader point is you take the wins when you can get them. People now had access to passports. They don't have to have, they can leave the country, they have food, they have access to information. It's somewhat censored, but it's certainly nothing like it was under the Soviet Union. And they didn't have to live in this kind of, constant fear and they had opportunities and it's such a step forward. And there was this one great moment and Boris Yeltsin became president of Russia. He's also mayor of Moscow at one point or the equivalent of mayor. And he came here to visit NASA in the capacity of one or the other. And while he was there, he went to visit a supermarket. It was a Randall's then, I think it's a food town now, it still exists. I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna start bawling. And as he's looking around, he had never seen so much food. And this is food that even wealthy people in Russia don't have access to. And there's pictures of him just like this. And the scene that really was poignant to me is on his flight back, he's sitting there on the plane like this. And he's like, they had to lie to the people because if they knew, they wouldn't have been able to get away with it. And that's the moment where it's just like, oh, this wasn't like skewed propaganda. This was like, they knew and it was a lie from A to Z. And he was just like, holy crap. And you can just imagine him on that plane, his brain reprogramming. Because if you're taught since you're a kid, and he was an older man, he was no dummy. You think, okay, the Americans are starving and poor and they're lynching people every day. And then you go to a supermarket, the most banal place on earth. And you see like, I think when the article said like, they couldn't believe how big the onions were or something like that. And you're seeing this and you're seeing these like janitors, school teachers, these aren't dignitaries and they're regular people just picking whatever they want. And you're just like, it's like the equivalent of having a stroke." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I do think that that's one of the most powerful things, is the grocery store. In terms of drawing a distinction between the two systems. You can show off technology and so on, but you can kind of sign right off technology as like, okay, that's the mechanism of the devil. But when you look at just fruit and veggies, and very big fruit and veggies, Yeah, and fruit in particular, like certain kinds of fruit that are just not available in Russia. I mean, it's, yeah, that really shows, wait a minute. Yeah. It's interesting, like when you're older and you, have to face the reality that what you believe to be true, that your whole life has been based on a set of lies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's tough. Not mistakes, not like a little bit, like blatant lies from top to bottom, start to finish. I don't know what that's like." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How much, you start the book, I think you start the book with Ayn Rand, yes. Yes. Yes. as one does. So before the revolution, she was born in Russia and she witnessed the revolution and moved to the United States in the 20- 26, 1926, yeah. 1926, I remember like it was yesterday. Anyway, you're right that she spent a lot of her life trying to convince Americans and the world that the negative effects of totalitarian government Just maybe using her as an example, but also this question, can we draw a distinction between authoritarian regimes and communism? Is it possible to steel man the case that not all implementations of socialism and communism would lead to the atrocities we've seen in the Soviet Union and in China under Mao? Like when you, in studying all of this, how much blame do you put on the ideologies, on the Marxist ideologies versus the particular leaders and dictators?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you have to blame the leaders a lot because they had different leaders and different countries were different from each other. Dubček, who took over Czechoslovakia and he tried to introduce socialism with a human face in the Prague Spring of 1968, he was like, all right, we got to do away with this authoritarianism. We got to have more free speech. He was thinking of introducing elements of democracy. Now, then the Russians sent in the tanks. But the point is, he certainly was someone who was like, all right, this has got to stop. This is just absolutely crazy. Khrushchev and Stalin were not the same animal at all. So I think the problem with communism in the Marxist sense is that you're going to have to introduce an element of authoritarianism simply because you can't have economic planning. If I don't have a price mechanism, I don't know how prices what is me knowing as a consumer or a producer what should be produced or what there's a shortage of. As prices increase, that's a signal that we have a shortage here. As prices decrease, that means that there's a surplus here. But if I'm setting the price, I don't really know how much weed I need to produce if I'm compared to corn, as compared to shoes, as compared to Santa costumes. So that is a big problem. The other issue is if you have one agency, the government, having a monopoly on, let's suppose, the news, like you were talking about earlier with Twitter, it's going to be really hard to have any kind of objective discourse because everyone is going to be working for the same organization. That is going to cause a problem in terms of having a feedback mechanism, even in the best scenario, in terms of this is a problem, this isn't a problem. And when you have a monopoly, which is what a government is, I think people are very familiar with what the problems happen with monopoly, this lack of accountability, bureaucracies are faceless and then no one's to blame, and yet everyone kind of suffers as a consequence. So it doesn't necessarily have to be as authoritarian as Stalinism, but you can't have a government, which is authority by its nature, be this pervasive without a strong amount of oppression. And same thing with, even if you just have like, let's say socialized healthcare, you're gonna have to make it illegal for doctors to practice privately. You're gonna have to have rationing, so on and so forth. Now, that might be a price that people are willing to pay, because you can't have infinite spending on healthcare, right? So something's gonna have to give somewhere. So there is an element of authoritarianism there, and people are comfortable with that, and I can wrap my head around it. But if you're gonna have, one organization running literally everything in society, I don't see how you do that and have any measure of liberalism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you think Ayn Rand had so much trouble telling people the danger of Soviet Stalinism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think, more pertinent question is why did Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman have so much problems? So they were hardcore- These are anarchists. Yeah, Emma Goldman's on the cover. They were deported from the US. J. Edgar Hoover saw them off at Ellis Island. They were sent to Russia. They were bloodthirsty revolutionaries. They had no shortage advocating violence when necessary. And when they went there, they were just like, this is a complete nightmare. They both individually had meetings with Lenin, complaining about political prisoners, complaining about lack of free speech. He told them, you know, this is a revolutionary time. You could do that later. And when they both left, she wrote, her memoir was split into two books, My Disillusionment in Russia and My Third Disillusionment in Russia. He wrote The Bolshevik Myth. And she was in England and she gave a speech And she's just like, if you guys think this is for the workers, this is the biggest lie I've ever heard. They're oppressing the workers like no capitalist has ever imagined. And as she described it, people were just shifting their seats. They were interrupting her. And when she opened her talk, she had a standing ovation. And when she was done, you could hear a pin drop. So they didn't want to hear it because this was this kind of, and Eugene Lyons talks about it later, this was like the guinea pig theory of the Russian people. We're going to experiment on them over there. If it works, great, we're right. If it's wrong, it's their problem. And sure, these animals squeal, but they're beneath us. And of course, they're going to make some noise. But this is a noble experiment. But they're experimenting on a country, several countries. So I think an ideology like this, which appeals to intellectuals, because if it works or if it's implemented, they're the ones who are gods, in effect, in a society. Their status cannot be higher. They really want this to work. They want a society where They are the new aristocracy, the most important people. And their criticisms of America, if they had a binary worldview, if America is bad and this is the opposite of America, then by definition it's good. And the other binary that they bought into is the Nazis and the fascists hate the communists and the communists, it's true. up to a point, hated the fascists and the Nazis. Okay, well, Hitler is evil, so this guy's against Hitler, we're with him. So that's an argument that's still made in schools growing up when you talk about World War II where they're like, we teamed up with Stalin, and they don't really talk about Stalin being a bad guy, but it's like, we worked with him to fight Hitler because Hitler was a unique evil. Now that is certainly true that Hitler's a unique evil, but that doesn't mean or even imply that Stalin is somehow an angel or a saint." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think some of the lessons of history are forgotten here in our modern political discourse that are important to remember?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was so triggered because I was in the supermarket and there was like a company that's selling Russian ice cream because it meets these high level Soviet standards. And I'm just like, you think this is some kind of joke? You think this is some kind of kitschy punchline that you had decades of people who were taught in school to turn their parents into the police if they were hoarding grain, even if it cost them their own lives, where it was a crime to be married to someone who was an enemy of the state, where you had torture being the norm, where people were institutionalized. because they were politically disadvantageous and they were called insane. Like this isn't just like, oh, this hammer and sickles, this cool, wacky symbol. Like the amount of blood under this symbol was just enormous. And so yeah, I think that lesson has very much been forgotten." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How did the ice cream taste?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was fine. I'm a Baskin-Robbins guy, to be honest, but Van Leeuwen's does some great work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Baskin-Robbins doesn't have any Soviet flavors?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those are dark jokes, dark jokes. I'm gonna self-publish a book of jokes. Coming out in a grocery store near you. Okay, what was the hardest part about writing this book? Spent two years writing it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So when I write books for celebrities and I was co-authoring them, I did it kind of like method acting. I tried to get into their head as much as possible to kind of speak in their voice. And when you're dealing with children being tortured, harmed, starved, and you're trying to empathize with the characters, it's hard to take. The other big part I had, like I was saying earlier, is just, I was just very, very concerned that I told this story and that it did it justice, because I think this is something that is, I still don't understand, and I'm kind of angry about it, that it's fallen on me to tell this story. This isn't some minor incident that happened in some random town in pick a state. This is half the world for, you know, 70, 80 years. And the fact that it's This is the 80s. I mean, you and I are old enough to remember the 80s. There's a show, I remember the 80s. The fact that all these things have just kind of, we have this collective amnesia. And even amnesia, I think a lot of this stuff was not known even at the time or was kind of obscured. I remember I was at the Blaze, which is a network run by Glenn Beck, and they're conservatives, and I have a lot of fun there. And I'm just sitting there, and sometimes they veer off. They're like, oh, Biden's a communist. I'm like, okay, Biden's a communist. But I'm like, we talk so much about slavery and the Civil War, the atrocities. We talk about World War II and the Holocaust. I'm like, how is no one talking about this? And this can very easily be portrayed as like conservatism's big victory because Reagan and Thatcher were so instrumental in guiding this to a safe landing. And I'm like, how is no one telling the story? And then one day my brain is like, you know, you write books for a living. This is kind of your job. And I'm like, all right, but I still don't, I still, I gotta tell you, I'm kind of confused that I'm the one who has to do this because this should be, there should be, you know, there should be 30 books like this. And this is a model to follow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and it's also that it's such recent history. But it also kind of makes you realize that there might be other fights for progress going on right now in the world that we don't know about. So you wrote about North Korea. I don't know to what degree there could possibly be fights there for progress, but they could be boiling up. In China, there could be boiling up battles for progress. In other parts of the world, Russia, there could be. And in America. And in America. And these are all different kind of battles for progress. And they're all, sometimes, Sometimes I, you know, we sometimes tend to criticize these battles for progress. Like if it's on the left, we'll call it like wokeism or whatever. And we pick extreme elements of it and show how silly and ridiculous it is, not realizing it, not acknowledging that there's a, a more civil battle going on underneath for respecting human dignity for people from all walks of life. And the same, we tend to call anybody who questions mainstream narratives, conspiracy theorists, we dismiss them immediately. And they're ultimately fighting for progress. So people who criticize Fauci and everybody else, I don't know if they're, I think they want Institutions that serve the public, they're fighting for progress too. And we tend to dismiss them, like each side tends to caricature the other. But the battle for progress is happening. And I guess that's what you're... That's the hopeful message with the white pill, right? Is that there's progress being made. Somehow we're all making progress here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think more the hopeful message is that it's not possible that we have to lose. Like if someone tells you the straight face, you can't win, the enemy is too impressive and strong, I'm like, what are you talking about? I mean, look, this was the Soviet Union and it happened you know, relatively quickly and relatively peacefully. I mean, again, and it wasn't because Honecker in East Germany was like, oh, I'm just going to, I'm just going to vacate my seat. He was like sending the tanks and the military guy said no. So they wanted blood. There were plenty of people who wanted blood and would have been happy to have it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to you, maybe if not the fall of the Soviet Union, then the fall of the Iron Curtain is a great leap of progress in the 20th century." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't see how anyone can argue against that point with a straight face." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that gives you hope that we humanity were able to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and at the same time, we were told at the time, give it up, be realistic, It's utopian to think this is going anywhere, maybe in a hundred years. Look, there's a reason Chekhov was on Star Trek, because the idea is even in the far future, you're going to have America and you're going to have the Soviet Union. Like this is the reality. It was called real politic. We're going to have detente because it's, you know, it's this permanent stalemate. We had the Vietnam War. We got our asses kicked. Russia's not going anywhere. America's not going anywhere. We got to learn to live with each other, blah, blah, blah. And Reagan said, you don't want to hear my strategy for the Cold War? Some people might say it's simple or even simplistic. Here it is. We win, they lose. And the people who won were the Russian people, and the Ukrainian people, and the Lithuanian people, and the Polish people, and the Romanian people especially, and the Hungarian people. And it's just, there's so many moments of great joy Just tears coming down my face because you're like in Prague when Dubček, again, who tried to liberalize in 1968, and then when they send the tanks, they deport him to Slovakia somewhere to do some forestry job. He appears in their big squares just waving from the balcony like this ghost. from 20 years prior being like, look, you know, the spirit of 68 is still alive here in Czechoslovakia. And it was like a matter of weeks, the entire government resigned and then they liberalized. It's just so many things about just overnight, just change for the profound better. And, you know, people are so committed to making sure you don't have hope. And if things get better, oh, it doesn't really matter because the broader picture never gets better. And there's lots of data to the contrary where that's happened before. And this isn't some magical faraway place. This is the opposite of magical faraway place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's Eastern Europe. And to me, I think one such narrative that, people assume will always be true, or just to a degree will always be true, like in American politics, is the extreme levels of division. And it seems to me like that too we can overcome. So the division in American politics that seems to be counterproductive, I think that can be overcome. And I think the division in geopolitics currently with Russia, China, and the United States, particularly China and the United States can be overcome. And I think that requires great leadership that galvanizes the populace. to the better angels of their nature. Like I have hope for that. People have become really cynical on social media and elsewhere in the way they talk. The liberals are destroying this country. The conservatives are destroying this country. This kind of language is becoming more and more popular. I think that's, I have hope that that's temporary. At least that's my white pill. I don't know if you have that kind of hope for, like what does hope look like for you in American politics? Forget American politics, American, the nation, the country, the people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My hope, which I don't think is an unrealistic one, is that the next generation, has a better life than you and I have had in this country. And I think anyone who thinks that America is over or is one president away from being destroyed, cannot in good conscience call themselves a patriot. Because if you think America is so weak that it takes a Biden or a Trump or an Obama to irrevocably destroy it, then it's already a wrap. And I think that's just absolutely ridiculous. If you look what this country has survived, Great Depression, World War II, the Civil War, I mean, my God. So we've been through worse before. It wasn't always easy, certainly not, but it's so hard for me as someone who's a hopeful person, not by my nature, I'm not, you know, Michael Kindness, who does work for Random House, or at least he did last time I talked to him, I look at even like, the thing is when you speak positively, it sounds corny. That's how screwed up our cynical culture is. Have you seen my Twitter? Oh, you're verified now. So that's good. But even like something like Etsy. Like you can go on Etsy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I paid $8 for that verification. Did you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I earned it. It's an opportunity for independent artists to create something special and cool. And I've bought a lot of stuff from them. That in and of itself is something that's pretty awesome. There's so much, I'm into shaving soaps, right? Of course you are. The point is there's like dozens of artisans every day when you have a shave, it brings you some joy. So there's just so many things that are wonderful. And I know there's people listening to this rolling their eyes. How can you talk about shaving soaps when my daughter or when my wife or when blah, blah, blah, and I'm not disparaging or dismissing what you're regarding as a problem. My point is hope means the belief that it's not at all a certainty that this problem will be insurmountable. That's all it means." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you look forward to in 2023? Since this is a holiday special." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Honestly, I look forward to a lot of young people realizing that they still have lots of opportunity in this country and taking control of their own selves and realizing they can be a better person tomorrow than they are today, that the entirety of their identity is not a function of a culture which they may not identify with or like or think is deplorable, and realize, you know what, I have it in me to improve and find joy and happiness, and also the fact that that is so compelling and contagious. That is what I would want in 2023, and also for New York to get nuked." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So those two things could be accomplished." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can I go back and switch the order? Because I think New York won." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, the jokes, the jokes. And one day, friends, if you work hard enough and believe in yourself," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You too can nuke New York." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, you too can spend your days dressing up. Grown men dressing up in a Santa outfit. and putting on lipstick and having hours upon hours of conversation with each other and loving every second. Thank you for writing this really, really important book. Please buy the white pill. I love you, brother." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Definitely the one I'm most proud of is that journey for the grand goals. It was like a five-year scope that I chased this. And so when you think about training, it took more than five years, obviously. By that point, I'd been training for over 25 years. but it makes me proud. I mean, there was three distinct things that I wanted to accomplish out of this. So it was really thought out. And this was kind of my exit from being a competitive lifter and basically saying, hey, I'm gonna be, you know, an Instagram lifter, an exhibition lifter or whatever. I've done this for 16 years. I was number one in the world for like eight years straight, all time world records. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do that anymore. What I wanna do, is just something deep down to me that is really important. And there's three things that were driving this. And this is a five-year journey that I went through to do this. I really wanted to showcase that you could do something that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible. So just this inspiration thing, this grand over the top. Like if you set your mind to a single-minded goal, you can go so much further. And I didn't even say what the goal was up front because it was so far out there, I would have been laughed at. And that's, I think big goals should be kept pretty damn close to start with for that reason too. And then the second piece was to walk the walk, to show like the principles of what I believed in around human movement. the ability to manage and control the spinal mechanics and the output that can have on the body. And so I wanted to take the two most basic movements that every able-bodied person should be able to do. So fundamental movement patterns, the squat, which is like in the developmental approach is around nine months as a baby from a developmental kinesiology standpoint, and a really basic pattern that every able-bodied person should be able to master. The other one being the hip hinge, being able to pick something up off the ground. a deadlift. And I wanted to do those two, not just one, because I wanted to show the principles that I wasn't, uh, built for one. I wasn't a specialist because of my lever links, torso links, all that, any outliers because nobody had ever done a thousand pound squat. So this is it is, and a thousand pound deadlift. It was outside of the scope of what anybody's, there's like half a dozen people that have done one or the other, but nobody's ever done both. And I wanted to do something unique. I wanted to do them, not only do it, but do them for reps to leave literally no question out there. And there's no competition for that. So it was, this is what I'm going to go do. And, uh, to pull it off, I had some past issues with my elbows and stuff that I couldn't work around. So I had to wear, uh, straps, which was another reason I couldn't do it in the competition setting. Um, so the first year I worked up and I did a thousand and two pound deadlift. We plates were weighed afterwards. It was a couple little bit over and I did it for almost three reps. And that still stands as a Guinness world record, just the one rep does, is the most weight ever sumo deadlifted. And one other person has deadlifted a thousand for reps at this point, and that was Thor Bjornsson from Game of Thrones. He's done a thousand for a double as well. So then the next four years, and I did a bunch of feats of strength on the way, but it was all about building that axial loading capacity, the strength that, cause now I'm moving the weight from my hands up to my shoulders. And so to do it for reps is like so much harder than a single, like five to 10 seconds versus 30 plus seconds to be able to buffer and manage all that with that kind of load is just. crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's literally about the duration that your body is carrying the load." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a big part of it. Yeah. Because you have to, you're using the resource of the diaphragm for stabilization. And so it it's also responsible for respiration and all this other stuff. So even when you're not squatting, you've got to be handling those loads." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just holding that way. It's fascinating. It's like it's fascinating that the human body can do that, can maintain that structure, just everything working together, that the biology, the skeletal structure, the musculature on top of that can hold the weight. It's fascinating to watch." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everything is very intentful about positioning and how you're creating pressure and all this sort of stuff, especially for me. So when I mentioned that half a dozen people have squatted it and half a dozen people have deadlifted it, understand those people all weigh 380 to 440 pounds. I weighed 265 to 285 depending on the where I was between the two. So there's that as well, right? So big, big difference. And over the course of that, I did a lot of other feats of strength that fit in that capacity. And we can skip over those. But that was hugely invested as far as you know, what I put into being able to accomplish that because it's it's over the top, which means the other stuff had to shift and I had to learn. So there's so many things that came into place to pull that off. And so yeah, last March, two days before the world shut down, I did it. It was supposed to be at the largest equipment exhibition in the world down in San Diego as an event. And that got shut down a week beforehand, obviously. So we moved to, let's do it in my gym and invite people. And that was on a Saturday and Thursday or Friday, they limited it to 25 people for gatherings. I did it on Saturday and then Monday, everything shut down. So it was kind of surreal for timing wise, right? And so if I hadn't done it, it would have never got done. Like, cause I, I'd pushed to the limit. I couldn't come back and do it. It was at the total limitation of my capabilities. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty proud of it. And the last piece was every one of these feats along the way, I collaborated with a charity that I believed in. And there was a lot of those tied to my life story, which we probably will get into. So it was threefold. So that inspiration piece, inspiration, motivation, walking the walk and showing like, just these methodologies that a guy that had to learn to walk again can do something like this with no back pain. If you, if you, there is a way. And the third one is, is to provide awareness and recognition around a lot of, um, key charities." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, so your heart was in this journey, but also your mind is just, you're like a scholar of strength, a scientist of strength and engineer of strength for reps do a thousand pounds squat and deadlift. Let's first talk through the actual day you did it. What does it take to lift that much for reps?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The day of is really easy. Really? The lift itself. other than a few seconds is really easy and not challenging. People always ask me, what was it like? How beat up were you after that and the deadlift? And the simple fact is it was easy. The work to get there was horrendous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, so even the psychology of the day, you weren't, there was not a fear. There was not a nervousness. There was not a doubt in your mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Uh, there was certainly doubts on that day, um, from some training history. So there was some major. Breaks to my confidence in the couple months leading up where I had issues with passing out under the bar. So completely losing consciousness. And this was on weight, less than a thousand pounds, even. So that was like all this buildup in me going, what if, what if it, I think I have this resolved, but what if I get up there and I can't even do a rep? How embarrassing will this be that I've been talking about this and planning for this for so long? But outside of that, I knew I could do it. In fact, I wanted to do even more, even up to the second rep. Training is about, you know, working into a fatigue state. So you're building an amount of fatigue. in your system, and then when you let off of it, that's when you get a compensation, and that's how you stair-step training. This is periodization, but leading into a big event, you're accumulating this massive amount of fatigue. And so I was performing at a level that I could do it, and so I knew I was gonna be able to on me, because then you give yourself that window to be able to recover and supercompensate and be able to do a little bit more. So like that first rep when I did it, strength-wise, I went, I could do this for five reps. Like it went through my head. I'm like, I mean, it was easy and it was fast and it felt like amazing. And I'm like, I'm going to crush this. And then set rep two, uh, the realization kicked in as like, Oh, this is for reps with a thousand pounds on your back. And you're fatiguing just like. And then the third one was every last thing I could muster to just finish. I mean, I just barely got it done because it's the strength is like there, but like that capacity to be able to manage all those resources for that amount of time, because it's not just leg strength when we're talking about this stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what does it take to go from the from I don't know what like from five hundred to a thousand? that feels like a journey that's like exponential. It seems like way harder." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is, it gets exponentially harder, it does. In the early 2000s, like I said, I started lift in 1988, but my first meet in the early 2000s, my max deadlift was 523 and my first squat was 550. So, for reference. That's a heck of a journey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That is a journey. For people that like to lift, what should they understand about the difference between doing 500 and 1,000? in terms of the actual lift that you were experiencing that day, in terms of the mechanics, in terms of all the things you have to be, like the neurological adaptation you mentioned, the breathing, the core strength, like techniques, like little tricks, psychological tricks, anything that kind of stands out to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the level of intent and the opportunity for error are at a different level. So just the minutest changes of position by quarter inch, half inch can be make or break at that level. So these things, everything gets amplified. So the ability to, to start with having the pelvis just in the right orientation to the diaphragm, before we start initiating what we call the, the eccentric loading of the abdominal cavity, to create this intra-abdominal pressure of working against this outward expansion, working against the outer sheath of abdominal, thoracolumbar musculature, obliques, causing the co-contraction at the pelvic floor, all this stuff and how you cue that because you can't think about all this stuff. You need to break it down and distill and practice to like it's one simple cue that we now lock down and control this torso stability because this is what these fundamental movements are about is being able to control our spinal mechanics and then now be able to maintain that while articulating the joints around that through a range of motion. Uh, and then using the main power drivers. So in this instance, both instances, it's the, you know, the hip complex to generate that power and transfer it from how we're rooted and connected to the floor through to the distal end. you know, which would be the barbell on the shoulder, you know, there's a couple key concepts. So one is that what we just talked through is how to actually maintain that stability. So if you have either the diaphragm, so which is connected at the ribcage, so out of alignment in any position, it needs to be in alignment with the pelvic, uh, the pelvis. So those two in opposition. So this is simple engineering here. Um, because what we're going to do is eccentrically load this. We're going to use the diaphragm, just like you would in a diaphragm pump, where it's going to press down on all the tissue in there. So we're not using breath. So our breath was actually a lot of times a default pattern when people do that, because they'll bring it into their chest and raise their ribcage. So what we want to do is just initiate the diaphragm. Air can be used as well over the top at the final to create just a little bit more downward pressure. But if we have out of alignment there, we have a pressure leak where it's going to be pushed out the front or the rear if you're either inflection or extension. All right. And then that causes this co-contraction and all this pressure of the organs essentially against outward against all those tissue for the co-contraction as well as surrounding the spine to be able to stabilize that. And then it puts all the muscles on both sides of the body. In what we call the, the, the best length tension relationship. So if you think about a curl and we reach our arm out at the extended length, our bicep is not as strong. And then all the way in the curl position, it's not in strong. There's somewhere in here that's this control of both. And so when you're sitting there. arched or bent over, we have muscles that are past either one of those ranges. So they've got a lot of tension, which then will create relaxation on the other side, right? So we want to have an all of that needs to be working. And now the next important thing is the foot. So it's actually this connection to the ground and how we're actually using the foot and ankle complex to grab and grip this connection to the ground and elicit an effect. And because of this, and then the everything between will naturally kind of do what it needs to do. So people like to focus on it. knee, knee position or how far out their hips are all this other stuff, which is outputs of this. So if we control the torso and the knee, the only thing that can happen from that point is for the squat to happen. All right. So this allows us to use this massive, you know, the hip complex for all the muscles around that that are built to drive through hip extension to complete the squat. I did actually miss one thing in there. So this torso, people will often miss. The lat is a spinal stabilizer as well. So that's key in controlling function at the TL junction, which is just above the lumbar spine. So kind of right opposite where your sternum is. And you'll see people kind of roll over sometimes like in an Olympic squat or something like that where they lose position. And that's often because they're close grip because you can't engage the lats very well that way. And they're pushing up in the bar. but you want to be able to drive and pull the bar to your center. And that's going to create and use the lats now to drive and connect the shoulder into this. And we're kind of congressing and tightening all this stuff towards that center to create that entire torso stability. That's why I was using torso stability, not just core stability in my conversation earlier." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so there's all these like modules of the body then connected to the grounding with like your feet on the ground. Everything you're speaking to, how do you work each of those modules? Is this over time you kind of develop the feel that ultimately boils down to this one simple cue that you mentioned? Or can you like literally study each particular module in yourself and see how it affects the lift?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the best way and I believe it's because I hate just like people getting out and just doing just movement stuff and not actually adding load because we only adapt when there's load. Maybe we can get some, you know, some proprioception or awareness of position and other stuff doing some, some corrective patterns and other stuff. But This is basic physiology, is that there must be an imposed demand for us to have adaptation. And this is mental, this is emotional, this is all these areas. but, and people miss that. So I prefer to be able to look at a person and this is our methodology and do the assessment in any basic loaded movement. So with developing an eye for that, you can actually see and go, okay, we've got a fault pattern right here in the foot and use a cue or a set of cues. It doesn't really matter till we find the one that works and bring that. And now we know we want to simplify this. So if I just walk through, that sounds really complicated and it, It is if we try to break down and distill it all, but like, let's just find the basic stuff that gets us in the range, start working and then find the next as we add load. Now we find where's our next area that we're starting to fault that and then go there again next. So this is what we do, what we teach in our educational platform. So we are the only, I believe everybody wants to do a lot of these, like. assessments on a bench, on a table, body, and it's like, no, let's go squat. Let's go deadlift. If you do strongman and it's a yoke carry, let's yoke carry. Because these are basic human fundamentals. It's not power lifting. This is how we function. This is why we work with 29 of the 30 Major League Baseball teams and 90% of all professional sports out there in North America. Sorry. Although we do some work with Tour de France and other stuff as well. And North America, I do mean hockey too. But these principles, like, you know, if, if the Dodgers won't bring us in, they're not learning how to power lift, you know, we're gonna, obviously we'll probably be do, we do a little bit more shoulder focus than hip focus with their athletes. or their coaches, we're usually working with the coaches, not the athletes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so you help them and then the same thing on yourself to understand the role that these different muscle groups have on the holistic list." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's all about getting the joints in the appropriate position so that we can that we can manage load so that we're not putting undue stress in the joint, we're getting the proper link tension, we're getting these basic fundamental things with the body. And so the largest global impact that you will have is through spinal mechanics. I can't look at a shoulder if I'm not managing this, because it's your spine. So for those who are just listening, I'm arching and then flexing. That's going to affect shoulder extension, flexion, all these sorts of things. It could even affect things down to what's looking at dorsiflexion issues on the foot. And then that's why I go to the foot next, because it has the second largest global impact. And then from there, now I'm gonna look at the big energy drivers, which is the hip complex, shoulder complex. And then we can start looking at kind of the peripheral things, but usually that's some sort of output of the other, but the knees, the elbows, the things like that. So it's all about getting the stack, which affects neurology. So let's talk in engineering terms. You get in a car, modern car today, and a lot of them will have this traction control button in there. And there's a big misconception that I'm out and it's snowy or here in Austin only rainy. Well, it probably doesn't rain much, but you're going around a corner, start slipping. It's like, oh, it's going to send the powers from the wheels that are slipping to the ones that are gripping and keep me from crashing and dying a fiery death. Well, that's not how it works. It's the exact same. We've got the tires, which are our foot, you know, the connection to the ground, right? We've got the power driver, which is, you know, the engine, the transmission delivering, you know, the power through it. And we've got the stability or suspension. And then we have the neurology. And what the neurology is doing, it's sensing that we don't have good stability or a loss of connection somewhere. And so I need to save you from crashing and hurting yourself. And so it goes to the engine and says, let's retard the timing. Let's reduce the shift patterns. And we're just reducing the power output. And that's straight how the human body works. So when I do this stuff, it's actually affecting that. I mean, I can take somebody and do some minute changes with the neck position at the thoracic outlet, okay? And immediately see an enhancement in power output. And I can measure it. We measure this stuff with velocity devices and see like a 10%, boom, jump. And so if you think about that, what about all your training through the years where you actually had additional capacity but you weren't using it because your traction control was on. Now you figure this out stuff, and now you start stacking it, and now you can see so much greater. So it's not just injury prevention. This is performance and additive performance over time. This is huge, and people don't really think about this stuff, but we can turn that stuff off, which is actually gonna also, again, make us safer. But what we wanna do is the performance tuned race car. Do they have a traction control button? No, they got some amazing tires to grip the ground, a performance-tuned suspension, and that driver's gonna put his foot to the metal. He's gonna put it to the floor. Okay. That's a performance vehicle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what we want to be. I want to continue on that line. Um, but first I have to ask, like, how did it feel to accomplish the grand goal? Oh my God. Okay. When you just stand back. Oh my thousand pounds for reps." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What'd it feel like? Anybody can go watch the video online." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, 12 film, by the way, got me all like excited." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, well, the movies. So we actually have the final footage of that, the good footage not posted yet. So it's really just an Instagram video or a phone video right now. The only one online." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. It's on your YouTube channel. It's dramatic. Yes, it is. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Came out just time to the music perfectly, too, which is I listened to some odd music, which there's some reason behind that. OK, but I liked it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're saying there's full length footage. There's a documentary that's, it's got a little slowed because of COVID, because it's also a backstory of the Eagle and the Dragon, my book, about why I do kind of the things that I've done in my life, or that's what I'm assuming the director's working on. I don't really have the control of the movie, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But, but okay, but the video is okay. How did it feel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How did it feel? I started crying. It was overwhelming to have worked so intensely and so long and hard at something that pushed every ounce of me to the limit. And I did it. I'm getting a little emotional. I did exactly what I said I was going to fucking do. And it was overpowering. I mean, I was just crying uncontrollably, just with a mixture of I I don't know what the mixture of emotions is hard to explain. Cause it was the completion of something. It was a new phase of my life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, there's so many things here. So one, you set an impossible goal and you accomplished it. One, two is like on the broader humanity aspect, like how many humans in this world accomplish perfection in a particular direction? required to do this. So you're basically representing one little glimmer of excellence of the human spirit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's always more, so understand that. This is a basic fundamental. You can always do better. There is no such thing as perfection. You could always, there is always more. So anytime you reach something, any amazing workout or accomplishment in life, could you have put more into it? Could you? Yes. But here's the thing. I left on my terms. I said, this is it. I'm going to work towards, I've been training for 30 years. I'm going to do this thing that is, like, I couldn't even say that I was going to do it years before. I'm going to do it. And then I'm done. I didn't leave from an injury. I wasn't forced. I wasn't, I left on, I did exactly what I said. I went to a level that I, I left on my terms. And that's unique because that's usually not the case. Usually you kind of either taper out or it doesn't matter. I'm talking like anything in life in general, right? Like you taper out, you fail, you hurt, like you lose a job, like something, you know, you roll into retirement. Like I did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You accomplished something truly great and you walked away on your own terms. Is there a sadness completing something like that? Because it's in one perspective, the greatest thing you'll ever do. And like when you accomplish such a great height, in some sense, you have to face your mortality at that point." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So good question, but it is certainly not the greatest thing that I'll ever do. It's the greatest physical strength I'll ever do. There's always more. The greatest, yes. But that was an expression of some of my values and the way that I want to live. It was a way of expressing it. So understanding that is hugely fundamental because we do see so many athletes get to the end of a career and then they fall into a depressive state and struggle with drugs, alcohol, depression, and so on. They lost how they identified themselves and trying to figure out where to turn what to do But a big central component of their identity is lost so I knew that this was one way to express that. And my grand goals have shifted. They're shifted to other outlets that allow me to express that. Like my companies, Kabuki Strength, I'm going to change the face of fitness, as well as all the way through with its integration with clinical medicine and telemedicine. And I got another five years before even people see what I'm working on five years in right now, because I had to invent equipment I have to develop methodologies that we're talking. I had to do this stuff that ground layer wasn't done to create a cohesive ecosystem of training methodology tied to the tools that we're using, to the environment, tied to the clinical practice assessment, tied to the interaction between all those, and how that actually needs to be reframed because so much of this is broken. But there is sadness. I won't deny that. And the sadness comes in the singularity of focus that I had at that time, the being in the process, not necessarily doing, but like having, being in this place that the rest of the world kind of fell away from me in those final phases, to have something so intense, to have a team around me so focused on supporting. And like, it took me a couple months after that squat. I finally, one day I woke up and I was like, Oh, welcome back to the world. Like I was in such a mental fog. Like I was, it took me a while to climb out of that, but that space, that level of intensity and drive and living and being in that space, I do miss that. But I also, I can't continue that. I couldn't continue, like, there's a point of like, you push it so hard. the level to try to go from there is not acceptable for what you, the impacts that'll have on your life or how you want to live. And it was taking away those final, like I had to do extreme things and live in an extreme way to, to, to get there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're just a genius in this whole space of strength and health and almost like biology that, uh, this strength feat is just one representation of that. But this particular strength feat required that kind of singular focus, which I think, I don't know, there's something beautiful about that singular focus. There is. Often only truly perfected in athletics. I see it with the greatest Olympic athletes as well. The kind of singular focus required there is incredible. It's somehow some of the most beautiful things that humans can do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it's not just that thing. So that's the thing, it's like, oh, that must be it. When we say singularity of focus, it's not like, here's it, because it covers a vast array of stuff. Like I was working with people, you know, all, well, yeah, all around North America. I wouldn't say anybody around the globe, but professionals coming in, working on different aspects of rehab and recovery. And like, I mean, I'm tapping all sorts of stuff in so many platforms. from nutrition to drugs to, again, like, you know, various Chinese medicine, you know, as far as, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also the humans in your life, just love and positivity and just inspiration, all those kinds of aspects. I mean, you probably would have done much more if you went outside North America and talked to some Russians, just between you and I. Some Russians. Possibly. They give you some, I don't know, those there's some incredible strength athletes in Eastern Europe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I've got the best one coming in September to get fixed. So what do you mean by fixed? So I'm not sure what his particular issues are, but he has held the all time world record repeatedly for a long time and he hasn't competed for some time. And he just reached out saying, He would like to come and have me take a look and see if I can get him fixed because he needs to return." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so it's more injury-centric versus like form and fundamental-centric combination of everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everybody always wants to focus on the output. How do you give me the fix for that? But it ties right back into all those other things, right? So but yeah, the eastern the eastern block continued to be a dominant force in regards to athletics and strength athletics, without a doubt. Some of my big rivals in my competitive days were that's who it was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Rivalry brings out the best in us. Can you tell me the story of your childhood?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's definitely outside the scope of the norm. Well, today, maybe not 150 or 200 years ago, but my parents, highly intelligent, you know, people coming out of the Bay Area. My mom was going to school to be a chemical engineer. She was a top student athlete, graduated out of her school. My father was a member of Mensa. My stepfather was just a genius, but not able to really function in society. But my mom, she had some demons and some other stuff. She just said one day, she's like, I just don't want to be part of society. She still isn't. Lives out in the desert, but has her minds, but she wanted to figure out a way to make a life outside of that. And so that's where we ended up is up in the mountains in Northern California. A lot of that was, you know, them trying to get into successfully growing marijuana, which back in that, you know, wasn't legal back then, highly illegal. And in fact, those areas were some of the areas where I lived were quite dangerous. So there's a documentary. Murder Mountain that came out recently. If you watch that, you'll tie into my book, just the understanding of the stuff that I was talking about dealing with serial killers, human trafficking, police corruption, murderers, like just how real that stuff is if it doesn't capture you from the book, okay?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The book, by the way, is The Eagle and the Dragon. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm a terrible salesperson, like I told you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's a good title. I don't know if you came up with it, but... I did, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So yeah, we'll talk about that anyway. We're living by a stream, you know, off a meadow. There's no roads into where you have to hike in. And we've got beams lashed into the trees up above us, because that's where our bedding is, because there's rattlesnake dens all around. And six years old, I'm being taught how to capture and handle live rattlesnakes, because that's what I need to do to be safe. And you can imagine, six years old, sitting there with a live rattlesnake in your hand, grabbing it by the side of the head, controlling so it can't bite you. And it's just wrapping itself around your arm, and you're staring at it. right then is to kill you. Like that's it, right? You want to take a bath, it's filling up the jug in the stream and setting it out on the rocks during the sun so you can dump it over your head. And you know, not all the living was that way. You know, good part was similar to that tent living, living in a 16-foot trailer with a family of six, which is not much bigger than the space that we're sitting here. So we're talking hard winters with feet of snow on the ground, nowhere to go. I'm living in the back of the pickup truck. just a standard sleeping bag that we get from the Salvation Army, not the Blow Zero. So I'm not sleeping well. There's living in homes that were maybe condemned. There's no doors even on them, no electricity or running water, or one or the other, or both, and sometimes a little bit better. By the time we got to high school, we had a mobile home. So my stepfather had won a disability payment because he had a broken arm that whole time from an accident a long time ago, and finally got an award and got a down payment on this mobile home that didn't have, again, doors on the inside. It did have running water. It did have electricity. It didn't have a kitchen. You know, the windows would crank closed and open, but they wouldn't close all the way, so they'll trim them in with plastic to be able to try to protect from the elements. That was my environment, like learning how to forage for mushrooms. I mean, there were summers I would send and my parents would be out. They were in the drug trade earlier. We got taken by the by the police and put into foster care for a while, which ties into some of the stories with human trafficking. And honestly, it's in my book, but it's really hard for me to talk about that stuff. And obviously not all that's in the book. So, but they got us back and we moved to Oregon and they stayed out of the drug trade from that time to ensure that they didn't lose us again, but quickly we kind of fell back into the same thing. So at that point it was learning about geology and starting to do mining and firewood cutting, but mostly the mining, because Pat's broken arm chainsaw made a little tough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you remember just the sequence of moments, are you haunted by the darker moments of your childhood? Do you remember moments of simple joy and happiness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Outside of the living around dangerous people and the interactions that came from that, We were a family, like we were a cohesive unit battling against the world together. We spent all our time together, work, play, I was there. I was helping raise my siblings or I was working with them. And, you know, it was a constant, like I said, we were very physically active. So, you know, I had that in my upbringing. I had a plug for my shoe company, Barefoot, B-E-A-R. I ran around the wilderness and bare feet all the time, you know, but it was, I had a lot of great moments and I'm thankful for a lot of that childhood once we take out the trauma and the other stuff associated with it, right? And so the connection that I have with my sisters is huge. That goes a bit further because I am kind of like a little bit of a father figure because I was at home raising them and then later I took custody of them. while I was going to school because the environment at home deteriorated further. Their stepfather, like I said, he wasn't capable of managing life. And my mom had a mental breakdown and took off to Montana, and he descended into madness, even worse. Actually took my 13-year-old sister and kicked her out in the middle of winter, a couple feet of snow on the ground, because he thought she stole his favorite cereal bowl. Um, type. So that's when I took in and I was going to college, putting myself through college and I started taking custody of my sisters and raising them. So anyway, we're still like very. very tight family. There was a few years later in life that the connection with my mother was kind of broken. I didn't speak to her for years because of her basically abandoning my sisters and me having to come in, but we've worked through that as best we can. So you anger on your part? It wasn't There might've been some anger. Um, did you always love her? Yes. And I still do. And I'm so she's taught me basically everything I know about strength and perseverance and living life on your terms and being able to, to create that. And so much of what I am is from that, right? We've all had to learn to, be okay with the way she is because she is just blunt but you know she's the one that figured out that the human trafficking situation and got, got the DA involved and got all the, she's the one that I've learned a lot from her. And, uh, did you inherit some of the demons? Oh, most certainly. And I, it's something I've continued, like, uh, in my father's side of, has been, really tough on that because some of it is just based genetic as well. So my stepfather made, I think, six or seven attempts on his life during his lifetime. One of those in front of me. His mother blew her head off with a shotgun. Her brother jumped out a window in LA. Their father did something similar. And I don't know how far back it goes because there is no family except for me and my children." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You spoke about going through depression yourself. Yeah. Can you talk about some of the darker moments of that? Have you ever, like many in your family, have you ever considered suicide? Yes, I have." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I have." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've achieved a lot of exceptional things in your life. Can you talk about those early days of depression and how you overcame it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So the things that I did that people give me accolades for are the things that I did selfishly to save myself. The things like taking custody of my sisters, being the person that everybody around, you know, the, the important people relied on the fact that I had to step to the plate and be present and be that person. Because if I failed, they failed. They would be like the people that I grew up with that are dead or in prison or on drugs and they're either way to one of those, right? That's where everybody ended. And I wasn't going to let that happen. What about saving yourself? And so that's how in those early days, that's how I did it. Not saying it's the best approach, but it was survivor mentality. It was I can't selfishly do that because I have them to take care of. Right. And then that continued where I would keep putting myself in these leadership roles or other things. And there's always being this person that was at the center, at the hub that forced me to be there. And so it's only in the more recent, you know, last decade or so that I have had to really learn how to come and start confronting some of those demons. And you think, man, why is the guy so successful? Like, I mean, and we haven't talked about all the stuff that I've done, but like, I've seen a lot of success in both business leadership, athletics, academics, entrepreneurship, all these sorts of things, right? But if it wasn't for, you know, having kids and the same being in the position, I wouldn't be here. If it, and that's just, that's the reality of it. And I'm learning to, to come and manage those as best I can learning to meditate into those things and really feel what the driver is so I can get to those. those root understanding and having some guidance doing so. If you've got mental health issues, this isn't something that you need to tackle on your own. Having a professional that can help guide you on that introspective journey is something like, it's not like, hey, I'm a big tough guy, I can handle everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, that's fascinating that you saved yourself. That's quite powerful to save yourself by having others depend on you. And so you can't fail. You can't fuck it up. And that's a reason to keep moving forward. But on the flip side, that's not addressing the darkness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not. And it probably not a sustainable strategy either." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So I recognize these. I don't know. Perhaps it is sustainable. Perhaps, I mean, there's something beautiful about giving yourself basically in service of others and thereby creating purpose. And then like, it's almost like fake it till you make it and then you make it eventually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is purpose though. That is purpose. I mean, you have to, to me, life is about, taking your cup and how you choose to pour it out, how you choose to give, what is your purpose? What is that connection with everybody around you? That's the intent, that's the life, that's what life is about. How are you going to help those around you? How are you gonna help the world? Your purpose is right here, figuring out what this is and then how to do that. But at the same time, you can't let that run dry, so you have to make sure that you're filling that up. That's the other side, right? That's the other side." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We'll return to your engineering degree, which you're obviously scientifically engineering minded, which is fascinating. Your book is titled The Eagle and the Dragon. What do the eagle and the dragon symbolize?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're pretty big symbols for me, in fact, that covers my entire body as a tattoo. So the first one I had done is around 19 years old. And so this is, or started at 19. It's an eagle that covers my entire front, you know, my stomach, rib cage, and one that was on my back that covered most of my back. And there's chained at the, Well, at the claw, I guess. And the chain wraps down around and attaches to my ankle, and there's a shackle there. And so this was something that I had done at that age because it was, to me, it was a representation of your potential, your strengths, your abilities, that you can fly to whatever height that you want in this world. The only thing holding you back at the end of the day is yourself. And this was, I hadn't necessarily accomplished a whole lot at that time. I mean, I was valedictorian for high school, small high school. Does that even count? I was a state level wrestler. This was my belief." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And- You sensed that there was a potential in you and the only thing that could stop you from realizing that potential was yourself. That's right. That's a heck of a tattoo to get, by the way, at 19." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But 40 hours went into that thing. It shows you got some guts. And then the next tattoo. So I only have two I had done in 2015, 2016, when I so at this point in my life, So I had done that. I had flown to whatever heights, right? So I had proven to myself and maybe done what I thought I needed to do to show the world that this poor kid from the sticks, this kid growing up in the mountains with nothing could achieve the American dream. I was a corporate executive sought after. that I'd come in, I'd fix companies, I'd turn around and prep them for sale. I'd take a company and grow it from a regional to a national to a global presence. I did this in the automotive manufacturing, aerospace manufacturing, high-tech, heavy industry. And I had a house with a white picket fence. I was a successful athlete with all-time world records. I owned a gym on the side where I coached people. And I had a comfortable marriage that everything was hunky-dory with no arguments at home and I walked away from all of it. I left everything behind except for my kids. I wanted to chase what I was meant to do and chase what I was capable of doing. I wanted to become a better version of myself, but very intentfully. And that's what I did. I sold. I had multiple homes, sold my homes. I cashed in all my retirement that I'd earned for 20, nearly 20 years. And I lost all that. I leveraged myself millions of dollars of personal debt so that if I failed, there was no way out. Even going back to that old career that I did well, I'd be living in an apartment the rest of my life paying it off. People questioned me at the time because I had a comfortable, easy marriage. And I chose to ask for a divorce. And I ended up living in an apartment for a couple of years with no income, selling off every last thing that I had except for my two vehicles that I built and with my kids. And I started my businesses to help people live a better quality of life, to get them out of pain, to help them live better through strength, to realize that stress, demand, those things, they don't have to be the thing that, if you look back, made you have the bad back, made you have the bad Ds, but they do the opposite. They get you out of pain. And then I started working on my book to hit on those other things, the mental, the emotional, maybe even spiritual. I don't touch on that one too much in there, but it's all the same. things that happen around you to you, like maybe they're bad, I can't take away that, but why can't you use what you have of it to become a stronger and better person, to become more resilient, to be able to take the things that you don't know that are coming in the future. And so this is very intentful and that's what the second I'm long-winded to answering your question here. The dragon. The dragon. The dragon is an Ouroboros. And so it circles my entire upper body, my shoulders, my back, my chest, everything. It's right here. There's this big dragon head and its tail is right there in its mouth. It's eating itself. It may sound a bit graphic or whatever, but it's the eating of the old becoming the new. It is the purposeful reinvention of oneself. It is the deciding. not realizing just your potential, but deciding specifically who you want to be in this fucking world and becoming that person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you comment on the value and the power of putting a flame to your old life, your old self, just destroying all of it? as you walk into the new life, you know, did you have to do that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't recommend this, by the way, because when you put yourself in no way out, there is no way out. Yeah. OK, like you got to really No, but I can be an overconfident individual at times. And I live, I live through extremes. I think it's a great way of actually finding your real values and how you want to live honestly, to chase the having absolutely perfect squat technique, but chase putting every freaking thing that you got in it, which most people would say those are those are opposite, those are diametrically opposed. I wanted a better home life. I wanted to do more in the world through my work. And the burning the bridges mentality is not necessarily, you know, the best. There was some temperament in that, though, because I was slow to make the shift for a long time, because I'd been thinking about doing it. But I was thinking about doing it in a health care perspective. I'm going to go back to school to be a surgeon or a physical therapist or a chiro, because that's where all my research and stuff was in this human movement and rehab and recovery. The mentors that I'd been developing were the best in the world in these things, in these disciplines. Those were my friends. But I wasn't able to compromise my family's certain quality of life. I wanted to keep that. So it was slow and hard for me to make that transition, but I didn't do it until I had a platform built enough that those first few years, I did have an income. I was able to make enough from the business until it grew so fast that I needed, so much more needed to come in. The living in the apartment piece and doing all that, that was actually a couple years into that process, maybe like two years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm with you on that. So I'm actually going through that very process now. I put everything, I quit everything, gave away everything and starting anew. And unfortunately, or fortunately, this podcast somehow became quite popular. So it's getting in the way of my burning everything to the ground. But in that it's a source of joy. But the main thing I'm after is the similar project as you is building a business." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sense of joy. So this is the point I want to drive home right now, right now. Because when I say burn, I learned that burning the bridges works because that's how I had to succeed when I was earlier. The bridges weren't burnt. They didn't exist. There was no couch to go home to. There was no fallback plan. And it forced me and gave me the confidence to know that I can pull it off. But I don't encourage people because there's so much out there of this hustle porn and other stuff going, just grind, just go after it, get in and start your, like, you'll get there. And it's all about the output, to make money, to be somebody, to do this. And I'll tell you what, that is some short-term motivation right there. I feel like dropping a few swear words, but- You're always welcome." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We've already done a few, so we'll- All right, we'll balance it out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is short term. That is not going to keep you going this neat. If you're going to go that approach, it needs to be because this is your North star. There's going to be so much hard work. There's going to be years of just pushing through where your quest, not only is everybody around you questioning you and your family's questioning you, you're questioning yourself going, man, I don't know if I can pull this off. You're going to be stressed. You're going to be pulled to the max. If somebody comes up to me and says, should I start a business? I'm going to say no. And oh, you're supposed to motivate me. If you need me to motivate you, this is the wrong damn approach for you. This is going to be hard. This is going to be harder than you expect, even with me telling you this. And so it better damn well be worth it. This better be your North fucking star. This better live and be a way for you to be able to articulate or realize those values that you want to live. This isn't something to make money. This is a way for you to live the life and be able to share the values that you have with the world. And that's what it is. And if you don't have that, which is going to give you joy, then freaking walk away. Yeah. There's just not some way to make some money and be known." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, this includes both like simple day-to-day joy and also deep meaning. Exactly. The whole thing. And then that allows you to overcome all the pain along the way. But I gotta say, I mean, it's a difficult thing because you run a business. This podcast and a lot of things I do research-wise is full of joy, but it's simple. Running a business is hard. So it's something that I'm very hesitant about. in that to almost push back a little bit, I think if I do get the guts to start the business, it will not be because I'm not choosing a more joyful life because I'm already truly happy. The reason I'll choose is because I just can't help it. There's this, I've always had this dream and I know it's gonna lead to suffering, and I know it's gonna be a life that has less happiness in it, as sad as this to say." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it won't be. It won't be less happiness. because we talk about this cup and where you choose to pour it and what you choose to do with it. And when you look back on things, the things that are gonna give you the most joy, the most proud, the things that are gonna stand out in your life that you really remember are gonna be those days. And those years you struggle, you're gonna look back on 10 years later and go, Fuck. Those were the glory days. Those were the glory days. And it won't feel like it at the time. So that's what life's made of. And so this is your, this is your opportunity. You feel that. So right now you got this, when you think about it, you got this little thing twisting up in your gut, right? It's like, it's a mixture of anxiety and fear as well as excitement. And that is, that's your signal that this is your opportunity for that personal growth, to challenge yourself. This is your going for a run or working out in the heat. It's, it's those things. It is your opportunity to go, heck, Maybe it even fails. Maybe it even fails. But by turning into that? you're gonna learn so much and it's gonna make you so much better. And it's the path that you should take when you have this stuff rolling around in there. And I don't, it could just be a hard conversation with your partner or your boss. It could be taking on a project that your boss has thrown out to the team and you're like, oh, I'm gonna hide in the back. I don't want that one. And it's like, maybe you do. Maybe it's going back to school. Maybe it's making that career move that you always wanted, but you're just afraid of. All these things are your opportunity for you to turn into that. It is your workout. It is your practice. Because if you don't, you'll get soft. And who knows what's coming and you're not gonna be ready for it. And it's gonna run right over the top of you because you're gonna be weak. You're gonna be soft." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's some aspect in which choosing that hard path is actually the way to arrive at the richest kind of happiness, the greatest fulfillment. That's the funny thing about just the human." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But just make sure you're filling the cup as you're going through it, not pouring it all out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the part to figure out, right? Sure. Well, life is short anyway. Eventually the cup will be empty. So maybe time the refilling of the cup correctly so you maximize the little time you got. Let me talk to you about strength a little bit. First, high level. What are the differences in the different disciplines of strength? So powerlifting we talked about. Maybe just to clarify for people, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, just regular gym fitness, bodybuilding, doing curls in front of the mirror for hours like I do. What's the difference between all of these? Oh, and also strongman." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Every one of those, as far as the athletic disciplines, are different qualities. So we want to think about things as terms of quality. So there's strength, there's power, there's endurance, there's the ability to be coordinated and athletic. There's all these things, and they're different qualities. So your training, as it relates to that, is how you cycle in the development of those qualities. what we want to think about is there's a lot of different frames of thought, some very classical, maybe not classical Russian approach, because there's a lot of different approach from the Eastern bloc. But one of the ones is developing all the qualities at once, you know, focusing on building those more of a periodization effect would be focusing on one quality at a time or one quality while maintaining other qualities and then shifting that around. So it's just going to be a little different based on what the output is and what the desired. So like power lifting is actually power is the wrong word. There's actually no power in it. It's just brute. It's strength. application of force. Olympic lifting would actually be a better name for powerlifting because that is more explosive development. There's strongman is again, now we're getting a little bit more athletic. It's equipment based on the implements and stuff that are used, how fast you can move your feet and run mixed with more endurance, but still very strength focused. And there's some things with strongman that is straight, like each one of these is very also focused on different genetic dispositions. So actually, if you look at the history of sports, you'll find that they're a lot of times based on different populations. And it sounds like it's very un-PC, but like Highland Games, they've got deeper hip sockets that are shallow. So you're going to see a lot of short hip hinge movements, like the caber toss and things like that. Muay Thai wrestling, they've got a completely different hip joint. And so Strongman itself is going to be for very large frame individuals. If you're not well over six foot and a large person, you're probably not going to perform well. Very few people at sub six foot have ever done well at Strongman just because it's leverage based, right? Olympic lifting. We see consistently in Europe, The history tells us a high level of hip and back issues because of the depth that that hip socket has to go in to be able to complete that lift. And so you're going to see issues with populations that don't have the ability to do that. So we've talked a little bit about training as well as disposition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and also CrossFit fits into that. That's more like strongman, but for a wider variety of bodies, I suppose." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, and definitely more metabolic conditioning focused than the strength aspect of it. And conditioning is an interesting thing, too. So that quality, in my opinion, can be developed a lot faster, but kind of peaks much faster as well. So where strength, we can continue to add and add and add over time. So it's, for me, like for conditioning with any strength athlete, I don't like to spend as much time on that. So I'll cycle the conditioning work for our strength athletes and then taper that off leading into meat. So the more metabolic work, that means the more capacity in strength training that you can accomplish, which is the goal. and recover from, but then as we lead to a competition, we want to spend more time on recovering from that. So we have to pull things out. So we'd pull out less. So like a typical approach would be like taking a six-week cycle for conditioning and ramping up over three weeks periods time, then dropping back down again. and ramping up and being slightly offset by like a week or two from your strength peaks so that you've actually tapered the week prior in your conditioning work to your strength work, right? But that way we're not hitting conditioning hard all the time, which is a common misstep that people make is going, well, I need conditioning. So they just hammer that at a base level over the top instead of cycling that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we talk about powerlifting in terms of regimen, in terms of exercise, in terms of the process, the wood consistent with what? Is there something to be said about general qualities of the consistency of the regimen required to get strong?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So let's talk about some training principles as a whole. And this will, I think this will break down what you're wanting. The more work that we can fit into a given time, the more progress we're going to make. But that doesn't mean doing the max amount of work possible at any given time. So we know that we're always to accomplish more, we're always going to have more. And there's a certain ceiling that you're going to hit that you're not going to be able to add more. So you want to start and get the most amount of results that you can with the least amount of work, because you're going to have to do it again, like this stair step over and over. year, decade, so on. So when people, this is a big miss people got, they look at a Chico program from Russia or so on, and they go, I'm going to follow this. And it's like, that was specifically written for somebody with 20 years of experience. that's already built the capacities to be at that level. So it's all about building that work capacity. So how much work can you give in a given time? So now, we want to look at some research as it relates to injuries, because injuries are going to be a big driver over time of what holds you back. So when we talk consistency, training hard for three years, five years, it's gonna be really good. But what we find is a lot of people train really hard for nine months, have to slow back for a month, get back into it, then miss another week because, and so on. They're always like this little nagging, that little nagging. And so it's pretty clear in the research, we're looking at, when we're stair-stepping this stuff, we're looking at acute and chronic loading. So some fancy words for average and like what's happening right now. So this given week would be our acute chronic would be what is our average loading, let's say over the last six months. Okay. So the more that we can move the chronic loading up, the more work we're getting done on as a whole over time, we're going to get stronger. The way that we build the capacity to do that is having spikes in acute loading. Okay. Now, as we do this, the acute loading, if it spikes more than 10, maybe 15% from what the chronic loading has been, that accounts for 80% of injuries out there. So it's not actually the movement quality or this misstep or the other. It usually happens about four or five, six weeks later. It's like, Oh, this nagging. And then it gets worse. And then now you gotta, you gotta do some rehab. Your training sessions aren't as good and so on. So now we're starting to look at this. Okay. It's like, I want to do the, I want to do the least amount of work where I can still progress. I want to be able to have spikes in my weekly demand that don't go above 10 to 15% of what I've been averaging for the last month. But every time I do a spike, my average goes up, right? Boom, boom, boom. And then that becomes very particular also when you do take planned time off. So a lot of people, training session, maybe they're doing a five-week block with a deload week, or you go on vacation for a week, or any of those things that were a downward, what does that do to your average and chronic loading? It brings it down. And then what does the person want to do when they come back? Make up for it. Now they have a huge spike above, five weeks later, we're dealing with, ah, this elbow, this wrist, whatever's kind of bothering me, and now you're not performing as much. So these are some really fundamental pieces of, of, of, of training. And then now we can start overlaying the qualities that we're trying to develop that we were talking about earlier. So now it's, let's talk about my deadlift, my thousand pound deadlift. We'll talk about the training cycles for both the thousand deadlift and squat. So backing up a year out from the deadlift, knowing I was training at the time, heavy deadlifts once a week. And usually it was two of those sessions a month were really heavy and the others weren't. And it's like, okay, how can we get this up to where I'm deadlifting twice a week? because that's where I want to be to be able to accomplish this. I need to be loading about that much with frequency with a certain volume to be able to accomplish this goal. We're not going to go through all the math and stuff like that and how that's arrived, but there is math behind this. And so instead of just like, oh, well, let's start deadlifting twice a week. No. So we start and we take the one session that we've got and we split it, part of it, take part of it away and put it in the second half of the week. So the total volume is still the same. And then we start adding some volume, but I'm doing it at a off a block so that the actual load is accumulative load is less because I have less range of motion. And then we start building that closer to the ground, closer to the ground and so on. And now we start getting to where I'm almost doing two sessions, full sessions a week. And then we start adding a little bit of load. And so at my level, this isn't talking about adding another set. or another day a week, we're talking like in my squat, it might be one rep. Instead of doing three sets of three at one week, I do two doubles or two triples, then two doubles to give me one more rep. That's it. And so we're doing that from one week to the next, and that's a cycle, training cycle. It might be five, six weeks, and then so on, and the next one, and slowly bringing that average load up. So the last phases of the squat, for example, we took the average loading every week of my heavy sets. So once we developed all this stuff over the last year to get to this point, now it is taking and going, okay, my average load this week is eight reps at 955 pounds. And then the next week, let's get it to 957, 963. And this was pretty aggressive, working up to where my average loading the final, that the final was 985 pounds, average load for eight to nine reps. And that's why I said, this is the intense part. That was why it was, the day of was much easier. That week over week is pretty brutal. May not sound, oh, you're just squatting. And now let's back it up. Let's look at the quality development. So a year out from the squat, Um, obviously they've been working on developing axial load capacity, my capacity to withstand load from top to bottom. So I like thinking about things and movement vectors. So this vector is an axial loaded vector is the hardest to recover from." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, sorry, what's axial. So like is deadlift, are they both?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep. So a horizontal, a front to back would be like a row or a press." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is the axial hardest to recover from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it's the entire body, the entire- Entire body, just anything that taxes the spinal mechanics. I could tell you my beliefs, it's studied, it is, okay? We can just keep the discussion on that short like that. So we start looking at those different vectors that we're training in. So this is why, this is important to understand. So I'm not just getting into nuance here. Hey, squatting is going to make me jump further, because it's legs. Well, squatting is an axial load vector and jumping is a vector this way. So actually hip thrust would help with your, and this is proven in science, with your forward jumping ability. They're both working similar muscles, the glute extension, but they're working it in those different platforms. So it's really important to understand because people don't understand. I'm building my work capacity by doing sled pushes. You're not developing your work capacity for squatting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Most movements, even ones as holistic as a as a squat, require specialization. Yeah. You can't get strong at the squad by doing it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're going to have some carry over. Right. Obviously. But because taking an untrained person that hasn't done it is still not going to do as good as somebody that's done nonspecific work, but done work. So but yes, for the most part, to get truly strong, you need to specialize. So but not all the time. So now we talk about quality. So, and if we specialize in the same thing too long, we stagnate because the body adapts to a certain point and just can't make progress. So we wanted to save the actual squatting in the pattern with the bar that I was doing for the very end. So starting a year out, I started doing work front squatting. like a squat, axial loaded pattern, and worked on maximizing that up. Then I started shifting to doing transformer bar squat. It's this bar I developed that actually changed and manipulates spinal mechanics. So I started loading in these more forward positions and being able, again, so now I'm getting closer than a front squat, but not quite squatting. And then I would start adjusting that bar every training cycle to closer to a squat, closer to a squat till it finally was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the difference between a front squat and a regular back squat? In terms of the stress on the body, the mechanics, was there something interesting to be said about, how fundamentally different are they?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what's interesting, people think about the weight in position to them like, oh, the bar's in front of me, the bar's behind me, which is not the case. The bar is above your midfoot. The load is above your midfoot. So we're actually manipulating the spine behind the bar. So we're causing spinal uprighting behind the bar, getting in a more erect position, which is gonna change the relationship of the hip angle. It's gonna change our ability to maintain the spine. It's going to change how much the core comes in, how hard it is to maintain that sternum to diaphragm relationship that we talked about. All this stuff starts changing. So the bar stays in the same place. The bar is still behind you, but the load, moves around so, but we're actually manipulating the spine around the load. Yeah. It's incredible. We can tailor it to an athlete, which is great when you got a seven foot plus tall baseball player or a basketball player. That's why we work with all these teams. Anyway, so it's like, you're taking something and getting closer and closer to it. At the same time, we're looking at the quality. So like, I needed to be able to really hold this torso position with the weight moving up here. Now, unlike the deadlift, the ability to manage this TL position, becomes much more challenging. So that was also why I was choosing the transformer bar because it actually challenges that more in those big forward positions. I was also working on my back strength tremendously to be able to hold and maintain position. So there was a lot of like, I chose a bent over rows. So bent over row is a mixed vector. So it's a forward to back. So it wouldn't have as much carrier, but it's also, um, I got some axial loading component in it as well. So we're working on that. And then as it, as we get closer and closer to competition, I'm developing those strengths, but now I need to start tapering those out. So all of my recovery needs can now go into the more specific that I'm actually ramping the load up. So as I'm ramping the load on the weight, I'm able to ramp it a lot faster because I'm tapering out the other stuff. So I can still keep my total load high, but now get it very, very specific. So everything I've done has always been kind of an annual training cycle. And then again, this was like a, this was a five-year training cycle, but we just kind of walked through the last year of each and you can see how these concepts play out in reality." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in the cycling, so this is both for you, but also for more recreational strength athletes, let's say, there's variety injected into the system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You need variety. Yeah, yeah. Because you will basically stagnate at some level, right? So you should always be kind of shifting a little bit. So three to four month blocks in general, for an average, you know, just a gen pop fitness is pretty good, where you're going to spend more time maybe in a higher rep range or lower rep range a little bit more. Uh, work on, uh, endurance capacity or maybe some more time. Hey, I'm playing around with boxing or jujitsu or something like that. Bring that a little bit more to the front forefront for awhile and bring the other out. But like mixing, mixing those variables up, but trying to keep the total load the same and always kind of like, yeah, do we add a little more again? It doesn't have to be major and it shouldn't be major. You don't want these big jumps. You don't go, oh my God, let's move. Uh, let's jump into squatting every day. Um, you've got to build the capacity to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's simple. What role would you say strength has in sports that combine skill and strength? So for me personally, maybe I'll just ask it selfishly, which is grappling, wrestling, MMA." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. How about I start with baseball?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Please. Baseball and golf are two of my favorite sports. You don't have to be in shape at all to excel at those sports. Here's the thing. We're going to get this argument." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I've got a perfect example, because this is why I sell so many transformer bars into the Major League Baseball. So they get these people that come in, these athletes, that have been baseball their whole life. It is part of the culture. And so they're great athletes. They've got all the skill. The only thing they have to do is develop a little bit more resilience. so that they don't have the injury. They can push their training a little bit more, that we can add a little bit more force output and be able to recover from it. So the only thing they've got to do is add some training, but there's no training culture there. So they don't have any experience, which is why they love the transformer bar, because they don't have to worry about teaching the technique. We can actually set the bar on a setting that makes their squats perfect by queuing all the stuff with actually not having to coach it. Because when you're coaching a room full of athletes, It's really hard to teach the nuance of all this and not sure that all that, but that's all that they have to do with these players with a huge level of skill. So once you reach a certain level of skill, adding strength. is the only real forward path. So that's the basic simple answer to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the benefits there being like injury prevention, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Injury prevention, resilience, because especially fighting sports, you're going to be challenged and thrown and other things happen to you. And the more resilient you can make your structures, the better you're gonna be. Even a cyclist, mountain biking, why would they need it? Why would they need to do upper body training? Take a crash, your shoulder's gone. you're done, your career's over, unless you've done a little training, right? So there's value in all this stuff, but the resilience is like, that's huge. And then we can overlay strength. Where we miss is this focus on strength when we haven't developed quality motor patterns first. So this is a huge thing with children, because people wanna know what's the appropriate training age. I'd had my daughter training before my son, because she developed movement patterns at a better quality earlier. There's no age because it's gonna be very dependent on the individual. There's no point in having adaptation if we don't have the right thing to adapt to yet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that applies to general movement, but also to sport. So you're saying the skills should be developed first and then the strength applied on top of that. Yep. Maybe you can educate me, but. I actually quit lifting and power lifting for a long time after I started judo, jiu-jitsu, grappling, all this sort of combat sports, because I found that it was preventing me from relaxing my body enough to load in the skill." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this isn't a problem with the training. this is a problem with you. So this is actually really, really important. The first product I ever released was a loadable mace, a swinging mace. And because every power lifter and body, well, not every, but most serious power lifters and bodybuilders, like shoulders, mobility is pretty limited. And most of them really, really struggle with this. The problem is they've been taught to have tension all the time. And that's not good. So when we talk about the joint positions that we were talking about earlier and having those and the muscles in the right length and tension relationship, athleticism is the speed to relaxation because the counter is speed to contraction. float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, right? And so what a mace can do is use that, because this ties back into developmental kinesiology. A lot of like reset patterns are getting back into these basic movements, but it's as much about relaxation as it is contraction. Okay. So a mace, we have this weight on a big, long lever. So I, if I grab a kettlebell and this would be like, that's the same movement as a kettlebell halo. It is the same movement as a kid, but here in the halo, I'm on the whole time. With the mace at the proper length, with the right distribution, you cannot do the movement. You could not move, force your way through it. The only way that you can accomplish that is by relaxing. And then now we can contract all the muscles related around that shoulder girdle all at once. We're working on, off, on, off, on, off. with moving and contracting. And now, so what happens a lot of times as we, you know, this stiffness and tightness happens, if we're in poor positions, we start using stabilizer muscles to do the movement. And then that's where this stiffness comes from. So it means that in some of whatever training that you're doing, there's a deficit in the movement quality. Okay. Or there's a deficit in the training program and you're not recovering from. And 80% of the time, that's the right answer, right? But yeah, that's where the gap is and learning how to relax and the way a lot of the exercises are taught and have been taught for a long time, which is why there's a big gap. And this is why both clinical rehab and all these other components are mixed in my philosophy and what I'm trying to do with Kabuki Strength. because I'm looking at holistic movement. I'm not looking at powerlifting. Base movements are what I want to load and be able to assess on, but this affects all sports, all activities, and strength doesn't have to be that. I mean, I'm freaking a thousand pound squatter and deadlifter. If you watch any of my videos where I do like complete quad fallbacks, I don't stretch at all. I can usually get close to a full split, like if I want to. What?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I did not see those videos. Okay. That's hard to believe. Wow. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, I do. I just did one recently, a quad fallback with my mace loaded way out to the end, torsioning on both ends of the other. I do a lot of weird stuff. That's awesome. Okay. Squatting doesn't make your hips tight. Squatting like shit makes your hips tight. Beautiful. But there is no perfect world. We're always our training program isn't quite perfect. Our movement isn't necessarily perfect. Like, so you're going to have the needs for this stuff. But if you're always have to do some soft tissue work to loosen up the same one for that exercise, to be able to get a joint in position. there is a problem. And I'm not saying don't do it, do it because I don't want you to have a joint. Like if I can't get my shoulders in a position, I can't do overhead presses because I'm going to compromise my spine position. Then I'm going to end up with some other problems, right? So go ahead and clean that up so you can get in position, but go figure out why it is and fix it. And then maybe next, you know, three, four months from now, they're going to get a little something else going on. fix it, but to understand the deeper root reason of why. So I believe I am the only company manufacturing and selling, you know, fascial soft tissue tools. And I'll tell you, I don't want you to use them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because it's not helping you get to the why, why it was caused in the first place. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The goal, the goal, the perfect state is not having to use them. Reality is you're going to have to use them from time to time because the world's not perfect. Yeah. So your discovery is 100% on point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's another side to combat sports. When you're beginning a particular combat sport, strength can be a negative because human psychology, because you can get away with a lot when you're stronger. Yes, you can. So if your mind is strong enough to where you can just turn off that advantage, and be a beginner, truly, in a particular art, that's probably the best way to do it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you can get away and then you don't learn. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. It's hard. It's hard not to use the little advantages you have, because jujitsu is a big hit on the ego for, you know, especially guys. like a smaller person just destroys you, dominates you when you can, I don't know, deadlift whatever number of pounds. And it's hard not to use that strength to then resist, slow the ultimate destruction by like 120 pounds." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But that and that's why I recommend developing the skill quality first. But it doesn't it doesn't mean that you can't make it. You can still do it. So that don't take it as a like, oh, I can't go that direction. That's fine. But understand those things and then also understand that jujitsu is additional load on the body. Yeah. So you have to you can't just add it on top. Yeah. You've got to taper back the other. You're going to have to make it. I'm sorry. You may not want to hear it. but you're not going to be able to do as much and add that here. It's a compromise because your total volume still has to be there. And there's not, unfortunately, not really a way to measure what the jujitsu volume is with this. So you've got to take a look at that. And that's where like measuring like heart rate variability or other stuff can be useful. So you can see what is happening for me from a sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system standpoint." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, making sure your body recovers efficiently and trying to put numbers to it. You mentioned Kabuki Strength. You run the Kabuki Strength Lab, previously called the Elite Performance Center in Oregon. You called it the perfect gym. What makes for the perfect strength training gym? I don't know where I called it the perfect gym. In a video somewhere I watched." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, man. I mean, that's where my testing grounds for developing all this stuff was through the years. And so this is, like I said, I started developing relationships with the best developmental kinesiologist in the US, the best, arguably the best or most well-known physical therapist in the world, the best spine biomechanist in the world. I started doing continuing education with these clinical courses and learning this stuff and going, but how does it work in my world, right? And then I started lecturing with them and all this other stuff. The lab was like, where do we test this stuff, right? And so let me get to a point. There's three things. There's always three things. So to be a success. To achieve success, I believe there's three things that really, really come into place. And it's the right methodology, the right tools, and the right environment. And so it was all about building that. And so the methodologies came from a lot of that different, that gray area, interaction of clinical with sports science, right? And then the tools I had to start creating and designing. And then the environment is having this, you know, focused environment of people that want to do better and push each other and having community and culture, right? I end up building these connections, this network, everything that I'm doing with my businesses. is trying to create that into a scalable fashion. And so I'm building the groundwork because to have a system that like, yeah, I had clinicals on site that knew exactly what we were doing. And when it's me and a few people in a small team and all this stuff, we're all just like easy to manage. And you can see these, there's other models around this. So I've been other areas since maybe whenever it was I filmed that video that said that, that they have that same model. And it's taken probably about a decade usually to develop that. you know, and having the right people in this community, they can create this, this network and the tool and all this stuff, right? Except they still don't have the best tools, because Kabuki strength didn't exist. But, but, and so out of that was is essentially started building this business and people like, when did you know how all this stuff was connected? And I'm like, I don't know, I didn't, I just started creating on the outset, the things that worked until finally, I'm like, oh, I'm recreating a scalable version of this stuff. Here's the methodologies and a coaching platform that we can manage clients around the globe and see what's working and not based on the scientific principles of training, right? How do we create that into a database that now we can train new coaches and they can use those same metrics and tools to create programs that are tailored to fit person's individual needs, right? Now, how do we integrate that with assessment and clinical care assessment and all these other pieces? So there's a lot of work in that. And so that's where Kabuki strength is the genesis, but we have, we call our gym, the Kabuki strength. lab, literally people find about our gym in the neighborhood. They're like, how long have you been here? Why do I not know about this? We don't advertise our gym at all. They're like, that makes no sense. Well, that's because the only reason is to have a testing environment for the tools and methodology and having enough people to have the culture and fit and to be able to be part of the experiment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about the environment of the feel of it, the actual gym? There's a, I don't know, a grunginess to it. I've recently became a member of Planet Fitness for reasons that have to do more with the heat in Austin that sometimes I need to put in time on the treadmill. I don't like that gym. I don't have any judgment, honestly. The best gyms I've been in are" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Kind of dirty. You walk in and you know that work is to be done. Yes. There's not another reason to do there. It is the the environment is tight. There's a big piece of that. I know it's studied sociologically, I believe. I just I just pictured that word, too. But but the intensity when you start growing a space, the intensity drops. And so I I had that experience when we grew. We went from a 4000 foot to a 9000 square foot gym at one time. And everybody's like, it doesn't feel the same. Like if people are complaining for years, we've shrunk it back down. Well, we're down to 3,500 square feet. And it creates that intensity. It creates the closest, the connection with the people around you. And then, like I said, the grunginess, like you go in, you know the intention when you walk in. That environment creates that tension. But when I speak environment, it's not just the, it's not the physical, it's the people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you know, when the gym is a little bit beat up, Yes. It also tells a story, like there's a history to it. You could tell that not only is there work to be done, that work has been done here. Yes. Like battles have been fought. There's something to that where you're just in a long line of people, you know, that fought and won." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And we could get into a whole nother space, this would be a whole nother topic, but that existing energy of a space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, we mentioned offline Joe Rogan, he talks about the same with comedy clubs. There's certain clubs that just have a history, there's an energy there, you can get all woo woo, but you know, it's there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a real thing, I think. You walk in and you can feel it. You feel it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You feel it. Yeah, that makes me feel that somehow all of us humans are connected in ways that's hard to describe, even the ones who are no longer here. Just the greatness that once was is still in the walls, in the space, present there. And we somehow can plug into that energy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. We can go down a path there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's something really powerful there. You've also mentioned a bunch of cool equipment that you've developed as part of Kabuki Strength. Probably a little bit of that has to do with your engineering education, but also just generally with the spirit of the innovator that you are. What are some cool, maybe revolutionary pieces of equipment that you're particularly proud of or just you've been obsessed with recently that you're developing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I love to talk about that. So we've got some wild, crazy stuff that just came out and is coming out too. So everything that we create and release at Kabuki Strength, The industry hasn't seen before. There's stuff that's basic foundational that's been around forever because it works. But there's always more. It could be better. And why are we not looking at these things, these foundational things? So when people are coming up with novel things, they end up being way different outside the perspective. And I'm coming up with things that are way different, that are plays on what we already know works. So we talked about the transform bar, the only bar in the world, we can manipulate spinal mechanics. We can, so everything, everything for me from a design concept that we develop is all about creating products that can rapidly accommodate to the variability of an individual's leverages, mobility, and training needs. Okay. And that's going to also create and distill down the size and scope of space that we need, which is going to be continue to be an ongoing thing. Check out my Instagram after this, and you'll see, I put an entire gym on the bed of my truck and went on vacation. Last week we drove to the desert and by entire gym. I mean Squat rack full complement of our specialty bars a horizontal and vertical pulley system handheld weights Shoulder rock like a complete an entire gym in product that took up the space the size of this bed right here That's incredible. Because of the design scope of what we have. So the cool thing is that there's two other bars that fit our biomechanically sound barbell lines. We talked about the transformer bar. The other two are built on this thing I called playground physics. So we have these bars with handles that are off off parallel with the axis. So they've been around the market for a long time. One is a hex bar or a trap bar. Another one is a, it's a pressing bar with the handles turned as well. And both of them suck. They're horrible. Anytime, any lifter knows if you pick it up, it's going to break your wrist and crush into your face. And it just, it just doesn't feel good pressing. but it alleviates the strain on the wrist. So people use it for that reason. And the trap bar, same thing. It's always diving forward in your hand. So it's kind of limited. It's also limited in use because you could do a lot more with it. So these bars are really cool playground physics. So as soon as the center of rotation is on the same axis as the center of mass, and the handle is off center, you have a teeter-totter. So a teeter-totter has a balance point, but it's infinitely perfect. So technically you can never find it. So it's always going to be sitting on one side or the other in a playground. And that's what these bars are designed. So you've got instability right here. You can't find the center. The bar is always trying to tip in your hands on the trap bar. So you can't do carries with it because you're doing for momentum and it wants to dip on you, right? The Swiss bar wants to crush your face. Well, what do we do? We just make a swing. put center of mass below center of rotation. And what does it do? Oh! had always find center. So the handles on our pressing bar, it's arced so that the handles are above center of rotation. And then every angle, instead of just being a certain fixed angles, each angle is based on the width, the average width of an individual. So the internal and external rotational bias of the shoulder is based on the width, leaving just a little bit left because we talked about the lat being a stabilizer. You still need to have a little bit of cue of external rotation to engage that as a stabilizer. Boom. Now all of a sudden you have a bar. And I kid you not, this is a great story. Major League Baseball, when I presented it, every head strength coach for a Major League Baseball team, maybe not every, but damn near most of them, have bad shoulders. They can't press, they've got shoulder surgeries, so on. And so we're showing them, they love all our stuff. And I'm like, hey, I've got this cool prototype I want to show you. It's a pressing bar. And they're like, oh, you know. Major League Baseball is a little hesitant on pressing, because of the dangers for the shoulder. And I haven't been able to take a bar to my chest. I mean, I'd really love to. It's been five years since I've been able to XX train. And I'm like, just try it. Like, I can't even get a bar to my chest without pain. I'm like, just try it. Put it in. Ooh, that feels good. Now, the arc makes it actually three inches deeper. So people are automatically scared. I can't do that, because that's an extra range of motion, right? Like, Oh, put a plate on there. They're doing it by that time. The staff's like, they're all standing around. You see, like, what's going on? Put two plates on. You see the, just like he gets up. How do you feel? Like, I feel fine, no pain at all. I did this with five teams, with five of the happening repeatedly five times. And every one of them worked up to two plates and did reps varied with zero pain to a three inch greater range of motion. Because what did we do? We stacked all the joints and we provided stability at the end. We balanced internal and external rotation. basic playground physics, and it changed the game. Now we get a greater range of motion with a greater training effect with the negative stresses removed. Our trap bar opened up one side, which there was already something like that out there, created, it pops up so you can pick up, take the weights on and off. It's got a built-in jack. And then created the high handle position, which already did it. Everybody uses the high handle on a trap bar. They just don't know why they like it. The handle that's on center, we offset just a little bit, not enough to make a difference on the range of motion lift. or even notice visibly, but it still has the same effect. So both handles now have that. We added the option of different handle sizes based on whatever your needs are, even a one that rolls to develop grip, and then different widths that you could choose from based on whether you're training a teen athlete or a seven foot six NBA player or a NFL lineman, so that we can accommodate for all these differences. And so, and then now it becomes the most functional all around bar around, because now you can do carries with it. You can do split squats with it. You could do curls with it because it goes around the body. You can do overhead presses because you don't have a thing that gets in your way and you can flip it up into position. You can do bent over rows and not run into your shins. You can do seal rows off of a bench. You can do ab rollouts. You could, should I go on? Yeah, so you could use it as like the main bar. The best multi-purpose bar around. You got a home gym, one bar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like how do you develop totally new equipment like this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I scratch it on paper, maybe cut up and weld up a prototype, but usually I just hand the scratched up paper to my engineering manager. And that's what he says his job is to distill my chicken scratch into something real. And then that team picks it up. But in the old days, starting out, I just walk out. I just walk out and do it. You talk about engineering. I work more of an artist fashion. It's in my head, and I just go create with no plans. And so they have to pick that up and actually do the engineering and testing and all that. And then we got two other products came out this year. Freaking wild. Are you familiar with training with a flywheel?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, it's a flywheel. Maybe I am." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A flywheel is a spinning object that creates inertial mass. Yeah. And then it reverses direction. So whatever you put into it, and there's ones out there, but ours is the first patent pending that's everything all in one unit. So it's a floor-based as well as a horizontal. So you can basically do any pulley movement in the world. And now everything that you put into it on a concentric force, it whips right back as a concentric load. Gotcha." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's an accelerating whipping motion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It just, yeah. Basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I mean, I have trouble imagining exactly. Many of the things you're describing, I suppose, have to be experienced, right? Yes. Because there's a magic to it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And there's a lot of research they've been around. They're adopted more heavily in Europe, quite heavily in Europe, but not as much in the US, because they sell them as a be-all, end-all tool, which they're not. They're crazy for what they do, but it's another tool. And so we have a very high quality unit now that is half the cost of everybody else's, because The innovation of a movable mount point that you, for them, you have to have two pieces of equipment. We have one. So, um, and then a few other things, better platform to be able to do things and that we can do what we call app off platform work, which allows us to do movements like, uh, punches and, and standups, things like that. And then I've got a handheld weight coming out next month. that we can actually play with. So varying the load with it never leaving your hand by changing the leverage point. And so with that- What exercise are we talking about here? Anything that would be a dumbbell or a kettlebell movement. So it functions, it does the function of a kettlebell, a dumbbell, and what we call a center mass bell, as well as provides variable loading within a range." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how can you change, like, how can you change the load?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because load, well, we don't actually change the load. We change the torque on the joint that we're working, which is the same. That's actually what is creating the force, right? So if I'm doing a front raise, it's where this downward force is times the distance away, right? Which also then makes it no force when I've got it at the bottom of the front raise, which is why it's so easy. With this, It's like a kettlebell. It's offset, except it has three different handles. But it's offset just that a kettlebell, you can't do it because the offset so far, it becomes a wrist movement. So ours has three different sizes and the offset just enough so that you can pick if I put it in the front race position or curl position, I could put it in outward position. And the force is almost what it is at the top, but then I get to the top and it's the same exact or the curl. So I can actually change the force curve in the movement. And then I can just release the pressure a little bit and let it swing into position and keep doing a drop set with never letting it down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's got a really nice texture grip that allows you to hold it in different positions. And then the load offset is just enough that it doesn't overpower the wrist. And then you've got different hand sizes so that you can maximize this relationship and hit whatever joint that you're applying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That sounds incredible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's really freaking, well, it's awesome because you can, because the variable load, now I could go straight from front raises to side raises or rear or curl because without like, because I don't have to put it down. So now my time under tension goes through the roof. And by the way, the same effect with a flywheel trainer, because the variable, whatever you put into it is what it kicks back. So you have an constant time under tension because there's no rest points either. So all this stuff is working on maximizing time under tension, which anyway, It's cool stuff. Anyway, I get excited." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask you about another thing you've already mentioned, but I find this really interesting, which is barefoot running and your sort of company, Barefoot Athletics. Yeah. B-E-A-R. And the tagline is optimizing the human to ground interface. We've talked about this a little bit with the power lifting. How do you think about the foot ground interface?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's interesting that we know that we should train all these parts of our body to be able to be stronger, be more resilient. But we think that the foot is different, that we need to package it and modify it, and somehow that that's the science of making it healthy. Where I challenge people, think about that like, first thing you do in the morning is roll out of bed and put your weightlifting belt on and wrap it on tight and wear it till you go to bed at night. Do it with your shoulders, your knees, wake up and put some knee wraps on, okay, and elbow wraps, and see what happens. One, you'll get weaker, you'll lose movement capacity and you'll start affecting other areas of the body very negatively because they will start picking up the compensation for those joints that are not moving properly. This is it. What shoes are for is to protect you from the environment, from cuts and abrasions and heat and things like that. But the foot, the mind blowing is like every other foot area of the body. You need to use it, and you need to strengthen it, and you need to learn to control it. That's it. That's all I have to say about the subject, okay? It's that simple, but somehow we have been sold entire industries, like the orthotics industry, It's completely false. Meta analysis of the data shows that orthotics do nothing beyond temporary relief from pain over a six, eight week period of time and provide no long-term benefit. And I can't tell you how many people I've eliminated back or knee or hip pain from working on strengthening and controlling the foot and ankle complex. We believe we've villainized and said a low arch is a condition that needs fixed. Like when it really is just controlling the foot and ankle complex and how they relate to each other and how we use that. Is it like, go put on boxing gloves in the morning and do that for the next 20 years and see what happens. It's not about finding the right shoe that fits because your foot has been deformed. And so I'm not like some wacky, like, oh, you gotta be barefoot forever or do this. Like, no, I'm just saying, go spend some time using it. Strengthen it, learn to control it, and you will work better in a shoe. But the whole running shoe movement with the raised heel, that was the person that suggested that to Nike way back when they were trying to figure out what to do, the reason. And he says it's the worst thing that he ever did. Because we were coming from an era of people wearing heeled shoes, which, by the way, came from stirrups way back in the day. That's where the whole heel came from, is to go in a stirrup, but then it went into fashion. And then the running craze started coming around in the 70s. They're starting to push this, the general mass population, and they realized that they were causing injuries. And like, what are we going to do? Well, that's because everybody was in this position and had a shortened calf muscle. And it's like, well, to work around, let's just put a heel on it so we don't injure them. That's it. And now because the raised heel, you got to raise the toe. And then now with that, if you go stand on something and pull your inner toe in, and in a squat position, just reach down and do it, you'll see that you have no control over internal and external rotation of your leg. You don't. Or your foot. And you actually have to put a support in for the arch to be able to passively control those structures. It's just Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid. Use it, strengthen it. If you wanna wear some shoes cause they look good or fancy, I'm like, I have no problem. I mean, I go out on a wife, my wife will put on some high heels every now and again. But all I'm saying is use your foot. My thousand pound squat, my thousand pound deadlift were done barefoot. I'm not trying to sell you shoes. Go do it with no shoe. That's what I've been promoting. I did that for six years and I promoted it. But people ask me like, Well, what do I do? Because my gym requires shoes. Okay, where do I go? And then I go, well, you know, you could pick up these other finger shoes or whatever. And they go, man, my wife won't have sex with me if I do that. And I go, I know, mine either. Like, trust me, I'm not making this up. Everybody in that market markets to one segment and they're still missing some gaps because they still have a little bit too narrow of a toe box. And if you're lifting, you have the opportunity to really get that splay and start working on this stuff better. So, um, I just wanted to create a shoe. These ones are odd colored. Cause it's a partnership with Kabuki. Normally we've got a black or a gray, uh, low top, high top sticks to the ground for lifting. So we can do that and very pliable. It's a moccasin. It's a modern day box. But looks okay that you can wear it around in other areas. If you, if you so choose, like, you know what the number one healthcare cost in America is, what's that? diabetes, uh, heart disease, cancer, low back pain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hmm. Now, what do you attribute low back pain to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's attributed to a lot of things, but inability to control spinal position, which starts happening from some breathing issues. It also happens from the foot. So there's a lot of stuff, but everything that I do actually focuses on improving this. Yeah. And it all starts with the foot. This is one thing. This doesn't affect breathing. So it does actually affect breathing to some extent and spinal stabilization. So the raised heel and toe will make you stride further because of just how it operates. But that overstride is a result of opening this. So we open the pelvis and diaphragm. Did we talk about that and the impact that that has for controlling and spine? Yeah, I think we touched on that. But all this stuff plays together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the gait affects that. And so the shoe affects the gait. And then so it's all connected. All connected." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me be very purposeful with some conversation here, though. We've talked about periodization. This was a big gap. So people go, yeah, well, when people started running with those, they started having injuries back when the finger company produced those and didn't do the education around this very simple concept. You do not walk into the gym if you haven't squatted and start squatting 225 for max reps every day over day. And that's what people did because they weren't told that you need to build the capacity to do this. You go wear these and walk around in your office or wherever all day long, your feet are gonna hurt. They're gonna be sore. Do it for 10% of your time. Do that for a month, then add some. That will build the capacity to do this, and then that's gonna start having the ability to strengthen, manage the foot. And there's a whole lot of other stuff. I've got videos on things that you can do. Buy whatever you want, or just spend some time out of them. Like that's all that I want people to do because it is so simple and it has such a profound impact. It does. What I did- I noticed when I walked in. I was like, oh, hey, you're spending some time without the last shoes on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, what I did, I think it's already now, two years ago, when I was doing a lot of running, I'd do like a 10-mile run. I would take my shoes off for the last half mile, and I'd run like that. And that was, for me, really helpful to ensure that I have proper form. form that minimizes pain on the way I run. I still like shoes. I benefit a lot from shoes, the protection they provide, but it's for running we're referring to, especially trail running and so on. and in the city when there's glass and all those kinds of things. But it's really important to have minimal sort of protection on your feet. For me, at least it was to figure out the ways that my form, basic movement and like the positioning in the foot, the impact of the foot and everything, you know, the lower leg, the entirety of the torso really, how it's improperly positioned. in terms for the objective of minimizing pain. And the barefoot running really helped fix that for me. Because I figured out that I need to take shorter steps, more frequent, you know, all those kinds of things. And that really helps you figure that out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, let's be realist about stuff. Like, spend some time using it, strengthen it. And I've got some great ways to do that and learn how to do that. So, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is a good diet for strength development? I've just to give you some context, I've been eating mostly meat, not for strength, mostly for mental performance. I just enjoy it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, you need to have a base level of protein building blocks for tissue, right? We need to have enough fats to be able to have hormones work and key processes in the body. We need to have Well, you don't need to have, from a performance aspect, carbohydrates necessarily, because the other ones can convert into injury sources. But for a performance athlete, carbohydrates can be very beneficial as well. So I look at it as you need a base level of fats, you need a base level of proteins, and then you adjust the carbohydrate intake based on the needs. I'm not anti-carbohydrate by any means. Because a lot of people, well, they look at me now when they see how lean I am, and they jump to a conclusion. You must be keto. You must be carnivore. You must be whatever. And it's like, so losing and gaining weight is simply eating less or eating more. And we get so complicated. Oh, what's your fasting window? If I'm doing fasting, it's just because it works with my environment. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. All that does is control how much calories that you take. Big success with keto and carnivore diets. It's hard to eat a lot and put on weight with those diets. Protein actually has a thermogenic effect. And so you have to have a massive amount of fats if you have a only meat diet, because you can literally starve to death. There's a show where they put people out in the wilderness, and this guy, the one that won one of the ones I looked at, and they threw him way, like, up in the, past a lot, you know, out the way out there. There was nothing, but he somehow got a caribou and killed it. And he still lost a pound a day for 30 days with a caribou because his fat was stolen by a, and he could eat all the meat he wanted. And then he almost got pulled because his weight loss, right? But that isn't actually a performance. So those type keto and carnivore are not performance diets. So they're not going to be as effective at supplying the energy needs for high capacity training. So don't get me wrong, you can do training, but like. you can be a successful like elite athlete with a vegan diet, but it's not as easy to do it with other diets. So, and you're missing some base nutrients. So many nutrients in meat. I believe having greens in your diet is really beneficial. Lots of research, but there's people in the the other worlds that argue that you don't need them, but they help clear organs, provide micronutrients, all this sort of stuff. So I eat simply a whole well-rounded diet and I've gone from, I can go from 285 pounds, squatting a ton of weight to eating less and dropping all the way down to, you know, seven, 8% body fat with veins standing out everywhere without a tissue on me, just with amazing, great tasting food. To lose weight or be healthy does not mean that you need to eat flavorless, bland food. So that's the main thing I try to get across." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's eat less to lose weight, eat more to gain weight." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, make sure that you've got enough protein, make sure that you've got your micronutrients covered, which is gonna cover by eating real food. Don't go low fat, no fat. If you want a performance, don't go no carb, but if it works, any of those things. So diet approach, when you look at diets, Understand how aggressive they are. Keto can make you lose a lot of weight. Carnivore can make you lose a lot of weight. A lot of that up front is actually dropping glycogen stores, so you're actually just reducing water in your muscle and fat tissue, which is why it isn't as great for a performance diet. Understand that every diet also has a level of discipline and does it fit your lifestyle? So I suggest people don't find a diet. You need to find a lifestyle because that's what's sustainable. I hate the word diet to begin with. What behaviors are sustainable? And then do that. And then over time, the things you'll get to where you need to get. Diet itself, just by the name of it, is not sustainable because it is a short-term thing to get somewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I tend to try to measure it because I definitely have a love-hate relationship with food. I tend to look back and say like, by following this particular protocol, lifestyle, whatever, what was the level of happiness? Yes. So not like weight loss or weight gain or all those kinds of things. It's the entirety of the picture. Productivity, just feeling good throughout the day. Socially also, like interacting with people. Because so much of human connection, like I mentioned before, is over food. And if you're going to limit yourself in that regard, you're limiting a certain fundamental aspect of life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A number of years ago, I did like 20 to 22 hour fasts every day. And I'm like, well, this doesn't work. I can't do business lunches and stuff like that. So when I was in my fasting thing, I went to a 16 so I could have a light lunch. just for the social aspect of it and perform that. And then that's why, and that's why like the typical bodybuilding, like the eight meal a day diet has never worked for me because I've always been a very bit like trying to fit that between meetings and other stuff. What that diet provides is it just, you get less bloat and distention of a larger meal. But at the end of the day, you get the same exact results. Pick a lifestyle, live that. You can have really great tasting food, And that to me is the same thing. And this is why I'm like really hitting this point because also with the dieting and like the approach, like, oh, I'm gonna do this. And people pick these chicken and broccoli recipes and guess what? You're going to break. If you do not enjoy it, you will break. So it is a very important point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I also slightly push back or maybe to elaborate, if you don't enjoy moderation, for me particularly, I have trouble moderating certain things, most foods, I would say. So my source of happiness comes with foods, even if they're bland, the ones that can enjoy, but enjoy moderation. So there's, I mean, I enjoy every piece of food. So it's like, if you can enjoy the full lifestyle, it's not just the particular experience, but like the full journey." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep. Does it fit your lifestyle?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yep. So let me ask about a complicated topic that's sometimes a bit controversial, which is steroids and maybe TRT, testosterone replacement therapy. What role does that play in strength training?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, we're gonna go there. Yeah, but it's an important discussion to have. I think that it's something that I can be more transparent on. In my past, I wasn't able to due to the career that I had. So just like covering that stuff in a public forum, when you're highly looked at being an executive for recruiting and other stuff, It was an area I had to just kind of pass on, right? Now, I've used steroids. I've used them since I was 33. And I basically just use TRT now after my big squat. So, for 10 years, I used them. There's some interesting components to this. So one is just the gray area of what we call performance enhancing supplements. So performance, what is it, PEDs? That the line of what defines a PED is ever shifting. And it's shifting based on society norms, cultural norms, government bodying agencies, all these sorts of stuff. So I'm not making excuses here. So I just want to elaborate before I actually start digging into the details here. Because performance enhancing, I could take sodium bicarbonate, and enhance my ability to perform deadlifts for reps. Guess what? I did that for my Guinness World Record for deadlifts in a minute. Okay? People do it for rowing or other, they use high capacity type stuff. It is performance enhancing. It is a chemical. It is baking soda. All right? They're not able to make it illegal because everybody eats bread. Well, not everyone. And so it's a little hard to test for, no matter what you do at any level. So that's an extreme example. But other examples, you're drinking an energy drink in that cup there a little while ago. And in America, you can get an energy drink with 240 milligrams of caffeine in it. In Canada, that's too dangerous. You can only get 140, but you can go buy a Fedra. and ephedra is illegal in America. And so these things bounce back and forth all the time. I could take yohimbi and in Europe or Australia, it is a drug and classified and America, it is not. It's an herbal root and a lot, I actually haven't won one of my supplements except for the overseas version. Anyway, the point I'm getting is no matter what you do at some point, there's by someone's standards, you are cheating. And because it is, you're taking something that but you could work around these things with nutritional ways or other ways versus taking a chemical shirt. And there's whole lots of ways to do this. But it's like, Oh, no, it's steroids. It's not it's injectable. It's not. Well, somewhere, There is a culture or a person that will say you're cheating no matter what. So it's a self-defined, you need to define it for yourself unless you're competing in an organization that has testing. Then it's a straight ethical thing. And it's either right or wrong, in my opinion. That's kind of the overall dilemma of it is if you want to see what you're totally capable of, you have to decide yourself what's okay or not to that level. There is no body that can say something yes or no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, when there's an event like the Olympics, maybe then you have a standard that you're all trying to adhere to. And then it makes sense to keep a certain like to be within. There's an ethical. There's an error." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm agreeing to compete in this by these by these rules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But when you're trying to maximize your own performance, whatever that journey is, whatever that goal is, that's a different story. And it's not it's not easy to figure that out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You go, oh, you're just like dancing around the subject, whatever. Well, guess what? I've got a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone. It's legal for me to take. And you know what? A lot of the people that are in front of the camera in the media, politicians and news people and the people that are there saying the no-drug stuff, they're going to anti-aging clinics to look better and they have a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone themselves. But in their eyes, it's okay. It is a prescription from their doctor because they have the money to do it. So it's legal and it's fine. If I, it's interesting in Oregon, anybody, and I don't know what other states, over the age of 16 can, without parent's permission, by the way, walk into a gender clinic and as a female and get a prescription for testosterone. But as an athlete, If I've got low testosterone, I'm so low, I've got depression, I can't have sex with my wife, it's affecting my quality of life, I will have to fight tooth and nail to get testosterone just as a prescription, and then I will get kicked out of my organization for competing. Like, so you understand how gray this stuff gets." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the stigma on testosterone is the reason we're not having like a healthy conversation about when it's proper? Like what are the proper uses of testosterone in an athlete's life and just the regular human life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and it's just, it's like anything. It's like I said, it is lines that we pick and draw. Anytime you put that out there, people are going to have different opinions where those lines are. So now when it comes to strength, here's an interesting thing. In powerlifting, there's tested federations and non-tested federations. So we can literally look at the statistical data and actually find out What do steroids do? And so it's pretty clear that steroids provide about a 10% increase in strength on average over not. Now, that does take out the fact that steroids will put you in, allow you to put on more mass, so you'll go up a weight class a lot of times. So as a whole, you could definitely lift more probably than the 10% over time, right? And then we think about steroids as the ability to just put on muscle. And here's where things get a little interesting, even with people that use steroids, is not understanding the neurological impacts that steroids have. Because you could take some steroids right now and be stronger in 10 minutes. That's clearly not done anything. you know, from a physiology standpoint to make you stronger, but we have tapped in neurologically to elicit those gains. And there's a whole lot that happens neurologically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like how much science is there in terms of all the different ways you could take steroids, which kinds of steroids, the timing, the dose? all of those things to develop the neurological, the physical, the skeletal. You've talked with such depth about the science of strength building in terms of form, in terms of the equipment that you use. It seems like a component, the use of steroids should be an equal level of scientific rigor when applying them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is now the research is harder to get because of what it is. But there is a lot of research that was done when they were legal. So they were legal up in through the through I think the mid 80s. And so a lot of the classical high, high benefit to low risk steroids were studied. And then since then, there's a lot of like designer steroids or new steroids that have come up that don't have a lot of research around safety and risk and things of that nature. And we can't do that because it's you know, because of the legality around these things. But some of the stuff on the neurological function is really just understanding how that chemical structure works in what it's doing to the neurotransmitters, what it's doing. And so some of it is really talking to people that have experience with it. And the other is understanding those structures and what they do. The neurological component, I think, is more interesting than most, because most steroids act through increasing muscle protein synthesis. That's how you add more muscle, is they have an anti-catabolic effect. and they have a muscle protein synthesis enhancing effect. So it reduces the amount of muscle that you waste and increases the amount of muscle that you put on. The neurological component is, is tremendously valuable for what it can do for your training workout. Like if I handle more load over time, I'm going to make more progress. If I can actually just stimulate more neurological effects for a specific event, it's going to have an impact, right? But there's other ways that you can tap into this too. Things that you can tap into mentally with great practice with meditation and other stuff that will have the same effect. People probably think I'm over-speaking, especially steroid users that are listening to this. Well, at least I'm talking out my ass. But I'm not. Because I have experience with this stuff on both ends. And some of those areas, a lot of people don't have the experience with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "what I've kind of heard from people is the confidence that comes with steroids. It feels like, not to call it placebo, but it seems like the psychological benefits of steroids is huge in that you feel like there's a confidence that seems to be coupled with the actual biological and chemical effects." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have a, actually a neurological condition. Um, so I actually don't feel a lot of that stuff that people, cause there's certain steroids that like people will like, you're like very extreme ones. Um, like that would make somebody bite someone's ear off in a fight, for example. Um, what was that aggression that, and they'll literally do nothing. I'm like always just chilling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't like, but." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But neurologically, they're still having those effects, but I don't get those feels that other people have from those. But yes, there's that immediate boost in aggression and a confidence and stuff that come with a lot of those ones that deal on the neurological. Overall, a good sense of well-being, just like from being on testosterone, like it's going to affect your mood. And it's interesting. So testosterone replacement therapy, if we walk down that path now and kind of switch gears, You know, we find that men today have declining testosterone over what has historically been in the past. So right now, I think a 35-year-old testosterone is shown to be about half what it was just 50 years ago. I don't know if we could argue the point. We don't really have the science to validate any of it, but it could be society as far as the impact that it's having on the mental health for men. It could be the estrogens floating around in the water from all the chemicals and birth control and all this sort of stuff could be a lot of things. But it is a fact that average testosterone is significantly lower. And that is going to end up affecting life, quality of life, as well as your longevity, because it will affect those things. But on the other end, steroids and TRT, particularly steroids, come with a lot of negative health benefits. not benefits, a lot of negative health ramifications. And so, you know, if I knew what I know now, I don't know that I would have gone that path. I didn't, I didn't tell I was 33, which is kind of an outlier for a strength athlete. I was, I was a four times body weight deadlifter, 800 plus pounds at 198. And I was pretty dang strong before I went down that path. And that's because I wanted to see what I was capable of but I was reaching a point that it was either I need to do that or not my testosterone my natural testosterone levels were actually I think below 300 is actually the threshold So I was being told to go on TRT for the last couple years Probably just because I was pushing so hard and the stress level was driving my test down. So it was self-imposed more than likely but I put it off because I wanted to set all the drug-free records and And I set the ones that I wanted, and then it was 33. I'm entering the age category, and I'm like, I'm going to go on TRT. I did not feel like I should be with TRT. Personally, my ethical standard was I shouldn't be competing in tested events anymore. There are federations that will allow you with your, you show up with your script, and you do your test, and you're below a certain level, but you're still on. But for me, I'm like, that's not OK. So I'm like, I may as well at this point use steroids. But since then, understanding all those ramifications, I might not have gone down that route quite so fast and easily. But I continued because I also have a lot of resources that other people don't in being able to assess and understand and put things in place to mitigate that. And the other thing is, once you go on, it's literally a decision for life. But realistically is, because your quality of life, your feeling is going to be enhanced quite a bit. And you're not going to want to go back. And if you go back, it's going to be less than it was before. That's how the endocrine system works. There are ways to try to recover and bring that up, but it might be a while. And if you've been on for a while, it definitely is not an option. So those are big things that people need to understand that you're going to have some things in there. And even TRT has some potential, especially at higher levels, that it's going to, you know, increase the risk for prostate cancer. It's going to potentially cause some hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart and some potential plaque buildup of the, some of those key arteries are on there. That's going to have an impact on your cardiovascular health. There's things that you can do. again, but everything is like the shoe story, right, where I'm anti-shoe, but I'm going, well, we could put Band-Aids on this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's... But there's a quality of life that comes with it, the increase in quality of life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And if you do it correctly, I think... For me, I definitely would not live without TRT, even with knowing what I know now, at this age and the quality of life and being able to be there, have the energy, the recovery. That's a big thing where all this, so I talked about muscle protein synthesis and anti-catabolism as being big drivers. But recovery is the other big aspect that they offer, probably as a result of those. But those are going to be the big enhancements. So just doing steroids. Steroids is going to increase all the other stuff that you do. So if you have good training, you have good diet, good quality of sleep, like all this other stuff, then you can take advantage of that. But you could choose steroids and nobody would know. And honestly, you go down to 24 hour fitness and you'll see a bunch of, you know, late, you know, 19 to 21 year old kids that are all kind of red and 150 pounds that look like that don't look like anything. And they're a bunch of them will be using steroids because. They're not like, so it's not going to make a champion. Like you said, 10% at most. Guess what? I was already at an elite level. I was one of the best in the world before I started using. It doesn't do that. It does a 10% increase at best. And that's proven in the statistics, which is interesting because most people don't know this. The data is right there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and that's why I'm often saddened by maybe the negative view of somebody like Lance Armstrong, who was one of the greatest athletes in history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And everybody else that he was competing against. I'm sorry. Yeah, I hate to blow anybody's bubble. But regardless of I told you my ethical pieces with saying that you're going to be at something at an elite level. And you look at a lot of those big figures out there, when their income and your life relies on it, you're going to push those limits. So maybe my ethical would change if I was in that position too. Because here's the thing where I believe, someone is, I think people should avoid steroids. probably something worth taking a look at what your levels are when you're in the 35 to 45 range and see what decision you decide to make from there. And that's a decision that you make for the rest of your life. The only times that you should be taking a look at steroids is if it's, it's funding your life. It's creating that it is your job and it's doing like, and honestly it was for me. Like I, so was it the only thing?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, no." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you want to get into neurology, neurotransmitters and alcohol, there's a really interesting discussion on performance enhancement. So when I lift heavy, and so I always promote it, like not more than a drink or two, like once or twice a month is what all I'm talking about when I'm saying this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like getting- What's the timing of the drink that we're talking about? It's about three to five minutes. Before? Yes. And then we're talking about beer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It doesn't matter the source. So shots are the easiest. You want something that is not going to have some sort of regurgitory effect or bloating effect or anything like that. But you want to have the quick hit of energy. So it's a preferential energy source, moves above ketones, carbs, everything. It's seven calories per gram. But then there's some really interesting things that happen. Spikes blood pressure, which is going to make weights feel lighter. So when you're in your early 20s and you're trying to hit up, you know, some attractive person at the bar, you're with your buddies and you're like, ah, you know, and you got second guess, right? Oh, should I, should I? And they go, have a shot of liquid courage. and you have one, and all of a sudden, the second thoughts, the second guessing, all that drops away. Like, you're focused in the moment, and you walk over, and you actually perform a little better, like, conversation-wise, than you normally would. Now, if you have five or six and then go over, you're going to make a fool of yourself. So it's all about timing and amount. But there is a reason that that happens. So anyway, I'm known for promoting this whiskey and deadlift concept." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it works. Like the Eastern block." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's where I stole it from. Because I was watching all these Russian lifters would have a shot of vodka or something before they go lift. And I'm like, there is something here. So I started experimenting with it. And I'm like, that works. And then I started researching. Nobody talks about this stuff. So it takes a while to start piecing together all the stuff that actually happens to make that happen. But it moves away. the things that you're going to, the concerns about the ramifications in the future and the other stuff. So the, but brings you into the moment and then the dopamine hit and the other, and then it enhances whatever mood that you're in. But all of a sudden you get in the state much easier. And so it's really, really interesting, but it's a very small amount needed and very time sensitive, but it can be so much more powerful than like drugs people use for this stuff. It ties really together with meditative state and other pieces to get you into that flow state. Those thoughts about failure, what if, like all that, you get into that zone, that moment, that time. Anyway, so interesting an alcoholic is promoting, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but there's an important point here, which is not often talked about. I think it is fascinating that because you can get into so much trouble with alcohol when used in excess, people don't often talk about the positive aspects of alcohol, even in your college years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It had a lasting effect on who I am as a person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think people give enough credit to the positive aspect. See, you could have accomplished a lot of those same things with a little more moderation, which I think people should talk about more, which is like the way to open up a personality, like the flowering of the full character and the weirdness and the beauty of who you are as a human being could be opened up with alcohol. And that's really interesting to think about. You should try some podcasts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "with a shot in these. I do this sometimes with myself and guests, and it will change the conversation, lubricates the conversation. Definitely not the excess, which is what I learned, because I went all the way in because I do everything at extremes. So it was a really hard lesson that took me a lot of time to unwind. But it is interesting, and people don't discuss those things, because it's either this or this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're one of the greatest strength athletes of all time, so it's worthwhile to consider how you optimize the feats of strength that you reach for with things like steroids. It makes perfect sense, and I think that was a, From my perspective, I think it was probably the right decision. You've achieved something incredible that inspires a huge number of people. That's it, and you've shown to yourself and to the world what the human body can accomplish. That's incredible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And no matter if I push to a less weight, and if I disclosed everything that I did, and I wasn't using steroids in my opinion, if we went through everything, there were people that would say, you're using performance enhancing. It's straight up, so you just need to be okay with it yourself. And so I had to make the call, I want to see what, The true potential is of let's throw everything out the window unless I feel it's a risk from a health standpoint that I'm not willing to take on. And because that's, how do I, like, it's just picking and choosing. It's just picking and choosing. Here's what I want to know. This is what I want to be able to try to achieve. And so, yeah, yeah, that's what I did." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And what you did is incredible. Like, it's just awe-inspiring. And what Lance Armstrong did was incredible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and that- And that ate me up. And what's funny is the people that bash him are, like, on the media or politicians or maybe some actors, and guess what? a ton of them are doing the same thing. It's hypocrisy at its finest, trust me. How many of those figures you're watching in movies that love to talk, be political and do this and the news and all this, I'm telling you, there are anti-aging clinics all over California and everywhere else. Who do you think keeps them in business? It's not the competitive lifter, I'll tell you that. Well, that's just they're using peptides in SARMs and all sorts of like you're speaking to the hypocrisy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I also want to speak to the the fact, you know, somebody is a friend of mine, David Goggins. I don't know if you know that is ultra marathon runner, Navy SEAL. He gets a pretty incredible person, incredible human being. And he gets criticism like, you know, what you're doing is is bad for the body. You know, you're you're pushing yourself too far. I find that the people that criticize are often people that haven't truly pushed themselves to the limit. They haven't actually worked hard in their life. When you work hard, you realize how incredible it is that a human being can dedicate themselves so fully to an effort, the way you did, the way David Goggins does. the way the greatest athletes do. And there's nothing that should be said beyond just sitting back in awe that humans can achieve that. And that inspires me to do the best, whatever the hell I do, to be the best version of that. There's something about like athletic feats, especially like strength, that just inspire us to do the best, to be the best version of ourselves. I don't know. That's the only thing you should be saying as opposed to criticizing some little detail of this and that. It's just awe-inspiring that you push yourself to do that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the thing, talk to anybody that is at that level. And this is funny, like in competitive sports, like you go online and people, it's just bash, bash, bash, bash, bash, bash, bash. You go talk to anybody, anybody, anybody that's a high-level athlete within that field, and nobody has a single bad thing to say about each other. But all this chitter-chatter down there, I mean, I know exactly what you're saying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you, I would say, because I have love for all those folks, especially when you're younger, you have a little bit of that desire to criticize others. I think that should be channeled in improving your own life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Anytime that you feel that way, that is when you need to turn inward. And it's hard to do, but there is a reason. that you have those emotions around someone else and what they're doing, that you have an opportunity to look at yourself and know why you feel that way. And that, guess what? That's gonna be the hard thing to do. That's gonna be the thing, again, that's stirring you a little bit, because it's so much easier to sit there or talk to your confidant or whatever, instead of go, why does that bother me? Why does what that person doing or what that person's achieving bother me?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a good difficult question that I often ask others. Um, whether it's better to work hard or work smart. I like to ask that question because it helps me get a sense of the human being. And I think I, let me just say like, I often, I often like people that answer that would work hard. Even though the quote-unquote right answer is work smart, meaning like finding the optimal, efficient way to achieve a certain goal, I find that people that answer work smart don't actually find the optimal, efficient way to achieve a goal. It seems like the people that, certainly early in life, strive to work their ass off, even that means doing the inefficient, the dumb thing, just to learn the mistake. The spirit behind, the human spirit behind the person that says, or a card, is the one that I connect with. But I'm torn, especially in the war culture, in the tech sector, where people answer work smart. What would you..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What would you say about that tension? This definitely encompasses like, I'm the intellectual and I'm the meathead. I'm the work around the clock and go fix the processes and make it so much better type person, right? That's me and that's everything. That's my life story, right? Busting your ass to find the easiest way possible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To both." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So like, I will build a custom hydraulic cart that will lift my plates up to the height of my squat, so that I can roll it over next to it and then minimize the effort of it going on and off. To be able to lift the most amount of weight as possible, so that I can save the energy from here, from lifting those up and the fatigue of my back being in a bad position, so I can nearly kill myself over here. My wife, anybody will say, I'm a workaholic. And the first thing that I would do when it would be doing a company turnaround, they'd hire me, come in and I would be taking over for someone that wasn't successful, but it was usually hardly ever for lack of want or trying. So a lot of times they knew they were unsuccessful and they were running around working six, seven days a week, 12 hour days doing so much. And it'd be like, well, you need to do this. And they train me on like all the reports and this and all the things and like, good luck. luck, I couldn't do it. And the first thing I would do is nothing. I would do nothing. Because then I would find what actually keeps coming back. the things that I need to do and how much of it was filling the space. Because so much of human nature when you're failing is to make yourself feel like you're accomplishing thing. This is when things go on your list, on your checklist and you start like rolling up. So you're running around just getting shit done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. Being busy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So, but at the same time, like find somewhere in my career, something I've done where I haven't outworked everybody just so much on distilling things down to what's important. Yeah. And you've got to make time. to sit back and assess and think and be introspective. You have to make time for this because if not, you're going to waste so much time sitting there walking sideways when all you got to do is move just one step in front of the other each day. Just one. That's all I say. because it's going to add up, but you could spend six months knocking shit out, doing your routine, busting your ass and not take that one step. So you've got to distill stuff down. You've got to really understand like what's important to you in life and where you're going. And, uh, when you're looking at anything in your life, the first thing that you need to do is figure out, Do I need to do it? And just quit doing it. Just quit doing things in your life. And you'll see that a lot of stuff that you think has to be done doesn't have to be done. You'd be surprised. And then from there, this is the tech, okay. And then of that, what can I automate? What can I not have to do in a repeated fashion? And then the last one, yeah, wherever possible. If it's not something that I'm adding tremendous value to, like my uniqueness, people are like, oh, you must like do the auto work on your vehicles because you love working. I'm like, fuck that, I don't. And they're like, what, that doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, no, I love creating things, but I don't wanna do that stuff. So you could use delegating if you're a manager position, but it's outsourcing, whatever it is. But there are also so many things, and this ties back to your point around just doing it. There's a point to experiencing all levels to really understand things. You need to spend time, at the same time, doing all those things, because there could be good, huge, massive gaps in there. that you're not aware of that are key for you or key to having done different or so on. So like in my company days, I was one of the few executives that came in that could do anything on the floor from code to machine, run a lathe, a mill, weld, step into engineering. And that added tremendous value to me to having had spent time being a doer and not enough people want to be, you've gotta just go do shit. You need to spend time in your life chopping wood." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, get a lot of shit done, doesn't matter what the shit is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You gotta have experience trying and doing. and do all these things that you would never like. My skill set is massive because I want to know like you need to have those touch points. My job, my title is chief visionary. But I've spent time doing everything. It's not about just like creating this amazing strategy or vision, and I'm just going to be there in this person that direction like like. You can't be effective. You cannot connect the dots. unless you've been in the moment with everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, low level stuff. Sometimes it's doing stupid shit that you're not uniquely qualified to do that anybody could do, but you did it anyway." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just the training environment. People hit me up at a school or wherever like, hey, how do I get into, I wanna grow my brand online, I wanna do this, where do I start? I'm like, go get a job at Planet Fitness or 24 Hour Fitness. They're like, but I wanna, how do I get recognized and write articles and be an online coach? I'm like, you need to go spend a few years one-on-one training people. to learn like the interaction, how people were, there's base levels you have to do. You've got to go work your way up from the ground. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I truly believe it. Well, I think that's the hard work piece that I'm speaking to that I like it when people have been humbled by the hardness of life. Yeah. Like how difficult it is to do stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And to me, I went and got my MBA. I went to MIT. I don't need to do that stuff. I'm above that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Once you've been humbled by doing those things, I feel like you can truly explore the optimization that you're talking to, finding the ways where you're uniquely capable to add value to the world. And then again, work your ass off to be the best in the world at that thing. Yes. But then don't waste your time on shit that's not a line." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the only, so that's, I guess there's a lot of context I put around that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, that was like a long answer to a long, beautiful answer to an unanswerable question. Do you have advice outside of all this discussion to young people today about career, about life? Since you've done so many things, you've overcome a lot of things. Think high school, college student, thinking about what to do in their life. Do you have advice for those guys and girls?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. First is, you don't have it figured out. So don't worry, just jump in. Yeah. We talked, you know, a lot about understanding your values and aligning all that stuff. But you got to have a base level of start exploring and learning and just spending the time doing like, pick something. Let me elaborate a little bit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, you know what? A lot of people struggle with that aspect now because the choice, there's so much choice, it's difficult to pick something. But I think it does boil down to you should pick something and don't worry about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then, but within that, you can start discovering the things that are there for you. Like I talked about, I made this huge shift. I threw away my whole life. But I don't regret anything about that. I wouldn't be where I was if I didn't walk through and learn those things. And in fact, in the course of that, I learned just how much that inspiring people and helping them realize the potential far beyond what they thought was capable. And guess what? That was leadership 101 in managing people base level, floor level, right? And I got a lot out that was perfectly aligned with what, and that's what I realized. It didn't matter what industry I was in or any of those other things. But I was able, you can see so many things. There's so many paths that you can go down to help you realize what those things are. And you're gonna be able to find a lot of those nuggets and develop those. Do you think that I could have just gone to school and got out and started a globally recognized brand within a few years without having been schooled in business while getting paid for it by others for years? And in fact, that entire time, I knew that that's what I wanted to do, but I didn't go out on it. I mentored some of my friends along the same path to go. No, they're like, I'm ready. I'm ready to go do this. And I'm like, no. Now you need to go get a job. Yeah, you know engineering, management, design, all that stuff. Go get a job as a manager now. Like, oh, that's a step down. I can't do that. I'm like, go try it. A couple years later, oh my god, that was such a good move. I didn't know what I didn't know. And now they're an executive for freaking a Fortune 500 company. And the same thing. I sat there knowing that I was getting a free education. Don't stress yourself out, that's my advice. Don't stress yourself out that you've got to have this perfect thing, because this process of understanding your values and the introspect, that takes time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can get a job where you're getting paid to learn. Exactly. That's a good deal before you launch on your own. You mentioned going back to darkness. I'm Russian, so I like going back to darkness. You suffer from depression, you consider it suicide. Do you ponder your own death these days? Do you think about your own mortality? Are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I definitely think about mortality. And am I afraid of my own death? It depends on the moment. If I'm in the middle of a project, I definitely want to finish that project, man. But I don't fear it so much. I fear leaving my kids or my wife and not being able to be there for them. That bothers me. Outside of that, I know that I put everything into the life that I've lived. Like you said, there's always more, but I've lived hard. I've loved hard. Every moment in my life, I've made connections and impacted people around me for the better. And this tracks back, which is crazy when we were doing the documentary and they're interviewing people through my whole life and the consistency of the themes of anyone, like anything for Duffin, like just, sure. I'll fly in from Boston. All of them, like these people, like all like, it was crazy. Like everybody had a story. about me giving like just over and over and I didn't even really. It's just the way you were. But I've been all in. I don't have like, I have a lot more I want to do, but I don't have things that regret have not done in like, I don't fear it. I don't fear it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's like the, I don't know if you know the Bukowski poem, Go All the Way. Otherwise, Don't Even Try. It seems like you embody that poem and you've accomplished some incredible things and serve as an inspiration to a huge number of people. Chris, you're an amazing human being. I'm really honored that you would spend your valuable time with me. Thank you so much for talking with me today. It was incredible. I can't wait to check out all the cool stuff you've engineered with Kabuki Strength. Obviously, I love strength. I love strength training. I love the idea of strength. I love the equipment and the engineering approach that you take to strength. You're an incredible human, both on the things you've accomplished in terms of your own, strength feats and the kind of science and engineering you bring to the field that many others could use. So thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in a way, on this issue, I think there is no center except in this, if you're looking on social media or if you're looking on TV, there are people who are trying to fabricate the idea that there's a single question. And that's the first mistake. We are developing a new relationship with the climate system and we're rethinking our energy systems. And those are very disconnected in so many ways that connect around climate change. But the first way to me to overcome this idea of there is this polarized universe around this issue is to step back and say, well, what is this actually? And when you do, you realize it's kind of an uncomfortable collision between old energy norms and a growing awareness of how the planet works, that if you keep adding gases that are invisible, it's the bubbles in beer. If you keep adding that to the atmosphere, because it accumulates, that will change everything. It is changing everything for thousands of years. It's already happening. What do you mean by bubbles in beer? CO2, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Why beer? Well, because I like beer. It's also in Coca-Cola. We were talking about Cola before. And so it's innocuous. We grew up with this idea. CO2, unless you're trapped in a room suffocating, It's an innocuous gas, it's plant food, it's beer bubbles. And the idea we can swiftly transition to a world where that gas is a pollutant, regulated, tamped down from the top, is fantastical. Having looked at this for 35 years, I brought along one of my tokens. This is my 1988 cover story on global warming." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The greenhouse effect discovered, 1988." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Jim Hansen, the famous American climate scientist, really, he stimulated this article by doing this dramatic testimony in a Senate committee that summer, in May, actually, spring, late spring. It was a hot day, and it got headlines, and this was the result. But it's complicated. Look what we were selling on the back cover." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What you see is when you get tobacco. Cigarettes, yeah. Tobacco, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, looking back at my own career on the climate question, it's no longer a belief fight over is global warming real or not. You say, well, what kind of energy future do you want? That's a very different question than stop global warming. And when you look at climate, actually, I had this learning journey on my reporting where I started out with this as the definition of the problem. You know, the 70s and 80s, pollution was changing things that were making things bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So really focusing in on the greenhouse effect and the pollution." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But what I missed, the big thing that I missed of the first 15 years of my reporting from 1988 through about 2007, when I was, that period I was at the New York Times in the middle there, was that we're building vulnerability to climate hazards at the same time. So climate is changing, but we're changing too. And where we are here in Austin, Texas is a great example. Flash flood alley. named in the 1920s, west of here. Everyone forgot about flash floods. Built these huge developments, you know, along these river basins. Then one side starts saying, global warming, global warming. And the other side is not recognizing that we built willfully, greedily, vulnerability in places of utter hazard. Same things played out in Pakistan and in Fort Myers, Florida. And you start to understand that we're creating a landscape of risk. as climate is changing, then it feels, oh my God, that's more complex, right? But it also gives you more action points. It's like, okay, well, we know how to design better. We know that today's coasts won't be tomorrow's coasts. Work with that. And then let's chart an energy future at the same time. So the story became so different. It didn't become like, you know, a story you could package into a magazine article or the like. And it just led me to a whole different way of, even my journalism changed over time. So I don't fight the belief-disbelief fight anymore. I think it's actually kind of a waste. It's a good way to start the discussion, because that's where we're at. But this isn't about, to me, going forward from where we're at. It isn't about tipping that balance back toward the center so much as finding opportunities to just do something about this stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think, Bjorn? Do you agree that it's multiple questions in one big question? Do you think it's possible to define the center? Where is the center?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's wonderful to hear Andy sort of unconstruct the whole conversation and say, we should be worried about different things. And I think that's exactly, or we should be worried about things in a different way that makes it much more useful. And I think that's exactly the right way to think about it. On the other hand, and that was also where you kind of ended, we are stuck in a place where this very much is the conversation right now. And so I think in one sense, certainly the people who used to say, oh, this is not happening, they're very, very small and diminishing crowd and certainly not right. But on the other hand, I think to an increasing extent, we've gotten into a world where a lot of people really think this is the end of times. So the OECD did a new survey of all OECD countries, and it's shocking. So it shows that 60% of all people in the OECD, so the rich world, believes that global warming will likely or very likely lead to the extinction of mankind. And that's scary in a very, very clear way. Because look, if this really is true, if global warming is this meteor hurtling towards Earth, and we're going to be destroyed in 12 years or whatever the number is today, then clearly we should care about nothing else. We should just be focusing on making sure that that asteroid gets, we should send up Bruce Willis and get this done with. But that's not the way it is. This is not actually what the UN climate panel tells us or anything else. So I think, uh, it's not so much about arcing against the people who are saying it's a, it's a hoax. That's not really where I am. I don't think that's where Andy or really where the conversation is. But it is a question of sort of pulling people back from this end of the world conversation because it really skews our way that we think about problems. Also, if you really think this is the end of time and you only have 12 years, nothing that can only work in 13 years can be considered. And the reality of most of what we're talking about in climate and certainly our vulnerability, certainly our energy system is going to be half to a full century. And so when you talk to people and say, well, but we're going to, you know, we're really going to go a lot more renewable in the next half century. They look at you and like, but that's what 38 years too late. Uh, and I get that, but so, so I think in, in your question, what I'm trying to do, and I would imagine that's true for you as well, is to try to pull people away from this precipice and this end of the world, and then open it up. And I think Andy did that really well by saying, look, there's so many different. Sub conversations and we need to have all of them and we need to be respectful of Some of these are right in the in this sort of standard media kind of way But some of them are very very wrong and actually means that we end up doing much less good both on climate But also on all the other problems the world face. Oh, yeah, and it just empowers people to those who believe this then just and sit back, even in Adam McKay's movie, the Don't Look Up movie, there was that sort of nihilist crowd, for those who've seen it, who just say, fuck this. And a lot of people have that approach, when something's too big. And it just paralyzes you, as opposed to giving you these action points. And the other thing is, I hate it when economists are right about stuff like this. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, But those big features of our landscape are, it's path dependency. When you screw in a light bulb, even if it's an LED light bulb, it's going into a 113, 120 year old fixture. And actually that fixture is almost designed, if you look at like 19th century gas fixtures, they had the screw in thing. So we're like on this long path dependencies when it comes to energy and stuff like that. you don't just magically transition a car fleet. A car built today will last 40 years. It'll end up in Mexico, sold as a used car, et cetera, et cetera. And so there is no quick fix, even if we're true that things are coming to an end in 13 years or 12 years or eight years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So most people don't believe that climate change is a hoax. So they believe that there is an increase, there's a global warming of a few degrees in the next century. and then maybe debate about what the number of the degrees is. And do most people believe that it's human caused at this time in this history of discussion of climate change? So is that the center still? Is there still debate on this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yale University, the climate communication group there for like 13 years has done this Six Americas study where they've charted pretty carefully in ways that I really find useful what people believe. And we could talk about the word belief in the context of science too. And they've identified kind of six kinds of us. There's from dismissive to alarmed and with lots of bubbles in between. I think some of those bubbles in between are mostly disengaged people who don't really deal with the issue. And they've shown a drift for sure. There's much more majority now at the alarmed or engaged bubbles than just the dismissive bubble. There's a durable, like with vaccination and lots of other issues, there's a durable never anything, belief group, but on the reality that humans are contributing to climate change, most Americans, when you ask them, and it also depends on how you write your survey, you know, think there's a component. And this is also true globally, I mean, when you ask around, I mean, and this is, you know, if you hear this story from the media of 20 years, of course, that's what you will believe, and it also happens to be true. I mean, that is what the science, I think it's perhaps worth saying, and it's a little depressing that you always have to say it, but I think it's worth saying that I think we both really do accept the climate panel science, and there's absolutely global warming, it is an issue, and it's probably just worthwhile to get it out of the way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's an issue, and it's caused by humans. It's caused by humans, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But vulnerability, the losses, that are driven by climate-related events still predominantly are caused by humans, but on the ground. It's where we build stuff, where we settle. Pakistan... In 1960, I just looked these data up, there were 40 million people in Pakistan. Today there are 225 million. And a big chunk of them are still rural. They live in the floodplain of the amazing Indus River, which comes down from the Himalayas. Extraordinary 5,000 year history of agriculture there. But when you put 200 million people in harm's way, and this doesn't say anything about the bigger questions about, oh, shame on Pakistan for having more people. It just says the reality is, The losses that we see in the news are, and the science finds this, even though there's a new weather attribution group, it's WX Risk on Twitter. This does pretty good work on how much of what just happened was some tweak in the storm from global warming, from CO2 changing weather. But, and the media glommed onto that, as I did, you know, in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. But the reports also have a section on, by the way, the vulnerability that was built in this region was a big driver of loss. So discriminating between loss, change in what's happening on the ground, and change in the climate system, is never solely about CO2. In fact, Lawrence Bauer, B-O-U-W-E-R, has, I first wrote on his work in 2010 in the New York Times. And basically, in 2010, there was no sign in the data of climate change driving disasters. Climate change is up here. Disasters are on the ground. They depend on how many people are in the way, how much stuff you built in the way. And so far, we've done so much of that so fast in the 20th century, particularly, that it completely dominates. It makes it hard, impossible to discriminate how much of that disaster was from the change in weather from global warming." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a function of greenhouse gases to human suffering is unclear." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's very much in our control, theoretically. The point, I think, is exactly right. If you look at the Hurricane Ian that went through Florida, you have a situation where Florida went from, what, 600,000 houses in 1940 to 17 million houses. Sorry, 10 million houses, so 17 times more over a period of 80 years. Of course, you're going to have, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to have lots more damage. And many of these houses now have been built on places where you probably shouldn't be building. And so I think a lot of scientists are very focused on saying, can we measure whether global warming had an impact? Which is an interesting science question. I think it's very implausible that eventually we won't be able to say it has an impact. But the real question, it seems to me, is if we actually want to make sure that people are less harmed in the future, What are the levers that we can control? And it turns out that the CO2 lever, doing something about climate, is an incredibly difficult and slightly inefficient way of trying to help these people in the future. Whereas, of course, zoning, making sure that you have better housing rules, what is it, regulations, that you maybe don't have people building in the flash flood, what was it called? Flash flood alley. Flash flood alley. It's just simple stuff. And and because we're so focused on this one issue, we sort of it almost feels sacrilegious to to talk about these other things that are much more in our power and that we can do something about much quicker and that would help a lot more people. So I think this is this is going to be a large part of the whole conversation. You know, yes, climate is a problem, but it's not the only problem. And there are many other things where we can actually have a much, much bigger impact at much lower cost. Maybe we should also remember those." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you. Steel Man the case of Greta, who's a representative of Alarmism. that we need that kind of level of alarmism for people to pay attention and to think about climate change. So you said the singular view is not the correct way to look at climate change, just the emissions. But for us to have a discussion, shouldn't there be somebody who's, you know, really raising the concern. Can you still man the case for alarmism essentially? Or is there a better term than alarmism? Communication of like, holy shit, we should be thinking about this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think, I totally understand why Greta Thunberg is doing what she's doing. I have great respect for her because I look at a lot of kids growing up and they're basically being told you're not going to reach adulthood or at least not you're not going to get very far into adulthood uh and that of course you know this is the meteor hurtling towards earth and then this is the only thing we should be focusing on i understand why she's making that argument i think i think it's at the end of the day, it's incorrect. And I'm sure we'll get around to talking about that. And one of the things is, of course, that her whole generation, you know, I can understand why they're saying, you know, if we're going to be dead in 12 years, why would I want to study that? You know, why would I really care about anything? So so I totally want to sort of pull Greta and many others out of this end of the world fear. But I totally get why she's doing it. I think she's done a service in the sense that she's gotten more people to talk about climate Uh, and that's good because we need to have this discussion. Uh, I think it's, uh, unfortunate and this is just what happens in almost all policy discussions that they end up being, you know, sort of discussions from, from the extreme groups, because it's just more fun on media, uh, to, to have sort of the, the total deniers and the, and the, the people who say we're going to die tomorrow. And it sort of becomes that discussion that's more, you know, it's more sort of a mud wrestling" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So would you think the mud wrestling fight is not useful or is useful for communication, for effective science communication on one of the platforms that you're a fan of, which is Twitter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I wrote a piece recently in my Sustain What column saying if you go on there for the entertainment value of seeing those knockdown fights, I guess that's useful if that's what you're looking for. The thing I found Twitter invaluable for But it's a practice. It's just like the workouts you do. It's how do I put this tool to use today, thinking about energy action in poor communities? How do I put this tool today, learning about what really happened with Ian the hurricane, who was most at risk, and how would you build forward better? I hate build back. Or you can go there and just watch it as an entertainment value. That's not gonna get the world anywhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You don't think entertainment, I wouldn't call it entertainment, but giving voice to the extremes isn't a productive way forward. It seems to, you know, to push back against the main narrative, it seems to work pretty well in the American system. We think politics is totally broken, but maybe that works, that like oscillation back and forth. You need a Greta and you need somebody that pushes back against Greta to get everybody's attention. The fun of battle over time creates progress." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and this gets to the, you know, people who focus on communication science, I'm not a scientist, I write about this stuff. If you're gonna try to prod someone with a warning, like, this is three years apart, nuclear winner. Nuclear winter, we'll talk about that. Global warming, well yeah, we'll talk about it. But look at that, this is three years apart in the covers of a magazine. But then you have to say to what end, if you're not directing people to a basket of things to do. And if you want political change, then it would be to support a politician. If you want energy access, it would be to Look at this $370 billion the American government just put into play on climate and say, well, how can my community benefit from that? And I've been told over and over again by people in government, Jigar Shah, who heads this giant loan program, the energy department, he says, what I need now is like 19,500 people who are worried about climate change, maybe because Greta got them worried, But here's the thing you could do. You can connect your local government right now with these multi-million dollar loans so you can have electric buses instead of diesel buses. And that's an action pathway. So, you know, alarm for the sake of getting attention or clicks, to me, is not any more valuable than watching an action movie. And again, I think also it very easily ends up sort of skewing our conversation about what are the actual solutions. Because yes, it's great to get rid of the diesel bus, but probably not for the reason people think. It's because diesel buses are really polluting. in the air pollution sense. And that is why you should get rid of them. And again, if you really wanted to help people, for instance, with hurricanes, you should have better rules and zoning in Florida, which is a very different outcome. So the mud wrestling fight also gets our attention diverted towards solutions that seem Easy, fun, you know, sort of the electric car is a great example of this. The electric car has somehow become almost the sign that I care and I'm really going to do something about climate. Of course, electric cars are great and they're probably part of the solution and they will actually cut carbon emissions somewhat. but they're an incredibly ineffective way of cutting carbon emissions right now. They're fairly expensive, you have to subsidize them a lot, and they still emit quite a bit of CO2, both because the batteries get produced and because they usually run off of power that's not totally clean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Strong words from your in-law. Okay, let's go there. Let's go electric cars. Okay, educate us on the pros and cons of electric cars in this complex picture of climate change. What do you think of the efforts of Tesla and Elon Musk on pushing forward the electric car revolution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So look, electric cars are great. I don't own a car, but I've been driving a Tesla." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There you go, socially signaling." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're in Texas, it's okay. Well, I flew in here, so it's not like I'm in any way a virtuous guy on that path. But look, they're great cars, and eventually electric cars will take over a significant part of our uh driving and that's good because they're more more effective they're more effective they're probably also going to be cheaper uh there's a lot of good opportunities with them but it's because they've become reified as this thing that you do to fix climate and right now they're not really all that great for climate they uh you need a lot of uh uh, extra material into the batteries, which is very polluting. And it's also, uh, it emits a lot of CO2, a lot of electric cars, uh, are bought as second cars in the U S uh, so we used to think that they were driven almost as much as, as a regular car. It turns out that they're more likely driven less than half as much as, uh, as a regular cars. So, you know, 89% of all Americans who have an electric car also have a real car that they use for the long trips. And then they use the electric car for sure. 89%, yeah. So the point here is that it's one of these things that become more sort of a virtue signaling thing. And again, look, once electric cars are sufficiently cheap that people will want to buy them, that's great. And they will you know do some good for the environment but in reality what we should be focusing on is instead of getting people electric cars in rich countries where because we're subsidizing typically uh in in many countries it's you actually get a a sort of sliding scale you get more subsidy the more expensive it is we sort of subsidize this to very rich people to buy very large uh teslas uh to drive around in Uh, whereas what we should be focusing on is perhaps getting, uh, electric motorcycles and third world developing cities where they would do a lot more good. You know, they can actually go as far as you need. There's no worry about running out of, uh, and they would obviously, they're much, much more polluting, uh, just air pollution wise. And they're much cheaper, and they use very little battery. So it's about getting our senses right. But the electric car is not a conversation about, is it technically really good, or is it a somewhat good insight? It's more like it's a virtual signal. So I work with economists. I'm actually not an economist, but I like to say I claim I kind of am. Uh, but, but, you know, the, the fundamental point is we would say, well, how much do you, how much does it cost to cut a ton of CO2? And the answer is for most electric cars, we're paying in the order of a thousand, 2000, you know, Norway, they, they pay up to what, uh, $5,000 at thereabouts, you know, huge amount for one ton of CO2. Uh, you can right now cut a ton of CO2 for about, what is it? at $14 on the Reggie or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You can do this. That's a regional greenhouse gas initiative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you can basically cut it really, really cheaply. Why would we not want to cut dozens and dozens of tons of CO2 for the same price instead of just cutting one ton? And the simple answer is we only do that because we're so focused on electricity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I may interrupt, typically European come here in Texas, tell me I can't have my Ford F-150, but I'll- Now you can have your F-150 Lightning. That's true, that's true. I'm just joking, yes. But what do you think about electric cars, if you could just link her in that moment and this particular element of helping reduce emissions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you talked about the middle in the beginning, and I loved moving to the hybrid. The Prius was fantastic. It did everything our other sedan did, but it was 60 miles per gallon performance, and you don't have range anxiety because it has a regular engine, too. We still have a Prius. We also inherited my dad, dear dad's year 2000 Toyota Sienna, which is an old 100,000 mile minivan. And we use it all the time to do the stuff we can't do in the Prius. Like what? Taking stuff to the dump." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, you mean in terms of the size of the vehicle?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, size and just, you know, convenience factor for a bigger vehicle. I would love a fully electrified transportation world. It's kind of exciting. I think what Elon did with Tesla, I remember way, way back in the day when the first models were coming out. They were very slick, Ferrari style. cars and I thought this is cool and you know there's a history of privileged markets testing new technologies and I'm all for that. I think it's done a huge service prodding so much more R&D and you know once GM and Ford started to realize oh my god this is a real phenomenon, you know, getting them in the game. There was that documentary who killed the electric car, which seemed to imply that, you know, there were fights to keep this tamped down. And it's fundamentally cleaner, fundamentally better. But then you have to manage these bigger questions. If we're gonna do a build-out here, how do you make it fair? As you were saying, who actually uses transit cars? And Jigar Shah, that guy at the energy department I mentioned who has all this money to give out, he wants to give loans to, if you had an Uber fleet, those Uber drivers, they're the ones who need. electric cars. His work, and there was a recent story in Grist also, said that most of the sales of Teslas are at the high end of the market. They're $60,000, $80,000 vehicles. The Hummer, the electric Hummer, there was a data point on that, astonishing data point. The battery in that Hummer weighs more than I'd have to look it up. It weighs more than a car." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your Prius." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it might have been a Prius. And think of the material costs there. Think of where that battery, the cobalt and the lithium, where does this stuff come from to build this stuff out? I'm all for it, but we have to be honest and clear about that's a new resource rush, like the oil rush back in the early 20th century. And those impacts have to be figured out too. And if they're all big hummers for rich people, there's so many contrary arguments to that that I think we have to figure out a way, we, I don't like the word we. I use it too much, we all do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- We all do. You usually refer when you say we, we humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We, society, we, the government, yeah. There has to be some thought and attention put to where you put these incentives so that you get the best use of this technology for the carbon benefit, for the conventional sooty pollution benefit, for the transportation benefit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I step back and ask a sort of big question? We mentioned economics, journalism. how does an economist and a climate scientist and a journalist that writes about climate see the world differently? What are the strengths and potential blind spots of each discipline? I mean, that's just sort of, just so people may be aware. I think you'd be able to fall into the economics camp a bit. There's climate scientists. And there's climate scientists, adjacent people, like who hang, some of my best friends are climate scientists, which is, I think, where you fall in, because you're a journalist, you've been writing it, so you're not completely in the trenches of doing the work, you're just stepping into the trenches every once in a while. So can you speak to that, maybe, Bjorn? What does the world look like to an economist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "let's try to empathize with these beings that, uh, you know, unfortunately has fallen into the disreputable, uh, economics. Yeah. So, so, uh, I think, I think the, the, the main point that, that I've been trying for a long time, and I think that's also a little bit what Andy has been talking about for a very long time. The whole conversation was about what does the science tell us is, is it global warming real? And, and to me, it's much more. what can we actually do? What are the policies that we can take and how effective are they going to be? So the conversation we just had about electric cars is a good example of how an economist think about, look, this is not a question about whether you feel morally virtuous or whether you can sort of display how much you care about the environment. This is about how much you actually ended up affecting the world. And the honest answer is that electric cars right now, in the next decade or so, will have a fairly small impact. And unfortunately, right now, at a very high cost, because we're basically subsidizing these things at $5,000 or $10,000 around the world per car. That's just not really sustainable, but it's certainly not a very great way to cut carbon emissions. So I would be the kind of guy, and economists would be the types of people who would say, is there a smarter way where you, for less money, can, for instance, cut more CO2? And the obvious answer is yes. That's what we've seen, for instance, with fracking. The fact that the US went from a lot of coal to a lot of gas because gas became incredibly cheap, because gas emits about half as much as coal does when you use it for power, that basically cut more carbon emissions than pretty much any other single thing. And we should get the rest of the world in some sense to frack because it's really cheap. There are some problems and absolutely we can we can also have that conversation. There is no technology is problem free, but fundamentally it's an incredibly cheap way to get people to cut a lot of CO2. It's not the final solution because it's still a fossil fuel, but it's a much better fossil fuel, if you will. And it's much more realistic to do that. So that's one part of the thing. The other one is when we talked about, for instance, how do we help people in Florida who gets hit by a hurricane? Or how do we help people that get damaged in flash floods, the people who are in heat waves? And the simple answer is there's a lot of very, very cheap and effective things that we could do first. So most climate people will tend to sort of say, We've got to get rid of all carbon emissions. We've got to change the engine that powers the world and has powered us for the last 200 years. And that's all good and well, but it's really, really hard to do. And it's probably not going to do very much. And even if you succeed it, it would only help, you know, future victims of future hurricane Ian's in Florida, a tiny, tiny bit at best. So instead, let's try to focus on not getting people to build right on the waterfront where you're incredibly vulnerable and where you were. very likely to get hit where we subsidize people with federal insurance again, which is just actually losing money. So we're much more about saying, it's not a science question. I just take the science for granted. Yes, there is a problem with climate change, but it's much more about saying, how can we make smart decisions?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you about blind spots? When you reduce stuff to numbers, the costs and benefits, is there stuff you might miss? that are important to the flourishing of the human species?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So everyone will have to say, of course there must be blind spots. But I don't know what they are. Yeah, I'm sure Andy would probably be better at telling me what they are. So we try to incorporate all of it, but obviously we're not successful. You can't incorporate everything, for instance, in the cost-benefit analysis. But the point is, in some way, I would worry a lot about this if we were, you know, sort of close to perfection, human race, we're doing almost everything right, but we're not quite right, then we need to get the last digits right. But I think it's much more that, you know, and the point that I tried to make before, that we're all focused on going to an electric car or something else rather than fracking. We're all focused on cutting carbon emissions instead of reducing vulnerability. So we're similarly getting in orders of magnitude wrong. And while I'm sure I have blind spots, I think they're probably not big enough to overturn that point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Andy Wise, Bjorn, economists are all wrong about everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, models, we could spend a whole day on models. There are economic models. There's this thing called optimization models. There were two big ones used to assess the US plan, this new big IRA inflation reduction package. And they're fine. They're a starting point for understanding what's possible. But as this gets to the journalism part or the public part, you have to look at the caveats, you have to look at what model, economists expressly exclude things that are not modelable. And if you look in the fine print on the repeat project, the Princeton version of the assessment of the recent giant legislation, the fine print is the front page. for me, as a deep diving journalist, because it says we didn't include any sources of friction, meaning resistance to putting new transmission lines through your community, or people who don't want mining in America, because we've exported all of our mining. We mine our cobalt in Congo, and trying to get a new mine in Nevada, was a fraught fight that took more than 10 years for lithium. So if you're excluding those elements from your model, which on the surface makes this $370 billion package have an emissions reduction trajectory, that's really pretty good. and you're not saying in your first line, by the way, these are the things we're not considering." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's the job of a journalist. You could probably summarize all of human history with that one word, friction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, well, inertia, friction implies there's a force that's already being resisted, but there's also inertia, which is a huge part of our, you know, we have a status quo bias. The scientists that I, in grappling with the climate problem, as a journalist, I paid too much attention to climate scientists. That's why all my articles focused on climate change. And it was 2006, I remember now pretty clearly, I was asked by the Weekend Review section of the New York Times to write a sort of a weekend thumb sucker, we call them, on- Thumb sucker? You know, you sit and suck your thumb and think about something. Why is everybody so pissed off about climate change? It was after the Al Gore movie came out, Inconvenient Truth, Hurricane Katrina. It was big. Senator Inhofe in the Senate from Oklahoma wasn't yet throwing snowballs, but it was close to that. And so I looked into what was going on. Why is this so heated? In 2006, the story's called Yelling Fire on a Hot Planet. And that was the first time, this is after 18 years of writing about global warming. That was the first time I interviewed a social scientist, not a climate scientist. Her name is Helen Ingram. She's at UC Irvine. And she laid out for me the factors that determine why people vote, what they vote for, what they think about politically. And they were the antithesis of the climate problem. She used the words, she said, people go in the voting booth thinking about things that are soon, salient, and certain. And climate change is complex, you know, has long timescales. And that really jogged me. And then I, between 2006, 2010, I started interviewing other social scientists, and this was by far the scariest science of all. It's the climate in our heads, our inconvenient minds, and how that translates into political norms and stuff really became the monster, not the climate system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there social dynamics to the scientists themselves? Because I've gotten to witness a kind of flocking behavior with scientists. So it's almost like a flock of birds. Within the flock, there's a lot of disagreement and fun debates and everybody trying to prove each other wrong, but they're all kind of headed in the same direction. and you don't wanna be the bird that kinda leaves that flock. So like, there's an idea that science is a mechanism will get us towards the truth, but it'll definitely get us somewhere, but it could be not the truth in the short term. In the long term, a bigger flock will come along and it'll get us to the truth, but there's a sense that I don't know if there's a mechanism within science to like, snap out of it if you're down the wrong track. Usually you get it right, but sometimes you don't. When you don't, it's very costly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And there's so many factors that line up to perpetuate that flocking behavior. One is media attention comes in. The other is funding comes in, National Science Foundation or whatever, European foundations pour a huge amount of money into things related to climate. And then your narrative in your head is, shaped by that aspect of the climate problem that's in the spotlight. I started using this hashtag a few years back, narrative capture, like be wary of narrative capture, where you're on a train and everyone's getting on the train, and this is in the media too, not just science, and it becomes self-sustaining, and it's, And contrary indications are ignored or downplayed. No one does replication science because your career doesn't advance through replicating someone else's work. So those contrary indications are not necessarily really dug in on. And this is way beyond climate. This is many fields. As you said, you might've seen this in AI. And it's really hard to find, it's another form of path dependency, the term I used before. The breaking narrative capture to me, for me, has come mostly from stepping back and reminding myself of the basic principles of journalism. Journalism's basic principles are useful for anybody. confronting a big, enormous, dynamic, complex thing is who, what, where, when, why? Just be really rigorous about not assuming because there's a fire in Boulder County or a flood in Fort Myers that climate, which is in your head because you're part of the climate team at the New York Times or whatever, is the foreground part of this problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the psychological challenge of that if you incorporate the fact that if you try to step back and have nuance, you might get attacked by the others in the flock? Oh, I was." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you've certainly been." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So both of you get attacked. Yeah. Continuously from different sides. So let me just ask about that. How does that feel and how do you continue thinking clearly and continuously try to have humility and step back and not get defensive in that as a communicator." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, there are other things happening at the same time, right? I'm now 35 years into, almost 40 years into my journalism career, so I have some independence. I'm free from the obligations of I don't really need my next paycheck. I live in Maine now in a house I love. I own it outright. It's a great privilege and honor. And as a result of a lot of hard work. And so I'm freer to think freely. And I know my colleagues in newsrooms, when I was at the New York Times, in the newsroom, you become captive to a narrative, just as you do out in the world. The New York Times had a narrative about Saddam Hussein. drove us into that war. The Times sucked right into that and helped perpetuate it. I think we're in a bit of a narrative, we, the media, my friends at the Times and others are on a train ride on climate change, depicting it in a certain way that really, I saw problems with how they handled the Joe Manchin issue in America, the West Virginia Senator. They really kind of piled on and zoomed in on his investments. which is really important to do, but they never pulled back and said, by the way, he's a rare species. He's a Democrat in West Virginia, which is a seat that would be otherwise occupied by a Republican. There'd be no talk of a climate deal or any of that stuff without him. But once you're starting to kind of frame a story in a certain way, you carry it along. And as you said, sometimes it breaks and a new norm arrives, but the climate train is still kind of rushing forward and missing the opportunity to cut it into its pieces and say, well, what's really wrong with Florida? And it's for me, when you ask about how I handle the slings and arrows and stuff, it's partially because I'm past worrying about it too much. I mean, it was pretty intense. 2009, Rush Limbaugh suggested I kill myself on his radio show. It's a really great time. What was that about? I had, actually this was a meeting in Washington in 2009 on population at the Wilson Center. I couldn't be there, so actually this is pre-COVID, but I was Zooming in or something, like Skyping in, and I was talking about, in a playful way, I said, well, if you really wanna worry about carbon, This was during the debate over a carbon tax model for a bill in America. We should probably have a carbon tax for kids because a bigger family in America is a big source of more emissions. It was kind of a playful thought bubble. Some right-wing blogger blogged about it. It got into Russia's pile of things to talk about. And the clip is really fun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, so meaning, so if humans are bad for the environment, I can imagine. That's how you know you've made it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He was very explicit. He said, Mr. Revkin of the New York, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, if you really think that people are the worst thing that ever happened to this planet, why don't you just kill yourself and save the planet by dying? So that was tough for you. It was tough for my family. To me, it did generate some interesting calls and stuff in my voicemail. But on the left, I was also undercut. Roger Pilkey Jr., a prominent researcher of climate risk and climate policy, UC Boulder, was actively, his career track was derailed purposefully by people who just thought his message was too off the path. When you, you know, You've been dealing with this for a very long time. So I just want to get back to the science. I don't think the science get it so much wrong as it just becomes accepted to make certain assumptions. As you just said, we assume no friction. So, you know, there's a way that you kind of model the world that ends up being also a convenient message in many ways. And I think the main convenient message in climate, and it's not surprising if you think about it, you know, the main convenient message is that the best way to do something about all the things that we call climate is to cut CO2. And that turns out to only sometimes be true and with a lot of caveats. But that's sort of the message." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it takes a long time. Yes, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's really, really difficult to do in any meaningful sort of time frame. And if you challenge that, You, yes, you're outside the flock and you get attacked. I've always, uh, so, uh, somebody told me once, uh, I think it's true. They say at the, uh, Harvard law school, if you have a good case, pound the case. If you have a bad case, pound the table. Uh, and so I've always felt that when people go after me, they're kind of pounding the table there, you know, they're literally screaming. I don't have a good case. I'm really annoyed with what you're saying. And, and so to me, that actually means it's much more important to make this argument. Uh, sure. I mean, I would, I would love, you know, everyone just saying, oh, that's a really good point. I'm going to use that. But yeah, uh, we're, we're stuck in a situation, certainly in a conversation where. A lot of people have invested a lot of time and energy on saying we should cut carbon emissions. This is the way to help humankind. And just be clear, I think we should cut carbon emissions as well, but we should also just be realistic about what we can achieve with that and what are all the other things that we could also do. And it turns out that a lot of these other things are much cheaper, much more effective, will help much more, much quicker. And so getting that point out, It's just incredibly important for us to get it right. So in some sense, you know, to make sure that we don't do another Iraq and we don't do another, you know, lots of stupid decisions. I mean, this this is one of the things mankind is very good at. And I guess I see my role. And I think that's probably also how you see yourself is trying to, you know, get everyone to do it slightly less wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me ask you about a deep psychological effect for you. There's also a drug of martyrdom. So whenever you stand against the flock, you wrote a couple of really good books on the topic. The most recent, False Alarm. I stand as the holder of truth, that everybody who is alarmist is wrong. And here's just simple, calm way to express the facts of the matter. And that's very compelling to a very large number of people. They wanna make a martyr out of you. Is that, are you worried about your own mind? being corrupted by that, by enjoying standing against the crowd." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no. There's very little, I guess I can see what you're saying sort of in a literary way or something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's a bit poetic here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's very little comfort or sort of usefulness in annoying a lot of people. Whenever I go to a party, for instance, I know that there's a good chance people are going to be annoyed with me. And I would love that not to be the case. But what I try to do is, so I try to be very polite and sort of not push people's buttons unless they sort of actively say, so you're saying all kind of stupid stuff on the climate, right? And then try to engage with them and say, well, what is it you're thinking about? And hopefully, you know, during that party and then it ends up being a really bad party for me. But anyway, so I'll, you know, I'll end up possibly convincing one person that I'm not totally stupid, but no, I'm not playing the martyr and I'm not enjoying that. It's so interesting. I mean, the martyr complex is all around the climate question. Michael Mann, at the far end of the spectrum of activism from where Bjorn is, is a climate scientist who was actively attacked by Inhofe and West Virginia politicians. really abused in many ways. He had come up with a very prominent model of looking at long-term records of climate change and got this hockey stick for temperature. And he, you know, he definitely sits there in a certain kind of spotlight because of that. So it's not unique at any particular vantage point in the spectrum of sort of prominent people on the debate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Andrew, you co-wrote the book, The Human Planet, Earth at the Dawn of the Anthropocene, which is the new age when humans are actually having impact on the environment. Let me ask the question of what do you find most beautiful and fascinating about our planet Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would be cheap to say everything, but just walking here this morning under the bridge over the Colorado River, seeing the birds, knowing there's bat colonies, massive bat colonies around here that I got to visit a few years ago. I experienced one of those bat explosions. It's mind-blowing. I've been really lucky as a journalist to have gone to the North Pole, the camp on the sea ice with Russian help, a camp that was set up for tourists coming from Europe every year. There were scientists on the sea ice floating on the 14,000-foot-deep Arctic Ocean, and I was with them for several days. I wrote a book about that, too, along with my reporting. I've been in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. When I was very young, I was a crew on a sailboat that sailed two thirds of the way around the world. I was halfway across the Indian Ocean, again, in 14,000 foot deep water. There was no wind. This was way before I was a journalist, 22, 23 years old. And we went swimming, swimming in 14,000 foot deep water. 500 miles from land, the Western Indian Ocean, halfway between Somalia and the Maldives. is like so mind-boggling, chillingly fantastical thing with a mask on, looking at your shadow going to the vanishing point below you, looking over at the boat, which is a 60-foot boat, but it just looks like a toy, and then getting back on and being beholden to the elements, the sailboat heading toward Djibouti." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the immensity and the power of the elements." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh my God. And then the human qualities are unbelievable. The Anthropocene, I played a bit of a role as a journalist in waking people up to the idea that this era called the Holocene, the last 11,000 years, you know, since the last ice age had ended. I wrote my 1992 book on global warming, thinking about all that we're just talking about, thinking about the wonders of the planet, thinking about the impact of humans so far in our explosive growth in the 20th century. I wrote that perhaps earth scientists of the future will name this post-Holocene era for its formative element, for us, because we're kind of in charge in certain ways, which is hubristic at the same time. the variability of the climate system is still profound with or without global warming." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this immense, powerful, beautiful organism that is Earth, all the different sub-organisms that are on it, do you see humans as a kind of parasite on this Earth? No, no. Or do you see it as something that helps the flourishing of the entire organism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "that can." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can. Intelligence. That hasn't yet. Hasn't yet? I mean, aren't we on the ability of the collective intelligence of the human species to develop all these kinds of technologies and to be able to have Twitter to introspect onto itself? I think we're doing a..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In a way, we are. It's catch-up, we're always in catch-up mode. I was at the Vatican for a big meeting in 2014 on sustainable humanity, sustainable nature, our responsibility. And it was a week of presentations by Martin Rees, who's this famed British scientist, physicist who. I've been on his podcast. Yeah, great. Well, he's fixated on existential risk, right? Yes, he is. So it was a week of this stuff. The meeting was kicked off by, I wrote about it, Cardinal Maradiaga, who is, I think, from El Salvador. He's one of the Pope's kind of posse. He gave one of the initial speeches, and he said, nowadays, mankind looks like a technical giant and an ethical child. meaning our technological wizardry is unbelievable, but it's way out in front of our ability to step back and kind of like consider in the full dimensions we need to, is it helping everybody? What are the consequences of CRISPR, genetics technology? And there's no single answer to that. If I'm in the African Union, I'm just using this as an example. CRISPR has emerged so fast, it can do so much by changing the nature of nature. in a kind of a programming way, you know, building genes, not just transferring them from one organism to another. We've only just begun to taste the fruits of that, literally. And it can wipe out a mosquito species. We know how to do that now. You can like literally take out the dengue-causing mosquito. The scientists have done the work, and you think, okay, cool, well, that's great. Now there's this big fight over whether that should happen. The African Union, and I'm with their view, says, hey, if we can take out a mosquito species that's causing horrific, chronic loss through dengue, which I had once in Indonesia, it's not fun, And we should do it, you know? What's the other side of the argument? The European Union, they're saying, using their capital P precautionary principle, says, no, we can't meddle with nature. And this is just like we were talking with climate. There's the real-time question and the long-term question. And there's the people who are just facing the need to get through the day and be healthy and survive and have enough food, which is not integrated sufficiently at all into the climate, stop climate change debate. And those who are trying to cut CO2, which will have a benefit in the future by limiting the fat tail outcomes of this. journey we're on. So when I think about the Anthropocene, I think about this planet. I love that we're here right now. I love that our species has these capacities. I would love for there to be a little bit more reflection in where things come from and where they might go, whether you're a student, a kid. What's your role? The wonderful thing about the complexity of it is everyone can play a role. If you're an artist or a designer or an architect or an economist or a podcaster, Whatever you do, just tweak it a little bit toward examining these questions, stepping back from the simplistic label throwing toward what actually is the problem in front of me, whether it's in Pakistan or in Boston or wherever, you know, Florida." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you find beautiful about this collective intelligence machine we have? From an economics perspective, it's kind of fascinating that we're able to there is a machine to it that we've built up that's able to represent interests and desires and value and hopes and dreams in sort of monetary ways that we can trade with each other, we can make agreements with each other, we can represent our goals and build companies that actually help and so on. Do you just step back every once in a while and marvel at the fact that a few billion of us are able to somehow not create complete chaos and actually collaborate and have collaborative disagreements that ultimately, or so far, have led to progress." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think fundamentally the point, apart from the fact that, you know, we should just be joyful of the fact that humans live here. I think it's incredibly important to remember how much progress we've had. You know, most people just don't stop to think about those stats. You know, I get that in the normal bustle of day, but just, you know, in 1900, the average person on the planet lived to be 32 years. 32 years, that was our average life expectancy. Today, it's about 74. So we've literally got two lifetimes on this planet, each one of us. And every year you live in the rich world, you get to live three months longer, and the poor world is about four months longer. Because of medical advances, because we get better at dealing both with cancer and especially right now with heart disease, These are amazing achievements. Of course, it's a very, very small part of it. We're much better fed. We're much better educated. We've gone from a world where virtually everyone or 90% were illiterate to a world where more than 90% illiterate. This is an astounding opportunity. And 200 years ago, 95% 94% of the world were Extremely poor that is less than a dollar a day today that for the first time in 2015 It was down below 10% so there and again, these are kind of boring statistics, but they're also astounding Testaments of how well humanity has done. So just on the point of, we've kind of just been focused on making our own world better. And in many ways, you know, so we've hunted a lot of big animals, either to extinction or down to much, much smaller populations. There's much smaller populations of fish in the ocean. So there's a lot of things that sort of bear the brunt of our success. Not it's not because we're evil in that sense. It's just because we didn't care all that much about them. Uh, I think it is important as one funnel of that. I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. Uh, but the fact that we're putting out more CO2 in the atmosphere, uh, because CO2 is, as you also mentioned before, it's actually plant food. Uh, you know, if, if you're, if you're a greenhouse grower, you know, if you put in CO2 in your greenhouse, you actually get bigger and plumper tomatoes. And that's essentially what we're doing in the world. This has overall bad consequences, and that's why we should be doing something about it. But one of the good side effects is actually that the world is getting greener. So we get much more green stuff. Now, I don't know, and this is where I sort of show my economist roots, because if you just measure all living stuff, in, uh, in tons. Uh, so in weight, there's actually more living stuff than there were a hundred years ago, uh, because elephants and, uh, all these other, you know, big fish and stuff are actually really, really small fraction of the world. Uh, so yeah, the fact that we have, yes. So we have an enormous amount of life stuff, but that doesn't even measure it. It's mostly just wood. you know, wooden green stuff that has dramatically increased in the world. Now, we're still not there from what it was in 1500, so we've still cut down the world a lot, but we're actually making a much greener world. Again, not because we really cared or thought about it, but just sort of a side effect of what we're doing. I think the crucial bit to remember is When you're poor and you worry about what's going to happen the next day This is just not your main issue. You know, am I killing too many large? animals in the world but when you're rich and and you can actually sit in a podcast in a Convenient place in austin you can also start thinking about this. So one of the crucial bits I think if we want to get the rest of the world to care about the environment, care about climate, care about all these other issues, we really need to get them out of poverty first. And it's a simple point that we often forget. And get them connected to all these gifts. Yes. I have these memories of, I was reporting on the next big earthquake that's gonna devastate Istanbul. in 2009. I was in a slum, immigrant, poor neighborhood, and walking around with an engineer pointing out to the buildings that were going to fall down. This is all known. There was an earthquake in 1999 and the next one's coming. One of my advantages in covering climate is I've covered other kinds of disasters too, so it keeps my context, you know, me in touch with other things we could do. So I'm walking around and interviewing everybody, went to the school that's being retrofit. They actually were getting ahead of it there. The World Bank provided some funding to put in iron bars in the brick building. And I met these kids and they came, when you're a journalist with a camera and stuff and a pad, you get swarmed by kids, mostly in developing countries. And so these kids are running up to me. And they weren't going like, are you American or just, they were saying Facebook, Facebook. And I went, that's interesting. And they led me to their little town, a little community center that had a bank of eight or 10 pretty flimsy computers. And they were all there playing Farm, it was a game that was hot at that time on Facebook. Farm. Farmville. Farmville, yeah. And you know, my son back in the Hudson Valley, I remember him playing it. And I thought, wow, that is so frickin' cool that these kids, and actually I became Facebook friends with a couple of them afterwards. We traded our, and I thought back to my youth when we had pen pals. I would write a letter to a kid in West Cameroon, and he would write back. And it took weeks, and it was a crinkly letter, and I never met him. And now you can kind of connect with people, and that all, through my blogging, you know, at the New York Times, I was doing my regular reporting, but I launched a blog in 2007 called Dot Earth, which was all about where you were just describing, the newest sphere, the connected world. That's a term from these two earliest, a Russian guy in early Vernadsky and a French theologian and scientist, which is so interesting, Teilhard de Chardin, they had this idea in the early 20th century that we're creating a planet of the mind, that human intelligence can foster a better Earth. And I just became smitten with that, especially meeting kids in Istanbul slums who are on Facebook, looking at connectedness, what can you do with these tools, which is what drives me with my work now. But then there are these counter-currents that if the connectedness can cut back, it allowed... Al Qaeda to recruit, use decapitation videos to recruit distributed, disaffected young people into extremism. And there's lots of, these systems are not, they're just like every other tool, right? They're just for good or ill. And the efficiency thing, the economics of the world, which I also wrote about a little bit, you know, late 20th century, it was so cool that everything became so efficient. that our supply chains are just in time manufacturing, you know, getting the stuff from where the sources of the material are to the car factory and to get the car to the floor just in time for someone to buy it. And everyone got totally sucked in by that, including me. It's great, you know, super efficient, cheaper. And then COVID hit and the whole supply chain concept crumbled. And one of the big lessons there, hopefully, and this is relevant to sustainability generally, is efficiency matters, but resilience matters too. And resilience is inefficient. You need redundancy or or a variety of options, right? Which is not what corporate companies think about, which is not what, if you're only focused on a bottom line, short-term timeline, those disruptions are not what you're thinking about. You're still thinking about, can we get that widget here just in time for this thing to happen? And then on we go. So it's kind of, I love the noosphere, this noosphere idea, the connectedness is fantastic. Oh, another thing, like in the early nineties, When I wrote my first book on global warming, it was for an exhibition at the Museum of Natural History. The Environmental Defense Fund was involved. They were like a partner, one of these longstanding environmental groups. And they're very old-fashioned. It's mostly lawyers, really, just using the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act to litigate against pollution. And now, EDF is vastly bigger. And they're actually, this coming year, they're launching a satellite, an environmental group is launching MethaneSat. And it's providing an independent view of where there's this gas. It's the same thing, natural gas is basically methane. So if you have a leak, whether it's in Siberia or in Oklahoma, you can cross-reference, you can identify the hotspot, you can know where the problem is to fix in so many ways. And that's just one example. I'm like, if someone had told me in 1993 that EDF was going to launch a methane satellite, I would have laughed out loud. So technology plays a huge role if it's kind of you know, employed with the bigger vision and leadership." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Bjorn, you wrote, one of the books you wrote, the most recent one called False Alarm, How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. Good title, by the way, very intense, makes me wanna read it. What is likely the worst effect of climate change?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First, let me just, my editor actually hated the subtitle because it gives away the whole book. Basically, it tells you what the book tries to make. I think that's exactly what it should be. It's about getting this conversation out in the public sphere. So the worst thing that climate change can do is like the worst thing that anything can do is that it wipes out everything and we all die. So it's, it's not like, you know, if you're just looking for worst case outcomes, uh, you know, anything can get to the worst case outcome. Um, imagine if we, uh, what's the worst thing that could happen from HIV? It breaks down one or more African states because we don't fix it. And then you get sort of biological warfare and terrorism throwing that in the mix. And then you get someone who makes a virus and kills the whole world. You know, you can make worst case scenarios for everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But let's just call it, I get the point, and I'm sorry for the interruption, and I appreciate worst case analysis, because I am fundamentally a computer scientist, and that was the thing that defined the discipline of, to measure the quality of the algorithm, you measure what is its worst case performance. That's the big O notation, that's how you discuss algorithms. What is the worst possible thing in terms of performance this thing can do? for climate change, let's even go crazy, what is exactly the worst case scenario for climate change? Because I have to be honest and say I haven't really paid deep attention, I just have a lot of colleagues who think about climate and so on, and there's a kind of, in the alarmism, there was a sense what, this is a very serious problem. and then the sentence would never finish. What exactly is the problem? Well, the extinction of the human species, okay. With a virus, I understand how that could possibly happen. What is the mechanism by which the human species becomes extinct because of climate change?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not sure I would want to be able to argue that because it really requires you to have sort of very, very extreme parameter choices all down the line. And so it's more, it's this kind of idea that we hit some of these unexpected outcomes. So for instance, the Western Arctic ice sheet melts really, really quickly. It doesn't look like that can happen really, really quickly, but let's just say that this could happen within a hundred years or something. So we basically get what, seven meters what is that 20 feet of sea level rise uh that will be a real challenge to a lot of places around the world this would have you know significant costs uh it's likely and you know there's actually been a study that's tried to estimate could we deal with that and the this the short answer is yes if you're fairly well off you know if you're holland you can definitely deal with it uh it's also likely that most Developing countries are gonna be much closer to Holland towards the end of the century because they'll be much richer. So they can probably handle it, but it will be a real challenge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "May I ask a dumb question? Yeah. What happens when the sea level rises exactly? What is the painful aspect of that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is that all of your current infrastructure in a lot of coastal cities around the world that are literally built on, you know, Jakarta is a good example, that are literally built on the just, you know, inches above the sea level. If you then get a sea level rise, they'll rise, say, what would 20 feet, that would be like a third or a fourth of a foot every year kind of thing. Yeah. I see no evidence that that's even." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But hold on a second. We're not talking about evidence. No. We're talking about worst case analysis and algorithm." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so basically you would see your infrastructure, all your stuff, very quickly being very, very challenged. And you basically have to put up huge sea walls or migrate out of that area. Very quickly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, very quickly, as in 50 years or something. Right. So like, is that, as a human species, we're not able to respond to that kind of threat?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course we are. And look, again, the point here is, then there's a lot of other arguments. And I should just put the disclaimer, this is not what I think is correct, but you're asking me what's the worst case outcome that you have. So most of global warming is really about that we're used to one way of doing things. So, you know, we live in Jakarta because it's right next to the sea. We're used to the sea being at this level. We grow our crops because we're used to, you know, you grow corn here, you grow wheat here because we're used to that's where the precipitation and the temperature is the right for this kind of crop. If this changes, and this is the same thing with, with, you know, with houses, if it gets colder, if it gets warmer, it's suddenly uncomfortable because you've built your house wrong. So our infrastructure will be wrong if the world changes. And that's what climate change is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "At a large scale." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And so this is a problem in most of these senses. But if you then sort of take it to the extreme and say, well, imagine that you're going to get a huge sea level rise. Imagine that you're going to get a very different sort of precipitation. For instance, the what is it, the rain season, monsoon in the Indian subcontinent changes dramatically. That could affect a lot of agriculture and make it really hard to imagine that you could feed India well. There are these kinds of things where you can imagine and then that this would be very difficult to deal with. And then if you add all of it up, you could possibly get sort of a system collapse because, you know, you just have too many problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible to model those kinds of things? So what I understand is the sea of Arise itself isn't the destructive thing. It's the fact that it creates migration patterns and human tension, battle over resources. And so you start to get these, human things, human conflict. So the big negative impact won't be necessarily from the fact that you have to move your house. It's the fact that once you move your house, that means something else down the line, and it's the secondary, tertiary effects that can have potentially to wars, military conflict, can have destabilized entire economies, all that kind of stuff, because of the migration pattern. Is it possible to model those kinds of things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there are people who looked at this and, and, and surprisingly, again, you know, most people will move within their country for a lot of different reasons, but, you know, mainly language and political structure, you have your money, you have your relationships there. So it's not like we're going to see these big moves, you know, from. from southern Mexico and Central America up to the U.S. or from Africa up to the EU. That's not predominantly because of climate. That's because there's a lot of welfare opportunity. You can make your life much, much better. You can become much more productive if you move into a richer country. So so yes, there are these issues again. You're asking me for sort of what is it that could really sort of break down the world? I think the fundamental point is to recognize that it's not like we haven't dealt with huge challenges in the past and we've dealt with them really well. So just one fun thing. I encourage everyone to just look that up on Wikipedia. The rising of Chicago. So in the, uh, in the 1850s, uh, Chicago was a terribly, uh, uh, uh, uh, dirty place and they didn't have good sewers. And so they decided, and we can't really make up all my, they decided to raise Chicago one to two feet. And so they simply took one block at a time. They put like 50,000 jacks underneath a building and they would just raise the building. And then they'd go on to the next building. They raised all of Chicago, one or two feet. This is, you know, almost 200 years ago. Of course, we will be able to deal with these things. I'm not saying it'll be fun or that it'll be cheap. Of course, we would rather not have to deal with this, but we're a very inventive species. And so it's very unlikely that we'll not be able to deal with these things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "COVID pandemic just said, hold my beer. The response of human civilization to the COVID pandemic seems to have not, they didn't find the car jacks. Seems to have not been as effective as I would have hoped for as a human that believes in the basic competence of leadership and all that kind of stuff. It seems that given the COVID pandemic luckily did not turn out to be a pandemic that would eradicate most of the human species, which is something you always have to consider and worry about, that I would have hoped we would have less economic impact and we would respond more effectively. in terms of policy, in terms of socially, medically, all that kind of stuff. So if the COVID pandemic brought the world to its knees, then what does a sea level rise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's a different kind of thing that happened in the in the COVID. So politicians and a lot of politicians, I think, made certainly suboptimal decisions. But I also find the fact that we actually managed to get a vaccine in a year. We should not be sort of unaware of the fact that, yes, we did a lot of stupid stuff and a lot of people were really, really annoyed. But fundamentally, we fixed this. Uh, we could have done it better and prettier. I mean, I, I, uh, rode through, uh, the COVID pandemic in the Southern Sweden. Uh, so, uh, and, uh, yes, we, we can have that whole conversation. It was certainly a much easier, uh, to live there than, uh, than many other places. But the fundamental point was. We actually fixed it. So yes, we'll do, uh, and we'll do that with climate. We'll make a lot of bad decisions and we'll waste a lot of money like we do with all other problems, but it's, are we going to fix this? Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you add on to that uncomfortable discussion of what's the worst thing that could possibly happen?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not worried about the sea level rise component. Certainly not nearly as much as the heat and disruption of agriculture patterns and water supplies. And a lot of it relates to, again, path dependency in history. Farmers are the heroes of humanity all through history, because they're incredibly adaptable if you give them access to resources. In some cases, it's just crop insurance, which is really basically still impossible to get in big chunks of Africa to get you through those hard spots. But the heat issue is the one that's the most basic element related to global warming from CO2 buildup. is hotter heat waves. There's still some lack of evidence of the intensification, but the duration, and that's what really matters for heat, is how many days, seems to be very powerfully linked to global warming. And so how many people die as a result of that is important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're talking about maybe you can also educate me, what's the average projection for the next 100 years as the temperature rises at two degrees Celsius?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, although this gets us into the modeling realm. You're assuming, you have to assume different emissions possibilities. You have to assume we still don't know the basic physics, like how many clouds form in a warming climate and how that relates to limiting warming. There are aspects of the fundamental warming question that are still" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Deep land certain. But the debate is like two, three, or four Celsius. It's in that range. But the thing is, all of those are bad for, this is an educational question. Sure. It doesn't seem like that much from a weather perspective, if you just turn up the AC and so on in your own personal home. But it is, from a global perspective, a huge impact on agriculture." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, and getting back to sea level and glaciers, the melting point of ice is a number. And so if you pass that number, things start to change. What became known about Antarctica and Greenland more is that its ocean temperature the seawater in and around and under these ice sheets, because it kind of gets under parts of Antarctica, is what's driving the dynamics that could lead to more abrupt change, more than air temperature. Glaciers, these big ice sheets live or die based on how much snow falls and how much ice leaves every year. And I was up on the Greenland ice sheet in 2004, written about it forever since then. It's the same amount of water that's in the Gulf of Mexico as if God or some great force came down and flash flows the Gulf of Mexico and plunked it up on land. That's the ice sheet. It's a lot of water. That's 23 feet of sea level rise. If you but we're not gonna melt it all. And the pace at which that erosion begins and becomes sort of a runaway train is still not well understood. That changed from like a manageable level of sea level rise from these ice sheets to something that becomes truly unstoppable or that has these discontinuities where you get a lot more all of a sudden. To me, it's in the realm of what I've taken to calling known unknowables, like don't count on another IPCC report magically including science that says, aha, now we know it's going to be five feet by 2100. Because learning, there's a lot of negative learning in science. This may be true in your body of science too. There's a guy named Jeremy Bassis, B-A-S-S-I-S. who wrote a paper about the idea that you could get this sudden cliff breakdown of these ice shelves around Antarctica leading to rapid sea level rise. He did more modeling in physics, and it turns out that you end up with, it's a much more progressive and self-limiting phenomenon. But those papers don't get any attention in the media because- They're not scary. They're not scary, and they're sort of after the fact. You know, Just this past year, there's been this cycle around collapse, the word collapse, and Antarctic ice. It started actually several years ago with the idea that the West Antarctic ice sheet is particularly vulnerable, and some paper, everyone, the science community, like the birds, we were talking about flux to it, and some high-profile papers are written. And then a deeper inquiry reveals, eh, you know, it's more complicated than that. And we, the journalists, the media, pundits, don't pay attention to that stuff. And actually, which is why I started to develop kind of a dictionary, I call it watchwords, like words, if you're out there, You're just a public person, you want to know what's really going on. You hear these words like collapse in the context of ice. What do you do with that? And so I've created conversations around these words. Geologists and ice scientists use the word collapse. They're talking about a centuries-long process. They're not talking about the World Trade Center. Scientists would do well to be more careful with words like that. Unless your focus is what we were saying earlier, your idea that alarming people will spur them to act, then you use that word carelessly. Can I just follow up on the other point that you said, you know, two, three, four degrees, you know, that doesn't sound like much. I can just crank up the air conditioning. I think that sort of touches on a really, really important point, that for most rich people, much of climate change is not really going to be all that impactful. It still will have an impact. But fundamentally, if you're well off, you can mitigate a lot of these impacts. And there's a young scientist at Carnegie Mellon, Destiny Nock. She just was the lead author on a study what poor and prosperous households do in a heat wave when they have access to air conditioning. In a poor household, you wait, they found through science, they delay turning on the air conditioner four to seven degrees more of heating before they start to use the air conditioner. And that can create adverse outcomes if you have an asthmatic in the house, an old person. you're endangering their lives. And that's just a little tiny microscopic fractal example of this powerful real phenomenon that there's a divide in vulnerability. And it's not just based on where you live. This is families in like Pittsburgh. We're not talking about Botswana. And so that divide in capacity to deal with environmental stress is something you can really work on. And it gets hidden in all this talk of climate crisis. And that's one of the important parts is both to say, look, If 7 billion people, sorry, 8 billion people will now have all experienced this, even though for each one of them, it's manageable, it's still a big problem because it's 8 billion people living through this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the second- Air condition, 8 billion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And then it's the point of getting to realize it's very, very much about how do you help the world's poor, and that's very much about making it more affordable, basically getting them out of poverty. And remember, getting out of poverty doesn't just mean that they can now afford to air condition themselves, but they get better education, they get better opportunities, they get better lives in so many other ways. And then at the end of it, it's not just about making sure that we focus on this one problem, but it's recognizing that these families have lots of different issues that they would like us to focus on, climate and heat waves just being one of them. So it's sort of taking progressive steps back and realizing, all right, okay, this is a problem, not the end of the world. And one tiny little last example, you mentioned Jakarta at the beginning. it's really valuable to look around the world at places that are sort of leading indicator places. whether it's sea level rise or heat, and you could do that. Jakarta is sinking like a foot a year, literally a foot a year. It's some insane number, from withdrawing groundwater, from gas withdrawal from, it's a delta, you know, it's sediment, it's built on sediment. I wrote a piece ages ago at the New York Times calling it Delta Blues, you know, all the musicians. And Jakarta, so what are they doing? They're moving, they're moving the capital to another area. And so that says to me, there's a lot of plasticity too. It's a city that's going through this, that rate of sea level of their relationship with the sea level through sinking is way faster than what's happening with global warming. So look there, look to those kinds of places and you can start to build. Tokyo had the same thing in the 1930s. They were also withdrawing lots of water way too fast. And so, you know, one of the obvious things is maybe you should just stop withdrawing water so fast. And again, we seem to almost be intent on finding the most politically correct way to fix a problem or, you know, the most, the thing that sort of gets the most clicks instead of the thing that actually works the best. So a lot of these things are really, you know, not rocket science solutions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, we'll get there. Let me add one more on top of the pile of the worst case analysis. So what people talk about, which is hurricanes and earthquakes, is there a connection that's well understood between climate change and the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes and earthquakes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've dug in on both a lot. The earthquake connection to climate change I'm not worried about compared to just the earthquake risk that we live with in many parts of the world already. The Himalayas, even with that earthquake in 2015 in Kathmandu, that whole range is overdue for major earthquakes. And what has happened in the last 50 years since they last had big earthquakes, huge development, big cities, a lot of informal construction, like the stuff I wrote about in Istanbul, where the family builds another layer and another, they put a floor on, every time someone gets married and has kids, they put another floor in the house. And unfortunately that's, you know, What was the term, this Turkish engineer? Rubble in waiting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Rubble in waiting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's rubble in waiting. And we're looking at it, videotaping it, and there are people playing there. So I don't worry about the earthquake connection to climate change. The hurricanes I've written about for decades. And the most illuminating body of science that I've dug in on, literally, related to hurricanes is this field that's emerged. It gets a tiny bit of money compared to climate modeling. It's called paleotempestology. It's like paleontology. They look for evidence of past hurricanes along coasts that we care about. And they dig down into the lagoons behind like the barrier beaches along Florida or the Carolinas or in Puerto Rico. And what you have is a history book of past hurricanes. So there's mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, you know, accumulating over centuries. And then there's a layer of sand and seashells. And what that indicates is that there was a great storm that came across the beach, pushed a lot of sediment into the mud. And then there's mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud. And when you look at that work, I first wrote about this in 2001 in the Times, a long story, and then I kept track of these intrepid scientists putting these core tubes down. It shows you that we're in a landscape where big, bad hurricanes are not, they're the norm. But something that's rare and big is something that's extreme. When you think about the word extreme, right, it means it's at the end of the spectrum of what's possible. They're rare. rare in human timescales. Hurricane Michael, four years ago, devastated Category 5, came ashore in the panhandle of Florida, leveled that much photographed town, Mexico Beach. And people, actually the Tallahassee National Weather Service said, unprecedented hurricane. And the damage was unprecedented because there hadn't been a community there before. But the hurricane was not unprecedented at all. If you look at the history, and this is published research, it's just that no one bothers to, we have this blind spot for the longer timescale you need to examine if you're thinking about big, bad things that are rare, and hurricanes are still rare. I was recently covering Fort Myers, the awful devastation. There's a young climate scientist at Florida Gulf Coast University, Joe Muller, who's done that paleotempestology work there right in Fort Myers. She lives there and she was away in London at a meeting of reinsurance companies that reinsure all the world's big bad risks when this was happening. But she has done the work that shows it's a thousand year record of past hurricanes and it's super sobering. when you consider how fast people have moved into Florida and built vulnerably in an area that hurricanes will hammer, that part of the fundamental dynamics of the Gulf of Mexico and the storms come off of Africa, it's a place where they will come. Now, the question of global warming impact is subtle. There are aspects of hurricanes that haven't changed. There's aspects like rainfall that seem pretty powerfully linked to global warming. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so when you have a big disturbance like the heat engine of a hurricane comes through, you get more rain. There's rapid intensification, how quickly these storms jump from category one to five or four before they hit. is a new area of science. So I think it's still early days in knowing, because no one was looking for that. There were no data back 300 years ago, you know, when these big bad previous hurricanes came to know whether they were rapidly intensified or not. So I, as a journalist, I try to keep track of what we don't know, not to be too constrained and think about new science as being robust unless it's considering and actually actively stating we don't really know what's going on with earlier hurricanes. And all of that is swamped ultimately, literally, by the vulnerability, building vulnerability in these areas. If there's a marginal change in a storm, and you've quadrupled or sextupled how much stuff and how many people are in the way. And if some of those people are poor and vulnerable or elderly and can't swim, you're creating a landscape of destruction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a lot of the human suffering that has to do with storms is about where and how you build versus the frequency and the intensity of storms. Still, you didn't quite answer the question. When I'm having a beer with people at a bar and they say, hey, why are you having a beer? We're all going to die because of climate change, usually what they bring up and I'm just trying to add some levity here. Usually what they bring up is the hurricanes and the most recent hurricane saying they're getting crazy, hurricanes all the time, they're getting more intense, more frequent and so on. I'm sure there's incredible science going on trying to look at this. Is there, is it possible, is there evidence, and is it possible to have evidence that there's a connection between what we can call global warming and the increased frequency and intensity of storms? And is, okay, no, thank you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, can I? You added intensity, you know, it's, let me just get into this a tiny bit more. I mean, hurricanes, I grew up with them in Rhode Island in my youth and there was a very active period of hurricanes in New England in the 50s and 60s, 70s. And then in the North Atlantic generally was very, very active in the 50s when I was a kid. And the dynamics of them forming off of Africa and coming here, circling up the coast was just prime time. Then there was like what Kerry Emanuel, who's the most experienced hurricane climate scientist around at MIT, he's in this story, he's in my 1988 article. He and colleagues have found and others that There's what they call a hurricane drought from like the 70s through about 1994 in the Atlantic, specifically the Atlantic Basin. And there's been a lot of questions about that. People thought it was ocean circulation, something about the currents. There's these multi-decadal variabilities in the oceans, right? And then now it looks robustly, I can't find a climate scientist who disagrees that the thing that caused the drought was pollution, smog. and significantly in Europe. And you're saying, well, how does smog in Europe relate to hurricanes crossing the Atlantic and getting to the United States? It's because of the smog was changing the behavior of the Sahara Desert, which is just south of Europe. And the Sahara Desert kills hurricanes. Sand and dust coming off the Sahara. You can see this every year. When that's active, it stifles these big storms. At the point, right in their nursery, they all form, there's this area for hurricanes off of West Africa. That's like the nursery zone. And so if you're stifling those hurricanes because of pollution in Europe before the Clean Air Act's cleanups, and then that goes away, None of that has anything to do with global warming. It's another kind of forcing in the climate system, a local one, that created a regional dynamic that created a quiet period when all these friends in the bar, maybe they were born in the 90s or whatever, they grew up in an area of like, you know, hurricanes weren't a big deal. And now we have an end to that drought because we cleaned up the air pollution, the sooty kind of air pollution, sulfury. anyone who says global warming, global warming, without saying, well, that's in there too, is kind of missing that. And when you look globally, you know, there's still, I think, what is it, 90 or so hurricanes a year, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, globally. That hasn't changed. The number of these tropical storms that reach that porosity has not changed. It's just a fundamental dynamic of, and by the way, on the long time scale, the models, still indicate as you warm the planet, and remember the Arctic warms quicker, this is something people probably understand, you're actually evening out the imbalance between the heat at the equator and the cold in the northern part of the hemisphere. And that calms the whole system down. So there could be fewer hurricanes later in the century because of global warming. And for me, that's a lot of information, but if I'm in a bar, I start with what do you care about? You care about safety. You care about security. You care about having everybody safe, not just you. You get in your car and you can evacuate. What about the old person? or the poor family who can't do that. They're not gonna leave their house. What are we doing to limit vulnerability now? That, I circle back to that over and over again. I have like a pocket card. I have this graphic card I created about risk. And what we really care about is climate risk. Like who's at risk? What's driving the risk? How do you reduce that? It's a card, you can almost pull it out in a bar. I should print them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You should do that. Risk is the hazard." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Climate bar, Pat. Risk is the hazard, like, you know, the hazard is a storm, times exposure, how many people, how much stuff, factoring in vulnerability or resilience. And climate change is changing the hazard for some things, not for tornadoes, not for everything. Exposure is this expanding bullseye. This is another hashtag, expanding bullseye. Get out there and look for that. And you'll see, I'm pushing these two geographers to do this for every hazard, wildfire, earthquake, flood, coastal storm. And we're building an expanding bullseye in an area and nature's throwing darts. Some of the darts are getting bigger because of global warming. Some of the darts, we don't know. What do you do? Like, what do you do? Well, you get out of the way, right? You don't want to be on the dartboard. And that, it just simplifies the whole formula. To me, it's kind of a transformational potential. to go into a bar. Maybe I should print these things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "100%. And I should go drink it with you more often." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There should be coasters in bars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Because that was fascinating about smog. I mean, it's nice to be reminded about how complicated and fascinating the weather system is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me try to answer the questions slightly quicker before your friends have drunk too much. Never enough. Or not enough. So if you look at the amount of the number of hurricanes, as Andy rightly pointed out, it doesn't look like it's changing. So we see more because we have now much better detection systems with satellites. But if you look since 1980, when we have good satellite coverage, for instance, last year was the year that had the lowest number of hurricanes in the world. And you're sort of like, that's odd, because it's probably the year where I heard the most about hurricanes. And what that tells you is that just because you hear a lot about hurricanes doesn't actually mean that there is a lot of hurricanes. You can't just go that way. If you remember in the 1990s and 2000s, Uh, there was an enormous amount of talk about how violence how crime was getting worse in the u.s While all the objective indicators showed that it was going down But there's sufficient amount of violence that you can fill every radio and tv show with a new crime And so if you get more and more tv shows that talk about crime Actually, most people end up thinking that there's more crime while the real number is going down so the reality here is Yes, climate change will probably affect hurricanes in the sense that they'll be the same number or slightly fewer as Andy was mentioning, but they will likely be somewhat stronger. This seems to be the best outcome. We're not sure, but this seems to be the outcome. And it's important to remember, stronger is worse than fewer is better. So overall, climate will make the world a little bit worse. So that's that's the that's the sort of bottom line. But and that's the real issue here. All the other things, the fact that people are much more vulnerable is is just vastly outweigh this, which is why if you look at the impact of hurricanes and impact of pretty much everything is typically going down. If you look, for instance, in percent of GDP, you have to look at percent of GDP because if you have twice as many houses, obviously, the same kind of impact will have twice the impact or if they're worth twice as much. If you do that in percent of GDP, and even the UN says that's how you should measure it, it's going down. Why is that? It's because we're becoming more resilient. Just simply, if you look at what happens when hurricanes come in, we have much better prediction in the long run. That means you now know two or three days out that there's a big hurricane that's likely to come here. What does that mean? All the things that can be moved. So, you know, typically all buses, all trucks, everything that's not bolted down will leave this area. And so you'll get less damage from that. You will have more people knowing, Oh, this is going to be a big one. They moved to their relatives somewhere else. So you'll have fewer people being vulnerable. There's a lot of people are responsive and aware." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a lot of ways you can do this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the outcome, and this is important for the whole conversation, the outcome is that we're actually becoming less vulnerable and that damages are becoming smaller, not bigger, but. Had there not been global warming, it would probably have gone down even faster. So we would have become even better off quicker had there been no global warming. But this is a crucial difference, and this is what I find really hard to communicate. Climate change is not this, oh my God, everything is going off the charts and we're all going to be doomed kind of thing. Climate change is a thing that means we're going to get better slightly slower. And that's a very, very different kind of attitude. It's one of the many problems rather than this is the end of all of us. And by the way, if you look at what's happening in the world, the data also show that in rich places and poor places, we still are moving into zones of hazard faster than climate is changing. Beth Tellman was at Columbia and she moved to Arizona. She and colleagues at this outfit called Cloud to Street did an amazing study showing, this is a year or so ago I wrote about, showing, again, we're moving into zones of hazard, which it applies to me, just what Bjorn was saying, that people wouldn't be doing that if they thought that was gonna lead to devastation. And this is today, we're doing this now. And it's flood zones, wildfire zones, So that means there's these things to do. There's so much plasticity in human behavior and how we build and where we build. You can make a big, big change in the outcomes. I mean, one of the things to remember is, you know, people move to where hurricanes hit because when they're not there, it's a really beautiful place to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right? So in many ways, we make the trade-offs and say, look, I'm happy to live, you know, have an ocean view, and then maybe a hurricane's going to hit. And of course, it becomes a lot easier than when the federal government is actually subsidizing your risk by saying, we'll insure you really cheaply. And that's one of the things that we should stop doing. Yeah. We should actually tell people, look, if you wanna live where hurricanes hit, maybe you should be more careful. And by the way, what I was saying about past storms, the paleotempestology, past fires, it's the same thing. We've suppressed fire in the United States for 100 years through much of the West, through wanting to save the forests, you know, the whole Smokey the Bear thing. When these were landscapes that evolved to burn, And what happened in the last hundred years? A lot of people love the West. We love these environments. We love to live with the trees. The Boulder County area, the explosive development in zones of implicit hazard leads to big bad outcomes when conditions align and climate change is worsening some of those conditions. And sometimes it's really counterintuitive. A wet season builds more grass. A dry season comes along, parches the grass. Then comes a human ignition. It's almost always human ignitions. And then you have this disaster where a thousand homes burn in Boulder County. And it's like, there's so many elements there that can be worked on that give me confidence that we can change these outcomes. Disasters are not natural. Disasters are designed, really, as some people say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I take a quick aside and ask about terminology of climate change and global warming? Because we use it interchangeably. It is an aside, but it's one that's worthy of taking. Do those carry different meanings, and has that meaning changed over the years? Between those two terms, are they really equivalent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, some people say there was this industry or propagandistic shift from climate change Let's see, which came first? Oh no, they're going to climate change now, like it's a new thing, which is, it's ridiculous. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 wasn't the Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming, it was on climate change. So these terms have been there, they've been sort of evolving. When I wrote this cover story, it was the greenhouse effect." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So green, and that's falling out of favor, greenhouse effect is not often talked about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's really, that's the physical effect that's holding in the heat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But see, there's terms that mean stuff, and there's terms that are actually used in public discourse to designate what you're, a whole umbrella of opinions you have. And I guess as somebody, me, who doesn't pay attention to this carefully, you have to use terms carefully. Because people will, you know, a noob that rolls into the topic will often use terms to mean exactly what they mean, like literally. but they actually have political implications, all that kind of stuff. So I guess I'm asking, is there like, are you signaling something by using global warming versus climate change? Or people have calmed down in terms of the use of these terms?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, but the Guardian newspapers made it worse. Now they have their style book, you know, every newspaper has a, they prescribe, they don't want their reporters to use any of those terms anymore. They call it climate crisis, climate emergency. Oh no." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "or global heating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's literally in their rule book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Global heating, that sounds more intense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that was the point. Well, I wrote about the global heating thing more than a decade ago, that's been around, but you know, so they're doing the, what was the movie where the comedy, the rock and roll comedy where he sets his- To 11, yeah, yeah. His amplifier goes to 11. You know, the idea that you turn up the rhetorical volume and that's gonna change people's It's ridiculous. So for me, I use global warming and climate change interchangeably. And I think it's fair. There's some technical ways that you can differentiate them. But the reality is that global warming is probably a better way to describe a lot of it, because this is really what is the main driver of what we worry about. Climate change seems a little diffuse, but it's convenient when you talk about climate all the time that you can call both of them But I think the climate crisis and the climate catastrophe is really sort of this is the amping up of a catastrophe. And again, as we've talked about before, if it really were true, we should tell people. But if it's not true, and I think there's a lot of reasons why this is not a climate catastrophe, this is a problem. uh we're actually doing everyone a disservice because we end up making people so worried that they say we got to fix this in 12 years or whatever the number is and also that it makes it almost impossible to have a conversation of you know well you know maybe we should be focusing on vulnerability first and it a lot of people and i think a lot of well-meaning Uh, and well-intentioned people feel that it's almost sacrilegious to do, you know, to say it's a, it's about a vulnerability because you're taking away the guilt of climate change. You're taking away our focus on, on, on dealing with climate change. Whereas I think we would say it's about stuff that actually works and, you know, doing that first. And by making it about carbon dioxide, you're implicitly making it about fossil fuels, which implicitly gives you another great narrative, good guy, bad guy. It's these big companies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where's the source of alarmism? So is it the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? There's a chain here. Is there somebody to blame along the chain or is this some kind of weird complex system where everybody encourages each other? Can you point to one place? Is it the media, is it the scientists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the UN Climate Panel is fundamentally a really good climate research group. You can have some quibbles with the way that they sort of summarize it in politically coordinated documents and stuff. But, you know, fundamentally, I think they do a good job of putting together all the research. This also means it's incredibly boring to read, which is why virtually nobody does. I'm sure you have, but I'm pretty sure a lot of climate journalists have never sort of looked past the at least the uh, the summary for policymakers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they do like a, they do predictions as well." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, they, they pull together all the stuff that people have published in the period literature, uh, and then try to summarize it and basically tell you, so what's up and down with climate change. they do that in four four large volumes every four to five to six seven years or something uh and um and yes it's it's you know i think it's the gold plated version of what we know uh there tends to be a lot of um Uh, well, this is what they say. Actually, they say so many different places with so many different people that it's not quite clear exactly what they're saying. Often, you know, you can sort of find contradictions between one volume with one set of authors and another. But yeah, I think this is fundamentally the right way that we know about climate. But then it gets translated into, how do you, how do you know about this? When most people don't read these 4,000 pages, you know, you read a news story in a newspaper and that news story will be very, very heavily slanted towards, you know, if, if you say, so sea levels could rise somewhere between one and three foot, what do you hear? Yeah, you obviously hear the three foot. Three foot is just more fun, more scary, more interesting than one foot. And it's that way with all of these. So what's the prediction for temperature rises? It's somewhere from not very scary to pretty damn scary. And again, you hear the pretty damn scary all the time. And and then there's there's obviously always researchers who are saying well But actually could be a little more scary than that and then they're likewise researchers say well It's probably not going to be as scary as that and most of the journalists will you know interview?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you really put the blame fundamentally on the? on the journalists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I put it on the media setup. Look, media is simply trying to get clicks or sell newspapers. And if you were just going to say, this is not a big issue, it just doesn't sell anything. But I think you're probably much better able to address this. Well, no, folks can Google for my name, Revkin, and the words front page thought, in the newsroom every afternoon. Now we have a 24-7 news cycle, so it's different. But back in the day, the New York Times, when it was a flourishing print institution, every afternoon there was a front page meeting, and the big pooh-bah editors would go in there, and the desk editors come in with their pitches for the day. And my friend, Corey Dean, who was the science editor for a chunk of my time, I remember having a conversation with her about some new study of, I think it was Greenland, the ice sheet, and I laid it out for her and she said, where's the front page thought in that? So we're all set up to look for the... That. Scary bit. And the news environment has gotten so much worse than 10 or 20 years ago. At least you had filters and limited number of outlets and there was some sense you could track what's good or bad. There's lots of problems with that system too. But now you have an information buffet. So if you want to be alarmed or you want to be... stay in the tribe of those who think this is utter bull, you can find your flow. And that has led... But getting back to this specific question, the 2018 IPCC report, which was a special report commissioned to learn about the difference between 1.5 degrees of warming and two, which sounds so weird and technocratic and complicated, that's the one that generated the whole meme about eight years left." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "12 years. Till doomsday. And that's the one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This was the idea that there's a point we're gonna, if we don't cut emissions in half by whatever it was, 2050, we're doomed. That emerged from that specific report. And it wasn't something that was in the report, it was in the spin around the report. And that's what captivated Greta appropriately as a young person going, you know, and with her unique vantage point and stuff. And that report, I still need to dig in and write something deeper about what happened with that particular dynamics, created this recent burst of redeemed rhetoric that I think you're focusing on. And it's all in the external interpretations, which journalism laps up because we're looking for the front page thought. But it's not just the journalists, it's the whole system, NGOs, environmental groups. If you're, if a developing country, well-meaning leaders in developing countries, because of the structure of this treaty that goes back to 1992, that the Paris Agreement is part of, they are now really looking for a way to portray this as a CO2 problem, not a vulnerability. Well, there's a vulnerability aspect, but like in Pakistan, their climate minister, which they didn't even have a climate minister five years ago, is blaming everything that happened in Pakistan on carbon dioxide, warming the climate, creating this, when a lot of what was going on was also on the ground. And you can blame colonialism, Pakistan's history, all kinds of things. But under the treaty, you want it to be about CO2, because that puts the onus on rich countries. You're not paying us. Where's our money? And they're right, you know, in the context of what everyone agreed to. There was supposed to be $100 billion a year. from rich countries to poor countries starting in 2020. It didn't happen. It's like basically some money is flowing, but it's not really made up money. Yeah. And so that whole dynamic, they latch onto the climate science and they, you know, so they're there and they're very handy, quotable people. And you have a justice angle. You have bad guys and good guys, which fits all of these narrative threads that come together into this information storm we're still living with. And then, of course, it's not Pakistan's fault either, right? I mean, it also actually, almost all leaders now say it's because of climate, because then it's not, you know, we didn't do anything wrong. In Germany, for instance, when we had that flood last year, it's not impossible that climate had a part in that. But it's very, very clear that the main reason why so many people died in Germany and Belgium was because the alarm systems didn't work. And this was plainly the local leaders in Germany. Now, if I'm stuck here and basically have caused the death of 200 people, would I rather say, yeah, that's on me, or would I climb it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just such an easy scapegoat. I don't wanna place it all on the journalists, I think, because there's a lot of, if I were to think about, what did you call it, front page thought, there's a lot of really, narratives that result in destruction of the human species, a nuclear war, pandemics, all that kind of stuff. It seems that climate is a sticky one. So the fact that it's sticky means there's other interests at play, like you guys are talking about, in terms of politics, all that kind of stuff. So it's not just the journalists. I feel like journalists will try anything for the front page, but it won't stick unless there is bigger interests at play for which these narratives are useful. So journalists will just throw stuff out there and see if it gets clicks. It's like a first spark, maybe. It's maybe a tiny catalyst of the initial steps, but it has to be picked up by the politicians, by interest groups, and all that kind of stuff. Let me ask you, Bjorn, about the... First part of the subtitle, how climate change panic costs us trillions. How does climate change panic cost us trillions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we're basically deciding to make policies that'll have fairly little impact, even in 50 or 100 years, that literally cost trillions of dollars. So I'll give you two examples. So the European Union is trying to go to net zero. Uh, so our attempt to go halfway there by 2030, uh, will cost about a trillion dollars a year. Uh, and yet the net impact will be almost unmeasurable by the end of the century. Why is that? That's because the EU and the rich countries is a fairly small part of the emissions that are going to come out in the 21st century. Now we used to be a big part of it as us mainly because nobody else, you know, it was just the U S and, and Europe and a few others have put out CO2 in the, in the 20th century. So we used to be big. But in the 21st century, we'll be a small bit player. And so we're basically spending a lot of money. And remember, a trillion dollars is a lot of money that could have been spent on a lot of things that could have made humanity better, on something that will only make us a tiny bit better. Now, it will do some good. But the reasonable estimates is if you do a cost-benefit analysis, and again, technically, it's really, really complicated, but the basic idea is very, very simple. You just simply say, what are all the costs? on one side and what are all the benefits. So the costs are mainly that we have to live with more expensive energy, you have to forego some opportunities, you have to have more complicated services, that kind of thing. The benefit is that you cut carbon emissions and that eventually means that you'll have less climate damage, you'll have lower temperature rises and so on. If you try to weigh up all of those, it's reasonable to assume that the EU policies will deliver for every dollar you spend it'll deliver less than a dollar, probably about 30 cents back on the dollar, which is a really bad way to spend dollars because there's lots of lots of other things out in the world where you could do, you know, multiple, you know, so for instance, if you think about tuberculosis or education of small kids or nutrition for small kids and those kinds of things, every dollar you spend will do like 30 to $100 worth of good. So they're much, much better places where you could spend this money. Likewise, the U.S. is thinking of going net zero by 2050. It's not actually going to happen, but it's sort of a thing that everybody talks about. Biden is talking a lot about it. If you look at the models that indicate how much will that cost, it's not implausible that this will cost somewhere between $2 and $4 trillion per year by mid-century. And remember, if the U.S. went carbon neutral today, by the end of the century, that would reduce temperatures by about 0.3 degree Fahrenheit. So you would just be able to measure it. It probably wouldn't in real life, but you'd just be able to measure it. Again, this is not saying that there's not some good coming out of it, but you're basically spending an enormous amount of money on fairly small benefits. So that's my main point. Yeah, this reminds me of what we were saying earlier about the things that models don't integrate and the things that cost-benefit leave out because you really can't go there. One of the issues facing the world right now is the reality that we're reminded of, that energy availability is a geopolitical issue. destabilizer. If you have uneven access to energy and you have Vladimir Putin coming into office or something else happening that disrupts that system, you're vastly increasing poverty. This is playing out across the world. Fertilizer prices, fertilizer comes from gas, natural gas. If you can envision a world later in the century, where we're no longer beholden on this material in the ground, at least fossil fuels, you know, cobalt and lithium for batteries, that's pretty cool, you know, because you're taking away geopolitical instability and you don't, but that's not factored in, right? That's like way outside of what you'd factor in. But it does feel like to me, you know, if I was going to make the case for, you can choose your trillions, whatever that investing big, isn't for these marginal things. It's for looking at the big picture, a world of abundant energy that doesn't come from a black rock or a gooey liquid that when you burn it creates pollution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But isn't that what the proposals are, is investing in different kinds of energy, renewable energy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I don't think most people are making that case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's in the trillion and the T costs? What's in corporate, what are the big costs there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the big cost is that you have slightly lower productivity gains. So basically again, and this is sort of the opposite of what we just talked about by climate change. We're gonna get richer and richer in the world. This is all models, also the UN, this is really the only way that you can get big climate changes because everybody gets a lot richer, so also the developing world gets a lot richer. So we're likely to get richer. But one of the things that drive our wealth production is the fact that we have ample and cheap and available energy. If you make that slightly harder, which is what you do with climate legislation, because you're basically telling people you have to use a source of energy that you would rather not have used had because if people wanted to do it, we'd already have solved the problem. So you basically tell them you've got to use this wind turbine instead of this natural gas plant or, you know, that kind of thing. It's not that you suddenly become poor or anything. It simply makes production slightly harder. What do you do when the wind is not blowing kind of thing? And of course we have lots of ways to somewhat mitigate that, but it's a little more costly, a little more complicated, a little less convenient. And that means you grow a little less. That's the main problem with these policies, that it simply makes you somewhat less well-off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So energy becomes more inefficient. Yes. So let me challenge you here. Try to steel man some critics. So you have critics. I would love you to take it seriously and sort of consider this criticism and try to steel man their case. There's a bunch, I could mention this list of criticisms from Bob Ward in London School of Economics. I don't know if you're familiar with him. But just on this point, in terms of one of the big costs being an energy, he criticizes your recent book in saying you consider the $143 billion in annual support for renewable energy but ignore the $300 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. So a lot of the criticism has to do with, well, you're cherry picking the models, which the models are always cherry picking anyway. But you want to take those seriously. So he claims that you ignore, you're not fully modeling the costs. the trade-off here, how expensive is the renewable energy and how expensive is the fossil fuel? Can you still manage this case? Sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, two things. The first, the quote, it's absolutely true that the world spends a large chunk of money on fossil fuels, and that's just stupid, and we should stop doing it. We should also recognize that this is not rich countries. This is not the countries where we're talking about climate change. This is poor countries. This is Saudi Arabia. No, that's actually not a terribly poor country. It's China. It's Indonesia. It's Russia. It's places where you're basically paying off your population, just like that you subsidize bread. You make sure that they don't rebel by making cheap fuels available. That's dumb. But it's not like they don't know what they're doing. They're mostly doing this for things that have nothing to do with climate. So I totally agree we should get rid of it. It's hard to do. Indonesia's actually somewhat managed to get rid of it. Because remember, if you spend a lot of money on fossil fuel subsidies, you're basically subsidizing the rich. Because poor people don't have a car. It's the rich people who can now buy very cheap gasoline. That's unjust as well. So it's dumb in so many different ways. I would never argue that you shouldn't do it. I've plenty of times said we should stop that. But we should also recognize these are mostly regimes that are not going to be taken over either by my argument or Bob Ward's or anyone else's. They're doing this for totally different reasons. Now, on the model side, There is virtually no model that don't show, economic model that don't show this has a cost. And that's the fundamental point is that this is sort of a basic point from economics. The system is already working most effectively because if it wasn't, you could actually make money. changing over. So if you want to have a change outside of what the system is already doing, it's because you're saying you have to do something that you rather not want to do, namely use an energy source that is less convenient or less cost effective and so on, and that will incur a cost. Now there's huge discussion about just exactly how much cost is that. So there's definitely a cost. Is the cost going to be one or five trillion? That's absolutely a discussion about where do you take your models from. I try to do, and again this is not possible everywhere, I try to actually take the average of all of the economic models. So there's a group called the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum which tries to pull together all these different groups that do the modeling. So some models, a lot of this cost actually comes down to, uh, uh, uh, the fact that we don't quite know how much more fossil fuels you're going to need in the future. And so if you're not going to, if your projections are, you're not going to use that much. The cost of reducing it is going to be very small. If you think you're going to use a ton of extra fossil fuels and you have to reduce that, the cost is going to be bigger. So I think that's just one of the variables that's oh yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's many, many, many more." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the point here is to say that if you take the average of all the best modelists that are sort of aggregated, for instance, at the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum, you're pretty secure ground. And so again, I would argue that Bob Ward, yes, I've had a lot of run-ins with Bob Ward, and he has a very different set of views on things, but I just don't think he's right in saying that I'm cherry picking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yes, and I mean, he also has similar criticism about the estimate of the EU cost of climate action based on the NOP 2013 model. But ultimately these criticisms have to do is like, what are the sources for the different models?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And just very briefly, I mean, I'm laying it out very transparently where I get these estimates from in the book. I've really tried to document this. And yes, I mean, look, there's nobody who sort of has all the information and gets everything right in all of these areas. I think most of Bort's argument is not a good faith effort to sort of uh improve on on these estimates he's he's right in saying some of these estimates we only have a few estimates and you know yeah i'd like to have more of them i one thing i should mention is that there's very little interest in general and there's very little funding in finding out how much do our climate policies cost because that's you know that's just inconvenient to everyone yeah and and the whole game you know who wants to know that For instance, would you want to fund something that says that the Inflation Reduction Act is not going to be very effective? Of course you don't want to do that, right? So again, it's a little bit the flock of birds. We'll look at something else. And what I think is that given that we're paying for it at the end, this is public money. We're deciding we're going to spend money here rather than there. Let's at least look at what are the best estimates out there. I would love to have more estimates." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "More estimates is always better and I just a quick comment on the good faith part me as a consumer looking for truth It's hard to find who's good faith and not so it's not only are you looking for? sort of accurate information You're also trying to infer about the communicator of that information. Yeah, it's very difficult. It's a" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you put me on the podcast, of course I'm gonna say, I'm a trustworthy guy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah. And we believe we're trustworthy too, but I've been reading for various reasons, but mostly because I've been traveling to Ukraine and thinking and just about the people's suffering through war. I've been reading a lot about World War II and Stalin and Hitler. And from the perspective of Hitler, He really believed he's doing good for the world, and he was communicating from his perspective in good faith. He started to believe, I think, early on in his own propaganda. So even your understanding and perception of the world completely shifted. So it's very, very, very difficult to understand who to trust. And just because it's a consensus in a particular community doesn't necessarily mean it's a source of trust. I mean, basically... I don't know how to operate in this world except to have a humility and constantly question your assumptions. But not so much that you're completely out in the ocean not knowing what is true and not. So it's this weird world because I ultimately, bigger than climate, my hope is to have institutions that can be trusted. And that's been very much under attack. as part of the climate debate, as part of the COVID debate, as part of all these discussions. And science, to me, is one of the sources. of truth and the fact that that's under question now is something that hurts me on many levels, deeply." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You said something earlier, I took a note down here and I can't find it, about cooperation, it was like collaborative cooperation or something like that? Sure. To me, there was a point like in 2013, after just dealing with everything you've been grappling with, if you know you don't know how this is gonna work out, what do you work on? And one morning I made a list of words that kind of summarized basically system properties that give you confidence in a system, trust, and transparency is one, just as you were saying earlier. Connectivity is another, so that everyone's connected. So on the subsidy issue, for example, there are young entrepreneurs in Nairobi who are selling ingeniously using Nairobi's digital currency, propane, the fuel that's in our backyard barbecue grills, which comes out of gas wells, but it's a separate fuel, in little increments that poor people can use instead of charcoal. And LPG subsidies are helping them. get people off of charcoal, which is a horrific trade from the source through the warlords in Somalia and elsewhere who are getting the money to the pollution in houses. So being sure when we're having these big debates about who the World Bank is gonna give loans to, and drawing a simple line, no more fossil fuel subsidies, hurts a really good, valuable, small-scale but scalable way to have people not die from cooking smoke in their houses and take down forests. But that only is considered if they're in the conversation. So connectivity, full connectivity, digital access. So those entrepreneurs are in the mix of people. When you're thinking about subsidies, you're not just thinking about Big Bad Exxon, you're thinking about this little company in Nairobi, Pago LPG, I think is the name, in India, the same thing. So you can list those properties of systems. And the IPCC wasn't originally transparent when I started writing about it in 1988 and 1990. And now it's way more transparent. They have more public review. So it's even better than it was. It's like a really good example of a science process of assessing the science, providing periodic output to the world, and iteratively improving the model going forward because of critique, because of scrutiny, and finding better ways for that to interface with people so they have information they can use from that big thing. And the media are not doing a good job because of this front page thotism. But we can all, you know, I work partially in academia, Columbia, on an initiative partially in communication innovation. Like how can we have an open landscape of access to information that matters? What can you do to foster better conversations so that words like collapse aren't just thrown around like emblems? And so system properties give you confidence, I think. And then you don't have to be flailing around for Bjorn or Tom Friedman or Katharine Hayhoe. You can always, right now, find your character to follow. But I think what would be better is if you actually develop some skills to just have a basic ability to know how to cut to the chase. Can I just follow up on that? Because one of the things that I try to do, and so my day job is actually something else I work with, I think called the Copenhagen Consensus, where we work with more than 300 of the world's top economists, and we work with seven Nobel laureates in economics. And the point there is really to talk about where can you spend a dollar? and do the most good for the world. That's basically the thing that we try to do. And as you rightly point out, look, there are lots of different estimates of what can you do, for instance, on climate, what can you do on tuberculosis, what can you do for vulnerability, and all kinds of different ways. And if these were all sort of, well, you can spend a dollar here and do 2.36, but you can spend a dollar here and do 2.34 over here, I would worry a lot, but that's not how the world works, because we're terribly inefficient. So there are literally lots and lots of amazing things you can do out there. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit. And there's a lot of not terribly great things that you can do. And unfortunately, one of the things I try to sort of battle is that we get a lot of things right. That's why the world is a lot better than what it used to be. But the things that are sort of left left over are often the boring things that happen to be incredibly effective and the exciting things that are often not that terribly effective. And so I think one way to look at this is basically to have people do cost benefit across a wide range of areas. And we try to get a lot of different economists to do this, and they come up with different numbers and different models and different results. But if you sort of consistently get that some things give you, you know, in tens or maybe even hundreds of dollars back per dollar. Remember, this is not actually you getting rich, it's the world getting rich. It's that the world gets better worth $100 for every dollar you spend. And over here, you can spend a dollar and do somewhere between 30 cents and maybe a couple of dollars. you should probably be focused on the other opportunity first. And that's really the point that I try to make with climate. There are some smart things we can do and I hope we get to talk about them in climate. But there's also a lot of sort of the standard approaches to fixing climate. turns out to be very likely below $1 back in dollar, and certainly not terribly high. Even if you're very optimistic, it'll be like two or three, whereas many other things are just fantastically better investment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like the thing I've been advocating, a modest proposal to eat the children of the poor in England. Was that in Jonathan Swift's modest proposal from a few centuries ago? Yeah. So it's not just cost-benefit, it's also in the context of what is moral and the full complexity of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You just hit on something really important. You know, having been on this beat for so long, and again on the disaster beat as well, earthquakes, I can't tell you how many disaster science experts keep telling me, like everyone says, preparedness, invest for preparedness. A strict cost-benefit analysis will always tell you a dollar invested in resilience before community gets hit by whatever is worth 10, you'll always have to spend 10 after. And so it's fine to do the cost-benefit stuff, but it's just the baseline. Then you have to look at the social science which shows, or history, which shows you how few times we do it. It's like we just don't do it. Therefore, you can bang that drum. Your work is valuable, but it's really constrained because show me in the world where that does happen, and then how you turn that success, which is basically something not happening, into the story. Just very briefly, you know, we try to, so we do this for a lot of countries. So we did it for Haiti, for instance, funded by the Canadian Development Ministry, because they're basically saying, we spent a billion dollars in Haiti since the earthquake, and we really can't tell the difference. So they wanted to find, I mean, they actually say that, right? And so they said, we want to find out what are the really smart things you can do in Haiti. And so we, we, uh, together with lots of, you know, uh, people in Haiti and all the, you know, the business community and the political community and the religious community and, labor community and everybody else, what are the smart things to do? And then we had economists evaluate it. And there are a lot of these things that everybody wanted that were not all that smart. There's actually a lot of smart things. And yes, the politicians didn't pick most of them. So our sense is we try to give people, you're thinking about these 70 things, You should actually just think about these 20 things, and then we consider ourselves incredibly lucky if they actually do one of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you wrote the book, How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place. So, can we just list some of the things, if you got $75 billion, how do you spend them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, so there's some incredibly good and very, very well-documented things that you could spend money on. So we have two big infectious diseases that almost nobody think about, because we only think about COVID. But tuberculosis used to be the world's biggest infectious disease killer. It still kills about 1 and 1⁄2 million people every year. you know, really worry about it is because we fixed it a hundred years ago. We know how to fix it. It's just, you know, it's just basically getting medication to people. It's also about getting them to take it while, when they're sort of been cured because you need to take it for four to six months and that's actually hard to do. So you also need to incentivize that in some kind of way. It turns out it's incredibly cheap to basically save almost all of the 1.5 million people. These are people that die in the, the prime of their lives, they're typically parents, so it would also have a lot of knock-on effects. And basically we find for a couple billion dollars, you could save the vast number of these. Not all of them, but you could save the vast number of them. It would also improve outcomes in all kinds of other ways. Likewise with malaria, another, it has somewhat better PR." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's funny to think of malaria as PR and tuberculosis not, they need to improve their PR department. Those mosquitoes are the good PR." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "By far the biggest infectious disease that got good PR, if you will, was HIV, right? And I'm not trying to compare and say, oh, it's worse or better to have HIV than tuberculosis or anything, but I'm simply saying we are underfunding because it doesn't really get the public attention. We don't really care." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But spending money on that has, in terms of benefit, a much bigger impact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So every dollar you spend on TB will probably do about $43 worth of good. So it'll do an amazing amount of good, basically because it'll save lives, it'll make sure parents stay with their kids and be more productive in their communities, and it'll have a lot of knock-on effects. And it's incredibly cheap to do. Same thing with malaria. It's mostly mosquito nets. that we need to get out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're saying just to contrast with climate change, the dollar you spend on, no, not climate change, but decreasing emissions. does not come close to the $43 benefit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. Nobody would ever argue that. So very, very enthusiastic climate advocates would probably say it'll do $2 or $3 worth of good for every dollar. So it's still worthwhile to do. That's what they would say. I would argue, and I think a lot of the evidence seems to side that way, that a lot of the things that we're doing deliver actually less than a dollar back. But it's certainly not nearly the same kind of place. many, many other things. And just if you'll allow me to. Yes, please. I love this. But there are lots of other things. For instance, e-procurement. So it's incredibly boring. So most developing countries, well, actually, most governments, spend most of their money on procurement. It's typically incredibly corrupt. So we did this project for Bangladesh. Can you explain procurement? Yes. So that's governments buying stuff. So a large part of the government revenue is spent on buying anything from post-it notes to roads. And obviously, roads are much, much more expensive. It's mostly infrastructure stuff. Hugely corrupt. For instance, in Bangladesh, it would already have been decided among the ruling elite in that local area who's going to get this. So they'll have this bidding competition where you have to hand in an envelope, a sealed envelope with your bid on it. but you put a goon outside the office, so you literally physically can't get in with your bid. Now, what we found, and this is, you know, I'm not claiming any sort of ownership to this. A lot of smart people have done this way before. We're just simply proving that it's a good idea. It turns out that if you put this on eBay, essentially, so if you do an e-procurement system, where bidders can come in, suddenly it becomes harder to put up the goon. You can still do it, but it's harder to do it. It also means you get bids from all over Bangladesh. And in general, you'll get bids from all over. Actually, it turns out you get better quality, but most important is you get it much cheaper. So basically, you can simply save money. So we did a scaled experiment in Bangladesh, where we had about 4% go to be e-procurement, and you could compare what it would have cost, and then what it did cost. And the average reduction was, as I remember, it's 7%. And the finance minister loved it, because that basically gives him a lot more money, or you can buy more stuff at the same cost." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is corruption." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's basically you get rid of some corruption. There'll still be corruption, but less corruption. Ukraine has actually been big on this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I've talked to them. I talked to the digital transformation minister. It's kind of incredible. I mean, this is before the war, but still working. It's like the entirety of the government is in an app. And that, one of the big effects, is the reduction of corruption, and not like from, as politicians say, to say, we've reduced, we've taken these actions to reduce corruption. No, literally, it's just much more difficult to be corrupt. The incentives aren't quite there, and there's friction for corruption." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, yeah. So basically, you can spend a little bit of money and you can make a huge benefit. There's still about 70 countries that haven't gone e-procurement, so obviously they should do that. Food for small kids, another thing. So basically, it's morally wrong that people are starving, but it also turns out that it's a really, really dumb thing not to get kids good food. Because if you get them good food, their brains develop more, So that when they get into school, they learn more. And so when they come out in adult lives, they're much more productive. So we can actually make every kid in, especially in developing countries, much more productive by making sure they get good food. So getting good food is not cost-free. So it probably costs about a hundred dollars. Uh, both in, and you, you need some, uh, uh, directed advertisement. You need to make sure that you actually get some of the food out there that you help the families. And you also make sure you don't just give it to everyone because then it becomes a lot more expensive. If you do that, right. It costs about a hundred dollars per kid, but per kid for two years. So it's for their first two years of life. Um, and if you do that. you then get a benefit in that they become smarter and go longer to school, and they actually learn more and become more productive of $4,500. Remember, this is far out into the future. So this is discounted. The benefit is actually much higher. And this is one of the things that we also have a conversation about in climate change, because when you talk about climate change, cost and benefits, all the costs are now, and all the benefits are in the future. But it's just like that in education. All the costs are now. All the benefits are far into the future. And if you try to do that right, and that's a whole other conversation we could have, then it turns out that for every dollar spent, you do $45 worth of good. Again, remember about a third of all kids that go to school right now just don't learn pretty much anything. Yeah. And if we could make them more productive in the school system, we have another proposal on how to do that in the school system, but by just simply making sure that they're smarter when they get into school. We've been focusing so much on making the education system better, which is really hard. but it's actually really easy to make the kids smarter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Then when you say the education system is not working well, that's, we're talking about not the American education system, we're talking about globally." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, we're talking about globally. You know, so about a third of the teachers in developing countries have a hard time passing the tests of the things they have to teach their students, right? And all these students have lots of other issues. They need to do farm work. They're constantly considering, should I just go out and start working instead? There's constant disruption. There's a lot of teachers that don't show up in India. You have this absurd situation where all the teachers are basically paid and hired for eternity for the rest of their lives. And so not surprisingly, a lot of them decide not to show up. So now they've hired. assistant teachers that basically have taken over. So they're paying, you know, for, I think it's 7 million teachers that, I'm not saying they're not all, all not working, but a lot of them are not working as much as they should. And we now hired another 7 million teachers that will eventually, you know, stop working as well. They're, they're working much better right now because they're, you know, they're, they're not on permanent contracts, but eventually they'll get on permanent contracts and then you have the same problem again. There's lots of these issues, and it's just simply about saying, we can't fix all problems, but there are some problems that are incredibly easy to solve, and there are some that are incredibly hard to solve. Why don't we start with solving the easy and effective ones? And this, of course, bears on that whole conversation on climate change, because in some ways, that's also Andy's point of saying, Look, if you want to save people from the impacts of hurricanes, let's fix the simple, easy things about vulnerability first. Whereas we have somehow latched onto this, let's fix the hardest thing to do, which is to get everyone to stop using fossil fuels, which is basically what's driven the last 200 years of development. That's a tall order, no matter how you look at it. There's some really cool elements that you guys just brought up. You mentioned that word moral before. I wasn't, I latched onto it because it relates to these timescales that really are immeasurable. If you know it's gonna take decades to confirm the benefit of some investment now, that implies you're doing the investment with some moral imperative, not because you can do a spreadsheet and come up with a number. And that process, letting go of the need for kind of a mechanistic cost-benefit approach, and thinking about kids' education in poor countries, or several things we've talked about, seems to be really important, and it's very hard for all of us to do. Philanthropists suck at it. I worked at National Geographic Society for a year building some new programs when they got a big infusion of money. They have a whole department that's called M&E. It's Measurement and Evaluation. which is if you don't prove it, it goes away. I mentioned Spotify earlier, Spotify killing a climate podcast because that podcast didn't measure out for their impact, you know, what they wanna do. And if we're always making the judgments based on strict cost benefit, we're gonna miss larger realities. Another thing is, a really exciting example of what you're talking about in terms of in Ukraine with the trust and less corruption and stuff was in India. For all of his issues, Modi recognized that middle class people in India cook on LPG, propane, or on piped gas, natural gas if they're in cities. Much cleaner, much healthier. in so many ways, and actually, compared to chopping down trees and cooking on wood, it's actually better for the climate, even though it's a fossil fuel. So he and others, there was an American scientist, Kirk Smith, who worked this all out. If you find a way, they were getting a subsidy. They had that energy subsidy. You were talking about how many poor countries subsidize energy just to stay in office, you know, to make something cheap that everyone wants. But they wanted to shift the subsidy away from the middle class to the poor people who are cooking on firewood and dying young from pneumonia. And the critical factor was India's digital currency. India went to a digital economy. Very poor families there now. If you have a phone, basically that's your bank. And you could make the case to the public that we're going to be starting to shift your LPG, your propane subsidy, to poor people. But we know they're poor. We know they're not just going to be using it behind their restaurant, which was, you know, when it was a general subsidy, people were hoarding the LPG. And the system has worked. They've shifted a lot of capacity to cook on a clean blue flame that turns off and on in homes that previously where the woman would spend hours collecting firewood, smoky fire, cooking, clean the pots and start all over again. But it's all built on trust, built on the digital economy and the same thing in Nairobi. So that excites me every day, you know, with all the doomism. I just hope people can literally take a breath, look for these examples that show the potential when you have a trustworthy system, when you have a clear path to making lives better. And then knowing that kid having electric light as opposed to a kerosene lamp, we don't know how much that's gonna improve his homework. and lead to a better outcome. But we know from history that sometimes it does. Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General, told the most powerful story I ever heard from a UN Secretary General was like 2012 when they were rolling out this Sustainable Energy for All initiative, which is not just climate, it was just like getting people energy they need to survive and thrive. He was growing up in post-war Korea, Everyone was poor, everything was broken, destroyed. Sadly, like so much of many parts of Ukraine. And he would do his homework by kerosene lamp. He said when he was studying for his finals, his mom would give him a candle. This was a brighter flame, you know, better grades maybe. And he became Secretary General." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a hell of a story. So which, For climate change, which policies work, which don't? Which are, when we look at this formula of $1 in, $45 out, for climate change, what dollar in, what policies for dollar in and dollar out are good and which are not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we actually did a whole project back in 2009 when the whole world circus was coming to Copenhagen and we were going to save the world there. We brought together about 50 climate economists and three Nobel laureates to look at where can you spend a dollar and do the most good for climate. And what they found was a lot of these things, as we've been talking about before, that basically investing in the current sort of technology that we're trying very hard is, at best, a pretty dicey outcome. Much of it's probably less than a dollar back in the dollar. There's some investments on adaptation, for instance, that's pretty good, but it's sort of two, three dollars back in the dollar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, what is adaptation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The obvious thing is that you build a dike for a sea level rise, or that you make people, you get some apps that people know that there's a hurricane coming or that, you know, so you can adapt to infrastructure, the physical and the digital infrastructure. The point is that people are really good at doing this already because they have a strong incentive to do it. So the extra thing that governments can do outside is somewhat good, but it's not amazing or anything. What we found by far the best investment in the long run was on investment in energy innovation. So and I think this also sort of corresponds with what we would think in general. If we could innovate – so, you know, for instance, Bill Gates is arguing we should have fourth-generation nuclear, so the next – more advanced than what we currently have in third-generation nuclear, which would be industrial-scale process. You'd just be building these, you know, modular nuclear power plants, they would be, instead of being this artwork that we design once for every different plant, which is one of the reasons why they're so expensive, they would just be mass-produced and you'd have one, you know, they all be recognized in one go, so it'd be much cheaper. They would also be passively safe, so if all the power goes. they'll shut down rather than go boom. Uh, so that's, that's another very good thing. And then they'll also, uh, be very hard to transform into nuclear, uh, weapons. Uh, so you can actually imagine them being out in a lot of different places where we'd perhaps be a little worried about having, you know, plutonium lying around. Now, this is all still being worked out, but imagine if that actually comes out. And again, remember the other three generations, they were, we were also told that it'll be incredibly safe and it'll be incredibly cheap. And it didn't turn out that way. So let's wait, but it could be. And so the argument is, invest in these ideas, for instance, fourth generation nuclear, and if fourth generation nuclear becomes cheaper than fossil fuels. We're done. Everyone will just switch, not just rich, well-meaning Americans or Europeans, but also the Chinese, the Indians, everybody in Africa, the rest of the Indian subcontinent. That's how you fix these issues, right? So the idea here is to say, instead of thinking that we can sort of push people to do stuff they really don't want to do, which is basically saying, let's let's use more of the, you know, the solar and wind that you would otherwise have invested in. Force people to buy an electric car by giving huge subsidies, because otherwise they're clearly not all that interested in buying it and so on. Then get the innovation such that they become cheaper than fossil fuels and everyone will switch. This is how we've solved problems in the past, if you think. And in Los Angeles in the 1950s was hugely polluted place, mostly because of cars. The sort of standard climate approach today would be to tell everyone in Los Angeles, I'm sorry, could you just walk instead? And of course, that just doesn't work. That doesn't pay off. You never get politicians voted in office, or at least staying in office, if you make that kind of policy. What did solve the problem? was the innovation of the catalytic converter. You basically get those little gizmo, and it cost a couple hundred dollars, and you put it on your tailpipe, and then you can drive around basically almost not pollute. And that's how you fix the air pollution in Los Angeles. Basically, we've solved all problems in humanity, all big difficult problems with innovation. We haven't solved it by telling everyone, I'm sorry, could you be a little less comfortable and a little more cold and a little poorer, and believing that that can go on for decades. And while it possibly works in some pockets of the US, and I think actually in large parts of Europe at least, it used to, the war in Ukraine is definitely sort of changing that whole perspective. But, you know, there's a willingness to say we're going to suffer a little bit, then we'll fix this problem. But the point is, we're going to be willing to suffer a little and so fix a tiny bit of the climate problem instead of actually focusing on innovation. So what we found was if you spend a dollar on innovation, you will probably avoid about eleven dollars of climate damage in the long run, which is a great investment. And the terrible thing is We have not been doing this. So because everybody's focused on saying we need this solution within the next 12 years, it means you're not thinking about the innovation. We're actually spending less money, not more money, on innovation globally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So everyone's focusing on reducing carbon emission versus innovating on alternate energy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're basically focusing on putting the existing solar panels or wind turbines, which are either just about inefficient or inefficient, Instead of making the next generation, or it's more likely the 10th generation after that, that comes with lots of, you know, battery backup power or, you know, a fourth generation nuclear, or, you know, Craig Venter has this great idea. Craig Venter, the guy who cracked the human genome back in 2000, he has this idea of growing algae out on the ocean surface. These algae, they'd be genetically modified and they would basically soak up sunlight and CO2 and produce oil. then we could basically just grow our own Saudi Arabia out on the ocean surface and we'd harvest it, we'd keep our entire fossil fuel economy, but it'd now be net zero because we just soaked up the CO2 out there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "$1 invested in the portfolio of different ideas. Gives $11 back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I first wrote about that in the New York Times. It was one of my actual page one stories. In 2006, it was declining R&D in energy at a time of global warming. And the baseline is so low for this that it's a super bargain. We were During the energy crisis, the first energy crisis in the 70s before the current one, our annual spending in the United States in constant dollars on R&D, research and development for energy, was about $5 billion. And then it's just dribbled away since then. And recently now, there's a big burst of new money coming through these new bills that got passed. But what I was told over and over again by people in that arena, is you can't just have these little bubbles of investment. You don't get young people away from thinking about Wall Street for jobs toward thinking about energy innovation if there isn't like a future there. And a lot of the, in the United States and Europe, the presumption was the wage of that future was taxing carbon. make that so punitive that you're basically evening the landscape for cleaner stuff that's more expensive. That has failed completely. There are little examples in Europe where it's working. And what's happened now is, well, the United States, this big chunk of money is designed to take us over a finish line that was started with not just innovation, but with the production efficiency too. This is one thing I got wrong, I think, a little bit in my reporting. I was so fixated on the innovation part, just because I love science too, I saw this untapped possibility. that others were saying, no, no, production efficiency, the more people are producing batteries, the cheaper they'll get. This is Elon Musk's path and many others. And it really is both. So when you were talking about purchasing power for governments, for example, that can stimulate production capacity for batteries or whatever the good thing is and take you down faster. And it's all about getting that margin of the new thing out competing the old. And it's not just innovation. It has so many parts of the pipeline that need to be nurtured. And the other thing is relative cost. The United States, when I was writing about this in 2006, Our budget for DARPA, the Advanced Research Project Agency for the Defense Department, just for science, was 80 billion a year. For health, for medical frontier research on cancer and stuff, 40 billion. Energy was two or three. So we weren't taking this remotely seriously. So now if we get that up, to me there's like this level You know we're taking something seriously when it's in the tens of billions for R&D. It's not that R&D will solve the problem, but it's a proxy for what we really care about. We care a shitload about defense. What's the defense budget in the United States now? Like 800 billion?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's some insane number. Who's counting when you're having fun?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so innovation is not just for the better. you know, camera, the better solar panel, the better battery. Social innovation actually matters hugely. Like the guy in Nairobi I mentioned with a company doing micropayment gas to get people off charcoal. We need that as much as this. And I actually, I interviewed Bill Gates. We had spent an hour with him in Seattle in 2016. when he was rolling out his breakthrough energy thing. I got to spend, it was 45 minutes, me and Bill Gates, which was pretty fun. But I brought this up, I said, you know, because he's all about the new nuclear thing that will solve the world's problems. And I, yes, yes, yes, but we also- He brought up nuclear, sorry to interrupt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, he did, oh sure, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So he's interested in one of the- Oh, he's investing heavily in nuclear, but he invests in everything, you know, he's got a big portfolio. But I brought up a guy I met in India who runs a little outfit called Selco that they do really interesting, cool village to village. They're like an energy analyst will come to your house here in the States and tell you how to weatherize your house, but they do it at the village scale. And in a village that has, where they're milling wheat, he'll put in a solar powered wheat mill. And you know, that's not going to solve the world's problems, but it gives them a way to control their energy. They don't have to buy something to grind their weight. And that needs just as much attention as the things I really like too, the cool technologies. And I thought I cornered Bill Gates. I was like, because he really does focus on these big wins, the big, you know, like nuclear that will make net zero completely doable. And I said, well, you know, what about like New York City, where I was still living at the time, or near, and I said, it's got a million buildings. New York City has one million buildings. And in 2013, the Bloomberg government analyzed, they said, looking ahead to 2050, 75% of the buildings in New York City that will exist in 2050 already exist. Think about these brave new futures, right? Like, we're just gonna come in, have these shiny, cool passive house cities. And so I put this to Bill and I said, so how do you do that? How do you retrofit all those boilers, many of which were coal-fired like 20 years ago, to get a zero-energy New York City? And I kind of thought I had him. And then he immediately, he kind of sat back and went, well, but if you have unlimited clean power coming into that city, it doesn't really matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a pretty good Bill Gates impression." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was a good answer. I mean, it was a good answer. He said, oh yeah, it's a leaky bucket, but if you pour in zero carbon energy, then it doesn't matter. But I still think we have to figure out the other part, too, that end. How do you innovate at the household level, at the village level? It's much more of a distributed problem, we used to think. The one big change I've had in my own thinking, too, is from top down to distributed. Everything about the climate problem, through the first three decades of my reporting was that the IPCC will come out a new report, the framework convention, the treaty will get us on board. We'll all behave better. It has this like top-down, you know, parent to child architecture. And everything I've learned has gone the other way. It's distributed capacity. for improved lives, you know, kids getting through school, women not having to spend three hours collecting firewood. And if it means propane for that household in that context, that's a good thing. So stop with all your yammering about ending all fossil fuel subsidies. And, you know, what's an America look like that has some climate-safe energy future? Find your part in that. Don't get disempowered by the scale of it. There's like a thousand things to do. When you start to cut it into pieces, So it's very different. It's not a top-down thing. No one's going to magically come in and... And that's where I think... So I agree that everyone should try to play their part and do whatever they can. But I also think just the sheer incentives, what we saw happening with shale gas is a great example. When shale gas becomes so cheap that you just stop using coal, that then you don't really have to convince lots and lots of people. Coal is really bad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It just happened. And it wasn't a label of climate. No, it wasn't. It wasn't a climate thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was an energy thing. It was totally. And the point is just the power of an innovation is that you almost don't see it anymore. It just happens. And I think that's really the only way we're going to fix these big problems. If you think about the nutrition problem back in the 60s, 70s, we worried a lot about India and other places. A solution is not worrying or the solution was not us eating a little bit less and sending it down to India or wherever. The solution was the Green Revolution, right? It was the fact that some scientists made ways to make every seed produce three times as much so you could grow three times as much food on an acre. And that's what basically made it possible for India to go from a basket case to the world's leading rice exporter. And that's how you do these things. You solve these big problems through innovation. And again, I'm not saying that we're actually arguing our carbon tax is a smart thing to do. That's what any economist would tell you to do. But it also turns out that it's partly, it's not going to solve most of the problem and It's incredibly politically hard to do. So it may also just be the wrong sort of tree to bark up against. If you can do it, please do. But this is not the main thing that's going to solve climate. The main thing is that we get these innovations that basically make green energy so cheap everyone will just want it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We mentioned nuclear quite a few times. There was, for a long time, it seems to have shifted recently. Maybe you can clarify and educate me on this, but for the longest time, people thought that nuclear is almost unclean energy or dangerous energy or all that kind of stuff. When did that shift? what was the source of that alarmism, and maybe is that a case study of how alarmism can turn into a productive, constructive policy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Productive from whose standpoint?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it not, is it not, like nuclear?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I was trying to, do you mean productive in terms of yay, we banned it, or productive for those who want it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, I see, I see what you mean, yes. I meant productive for human civilization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, the alarmism over nuclear power dominated any alarmism over global warming, absolutely. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. This in the United States, Three Mile Island, then you had Chernobyl there. And the traditional environmental movement still won't go there. They still, the big groups, NRDC, EDF, that whole alphabet soup of the big greens are reluctant to put forward the nuclear option because they know a lot of their aging donors basically grew up in the thinking about nuclear as the problem, not the solution. I lived for the last 30 years. I moved to Maine recently. But I lived in the Hudson Valley, 10 miles from the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which was built in the 60s, 70s, and had some problems. None of them were to the point of a meltdown or the threat of it, or even the theoretical possibility of one. I was in it twice as a reporter, looking down in the cooling pool. I can send you a fun video of bubbles in the cooling pool with the rods. Progressively, they demonstrated how to handle waste. In the United States now, the waste is, because we haven't figured out how to move it across state lines, it's glassified, it's put into kind of containers that sit there at the plant. We just simply don't have a long-term solution. The Nevada politicians were successful in saying, not here, not Yucca Mountain. But my wife, who I've been married to, well, I met 30 years ago, and she lives with me. She's an environmental educator. She was very happy when Cuomo shut it down, said we're gonna shut it down three or four years ago, which just happened a year, it actually has shut down now. It's being mothballed. And I was like, that sucks. We need- But she's happy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and we still love each other. And she's an environmentalist, so that just speaks to a lot of environmentalists still see nuclear as bad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, totally, oh yeah. You know, and you bring in the weapons proliferation issues. But it's a safety thing, it's a generational thing. I think young people are different, I hope. These small modular reactor designs, several of which, there's a couple of PhDs from MIT who did transatomic power. They're both like in their early 30s. We need so much more of them. And just briefly, the one thing I say about nuclear is, like with so many of these things, like subsidies, don't talk to me about yes, no nuclear. Talk to me about what do you wanna do with existing nuclear power plants? And what do you wanna do about the possibility of new ones? Let's parse this out in chunks that we can have constructive conversations about. The idea of no nuclear drives me crazy, just like no fossil fuel subsidies. is silly in the world we inhabit that has these pockets of no energy. So that's just my sustain what mantras. Start with some, divide and conquer. Conquer the dispute over by saying, let's at least get real. This power plant has been in the Hudson Valley for 30 years. It was the baseload. It was baseload. Baseload is a real thing. And guess what has filled the gap since that power plant has turned off? Natural gas, natural gas. And you don't hear that from the environmental community that was so eager to turn off the Indian Point. I think both the point of saying, the people are saying, it's the end of the world, but no, I don't want a nuclear power plant. It just doesn't make sense. And Andy's absolutely right to talk about, so existing nuclear power plants, we already paid for them. We already have them. We already committed to decommissioning them eventually. While they're running, they're pretty much the cheapest power you can possibly have on the planet because it costs almost nothing to run them day to day. So it's basically cheap or almost free CO2 baseload power. There's just nothing there that you should embrace. new nuclear power plants turn out to be very expensive currently. So, you know, the one they built in Finland, some in the UK and France and several other places turn out to be incredibly expensive. So they're much more expensive than, you know, the costliest renewables you can imagine. So they're actually not a solution right now. And that's why we need the innovation. That's why we need the potentially fourth generation nuclear power. It's just simply, it's a bad deal. And that's why, you know, nuclear is never going to win on its third generation. Now it may never get there, you know, who knows, but it's certainly a possibility and we should be looking into it. And there are wonky realities that need to be dealt with. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States, their approval process is still locked and designed on this 50-year-old model of big, giant power plants. There's an intense discussion right now about evolving a new regulatory scheme for small, modular ones because of all these implicit advantages they offer. And that, so it, along with the innovation, you need to have this get out of the way, or you're never going to have the investment. So it really is an all of the above thing. Looking at these as systems solutions is really important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you about Alex Epstein. So he wrote, I'm not sure if you're familiar who he is, but he wrote a couple of books. It's just interesting to ask a question about fossil fuels because we're talking about reality. And he's somebody that doesn't just talk about the reality of fossil fuels, He wrote a book, Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future, where he makes the case that, as his subtitle says, global human flourishing requires oil, coal, and natural gas, or more oil, coal, and natural gas, not less. What do you think about the argument he makes? So he pushes, we've had this kind of, speaking of the center, of this balanced discussion of the reality of fossil fuels, but also investing a lot into renewable energy and having the $1 to $11 return. He says like, I'm not sure exactly how to frame it, but investing and maintaining investment of fossil fuels also has a positive return because of how efficient the energy is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I read the first book. I haven't read, I've got his second one. I've been planning to have him on my webcast, my tiny webcast. What's the name of the webcast? Sustain what? Everything I do is sustain what? Because it's like, don't talk to me about sustainability. Sustain what? For whom? How? Then we're talking, you know? Interrogatory approach to things. So I think the valuable part of what he has done is to remind people, particularly in the West or North, but everyone, the developed world, that everything we take for granted, low fertilizer, from low fertilizer prices to air conditioning to everything else, exists because we had this bounty that we dug out of the ground or pumped out of the ground. It's a boon, it's been an amazing boon to society, period. So start there. Which means going forward, what we're talking about is a substitution. Or having your fossil fuels and eating it too, meaning getting rid of the carbon dioxide. If you focus on the carbon dioxide, which is the thing warming the planet, not the burning of the fuels, then that's another way forward that could sustain fossil fuels. As far as I can tell from at least the first book, he makes the moral case that fossil fuels are essentially a good overall. I don't think he adequately accounts for the need to stop global warming. I think that we have to slow... Slowing global warming is a fundamental need in this century we're in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's just not factored into his math. Well, I think that's where... I've had a few sort of offline conversations with him. I think he said, because I mentioned I'm talking to the two of you, he said that that's probably where he disagrees about sort of the level of threat that global warming causes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Steve Koonin is another one. He's a brilliant guy. He lived right close to me in the Hudson Valley. He was in the Obama administration energy department. It's K-O-O-N-I-N. He wrote a bestseller that came out recently on skepticism about climate. And there are other smart people who somehow feel we can literally adapt our way forward without any constraint on the gases changing the climate. And I, you know, I've spent enough time on this. I think I'm a pretty level-headed reporter when it comes to this issue. And I think having some sense that we can adapt our way into the world we're building through relentless climate change with no new normal, remember, more gas accumulating in the air every year, These are not static moments. That that's a good thing to do doesn't strike me as smart. I'd probably say that I think it's more sort of, at least the thing that I take away from Alex is the fact, as you point out, that we need to recognize that fossil fuels is basically the backbone of our society today. We get 80% of our energy from fossil fuels Still, as we did 50 years ago, 40 years ago. Yeah. And people have no sense of this, right? So they have the idea, because you see so many wind turbines and solar panels and everybody's talking about it, that this is huge, big things. But the reality is, remember, only about a fifth of all energy use is electricity. The rest is processes and heating, industrial processes and so on. So actually, you know, solar and wind right now produces 1% of energy from wind and 0.8% from solar. This is not a huge thing. It's a fairly tiny bit. And growing explosively. Yes, it's absolutely growing. But actually, it's growing slower than what nuclear was growing in the 70s and 80s, which I thought was a fun point, not by a little amount, by like two or three times. So, so we're, we're still talking about, you know, something which is somewhat boutique at least. And, and when you then look out into the future, and, and I think this is the interesting part of it. When you look out into the future, if you look at the Biden administration's own estimate of what will happen by 2050. we will be at, you know, if all countries do all the stuff that they promised and everything, we will be at 70% fossil fuels by 2050 globally. This is just, yes, it's a better world. I think it's good that we're now down to 70 instead of 80, but it is still a world that's fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels for almost everything that we really like about the world. And forgetting that, and I think we are doing that In the sense, as you also mentioned, that people say, no fossil fuels. And we're in all development organizations, we're now telling the poor countries, you can't get any funding for anything that has to do with fossil fuels. We have literally reduced our investment in oil and gas by more than half since 2014. And much of this is because of climate concerns. This has real world consequences. This is why energy prices have gone up. It's not the only reason, COVID also, certainly the war in Ukraine, but this is an underlying systemic reason why fossil fuel costs will go up dramatically. Now, a lot of Greens will sort of tend to say, well, that's great because we want fossil fuels to be expensive. We want people to be forced over to renewables. But that's very easy to say if you're rich. It's the kind of thing that New Yorkers will say when you go to rich, well-meaning, green New Yorkers and say, yes, gasoline should cost $20 a gallon. Well, you don't have a car. You just ride the metro. It's very easy for you to say that. But lots of people, both in the rich world and in poor parts of the US, all around the world, their lives are basically dependent on fossil fuels. And so the idea that we're going to get people off by making it so expensive that it becomes impossible for them to live good lives is almost morally reprehensible. And I think Alex has the right point there. We need to get people to realize we're not going to get off fossil fuels anytime soon. So we need reasonably affordable fossil fuels for most of the world. And that's, of course, why we need to focus so much more on the innovation so that we can get to the point where we no longer need fossil fuels as soon as possible. But to say to everyone, look, we're going to make fossil fuels expensive way before we have the solution is just terrible. And so much is on the rich countries of the world. Yeah. I did a conversation recently with Johan Rockström, who's a famed sustainability scientist in Stockholm. Actually, Potsdam now. And he's come up with the idea of planetary boundaries. There's lots of things he has said that I... as a journalist, I'm still looking into about that. Planetary boundaries. Yeah, that there are limits to what Earth can absorb in human, our use of water, phosphorus, or carbon dioxide loading in the atmosphere. There are these tipping, there are these boundaries if we cross them, we're in a hot zone, a danger zone. He's an interesting thinker, but on this point, last year at the Glasgow Climate Talks, he gave a very important talk about the equity thing here, that you, he basically laid out a landscape saying the rich nations of the world need to greatly ramp up their reduction of emissions or what they're gonna pay poor countries to do, to allow poor countries, some of which have fossil resources, like in Africa, to have the carbon space, to own whatever space or time is left to be able to develop their fossil fuels as a fundamental right. Because also they're starting from this little baseline. Ghana hasn't contributed squat to the global warming problem in terms of emissions. Ghana has natural gas. And right now, this month, environmental groups are outside the World Bank, today, actually tonight, saying this was on their list of dirty projects. World Bank should stop financing Ghana's right to get gas out of the ground, to develop its economy, get its people less poor, make them more productive, innovative parts of humanity. To me, that's really reprehensible. One of the other projects on their list, as a World Bank kind of gotcha, like how dare they give money, was for a fertilizer factory in Bangladesh that is designed to get three times as much fertilizer from the same amount of natural gas as the old plants that are now dormant. That's... This is in a time when we're facing high energy prices, high gas prices, high food prices, when food insecurity is spreading rapidly, when a country like Bangladesh has millions of rice farmers who need urea tablets to put in their rice fields. And to say that shouldn't, that how dare they finance that because there's a fossil fuel involved is immoral. So yes on that point from Alex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is 2022 poll. polls, just this is a bunch of different ways to look at the same basic effect. In the United States, Democrats, younger Americans identify dealing with climate change as a top priority. U.S. adults, 42% say that dealing with climate change should be a top priority. 11% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats. And we could see this effect throughout, 46% of Americans say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change. By the way, this is a little bit different than what we were discussing. I was just looking through different polls. In the public, there seems to still be uncertainty about how much humans contribute to climate change, more than the scientific attempt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, it would only be 24% that disagree with the UN Climate Panel, right? Three quarters would agree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you uncomfortable about the 29?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, 29 is actually, it's exactly right. I mean, the U.N. doesn't say it's all, well, they say that could be the border case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But anyway, this is interesting, but to me, across all these polls, if you look, Republican versus Democrat. Republican, say that 17% say it's a great deal. Democrats say 71% say it's a great deal. And you just see this complete division. I think you probably, of the COVID pandemic, you can ask a lot of questions like this. Do masks work? Are they an effective method to slow transmission of a pandemic? You'll probably have the same kind of polls about Republicans and Democrats. And while the effectiveness of masks, to me, is a scientific question. So there's different truths here, apparently. One is a scientific truth. One is the truth held by the scientific community, which seems to be also different than the scientific truth sometimes. And the other is the public perception that's polluted or affected by political affiliation. And then there's whatever is the narrative that's communicated by the media. they will also have a question, the answer to the question of whether masks work or not. And they will also have an answer to the question about all these climate related things. So that's a long way of asking the question of how is politics mixed into all of this? On the communication front, on the figuring out what the right policy is front, on the friction of humanity in the face of the right policies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I've written a ton on this. After I had that conversion about the social science in 2006, I began digging in a lot more on how people hold beliefs and what they do as opposed to what they think. questions about polling. And there's two things that come to me that make me not worry about the basic literacy, like is climate change X percent of whatever? I don't really care about that, and I'll explain why. For one thing, more science literacy, more basic literacy, like what is a greenhouse gas, all that stuff. Dan Kahane, K-A-H-A-N, at Yale, he's actually at Yale Law School, last decade he did all this work in what he calls cultural cognition, and he did studies that showed you know, how what you believe emerges based on culture, based on your background, your red, blue, where you are in the country. And one of the really disturbing findings was that the people who have the most basic science literacy, like who know the most about greenhouse effect or whatever, They're at both ends of the spectrum of views on climate, dismissives and alarmed. Steve Koonin, as I mentioned, is a good example. He's a brilliant physicist, and he knows all the science, and he's completely at the end of skepticism. Will Happer, who was close to being Trump's science advisor, was even more out there, and they're both on the Jason Committee that advises the government on big strategic things. And people who are really alarmed about it also have the same belief. So as a journalist, I was thinking, do I just spend my time writing more explanatory stories that explain the science better? No. Do I dig in on this work to understand what brings people together? And then these same surveys, the same science shows you, if you don't make it about climate, among other things, this becomes You don't have to worry about this anymore. If you Google for, Google for no red blue divide climate revkin, you'll find a piece I did with some really good graphs. Essentially it shows that in America, this is the Yale group again, their climate communication group. There's no red blue divide on energy innovation, none. We need more climate energy, clean energy innovation. There wasn't even a divide country by state by state on, whether CO2 should be regulated as a pollutant. But it's all like, what are the questions you ask? If you ask about innovation, if you ask about more incentives for renewable power. Oklahoma, Iowa, I did a piece when I was at ProPublica showing that the 17 states that were fighting Obama in court over his clean power plan, the majority of them were actually meeting the targets that the clean power plan had. because they're expanding wind power already. Not because of the climate, because it makes money sense and energy sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think there's a political divide in this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is on climate, if you call it climate. If you say it's a climate, do you believe in the climate crisis? You're not asking, what kind of energy future do you want in your town? And so if you ask that question, the polarization goes away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I guess what I'm asking, is there polarization on policy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, well there, again, the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed last November, that was bipartisan. All of Congress said yes. And that's a trillion dollars, several hundred billion of which are for cleaner energy and resilience. But it's not a climate bill. And it wasn't a tax. It's incentives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the word climate and similar words are just used as part of the signaling, like masks. It's not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Dan Cahan's work, the guy at Yale, he really demonstrated powerfully abortion, gun rights, climate, and a more parsed level of nuclear power has enduring camps that for and against." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do the camps form?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Some of it's cultural cognition, it's how you grew up, it's what you fear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no common human frame for- Is it because of folks, certain individuals like Al Gore? Like he would make a film, he cares about this thing, he's a Democrat." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Therefore I hate this thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Therefore I don't like this thing, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh sure, yeah. You know, when people get attached to an issue. If that's what pops into your head when you hear climate then. And it got politicized, it became emblematic. And the whole vaccine thing. I mean, I'm not American, so I should stay a little bit out of this, but I think it seems to me that a lot of the thing that people believe and talk about is really about what they worry that that will lead to in terms of policy down the line. So a little bit like, do masks work? I'm sort of imagining, I don't know whether this is true, but I think part of it is if I say masks work, they're gonna force me to wear it for the next year. So it doesn't work because then I don't have to wear it kind of thing that it's really, uh, uh, you know, you're, you're looking much further down the line and certainly on climate, it seems to me that a lot of the people who say it's not real, it's not because they don't know it's of course it's real, but it's that they don't want you to then come and regulate it heavily. Uh, so it's because they don't like top down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And, and also because they don't, want another tax and, you know, there's lots of other. So it's it's really it's not a science. It's not a straight science question. It really is a question of what do you want to do? And that's where I think, Andy, you're much, much more right in saying we should, you know, have that discussion. So what do you want to do? Because that will be a much easier conversation to say, do you want to do really smart, cheap stuff? Or do you want to do pretty dumb, expensive stuff? When you put it that way, you can get most people on board. Of course, it's not as simple as that, I know. And it gets back to what you said earlier, that again, you talked about collaborative cooperation or whatever. There's a guy at Columbia, Peter Coleman, who runs this thing called the Difficult Conversations Laboratory. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And when I first heard about it, I was like, oh man, we need that, you know? And his background's psychology and conflict resolution, mostly at the global scale related to atrocities that countries are trying to get over. And there's a science to how to hold a better conversation, as you, either through experience or whatever, know. If you hold a debate, like, I wouldn't want to be in a debate with Bjorn. We could find lots of things we disagree on. But that takes it back to the win-lose model, right? That's not how you make progress. And what Peter, what I learned, absorbed from him, Peter Coleman, because I was thinking like, we need room for agreement. I need to build a room for agreement. My blog and at the Times and then the stuff I do now, it's like, how can we talk and come to agreement? He says, no, no, you don't want agreement. You want cooperation. that allows you to hold on to your beliefs. But we can disagree on all these things, but let's cooperate on that one thing. And that's a really valuable distinction that's needed so much in this arena because, as I said earlier, you can parse it right down to, the whole menu of things Joe Manchin wanted, you know, transmission lines. Now we're gonna have big fights over transmission lines. We've got billions of dollars to spend expanding America's grid. And every community in America is gonna say, not here. So how do you foster a federal local dialogue that allows that to happen if you wanna have any hope of a better grid? So that's like, Those insights come from behavioral sciences that I think are completely undervalued in this. area. Pilka loves to quote, I can't, I think it's Lippert, but. Oh, Walter Lippman. Lippman, yes, that democracy is not about, you know, everybody agreeing, but it's about different people disagreeing, but doing the same thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Doing one thing together." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I mean, agreeing that we're going to do this thing. So you can disagree, but still do a thing, you know, possibly for very different reasons. And that's fine. There's an amazing video clip that shows this so powerfully. 2015 was the build-up to the Paris talks that led to the Paris Agreement. And a really talented journalist at CNN at the time, John Sutter, who's from Oklahoma originally, he He saw another Yale study that was a county-by-county study of American attitudes on global warming, like right down to the county level. And there's this little glowing data point in Woodward County, Oklahoma. Woodward County, Oklahoma was ground zero for climate skepticism, climate denial, whatever you wanna call it. And he thought, oh, I'm gonna go there. And he went there just to meet people on the street, to talk to them about energy and weather. And he did these little interviews, and there's this one with this guy who's like a middle-aged oil company employee, like an administrator, Thai kind of guy. And he starts out the interview, and the guy is saying, well, you know, God controls the environment. And if you're watching this, you're just going, okay, this is gonna be interesting. And the backstory, by the way, is the guy, he paid for the local playground to have dinosaurs and people, like toy dinosaurs and people on the playground, because he believes in creation, you know, 6,000-year creation. So that's the guy, right? And then he gets to energy, and the guy says, you know, the same guy, who believes God controls the environment, says, you know, we have half of our roof covered with solar panels, and we want to get off the grid entirely. And when I show this to audiences, I say, just pause and think about that for a second. Why do you think that's happening? And it's because he's independent. He wants to have his own source of power. He's libertarian. He doesn't want the government telling him what to do. He would never vote for Hillary, I guarantee you. This is 2015. But he wanted to get off the grid entirely to be himself. And so then I say, okay, so if you were going around the country with your climate crisis placard and you go to Woodward County, Do you think that would be a productive way to go to that place and make your case? And the answer is pretty obvious, no. If you go in there and you listen, like listening is such an important property that we all forget, including journalists, you're much more apt to find a path to cooperation. You could talk to him about, I guarantee if I went there today, maybe I should go to talk about this new bill, $370 billion. How do we make that work at the local level? How do we answer that guy at the energy department, Jigar Shah? So how do we put this to work to get our buses off, to get electrified or transition our street lamps and stuff? You could have a good chat with him. If you go in there and say, I'm here to debate you to death on global warming, forget about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Actually, let me ask you a question, given your roots as a journalist. So yeah, talking to a guy you disagree with, that's one thing. What about talking to people that society might consider bad, unethical, even evil? What's the role of a journalist in that context? So climate change is a large number of people that believe one thing, a large number of people that believe another thing. It turns out even with people that society deems as evil, there's a large number of people that support them. What's your role as a journalist to talk to them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I have talked to really bad people. When I wrote about the murder of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian Amazon rainforest activist in 1989, I interviewed the killers. One was in jail, several of them were just ranchers who, you know, they had their point of view. They were there in the Amazon rainforest to The word in Brazil and Portuguese is limpar, to clean the land. They're the bandarantes, the pioneers of Brazil. They go into these frontiers and tame them like we had in our West. And they would bring that up too. They would say to me, well, you did this. They didn't say you murdered your Native Americans and stuff, but they could easily have said that too. And you deforested all your landscapes. So who are you to come down here? But if I didn't talk to them, that would be, not a way to do journalism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But when you talk to them, did you empathize with them or did you push back? That's the ultimate question. Like if you want to understand. Like if you talk to Hitler in 1941, do you empathize with him or do you push back? Because most journalists would push because they're trying to signal to fellow journalists and to people back home that this me, the journalist, is on the right side. But if you actually want to understand the person, you should empathize. If you want to be the kind of person that actually understands in the full arc of history, you need to empathize. I find that journalists, a lot of times, perhaps they're protecting their job, their reputation, their sanity, are not willing to empathize." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I think this happened with Joe Manchin. I'm not doing any kind of equation here related to Hitler and Joe Manchin. Or Trump, I mean Trump. I interviewed the guy, Will Hepper, I mentioned, who was a physicist at Princeton who thinks carbon dioxide is the greatest thing in the world and we should have more of it in the atmosphere. I profoundly disagree on that point. But I interviewed him for an hour and it was so interesting because he was trying to kind of rope-a-dope me into making it about CO2 and climate, because he's a super smart physicist. And I kind of said, let's talk about some other things. And we started talking about education and science education. He went on for like 20 minutes about the vital importance of better science education for Americans. He drew on people he knew from Europe, Hungary, a bunch of Nobel Prize winners came from some town in Hungary, at least a couple. And he said that he learned their teachers At any rate, he went into a long exposition on that. He then defended climate science. He said, we need more climate science. He says, I love this stuff. I love the ocean buoys. There are now thousands of them in the oceans, charting clear pictures of ocean circulation and satellites. And he said something really important that many people discount, which is we need sustained investment in monitoring this planet. we neglect our systems that just tell us what's happening in the world. And that's happened over and over again. So if I had left it, if I had gone into the terrain of the fight over CO2, some journalist friends might say, oh, that was good. Mashup, you know, matchup. But I found these really profound and important things that I wanted the world to know about in the context of whether Trump was gonna have him as a science advisor. And so if I hadn't gone there, and a lot of people, if you look back, I got hammered for doing that, even from friends. And then later, John Holdren, who had been Obama's science advisor for eight years, he said, I would rather have Will Happer as Trump's science advisor than no science advisor. In other words, there's a landscape of things that are important. He recognized that Happer's really smart about defense and all kinds of things too. So it's like, you do have to sort of screw up your, ideally screw up your courage, but then not necessarily get into the, It's like with the guy in Oklahoma. If you go in looking for the differences, you'll find them. You can amplify them. You can leave with this paralyzed sense of nothing having happened that was useful. Or you can find these nuggets. Everyone is a human being. I can't play the mind game of what I would have asked to Hitler, but" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I play that mind game all the time, but that's for another conversation. I had many in my family that have suffered under him. Nevertheless, he is a human being. And people sometimes caricature Hitler saying like, that's when you mention Hitler, the conversation devolves. But I don't agree. I think sort of these extremes are useful thought experiments to understand. Because if you're not willing to take your ideals to that extreme, then maybe your ideals need some rethinking from a journalistic perspective, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A number of years ago, my wife and I were with our veterinarian, who was German born, Dr. Bach, B-A-C-H. We were talking about the dog and stuff, and then we were talking about Trump, and he just mentioned in passing, he said, my mother voted for Hitler. Wow, that hit me like a brick. Because it was so, at the very least, understanding how pathways that lead to people doing things like he did and ordered. It's essential, and the only way to understand that is to dig in and ask questions and get uncomfortable. It still makes my hair prickle when I think back to him saying, yeah, my mom voted for Hitler." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That somehow makes it super real, like, oh, yeah. Yeah, there's elections, there's real people living their lives." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, struggling with a broken economy and all kinds of stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "having their own little personal resentments and all that kind of stuff. Let me ask you about presidents, American presidents. Who had a positive or negative impact on climate change efforts in your view? Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, or maybe you could say that they don't have much of an impact. So like they, in public discourse, presidents have a kind of, maybe disproportional, like we imagine they have a huge amount of impact. How much impact do they actually have on climate policy? I don't know if you have comments on this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there is a background decarbonization rate that's happened for 150 years. We move from wood to charcoal to coal to oil and gas is cleaner, it's more hydrogen, less carbon. And I asked recently, I asked some really smart scientists who study these long trajectories of energy, When you look at those curves, is there anything in that curve that says, oh, climate treaty 1992? Oh, Paris. And it's really hard, or China, I mean, when China came in with his huge growth in emissions, that created a bit of a recarbonization blip, but that was this huge growth in their economy that pulled a bunch of people out of poverty. So yeah, no, presidents don't really change anything. On timescales that we would measure, where you could parse it out, I think that's not to say that Obama's and the current focus on the stimulus that's happening, which includes a lot more money for research, et cetera, and innovation. I do think that will be beneficial in a very, very long run. But I have to say, when Obama stood up and took credit for reductions from moving from coal to gas because of fracking, That was actually Cheney who set that in motion. I was thinking, I would say Bush, not because I like him or anything, but he's the guy who inadvertently started fracking. It goes further back than that. It was a federal investment in fracking in the 60s and 70s. And then this one guy in Texas, right here in Texas, George Mischel, who you know, cobbled together technology. And that led to this real dramatic change from gas to coal that mostly played out in the Obama years, but that really was stimulated by Cheney's early energy task force, 2001, when they were getting into office. And also Bush did something interesting in the whole wonky climate treaty process. It was under Bush that they started to focus on sectors. Let's do a, they did a, oh, and also on big emitters. This isn't about 200 countries. It's about basically eight or 10 countries. Let's get them into a room and let's have these little sub rooms on like electrification, on mining, on whatever, and by parsing it out. And Obama picked up the same model. They had different names for it because presidents always name something different than the last president. One was the major economies forum and then it was the, major emitters, something or other. And that, getting away from the treaty, dots and dashes, toward just sectoral, big sectors that matter, you know, gas, electrification, makes a difference. But again, you couldn't ever measure. It's always the lag time. And also, I think one very under-reported fact, so the UNEP, the Environment Program, They come out with what they call a gap report every year, where they estimate how much is the world doing compared to what should it or has it promised to do. Emissions. Yeah. And in 2019, so just before COVID hit, they actually did a survey of the 2010s. So the last big sort of report on how well are we doing. And their takeaway quote, and I'm not going to get this right, but it's pretty much what they said was, If you take the world as if we hadn't cared about climate change since 2005, we can't tell the difference between that world and the world that we're actually living in. So despite the fact that we've had 10 years of immense focus on climate, and everybody talks about it, and the Paris Agreement, which is perhaps the biggest global sort of agreement in what we're going to be doing, you can't actually tell. And that, I think, is incredibly important because what it tells you is all that we're doing is not even on the margin. It's sort of smaller than that, and I'm not sure what that is. But we're basically dealing in, for instance, the UK loves to point out that they have dramatically reduced their carbon emissions. And they have. They've really dramatically lowered their emissions, but mostly because they've de-industrialized. They basically said, look, we're just going to be bankers for all of you guys, and then everybody else is going to produce our stuff. Which, of course, is great for Britain. I don't know if it's great for Britain, but we can't all do that. And so most of what we're trying to do right now is sort of, you know, this virtue signaling. It makes us feel good. It's sort of, yeah, on the margin or in the very tiny margin. But, you know, what we basically, and that was, Andy, your point with China. The reason why we can't tell the difference, of course, is because China basically became the workshop for everyone. And so not only did they lift more than half a billion people out of poverty, but they also basically took over most production in the world. And so, of course, you know, much many rich countries could decarbonize and or at least reduce their carbon emissions and feel very virtuous about it. But fundamentally, we haven't solved how does the world do this? And that's why I think we're also left with this sense of not only are we being told this is a unmitigated catastrophe and that's why this is the only thing we should be focusing on, but also somehow and we can all fix it. And I don't think we have any sense of how hard this is actually going to be. And that's, of course, why I would go back and say, look, the only way you're going to fix this is through innovation, because if you have something that's cheaper than fossil fuels, you've fixed it. If you have something that's harder and costlier and more inconvenient, no, you're just not going to make it. And getting more time by cutting vulnerability. Yes. The pockets of vulnerability on the planet are huge and they're identifiable and you know what to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are the biggest pockets of vulnerability? Infrastructure of cities?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it's where people are living and what their capacities are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So moving people, how do you decrease the vulnerability in the world? What are the big ones?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Affordable housing. One reason so many people moved out of San Francisco and adjacent cities into the countryside and then had their houses burned down is because they can't afford to live in the city anymore. So affordable housing in cities can limit exposure to, in that case, wildfire. Durban, South Africa, that terrible, devastating flood they had this year, past year, who was washed away? Poor people who don't have any place to live. So they settled in a floodplain along a stream bed that's livable when it's not raining buckets. And those are vulnerabilities that are there because of dislocation, housing. Tacloban, this typhoon that hit the Philippines terribly, ahead of the Paris talks, or was it the previous one? It was in 2013, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thousands died. Most of the stories that were written were framed around climate change because the Pope made a deal about it. It was just before the climate talks of that year. And what happened, partially why there were so many losses, was Tacloban City had quadrupled in population in the last 30 years. And most of the people coming into the city were poor, looking for work, and settling in marginal places where a storm surge killed them. So those are things we, whatever the we is in the different places, really can work on. And that gives more flex for sure, and thinking about how, this long trajectory that seems so immovable and so hard, the decarbonization part. There's no excuse. I wrote a piece, I guess a year ago. I said there's a vulnerability emergency hiding behind this climate emergency label. That's really what needs work. And also on the Tacloban, I mean, the hurricane that hit in 2013, there was almost a similar hurricane in the early part of 1900s that hit pretty much the same strength and it eradicated half the city. It killed half the city. And so what's happened since then is people just got much, much richer. You know, from early 1900 to 2013, we've just moved a lot of people out of poverty. Bangladesh is even a bigger example of that. In the 1970s, they had horrible cyclones, one of which was the Beatles, George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh. Great album. that I still have somewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hundreds of thousands." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He did a concert, a fundraising concert, the concert for Bangladesh after this terrible cyclone tragedy hit Bangladesh. And I think there were several hundred thousand who were killed. And a couple like that around that time. Bangladesh has been hit by comparable storms recently. And it's terrible. Every death is terrible, but it's like 123 deaths. And it's not just because of wealth. It's because people know what to do. It's because there's cell phones. It's because they have elevated platforms in many communities in the floodplains there that you know to get to. So they went from hundreds of thousands of deaths in a cyclone to 123. When we were working with Bangladesh, it's no longer the problem of people dying, it's the fact that their cattle die. So they want cattle places where you could herd your cow. This is their capital, and it's not to make fun of it, but it's an amazing progress that you've stopped worrying about your parents dying and you worry about your cows dying. And when I was talking about social innovation the other hour, there's a model emerging in Bangladesh for farmers to move from raising chickens, poultry, to ducks. And it's working. And ducks actually fetch a higher price at the market. And guess what? When you get flooded, you can still have your income and your future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you to give advice. Put on your sage, wise hat and give advice to young people that are looking into this world and see how they can do the most good we talked about. What is the $1 that can do the most positive improvement to lead to $40, $45 and so on? What advice would you give to young people in high school and college how to have a positive impact on the world? How to have a career they can be proud of? Maybe ask Bjorn first and how to have a life they can be proud of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think, and this really pretty well reflects the whole conversation we've had, we've got to sort of take the catastrophism out of the climate conversation. And this really matters because a lot of kids literally think that the world is going to end pretty soon. And that obviously makes any other kind of plan meaningless. So first of all, look, you're not going to die. Uh, you know that that poster that people that a lot of kids have you're going to die from old age, but i'm going to die from climate No, you're not you're going to die from old age and you're going to die much older very likely, right? Uh, so the reality is the world has improved dramatically and it's very likely to improve even more. So the baseline is good This is just you know the facts Then there's still lots and lots of problems. And what you should do as a young person is stop being, you know, paralyzed by fear and then realize what you can do is basically help humanity become even smarter. There's a lot of different places you can do. I mean, the obvious thing when you're talking about climate is, what if you could become the guy that develops fourth generation nuclear? It's very likely it's something that neither of us know anything about right now, but develop the energy source that'll basically power the rest of humanity. How cool would that be? That's one of the many things you could do. But again, also remember, there are lots and lots of other things that need solutions. So what about you become the guy that makes the or the girl that makes the social innovation in Tanzania or in Kenya? Or what about if you become the person who finds a way that is a much cheaper, more effective way to tackle tuberculosis? Right now, it needs four to six months of medication. One of the big problems is once you pop the pills and you're fresh, it's really hard to get people to do it for the other five and a half months. And you need that. Otherwise, you actually have a big risk of getting multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which is a real scourge on the earth. So, you know, what if you develop that? So the truth is, not only can your life be much better when you sort of ditch that doomerism, but it also becomes much more possible for you to be a positive part of making sure that you do that progress. Why has the world improved so much? Because our parents and great-grandparents, they made all this work. This was all their innovations and a lot of hard work. And I'm incredibly grateful that they've done it. But now it's kind of time to pay back. So you've got to do this for our grandkids. You've got to make those innovations, make those policy opportunities that will make the world an even better place. Totally. And to me, there's never been a better time to be effective as a young person, because the internet, connectedness, you can brainstorm with someone in another country just as easily as you can brainstorm with someone down the block when we were kids. As I said earlier, my pen pal was letters taking weeks to come. So the key properties, ideally, that young people would do well to cultivate are, well, certainly adaptability, because change is changing, not just, you know, the rate of change is changing. These layers of change are all piling up on each other. Having an ability to understand the information environment is a fundamental need now that wasn't a need when we were growing up. We read a few newspapers, my dad would turn on the nightly news, and Walter Cronkite would say, that's the way it is. And we'd say, that's the way it is. And that's so not the way the media environment is now. So courses in media literacy should be kind of fundamental parts of curriculum from like kindergarten on, or parents can do the same thing. There's a woman at URI, University of Rhode Island, Renee Hobbs, who teaches a course in propaganda literacy. And she said, you know, the history of the word is not bad. Propaganda could be good. It's pro, it's for the church. She did a wonderful chat with me. She laid this out, but understanding when it is propaganda, like the tobacco, you know, there is hopefully a difference between that and that, right? Cigarette ads and journalistically acquired information. So Akita, everything Bjorn was talking about too, is just understanding how to not be sucked into this information environment and spit out as a paralyzed, doomist entity. Because once you have an ability to step back, then you can use Twitter or whatever you're on to find people who might have a skill set you don't have that is something you need to do to incorporate, to harness, to do the thing you want to do in the world, finding your way to make the world better. And it can have nothing to do with climate, but if it makes a few more people's lives better, then overall you're leading toward better capacity for all this stuff. And then the climate problem, the prismatic giant nature of it is what makes it so daunting, but it's also it gives everybody an opportunity. There's something for artists, scientists, poets, everybody needs to get in the game. I just spent some time with Kim Stanley Robinson, who wrote that book Ministry of the Future, which is this sprawling novel about worst case outcome where everyone in India is dying. So fiction can help experiment, different kinds of fiction, different kinds of arts can help us sort of experiment with what the future might look like in different ways and just get started. And the other thing, unfortunately, that's needed, I think I first said this in 2008 when someone asked me something about climate. I said, Weirdly, you have to sort of have a sense of urgency, but a sense of patience at the same time. Like, just roll those words around in your mind. Like, what does that mean, urgent and patient? How could that possibly be? But actually, it really is the reality. There is an urgency with this building gas that's cumulative, that doesn't go away like smoke when it rains. And every year that happens, it's adding to risk. And you can kind of wake up completely freaked out urgent, But when you realize energy transitions take time, then you have to sort of find patience or whatever your word is for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think you have to oscillate back and forth throughout the day, having a sense of urgency when you're trying to actually be productive and have patience so you can have a calm head about you in terms of putting everything into perspective. And like you said, with information, that is interesting, especially in the scientific community. I think you've spoken about this before. you know, that there is some responsibility or at least an opportunity for scientists to not just do science, but to understand the dynamics of the different mediums in which information is exchanged. So it could be Twitter for a few years, then it could be TikTok, then it could be, you know, I'm a huge believer in the power of YouTube. over the next several years, perhaps decades. I mean, it's a very interesting medium for education and communication and for debate. And that's grassroots, that's from like the bottom up, that every scientist is able to communicate their work. And I personally believe have the responsibility to communicate their work. If anything, the internet made me realize that science is not just about doing the science, it's about communicating it. This is not some kind of virtue signaling on my part. No, no, no. No, I feel like if the tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, it really didn't fall. There should be a culture of, at MIT, there's a place called the Media Lab. Yes, sir. Where they really emphasize like you always be able to demo something to show off your work. They really emphasize showing off their work. And I think that was in some part criticized in the bigger MIT culture that, you know, that's like focusing too much on the PR versus doing the science. But I really disagree with that. Of course, there's a balance to strike. You don't want to be all smoke and mirrors, but there really is a lot of value to communication and not just sort of, some broad, you almost don't wanna teach a course on communication because by the time you teach the course, it's already too late. It's always being on top of how, what is the language, what is the culture and the etiquette, what is the technology of communication that is effective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I actually had a big conversation about that in my university because I think, and this is perhaps especially true for social sciences, but I think it's probably true for everyone, just simply communicating what it is you've done in research makes it possible for you to sort of get an outsider's perspective and see, did I just go into an incredibly deep hole that just three other people really care about in the world? or is this actually something that matters to the world? And being able to explain what it is that you've done to everyone else makes, you know, my sort of sense is if you can't say it in a couple of minutes, it's probably, it's not necessarily true, but it's probably because it wasn't all that important. There was a hashtag generated maybe seven years ago by a Caltech PhD candidate woman, And it was fantastic. The hashtag was I am a scientist because. And she posted it with a picture of herself with her answer. And that, when I talk to scientists or basically anybody about communicating, I say don't start with I am a phytologist and I use a spectrophotometer to do X. Start with, I'm a scientist because the world is endlessly interesting, and I just found these salamanders, which are going to vanish if we don't stop this fungus from coming to the United States. Utterly interesting. And then you've got people hooked. But it's the motivation part, because everyone grew up as a kid, and a kid is basically like a scientist. Wow, what the hell is this? How does this work? So you can connect with people that way. But this other issue you broached is really important. And what I love about MIT particularly, I spent a lot of time there over the decades, not just talking to the hurricane guy, Amy Smith, who has the development lab in the basement there somewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Most of MIT looks like it's the basement." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's part of the charm. But it's a usability function is part of a lot of that goes on there. It's engineering and science. And it reminds me, in 1997, these two very different scientists, Dan Kamen at Berkeley and Michael Dove at Yale, wrote a manifesto, and it was The Virtues of Mundane Science. That's what they called it. It was a prod to the scientific community to, actually, it's very useful, utility. Because the whole arena is set up to advance your career through revealing new knowledge that will get you tenure someday. actually doing useful science is disincentivized. And especially if it involves more than one discipline. Because as a young scientist, there were some postdocs at Columbia who wrote this other manifesto paper saying, here are the things universities need to do to foster the collaborative capacity we need to have sustainable development. And it was like four or five things that universities don't do. give you time to become fluent and for a physicist to talk to an anthropologist and understand how anthropology works or sociology takes time. And then building a relationship with a community that has a problem that you want to fix takes time. And so you do these like quick turnaround papers that get you toward your little micro career goal, but they're not actually getting you what you want in the world. Those are really hard problems going forward. But starting with that idea of usability What can I do with my skill sets? You know, a lot of great physicists I know are dug in on string theory and stuff, and someone has to dig in on that too, but I'd like to have them pull a little bit of their brainpower away to think about some of the practical things Bjorn thinks about too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the two of you have been thinking about some of the biggest questions, which is life here on Earth, the history of life here, the future of life here on Earth, of Earth itself, and how to allocate our resources to alleviate suffering in the world. So let me ask the big question. What do you think is the why of it all? What's the meaning of it? What's the meaning of our life here on Earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You waited till the last moment to ask us that question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, in case I can trick you into finding an answer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so I mean, again, I'm just gonna take a stab in this because I think in some ways, it's the same thing that you were talking about before. It's not about getting everybody sort of in the same track and all agree on something, but it's about getting a lot of people with very different goals and targets and ways of thinking about the world to go in the same direction. So for me, the goal of life, certainly my goal, but I think for most people, is to make the world a better place. It sounds incredibly pedestrian because it's become so overused, but that really and literally is the point. Your point of your life is to, when one of your friends is sad, to make sure that they sort of get out of that and find out why they're sad and maybe move them a little bit in the right direction. and all the things that we've talked about, you know, stop people from dying from tuberculosis and live longer lives and fix climate change, but fix it in such a way that we actually use resources smartest, because there are lots of problems. So let's make sure we, you know, we deal with them adequately. This is very unsexy in some sense, but I think it's also very basic and really what matters. Well, you know, biologically, Evolution has demanded that life is about finding sources of energy and perpetuating yourself, right? So that's the baseline. And that's led us into a bit of a bollocks because we have this easy energy, it's come from the ground so far. But our brilliance has given this larger awareness of everything about the planet is transitory. And so how do you work with that productively is really an important question. I could just sort of try to be as rich as possible and use as much energy as possible and have other people I mean, Alex Epstein, I think, again, this is one of the constraints in my support for what he says, is he's just talking about growth and progress in that sense. But there are consequences and there are long-term trajectories here that have to be taken into account too. So what do you wake up to do? To me, it's finding your part of this. And as Bjorn said, finding a way to pursue and expand betterment. When I taught, I was at Pace University for six years, and one of the courses I launched there was called Blogging a Better Planet. And it was for grad students mostly in communication. It wasn't an environment, it wasn't like Better Planet, like Save the Climate. But my task for the students was to blog about something they're passionate about, first of all. Because you can't do this, just like you can't do your conversations if you don't wake up in the morning wanting to do what you're doing, right? You're doing this. I used to call myself a selfish blogger because I was learning every day. I still am. I love this. My wife laughs, she thinks I work too much, but I'm always asking those questions, like sustain what? So my charge to the students was, harness a passion, build a blog, either alone or with others, that notches the world a little bit towards some better outcome. And so there was a musician who did a thing on musicians who use their art for their work for making the world better. Some of it was like music therapy, you know, bands contributing money, whatever. Another one did, her blog was on comfort food all around the world. And I thought it was my favorite. It was a video. I think it should be viral, actually. It was like looking at the world, every different cultures. She was in Queens, so every culture, every cuisine is there in Queens, 200 countries, right? But she would go and talk to people's moms and have them cook the food of that country that's their comfort food. I mean, I just love this because we all need to eat and you're getting this expanded sense of what comfort is by thinking about what other cultures choose. And that felt like a great course because it was not directive, it was just, gave them this potential to go forward. I'd love to think they've all gone on to become a superstar, whatever it is, I don't know. That's the giving, that's the letting go part. Even if one did something special, then that makes me feel job done. After I'd been writing about climate for 30 years, 2016-ish, I Did a lot of writing about what did I learn, unlearn, and stuff. And I had had a stroke in 2011, which was interesting. It was the first time I really thought about my brain. You don't think about your brain on a day-to-day basis. But this is my brain telling me, ding, ding, ding, ding, some weird shit's happening. And when I was thinking about climate, confronting climate change, it felt like some of the things I learned about my own existence. I'm gonna die. But you don't really absorb that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that the first time you kind of faced your mortality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was like my first like, yeah, this is really the shit. Or at least deep disability, if not death. That ability is transitory. And I thought about the climate problem. We're not going to solve the global warming problem, at least not in our lifetimes. But you work on making those trajectories sustainable, you know, the end of life particularly. You work on making sure other people don't get strokes if they can avoid it. In my case, I wrote about it. I was blogging about my stroke while I was having it. I was tweeting about it. There's a funny tweet that's kind of mistyped because, you know, things weren't working. So that's like share your knowledge, share your learning. And everyone can do this now, like on whatever platform. And then there's also this like giving up part, but not in a depressing, well, maybe you could call it depressing. I started to zoom in years ago on the idea of the serenity prayer, the sobriety thing. It's like know what you can change, know what you can't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, see those three properties are really important right now. Some aspects of this, we know absolutely what we can work on, cutting vulnerability. Energy transitions take time. Science can help us discriminate the difference. And that's an iterative changing landscape going forward. But at the same time, science, like I personally on climate modeling or like narrowing how hot it's going to get or more clarity on when an ice sheet is going to collapse. I think those are what I call known unknowables. So being able to, I've seen enough evidence that those are deeply complex problems that we're not going to get there quickly. So then that gives you a landscape to act on. And that, whether you bring God into the mix is irrelevant. It's really know what you can change, know what you can't, and that gives you the quality to work on them. And serenity is comfort with that this is transitory, that the human journey, like anyone's individual journey, will have some end. That doesn't mean it has to be near. This Anthropocene that I've been writing about for decades can still be a good Anthropocene, or at least a less bad one in terms of how we get through it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're also a musician, so in context, one of my favorite songs of yours, an album, A Very Fine Line, I should mention that with the stroke coming close to death, The lyrics here are quite brilliant, I have to say. Oh, yeah. It's a very fine line between winning and losing, a very fine line between living and dying, a very fine line. By the way, people should listen to this. I can't play this because YouTube will give me trouble. A very fine line between loving and leaving. Most of your life, you spend walking a very fine line. And the rest of the lyrics are just quite brilliant. It is a fine line. Yeah. I'm glad you walked in with me today, gentlemen. You're brilliant, kind, beautiful human beings. Thank you so much for having this quote-unquote debate that was much more about just exploring ideas together. Bjorn, thank you so much. And Andy, thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can't exclude that. I think it's fairly unlikely. I wish we had more ability to be able to ask questions of the Chinese government and learn more about what kind of records might have been in the lab that we've never been able to see. But most likely this was a natural origin of a virus, probably starting in a bat, perhaps traveling through some other intermediate yet to be identified host and finding its way into humans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is answering this question within the realm of science, do you think, will we ever know?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we might know if we find that intermediate host. And there has not yet been a thorough enough investigation to say that that's not going to happen. And remember, it takes a while to do this. With SARS, it was 14 years before we figured out it was the civet cat that was the intermediate host. With MERS, it was a little quicker to discover it was the camel. With SARS-CoV-2, there's been some looking, but especially now with everything really tense between the US and China, if there's looking going on, we're not getting told about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think it's a scientific question or a political question?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a scientific question, but it has political implications." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the world is full of scientists that are working together, but in the political space, in the political science space, there's tensions. What is it like to do great science in a time of a pandemic when there's political tensions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very unfortunate. Pasteur said science knows no one country. He was right about that. My whole career, in genetics especially, has depended upon international collaboration between scientists as a way to make discoveries, get things done, scientists by their nature. like to be involved in international collaborations. The Human Genome Project, for heaven's sake, 2,400 scientists in six countries working together, not worrying who was going to get the credit, giving all the data away. I was the person who was supposed to keep all that coordinated. It was a wonderful experience. And that included China. That was sort of their first real entry into a big international, big science kind of project. And they did their part. It's very different now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Continue in the line of difficult questions. especially difficult ethical questions. In 2014, U.S. put a hold on gain-of-function research in response to a number of laboratory biosecurity incidents, including anthrax, smallpox, and influenza. In December 2017, NIH lifted this ban because, quote, gain-of-function research is important in helping us identify, understand, and develop strategies and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health. All difficult questions have arguments on both sides. Can you argue the pros and cons of gain-of-function research with viruses?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can. And first let me say this term, gain-of-function, is causing such confusion that I need to take a minute and just sort of talk about what the common scientific use of that term is and where it is very different when we're talking about the current oversight of potentially dangerous human pathogens. As you know, in science, we're doing gain-of-function experiments all the time. We support a lot of cancer immunotherapy at NIH. Right here in our clinical center, there are trials going on where people's immune cells are taken out of their body, treated with a genetic therapy that revs up their ability to discover the cancer that that patient currently has, maybe even at stage four, and then give them back. as those little ninja warriors go after the cancer. And it sometimes works dramatically. That's a gain of function. You gave that patient a gain in their immune function that may have saved their life. So we've got to be careful not to say, oh, gain of function is bad. Most of what we do in science that's good involves quite a bit of that. And we are all living with gains of function every day. I have a gain of function because I'm wearing these eyeglasses. Otherwise, I would not be seeing you as clearly. I'm happy for that gain of function. So that's where a lot of confusion has happened. The kind of gain of function which is now subject to very rigorous and very carefully defined oversight. is when you are working with an established human pathogen that is known to be potentially causing a pandemic and you are enhancing or potentially enhancing its transmissibility or its virulence. We call that EPPP, Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen. That requires this very stringent oversight worked out over three years by the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, that needs to be looked at by a panel that goes well beyond NIH to decide, are the benefits worth the risks in that situation? Most of the time, it's not worth the risk. Only three times in the last three or four years have experiments been given permission to go forward. They were all on influenza. So I will argue that if you're worried about the next pandemic, the more you know about the coming enemy, the better chance you have to recognize when trouble is starting. And so if you can do it safely, studying influenza or coronaviruses like SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 would be a good thing to be able to know about, but you have to be able to do it safely because we all know Lab accidents can happen. I mean, look at SARS, where there have been lab accidents and people who have gotten sick as a result. We don't want to take that chance unless there's a compelling scientific reason. That's why we have this very stringent oversight. The experiments being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a subaward to our grant to EcoHealth in New York did not meet that standard of requiring that kind of stringent oversight. I want to be really clear about that because there's been so much thrown around about it. Was it gain of function? Well, in the standard use of that term that you would use in science in general, you might say it was. But in the use of that term that applies to this very specific example of a potential pandemic pathogen? Absolutely not. So nothing went on there that should not have happened based upon the oversight. There was an instance where the grantee institution failed to notify us about the result of an experiment that they were supposed to tell us where they mixed and matched some viral genomes and got a somewhat larger viral load as a result. But it was not EPPP. It was not getting into that zone that would have required this higher level of scrutiny. It was all bat viruses. These were not human pathogens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they didn't cross a threshold within that gray area that makes for an EPPP?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They did not. And anybody who's willing to take the time to look at what EPP means and what those experiments were would have to agree with what I just said." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is the biggest reason it didn't cross that threshold? Is it because it wasn't jumping to humans? Is it because it did not have a sufficient increase in virulence or transmissibility? What's your sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "EPPP only applies to agents that are known human pathogens of pandemic potential. These were all bat viruses derived in the wild, not shown to be infectious to humans. Just looking at what happened if you took four different bat viruses and you tried moving the spike protein gene from one into one of the others to see whether it would bind better to the ACE2 receptor. That doesn't get across that threshold. And let me also say, for those who are trying to connect the dots here, which is the most troubling part of this, and say, well, this is how SARS-CoV-2 got started, That is absolutely demonstrably false. These bat viruses that were being studied had only about 80% similarity in their genomes to SARS-CoV-2. They were like decades away in evolutionary terms. And it is really irresponsible for people to claim otherwise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of people who claim otherwise, Rand Paul. What do you make of the battle of words between Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci over this particular point?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't want to talk about specific members of Congress, but I will say it's really unfortunate that Tony Fauci, who is the epitome of a dedicated public servant, has now somehow been targeted for political reasons as somebody that certain figures are trying to discredit, perhaps to try to distract from their own failings. This never should have happened. Here's a person who's dedicated his whole life to trying to prevent illnesses from infectious diseases, including HIV in the 1980s and 90s. And now probably the most knowledgeable infectious disease physician in the world and also a really good communicator is out there telling the truth about where we are with SARS-CoV-2 to certain political figures who don't want to hear it and who are therefore determined to discredit him. And that is disgraceful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So with politicians, they often play games with black and white. They try to sort of use the gray areas of science and then paint their own picture. But I have a question about the gray areas of science. So like you mentioned, Gain of function is a term that has very specific scientific meaning, but it also has a more general term. And it's very possible to argue that the, not to argue, not the way politicians argue, but just as human beings and scientists, that there was a gain of function achieved at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. but it didn't cross a threshold. I mean, there's a, it's, it's a, but it could have too. So, so here's the thing. When you do these kinds of experiments, unexpected results may be achieved. And that's the gray area of science. You're, you're taking risks with such experiments. And I am very uncomfortable that we can't discuss the uncertainty in the gray area of this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I'm comfortable discussing the gray area. What I'm uncomfortable with is people deciding to define for themselves what that threshold is based on sort of some political argument. The threshold was very explicitly laid out. Everybody agreed to that in the basis of this three years of deliberation. So that's what it is. If that threshold needs to be reconsidered, let's reconsider it. But let's not try to take an experiment that's already been done and decide that the threshold isn't what it was, because that really is doing a disservice to the whole process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wish there was a discussion, even in response to Rand Paul. I know we're not talking about specific senators, but just that particular case, I'm saying stuff here. I wish there was an opportunity to talk about Given the current threshold, this is not gain of function, but maybe we need to reconsider the threshold and have an actual, that's an opportunity for discussion about the ethics of gain of function. You said that there was three studies that passed that threshold with influenza. That's a fascinating human question, scientific question about ethics, because you're playing, like you said, there's pros and cons. You're taking risks here to prevent horribly destructive viruses in the future, but you also are risking creating such viruses in the future. With nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, you are, nuclear energy promises a lot of positive effects, and yet you're taking risks here. With mutually assured destruction, nations possessing nuclear weapons, you're a lot of people- I hope we're not going there. Well, we're not. A lot of people argue that that's the reason we've nuclear weapons is the reason we've prevented world wars and yet they also have the risk of Starting world wars and this is what we have to be honest about With the with the benefits of risks of science that you have to make that calculation What are the pros and what are the cons?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm totally with you, but I want to reassure you Lex that this is not an issue that's been ignored. That this issue about the kind of gain of function that might result in a serious human pathogen has been front and center in many deliberations for a decade or more, involved a lot of my time along the way, by the way. and has been discussed publicly on multiple occasions, including two major meetings of the National Academy of Sciences, getting input from everybody and ultimately arriving at our current framework. Now, we actually, back in January of 2020, just before COVID-19 changed everything, had planned and even charged that same national science advisory board on biosecurity to reconvene and look at the current framework and say, do we have it right? Let's look at the experience over those three years and say, is the threshold too easy, too hard? Do we need to reconsider it? Let's look at the experience. COVID came along. The members of the board said, please, we're all infectious disease experts. We don't have time for this right now. But I think the time is right to do this. I'm totally supportive of that. And that should be just as public a discussion as you can imagine about what are the benefits and the risks. And if somebody decided, ultimately, this came together and said, we just shouldn't be doing these experiments under any circumstances, if that was the conclusion, well, that would be the conclusion. But it hasn't been so far." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we can briefly look out into the next hundred years on this, I apologize for the existential questions, but it seems obvious to me that as gain of function type of research and development becomes easier and cheaper, it will become greater and greater risk. So if it doesn't no longer need to be contained within laboratories of high security, It feels like this is one of the greatest threats facing human civilization. Do you worry that at some point in the future, a leaked man-made virus may destroy most of human civilization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do worry about the risks. And at the moment where we have the greatest control, the greatest oversight is when this is federally funded research. But as you're alluding, there's no reason to imagine that's the only place that this kind of activity would go on. If there was an evil source that wished to create a virus that was highly pathogenic in their garage, the technology does get easier. And there is no international oversight about this either that you could say has the same stringency as what we have in the United States. So yes, that is a concern. It would take a seriously deranged group or person to undertake this on purpose, given the likelihood that they too would go down. We don't imagine there are going to be bioweapons that only kill your enemies and don't kill you. Sorry, we're too much alike for that to work. I don't see it as an imminent risk. There's lots of scary novels and movies written about it. But I do think it's something we have to consider. What are all the things that ought to be watched? You may not know that if somebody is ordering a particular oligonucleotide from one of the main suppliers and it happens to match smallpox, they're going to get caught. So there is effort underway to try to track any nefarious actions that might be going on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the United States or internationally? Is there an international collaboration of trying to track this stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is some, I wish it were stronger. This is a general issue, Lex, in terms of do we have a mechanism, particularly when it comes to ethical issues, to be able to decide what's allowable and what's not and enforce it? I mean, look where we are with germline genome editing for humans, for instance. There is no enforcement mechanism. There's just bully pulpits and governments that get to decide for themselves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You talked about evil. What about incompetence? Does that worry you? I was born in the Soviet Union. My dad, a physicist, worked at Chernobyl. That comes to mind. That wasn't evil. I don't know what word you want to put it. Maybe incompetence is too harsh. Maybe it's the inherent incompetence of bureaucracy. I don't know. But for whatever reason, there was an accident. Does that worry you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course it does. We know that SARS, for instance, did manage to leak out of a lab in China two or three times, and at least in some instances people died, fortunately quickly contained. All one can do in that circumstance, because you need to study the virus and understand it in order to keep it from causing a broader pandemic, but you need to insist upon the kind of biosecurity, the BSL 2, 3, and 4 framework under which those experiments have to be done. And certainly at NIH, we're extremely rigorous about that. But you can't count on every human being to always do exactly what they're supposed to. So there's a risk there, which is another reason why if we're contemplating supporting research on pathogens that might be the next pandemic, You have to factor that in, not just whether people are gonna do something that we couldn't have predicted where all of a sudden they created a virus that's much worse without knowing they were gonna do that, but also just having an accident. That's in the mix when those estimates are done about whether the risk is worth it or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Continuing on the line of difficult questions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're gonna get to fun stuff after a while." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We will soon, I promise. You are the director of the NIH. You are Dr. Anthony Fauci's, technically his boss. You have stood behind him. You have supported him, just like you did already in this conversation. It is painful for me to see division and distrust, but many people in politics and elsewhere have called for Anthony Fauci to be fired. When there's such calls of distrust in public about a leader like Anthony Fauci, who should garner trust, do you think he should be fired?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely not. To do so would be basically to give the opportunity for those who want to make up stories about anybody to destroy them. There is nothing in the ways in which Tony Fauci has been targeted that is based upon truth. How could we then accept those cries for his firing as having legitimacy? It's a circular argument. They've decided they don't like Tony, so they make up stuff, and they twist comments that he's made about things like gain of function, where he's referring to the very specific gain of function that's covered by this policy, and they're trying to say he lied to the Congress. That's simply not true. They don't like the fact that Tony changes the medical recommendations about what to do with COVID-19 over the space of more than a year. And they call that flip-flopping and you can't trust the guy because he says one thing last year and one thing this year. Well, the science has changed. Delta variant has changed everything. You don't want him to be saying the same thing he did a year ago. That would be wrong now. It was the best we could do then. People don't understand that or else they don't want to understand that. So when you basically whip up a largely political argument against a scientist and hammer at it over and over again to the point where he now has to have 24-7 security to protect him against people who really want to do violence to him, for that to be a reason to say that then he should be fired is to hand the evil forces the victory. I will not do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yet there's something difficult that I'm going to try to express to you. So it may be your guitar playing. It may be something else. But there's a humility to you. It may be because you're a man of God. There's a humility to you that garners trust. And when you're in a leadership position representing science, especially in catastrophic events like the pandemic, it feels like as a leader, you have to go far above and beyond your usual duties. And I think there's no question that Anthony Fauci has delivered on his duties. but it feels like he needs to go above as a science communicator. And if there's a large number of people that are distrusting him, it's also his responsibility to garner their trust, to gain their trust. As a person who's the face of science, are you torn on this? The responsibility of Anthony Fauci, of yourself to represent science, not just the communication of advising what should be done, but giving people hope, giving people trust in science and alleviating division. Do you think that's also responsibility of a leader or is that unfair to ask?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the best way you give people trust is to tell them the truth. And so they recognize that when you're sharing information, it's the best you've got at that point. And Tony Fauci does that at every moment. I don't think him expressing more humility would change the fact that they're looking for a target of somebody to blame, to basically distract people from the failings of their own political party. Maybe I'm less targeted, not because of a difference in the way in which I convey the information. I'm less visible. If Tony were out of the scene and I was placed in that role, I'd probably be seeing a ratcheting up of that same targeting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I would like to believe that if Tony Fauci said that when I originally made recommendations not to wear masks, that was given on our best available data, and now we know that is a mistake. So admit with humility that there's an error. That's not actually correct, but that's a statement of humility. And I would like to believe, despite the attacks, he would win a lot of people over with that. So a lot of people, as you're saying, would use that, see that, here we go, here's that Dr. Anthony Fauci making mistakes. How can we trust him on anything? I believe if he was that public display of humility to say that I made an error, that would win a lot of people over. That's kind of, my sense, to face the fire of the attacks on politics, like politicians will attack no matter what. But the question is the people, to win over the people. The biggest concern I've had is that there was this distrust of science that's been brewing. And maybe you can correct me, but I'm a little bit unwilling to fully blame the politicians, because politicians play their games no matter what. it just feels like this was an opportunity to inspire people with the power of science. The development of the vaccines, no matter what you think of those vaccines, is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of science. And the fact that that's not inspiring, listen, I host a podcast. Whenever I say positive stuff about the vaccine, I get to hear a lot of different opinions. The fact that I do is a big problem to me because it's an incredible, an incredible accomplishment of science. And so I'm sorry, but I have to put responsibility on the leaders. Even if it's not their mistakes, that's what the leadership is. That's what leadership is. You take responsibility for the situation. I wonder if there's something that could have been done better to give people hope that science will save us as opposed to science will divide us." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you have more confidence in the ability to get beyond our current divisions than I do after seeing just how deep and dark they have become. Tony Fauci has said multiple times the recommendation about not wearing masks was for two reasons, a shortage of masks, which were needed in hospitals, and a lack of realization early in the course of the epidemic that this was a virus that could heavily infect asymptomatic people. As that changed, he changed. Now, did he make an error? No, he was making a judgment based on the data available at the time, but he certainly made that clear over and over again. It has not stopped those who would like to demonize him from saying, well, he just flip-flopped. You can't trust the guy. He says one thing today and one thing tomorrow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, masks is a tricky one, so I'm actually- It is a tricky one. Early on, I'm a co-author on a paper, one of many, but this was a survey paper overlooking the evidence. It's a summary of the evidence we have for the effectiveness of masks. It seems that it's difficult to do rigorous scientific study on masks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is difficult." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a lot of philosophical and ethical questions I want to ask you, but within this, It's back to your words and Anthony Fauci's words. When you're dealing with so much uncertainty and so much potential uncertainty about how catastrophic this virus is in the early days, and knowing that each word you say may create panic, how do you communicate science with the world? It's a philosophical, it's an ethical, it's a practical question. There was a discussion about masks a century ago, and that too led to panic. So, I mean, I'm trying to put myself in the mind, in your mind, in the mind of Anthony Fauci in those early days, knowing that there's limited supply of masks. Like, what do you say? Do you fully convey the uncertainty of the situation, of the challenges of the supply chain? Or do you say that masks don't work? That's a complicated calculation. How do you make that calculation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is a complicated calculation. As a scientist, your temptation would be to give a full brain dump of all the details of the information about what's known and what isn't known and what experiments need to be done. Most of the time, that's not going to play well in a soundbite on the evening news. So you have to kind of distill it down to a recommendation that is the best you can do at that time with the information you've got." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're a man of God, and we'll return to that to talk about some also unanswerable philosophical questions. But first, let's linger on the vaccine, because in the religious, in the Christian community, there was some hesitancy with the vaccine. Still is. Still is. There's a lot of data showing high efficacy and safety of vaccines, of COVID vaccines, but still they are far from perfect as all vaccines are. Can you empathize with people who are hesitant to take the COVID vaccine or to have their children take the COVID vaccine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can totally empathize, especially when people are barraged by conflicting information coming at them from all kinds of directions. I've spent a lot of my time in the last year trying to figure out how to do a better job of listening. Because I think we have all got the risk of assuming we know the basis for somebody's hesitancy. And that often doesn't turn out to be what you thought. And the variety of reasons is quite broad. I think a big concern is just this sense of uncertainty about whether this was done too fast and that corners were cut. And there are good answers to that. Along with that, a sense that maybe this vaccine will have long-term effects that we won't know about for years to come. And one can say, that hasn't been seen with other vaccines. And there's no particular reason to think this one's going to be different than the dozens of others that we have experience with. But you can't absolutely say, no, there's no chance of that. So it does come down to listening and then trying in a fashion that doesn't convey a message that you're smarter than the person you're talking to, because that isn't going to help. to really address what the substance is of the concerns. But my heart goes out to so many people who are fearful about this because of all the information that has been dumped on them. Some of it by politicians, a lot of it by the internet. Some of it by parts of the media that seem to take pleasure in stirring up this kind of fear for their own reasons. And that is shameful. I'm really sympathetic with the people who are confused and fearful. I am not sympathetic with people who are distributing information that's demonstrably false and continue to do so. They're taking lives. I didn't realize how strong that sector of disinformation would be. And it's been, in many ways, more effective than the means of spreading the truth. This is gonna take us into another place, but Lex, if there's something I'm really worried about in this country, and it's not just this country, but it's the one I live in, is that we have another epidemic besides COVID-19, and it's an epidemic of the loss of the anchor of truth. The truth as a means of making decisions. Truth as a means of figuring out how to wrestle with a question like, should I get this vaccine for myself or my children, seems to have lost its primacy. And instead, it's an opinion of somebody who expressed it very strongly or some Facebook post that I read two hours ago. And for those to become substitutes for objective truth, Not just, of course, for vaccines, but for many other issues, like was the 2020 election actually fair? This worries me deeply. It's bad enough to have polarization and divisions, but to have no way of resolving those by actually saying, OK, what's true here makes me very worried about the path we're on. And I'm usually an optimist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, to give you an optimistic angle on this, I actually think that this sense that there's no one place for truth is just a thing that will inspire leaders and science communicators to speak not from a place of authority, but from a place of humility. I think it's just challenging people to communicate in a new way, to be listeners first. I think the problem isn't that there's a lot of misinformation. I think that people The internet and the world are distrustful of people who speak as if they possess the truth with an authoritarian kind of tone, which was, I think, defining for what science was in the 20th century. I just think it has to sound different in the 21st. In the battle of ideas, I think humility and love wins. And that's how science wins, not through having quote unquote truth. Because now everybody can just say, I have the truth. I think you have to speak, like I said, from humility, not authority. And so it just challenges our leaders to go back and learn to be, pardon my French, less assholes and more kind. And like you said, to listen, to listen to the experiences of people. that are good people, not the ones who are trying to manipulate the system or play a game and so on, but real people who are just afraid of uncertainty, of hurting those they loved and so on. So I think it's just an opportunity for leaders to go back and take a class on effective communication." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm with you on shifting more from where we are to humility and love. That's got to be the right answer. That's very biblical, by the way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We'll get there. I have to bring up Joe Rogan. I don't know if you know who he is. I do. He's a podcaster, comedian, fighting commentator, and my now friend." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Ivermectin believer too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, that is the question I have to ask you about. He has gotten some flack in the mainstream media for not getting vaccinated and when he got COVID recently, taking ivermectin as part of a cocktail of treatments. The NIH actually has a nice page on ivermectin saying, quote, there's insufficient evidence to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19. So let me ask, why do you think there has been so much attack on Joe Rogan and anyone else that's talking about ivermectin when there's insufficient evidence for or against?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let's unpack that. First of all, I think the concerns about Joe are not limited to his taking ivermectin. Much more seriously, his being fairly publicly negative about vaccines at a time where people are dying. 700,000 people have died from COVID-19. Estimates by Kaiser are at least 100,000 of those were unnecessary deaths of unvaccinated people. and for Joe to promote that further, even as this pandemic rages through our population, is simply irresponsible. So yeah, the ivermectin is just one other twist. Obviously, ivermectin has been controversial for months and months. The reason that it got particular attention is because of the way in which it seemed to have captured the imagination of a lot of people to the point where they were taking doses that were intended for livestock. And some of them got pretty sick as a result from overdosing on this stuff. That was not good judgment. The drug itself remains uncertain. There's a recent review that looks at all of the studies of ivermectin and basically concludes that it probably doesn't work. We are running a study right now. I looked at that data this morning. in a trial called ACTIV-6, which is one of the ones that my public-private partnership is running. We're up to about 400 patients who've been randomized to ivermectin or placebo and should know, perhaps as soon as a month from now, in a very carefully controlled trial, did it help or did it not? So there will be an answer. Coming back to Joe, again, I don't think the fact that he took the ivermectin and hoping it might work is that big a knock against him. It's more the conveying of we don't trust what science says, which is vaccines are gonna save your life. We're gonna trust what's on the internet that says ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine really do work, even though the scientific community says probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me push back on that a little bit. So he doesn't say let's not listen to science. he doesn't say the vaccine, don't get vaccinated. He says, it's okay to ask questions. I'm okay with that. How risky is the vaccine for certain populations? What are the benefits and risks? There's other friends of Joe and friends of mine like Sam Harris, who says, if you look at the data, it's obvious that the benefits outweigh the risks. And what Joe says is yes, but let's still openly talk about risks. And he often brings up anecdotal evidence of people who've had highly negative effects from vaccines. Science is not done with anecdotal evidence. And so you could infer a lot of stuff from the way he expresses it, but he also communicates a lot of interesting questions. And that's something maybe you can comment on this. you know, there's certain groups that are healthy. They have, they're younger. They have, they exercise a lot. They get the, you know, nutrition and all those kinds of things. He shows skepticism on whether it's so obvious that they should get vaccinated. And the same as he makes this, he kind of presents the same kind of skepticism for kids, for young kids. So with empathy, and listening my Russian ineloquent description of what Joe believes, what is your kind of response to that? Why should certain categories of healthy and young people still get vaccinated, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first, just to say, it's great for Joe to be a skeptic, to ask questions. We should all be doing that. But then the next step is to go and see what the data says and see if there are actually answers to those questions. So coming to healthy people, I've done a bunch of podcasts besides this one. The one I think I remember most was a podcast with a worldwide wrestling superstar. Very nice. He's about six foot six and just absolutely solid muscle. And he got COVID. And he almost died. And recovering from that, he said, I've got to let my Supporters know, because you can imagine worldwide wrestling fans are probably not big embracers of the need for vaccines. And he just turned himself into a spokesperson for the fact that this virus doesn't care how healthy you are, how much you exercise, what a great specimen you are. It wiped him out. And we see that. You know, the average person in the ICU right now with COVID-19 is under age 50. I think there's a lot of people still thinking, oh, it's just those old people in the nursing homes. It's not going to be about me. They're wrong. And there are plenty of instances of people who were totally healthy with no underlying diseases, taking good care of themselves, not obese, exercising, who have died from this disease. 700 children have died from this disease. Yes, some of them had underlying factors like obesity, but a lot of them did not. So it's fair to say younger people are less susceptible to serious illness, kids even less so than young adults, but it ain't zero. And if the vaccine is really safe and really effective, then you probably want everybody to take advantage of that. Even though some are dropping their risks more than others, everybody's dropping their risks some." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you worried about variants? So looking out into the future, what's your vision for all the possible trajectories that this virus takes in human society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm totally worried about the variants. Delta was such an impressive arrival on the scene in all the wrong ways. I mean, it took over the world in the space of just a couple months because of its extremely contagious ability." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Viruses would be beautiful if they weren't terrifying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. I mean, this whole story of viral evolution scientifically is just amazingly elegant. Anybody who really wanted to understand how evolution works in real time, study SARS-CoV-2. Because it's not just Delta, it's Alpha, it's Beta, and it's Gamma, and it's the fact that these sweep through the world's population by fairly minor differences in fitness. So the real question many people are wrestling is, is Delta it? Is it such a fit virus that nothing else will be able to displace it? I don't know. I mean, there's now Delta AY4. which is a variant of Delta that at least in the UK seems to be taking over the Delta population as though it's maybe even a little more contagious. That might be the first hint that we're seeing something new here. It's not a completely different virus. It's still Delta, but it's Delta plus. You know, the big worry is what's out there that is so different that the vaccine protection doesn't work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we don't know how different it needs to be for the vaccine to start working. That's the terrifying thing about each of these variants. It's like, it's always a pleasant surprise that the vaccine seems to still have efficacy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And hooray for our immune system, may I say, because the vaccine immunized you against that original Wuhan virus. Now we can see that especially after two doses, and even more so after a booster, your immune system is so clever that it's also making a diversity of antibodies to cover some other things that might happen to that virus to make it a little different. And you're still getting really good coverage. Even for beta, which was South Africa, B1351, which is the most different, it looks pretty good. But that doesn't mean it will always be as good as that if something gets really far away from the original virus. Now, the good news is we would know what to do in that situation. The mRNA vaccines allow you to redesign the vaccine like that and to quickly get it through a few thousand participants in a clinical trial to be sure it's raising antibodies, and then bang, you could go. but I don't want to have to do that. There will be people's lives at risk in the meantime. And what's the best way to keep that from happening? Well, try to cut down the number of infections because you don't get variants unless the virus is replicating in a person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do we solve this thing? How do we get out of this pandemic? What's like, if you had a, like a wand or something or, you could really implement policies. What's the full cocktail of solutions here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a full cocktail. It's not just one thing. In our own country here in the US, it would be getting those 64 million reluctant people to actually go ahead and get vaccinated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's 64 million people who didn't get vaccinated?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Adults, yes. Not even counting the kids. Wow. 64 million. Wow. Isn't that astounding? Get the kids vaccinated. Hopefully their parents will see that as a good thing too. Get those of us who are due for boosters boosted because that's going to reduce our likelihood of having breakthrough infections and keep spreading it. Convince people that until we're really done with this, and we're not now, that social distancing and mask wearing indoors are still critical to cut down the number of new infections. But of course, that's our country. This is a worldwide pandemic. I worry greatly about the fact that low and middle income countries have, for the most part, not even gotten started with access to vaccines. And we have to figure out a way to speed that up. Because otherwise, that's where the next variant will probably arrive. And who knows how bad it will be. And it will cross the world quickly, as we've seen happen repeatedly in the last 22 months." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think I'm really surprised, annoyed, frustrated that testing Rapid at-home testing from the very beginning wasn't a big, big part of the solution. It seems, first of all, nobody's against it. That's one huge plus for testing that everybody supports. Second of all, like that's what America is good at, is like mass manufacturer stuff, like stepping up, engineers stepping up and really deploying it. Plus, without the collection of data is giving people freedom is giving them information and then freedom to decide what to do with that information. It's such a powerful solution. I don't understand. Well, now I think the Biden administration has, I think, emphasized the scaling of testing manufacturers. But I just feel like it's an obvious solution. Get a test that costs less than a dollar to manufacture, costs less than a dollar to buy, and just everybody gets tested every single day. don't share that data with anyone. You just make the decisions. And I believe in the intelligence of people to make the right decision to stay at home when the test is positive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I am so completely with you on that. And NIH has been smack in the middle of trying to make that dream come true. We're running a trial right now in Georgia, Indiana, Hawaii. And where's the other one? Oh, Kentucky. basically blanketing a community with free lung testing. That's beautiful. And look to see what happens as far as stemming the spread of the epidemic and measuring it by wastewater, because you can really tell whether you've cut back the amount of infection in the community. Yeah, I'm so with you. We got off to such a bad start with testing. And of course, all the testing was being done for the first several months in big box laboratories, where you had to send the sample off and put it through the mail somehow and get the result back sometimes five days later after you've already infected a dozen people. It was just a completely wrong model, but it's what we had. And everybody was like, oh, we got to stick with PCR, because if you start using those home tests that are based on antigens lateral flow, probably there's going to be false positives and false negatives. OK, sure. No test is perfect. Having a test that's not acceptable or accessible is the worst setting. So we, NIH, with some requests from Congress, got a billion dollars to create this program called Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics, RADx. And we turned into a venture capital organization and we invited every small business or academic lab that had a cool idea about how to do home testing to bring it forward. And we threw them into what we called our shark tank of business experts, engineers, technology people, people understood how to deal with supply chains and manufacturing. And right now today, there are about 2 million tests being done based on what came out of that program, including most of the home tests that you can now buy on the pharmacy shelves. And we did that. And I wish we had done it faster, but it was an amazingly speedy effort. And you're right, companies are really good. Once they've gotten FDA emergency use authorization, and we helped a lot of them get that, they can scale up their manufacturing. I think in December, we should have about 410 million tests for that month ready to go. And if we can get one or two more platforms approved, and by the way, we are now helping FDA by being their validation lab. If we can get a couple more of these approved, we could be in the half a billion tests. a month, which is really getting where we need to be. Wow." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a dream. That's a dream for me. It seems like an obvious solution, engineering solution. Everybody's behind it. It leads to hope versus division. I love it. Okay. A happy story. A happy story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was waiting for one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, all right, well, one last dive into the not happy, but you won't even have to comment on it. Well, comment on the broader philosophical question. So NIH, again, I said, Joe Rogan is the first one who pointed me to this. NIH was recently accused of funding research of a paper that had images of sedated puppies with their heads inserted into small enclosures containing disease-carrying sand flies. So I could just say that this story is not true, or at least the... I think it is true that the paper that showed those images cited NIH as a funding source, but that citation is not correct. That was not correct. Yeah. But that brings up a bigger philosophical question. could have been correct, how difficult is it as a director of NIH or just NIH as an organization that's funding so many amazing deep research studies to ensure the ethical fortitude of those studies when the ethics of science is, there's such a gray area between what is and what isn't ethical?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, tough issues. Certainly animal research is a tough issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was going to bring up, it's a good example of that tough issue, is in 2015, you announced that NIH would no longer support any biomedical research involving chimpanzees. That's right. So that's like one example of looking in the mirror, thinking deeply about what is and isn't ethical. And there was a conclusion that biomedical research on chimps is not ethical." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was the conclusion. That was based on a lot of deep thinking and a lot of input from people who have considered this issue and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences that was asked to review the issue. I mean, the question that I wanted them to look at was, are we actually learning anything that's really essential from chimpanzee invasive research at this point? Or is it time to say that these closest relatives of ours should not be subjected to that any further and ought to be retired to a sanctuary? And that was the conclusion, that there was really no kind of medical experimentation that needed to be done on chimps in order to proceed. So why are we still doing this? Many of these were chimpanzees that were purchased because we thought they would be good hosts for HIV AIDS, and they sort of weren't. And they were kept around in these primate laboratories with people coming up with other things to do, but they weren't compelling scientifically. So I think that was the right decision. I took a lot of flak from some of the scientific communities, said, well, you're caving in to the animal rights people. And now that you've said no more research on chimps, what's next? Certainly when it comes to companion animals, everybody's heart starts to be hurting when you see anything done that seems harmful to a dog or a cat. I have a cat. I don't have a dog. And I understand that completely. That's why we have these oversight groups that decide before you do any of that kind of research, is it justified? And what kind of provision is going to be made to avoid pain and suffering? And those have input from the public as well as the scientific community. Is that completely saying that every step that's happening there is ethical by some standard that would be hard for anybody to agree to? No, but at least it's a consensus of what people think is acceptable. Dogs are the only host for some diseases, like Leishmaniasis, which was that paper that we were not responsible for, but I know why they were doing the experiment. Or like lymphatic filariasis, which is an experiment that we are supporting in Georgia that involves dogs getting infected with a parasite, because that's the only model we have to know whether a treatment is going to work or not. So I will defend that. I am not in the place of those who think all animal research is evil. Because I think if there's something that's going to be done to save a child from a terrible disease, or an adult, and it involves animal research that's been carefully reviewed, then I think ethically, while it doesn't make me comfortable, it still seems like it's the right choice. I think to say all animal research should be taken off the table is also very unethical because that means you have basically doomed a lot of people for whom that research might have saved their lives to having no more hope." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And to me personally, there's far greater concerns ethically in terms of factory farming, for example, the treatment of animals in other contexts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, there's so much that goes on outside of medical research that is much more troubling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That said, I think all cats have to go. That's just my off the record opinion. That's why I'm not involved with any ethical decisions. I'm just joking. Internet. I love cat. You're a dog. I'm a dog person. I'm sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Have you seen the New Yorker cartoon where there are two dogs in the bar having a martini and one is saying they're dressed up in their business suits and one says to the other, you know, it's not enough for the dogs to win. The cats have to lose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's beautiful. So a few weeks ago, you've announced that you're resigning from the NIH at the end of the year. I'm stepping down." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm still going to be at NIH in a different capacity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, different capacity, right. And it's over a decade of an incredible career overseeing the NIH as its director. What are the things you're most proud of of the NIH in your time here as its director? Maybe memorable moments." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a lot. In 12 years, science has just progressed in amazing ways over those 12 years. Think about where we are right now. Something like gene editing, being able to make changes in DNA, even for therapeutic purposes, which is now curing sickle cell disease. Unthinkable when I became director in 2009. The ability to study single cells and ask them what they're doing and get an answer. Single cell biology just has emerged in this incredibly powerful way. Having the courage to be able to say, we could actually understand the human brain seemed like so far out there. And we're in the process of doing that with the BRAIN Initiative. Taking all that we've learned about the genome and applying it to cancer to make individual cancer treatment really precision. And developing cancer immunotherapy, which seemed like sort of a backwater into some of the hottest science around. all those things sort of erupting, and much more to come, I'm sure. We're on an exponential curve of medical research advances, and that's glorious to watch. And of course, COVID-19, as a beneficiary of decades of basic science, understanding what mRNA is, understanding basics about coronaviruses and spike proteins, and how to combine structural biology and immunology and genomics into this package that allows you to make a vaccine in 11 months, Just, I would never have imagined that possible in 2009. So to have been able to kind of be the midwife helping all of those things get birthed, that's been just an amazing 12 years. And as NIH director, you have this convening power. and this ability to look across the whole landscape of biomedical research and identify areas that are just like ready for something big to happen. But it isn't going to happen spontaneously without some encouragement, without pulling people together from different disciplines who don't know each other and maybe don't know how to quite understand each other's scientific language and create an environment for that to happen. That has been just an amazing experience. I mean, I mentioned the BRAIN Initiative as one of those. The Brain Initiative right now, I think there's about 600 investigators working on this. Last week, the whole issue of Nature Magazine was about the output of the Brain Initiative basically now giving us a cell census of what those cells in the brain are doing, which has just never been imaginable. And interestingly, more than half of the investigators in the Brain Initiative are engineers. They're not biologists in a traditional sense. I love that. Maybe partly because my PhD is in quantum mechanics. So I think it's really a good idea to bring disciplines together and see what happens. That's an exciting thing. And I will not ever forget having the chance to announce that program in the East Room in that White House with President Obama, who totally got it and totally loved science. And working with him. in some of those rare moments of sort of one-on-one conversation in the Oval Office, just him and me about science, that's a gift." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's it like talking to Barack Obama about science? He seems to be a sponge. I've heard him, I'm an artificial intelligence person, and I've heard him talk about AI. And it was like, it made me think, is somebody like whispering in his ear or something? Because he was saying stuff that totally passed the BS test, like he really understands stuff. He does. That means he listened to a bunch of experts on AI. He was like explaining the difference between narrow artificial intelligence and strong AI. Like he was saying all this both technical and philosophical stuff. And it just made me, I don't know, it made me hopeful about the depth of understanding that a human being in political office can attain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That gave me hope as well and having those experiences. Oftentimes in a group, I mean, another example was trying to figure out how do we take what we've learned about the genome and really apply it at scale to figure out how to prevent illness, not just treat it, but prevent it. out of which came this program called All of Us, this million strong American cohort of participants who make their electronic health records and their genome sequences and everything else available for researchers to look at, that came out of a couple of conversations with Obama and others in his office. he asked the best questions. That was what struck me so much. I mean, a room full of scientists, and we'd be talking about the possible approaches, and he would come up with this incredibly insightful, penetrating question. Not that he knew what the answer was gonna be, but he knew what the right question was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think the core to that is curiosity. Yeah. I don't think he's even like, he's trying to be a good leader. He's legit curious. Yes. That he, almost like a kid in a candy store, gets to talk to the world experts. He somehow sneaked into this office and gets to talk to the world experts. And that's the kind of energy that I think leads to beautiful leadership in the space of science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Another thing I've been able to do as director is to try to break down some of the boundaries that seem to be traditional between the public and the private sectors. When it comes to areas of science that really could and should be open access anyway, why don't we work together? And that was obvious early on. And after identifying a few possible collaborators who are chief scientists of pharmaceutical companies, it looked like we might be able to do something in that space. Out of that was born something called the Accelerating Medicines Partnership, AMP. And it took a couple of years of convening people who usually didn't talk to each other. And there was a lot of suspicion, academic scientists saying, oh, those scientists in pharma, they're not that smart. They're just trying to make money. And the academic scientists getting the rap from the pharmaceutical scientists, all they want to do is publish papers. They don't really care about helping anybody. And we found out both of those stereotypes were wrong. And over the course of that couple of years, built a momentum behind three starting projects, one on Alzheimer's, one on diabetes, one on rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Very different, each one of them trying to identify what is an area that we both really need to see advance and we could do better together. And it's going to have to be open access, otherwise NIH is not going to play. And guess what, industry? If you really want to do this, you've got to have skin in the game. We'll cover half the cost. You've got to cover the other half." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love it. Enforcing open access, resulting in open science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Millions of dollars have gone into this. And it has been a wild success. After many people were skeptical, a couple of years later, we had another project on Parkinson's. More recently, we've added one on schizophrenia. Just this week we added one on gene therapy, on bespoke gene therapy for ultra-rare diseases, which otherwise aren't going to have enough commercial appeal. But if we did this together, especially with FDA at the table, and they have been, We could make something happen, turn this into a sort of standardized approach where everything didn't have to be a one-off. I'm really excited about that. So what began as three projects is six and it's about to be seven next year with a heart failure project. And all of us have gotten to know each other. And if it weren't for that background, when COVID came along, it would have been a lot harder to build the partnership called ACTIV, which has been my passion for the last 20 months, accelerating COVID-19 therapeutic interventions and vaccines. We just had our leadership team meeting this morning. It was amazing what's been accomplished. That's pretty much 100 people who dropped everything just to work on this, about half from industry and half from government and academia. And that's how we got vaccine master protocols designed. So we all agreed about what the endpoints had to be. And you wondered, why are there 30,000 participants in each of these trials? That's because of ACTIV's group mapping out what the power needed to be for this to be convincing. Same with therapeutics. We have run at least 20 therapeutic agents through trials that active supported in record time That's how we got monoclonal antibodies that we know work That's been That would not have been possible if I didn't already Have a sense of how to work with the private sector that came out of a hemp Amp took two years to get started active took two weeks. I We just kept the lawyers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "100 people over." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Kept the lawyers out of the room." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now you're going to get yourself in trouble. I do hope one day the story of this incredible vaccine, development of vaccine protocols and trials and all this kind of details, the messy, beautiful details of science and engineering and, and that led to the manufacturing, the deployment and the scientific test. It's such a nice dance between, engineering in the space of manufacturing the vaccines, you know, you start before the studies are complete, you start making the vaccines just in case that if the studies prove to be positive, then you can start deploying them just like so many parties, like you said, private and public playing together. That's just a beautiful dance that is one of the, for me, the sources of hope in this very tricky time where there's a lot of things to be cynical about in terms of the games politicians play and the hardship experience of the economy and all those kinds of things. that to me this dance was of vaccine development was done just beautifully and it gives me hope." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It does me as well and it was in many ways the finest hour that science has had in a long time being called upon when every day counted and making sure that time was not wasted and things were done rigorously but quickly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're incredibly good as a leader of the NIH. It seems like you're having a heck of a lot of fun. Why step down from this role after so much fun?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, no other NIH director has served more than one president after being appointed by one. You're sort of done. And the idea of being carried over for a second presidency with Trump and now a third one with Biden is unheard of. I just think, Lex, that scientific organizations benefit from new vision. And 12 years is a really long time to have the same leader. And if I wasn't going to stick it out for the entire Biden four-year term, It's good not to wait too late during that to signal an intent to step down, because the president's got to find the right person, got to nominate them, got to get the Senate to confirm them, which is an unpredictable process right now. And you don't want to try to do that in the second half of somebody's term as president. This has got to happen now. So I kind of decided back at the end of May that this should be my final year. And I'm OK with that. I do have some mixed emotions, because I love the NIH. I love the job. It's exhausting. I'm traditionally, for the last 20 months anyway, working 100 hours a week. It's just that's what it takes to juggle all of this. And that keeps me from having a lot of time for anything else. And I wouldn't mind because I don't think I'm done yet. I wouldn't mind having some time to really think about what the next chapter should be. And I have none of that time right now. Do I have another calling? Is there something else I could contribute that's different than this? I'd like to find that out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think the right answer is you're just stepping down to focus on your music career." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But that might not be a good plan for anything very sustainable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I think that is a sign of a great leader as George Washington did stepping down at the right time. Ted Williams. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He quit when I think he hit a home run on his last at-bat and his average was 400 at the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "no one to walk away. I mean, it's hard, but it's beautiful to see in a leader. You also oversaw the Human Genome Project. You mentioned the BRAIN Initiative, which has, you know, it's a dream to map the human brain, and there's the dream to map the human code, which was the Human Genome Project. And you've said that it is humbling for me and awe-inspiring to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God. How does that, if you can just kind of wax poetic for a second, how does it make you feel that we were able to map this instruction book, look into our own code and be able to reverse engineer it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's breathtaking. It's so fundamental. And yet for all of human history, we were ignorant of the details of what that instruction book looked like. And then we crossed the bridge. into the territory of the known. And we had that in front of us, still written in a language that we had to learn how to read. And we're in the process of doing that and will be for decades to come. But we owned it. We had it. And it has such profound consequences. It's both a book about our history. It's a book of sort of the parts list of a human being, the genes that are in there and how they're regulated. And it's also a medical textbook that can teach us things that will provide answers to illnesses we don't understand and alleviate suffering and premature death. So it's a pretty amazing thing to contemplate. And it has utterly transformed the way we do science. And it is in the process of transforming the way we do medicine, although much of that still lies ahead. While we were working on the Genome Project, it was sort of hard. to get this sense of a wow-ness, because it was just hard work. And you were getting another megabase. OK, this is good. But when did you actually step back and say, we did it? It's the profoundness of that. I mean, there were two points, I guess. One was the announcement on that June 26, 2000, where the whole world heard, well, we don't quite have it, but we got a pretty good draft. And suddenly people were realizing, oh, this is a big deal. For me it was more when we got the full analysis of it, published it in February 2001 in that Issue of Nature paper that Eric Lander and Bob Waterston and I were the main authors and we toiled over and tried to get as much insight as we could in there about what the meaning of all this was. But you also had this sense that we are such beginning readers here. We are still in kindergarten trying to make sense out of this 3 billion letter book. And we're going to be at this for generations to come." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You are a man of faith, Christian, and you are a man of science. What is the role of religion and of science in society and in the individual human mind and heart like yours?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I was not a person of faith when I was growing up. I became a believer in my 20s, influenced as a medical student by a recognition that I hadn't really thought through the issues of what's the meaning of life? Why are we all here? What happens when you die? Is there a God? Science is not so helpful in answering those questions. So I had to look around in other places and ultimately came to my own conclusion that atheism, which is where I had been, was the least supportable of the choices, because it was the assertion of a universal negative, which scientists aren't supposed to do. And agnosticism came as an attractive option, but felt a little bit like a cop-out, so I had to keep going, trying to figure out why do believers actually believe this stuff? and came to realize it was all pretty compelling. There's no proof. I can't prove to you or anybody else that God exists, but I can say it's pretty darn plausible. And ultimately, what kind of God is it caused me to search through various religions and see, well, what do people think about that? and to my surprise, encountered the person of Jesus Christ as unique in every possible way, and answering a lot of the questions I couldn't otherwise answer. And somewhat kicking and screaming, I became a Christian, even though at the time, as a medical student already interested in genetics, people predicted my head would then explode, because these were incompatible worldviews. They really have not been for me. I am so fortunate, I think, that in any given day, wrestling with an issue, it can have both the rigorous scientific component and it can have the spiritual component. COVID-19 is a great example. These vaccines are both an amazing scientific achievement and an answer to prayer. when I'm wrestling with vaccine hesitancy and trying to figure out what answers to come up with, I get so frustrated sometimes, and I'm comforted by reassurances that God is aware of that. I don't have to do this alone. So, I know there are people like your friend Sam Harris, who feel differently. Sam wrote a rather famous op-ed in the New York Times when I was nominated as the NIH director saying, this is a terrible mistake. You can't do this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh no, Sam." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can't have somebody who believes in God running the NIH. He's just gonna completely ruin the place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I have a testimonial. Christopher Hitchens, a devout atheist, if I could say so, was a friend of yours and referred to you as, quote, one of the greatest living Americans and stated that you were one of the most devout believers he has ever met. He further stated that you were sequencing the genome of the cancer that would ultimately claim his life. and that your friendship, despite their differing opinions on religion, was an example of the greatest armed truce in modern times. What did you learn from Christopher Hitchens about life, or perhaps what is a fond memory you have of this man with whom you've disagreed, but who is also your friend?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I loved Hitch. I'm sorry he's gone. Iron sharpens iron. There's nothing better for trying to figure out where you are with your own situation and your own opinions, your own worldviews, than encountering somebody who's completely in another space and who's got the gift, as Hitch did, of challenging everything and doing so over a glass of scotch or two or three. Yeah, we got off to a rough start where in an interaction we had at a rather highbrow dinner. He was really deeply insulting of a question I was asking. But I was like, OK, that's fine. Let's figure out how we could have a more civil conversation. And then I really learned to greatly admire his intellect and to find the jousting with him. And it wasn't all about faith, although it often was. It was really inspiring and innervating, energizing. And then when he got cancer, I became sort of his ally, trying to help him find pathways through the various options, and maybe helped him to stay around on this planet for an extra six months or so. And I have the warmest feelings of being in his apartment downtown over a glass of wine, talking about whatever. Sometimes it was science. He was fascinated by science. Thomas Jefferson, sometimes it was faith. And I knew it would always be really interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he's now gone. Yeah. Do you think about your own mortality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Are you afraid of death? I'm not afraid. I'm not looking forward to it. I don't want to rush it because I feel like I got some things I can still do here. But as a person of faith, I don't think I'm afraid. I'm 71. I know I don't have an infinite amount of time left, and I want to use the time I've got in some sort of way that matters. I'm not ready to become a full-time golfer, but I don't quite know what that is. I do feel that I've had a chance to do amazingly powerful things as far as experiences, and maybe God has something else in mind. I wrote this book 16 years ago, The Language of God, about science and faith, trying to explain how, from my perspective, these are compatible. These are in harmony. They're complementary, if you are careful about which kind of question you're asking. And to my surprise a lot of people seemed to be interested in that. They were tired of hearing the extreme voices like Dawkins at one end and people like Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis on the other end saying if you trust science you're going to hell. And they thought there must be a way that these things could get along and that's what I tried to put forward. And then I started a foundation, BioLogos. which then I had to step away from to become NIH director, which has just flourished. Maybe because I stepped away, I don't know. But it now has millions of people who come to that website and they run amazing meetings. And I think a lot of people have really come to a sense that this is okay. I can love science and I can love God and that's not a bad thing. So maybe there's something more I can do in that space. Maybe that book is ready for a second edition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think so. But when you look back, Life is finite. What do you hope your legacy is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. This whole legacy thing is a little bit hard to embrace. It feels a little self-promoting, doesn't it? I sort of feel like in many ways I went to my own funeral on October 5th when I announced that I was stepping down and I got the most amazing responses from people, some of whom I knew really well, some of whom I didn't know at all, who were just telling me stories about something that I had contributed to that made a difference to them. And that was incredibly heartwarming. And that's enough. I don't want to build an edifice. I don't have a plan for a monument or a statue, God help us. I do feel like I've been incredibly fortunate. I've had the chance to play a role in things that were pretty profound from the Genome Project to NIH to COVID vaccines. And I ought to be plenty satisfied that I've had enough experiences here to feel pretty good about the way in which my life panned out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We did a bunch of difficult questions in this conversation. Let me ask the most difficult one. that perhaps is the reason you turn to God, what is the meaning of life? Have you figured it out yet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Expect me to put that into three sentences?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We only have a couple of minutes, so at least hurry up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's not a question that I think science helps me with, so you're going to push me into the faith zone, which is where I'd want to go with that. I think, well, what is the meaning? Why are we here? What are we put here to do? I do believe we're here for just a blink of an eye and that our existence somehow goes on beyond that in a way that I don't entirely understand despite efforts to do so. I think we are called upon in this blink of an eye to try to make the world a better place, to try to love people, to try to do a better job of our more altruistic instincts, and less of our selfish instincts, to try to be what God calls us to be, people who are holy, not people who are driven by self-indulgence. And sometimes I'm better at that than others. But I think that, for me as a Christian, is pretty clear. I mean, it's to live out the Sermon on the Mount. Once I read that, I couldn't unread it. All those beatitudes, all the blesseds, that's what we're supposed to do. And the meaning of life is to strive for that standard, recognizing you're going to fail over and over again, and that God forgives you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "hopefully to put a little bit of love out there into the world. That's what it's about. Francis, I'm truly humbled and inspired by both your brilliance and your humility, and that you would spend your extremely valuable time with me today. It was really an honor. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do think about it sometimes. I mean, it does pop into my head sometimes. Just the fact that, I mean, I'm 53. So if everything goes great, I have less than 50 years left. You know, if everything goes great, like no car accidents, no injuries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it could happen today. This could be your last day. Could be. That's kind of a stoic thing to meditate on death. There's a bunch of philosophers, Ernest Becker, and Sheldon Solomon, they believe that death is at the core of everything. Wrote this book, Warm at the Core. So does that come into play in the way you see the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think having a sense of urgency is very beneficial, and understanding that your time is limited can aid you greatly. I think knowing that this is a temporary time, that we have finite lifespans, I think there's great power in that, because it motivates you, it gets you going. I think being an immortal, living forever, would be one of the most depressing things, particularly if everybody else was dying around you. One of the things that makes life so interesting and fascinating is that it doesn't last, you know, that you you really get a brief amount of time here. And really, by the time you're just starting to kind of figure yourself out who you are and how not to screw things up so bad, like time's up, the ride's over." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about from your like from your daughter's perspective? Do you think about the world we're in now and what kind of world you're going to leave them? Do you worry about it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do. Yeah, I do. I do when I see these protests and riots and chaos and so much So much anger in the world today and then particularly today I think because of the pandemic and the fact that so many folks are out of work and through no fault of their own and can't make ends meet and just people feel so helpless and angry. It's a particularly divisive time. It's a particularly turmoil filled time. And it just doesn't seem like the world of a year ago even. It feels very chaotic and dangerous. And it's a small thing, like, in terms of the possibilities of things that could happen to the world, like a pandemic, like the one we've experienced, it really just doubles the amount of deaths on a bad flu year. Relatively speaking, it's a small thing in comparison to super volcano eruptions asteroid impact a real horrific pandemic or one that you know really wipes out millions and millions of people it's um It's stunning how fragile civility is. It's stunning how fragile our society really is. That something like this can come along, some unprecedented thing, unprecedented thing can come along and all of a sudden everybody's out of work for six months. And then everybody's at each other's throats. And then politically, everyone's at each other's throats. And then with the advent of social media and the images that you can see, you know, with the videos of police abuse and Just racial tensions are an all time high, to a point where like if you asked me just five or six years ago, like, have racial problems in this country largely been alleviated? I'd probably say, yeah, it's way better than it's ever been before. But now you could argue that it's not. Now you could argue, no, it's way worse in just a small amount of time. It's way worse than it's ever been during my lifetime, while I'm aware of it. Obviously, when I was a young boy in the 60s, they were still going through the civil rights movement. But now it just seems very fever pitched. And I think a lot of that is because of the pandemic and is because of all the heightened tension. What I liken it to is Pete road rage because you know people have road rage not just because they're in the car and no one can get to them But also because you're at a heightened state because you're driving fast, and you know, you're driving fast You know, you have to make split-second movements. And so anybody doing something like what up people go crazy Because they're they're already at an eight because they're in the car and they're moving very quickly that's what it feels like with today with the pandemic feels like everybody is already at an eight and So anything that comes along, it's like light it all on fire, you know, burn it down. Like that's part of what I think is part of the reason for a lot of the looting and the riots and all the chaos. It's not just the people out of work, but it's also that everyone feels so tense already and everyone feels so helpless. And it's like, you know, doing something like that makes people, uh, it just, It gives people a whole new motivation for chaos, a whole new motivation for doing destructive things that I've never experienced in my life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And your better days, when you see a positive future, what do you think is the way out of this chaos of 2020? Like if you visualize a 2025, that's a better world than today. How do we get there? What does that look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a good question. I can honestly say I don't know. And I wouldn't have said I don't know a year ago. A year ago, I would have said we're going to be OK. As much as people hate Trump, the economy is doing great. I think we're going to be fine. That's not how I feel today. Today, I don't think there's a clear solution politically, because I think if Trump wins, people are going to be furious. And I think if Biden wins, people are going to be furious. Particularly like if things get more woke, you know if people continue to enforce this force compliance and make people behave a certain way and act a certain way which seems to be a part of what this whole woke thing is that is The most disturbing for me is that I see what's going on I see there's a lot of losers that have hopped on this and They they shove it in people's faces and it doesn't have to make sense Like there was a Black Lives Matter protest that stopped this woman Bye. at a restaurant, they were surrounding her outside a restaurant and they were forcing her to raise her fist in compliance. This is a woman who's marched for Black Lives Matter multiple times, and the people all around her doing this were all white. It's all weird. My friend Coach T, he's a wrestling coach, he's also on a podcast with my friend Brian Moses. His take on it is that, and he's a black guy, he says, Black Lives Matter is a white cult. And I'm like, when you see that picture, it's hard to argue that he's got a point. I mean, it's clearly not all about that, but there's a lot of people that have jumped on board that are very much like cult members. Because the thing about Black Lives Matter or any movement is you can't control who joins. There's no entrance examination. So you don't go, okay, how do you feel about this? What's your perceptions on that? Like the man who shot the Trump supporter in Portland, that guy who murdered the Trump supporter, then the cop shot him. That guy was walking around with his hand on his gun, looking for Trump supporters. Known violent guy who was walking around looking for Trump supporters found one and shot one that has nothing to do with black lives matter He's a white guy. He shot another white guy. It's just it's just madness, you know, and that kind of madness is It's disturbing to see it ramp up so quickly. I mean, there's been riots in Portland every night. Oh, excuse me, demonstrations for 101 days now. 101 days in a row of them lighting things on fire, breaking into federal buildings. It's like, whoever saw that coming? Nobody saw that coming. I don't know what the solution is, and I don't know what it looks like in five years. So 2025, to answer your question, it could be anything. I mean, we could be looking at Mad Max. We could be looking at the apocalypse. We could also be looking at an invasion from another country. We could be looking at a war, like a real hot war." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to put a little bit of responsibility on you. Like for me, I've listened to you since the Red Band, Olive Garden days, that's the very beginning. And there was something in the way you communicated about the world, maybe there was others, but you were the one I was aware of, is you were open-minded and loving towards the world, especially as the podcast developed. you just demonstrated and lived this kind of just kindness or maybe even like lack of jealousy in your own little profession of comedy. It was clear that you didn't succumb to the weaker aspects of human nature and thereby inspire people like me, who I was naturally, probably especially in like the 20s, early 20s, kind of jealous on the success of others. And you're really the primary person that taught me truly celebrate the success of others. And so by way of question, you kind of have a role in this, of making a better 2025. You have such a big megaphone. Is there something you think you can do on this podcast with the words, the way you talk, the things you discuss that could create a better 2025?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think if anything, I could help in leading by example, but You know, that's only going to help the people that are listening. I don't know what else I can do in terms of, like, make the world a better place other than express my hopes and wishes for that and just try to be as nice as I can to people as often as I can. But I also think that I've fallen into this weird category, particularly with the Spotify deal, where, you know, I'm one of them now. I'm not a regular person anymore. Now I'm like some famous rich guy. So you go from being a regular person to a famous rich guy that's out of touch. And that's a real issue whenever you're talking about the economy, about just real life problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting. It kind of hurts my heart to hear people say about Elon Musk, he's just a billionaire." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's an interesting statement, but I think if you just continue being you, and he continue being him, I think people are just voicing their worry that you become some rich guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't even know if they're doing that. I think they're just finding, the way he describes it, an attack vector. Right. Yeah, and I think he's right. I think they can dismiss you by just saying, oh, you're just a that. You're easily definable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. But there's truth to that. If you're not careful, you can become out of touch. But that's an interesting thing. Why haven't you become out of touch? As a human off the podcast, you talk to somebody like me. You don't talk like a famous person, or you don't act rich. Like you're better than others. There's a certain, listen, I've talked to quite a few, you have too, but I've talked to especially kind of group of people that are like Nobel Prize winners, let's say. They sometimes have an air to them that's of arrogance. And you don't. What's that about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you got to know what that is, right? Like, um, that air of arrogance comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid. You, you start believing that somehow or another, just because you're getting praise from all these people that you really are something different. Usually it exemplifies. There's, there's something there. There's where there's a lack of struggle, you know? And I think a struggle is. probably one of the most important balancing tools that a person can have. And for me, I struggle mentally and I struggle physically. I struggle mentally in that, like we were talking about on the podcast we did previously, you and I on my podcast that I'm not a fan of my work. I'm not a fan of what I do. I'm my harshest critic. So anytime anybody says something bad about me, I'm like, listen, I said way worse about myself. I, you know, I don't like anything I do. I'm ruthlessly introspective and I will continue to be that way. Cause that's the only way you could be good as a comedian. There's no other way. You can't just think you're awesome and just go out there. You have to, you have to be like picking apart everything you do, but there's a balance to that too. Cause you have to have enough confidence to go out there and perform. You can't think, oh my God, I suck. I know what I'm doing, but I know what I'm doing because I put in all that work. And one of the reasons why I put in all that work is I don't like the, I don't like the end result most of the time. So I need to work at it all the time. And then there's physical struggle, which I think balances everything out. Without physical struggle, I always make the analogy that the body is in a lot of ways like a battery, where if you have extra charge, it's like it leaks out of the top and it becomes unmanageable and messy. And that's how my psyche is. If I have too much energy, if I'm not exerting myself in a violent way, like an explosive way, like wearing myself out. I just don't like the way the world is. I don't like the way I interface with the world. I'm too tense. I'm too quick to be upset about things. But when I work out hard and I put in a brutal training session, everything's fine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the first time I talked to you, Jerry, you were doing Sober October. Sober October. And there's something in your eyes, like, I think you've talked about that, you know, you exercise the demons out essentially. So you exercise to get whatever the parts of you that you don't like out. There is a dark, there's a darkness in you there, like the competitiveness and the focus of that person." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was a scary time in a lot of ways, that Sober October thing. Because my friends, we're all talking shit, right? Because we're competing against each other in these fitness challenges. And you had one point poor, like you got a certain amount of points for each minute that you went at 80% of your max heart rate. And one day I got 1,100 points. So I did seven hours on an elliptical machine watching the bathhouse scene from John Wick, where he murders all those people in the bathhouse. I watched it probably 50 times in a row. Went crazy. I went crazy, but I went crazy in a weird way where it brought me back to my My fighting days. It was like the same that person came out again. It's like well, I didn't even know he was in there it's like they're like like like an assassin like a killer like I felt I felt like I I felt like a different person." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it echoes of like what Mike Tyson talked about, essentially, like the- Maybe, but no orgasmic notions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All the crazy shit that he was saying." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a violent person in there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of violence in me, for sure. I don't know if it's genetic or learned, or it's because during my formative years from the time I was 15 till I was 22, all I did was fight. That was all I did. That was all I did. All I did was train and compete. That's all I did. That was my whole life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it connected to, so you, your mom and dad broke up early on. Is it connected to the dad at all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sure it's connected to him also because he was violent and it made me feel very scared to be around him. But I also think it's connected in who he was as a human is transferred into my DNA. You know, I think there's a certain amount of, I mean, I mean, to be prejudiced against myself, I look like a violent person. You know, if I didn't know me, I'm just, even the way I'm built, not even just the working out part, just the size of my hands. And like, there's the width of my shoulders. Like there's most likely a lot of violence in my history, in my past, in my ancestry. I think we minimize that with people. So much of your behavior, like when I see my daughter, I have one daughter that's obsessive in terms of like, she wants to get really good at things. And she'll practice things all day long. And it's 100% my personality. Like she's me in female form, but without the anger as much and without the fear, like she has a loving household and everything like that. She has this intense obsession with doing things and doing things really well and getting better What's the point we have to tell her stop like stop doing handsprings in the house stop stop Come on, just sit down have dinner like one more one more like she's just like she's like she's psycho. Yeah and I think there's a lot of behavior and personality, and a lot of these things are passed down through genetics. We don't really know, right? We don't know how much of who you are genetically is learned behavior, you know, nature or nurture. We don't know if it's learned behavior or whether or not it's something that's intrinsically a part of you because of, you know, who your parents were. I think there's certainly some genetic violence in me. And you channeled it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You figured out basically your life is a productive exploration of how to channel that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. How to figure out how to get that monkey to sit down. And calm down. There's another person in there. There's a calm, rational, kind, friendly person who just wants to laugh and have fun. And then there's that dude who comes out when I did Sober October. That guy's scary. I don't like that guy. That guy just wants to get up in the morning and go. You know, it's like, it's... I mean, when I was competing, it was necessary, but it makes me remember. I didn't really remember what I used to be like until that. It's like, when I'm working out seven hours a day, and just so obsessed, and all I was thinking about was winning. That's all I was thinking about. Like, if they were working out five hours a day, I wanted them to know that I was gonna work out an extra three hours, and I was gonna get up early, and I was gonna text them all, hey, pussies, I'm up already, take pictures, send selfies. You're gonna die. Oh, I kept telling them, you're all gonna die. You try to keep up with me, you're gonna die." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You weren't fully joking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I wasn't joking at all. That's what was fucked up about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is the scary thing when I interacted with Goggins. And what I saw in you during that time is like, this guy, like, this is why I've been avoiding David Goggins recently. Because he wants to meet, he wants to talk on this podcast, but he also wants to run an ultramarathon with me. And I felt like this is a person, if I spend any time in this realm, if I spend any time with the Joe Rogan of that Sober October, I might have to die to get out. There's this kind of..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there's a competitive aspect that's super unhealthy I mean you saw the video that we watched earlier today of Goggins draining his knee That would stop me from running ever again because I would think in my head. Okay, I'm gonna ruin my cartilage I'm gonna need a knee replacement. I would start thinking I would go down that line, but he is Perpetually in this push it mindset, you know what he taught calls the dog in him You know, he's got that dog is in him all day long and he feeds that dog, you know, and that's um, I That's who he is. That's one of the reasons why he's so inspirational and he's fuel for millions and millions of people I mean he really is he motivates people in a way that is it's so powerful But it can be very destructive. I just I know I know now Especially after the sober October thing that that thing's still in me, you know, I didn't know I So I really haven't done anything physically competitive, except one time I was supposed to fight Wesley Snipes. It came out then too. That came out too. That got creepy too, but luckily that never happened. But that was many months of training, like training twice a day, every day, kickboxing in the morning, jujitsu at night. I was just going and going and going and going. And I was just thinking. Just all day long. But it fucks with all the other aspects of your life. It fucks with your friendships. It fucks with my comedy. It fucks with everything. Because that mindset is not a mindset of an artist. It's a mindset of a conqueror." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The conqueror, yeah. Destroyer. That's why it's so interesting to see Mike Tyson make the switch. It's clear that whatever that is, however that fight goes, there's a switch. He stepped into a different dimension." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Roy Jones Jr. is coming on my podcast soon, and you know, Roy's going to be on before the fight. I'm so curious to see how it goes down, but genuinely concerned. Because Mike Tyson is a heavyweight, and Roy Jones at his best was 168 pounds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I don't know if Roy has that room in his house, mental house of where Mike Tyson goes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if he has that room. Mike doesn't have a room. He's got an empire in there. He opens up the door. There's a whole empire in his head, and he's in that firmly. When he got out of the weed and started training again, you could see it in him. And by the way, physically, in person, he looks spectacular. He looks like a fucking Adonis. I mean, he looks ready to go. It's crazy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I watch videos of him. What about you? Have you ever considered competing in Jiu Jitsu?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, for that very reason. I don't want to get obsessed. That's my number one concern. I had to quit video games when we were playing video games in the studio. I had to quit because I was playing five hours a day, like out of nowhere. All of a sudden I was playing five hours a day. I was coming home late for dinner. I was ending podcasts early and jumping on the video games and playing. I get obsessed with things and I have to recognize what that is and these competitive things like competitive, especially like really exciting competitive things like video games. They're very dangerous for me. The ultimate competitive video game is like jujitsu. And, um, if I was young, I most certainly would have done it if I didn't have like a very clear career path. It was something that I enjoyed. My concern would be that I would become a professional jujitsu fighter when I was young. And then I would not have the energy to do stand up and do all the other things that I wound up doing as a career. When I was, um, 21 I quit my job teaching. I was teaching at Boston University I was teaching taekwondo there and I I knew and I also have my own school in Revere I knew I couldn't do it right and also Be doing stand-up comedy. I knew I couldn't do both of those things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no way you have to be cognizant of that obsessive force within you to make sure yes, I" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd have to know how to manage my mental illness, right? That's that's a very particular mental illness And I think that mental illness again my formative years from 15 till I was you know 21 ish 22 Those those years were spent on constantly obsessed with martial arts. That was my whole day. I mean, I trained almost every day. The only time I would not train is if I was either injured or if I was exhausted, if I needed a day off, but I was obsessed. And so that part of my personality that I haven't nurtured is always going to be there under the surface. And when it gets reignited by something, it's very weird. It's a weird feeling. And it can get reignited with a video game. It can get reignited with anything. That obsessive, that, you know, whatever it is, that competitive demon." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. The way you talk about guitar, I know you would love, fall in love with playing guitar, but I think you're very wise to not touch that thing. That's why I want golf." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have friends who want to golf. I'm like, I don't fucking want that thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a lot of people ask me, like, what's Joe Rogan's jiu-jitsu game like? Like, assuming that I somehow spend hours rolling with you before and after we interact. I mean, what's a good, you should at some point show a technique or something, that'd be fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, I mean, I've got..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your game plan? I saw you doing, I think, head and arm something online." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I did. I fucked my neck. I'm doing head and arm chokes. I did them so much that I, you know, because you use your neck so much with head and arm chokes, I developed like a real kink in my neck. And it turned out I had a bulging disc." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you do it on that, just one side?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it was, no, I could do it on the left side, but I definitely am better on the right side. The right side was my best side." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you were to compete, let's say, like, what's your A game? Where would you go from standing up? How would you go to submission? Would you pull guard? Would you take down? How would you pass guard?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't have good takedowns. I was not a good wrestler. So I would most likely either pull guard or I would pull half guard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a good guard? Yes. Are you comfortable being on your butt on your back?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I'm very flexible. So I have a good, my rubber guard is pretty good. Yeah. I have good arm bars and good triangles off my back, but I also have a very good half guard, but my top game is my best. I have a very strong top game." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a half guard? Do you have a preference of what kind of guard and how to pass that guard? Is there a specific game plan?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Double underhooks from half guard is the game plan for me. If I can get double underhooks from half guard, I could sweep a lot of people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Underhooks of what? Sorry, the arms or the legs?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So half guard, lockdown, right? Half guard, go into lockdown, double underhooks. Got it. Clinch to the body. Suck the body in tight. Pressure. Massive pressure. And then inch my way into a position we call the dog fight. Inch my way into a position where I could get the person on their back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's what, cause you did show me, I still disagree with you about the tie thing. Um, so you can choke. It's so wrong. It's so wrong." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Uh, well, it's not wrong with you, with you. It's wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Cause you, you know, I think there's a system where I've, I've, I've, I have this thing with Donna, how we're going to figure it out. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But, uh, I have a little Velcro in the back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, let's see. That's you're just not cheating. You're not, you're the exact, that's cheating. Uh, Yeah, I did feel when you showed me, I think you showed me the rubber guard, because it's still a guard, that's a little bit foreign to me. I just felt that you can immediately feel, not with the rubber guard, but the way you move your body is, you're like a Shang-Chi type of guy who knows how to control another human being. So some people are a little bit more, I would say, agile and playful and kind of, Loose. Loose and they work on transition, transition, transition. You're a control guy. Like, you know how to control position and advanced position. Donahy is the same way. He's all about control." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My game is smush. That's my game. Smush you. Grab ahold of you. Once I have you, why would I let you go? That's my thought is like, why would I let you go? I just want to incrementally move to a better position until I can strangle you. But I'm much more into strangling people than anything else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, which is a great MMA approach for jiu-jitsu." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, too many people don't tap when you get their arms. And I'm not opposed to arm bars, I love arm bars, but everybody goes to sleep." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And quit from pressure too. I mean, quit mentally. There's nothing like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can't breathe. You know, if you got a guy who's like a really good top game guy and he mounts you, and I'm a big fan of mounting with my legs crossed, you know, like a guard, like a top guard. And so I can squeeze with both legs, smush. And I'm just, I'm just looking for people to make mistakes and slowly incrementally bettering my position until I can get something locked up. I love jiu-jitsu though, man. I just wish it didn't injure you. Jiu-jitsu is like, if your joints were more durable, they could figure out a way to make joints more durable. God, I could do jiu-jitsu forever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's so much fun. Actually, I talked to this roboticist, Russ Tedrick. He's one of the world-class people that builds humanoid robots. He was interested in Boston Dynamics. He's one of the key people in that kind of robotics. So I asked him the stupidest question of like, how far are we from having a robot be a UFC champion? And yeah, it's actually a really, really tough problem. It's the same thing that makes somebody like Daniel Comey on the wrestling side special, because you have to understand the movement of the human body in ways that's so difficult to teach. It's so subtle, the timing, the pressure points, the leverage, all those kinds of things. That's just for the clinch situation. And then the movement for the striking is very difficult. As long as you're not allowed as a robot to use your natural abilities of having a lot more power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, a lot more power and more durable. The human body, especially meniscus. You see the heel hook game, everybody's involved in leg locks and heel hooks. all those guys wind up with torched knees. Everyone's got torched knees. Everyone's knees are torn apart. And you don't grow new meniscus. That's like one of those joints where, man, when it goes, those guys are 28 years old with blown out knees." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask the ridiculous question. What do you think, we're talking about cops, so what do you think is the best martial arts for self-defense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For sure, jujitsu. Yeah, for sure. Wrestling? I think grappling, I should say. Judo as well, especially in a cold climate, if you get someone who's got like a heavy winter jacket on, my God, like Judo is an incredible martial art." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus concrete." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the worst place to be, with a heavy winter jacket, with a judo specialist, and you're standing up with them. Oh, my God. But I think grappling, because in most self-defense situations, it usually winds up with grappling. You're definitely better off, though, knowing some striking, because there's nothing more terrifying than when you go to take someone down. They actually have takedown skills, but they can fight. And so they have takedown defense and they know how to fight. And then you don't know how to stand up. Like the worst thing in the world is seeing someone like reaching who doesn't know how to do striking and someone cracks you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about all that Krav Maga talk, which is like, you know, the whole line of argument that says that jujitsu and wrestling and all of these sports, they fundamentally take you away from the nature of violence. So they're just teaching you how to play. versus the reality of violence that is involved in like a self-defense situation that is, a totally different set of skills would be needed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In general, the people that say that jujitsu or other martial arts don't, it's more of a sport and they don't really understand violence, in general, the people that say that suck. Yeah, that's anybody who thinks like someone's like, you know, hey, man, I'll just bite you. I'm like, are you gonna bite me? Okay. Do you think I'm gonna bite you too? What do you think of that? What if I punch you in your fucking face? You think you're still gonna bite me when you can't even see when you're you barely even know you're alive and I choke you unconscious. If someone's really good at jujitsu, good luck stabbing them with your keys. You know, you don't have a chance. You don't have a chance. If someone's much better than you and they trip you and get you on your back, and then they fucking elbow you in your face and get a head and arm choke on you, all that Krav Maga shit's out the window, son. You're way better off learning what works on trained killers. Like this whole idea that you're going to poke someone in the eye, and then you're going to kick them in the nuts. You're going through these drills that, yeah, it's good to know what to do if you run into someone who doesn't know how to fight. It's way better to know what to do to someone who knows how to fight. That's the best thing. Learn how to fight against people who know how to fight. All that practice self-defense, and they're going to come at you with a knife. You're going to grab the wrist and do that. It's good to know self-defense. But it's much more important to understand martial arts comprehensively. When you understand martial arts comprehensively, like there's no Krav, I shouldn't say there's no Krav Maga guys, but it would be shocking if a Krav Maga guy and a mixed martial arts guy had a fight and the mixed martial arts guy was a trained killer all around, didn't fuck that guy up. That's that's what I would expect would happen. I would I would I would not think that some guy who has a little bit of this and a little bit of that and prepares for the streets is going to be able to handle a person who trains with killers. on a day-to-day basis, who rolls with jiu-jitsu black belts, who trains with Muay Thai champions. The best martial arts are the martial arts that work on martial artists, not the martial arts that work on untrained people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, we're in Texas now, what about guns?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's the best martial art." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but would you, in this crazy time, should people carry guns?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not a bad idea to have a gun, because if you need a gun, you have a gun. And if you don't need a gun, if you're a person with self-control, you're not going to use it. You're not going to just randomly use it, but you have something to protect you. This is the whole idea of the Second Amendment. The whole idea of the Second Amendment gets distorted by mass shootings or by terrible people who murder people and do terrible things. It's that all those things are real, but they don't take away from the fundamental efficacy of having a firearm and defending your family or defending your life. And there are real live situations where people have had firearms and it's protected them or their loved ones, or they've stopped shooters. There's many of these stories, but people don't like those stories because then it, It tends to lead to this gun culture argument, this pro-gun culture argument that people find very uncomfortable. Human beings are messy, and we're messy in so many different ways, right? We're messy emotionally, we're messy physically, but we're also messy in what's good or bad. We want things to be binary. We want things to be right or wrong, you know, one or zero. And they're not. But there is crime in the world, there is violence in the world, and you're better off knowing how to fight, and you're better off knowing how to defend yourself, and you're better off having a gun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I generally think that guns, I do like the idea that guns, Second Amendment helps protect the First Amendment. There's a kind of sense that puts me at ease knowing that so many people in this country have guns that, I mean, Alex Jones, I just listened to one episode of Infowars for the first time. Boy, he reminds me like when I drank some tequila, I felt like I'm going to some dark places today. That's how I feel like listening to him. But he talks about like that. It's he worries about martial law. So basically government overreach by, which happened throughout history. Like there's something to worry about there, but it puts me at ease knowing that so much of the population has guns that people, government would think twice before instituting martial law in cities. But I actually was asking almost like on the individual level, I maybe shouldn't say this, but I don't yet own a gun. And I felt that if I carry a gun, Statistically, just for me as a human, knowing my psychology, I feel like I'm more likely to die. Like I feel like I would put myself in situations that I shouldn't like the way I I will see the world will change because my natural feeling is like when somebody when I was in Philly and I knew late at night in West Philly, when some guy looks at you, you can immediately calculate that this is a dangerous human being. It starts with a monkey look at first, like I'm a bigger monkey than you. And that's where I found like, for example, I'll do the beta thing of just looking down and turning away and just getting out of trouble, like very politely. And basically that kind of approach, because if you have, in terms of getting out of serious violent situations, like serious, something where you could die, versus if I had a gun, I feel like I would want to be that there would be that cowboy monkey thing where I would want to put myself in situations where I'm a little bit of a savior even of myself and almost create danger which can no longer, like the escalation of which I can no longer control." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you're talking about taking a gun somewhere versus having a gun in your home. Yes. Yes. I mean carry on me That's a different situation and much harder to get a warrant for or a license for that You know control concealed carry licenses, especially in Massachusetts. They don't come easy. Well message." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a whole nother thing Yeah, you're saying gun in the home" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, gun in the home, having a gun, knowing how to use a gun. I know how to use a gun. I've trained, you know, many hours learning how to shoot a gun at tactical places. You know, there's a bunch of videos of me doing it on Instagram. I practice and I think it's good to understand how to be accurate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I've been a fan of your podcast for a long time. You don't often talk about it because you're always kind of looking forward. But if you look at the old studio, they just left. Is there some epic memories that stand out to you that you like? You almost look back. I can't believe this happened." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yeah. Almost too many of them to count." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something that pops into mind now?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, all of them. Elon Musk blowing that flamethrower in the middle of the hallway. I've got a video of that. Have you seen the video of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you posted it on Instagram. I think I did too. Yeah, he's a madman. Having Bernie Sanders in there, you know, just all the fun fight companions we did and all the crazy podcasts with Joey Diaz and Duncan Trussell. There were so many. There were so many moments, you know. Podcast is the this is a weird art form and it almost seems like Sounds silly, but it almost seems like something that chose me rather than I chose it. I think of that all the time in some strange way. It's like I'm showing up as like an antenna and I just plug in and twist on and then I take in the thing and I put it together and I'm like a passenger of this weird ride." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you've talked about this before. I really like this idea that human beings are just carriers of these ideas. Ideas are the ones who are breeding. So in a sense, like the idea found you as a useful brain to use to spread itself through the podcasting medium. It's something that's on the, because when I think about your podcast, I think about Joey Diaz. I think about all those comedians you've had. I mean, I think you've had Joey on, I mean, maybe close to, I don't know, 50 times, 60, some crazy number. Is there, I mean, he is, over the top offensive, just that's who he is to the core. Is there some sense where you you wondered like, whether it's right to have the Spotify episode number one with Duncan Dressel for five hours?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wanted to do it that way. That's why we wore NASA suits and we got high as fuck. It's like, that's the whole idea behind it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, can you introspect that a little bit? Can you think, like, what is that? Because that's rare. It's such a rare thing to do because you're not supposed to talk to Duncan Trussell with a huge platform that you have five hours. Why not? Because Donald Trump apparently watches your podcast. So just the idea that there's these, I mean, that's what I think about, you know, these CEOs write to me that they listen to the podcast that I do. And I have somebody like a David Fravor. And I was nervous about it. I was nervous to have a conversation. For me, David Fravor is a Duncan Trussell." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "which is like- Just because of his experiences with UFOs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, even just the way he sees the world, because he is open, I don't know if he's always like this, but he opened himself to the possibility of unconventional ideas. Most people in the scientific community kinda say, well, I don't really wanna believe anything that doesn't have a lot of hard evidence. Right. And so that was to me like a step, and as the thing somehow becomes more popular, there becomes this, fear of like, well, should I talk to this person or not? And I mean, you're an inspiration in saying like, do whatever the hell you want." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to. First of all, I have what you call, fuck you money. And if you have fuck you money, you don't say, fuck you. What's the point of having the fuck you money? You're wasting it. Like you're wasting the position. Like someone said to me, like, why do you, why do you like sports cars so much? Like how many cars do you have? A bunch of cars. Cause if I was a kid and I said, Hey, if I was that crazy, rich, famous guy, like I don't want to have a bunch of cool fucking cars. Like, so I, so I would do that. Like, cause. that not everybody gets to do that. Like if you're the person that gets to do that, you're kind of supposed to do it. Like that's if you if you want to, if that really does speak to you. And, you know, I've talked to you about this before muscle cars. specifically ones from the 1960s and the early 70s, they speak to me in some weird way, man. I could just stare at them. I have a 65 Corvette. I walk around it sometimes at night when no one's around. I just stare at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's your favorite muscle car? What's your most badass late 60s, the perfect car?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably that car. Probably that 65 Corvette. 65 Corvette. Yeah. I walk around it when no one's around." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think I've drawn the 69 Corvette." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there a particular year that just- 65 is generation 2, 69 is generation 3, 69 is like the, it's even more curvy. They're both awesome, just awesome in different ways. But I just love- muscle cars for whatever reason. But the point is, I like what I like, and if I can do what I want to do, I should do what I want to do. And it's not hurting anybody. And the thing is, I would do the Duncan podcast if no one was listening, right? If we were just starting to do a podcast together, and no one cared, and it got 2,000 views, which we did for years. For a long time, yeah. I would do it with Duncan, and we would get high, and we'd talk crazy shit about aliens and spaceships and Maybe dude, maybe ideas are living life forms and they're inside your head. And that's how things get man, man. I've just kind of morphed me and him together in that because the life form idea, life form idea is mine that I've, I've really, I really think about a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think about it on a technical side, by the way. When I heard you say that, because I've been thinking, I was like, whoa, that's interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They might be alive, because I don't know what the fuck they are, but when someone has an idea for, you know, whatever, an invention, a toaster, and then they think about this, all it needs is like these heating elements and a spring. and then it pops when it's done, so you have a timer, and then they build this thing. Now all of a sudden, it's alive. It's like you manifested it in a physical form. A toaster's not the best example, but a car, an airplane, you're thinking about a thing, like an idea comes into your head. And you can say, oh, well, it's just creativity. It's a part of being a person. It's how we invented tools and how we became better hunters. All those things are true. I'm not saying that there's some magic to what I'm saying, but There's also a possibility that we're simplifying something by saying that it's just creativity, that it's just a natural human inclination to invent things. Why? Is it possible that ideas like creativity like we are the only animal other than there's a few Species that create things like bees make beehives and but it's very they're very uniform You know some animals use tools, you know, like, you know chimps will use like sticks to get termites and things like that but there's something about what we do that's it makes you wonder because we look at the just look at this room and that we're in. Look at all these electronics. Look at all this crazy shit that human beings have invented and then built upon others' inventions, improved and innovated. These all came out of ideas. The idea, it germinates in someone's head, it bounces around, they write it down, they share it with others, the other people who have similar ideas or ideas that are complementary, they work together, and they change the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the new thing in that is the ideas, not the people. It's like, we think we found the ideas, but it's more like the ideas found us. Found you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. They're literally in the air. Yeah. They come to you. I always felt like that with bits. Like when I come up with a bit, That's why I'm always telling people about the Steven Pressfield book, The War of Art, because he talks about respecting the muse and the idea that your ideas come when you sit down and you do the work, or you sit down like a professional and you talk to the muse, like, come tell me what to do. Like if the muse was a real thing, as if a muse is like some mystical creature that comes and delivers you ideas. Even if that's not real, that's how it works. It does work like that. If you do treat it like it's a muse, and you treat it with the respect, and you treat it like a professional, the ideas do come to you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I never thought about what he's doing. He's just sitting there waiting for the idea that's trying to breed to find him. That's a trippy thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you show up and put in the time and focus your energy on that, the ideas, they will arrive. that will arrive. And that's the same with writing comedy. Like this has been many, many times where I'll come home from the comedy store and I just sit down and I start writing and I just, I got nothing. There's nothing there. I'm just writing a small bullshit. Nothing's good. It's just like, hmm. And then all of a sudden, bam, there's the idea. And then all of a sudden, I can't stop. And then, you know, a couple hours later and I'm like, whoa. And then the next night I'm on stage and I'm like, how about that? Boom. It gets this big laugh. I'm like, holy shit. And I know that came out of the discipline to sit down and call the muse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, the cool thing is the ideas have found you to like, oh, I'm gonna use this dude. Like he seems to have a podcast that's popular. I'm gonna breed inside his brain and spread it to others." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the same as. Or an inventor. You know, I'm gonna use this guy who's like desperately seeking some sort of a product to bring to market. Some guy who wants to invent things. He's thinking about inventing things all the time. These ideas, they weasel their way into your head. And it seems to me also that You're the frequency that your mind operates under has to be correct Because one of the things about creativity seems to be if you think about yourself a lot If you're really into yourself or your image or or you're selfish Those ideas are not they don't find you Yeah, it's funny." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It stifles the creative. It stifles the opportunity that the idea has for defining it. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which is one of the reasons why joke thieves, people that steal jokes, are terrible writers. There's never like really good writers who are also joke thieves. It's just joke thieves. And then, you know, when they have to write on their own, if they get exposed, they become terrible comedians. They're a shadow of what they were when they were stealing other people's ideas. Because the thing that would make you steal a person's idea is that ego part. The wanting to claim it for yourself, the wanting to be the man. I'm going to or the woman, you know, you want to be the person who gets out there and says it and everybody's going to love me for it. Like you can't think like that and be creative. It requires a humility and it requires a detachment from self in order to create. Like when I'm writing, I'm blank. I'm like, I'm just staring. I'm like, I'm just, the part of my mind that's active is not like me. It's like this weird core function part where I'm not, I'm not aware of. my personality, I'm not aware of anything. I'm just trying to put it together in a way that I know works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just being there, being present. Pressfield is just, I'm a big believer, just sitting there, even staring at a blank page, putting in the time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And sometimes it's not that way. Sometimes it's an inspiration. Like sometimes I'll be sitting there at dinner and I'll be like, I got an idea. And my wife's really cool about that. I'm like, I have an idea. And I have to just run out of the room real quick. And I write it down on my phone and then I can come back, you know, because those are like little gifts that you get sometimes from the universe out of nowhere. And some people rely only on those gifts, you know, and I've talked to comics about like, Oh, I can't come up with my best ideas when I don't write. And I'm like, no, I do too. I come up with great ideas when I don't write, but I also write like you can do both of those things. They're not mutually exclusive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned fuck you money. I feel like I have fuck you money now. A year ago I was at zero, I have fuck you money now because probably my standards, I don't need much in this world, but because also probably because of you, but it's 300 to 400,000 people listen to every episode I do. That's a lot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that is weird. That's a successful television show on cable. Yeah, it's crazy. It's all you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's amazing. But at this point, that also resulted in a few money in a sense that I don't need anything else in this world. But so by way of asking, I've looked up, you've inspired me for a long time. Do you have advice You've done this on the podcast side of life. Do you have advice for somebody like, for me and somebody like me going on this journey? Eric Weinstein is going on this journey. Is there advice, both small and big, that you have for somebody like me?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The advice is to keep doing what feels right to you and do what you're doing. Obviously, it's resonating with people if you're getting that big of an audience. And I've listened to your podcast. You're very good at it. So just keep doing it the way you're doing it. Don't let anybody else get involved." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, you've connected, I think you met Jamie at the comedy store. I met him at the Ice House. At the Ice House?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think I met him at the comedy store, but then we talked at the Ice House." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, what- You'd have to ask him. Yeah, did you think deeply about, because like, you know, you basically have nobody on your team. And so it almost feels like a marriage. Were you selective about like, somebody to bring into your little circle? Well, Jamie's exceptional. He is. He truly is. He's a special. I mean, he might have grown. I don't remember how he was in the early days, maybe you could say, but he was definitely better at it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But he right away, he's exceptional. He's got very little ego. Yes. He's not a guy who needs a lot of attention. He's not a guy who overestimates Uh anything like in terms of like a negative or positive like his uh, like his is a interpretation of Whether it's uh good things that happen to the show or bad things that happen to the show. He just takes it all like flat He's chill. He's just cool as fuck. And he's so smart. And he's so good as an audio engineer and as a podcast producer. He's the best." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But he's basically one of the only people on this whole team. So how do you find, I mean, when you let people in? I mean, I'm sure other people wanted to get involved. Like, why don't you have a co-host? You basically kind of, well... Well, here's the problem with a co-host." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, when you and I are talking, when we're talking, I'm tuned in to you, and I'm waiting to hear what you're saying, and I'm listening, and I'm interpreting it, and then I'm calculating Whether or not I have anything to say, whether to let you keep talking, whether I maybe have a question that lets you expand further, or whether I have a disagreement, or like there's a dance that's going on. Now when there's another person there chiming in too, it fucks the dance up. It's like dancing, like if you're doing a dance with someone, you know, like if you're slow dancing with someone, and then a third person's there stepping on everybody's feet. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes having a third person is fun. Comedy podcast, sometimes it's fun. Debate kind of structured. Yeah, debate structures. But even then it gets difficult because people talk over each other. And also I find that without headphones, it's way easier to talk over each other. You make mistakes. You don't hear it the same way. When you have headphones, I hear what you hear. It's all one sound. And the audience hears exactly, or rather, I hear exactly what the audience hears. Whether it's over here, my voice is louder than yours because you're over there. And if I don't have headphones on, it's not all together." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On that point, one of the interesting things about your show is you don't, almost never have done, and you generally don't do remote, sorry, not remote calls, but you don't go to another person's location." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have only done a few, a small handful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And just like, well, Sapolsky, he should do this. But I actually, we went back and forth on email. I told him he needs to get his ass back in the studio. He's working on a book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was a fan of his a long time ago because I became obsessed with toxoplasmosis. And I reached out to him. a long time ago before he was willing to do it. But then I caught him in downtown LA. He was there for something else. And I just greedily snatched up an hour of his time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, he doesn't get, I think some of those folks don't get how much magic can happen in this podcast studio, like bigger than anything they've ever done in terms of their work. Not, I'm not talking about reach, but in terms of the discovery of new ideas, there's something magical about conversation like that. like somebody as brilliant as him, if he gives himself over to the conversation for multiple hours at a time, that's another place where you've been an inspiration, where I like, you know, I'm getting more and more confidence of telling people like Elon Musk that like, you know, a lot of CEOs are like, well, he has 30 minutes on his schedule. I'm like, no, three hours. So, And then they're like, so some say no. And then they come back. Those people have started coming back to like, OK, we're starting to get it. They start to get it. And you're a rare beacon of hope in that sense, that there is some value in long form. They think that nobody wants to listen for more than 30 minutes. They think, like, I have nothing to say. But the reality is, If you just give yourself over to like the three hours, just let it go. Three hours, four hours, whatever it is. There's so much to discover about what you didn't even know you think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah, you have to be confident that you could do it. And in the beginning, I just did it because that's what I wanted to do. And no one was listening. So I've always been a curious person. So I've always been interested in listening to how people think about things and how, and talking to people about their mindset and just expanding on my own ideas, just talking shit. And so we would have these podcasts and they would go on forever. And my friend Ari, I've never let him die, never let this die down. Never let him forget this. He was always like, you have to edit your podcast. I'm telling you right now you're fucking up. I go, why? He's like, because people are not going to listen to it. I go, they don't have to. I go, you listen to part of it. He goes, he goes, just do it. Just I'm telling you, trust me, cut it down to like 45 minutes. It's all you need. And I'm like, no, no, I don't think you're right. I go, I like listening to long form things. No one has that kind of time. I go, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm just going to keep doing it this way. So. And it sticks your gut. No, he doesn't. His are like two and a half hours long now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You won, but you wouldn't like say, I mentioned to you this before, and this is going to happen. It's actually made a lot of progress towards it. I'm going to talk to Putin, but you wouldn't travel to Putin if you want to talk to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Putin is a dangerous character. He's not. He's not. Have you ever seen the thing with Jerry Craft where they stole his Super Bowl ring?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that was a little bit of misunderstanding. Oh, really? I think it's a little bit, he just decided he's gonna steal that Superbowl ring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Kind of. Kind of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He thought, can I see your ring? He shows him his ring and then he puts it on and says, I can murder somebody with this ring. And then he walks off with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's possible he did it. He's a big believer in displays of power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So like, it's possible he did that, but I think he sees himself as like a tool with which to demonstrate that Russia still belongs on the stage of the big players. And so he, a lot of action is selected through that lens, but in terms of a human being, Outside of any of the evils that he may or may not have done, he is a really thoughtful, intelligent, fun human being. Like the wit and the depth from the JRE perspective is really interesting. I'm like his manager now selling. He's a judo guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's really good at judo. I have seen him practice judo. He's a legit black belt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And not only that, he loves it. Not just skill-wise, but to talk about it, to reason about it, to think about it, to MMA as well. So, you know, it'd be a good conversation. But you wouldn't travel to him. Well, that's hold to your principles. So that's the core of the advice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just hold to whatever... I would rather... Here's the thing. There's not a person that I have to have on the show. And I'm happy to talk to anybody. I'm just as happy to talk to you as I am to talk to Trump, probably more happy to talk to you, as I am to talk to Mike Tyson, as I am to talk to Joey Diaz. I like talking to people. I enjoy doing podcasts. I enjoy talking to a variety of people and I schedule them Based on I want to like I try not to get too many right-wing people in a row or too many progressive people in a row I don't want to get repetitive to try not get too many fighters in a row I try to balance it out. Not too many comedians comedians are the one I One group where I can have three, four in a row, five in a row, because that's my tribe. Those are my people. It's easy. We can talk about anything. It's a weird dance. The conversations that you're doing on a podcast, they're a strange dance. And you want to, you know, you want to not step on your own feet and you want to make sure that you do it in a way, do the podcast in a way that's entertaining for people. And it's, it's conversations are learning how to talk to me. It's a weird skill. It's a weird skill that took a long time for me to get good at. And I didn't know it was a skill until I started doing it. And then I just thought you were just talking. Like, I know how to talk, we'll just talk to people. And then along the way, I realized like, oh, and then when you talk to people that are bad at it, you realize that it's a skill. Like particularly, one of the things about my people, about comedians is a lot of them tend to want to talk, but don't want to listen. So they're waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk, but they're not necessarily thinking about what you're saying. You know, and they're just, they're just waiting for their opportunity or they talk over you or they, and I try real hard not to do that. And sometimes I fail, but my, when I'm at my best. I'm dancing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, ultimately the skill conversation is just really listening. Like really and listening and thinking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Listening and thinking and being genuinely curious and really having, you know, a take on what they're saying and maybe a follow-up question or maybe, you know, it's gotta be real. It's gotta be authentic. And when it is authentic and it's real, It resonates with people like they're listening and they go. Oh Like i'm locked in with the way you're thinking like you two guys are in a conversation and i'm locked in You know when she talks and you listen i'm listening too You know when he says something to her when she says something to to him like there's a thing that happens during conversations where? You're there like you're listening to and it's with me when I listen to a good podcast I feel like i'm in the room I feel like I'm in the room and I'm like the friend that got to sit down and listen. Like, oh, yeah, that's a great conversation. I love conversations. So I love listening to them and I love putting them together. And the fact that this podcast has gotten so fucking big. It it's stunning to me. It blows me away. I never anticipated it Never thought for a second that that stupid thing that I used to do in my couch in my my office Was the biggest thing i've ever done in my life by far like people used to make fun of it Like there's a comedy store documentary that's coming out And one of the parts of the documentaries my friend tom sagura when he first started doing my podcast He would he would be leaving and he would talk to red band. He's like, what the fuck is he doing? Yeah Like, why is he doing this? Like, who's listening? It's like, oh, some people like it. And it's like fucking nonsense, waste of time. And like, in the documentary, it shows like 2,000 views, like one of the early Ustream episodes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hilarious. And they don't just like it, really. They form a friendship with you. It's like, even me, when people come up to me, like the love in their eyes is kind of beautiful. It's weird, right? You're a part of their life. I don't know, it's also heartbreaking because you realize you'll never really get to know them back. Because they clearly are friends with you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes!" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's sad to see a person who's clearly brilliant and interesting and is friends with you. But you don't get a chance to return that love." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I mean, my kids, it took them a while to figure out what's going on. But people come up to me and, you know, they would say something like, hey, man, I fucking love you. Thanks, man. All right. Hey, brother. Nice to meet you. My daughter was like six. Like, do you know him? I'm like, no, I don't know him. She's like, how does he know you? It's very weird conversation I used to have with young kids. When I'd explain, I'd do this thing called a podcast and millions of people listen. So now one of my daughters is 12 and one of her friends is 13 and he's a boy and he goes to school with her and he's obsessed with me. And so she's weirded out and she says to him, I don't think you like me. I think you're just into my dad, you fucking weirdo." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "She's going to have that conversation a few stages in her life. That hard conversation with a boyfriend." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, probably. Yeah. That's the thing about men, too. This podcast. is my podcast is uniquely masculine. I'm a man, and I'm also a man that doesn't have to go through some sort of a corporate filter. I'm not going through executive producers who tell me, don't have this guest on, don't talk about that. We looked at focus groups, and they don't seem to like when you do this. There's none of that. I just do it. So I have a whole podcast where I just talk about cars. And people are like, I don't want to hear you talk about cars. Well, good. Congratulations. You found what you like. Here's good news. There's 1,500 other ones. Go listen to the other episodes where I don't talk about cars. You don't have to listen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's not like your brand. You just are who you are, and that's what you do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's like, it's authentically what I'm interested in. All the podcasts, whether I'm talking to David Fravor about his experience with UFOs, whether I'm talking to David Sinclair about life extension, whether I'm talking to you about artificial intelligence or whatever, it's because I want to talk to these people. And that resonates. I like when people are into shit. I've talked about this before. I have no interest in making furniture, but I like this PBS show where this guy makes furniture by hand. I love watching it. Craftsman. Because he's so into it. He's sanding this and polishing that. I'm not going to do that. I don't give a fuck about furniture. Furniture for me is function, like this desk. Function works, but I love when people are into it, you know, and I'm happy that someone can make it and they do a great job But I'm not I'm not interested in the the task is Or the even the finished product as much as I'm interested in someone's passion for something the passion that they've put into this That shines through last question" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I sometimes ask this just for to, what is it, to challenge, to make people roll their eyes, to make legitimate scientists roll their eyes. I ask, what is the meaning of life? according to Joe Rogan." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do not think there is a meaning. I think there's many, many meanings of life. I think there's a way to navigate life that's enjoyable. I think it requires many things. It requires, first of all, it requires love. You have to have loved ones, you have to have family, you have to have friends, you have to have people that care about you, and you have to care about them. I think that is primary. Then it also requires interests. There has to be things that stimulate you. Now, it could be just a subsistence lifestyle. There's many people that believe and practice. this lifestyle of just living off the land and hunting and fishing and living in the woods, and they seem incredibly happy. And there's something to be said for that. That is an interest, right? There's something, and there's a direct connection between their actions and their sustenance. They get their food that way. They're connected to nature, and it's very satisfying for them. If you don't have that, I think you need something that is interesting to you, something that you're passionate about. And there's far too many people that get sucked into living a life where you're just doing a job. You're just showing up and putting in your time and then going home, but you don't have a passion for what you're doing. And I think that's the recipe for a boring and very unfulfilling life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned love, if we could just backtrack. We talked about the demons and the violence in there somewhere. What's the role of love in your own life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's very important, man. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in helping people. I'm very interested in people feeling good. I like them to feel good. I want to help them. I like doing things that make them feel like, oh, you care about me. Like, yeah, I care about you. I really do. I want people to feel good. I want my family to feel good. I want my friends to feel good. I want guests to feel good about the podcast experience. I'm a big believer in as much as I can to spread positive energy and joy and happiness and relay all the good advice that I've ever gotten. all the things that I've learned and if they can benefit people and I find that those things benefit people that actually improve the quality of their life or improve their success or improve their relationships or I'm very happy to do that. That means a lot to me. The way we interact with each other is so important. It's one of the reasons why I like If someone gets canceled or you get publicly shamed, it's so devastating because there's all these people that negative, all this negative energy coming your way. And you feel it as much as you like to pretend that you're immune to that kind of stuff. And some people do like to pretend that you feel it. There's a tangible force when people are upset at you. And that's the same with loved ones or family or anytime someone's upset at you. Whether it's a giant group of people or there's a small amount of people, that has an impact on you and your psyche and your physical being. So the more you can spread love and the more love comes back to you, you also create this butterfly effect, right? Because where other people start recognizing like, oh, you know, when he's nice to me, I feel better and I'm going to be nicer to people. And when I'm nicer to people, they feel better, and I feel better, and it spreads outward. And that's one thing that I've done through this podcast, I think, is I've imparted my personal philosophy in kindness and generosity to other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, to correct you, you didn't do it. The ideas that are breeding themselves through your brain have figured out." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, the ideas that are alive in the air that made their way into my head." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Love is a more efficient mechanism of spreading ideas, they figured out. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably, man, probably. So as far as like, the meaning of life, that's, that's a bit without that you have nothing. You know, one of the biggest failures in life is to be extremely successful financially, but everybody hates you. Everybody hates you and you're just miserable and alone and angry and depressed and sad. You know, when you hear about rich, famous people that commit suicide, like, wow, you missed the mark. You got some parts right, but you put too many eggs in one basket. You put too many eggs in the financial basket or the success basket or the accomplishment basket. and not enough in the friendship and love basket. And there's a balance to that. And when I talked about the violence and all that stuff, that to me is me understanding and recognizing that it's me trying to achieve that balance. It's like, go kill those demons so that this boat is level. Because if it's not, then the boat is like this, and then everything's all fucked up. And every time we hit a wave, things fall apart. But Balance that boat out figure it out like know who you are. Some people don't have that problem at all Some people they could just go for walks and they're cool as a cucumber. I need more, you know I need kettlebells. I need a heavy bag. I need I need the echo bike, you know air assault bike I need some hardcore shit. And if I don't get that I don't feel good so I figured that out too and that makes me a nicer person and that makes my interactions nicer it makes the it changes the quality of my my friendships and my relationships with people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think we mentioned Neuralink. I can certainly guarantee that this is one of the memories I'll be replaying 20, 30 years from now once we get the feature ready. Joe, it's a huge honor to talk to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an honor to talk to you too, man. I'm glad you came down here for this. the first week of me doing this here, and it's very cool to have you always." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I hope you make Texas cool again and do your podcast for another 10, 11, whatever, however many years you're still on this earth." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "You grew up in Kansas, right? Yeah, and I just saw that picture you had hidden over there, so I'm a little bit worried about that now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nervous. Yeah. So in high school in Kansas City, you joined Shawnee Mission North High School robotics team. Yeah. Now, that wasn't your high school." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. That was, that was, uh, the only high school in the area that had a, like a teacher who was willing to sponsor our first robotics team. I was going to troll you a little bit, jog your memory a little bit. I was trying to look super cool and intense. Cause you know, this was battle bots. This is serious business. So we're standing there with a welded steel frame and looking tough." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So go back there. What is that drew you to robotics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think I've been trying to figure this out for a while But I've always liked building things with Legos and when I was really really young I wanted the Legos that had motors and other things and then you know Lego Mindstorms came out and for the first time you could program Lego contraptions, and I think things just sort of Snowballed from that, but I remember seeing know, the BattleBots TV show on Comedy Central and thinking that is the coolest thing in the world. I want to be a part of that. And not knowing a whole lot about how to build these 200 pound fighting robots. So I sort of obsessively poured over the internet forums where all the creators for BattleBots would sort of hang out and talk about, you know, document their build progress and everything. And, uh, I think I read, I must've read like, you know, tens of thousands of forum posts from, from basically everything that was out there on what these people were doing. And eventually like sort of triangulated how to, how to put some of these things together and, and, uh, uh, ended up doing battle bots, which was, you know, it was like 13 or 14, which was pretty awesome." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm not sure if the show is still running, but so BattleBots is, there's not an artificial intelligence component. It's remotely controlled and it's almost like a mechanical engineering challenge of building things that can be broken." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're radio controlled. So, and I think that they allowed some limited form of autonomy, but you know, in a two minute match, you're in, and the way these things ran, you're really doing yourself a disservice by trying to automate it versus just, you know, do the practical thing, which is drive it yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's an entertainment aspect, just going on YouTube, there's like some of them wield an axe, some of them, I mean, there's that fun. So what drew you to that aspect? Was it the mechanical engineering? Was it the dream to create like Frankenstein and sentient being? Or was it just like the Lego, you like tinkering with stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that was just building something. I think the idea of, you know, this radio controlled machine that can do various things, if it has like a weapon or something was pretty interesting. I agree it doesn't have the same appeal as, you know, autonomous robots, which I, which I, you know, sort of gravitated towards later on, but it was definitely an engineering challenge because everything you did in that competition was pushing components to their limits. So we would buy like these $40 DC motors that came out of a winch, like on the front of a pickup truck or something. And we'd power the car with those, and we'd run them at double or triple their rated voltage. So they immediately start overheating. But for that two-minute match, you can get a significant increase in the power output of those motors before they burn out. And so you're doing the same thing for your battery packs, all the materials in the system. And I think there is something intrinsically interesting about just seeing where things break. And did you" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Offline see where they break. Did you take it to the testing point? Like how do you know two minutes or was there a reckless?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's just go with it and see we weren't very good at battle bots. We lost all of our matches the first round like the the one I built First both of them were these wedge shaped robots because a wedge even though it's sort of boring to look at is extremely effective You drive towards another robot and the front edge of it gets under them and then they sort of flip over Kind of like a door stopper And the first one had a pneumatic polished stainless steel spike on the front that would shoot out about eight inches. The purpose of which is what? Pretty, pretty ineffective actually, but it looks cool. And, uh. Was it to help with the lift? No, it was, it was just to try to poke holes in the other robot. And then, uh, the second time I did it, which is the following, I think maybe 18 months later. We had a, well, a titanium ax with a, with a hardened steel tip on it that was powered by a hydraulic cylinder, which we were, uh, activating with liquid CO2, which was had its own set of problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So great. So that's kind of on the hardware side. I mean, at a certain point, there must have been born a fascination on the software side. So what was the first piece of code you've written? Go back there. See what language was it? What was that? Was it Emacs, Vim? Was it a more respectable modern IDE? Do you remember any of this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, I remember, um, I think maybe when I was in third or fourth grade school, I was at elementary school, had a bunch of Apple two computers and we'd play games on those. And I remember every once in a while, something would, would, uh, would crash or wouldn't start up correctly. And it would dump you out to what I later learned was like sort of a command prompt. And my teacher would come over and type, actually remember this to this day, for some reason, like PR number six or PR pound six, which is peripheral six, which is the disk drive, which would fire up the disk and load the program. And I just remember thinking, wow, she's like a hacker, like teach me these, these codes, error codes is what I called them at the time. But she had no interest in that. And so it wasn't until I think about fifth grade that I had a, a school where you could actually go on these Apple twos and learn to program. And so it was all in basic, you know, where every line, you know, the line numbers are all number that every line is numbered and you have to like leave enough space between the numbers that if you want to tweak your code, you go back and if the first line was 10 and the second line is 20. Now you have to go back and insert 15. And if you need to add code in front of that, you know, 11 or 12, and you hope you don't run out of line numbers and have to redo the whole thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's go to statements." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Go to, and it's very basic, maybe hence the name, but a lot of fun. And that was like, um, that was, you know, that's when, that's when, you know, when you first program, you see the magic of it. It's like, it just, just like this world opens up with, you know, endless possibilities for the things you could build or, or accomplish with that computer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you got the bug then. So even starting with basic and then what C plus plus throughout, uh, what did you, was there a computer programming, computer science classes in high school?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not where I went, so it was self-taught, but I did a lot of programming. The thing that you know, sort of push me in the path of eventually working on self-driving cars is actually one of these really long trips driving from my house in Kansas to, uh, uh, to, I think Las Vegas, where we did the battle bots competition. And I had just gotten my, I think my learner's permit or early driver's permit. And so I was driving this, you know, 10 hour stretch across Western Kansas, where it's just, you're going straight on a highway and it is mind numbingly boring. And I remember thinking even then with my sort of mediocre programming, background that this is something that a computer can do, right? Let's take a picture of the road. Let's find the yellow lane markers and steer the wheel. Later, I'd come to realize this had been done since the 80s or the 70s or even earlier, but I still wanted to do it. Immediately after that trip, I switched from BattleBots, which is more radio-controlled machines, to thinking about building autonomous vehicles of some scale. I started off with really small electric ones and then progress to what we're doing now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what was your view of artificial intelligence at that point? What did you think? So this is before there's been waves in artificial intelligence, right? The current wave with deep learning makes people believe they can solve in a really rich, deep way the computer vision perception problem. But before the deep learning craze, how would you even go about building a thing that perceives itself in the world, localizes itself in the world, moves around the world? Like when you were younger, what was your thinking about it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, prior to deep neural networks or convolutional neural nets, these modern techniques we have, or at least ones that are in use today, it was all a heuristic space. And so like old school image processing. And I think extracting, you know, yellow lane markers out of an image of a road is one of the problems that lends itself Reasonably well to those heuristic based methods, you know Like just do a threshold on the color yellow and then try to fit some lines to that using a puff transform or something and then Go from there traffic like detection and stop sign detection red yellow green and I think you can you could I mean if you wanted to do a full I was just trying to make something that would stay in between the lanes on a highway, but if you wanted to do the full the full, you know, set of capabilities needed for a driverless car, I think you could, and we've done this at Cruise, you know, in the very first days, you can start off with a really simple, you know, human written heuristic, just to get the scaffolding in place for your system, traffic light detection, probably a really simple, you know, color thresholding on day one, just to get the system up and running before you migrate to, you know, a deep learning based technique or something else. And, you know, back in when I was doing this, my first one, it was on a Pentium 203, 233 megahertz computer. And it, and I think I wrote the first version in basic, which is like an interpreted language. It's extremely slow. Uh, cause that's the thing I knew at the time. And so there was no, no chance at all of using, uh, there was no, no computational power to do, um, any sort of reasonable. deep nets like you have today. So I don't know what kids these days are doing. Are kids these days, you know, at age 13 using neural networks in their garage?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that would be awesome. I get emails all the time from, you know, like 11, 12 year olds saying, I'm having, you know, I'm trying to follow this TensorFlow tutorial and I'm having this problem. And the general approach in the deep learning community is of extreme optimism of, as opposed to, you mentioned like heuristics, you can separate the autonomous driving problem into modules and try to solve it sort of rigorously, or you can just do it end-to-end. And most people just kind of love the idea that, you know, us humans do it end-to-end, we just perceive and act. We should be able to do the same kind of thing with neural nets. that kind of thinking, you don't want to criticize that kind of thinking, because eventually they will be right. And so it's exciting, and especially when they're younger, to explore that as a really exciting approach. But yeah, it's changed the language, the kind of stuff you're tinkering with. It's kind of exciting to see when these teenagers grow up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I can only imagine if you if your starting point is, you know, Python and TensorFlow at age 13, where you end up, you know, after 10 or 15 years of that, that's, that's pretty cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because of GitHub, because the state of the art tools for solving most of the major problems in artificial intelligence. are within a few lines of code for most kids. And that's incredible to think about, also on the entrepreneurial side. And on that point, was there any thought about entrepreneurship before you came to college? Is sort of building this into a thing that impacts the world on a large scale?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I've always wanted to start a company. I think that's, you know, just a cool concept of creating something and exchanging it, um, for value or, or creating value, I guess. So in high school, I was, I was trying to build like, you know, servo motor drivers, little circuit boards and sell them online or other, other things like that. And certainly knew at some point I wanted to do a startup, but it wasn't really, uh, I'd say until college, until I felt like I had the, I guess the right combination of the environment, the smart people around you, and some free time. I had a lot of free time at MIT." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you came to MIT as an undergrad, 2004. That's right. And that's when the first DARPA Grand Challenge was happening. Yeah. The timing of that is beautifully poetic. So how did you get yourself involved in that one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "originally, there wasn't a official entry, yeah, faculty sponsored thing. And so a bunch of undergrads, myself included, started meeting and got together and tried to haggle together some sponsorships, we got a vehicle donated a bunch of sensors, and tried to put something together. And so we had, our team was probably mostly freshmen and sophomores, you know, which which was not really a fair, fair fight against maybe the You know, postdoc and faculty led teams from other schools, but we, uh, we got something up and running. We had our vehicle drive by wire and, you know, very, very basic control and things. But, uh, on the day of the qualifying sort of pre-qualifying round, the one and only steering motor that we had purchased, the thing that we had retrofitted to turn the steering wheel on the truck. died. And so our vehicle was just dead in the water, couldn't steer. So we didn't make it very far on the hardware side." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So was there a software component? Was there like, how did your view of autonomous vehicles in terms of artificial intelligence? evolve in this moment? I mean, you know, like you said, from the 80s has been autonomous vehicles, but really, that was the birth of the modern wave, the thing that captivated everyone's imagination that we can actually do this. So what how were you captivated in that way? So how did your view of autonomous vehicles change at that point?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd say at that point in time, it was it was a curiosity, as in like, is this really possible? And I think that was generally the spirit and the purpose of that original DARPA Grand Challenge, which was to just get a whole bunch of really brilliant people exploring the space and pushing the limits. And, and I think like to this day that DARPA challenge with its, you know, million dollar prize pool was probably one of the most effective, you know, uses of taxpayer money, dollar for dollar that I've seen, you know, because that, that small. Sort of initiative that DARPA put, uh, put out sort of, in my view was the catalyst or the tipping point for this, this whole next wave of autonomous vehicle development. So that was pretty cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me jump around a little bit on that point. They also did the urban challenge where it was in the city, but it was very artificial and there's no pedestrians and there's very little human involvement except a few professional drivers. Do you think there's room? And then there was the robotics challenge with humanoid robots. So in your now role is looking at this, you're trying to solve one of the you know, autonomous driving, one of the harder, more difficult places in San Francisco. Is there a role for DARPA to step in to also kind of help out that challenge with new ideas, specifically pedestrians and so on, all these kinds of interesting things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I haven't, I haven't thought about it from that perspective. Is there anything DARPA could do today to further accelerate things? And I would say, My instinct is that that's maybe not the highest and best use of their resources and time because like kickstarting and spinning up the flywheel is I think what they did in this case for very little money. But today this has become commercially interesting to very large companies and the amount of money going into it and the amount of people going through your class and learning about these things and developing these skills is just orders of magnitude more than it was back then. And so there's enough momentum and inertia and energy and investment dollars into this space right now that I don't, I think they can just say mission accomplished and move on to the next area of technology that needs help." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So then stepping back to MIT, you left MIT during your junior year. What was that decision like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As I said, I always wanted to do a company in or start a company. And this opportunity landed in my lap, which was a couple of guys from Yale. Uh, we're starting a new company and I Googled them and found that they had started a company previously and sold it actually on eBay for about a quarter million bucks, which was pretty interesting story. But so I thought to myself, these guys are, you know, rockstar entrepreneurs. They've done this before. They must be driving around in Ferraris because they sold their company. And, uh, you know, I, I thought I could learn a lot from them. So I teamed up with those guys and, you know, went out during, went out to California during IAP, which is MIT's a month off, uh, one on one way ticket and basically never went back. We were having so much fun. We felt like we were building something and creating something. And it was going to be interesting that, you know, I was just all in and, and, and got completely hooked. And that, that business was Justin TV, which is originally a reality show about a guy named Justin. which morphed into a live video streaming platform, which then morphed into what is Twitch today. So that was, that was quite a, an unexpected journey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So no regrets? No. Looking back, it was just an obvious, I mean, one way ticket. I mean, if we just pause on that for a second, there was no, how did you know these were the right guys? This is the right decision. You didn't think it was just follow the heart kind of thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I didn't know, but, you know, just trying something for a month during IAP seems pretty low risk, right? And then, you know, well, maybe I'll take a semester off. MIT is pretty flexible about that. You can always go back. Right. And then after two or three cycles of that, I eventually threw in the towel, but, uh, you know, I think it's, um, I guess in that case, I felt like I could always hit the undo button if I had to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. But nevertheless, when you look in retrospect, I mean, it seems like a brave decision. It would be difficult for a lot of people to make." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It wasn't as popular. I'd say that the general, you know, flux of people out of MIT at the time was mostly into, you know, finance or consulting jobs in Boston or New York. And very few people were going to California to start companies. But today, I'd say that's, it's probably inverted, which is just a sign of a sign of the times, I guess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so there's a story about midnight of March 18, 2007, where TechCrunch, I guess, announced Justin.TV earlier than it was supposed to, a few hours. The site didn't work. I don't know if any of this is true, you can tell me. And you and one of the folks at Justin.tv, Emmett Shear, quoted through the night. Can you take me through that experience? So let me say a few nice things that the article I read quoted Justin Kahn said that you were known for bureau coding through problems and being a creative, quote, creative genius. So on that night, what was going through your head, or maybe put another way, how do you solve these problems? What's your approach to solving these kinds of problems where the line between success and failure seems to be pretty thin?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good question. Well, first of all, that's, that's a nice of Justin to say that I think, you know, I would have been maybe 21 years old then and not very experienced at programming, but as with, um, uh, with everything in a startup, you're, you're sort of racing against the clock. And so our plan was the second we had this live streaming camera. Backpack up and running where Justin could wear it. And no matter where he went in a city, it would be streaming live video. And this is even before the iPhone. So this is like hard to do back then. we would launch. And so we thought we were there, and the backpack was working. And then we sent out all the emails to launch the launch the company and do the press thing. And then, you know, we weren't quite actually there. And then we thought, Oh, well, you know, they're not going to announce it until Maybe 10 a.m. The next morning and it's I don't know. It's 5 p.m. Now. So how many hours do we have left? what is that like, you know 17 hours to go and And and that was that was gonna be fine was the problem obvious Did you understand what could possibly like how complicated was the system at that point? It was, it was pretty messy. So to get a live video feed that looked decent working from anywhere in San Francisco, I put together this system where we had like three or four cell phone data modems and they were like, we take the video stream and you know, sort of spray it across these three or four modems and then try to catch all the packets on the other side, you know, with unreliable cell phone networks. It's pretty low level networking. Yeah. And, and putting these like, you know, sort of protocols on top of all that to, to reassemble and reorder the packets and have time buffers and error correction and all that kind of stuff. And, um, the, the night before it was just staticky every once in a while, the image would, would go to staticky and there would be this horrible, like screeching audio noise. Cause the audio was also corrupted. And this would happen like every five to 10 minutes or so. And it was a really off putting to the viewers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. How do you tackle that problem? What was the, uh, you just freaking out behind a computer? There's the word. Are there other, other folks working on this problem? Like were you behind a whiteboard? Were you doing a, yeah, it's a little, it's a little hair coding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's a little lonely. Cause there's four of us working on the company and only two people really wrote code and Emmett wrote the website and the chat system. And I wrote the software for this video streaming device and video server. Um, And so, you know, it was my sole responsibility to figure that out. And I think it's those, you know, setting deadlines, trying to move quickly and everything where you're in that moment of intense pressure that sometimes people do their best and most interesting work. And so even though that was a terrible moment, I look back on it fondly because that's like, you know, that's one of those character defining moments, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in 2013, October, you founded Cruise Automation. So progressing forward, another exceptionally successful company was acquired by GM in 16 for $1 billion. But in October of 2013, what was on your mind? What was the plan? How does one seriously start to tackle one of the hardest robotics, most important impact for robotics problems of our age?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "After going through Twitch, Twitch was, and is today, pretty successful. But the work was, the result was entertainment, mostly. Like, the better the product was, the more we would entertain people, and then, you know, make money on the ad revenues and other things. And that was a good thing. It felt good to entertain people. But I figured, what is really the point of becoming a really good engineer and developing these skills other than my own enjoyment? And I realized I wanted something that scratched more of an existential itch, something that truly matters. And so I basically made this list of requirements for if I was going to do another company. And the one thing I knew in the back of my head that Twitch took eight years to become successful, And so whatever I do, I better be willing to commit, you know, at least 10 years to something. And when you think about things from that perspective, You certainly, I think, raise the bar on what you choose to work on. So for me, the three things were it had to be something where the technology itself determines the success of the product, like hard, really juicy technology problems, because that's what motivates me. And then it had to have a direct and positive impact on society in some way. So an example would be like, you know, healthcare, self-driving cars, because they save lives, other things where there's a clear connection to somehow improving other people's lives. And the last one is it had to be a big business because for the positive impact to matter, it's got to be a large scale. And I was thinking about that for a while. And I made like a, I tried writing a Gmail clone and looked at some other ideas. And then it just sort of light bulb went off like self-driving cars. Like that was the most fun I had ever had in college working on that. And like, well, what's the state of the technology has been 10 years. Maybe, maybe times have changed and maybe now is the time to make this work. And I poked around and looked at the only other thing out there really at the time was the Google self-driving car project. And I thought, surely there's a way to have an entrepreneur mindset and sort of solve the minimum viable product here. And so I just took the plunge right then and there and said, this is something I know I can commit 10 years to. It's probably the greatest applied AI problem of our generation. And if it works, it's going to be both a huge business and therefore probably the most positive impact I can possibly have on the world. After that light bulb went off, I went all in on cruise immediately and got to work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you have an idea how to solve this problem? Which aspects of the problem to solve? You know, slow, like we just had Oliver from Voyage here, slow moving retirement communities. urban driving, highway driving. Did you have a vision of the city of the future where, you know, the transportation is largely automated, that kind of thing? Or was it sort of more fuzzy and gray area than that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My analysis of the situation is that Google had been putting a lot of money into that project. They had a lot more resources. And they still hadn't cracked the fully driverless car. You know, this is 2013, I guess. So I thought what what can I do to sort of go from zero to? You know significant scale so I can actually solve the real problem, which is the driverless cars, and I thought here's the strategy We'll start by doing a really simple problem or solving a really simple problem that creates value for people. So I eventually ended up deciding on automating highway driving, which is relatively more straightforward as long as there's a backup driver there. And the go-to-market will be able to retrofit people's cars and just sell these products directly. And the idea was we'll take all the revenue and profits from that and use it to sort of reinvest that in research for doing fully driverless cars. And that was the plan. The only thing that really changed along the way between then and now is we never really launched the first product. We had enough interest from investors and enough of a signal that this was something that we should be working on, that after about a year of working on the highway autopilot, we had it working at a prototype stage. but we just completely abandoned that and said we're gonna go all in on driverless cars now is the time. Can't think of anything that's more exciting and if it works, more impactful, so we're just gonna go for it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The idea of retrofit is kind of interesting. Yeah. Being able to, it's how you achieve scale. It's a really interesting idea. Is it something that's still in the back of your mind as a possibility?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not at all. I've come full circle on that one. trying to build a retrofit product, and I'll touch on some of the complexities of that. And then also having been inside an OEM and seeing how things work and how a vehicle is developed and validated, when it comes to something that has safety critical implications, like controlling the steering and other control inputs on your car, it's pretty hard to get there with a retrofit. Or if you did, even if you did, it creates a whole bunch of new complications around liability, or how did you truly validate that? Or, you know, something in the base vehicle fails and causes your system to fail, whose fault is it? Or if the car's anti-lock brake systems or other things kick in, or the software has been, it's different in one version of the car you retrofit versus another, and you don't know because the manufacturer has updated it behind the scenes. There's basically an infinite list of long tail issues that can get you. And if you're dealing with a safety critical product, that's not really acceptable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a really convincing summary of why it's really challenging. But I didn't know all that at the time. So we tried it anyway. But as a pitch also at the time, it's a really strong one because that's how you achieve scale. And that's how you beat the current, the leader at the time of Google or the only one in the market." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The other big problem we ran into, which is perhaps the biggest problem from a business model perspective, is we had kind of assumed that we started with an Audi S4 as the vehicle we retrofitted with this highway driving capability. And we had kind of assumed that if we just knock out like three making models of vehicles that'll cover like 80% of the San Francisco market. Doesn't everyone there drive, I don't know, a BMW or a Honda Civic or one of these three cars. And then we surveyed our users and we found out that it's all over the place. We would, to get even a decent number of units sold, we'd have to support like, you know, 20 or 50 different models. And each one is a little butterfly that takes time and effort to maintain, you know, that retrofit integration and custom hardware and all this. So it was a, it was a tough business." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So GM manufactures and sells over nine million cars a year. And what you with Cruise are trying to do some of the most cutting edge innovation in terms of applying AI. And so how do those, you've talked about a little bit before, but it's also just fascinating to me. We work a lot of automakers. you know, the difference between the gap between Detroit and Silicon Valley, let's say, just to be sort of poetic about it, I guess. How do you close that gap? How do you take GM into the future where a large part of the fleet will be autonomous, perhaps?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I want to start by acknowledging that GM is made up of tens of thousands of really brilliant, motivated people who want to be a part of the future. It's pretty fun to work with them. The attitude inside a car company like that is embracing this transformation and change rather than fearing it. I think that's a testament to So that's really great. So that starting from that position makes it a lot easier. So then when. The, the people in San Francisco at cruise interact with the people at GM, at least we have this common set of values, which is that we really want this stuff to work because we think it's important. And we think it's the future. And we think it's the future. And we think it's the future. And we think it's the future. That's not to say, you know, those two cultures don't clash. They absolutely do. There's different, different sort of value systems. Like in a car company, the thing that gets you promoted and, and sort of the reward system is following the processes, delivering the, the, the program on time and on budget. So any sort of risk-taking is discouraged in many ways because. If a program is late, or if you shut down the plant for a day, it's, you know, you can count the millions of dollars that burn by pretty quickly. Whereas I think, you know, most Silicon Valley companies and in cruise and the methodology we were employing, especially around the time of the acquisition, the reward structure is about trying to solve these complex problems in any way, shape, or form, or coming up with crazy ideas that 90% of them won't work. Meshing that culture of continuous improvement and experimentation with one where everything needs to be rigorously defined up front so that you never slip a deadline or miss a budget was a pretty big challenge. we're over three years in now after the acquisition. And I'd say like, you know, the investment we made in figuring out how to work together successfully and who should do what and how we bridge the gaps between these very different systems and way of doing engineering work is now one of our greatest assets, because I think we have this really powerful thing. But for a while, it was both both GM and crews were very steep on the learning curve." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, I'm sure it was very stressful. It's really important work because that's how to revolutionize the transportation, really to revolutionize any system. You know, you look at the healthcare system or you look at the legal system. I have people like Laura's come up to me all the time, like everything they're working on can easily be automated. But then that's not a good feeling. Yeah. Well, it's not a good feeling, but also there's no way to automate because the entire infrastructure is really, you know, based is older and it moves very slowly. And so, so how do you close the gap between I have an, how can I replace, of course, lawyers don't want to be replaced with an app, but you could replace a lot of aspect. when most of the data is still on paper. And so the same thing was with automotive. I mean, it's fundamentally software. So it's basically hiring software engineers. It's thinking a software world. I mean, I'm pretty sure nobody in Silicon Valley has ever hit a deadline. So, and then on GM. That's probably true. Yeah. And GM side is probably the opposite. Yeah. So that's, that culture gap is really fascinating. So you're optimistic about the future of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, from what I've seen, it's impressive. And I think, especially in Silicon Valley, it's easy to write off building cars, because people have been doing that for over 100 years now in this country. And so it seems like that's a solved problem. But that doesn't mean it's an easy problem. And I think it would be easy to sort of overlook that and think that we're Silicon Valley engineers. We can solve any problem. Building a car, it's been done. Therefore, it's not a real engineering challenge. But after having seen just the sheer scale and magnitude and industrialization that occurs inside of an automotive assembly plant, that is a lot of work that I am very glad that we don't have to reinvent to make self-driving cars work. And so to have, you know, partners who have done that for a hundred years now, these great processes and this huge infrastructure and supply base that we can tap into is just remarkable because the scope and surface area of, of the problem of deploying fleets of self-driving cars is so large that we're constantly looking for ways to do less. So we can focus on the things that really matter more. And if we had to figure out how to build and assemble and, you know, yeah, build the cars themselves. I mean, we, we work closely with Jim on that, but if we had to develop all that capability in house as well, you know, that, that would just make, make the problem really intractable, I think. So, yeah, just like your first." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "entry at the MIT DARPA challenge when there was what the motor that failed. If somebody that knows what they're doing with a motor did it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would have been nice if we could focus on the software and not the hardware platform." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Right. So from your perspective now, you know, there's so many ways that autonomous vehicles can impact society in the next year, five years, 10 years. What do you think is the biggest opportunity to make money in autonomous driving? sort of make it a financially viable thing in the near term. What do you think will be the biggest impact there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the things that, that drive the economics for fleets of self-driving cars are there, there's sort of a handful of variables. One is. You know, the cost to build the vehicle itself. So the material cost, how many, you know, what's the cost of all your sensors plus the cost of the vehicle and every, all the other components on it. Another one is the lifetime of the vehicle. It's very different if your vehicle drives a hundred thousand miles and then it falls apart versus, you know, 2 million." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then, you know, if you have a fleet, it's kind of like an airplane where, or a airline where once, um, you produce the vehicle, you want it to be in operation as many hours a day as possible producing revenue. And then, you know, the other piece of that is. How are you generating revenue? And I think that's kind of what you're asking. And I think the obvious things today are, you know, the ride sharing business, because that's pretty clear that there's demand for that. There's existing markets you can tap into. And, um, large urban areas, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I think that there are some real benefits to having cars without drivers compared to sort of the status quo for people who use ride share services today. You know, you get privacy, consistency, hopefully significantly improved safety, all these benefits versus the current product, but it's a, it's a, it's a crowded market. And then, uh, other opportunities, which you've seen a lot of activity in the last, really in the last six to 12 months is, uh, you know, delivery, whether that's parcels and packages, uh, food or, or groceries. Um, those are all sort of, I think, opportunities that are, that are pretty ripe. for these, you know, once you have this core technology, which is the fleet of autonomous vehicles, there's all sorts of different business opportunities you can build on top of that. But I think the important thing, of course, is that there's zero monetization opportunity until you actually have that fleet of very capable driverless cars that are that are as good or better than humans. And that's, sort of where the entire industry is sort of in this holding pattern right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, they're trying to achieve that baseline. So, but you said sort of reliability, not reliability, consistency. It's kind of interesting. I think I heard you say somewhere, I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but you know, I can imagine a situation where you would get an autonomous vehicle and you know, when you get into an Uber or Lyft, you don't get to choose the driver in a sense that you don't get to choose the personality of the driving. Do you think there's room to define the personality of the car, the way it drives you, in terms of aggressiveness, for example? In terms of sort of pushing the boundaries? One of the biggest challenges in autonomous driving is the trade-off between sort of safety and assertiveness. And do you think there's any room for the human to take a role in that decision? To accept some of the liability, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't, no, I'd say within reasonable bounds, as in we're not going to, I think it'd be highly unlikely we'd expose any knob that would let you significantly increase safety risk. I think that's just not something we'd be willing to do. But I think driving style or like, you know, are you going to relax the comfort constraints slightly or things like that? All of those things make sense and are plausible. I see all those as, you know, nice optimizations. Once again, we get the core problem solved in these fleets out there, but. The other thing we've sort of observed is that you have this intuition that if you sort of slam your foot on the gas right after the light turns green and aggressively accelerate, you're going to get there faster. But the actual impact of doing that is pretty small. You feel like you're getting there faster, but So the same would be true for AVs. Even if they don't slam the pedal to the floor when the light turns green, they're going to get you there within, if it's a 15 minute trip, within 30 seconds of what you would have done otherwise if you were going really aggressively. So I think there's this sort of self-deception that my aggressive driving style is getting me there faster." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so that's some of the things I study, some of the things I'm fascinated by, the psychology of that. I don't think it matters that it doesn't get you there faster. It's the emotional release. Driving is a place, being inside of a car, somebody said it's like the real world version of being a troll. So you have this protection, this mental protection, and you're able to sort of yell at the world, like release your anger, whatever it's about. So there's an element of that that I think Autonomous vehicles would also have to, you know, giving an outlet to people, but it doesn't have to be through driving or honking or so on. There might be other outlets. But I think to sort of even just put that aside, the baseline is really, you know, that's the focus, that's the thing you need to solve and then the fun human things can be solved. So from the baseline of just solving autonomous driving, you're working in San Francisco, one of the more difficult cities to operate in. What is, in your view, currently the hardest aspect of autonomous driving? Is it negotiating with pedestrians? Is it edge cases of perception? Is it planning? Is there mechanical engineering? Is it data, fleet stuff? What are your thoughts on the more challenging aspects there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good question. I think before we go to that, though, I like what you said about the psychology aspect of this, because I think one observation I've made is I think I read somewhere that I think it's maybe Americans on average spend over an hour a day on social media, like staring at Facebook. And so that's just 60 minutes of your life you're not getting back. It's probably not super productive. And so that's 3,600 seconds. That's that's time. You know, it's a lot of time you're giving up and if you compare that to People being on the road if another vehicle whether it's a human driver or autonomous vehicle delays them by even three seconds They're laying in on the horn, you know, even though that's that's you know one one thousandth of the time they waste looking at Facebook every day, so there's There's definitely some, you know, psychology aspects of this, I think that are pretty interesting road rage in general. And then the question of course, is if everyone is in self-driving cars, do they even notice these three second delays anymore? Cause they're doing other things or reading or, uh, working or just talking to each other. So it'll be interesting to see where that goes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In a certain aspect, people need to be distracted by something entertaining, something useful inside the car, so they don't pay attention to the external world. And then they can take whatever psychology and bring it back to Twitter and focus on that as opposed to sort of interacting, putting the emotion out there into the world. So it's an interesting problem, but baseline autonomy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I guess you could say self-driving cars at scale will lower the collective blood pressure of society probably by a couple points without all that road rage and stress. So that's a good externality. Um, so back to your question about the, um, technology and the, the, the, I guess the biggest problems. And I have a hard time answering that question because, you know, we've been at this. Like specifically focusing on driverless cars and all the technology needed to enable that for a little over four and a half years now. And even a year or two in, I felt like we had. completed the functionality needed to get someone from point A to point B. As in, if we need to do a left turn maneuver, or if we need to drive around a double parked vehicle into oncoming traffic, or navigate through construction zones, the scaffolding and the building blocks was there pretty early on. And so the challenge is not any one scenario or situation for which we fail at 100% of those. It's more, you know, we're benchmarking against a pretty good or pretty high standard, which is human driving. All things considered, humans are excellent at handling edge cases and unexpected scenarios where computers are the opposite. And so beating that, that, uh, baseline set by humans is the challenge. And so what we've been doing for quite some time now is basically. it's this continuous improvement process where we find sort of the most, you know, uncomfortable or the things that could lead to a safety issue, other things, all these events, and then we sort of categorize them and rework parts of our system to make incremental improvements and do that over and over and over again. And we just see sort of the overall performance of the system You know, actually increasing in a pretty steady clip, but there's no one thing. There's actually like thousands of little things and just like polishing functionality and making sure that it handles, you know, every ver every version and possible permutation of a situation. by either applying more deep learning systems or just by adding more test coverage or new scenarios that we develop against and just grinding on that. We're sort of in the unsexy phase of development right now, which is doing the real engineering work that it takes to go from prototype to production." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're basically scaling the grinding, sort of taking seriously the process of all those edge cases both with human experts and machine learning methods to cover all those situations." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And the exciting thing for me is I don't think that grinding ever stops because there's a moment in time where you cross that threshold of human performance and become superhuman. But there's no reason, there's no first principles reason that AV capability will tap out anywhere near humans. Like there's no reason it couldn't be 20 times better, whether that's, you know, just better driving or safer driving or more comfortable driving, or even a thousand times better given enough time. And we intend to basically chase that, you know, forever to build the best possible product." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Better and better and better. And always new edge cases come up and new experiences. So, and you want to automate that process as much as possible. So what do you think in general in society, when do you think we may have hundreds of thousands of fully autonomous vehicles driving around? So first of all, predictions, nobody knows the future. You're a part of the leading people trying to define that future, but even then you still don't know. But if you think about hundreds of thousands of vehicles, so a significant fraction of vehicles in major cities are autonomous. Do you think, are you with Rodney Brooks, who is 2050 and beyond, or are you more with Elon Musk, who should have had that two years ago?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, I'd love to have it two years ago, but, um, we're not there yet. So I guess the, the way I would think about that is let's, let's flip that question around. So what would prevent you to reach hundreds of thousands of vehicles?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's a good, that's a good, uh, rephrasing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So the, I'd say the, it seems the consensus. among the people developing self-driving cars today is to sort of start with some form of an easier environment, whether it means, you know, lacking inclement weather or, you know, mostly sunny or whatever it is, and then add capability for more complex situations over time. And so if you're only able to deploy in areas that meet sort of your criteria, or the current domain, you know, operating domain of the software you developed, that may put a cap on how many cities you could deploy in. But then as those restrictions start to fall away, like maybe you add, you know, capability to drive really well and, and safely in heavy rain or snow. You know, that, that probably opens up the market by two or two or three fold in terms of the cities you can expand into and so on. And so the real question is, you know, I know today, if we wanted to. We could produce that, that many autonomous vehicles, but we wouldn't be able to make use of all of them yet. Cause we would sort of saturate the demand, um, in the cities in which we would want to operate initially. So if I were to guess like what the timeline is for those things falling away and reaching hundreds of thousands of vehicles." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe a range is better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say less than five years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Less than five years. Yeah. And of course you're working hard to make that happen. So you started two companies that were eventually acquired for each $4 billion. So you're a pretty good person to ask, what does it take to build a successful startup? Hmm." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, uh, there's, there's sort of survivor bias here a little bit, but I can try to find some common threads for the things that worked for me, which is. You know, I, in, in both of these companies, I was really passionate about the core technology. I actually like, you know, lay awake at night thinking about these problems and how to solve them. And I think that's helpful because when you start a business, there are. to this day, there are these crazy ups and downs. One day you think the business is just on top of the world and unstoppable. And the next day you think, okay, this is all going to end. It's just going south and it's going to be over tomorrow. And so I think having a true passion that you can fall back on and knowing that you would be doing it even if you weren't getting paid for it helps you weather those tough times. So that's one thing. I think the other one is really good people. So I've always been surrounded by really good co-founders that are logical thinkers, are always pushing their limits and have very high levels of integrity. So that's Dan Kahn and my current company and actually his brother and a couple other guys for Justin TV and Twitch. And then I think the last thing is just, I guess, persistence or perseverance, like, and that that can apply to sticking to sort of, or having conviction around the original premise of your idea and sticking around to do all the, you know, the unsexy work to actually make it come to fruition, including dealing with, you know, whatever it is that you, that you're not passionate about, whether that's finance or, or HR or, or operations or those things, as long as you are grinding away and working towards, you know, that North star for your business, whatever it is, and you don't give up. And you're making progress every day. It seems like eventually you'll end up in a good place. And the only things that can slow you down are, you know, running out of money, or I suppose your competitors destroying you. But I think most of the time it's, it's people giving up or, or somehow destroying things themselves rather than being beaten by their competition or running out of money." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, if you never quit, eventually you'll arrive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a much more concise version of what I was trying to say. It was good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you went the Y Combinator route twice. What do you think, in a quick question, do you think is the best way to raise funds in the early days? Or not just funds, but just community, develop your idea and so on. Can you do it solo or maybe with a co-founder, like self-funded? Do you think Y Combinator's good? Is it good to do VC route? Is there no right answer or is there, from the Y Combinator experience, something that you could take away that that was the right path to take?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no one size fits all answer, but if your ambition, I think is to. you know, see how big you can make something or, or, or rapidly expand and capture a market or solve a problem or whatever it is, then, then, you know, going the venture back route is probably a good approach so that, so that capital doesn't become your primary constraint. Y Combinator, I love because it puts you in this, uh, sort of competitive environment where you're, where you're surrounded by, you know, the top, maybe 1% of other really highly motivated, you know, Peers who are in the same same place and that that environment I think just breeds breed success, right? If you're surrounded by really brilliant, hardworking people, you're going to feel, you know, sort of compelled or inspired to, to try to emulate them and, or beat them. And, uh, so even though I had done it once before and I felt like. Yeah, I'm pretty self-motivated. I thought like, look, this is going to be a hard problem. I can use all the help I can get. So surrounding myself with other entrepreneurs is going to make me work a little bit harder or push a little harder than it's worth it. And so that's why, why I did it, you know, for example, the second time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's go philosophical, existential. If you go back and do something differently in your life, starting in high school and MIT, leaving MIT, you could have gone the PhD route, doing the startup, going to see about a startup in California, or maybe some aspects of fundraising. Is there something you regret, something you, not necessarily regret, but if you go back, you could do differently?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I've made a lot of mistakes, like, you know, pretty much everything you can screw up, I think I've screwed up at least once. But I, you know, I don't regret those things. I think it's, it's hard to, it's hard to look back on things, even if they didn't go well and call it a regret, because hopefully, you know, it took away some new knowledge or learning from that. So I would say there was a period. Yeah. The closest I can, I can come to is there's a period in, in Justin TV, I think after seven years where You know, the company was going one direction, which is towards Twitch in video gaming, and I'm not a video gamer. I don't really even use Twitch at all. And I was still working on the core technology there, but my heart was no longer in it because the business that we were creating was not something that I was personally passionate about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It didn't meet your bar of existential impact." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and I'd say I probably spent an extra year or two working on that. And, and I'd say like, I would have just tried to do something different sooner. Because those are those were two years where I felt like I you know, from this philosophical or existential thing, I just, I just felt that something was missing. And so I would have, I would have, if I could look back now and tell myself, it's like, I would have said exactly that. Like, you're not getting any meaning out of your work personally right now. You should, you should find a way to change that. And that's, that's part of the pitch I use to basically everyone who joins cruise today. It's like, Hey, you've got that now by coming here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or maybe you needed the two years of that existential dread to develop the feeling that ultimately it was the fire that created Cruise. So you never know. Good theory. Yeah. So last question, what does 2019 hold for Cruise?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "After this, I guess we're going to go and I'll talk to your class. But one of the big things is going from prototype to production for autonomous cars. And what does that mean? What does that look like? 2019 for us is, is the year that we try to cross over that threshold and reach, you know, superhuman level of performance to some degree with the software and, uh, have all the other of the thousands of little building blocks in place to, to launch, um, you know, our, our first, uh, commercial product. So that's, that's what's in score for us or in store for us. And we've got. A lot of work to do. We've got a lot of brilliant people working on it. So it's, it's all up to us now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, from Charlie Miller and Chris Vells, like the people I've crossed paths with. It sounds like you have an amazing team. So, like I said, it's one of the most, I think, one of the most important problems in artificial intelligence of the century. It'll be one of the most defining. It's super exciting that you work on it. And the best of luck in 2019. I'm really excited to see what Cruise comes up with." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I want to sort of separate that out into two things. Yes, I think we're living in a dream of sorts. No, I don't think we're living in a simulation. I think we're living on a planet with a very thin layer of atmosphere and the planet is in a very large space and the space is full of other planets and stars and quasars and stuff like that. And I don't think those physical objects, I don't think the matter in that universe is simulated. I think it's there. We are definitely, or, there's a whole problem with saying definitely, but in my opinion, I'll just go back to that. I think it seems very like we're living in a dream state. I'm pretty sure we are. And I think that's just to do with the nature of how we experience the world. We experience it in a subjective way. And the thing I've learned most as I've got older in some respects is, is the degree to which reality is counterintuitive and that the things that are presented to us as objective turn out not to be objective and quantum mechanics is full of that kind of thing, but actually just day-to-day life is full of that kind of thing as well. So my understanding of the way the brain works is you get some information to hit your optic nerve and then your brain makes its best guess about what it's seeing or what it's saying it's seeing. It may or may not be an accurate best guess. It might be an inaccurate best guess. And that gap, the best guess gap, means that we are essentially living in a subjective state, which means that we're in a dream state. So I think you could enlarge on the dream state in all sorts of ways. So yes, dream state, no simulation would be where I'd come down." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So going further, deeper into that direction, you've also described that world as psychedelia. So on that topic, I'm curious about that world. On the topic of psychedelic drugs, do you see those kinds of chemicals that modify our perception as a distortion of our perception of reality or a window into another reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think what I'd be saying is that we live in a distorted reality and then those kinds of drugs give us a different kind of distorted perspective. Yeah, exactly. They just give an alternate distortion. And I think that what they really do is they give they give a distorted perception, which is a little bit more allied to daydreams or unconscious interests. So if for some reason you're feeling unconsciously anxious at that moment, and you take a psychedelic drug, you will have a more pronounced unpleasant experience. And if you're feeling very calm or happy, you might have a good time. But yeah, so if I'm saying we're starting from a premise, our starting point is we were already in the, slightly psychedelic state, what those drugs do is help you go further down an avenue, or maybe a slightly different avenue, but that's all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that movie, Annihilation, the the shimmer, this alternate dream-like state is created by, I believe, perhaps, an alien entity. Of course, everything's up to interpretation, right? But do you think there's, in our world, in our universe, do you think there's intelligent life out there? And if so, how different is it from us humans?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One of the things I was trying to do in Annihilation was to offer up a form of alien life that was actually alien. Because it would often seem to me that in the way we would represent aliens in books or cinema or television or any one of the sort of storytelling mediums, is we would always give them very human-like qualities. So they wanted to teach us about galactic federations, or they wanted to eat us, or they wanted our resources, like our water, or they want to enslave us, or whatever it happens to be. But all of these are incredibly human-like motivations. And I was interested in the idea of an alien that was not in any way like us. It didn't share maybe it had a completely different clock speed, maybe its way... So we're talking about, we're looking at each other, we're getting information, light hits our optic nerve, our brain makes the best guess of what we're doing. Sometimes it's right, something, you know, the thing we were talking about before. What if this alien doesn't have... an optic nerve, maybe its way of encountering the space it's in is wholly different. Maybe it has a different relationship with gravity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The basic laws of physics it operates under might be fundamentally different. It could be a different time scale and so on." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or it could be the same underlying laws of physics. You know, it's a machine created, or it's a creature created in a quantum mechanical way. It just ends up in a very, very different place to the one we end up in. So, part of the preoccupation with annihilation was to come up with an alien that was really alien and didn't give us And it didn't give us and we didn't give it any kind of easy connection between human and the alien. Because I think it was to do with the idea that you could have an alien that landed on this planet that wouldn't even know we were here. And we might only glancingly know it was here. There'd just be this strange point where the Venn diagrams connected, where we could sense each other or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in the movie, first of all, incredibly original view of what an alien life would be, and in that sense it's a huge success. Let's go inside your imagination. Did the alien, that alien entity, know anything about humans when it landed? No. So the idea is you're basically an alien life is trying to reach out to anything that might be able to hear its mechanism of communication? Or was it simply, was it just basically their biologist exploring different kinds of stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you see, this is the interesting thing is as soon as you say their biologist, you've done the thing of attributing human type motivations to it. I was trying to free myself from anything like that. So all sorts of questions you might answer about this notional alien, I wouldn't be able to answer because I don't know what it was or how it worked, you know. Yeah, I had some rough ideas, like it had a very, very, very slow clock speed. And I thought maybe the way it is interacting with this environment is a little bit like the way an octopus will change its color forms around the space that it's in. So it's sort of reacting to what it's... in to an extent, but the reason it's reacting in that way is indeterminate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But its clock speed was slower than our human life clock speed, but it's faster than evolution. faster than our evolution." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, given the four billion years it took us to get here, then yes, maybe it started at eight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If you look at the human civilization as a single organism, in that sense, this evolution could be us. The evolution of the living organisms on earth could be just a single organism and that's its life, is the evolution process that eventually will lead to probably the heat death of the universe or something before that. I mean, that's just an incredible idea. So you almost don't know, you've created something that you don't even know how it works." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because any time I tried to look into how it might work, I would then inevitably be attaching my kind of thought processes into it. And I wanted to try and put a bubble around it, where I was saying, no, this is alien in its most alien form. I have no real point of contact." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, unfortunately, I can't talk to Stanley Kubrick, so I'm really fortunate to get a chance to talk to you. On this particular notion, I'd like to ask it a bunch of different ways, and we'll explore it in different ways, but do you ever consider human imagination, your imagination, as a window into a possible future, and that What you're doing, you're putting that imagination on paper as a writer, and then on screen as a director, and that plants the seeds in the minds of millions of future and current scientists. And so your imagination, you putting it down, actually makes it a reality. So it's almost like a first step of the scientific method. You imagining what's possible in your new series with Ex Machina is actually inspiring you know, thousands of 12-year-olds, millions of scientists, and actually creating the future you've imagined?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, all I could say is that from my point of view, it's almost exactly the reverse, because I see that pretty much everything I do is a reaction to what scientists are doing. I'm an interested lay person, and I feel, you know, this individual, I feel that the most interesting area that humans are involved in is science. I think art is very, very interesting, but the most interesting is science. And science is in a weird place because maybe around the time Newton was alive, if a very, very interested layperson said to themselves, I want to really understand what Newton is saying about the way the world works, with a few years of dedicated thinking, they would be able to understand the sort of principles he was laying out. And I don't think that's true anymore. I think that's stopped being true now. So I'm a pretty smart guy. And if I said to myself, I want to really, really understand what is currently the state of quantum mechanics or string theory or any of the sort of branching areas of it, I wouldn't be able to. I'd be intellectually incapable of doing it because to work in those fields at the moment is a bit like being an athlete. I suspect you need to start when you're 12, you know. And if you start in your mid-20s, start trying to understand in your mid-20s, then you're just never gonna catch up. That's the way it feels to me. So, what I do is I try to make myself open. So, the people that you're implying maybe I would influence, to me, it's exactly the other way around. These people are strongly influencing me. I'm thinking they're doing something fascinating. I'm concentrating and working as hard as I can to try and understand the implications of what they say. And in some ways, often what I'm trying to do is disseminate their ideas into a means by which it can enter a public conversation. So Ex Machina contains lots of name checks, all sorts of existing thought experiments, you know, shadows on, you know, Plato's cave, and Mary in the black and white room, and all sorts of different long-standing thought processes about sentience, or consciousness, or subjectivity, or gender, or whatever it happens to be. And then I'm trying to marshal that into a narrative to say, look, this stuff is interesting, and it's also relevant, and this is my best shot at it. So, I'm the one being influenced in my..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "construction. That's fascinating. Of course, you would say that because you're not even aware of your own. That's probably what Kubrick would say too, right? In describing why how 9000 is created the way how 9000 is created, is you're just studying what's... But the reality, when the specifics of the knowledge passes through your imagination, I would argue that you're incorrect. in thinking that you're just disseminating knowledge, that the very act of your imagination consuming that science, it creates something, it creates the next step, potentially creates the next step. I certainly think that's true with 2001 A Space Odyssey. I think at its best, and if it fails... It's true of that, yeah, it's true of that, definitely. At its best, it plans something. It's hard to describe, but it inspires the next generation. And it could be field dependent. So your new series is more a connection to physics, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum computing. And yet Ex Machina is more artificial intelligence. I know more about AI. My sense that AI is much, much earlier in its, in the depth of its understanding. I would argue nobody understands anything to the depth that physicists do about physics. In AI, nobody understands AI, that there is a lot of importance and role for imagination, which I think, you know, we're in that, where Freud imagined the subconscious, we're in that stage of AI, where there's a lot of imagination needed, thinking outside the box." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's interesting. The spread of discussions and the spread of anxieties that exist about AI fascinate me. The way in which some people seem terrified about it whilst also pursuing it. And I've never shared that fear. about AI personally, but the way in which it agitates people, and also the people who it agitates, I find kind of fascinating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you afraid? Are you excited? Are you sad by the possibility, let's take the existential risk of artificial intelligence, by the possibility an artificial intelligence system becomes our offspring and makes us obsolete?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's a huge subject to talk about, I suppose. But one of the things I think is that humans are actually very experienced at creating new life forms, because that's why you and I are both here. And it's why everyone on the planet is here. And so something in the process of having a living thing that exists that didn't exist previously is very much encoded into the structures of our life and the structures of our societies. It doesn't mean we always get it right, but it does mean we've learned quite a lot about that. we've learned quite a lot about what the dangers are of allowing things to be unchecked and it's why we then create systems of checks and balances in our government and so on and so forth. I mean that's not to say The other thing is, it seems like there's all sorts of things that you could put into a machine that you would not be... So, with us, we sort of roughly try to give some rules to live by, and some of us then live by those rules and some don't. And with a machine, it feels like you could enforce those things. So, partly because of our previous experience and partly because of the different nature of a machine, I just don't feel anxious about it. I more, I just see all the good that, you know, broadly speaking, the good that can come from it. But that's just my, that's just where I am on that anxiety spectrum." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, it's kind of, there's a sadness, so we as humans give birth to other humans, right? But there's generations, and there's often in the older generation a sadness about what the world has become now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, that's kind of... Yeah, there is, but there's a counterpoint as well, which is that most parents would wish for a better life for their children. So there may be a regret about some things about the past, but broadly speaking, what people really want is that things will be better for the future generations, not worse. And so... And then it's a question about what constitutes a future generation. A future generation could involve people, it also could involve machines and... It could involve a sort of cross-pollinated version of the two. But none of those things make me feel anxious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It doesn't give you anxiety? Does it excite you? Like anything that's new?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It does. Not anything that's new. I don't think, for example, I've got, my anxieties relate to things like social media. So I've got plenty of anxieties about that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is also driven by artificial intelligence in the sense that there's too much information to be able to, an algorithm has to filter that information and present to you. So ultimately the algorithm, a simple, oftentimes simple algorithm is controlling the flow of information on social media. So that's another form of AI." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But at least my sense of it, I might be wrong, but my sense of it is that the algorithms have, an either conscious or unconscious bias, which is created by the people who are making the algorithms and sort of delineating the areas to which those algorithms are going to lean. And so, for example, the kind of thing I'd be worried about is that it hasn't been thought about enough how dangerous it is to allow algorithms to create echo chambers, say. But that doesn't seem to me to be about the AI or the algorithm. it's the naivety of the people who are constructing the algorithms to do that thing, if you see what I mean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. So in your new series, Devs, and we could speak more broadly, there's a, let's talk about the people constructing those algorithms, which in our modern society, Silicon Valley, those algorithms happen to be a source of a lot of income because of advertisements. So let me ask sort of a question about those people. Are current concerns and failures on social media, their naivety? I can't pronounce that word well. Are they naive? Are they, I use that word carefully, but evil in intent or misaligned in intent? I think that's a, do they mean well and just have an unintended consequence or is there something dark in them that results in them creating a company, results in that super competitive drive to be successful and those are the people that will end up controlling the algorithms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "at a guess, I'd say there are instances of all those things. So sometimes I think it's naivety. Sometimes I think it's extremely dark. And sometimes I think people are not being naive or dark. And then in those instances, there's sometimes, generating things that are very benign and other times generating things that despite their best intentions are not very benign. It's something, I think the reason why I don't get anxious about AI in terms of, or at least AIs that have, I don't know, a relationship with, some sort of relationship with humans is that I think that's the stuff we're quite well-equipped to understand how to mitigate. The problem is, is issues that relate actually to the power of humans or the wealth of humans. And that's where, that's where it's dangerous here and now. So... so what i see i'll tell you what i sometimes feel about silicon valley is that it's like wall street in the 80s um it it's rabidly capitalistic absolutely rabidly capitalistic and it's rabidly greedy but whereas In the 80s, the sense one had of Wall Street was that these people kind of knew they were sharks and in a way relished in being sharks and dressed in sharp suits and kind of lorded over other people and felt good about doing it. Silicon Valley has managed to hide its voracious Wall Street-like capitalism behind hipster t-shirts and, you know, cool cafes in the place where they set up there. And so, that obfuscates what's really going on, and what's really going on is the absolute voracious pursuit of money and power. So, that's where it gets shaky for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that veneer, and you explore that brilliantly, that veneer of virtue that Silicon Valley has. Which they believe themselves, I'm sure, for a long time. Okay, I hope to be one of those people. And I believe that. So as maybe a devil's advocate term poorly used in this case, What if some of them really are trying to build a better world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can't... I'm sure I think some of them are. I think I've spoken to ones who I believe in their heart feel they're building a better world. Are they not able to in a sense? No, they may or may not be. but it's just a zone with a lot of bullshit flying about. And there's also another thing, which is, this actually goes back to, I always thought about some sports that later turned out to be corrupt in the way that the sport, like who won the boxing match or how a football match got thrown or cricket match or whatever happened to be. And I used to think, well, look, if there's a lot of money, and there really is a lot of money, people stand to make millions or even billions, you will find corruption that's gonna happen. So it's in the nature of its voracious appetite that some people will be corrupt and some people will exploit and some people will exploit whilst thinking they're doing something good. But there are also people who I think are very, very smart and very benign and actually very self-aware. And so I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to wipe out the motivations of this entire area. But there are people in that world who scare the hell out of me. Yeah, sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I'm a little bit naive in that I don't care at all about money. You might be one of the good guys. Yeah, but so the thought is, but I don't have money. So my thought is if you give me a billion dollars, it would change nothing and I would spend it right away on investing it right back and creating a good world. But your intuition is that billion, there's something about that money that maybe slowly corrupts. the people around you, there's somebody gets in that corrupts your soul the way you view the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Money does corrupt, we know that, but there's a different sort of problem aside from just the money corrupts, you know. that we're familiar with throughout history. And it's more about the sense of reinforcement an individual gets, which is so, it effectively works like, the reason I earned all this money, and so much more money than anyone else, is because I'm very gifted. I'm actually a bit smarter than they are, or I'm a lot smarter than they are, and I can see the future in a way they can't. And maybe some of those people are not... particularly smart, they're very lucky, or they're very talented entrepreneurs. And there's a difference between, so in other words, the acquisition of the money and power can suddenly start to feel like evidence of virtue. And it's not evidence of virtue, it might be evidence of completely different things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's brilliantly put, yeah. Yeah, that's brilliantly put. So, I think one of the fundamental drivers of my current morality, let me just represent nerds in general, of all kinds, is constant self-doubt and the signals, you know, I'm very sensitive to signals from people that tell me I'm doing the wrong thing. But when there's a huge inflow of money, you just put it brilliantly that that could become an overpowering signal that everything you do is right. And so your moral compass can just get thrown off." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and that is not contained to Silicon Valley, that's across the board." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In general, yeah. Like I said, I'm from the Soviet Union. The current president is convinced, I believe, actually he wants to do really good by the country and by the world, but his moral compass may be off because... Yeah, I mean, it's the interesting thing about evil, which is that" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think most people who do spectacularly evil things think themselves they're doing really good things. They're not there thinking, I am a sort of incarnation of Satan. They're thinking, yeah, I've seen a way to fix the world and everyone else is wrong. Here I go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In fact, I'm having a fascinating conversation with a historian of Stalin, and he took power he actually got more power than almost any person in history. And he wanted, he didn't want power. He just wanted, he truly, and this is what people don't realize, he truly believed that communism will make for a better world. And he wanted power. He wanted to destroy the competition to make sure that we actually make communism work in the Soviet Union and then spread it across the world. He was trying to do good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's typically the case that that's what people think they're doing. And I think that, but you don't need to go to Stalin. I mean, Stalin, I think Stalin probably got pretty crazy. But actually, that's another part of it, which is that the other thing that comes from being convinced of your own virtue is that then you stop listening to the modifiers around you. And that tends to drive people crazy. It's other people that keep us sane. And if you stop listening to them, I think you go a bit mad. That also happens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's funny. Disagreement keeps us sane. To jump back for an entire generation of AI researchers, 2001, a space odyssey, put an image, the idea of human level, superhuman level intelligence into their mind. Do you ever, instead of jumping back to Ex Machina and talk a little bit about that, do you ever consider the audience of people who build the systems, the roboticists, the scientists that build the systems based on the stories you create? Which I would argue, I mean, there's literally most of the top researchers, about 40, 50 years old and plus, you know, that's their favorite movie, 2001 Space Odyssey. And it really is in their work, their idea of what ethics is, of what is the target, the hope, the dangers of AI is that movie. Do you ever consider the impact on those researchers when you create the work you do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Certainly not with Ex Machina in relation to 2001, because I'm not sure I'd be pleased if there was, but I'm not sure, in a way, there isn't a fundamental discussion of issues to do with AI that isn't already and better dealt with by 2001. 2001 does a very, very good account of of the way in which an AI might think and also potential issues with the way the AI might think. And also then a separate question about whether the AI is malevolent or benevolent. And 2001 doesn't really, it's a slightly odd thing to be making a film when you know there's a preexisting film, which is not a really superb job." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's questions of consciousness, embodiment, and also the same kinds of questions. Could you, because those are my two favorite AI movies. So can you compare Hal 9000 and Eva, Hal 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey and Eva from Ex Machina? In your view, from a philosophical perspective." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But they've got different goals. The two AIs have completely different goals. I think that's really the difference. So in some respects, Ex Machina took as a premise how do you assess whether something else has consciousness? So it was a version of the Turing test, except instead of having the machine hidden, you put the machine in plain sight in the way that we are in plain sight of each other and say, now assess the consciousness. And the way it was illustrating the way in which you'd assess the state of consciousness of a machine is exactly the same way we assess the state of consciousness of each other. And in exactly the same way that in a funny way, your sense of my consciousness is actually based primarily on your own consciousness. That is also then true with the machine. And so it was actually about how much of the sense of consciousness is a projection rather than something that consciousness is actually containing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And has Plato's cave, I mean, you really explored, you could argue that how sort of Space Odyssey explores idea of the Turing test for intelligence, not test, there's no test, but it's more focused on intelligence. And Ex Machina kind of goes around intelligence and says the consciousness of the human-to-human, human-to-robot interaction is more interesting, more important, at least the focus of that particular movie." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's about the interior state and what constitutes the interior state and how do we know it's there. And actually, in that respect, Ex Machina is as much about consciousness in general, as it is to do specifically with machine consciousness. And it's also interesting, you know that thing you started asking about, the dream state, and I was saying, well, I think we're all in a dream state because we're all in a subjective state. One of the things that I became aware of with Ex Machina is that the way in which people reacted to the film was very based on what they took into the film. So many people thought Ex Machina was the tale of a sort of evil robot who murders two men and escapes. And she has no empathy, for example, because she's a machine. Whereas I felt, no, she was a conscious being with a consciousness different from mine, but so what, imprisoned and made a bunch of value judgments about how... to get out of that box. And there's a moment which sort of slightly bugs me, but nobody ever has noticed it, and it's years after, so I might as well say it now, which is that after Ava has escaped... She crosses a room, and as she's crossing a room, this is just before she leaves the building, she looks over her shoulder and she smiles. And I thought, after all the conversation about tests, in a way, the best indication you could have of the interior state of someone is if they are not being observed. and they smile about something. They're smiling for themselves. That, to me, was evidence of Ava's true sentience, whatever that sentience was." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's really interesting. We don't get to observe Ava much or something like a smile in any context, except through interaction, trying to convince others that she's conscious, that's beautiful. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, yeah. But it was a small, in a funny way, I think maybe people saw it as an evil smile, like, ha, you know, I fooled them. But actually it was just a smile. And I thought, well, in the end, after all the conversations about the test, that was the answer to the test. And then off she goes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if we align, if we just to linger a little bit longer on Hal and Ava, do you think in terms of motivation, what was Hal's motivation? Is Hal good or evil? Is Ava good or evil?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ava's good, in my opinion. And Hal is neutral. Because I don't think Hal is presented as having a sophisticated emotional life. He has a set of paradigms, which is that the mission needs to be completed. I mean, it's a version of the paperclip." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know? The idea that it's a super intelligent machine, but it's just performed a particular task. And in doing that task may destroy everybody on earth or may achieve undesirable effects for us humans. Precisely, yeah. But what if..." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "At the very end, he says something like, I'm afraid, Dave. But that may be he is on some level experiencing fear, or it may be this is the terms in which it would be wise to stop someone from doing the thing they're doing, if you see what I mean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, absolutely. Actually, that's funny. that's such a small, short exploration of consciousness that I'm afraid. And then you just with Ex Machina say, okay, we're gonna magnify that part and then minimize the other part. So that's a good way to sort of compare the two. If you could just use your imagination and if Ava sort of, I don't know, ran the, was president of the United States, so had some power. So what kind of world would you want to create? If we, as you kind of say, good. And there is a sense that she has a really, like there's a desire for a better human to human interaction, human to robot interaction in her. But what kind of world do you think she would create with that desire?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's a really, that's a very interesting question. I'm gonna approach it slightly obliquely, which is that if a friend of yours got stabbed in a mugging, and you then felt very angry at the person who'd done the stabbing, but then you learned that it was a 15-year-old, and the 15-year-old, both their parents were addicted to crystal meth, and the kid had been addicted since he was 10, and he really never had any hope in the world, and he'd been driven crazy by his upbringing, and... did the stabbing, that would hugely modify, and it would also make you wary about that kid then becoming president of America. And Ava has had a very, very distorted introduction into the world. So, although there's nothing, as it were, organically within Ava that would lean her towards badness, it's not that robots or sentient robots are bad. She did not... Her arrival into the world was being imprisoned by humans. So I'm not sure she'd be a great president." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The trajectory through which she arrived at her moral views have some dark elements." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I like Ava. Personally, I like Ava. Would you vote for her? I'm having difficulty finding anyone to vote for in my country or if I lived here in yours." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a yes, I guess, because of the competition." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "She could easily do a better job than any of the people we've got around at the moment. I'd vote her over Boris Johnson." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what is a good test of consciousness? We talk about consciousness a little bit more. If something appears conscious, is it conscious? You mentioned the smile, which seems to be something done. I mean, that's a really good indication because it's a tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it. But does the appearance from a robotics perspective of consciousness mean consciousness to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't think you could say that fully, because I think you could then easily have a thought experiment which said, we will create something which we know is not conscious, but is going to give a very, very good account of seeming conscious. And also, it would be a particularly bad test where humans are involved, because humans are so quick to project sentience into things that don't have sentience. So someone could have their computer playing up and feel as if their computer is being malevolent to them when it clearly isn't. So of all the things to judge consciousness, us, we're empathy machines." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the flip side of that, the argument there is because we just attribute consciousness to everything almost, anthropomorphize everything including Roombas, that maybe consciousness is not real, that we just attribute consciousness to each other. So you have a sense that there is something really special going on in our mind. that makes us unique and gives us subjective experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's something very interesting going on in our minds. I'm slightly worried about the word special because it nudges towards metaphysics and maybe even magic. I mean, in some ways, something magic-like, which I don't think is there at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, if you think about, so there's an idea called panpsychism that says consciousness is in everything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't buy that. I don't buy that. Yeah, so the idea that there is a thing that it would be like to be the sun. Yeah, no, I don't buy that. I think that consciousness is a thing. My sort of broad modification is that usually the more I find out about things, the more illusory our instinct is, and is leading us into a different direction about what that thing actually is. That happens, it seems to me, in modern science, that happens a hell of a lot, whether it's to do with even how big or small things are. So my sense is that consciousness is a thing, but it isn't quite the thing, or maybe very different from the thing that we instinctively think it is. So it's there, it's very interesting, but we may be in sort of quite fundamentally misunderstanding it for reasons that are based on intuition." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I have to ask, this is kind of an interesting question. The Ex Machina, for many people, including myself, is one of the greatest AI films ever made. It's number two for me. Thanks." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's definitely not number one. If it was number one, I'd really have to... Anyway, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Whenever you grow up with something, it's in the blood. But one of the things that people bring up You can't please everyone, including myself. This is what I first reacted to the film, is the idea of the lone genius. This is the criticism that people say, sort of, me as an anti-racist, I'm trying to create what Nathan is trying to do. So there's a brilliant series called Chernobyl. Yes, it's fantastic. Absolutely spectacular. I mean, they got so many things brilliantly right. But one of the things, again, the criticism there. Yeah, they conflated lots of people into one. Into one character that represents all nuclear scientists, Ilana Komyak. it's a composite character that presents all the scientists. Is this the way you were thinking about that or is it just simplifies the storytelling? How do you think about the lone genius?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'd say this, the series I'm doing at the moment is a critique in part of the lone genius concept. So yes, I'm sort of oppositional and either agnostic or atheistic about that as a concept. I mean, Not entirely, you know. We're the lone, lone is the right word, broadly isolated, but Newton clearly exists in a sort of bubble of himself in some respects, so does Shakespeare." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think we would have an iPhone without Steve Jobs? I mean, how much contribution from a genius?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But Steve Jobs clearly isn't a lone genius because there's too many other people in the sort of superstructure around him who are absolutely fundamental to" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to that journey. But you're saying Newton, but that's a scientific, so there's an engineering element to building Ava." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But just to say, what Ex Machina is, is really, it's a thought experiment. I mean, so it's a construction of putting four people in a house, nothing about Ex Machina adds up in all sorts of ways, in as much as that, who built the machine parts? Did the people building the machine parts know what they were creating? And how did they get there? And it's a thought experiment. So it doesn't stand up to scrutiny of that sort." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think it's actually that interesting of a question. but it's brought up so often that I had to ask it because that's exactly how I felt after a while. There's something about, there was almost a defense, like I watched your movie the first time, at least for the first little while, in a defensive way, like how dare this person try to step into the AI space and try to beat Kubrick. That's the way I was thinking, because it comes off as a movie that really is going after the deep fundamental questions about AI. So there's a kind of a, you know, nerds do this, I guess, automatically searching for the flaws. I do exactly the same. I think in Annihilation and the other movie, I was able to free myself from that much quicker that it is a thought experiment. There's, you know, who cares if there's batteries that don't run out, right? Those kinds of questions. That's the whole point. But it's nevertheless something I wanted to bring up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's a fair thing to bring up. For me, you hit on the lone genius thing. For me, it was actually, people always said, Hex Machina makes this big leap in terms of where AI has got to and also what AI would look like if it got to that point. There's another one, which is just robotics. I mean, look at the way Ava walks around a room. It's like, forget it, building that. That's also got to be a very, very long way off. And if you did get there, would it look anything like that? It's a thought experiment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Actually, I disagree with you. I think the way Isabelle Arena, Alicia Vikander, brilliant actress, actor that moves around, that we're very far away from creating that, but the way she moves around is exactly the definition of perfection for a roboticist. It's like smooth and efficient. So it is where we wanna get, I believe. So I hang out with a lot of humanoid robotics people. They love elegant, smooth motion like that. That's their dream. So the way she moved is actually what I believe they would dream for a robot to move. It might not be that useful to move that sort of that way, but that is the definition of perfection in terms of movement. Drawing inspiration from real life, so for devs, for Ex Machina, look at characters like Elon Musk. What do you think about the various big technological efforts of Elon Musk and others like him that he's involved with, such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink? Do you see any of that technology potentially defining the future worlds you create in your work? So Tesla is automation, SpaceX is space exploration, Neuralink is brain-machine interface, somehow a merger of biological and electric systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In a way, I'm influenced by that almost by definition, because that's the world I live in, and this is the thing that's happening in that world. And I also feel supportive of it. So I think amongst various things, Elon Musk has done, I'm almost sure he's done a very, very good thing with Tesla for all of us. It's really kicked all the other car manufacturers in the face. It's kicked the fossil fuel industry in the face, and they needed kicking in the face, and he's done it. And so, that's the world he's part of creating, and I live in that world. Just bought a Tesla, in fact. And so, does that play into whatever I then make? In some ways, it does, partly because I try to be a writer who, quite often, filmmakers are in some ways fixated on the films they grew up with, and they sort of remake those films in some ways. I've always tried to avoid that. And so I look to the real world to get inspiration and as much as possible sort of by living, I think. And so, yeah, I'm sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which of the directions do you find most exciting? Space travel. space travel, so you haven't really explored space travel in your work. You've said something like if you had unlimited amount of money, I think I read it at AMA, that you would make like a multi-year series of space wars or something like that. So what is it that excites you about space exploration?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, because if we have any sort of long-term future, it's that. It just simply is that. energy and matter are linked up in the way we think they're linked up, we'll run out if we don't move. So we've got to move. But also how can we not? It's built into us to do it or die trying. I was on Easter Island a few months ago, which is, as I'm sure you know, in the middle of the Pacific and difficult for people to have got to, but they got there. And I did think a lot about the way those boats must have set out into something like space. it was the ocean, and how sort of fundamental that was to the way we are. And it's the one that most excites me because it's the one I want most to happen. It's the thing, it's the place where we could get to as humans. Like in a way, I could live with us never really, fully unlocking the nature of consciousness. I'd like to know, I'm really curious. But if we never leave the solar system, and if we never get further out into this galaxy, or maybe even galaxies beyond our galaxy, that feels sad to me, because it's so limiting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's something hopeful and beautiful about reaching out, any kind of exploration, reaching out across Earth centuries ago and then reaching out into space. So what do you think about colonization of Mars? So go to Mars. Does that excite you, the idea of a human being stepping foot on Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It does. It absolutely does. But in terms of what would really excite me, it would be leaving the solar system. In as much as that, I just think I think we already know quite a lot about Mars. But yes, listen, if it happened, that would be... I hope I see it in my lifetime. I really hope I see it in my lifetime. It would be a wonderful thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Without giving anything away, but... The series begins with the use of quantum computers. The new series begins with the use of quantum computers to simulate basic living organisms. Or actually, I don't know if quantum computers are used, but basic living organisms simulated on a screen. It's a really cool kind of demo." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's right. Yes, they are using a quantum computer to simulate a nematode." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So returning to our discussion of simulation, or thinking of the universe as a computer, do you think the universe is deterministic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there a free will? So with the qualification of, what do I know, because I'm a layman, right? Layperson. But with big imagination. Thanks. With that qualification, yeah, I think the universe is deterministic and I see absolutely, I cannot see how free will fits into that. So yes, deterministic, no free will. That would be my position." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And how does that make you feel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It partly makes me feel that it's exactly in keeping with the way these things tend to work out, which is that we have an incredibly strong sense that we do have free will. uh and just as we have an incredibly strong sense that time is a constant and uh turns out probably not to be the case or definitely in the case of time but but but it's the problem i always have with free will is that it gets i can never seem to find the place where it is supposed to reside" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and yet you explore." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just a bit of very, very, but we have something we can call free will, but it's not the thing that we think it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But free will, so to you, what we call free will is just- What we call it is the illusion of it. It's a subjective experience of the illusion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, which is a useful thing to have, and it partly comes down to although we live in a deterministic universe, our brains are not very well equipped to fully determine the deterministic universe, so we're constantly surprised and feel like we're making snap decisions based on imperfect information, so that feels a lot like free will. It just isn't. That's my guess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in that sense, your sort of sense is that you can unroll the universe forward or backward and you will see the same thing. I mean, that notion... Yeah, sort of, sort of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But yeah, sorry, go ahead." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that notion is a bit uncomfortable to think about, that you can roll it back. and forward." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if you were able to do it, it would certainly have to be a quantum computer, something that worked in a quantum mechanical way in order to understand a quantum mechanical system, I guess." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so that unrolling, there might be a multiverse thing where there's a bunch of branching." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, exactly. Because it wouldn't follow that every time you roll it back or forward, you'd get exactly the same result." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which is another thing that's hard to wrap my mind around." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but that, yes, but essentially what you just described, that yes, forwards and yes, backwards, but you might get a slightly different result." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or very different, though. Or very different. Along the same lines, you've explored some really deep scientific ideas in this new series. And I mean, just in general, you're unafraid to ground yourself in some of the most amazing scientific ideas of our time. What are the things you've learned or ideas you find beautiful and mysterious about quantum mechanics, multiverse, string theory, quantum computing that you've learned?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I would have to say every single thing I've learned is beautiful. One of the motivators for me is that I think that people tend not to see scientific thinking as being essentially poetic and lyrical, but I think that is literally exactly what it is. And I think the idea of entanglement or the idea of superpositions or the fact that you could even demonstrate a superposition or have a machine that relies on the existence of superpositions in order to function to me, is almost indescribably beautiful. It fills me with awe. It fills me with awe. And also, it's not just a sort of grand, massive awe of... But it's also delicate. It's very, very delicate and subtle. And it has these beautiful sort of nuances in it, and also these completely paradigm changing. thoughts and truths. So it's as good as it gets, as far as I can tell. So broadly, everything. That doesn't mean I believe everything I read in quantum physics, because obviously a lot of the interpretations are completely in conflict with each other. And who knows whether string theory will turn out to be a good description or not. But the beauty in it, it seems undeniable. And I do wish people more readily understood how beautiful and poetic science is, I would say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Science is poetry. In terms of quantum computing being used to simulate things, or just in general, the idea of simulating small parts of our world, which actually current physicists are really excited about simulating small quantum mechanical systems on quantum computers, but scaling that up to something bigger like simulating life forms. How do you think, what are the possible trajectories of that going wrong or going right if you unroll that into the future?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "well, if a bit like Ava and her robotics, you park the sheer complexity of what you're trying to do. The issues are, I think it will have a profound If you were able to have a machine that was able to project forwards and backwards accurately, it would in an empirical way show, it would demonstrate that you don't have free will. So the first thing that would happen is people would have to really take on a very, very different idea of what they were. The thing that they truly, truly believe they are, they are not. And so that I suspect would be very, very disturbing to a lot of people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think that has a positive or negative effect on society? The realization that you are not, you cannot control your actions, essentially, I guess, is the way that could be interpreted." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, although in some ways we instinctively understand that already, because in the example I gave you of the kid in the stabbing, we would all understand that that kid was not really fully in control of their actions. So it's not an idea that's entirely alien to us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I don't know, we understand that. I think there's a bunch of people who see the world that way, but not everybody." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, true. But what this machine would do is prove it beyond any doubt, because someone would say, well, I don't believe that's true. And then you'd predict, well, in 10 seconds, you're going to do this. And they'd say, no, no, I'm not. And then they'd do it. And then determinism would have played its part, or something like that. But actually, the exact terms of that thought experiment probably wouldn't play out. But still, broadly speaking, you could predict something happening in another room, sort of unseen, I suppose, that foreknowledge would not allow you to affect. What effect would that have? I think people would find it very disturbing. But then after they'd got over their sense of being disturbed, which by the way, I don't even think you need a machine to take this idea on board. But after they've got over that, they'd still understand that even though I have no free will and my actions are in effect already determined, I still feel things. I still care about stuff. I remember my daughter saying to me, she got hold of the idea that my view of the universe made it meaningless. And she said, well, then it's meaningless. And I said, well, I can prove it's not meaningless because you mean something to me and I mean something to you. So it's not completely meaningless because there is a bit of meaning contained within this space. And so, with a lack of free will space. You could think, well, this robs me of everything I am. And then you'd say, well, no, it doesn't because you still like eating cheeseburgers and you still like going to see the movies. And so how big a difference does it really make? But I think initially people would find it very disturbing. I think that what would come if you could really unlock with a determinism machine everything, there'd be this wonderful wisdom that would come from it. And I'd rather have that than not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a really good example of a technology revealing to us humans something fundamental about our world, about our society. So it's almost this creation is helping us understand ourselves. The same can be said about artificial intelligence. So what do you think us creating something like Ava will help us understand about ourselves? How will that change society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I would hope it would teach us some humility. Humans are very big on exceptionalism, you know? America is constantly proclaiming itself to be the greatest nation on Earth, which it may feel like that if you're an American, but it may not feel like that if you're from Finland, because there's all sorts of things you dearly love about Finland. And exceptionalism is usually bullshit. probably not always, if we both sat here we could find a good example of something that isn't, but as a rule of thumb. And what it would do is it would teach us some humility and about, you know, actually often that's what science does in a funny way, it makes us more and more interesting, but it makes us a smaller and smaller part of the thing that's interesting. And I don't mind that humility at all. I don't think it's a bad thing. Our excesses don't tend to come from humility. Our excesses come from the opposite, megalomania and stuff. We tend to think of consciousness as having some form of exceptionalism attached to it. I suspect if we ever unravel it, it will turn out to be less than we thought. in a way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And perhaps your very own exceptionalist assertion earlier on in our conversation that consciousness is something belongs to us humans, or not humans but living organisms, maybe you will one day find out that consciousness is in everything. And that will humble you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If that was true, it would certainly humble me. Although maybe, almost maybe, I don't know. I don't know what effect that would have. I sort of, I mean, my understanding of that principle is along the lines of say, that an electron has a preferred state, or it may or may not pass through a bit of glass it may reflect off, or it may go through, or something like that. And so, that feels as if a choice has been made. But if I'm going down the fully deterministic route, I would say there's just an underlying determinism that has defined that, that has defined the preferred state or the reflection or non-reflection. But look, yeah, you're right. If it turned out that there was a thing that it was like to be the sun, then... I'd be amazed and humbled, and I'd be happy to be both. That sounds pretty cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you'll say the same thing as you said to your daughter, but it's nevertheless feels something like to be me, and that's pretty damn good. Yeah. So Kubrick created many masterpieces, including The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange, but to me, He will be remembered, I think, to many a hundred years from now for 2001 Space Odyssey. I would say that's his greatest film. I agree. You are incredibly humble. I've listened to a bunch of your interviews and I really appreciate that you're humble in your creative efforts in your work. But if I were to force you a gunpoint... Do you have a gun? You don't know that. The mystery is to imagine 100 years out into the future. What will Alex Garland be remembered for from something you've created already or feel you may feel somewhere deep inside you may still create?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay, well, I'll take the question in the spirit it was asked, but very generous. Gunpoint. Yeah. What I What I try to do, so therefore what I hope, yeah, if I'm remembered what I might be remembered for, is as someone who participates in a conversation. And I think that often what happens is people don't participate in conversations, they make proclamations, they make statements. And people can either react against the statement or can fall in line behind it. And I don't like that. So, I want to be part of a conversation. I take as a sort of basic principle, I think I take lots of my cues from science, but one of the best ones, it seems to me, is that when a scientist has something proved wrong that they previously believed in, they then have to abandon that position. So I'd like to be someone who is allied to that sort of thinking. So part of an exchange of ideas. And the exchange of ideas for me is something like, people in your world show me things about how the world works. And then I say, this is how I feel about what you've told me. And then other people can react to that. And it's not to say this is how the world is. It's just to say, it is interesting to think about the world in this way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the conversation is one of the things I'm really hopeful about in your works. The conversation you're having is with the viewer in the sense that you are bringing back, you and several others, but you very much so, sort of intellectual depth to cinema, to now series, sort of allowing film to be something that, yeah, sparks a conversation, is a conversation, lets people think, allows them to think." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "We had assembled in a very small office that we are having in Connecticut, very few people. There were five, I think. And in another place, what we call the Data Monitoring Committee, which is a group of experts, independent experts. They're on Pfizer. We're going to have the opportunity to unblind the data and then tell us if the study needs to continue or if it is successful or if it fails. And we were waiting for their call. So the call came a little bit later than what we expected, which created a lot of anxiety to all of us. but came around, I think, two o'clock." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're just sitting there waiting. What were you feeling?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sitting there waiting and teasing one another, drinking coffee, making jokes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how did you feel like when you heard the results, the successful results?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "free, liberated, happy. Like if a huge weight that was on my shoulders was lifted." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I heard you said I love you to the team." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I did. This is how we speak in Mediterranean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Listen, maybe it's the Russian thing too. I love love, so I appreciate that kind of celebration. So looking back from that moment to before, how much did it cost to develop the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine? What was it like making the decision to make that investment when the risk is very high and you don't know if it's going to be successful?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, we do a lot of that anyway. This is what we do in our daily work. We are putting money. We are investing in research, which is highly risky. The difference in that case was that we didn't risk at all. We put it all in. We put everything in one go so that we don't lose time. Usually we'll spend 50 millions. And then if that goes well, then we will spend another 50. And then if it goes well, then 100. Here we put all together. a little bit more than $2 billion, $2.3 billion. And it was a significant decision, but it was a very easy decision to make in the context of what we were living at that time. It was a pandemic. People were scared. We were scared. We didn't know how tomorrow would look like. We were living unprecedented situations and we knew that we have capabilities that may help. So there was not a second question or choice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We go all in. When you make decisions like that, you're the CEO of a company that needs to make money and that hopes to do a lot of good in the world. How much of both of those things are part of the calculation? So when you said it was an obvious choice, I think you've said a bunch of things of the kind of saying we need to go all in, sort of very boldly diving in. How much was that that the world is facing uncertainty and fear and a potentially destructive pandemic in the early days, just when you're seeing the full uncertainty before us, don't know how it's going to unroll and how much of it is, this may also be a good financial decision to take this risk." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think about it all the time and I know very well that if you focus too much on making money, you will never make. You should focus in what is the real. value driver. And the real value driver, it is to make breakthroughs that change patients' lives. If you don't do that, you will never make money. If you do that, don't worry. Things will fall into place and also money will follow. but the mentality of the companies to be how to help the patient. And that's what the management was that the shareholders want, because that's the only way that we can create value. In this particular case, we're not thinking at all about what are we going to make when we sell it or if not sell it, because what we were focusing 100% was how to bring a solution to the world that will help all of us change the way, the fear that was bring hope to the world. And as always, when you do that, you will have good returns as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On a philosophical level, on a human level, do you ever worry that the pressure to cover the costs that were invested, to develop a new drug, to develop this vaccine, harms your ability to conduct unbiased studies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ah, not at all, because the studies are highly regulated. Everybody knows what regulators, and when I say regulators, FDA, European authorities, UK authorities, Israeli authorities, Japanese authorities, Canadian authorities, want to see how the study needs to be conducted and what exactly they need to see to approve it or not. So clearly everybody takes into consideration how much money I'm going to invest and what is the chances that I'm going to lose them. But what you can do is just to change the rules of the game so that you won't lose the money. There are very well-established methodologies that would say, with very high precision, if your medicine is effective, if your medicine is safe. And those are there for all and all playing with the same rules." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "do you have an intuition about why is the FDA trying to get 75 years to release the Pfizer data? They're trying to request that it will not be released for 75 years. And then maybe the broader version of that question is do you think people should have sort of full transparency and immediate access to the data? Immediate, you know, on the scale of weeks, not years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the relations with regulators, they have been always very transparent and there are a lot of laws that they are forcing regulators and companies to put out there, their interactions and what exactly was discussed. Now, to go into specific details of some discussions, I don't know what is the reason that FDA wants to take the time, but I'm sure they have very good reasons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me just say, my side of it, it doesn't look like a good reason. It looks like, maybe it's because I come from the Soviet Union. Now, this is not you saying this, this is me saying this, is there seems to be a bureaucracy that gets in the way of transparency. That's always the challenge with government. So government is very good at setting rules and making sure there's oversight over companies and people and so on, but they create, they slow things down, which is a feature and a bug. And in this case, they slowed down so much. I think the reason they set it at 75 years is because they set a rate of being able to only review 500 pages of data a day or something like that. And that's a very kind of bureaucratic thing, where in reality, you could just show the data. And it's not like something is being hidden, but in the battle to win people's trust, to inspire them with science, it feels like transparency is one of the most beautiful things. one of the most powerful things that the FDA has. FDA has the potential to be one of the great institutions of our country. And this is one example that it feels to me like a failure. So in your perspective, you're saying, I'm sure they have a good reason. So to you, the FDA is this black box that you submit things to, once they approve, you know that those are the rules, it's approved, that's it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But this is not a black box. we know very well what is the process. Everybody knows very well what are the processes. The review process also, it is very detailed. They have scientists of very, very high caliber. Not every regulator in the world, but the Europeans, the BRIDGE, the FDA, clearly, they have very, very high caliber of scientists that they are going into a lot of details. And also, Basically everything for a study is really released by law in the specifications of the product, but it's a very detailed document that it is issued and has basically the essence of everything was discussed. I don't know about specific documents if take them time to release, but clearly this is not a black box type of process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A lot of this stuff is how do you effectively communicate to the world about the incredible science that's been done, about the processes that were followed. I agree with you. And sometimes it's just ineloquence in communication. It's not that there's a failure of process, it's ineloquence of communication and silence. Silence in the moment when clearly a lot of people are bothered. and have questions, this is when you speak out and you explain exactly why, as opposed to letting the sort of distrust build up and linger. Because the result is there's a very large percentage of the population that just, I mean, it divides people, and science suffers, I think. And also the effectiveness of solutions suffers, like the vaccine and so on. I asked a few folks I know if they had challenging questions for you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm sure many of them answered your call." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, yeah, you know, many friendly folks out there. By the way, I'm sweating, not because this is a difficult conversation, it is, but it's also hot in here for the record. So one of the folks is Mr. Jordan Peterson. I don't know if you know who that is. He's a psychologist and intellectual and author. He suggested to me that I raise the concern that there's a close working relationship between Pfizer, FDA, and CDC. So we talked about FDA. Do you worry that this affects both positive and negative? Pfizer's chances of getting drugs approved. The fact that there's people that worked at the FDA that now work at Pfizer, Pfizer FDA, that there's a kind of pipeline. Does this worry you that it affects your ability to do great unbiased work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have zero doubts that this is not affecting at all their ability to be unbiased and regulate. And in order to, the system also reinforces that by creating significant time barriers. If someone moves from an industry to FDA, he won't be able to deal with topics for a period of time, and then for even an enhanced period of time with topics that are related with a company he or she may come from. I think these regulators, they are really very strict. Rightly so. If anything, I feel sometimes that maybe they should be a little bit more open-minded, particularly when it comes to new technologies, rather than trying to judge and implement the same framework of variation of new technologies to all. They are always as regulators in the conservative side, but always, always, they are unbiased and they are trying the best. And it's not only one or two people. They have processes to make sure that there are self checks and balances within the agencies, both in CDC and in the FDA. Difficult decisions, they bring external experts. that they should express. Easy decisions, they are internal issues that they are debating a lot. And if there are disagreements, they elevate them. So I think we are lucky to have good regulators. I think I agree with what you said before, as with all governmental agencies, there is bureaucracy and the bureaucracy needs to be addressed. And by saying bureaucracy is not relaxing the The bar needs to remain high, but focusing on what matters rather than on the detail." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't, you know, I've been reading quite a bit about history. You don't worry about human nature and corruption that can seep in. You're saying institutionally there's protections against this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there is always the fear of corruption, particularly when you speak about public servants, but clearly the risk is very different country by country. and speaking about an agency by agency, I think the regulatory agencies have a very good track record and history of the U.S., of Europe, of England, of very, very good track record of integrity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's something I think about, so I grew up in the Soviet Union and I need to perhaps introspect this a little bit, but when I was growing up, ethically, there was a sense that bribery is the only way you can get stuff done. That was the system of the time. Like you get pulled over by a police officer, like obviously you need to bribe them. It was like the way of life. And then so coming to this country, it was beautiful to see that the rule of law has so much power. And ultimately, the rule of law, when enacted, when it holds up, it gives people freedom to do the best work of their lives. But there's still human nature. And that worries me a lot here. And again, it goes back to the perception, the communication, when there's people that have worked at Pfizer and at FDA, at the CDC, you look at their resume, they have those things on their resume, it worries people. Are these great leaders that we are supposed to see as authorities, are they playing a game on us?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say that I recognize what you said about what happened or what I'm sure that what you describe in the country that you're coming from, it was how you experienced it. And I know that there are other countries that you need to do these things to do your job. I don't think it's the case in this country, particularly when it comes to those agencies that you mentioned. I think they have a very high track record. And also, I don't think that there are a lot of people that are worried about it or doubt it. I'm sure, like everywhere, there will be a minority, but the vast majority of the Americans, the vast majority of the Europeans, the vast majority of the Brits, the vast majority of the Israelis, they trust what FDA or EMA or CDC or MHRA will say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Still, there's currently a distrust of big pharma in the public. Maybe this is something I'd love to hear your comment on. There's distrust of science when it's tangled up with corporations and government institutions like we've talked about. But they have to be entangled to achieve scale. oversight and to achieve the kind of scale that Pfizer's been able to accomplish. How can Pfizer regain the public trust? How can you regain the public trust, do you think? Not regain, but sort of take steps to increase the public trust." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Reputation is something that... you can lose in buckets, but you can win back in drops. And once you lost it, you are going to take a lot of effort to bring it back. And the pharmaceutical industry lost it. It's clear that the reputation of the industry in the last decade was on the lowest that we have seen ever. And there are many reasons for that. but clearly there are reasons that are related also with the behavior of the industry. That needed to change and I'm hopeful that very few will disagree that the industry is a very different industry right now. That being said, I truly believe that if there is one lesson that stands out from the many lessons that we learned during COVID, is the power of science in the hands of the private sector. I think it was the private sector that came with solutions with diagnostic tests when we didn't have, solutions with respirators when we didn't have, solutions with treatments, solutions with vaccines. I think that demonstrated very clearly to the world the value of a thriving life sciences sector, private life sciences sector, to society. That also affected very positively the reputation, both of the sector and of Pfizer. I'm not going to make the mistake to consider it given. I'm not going to make the mistake that because our reputation is high, that will remain so. We need to earn it every day. Every day with everything we do, with everything we say, with the way we behave. And I hope that we will rise to this occasion and we will do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've been at Pfizer for 28 years. Time flies when you're having fun. And you've become CEO in 2019. It is a company you love, a company you believe in. It's a company that has developed drugs, that has helped millions of people. So let me ask yet another hard question. on this topic of reputation. In 2009, Pfizer pleaded guilty to the illegal marketing of arthritis drug Bextra and agreed to a $2.3 billion settlement. How do you make sense of the fact that this happened to a company you love and that you believe in? Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Bextra case in 2009 was related to things that happened in 2003. And the things that happened in 2003 were things that basically several of our reps did off-label promotion. So they spoke about, with the physicians, about off-label use of the product, and they shouldn't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And- Can you clarify that? So off-label are things that the FDA didn't approve, extra stuff. You basically say this drug does extra stuff that the FDA never approved." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct. And this is something that it is allowed when physicians are speaking to physicians, but it is not allowed for the pharmaceutical companies to refer to these studies, because usually are studies that are happening off-label. And apparently several of our reps in 2003, they did it. And we had to settle in 2009, and we paid a very big fine, as you said. The fine was related not to the severity of the conduct, but the size of the revenues. So the fines are, if Bextra was a small product, we would get a small fine. Bextra was a very big product, and we got a very large fine. Very bad, what happened in 2003. I don't think that these things happened since then. We have a stellar record from 2009 until now of complying with every single regulation and rule. We have internal processes to make sure that these are not happening by individuals that may have an interest. For example, to get a promotion, they may try and do things that are not the right things. And we have, more importantly, a culture in this company that really sets aside people that they think differently. So I didn't like what happened in 2003. But I believe a lot has changed in the 20 years that followed, or almost 20 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're developing drugs, you're developing solutions to help millions of people, but there's risk involved. And so there will be lawsuits heading back your way because there's a lot of lawyers in the world, partially. How do you put that into the calculation of how you try to do good in the world? That some of the cost is the lawsuits. How do you not fall victim to thinking that it's just the cost of doing business and that some of the lawsuits might actually represent real pain that people are going through?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that we try always to do the right thing. And that's, as I said, very well embedded into our culture. If you don't do the right thing, sooner or later, you will pay for it, one way or another. And right now, for us doing the right thing, it is being able to find innovations to issues that are real, diseases that they do not have good coverage, good treatments right now. We try to find treatments that significantly surpass the current standards of care. And we try not only to comply with what regulators are asking us to do, this is what you need to do to prove the safety or the efficacy, but exceed them. No matter what we do on that, I'm sure that people will find opportunity because as you said, there are a lot of lawyers to sue us. But we believe in the justice system. and to believe that eventually, if you are doing the right thing, you will be on the right side of the history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm really glad you say that because focusing on doing the right thing, no matter the money, I believe is the best way to make money. Just like you said. And also, in another way, in other realms, creating a product that people love is the best way to make money. So focusing on the core of the thing that makes people feel good, that brings value to people's lives. So I'm now in Austin, Texas. My good friend Joe Rogan, he's been highlighting to me this aggressive marketing on mainstream media channels by Pfizer. So let me ask a general marketing question. Do you see this as a conflict of interest? Is it my bias, the reporting of news? That a lot of us, a lot of people, me included, look to these mainstream channels of news for kind of authority of like, what the heck's going on in the world? And if Pfizer is sponsoring many of these shows, there's a worry, it may be a perception thing, but there's also a natural worry that it would influence what they're talking about, because they're afraid of losing the sponsorship. It's subtle, but at scale, it might have a serious impact. Do you worry about this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think people could go one way or another because of multiple reasons. From our perspective, I don't think we have aggressive marketing. What do we do? We go on TV and we are having ads about our products and they are highly regulated. I think it is the right of people to know, to learn that if there is a product like that, it's very clearly that we cannot say things that they are off-label, that have not been approved. We need to have, every time we go on TV, as you know, FDA is forcing us to say also the bad things that can happen. For a medicine, sometimes that takes more time than the good things. And I don't think that we are doing aggressive marketing. Now, people could be influenced and can be biased in the podcasts or in the other type of media activities that they have for multiple different reasons." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I know, but it's still, it's pressure, it's human nature. I mean, one of it is perception, but I worry about it, too. I have a ton of sponsors for this podcast, for example, and none of them ever ask me to anything. They're just, you know, I think likely that kind of pressure's not happening for Pfizer, but there's implied pressure sometimes. And I worry about that a lot because I look at academia Like, I look for the good in people. I tend to believe most people are good or have the capacity to be good and the desire to be good. When I came to MIT, I was a little bit disappointed, maybe heartbroken, how much pressure I think unjustified pressure, people felt from financial constraints, especially at MIT when there's, I think, a lot of money. People still felt constraints, and they weren't, it wasn't bringing out the best in them. They weren't supporting each other, they weren't loving each other, like celebrating each other's successes. I don't wanna blame money on everything, money constraints, but when you have sponsors, it just, I personally worry that it doesn't bring the best out of people. And so I feel like I want to put some responsibility on sponsors and great big companies like Pfizer to kind of not... get in the way of the best of human nature, whether it's sponsoring podcasts, mainstream media, like, I don't know, athletes, whatever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You need to know that we are so, so careful with sponsorships. First of all, we have very few, very, very few. We have a team that for every single one could be $2,000. they will try to see if there is a conflict of interest in the way we do it. And also what is the reputation of the persons or the programs that we are sponsoring. So I don't think our friend, I think was from Texas. Yes. Yeah. I don't think he got it right that we do those types of things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We don't. Oh, in terms of like having a negative effect on- Not even having aggressive sponsorships." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We have very few. Yeah, when you clip them all together. And most of the sponsorship that we have, it is more on patient-related organizations rather than, we are very careful not to sponsor other things that can be perceived, not even influenced, but perceived that we may influence. So we are very, very careful on that. This is not the case with us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So with the incredibly fast development of the vaccine, Could you tell me the story from the engineering to the science to the human story of how you could do it so fast? By November, you even had the ambition to do it by October. It was in the initial days. How do you- Eight days later. In that time, how do you show that the vaccine is safe and effective given that I think previous vaccines have taken years to do that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The vaccines take years to do that. And the time that it takes, it is basically the vast majority of the time to conduct the final phase three study, what is the confirmatory study. And you do that because the phase three study cost a lot of money. In our case, it cost almost a billion. So you don't want to go and risk a billion in blinded data normally before you do a lot of experiments to make sure that the product that you're putting in the phase three is the right one. We didn't have that time, so we risk all the money. So we went into, we condensed all the time towards this phase three. But the phase three study had to follow all the rules that any study follows when you do this trial." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Could you just briefly describe the basics of what is phase one, what is phase two, what is phase three?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's say that there are so many phases when you try, first of all, to find what is the right vaccine. We tried from 20 different vaccines, we nailed down to four. And for those four, we selected eventually two and then eventually one. Once you have those selections, what is the dose you're going to use? And then we tried multiple different doses to see which one we think is the best." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does trying entail in those early days?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You go, first of all, with smaller doses in humans. And then after you have done a lot of experiments in animals, so that you can feel that it is safe enough to go to humans and then go with very low dose. And then you gradually increase the dose and then you monitor those humans to make sure that there are not any, let's say, reactogenicity to what you are giving them. At the same time, you start to measure what it's doing in terms of immune responses. So you do that with multiple vaccines, and you do that with multiple doses, and you do that with multiple ages of people, young people, old people. And eventually, from the 20 vaccines to multiple doses to multiple schedules, is it after three weeks, the second dose, or is it after four weeks or after six months? All of that will inform you that I think this is the vaccine, this is the dose, this is the scheme that I believe will give me the best results. And when you have that, then you go to do what we call the phase three. This is a very big study with thousands of people where you use the vaccine that you think is the right one and a placebo. The placebo and the vaccine, they look identical. Nobody knows if he's injected a placebo or a vaccine. The physician that makes the injection, the doctor, doesn't know if he's injecting placebo or vaccine. He knows a barcode. Only the computer knows. in order to go into this computer, there are keys, and there are at least two people that needs to put their keys so that someone can see the data. And those people, they have legal obligations never to do that, right? So before a certain point. So all of that is blind. The idea is that when you go into this study, you need to make sure that you are going with the right one. That's why it takes so much time. But the study is the study. You need to have a significant number of people, that will give the two, and then you let them live their lives, and then you see how many of them will get the disease, and then you see if there are differences in percentage of infections for the vaccinated compared to the non-vaccinated. At the same time, you're monitoring all of them to see if there are differences in the safety profile. If those that got the placebo have the same, let's say, heart attacks with those that they didn't, they got the vaccine, because heart attacks will happen if you have 50,000 people, because it's part of life. All these processes are very well established and since years. What we did the last one was exactly the same as we did always. We just didn't lose time. We were not careful with money. Instead of recruiting 50,000 people over a year, because we had, let's say, 30 hospitals doing the recruitment, we went with 150 hospitals doing the recruitment. That cost a lot of money. but instead of recruiting them in a year, we recruited them in three, four months. So I did this type of things by taking return on investment, taking cost out of the equation, and we were able to achieve this result. But it's not the process, believe me. It is the heart of the people. People don't know what they can and what they cannot do. And if anything, they have a serious tendency to underestimate what they can do. And always, when you ask them something that is seemingly impossible, they will think out of the box to be able to deliver. We discussed about the timing. Instead of eight years, we then asked them to do it in six. We asked them to do it in eight months. Our normal manufacturing yearly production of Pfizer was 200 million doses of vaccines every year. That's what we are doing in the last 10 years. We didn't ask them to make 300 million doses for a new vaccine. We asked them to make 3 billion doses for a new vaccine. The discovery phase of a new molecule, like the treatment that we have now, the pill against COVID, takes four years. We didn't ask them to do it in three. We asked them to do it in four months, which is what they did. When you're setting this type of goals, they know immediately. They cannot just think within the box. And immediately, this is where the human ingenuity and the heart comes. And this is how they surprised all of us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's incredible science and engineering going on here. Absolutely. This is what's bothering me, that the conversation in public is often not about that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's about politics, unfortunately." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Politics. So I spent the day with Elon Musk yesterday. He works with rockets. Similar situation as with Pfizer in the sense that there's NASA and then there's this private company. And that's a source of incredible inspiration to people. No politics, very little politics. So this is part of the thing I'm trying to, I'm hoping to do our little part in this conversation to help untangle a little bit, just reveal the beauty and the power of the thing that was done here, especially with the vaccine, but other things that are being done with the antiviral drug. Let me just kind of linger on the safety. What can you say, there's a lot of people that are concerned that the Pfizer vaccine, by the way, of which I took two shots, no booster yet, is unsafe. What do you say to people that say that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, they should not fear something like that. It's completely wrong. There is no, medical product in the history of humanity that have been tested as much as this vaccine has been administered to hundreds of millions of people. And because of the importance of COVID, they have been scrutinized, those people, constantly. Right now, healthcare authorities are looking for every single signal around the world of people that they got the vaccine and try to see if it is vaccine related or not. There are electronic medical records that will tell us when and what happened to a person when he did get the vaccine. And we know now, we have so high certainty that it is so safe, exactly as the data sheet says about this vaccine, more than any other product. They should not be afraid of something like that. And they should not listen to information, but it is misinformation, but it is spread on purpose." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I don't like the word misinformation because, you know, again, back to the Soviet Union, Anyone who opposes the state is spreading misinformation. So you can basically call anything misinformation. That's the unfortunate times we live in. You can basically call anybody a liar and say I'm the sole possessor of the truth. And Jess, no offense to me, just because you wear a tie doesn't mean you're any more likely to be in the possession of the truth than anyone else. So- I wouldn't disagree with that at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think that- That's somebody who's not wearing a tie. And as you can, people can see that I'm not wearing a tie and you are. But it's not about being able, those that they have the power, to impose on the others the stigma that what you are saying is misinformation. But there are a few things that as a society we have accomplished, and science is one of them. And analytics of data is another one. And to say that something which is highly scientific by people that they are not scientists, I think that it is not what you're describing what used to happen in Soviet Union or in any other autocratic regime in the world right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I definitely do think that the scientists, the public science communicators I've listened to over COVID have really disappointed me because they have not spoken with empathy. They haven't sufficiently, in my view, have put their ego aside and really listened to people. Yes, people that don't have a PhD, people who have not really, you know, Maybe you've not even taken a biology course in college or something like that. But still, they have children, they worry, they fear, they don't know who to trust. They don't know if they should listen to the CEO of Pfizer, who might have other incentives in mind, who might just care about money and nothing else. And so they just use common sense and they ask questions. And I think to them, talking down to them as if they're not intelligent and so on is something scientists have done, almost like rolled their eyes, and that disappoints me, because I think that's kind of what is the source of division." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Look, humility is a virtue. Yes. And the fact that you are educated doesn't mean that you are having either humility or empathy, or you have good human qualities. This was never, and will never be, a metric of judging this type of virtues. Those that they do this, they're wrong. And actually, they are not doing good service to the public health because they're undermining. People are not stupid. They see if you're not respecting them and if you're not respecting their need to learn because that affects their health, the health of the mother, of the kids. So I fully agree with you that we should be very patient to explain again and again and again What is happening? And the vast majority of the people that they don't get vaccinations right now is because they're afraid. It's not for any other reason. It's not that they have an agenda. What I'm saying it is there is a small number of people that they have made business for them to profit from this anxiety. I'll give you an example. I have been arrested by FBI. This is what someone wrote. I read it, I laughed. I mean, okay, this is where they take it. There was a reason why they wrote it down. The Pfizer CEO was arrested by the FBI because they want to create doubts in the minds of the people that they're afraid and say, look, if FDA arrested him, likely I will not do the vaccine. But I laughed. A week later, the wife of the Pfizer CEO died. There is a picture in this website of my wife. someone sends to me now I'm pissed I'm not laughing I try to find my kids to tell them if you read something mom is fine don't worry then I remember that she has very old parents back in Greece we start calling them making sure because we know that that will be picked up by Greek newspapers and they will publish it, okay? They are those people that wrote these things. They know very well that my wife didn't die and died because she was vaccinated, right? So this is the narratives that they are on purpose forming to profit from the stress and the anxiety of good people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's something I have to kind of, people that listen to this that kind of doubt institutions, I do also want to say that there's quite a few folks who realize they can make money from saying the man is lying to you, the government is lying to you, it's all corrupt, it's all a scam, big pharma is lying to you, they're manipulating you. I'm surprised at how much money can be made with that. And it's sad. So you have to, just as people use their common sense to be skeptical when listening to politicians and powerful figures, they should be skeptical to also, when listening to sort of the conspiracy theorists, or not even the conspiracy theorists, but people who raise questions about institutions. Think on your own, think critically, with an open mind, that everyone could be manipulating you, but also everybody has the capacity to do good. And I think science in its pure form, not when entangled with institutions, is a beautiful thing. And in the hands of many companies, it is a beautiful thing at scale. Still, you have a lot of incentive as having created the vaccine at Pfizer, this incredible technology, to sing it praises. So there's a kind of, you know, people are skeptical, like how much do we trust, how excited Albert is about this vaccine? So for example, I mean, not to do a Shakespearean analysis of your Twitter, but I think you tweeted something about a study with 100% efficacy of the vaccine or in stopping a transmission or something like that. Do you regret, sort of being like over-representing the effectiveness of the vaccine, technically saying correct things, but just kind of like highlighting the super positive things that may be misinterpreted, you know, saying 100%. No, I never said something 100%." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Every time I speak, If a number is 100%, I rush to say that in biology there is nothing 100%. Because always there will be when you go to the millions, okay? There were in the study things that were 100%, for example, deaths. Or in South Africa, when we tried, there was 100% efficacy. Clearly, it's more numbers. When the numbers will become much bigger, the 100% will not hold, but will be 95, 96. So still, the direction of this is the point. So I'm very, very careful how I, what I tweet. And in addition to how careful I am, I have people that they are looking at and they're having second or third opinions to make sure that we don't put. Why? Because I know that people are listening to me right now, everything I say. And I want to make sure that they continue not only being clear as to what I want to say, so there are no misunderstandings, but also I maintain the trust of the people. I don't think that someone who only cherry-picks information and only emphasizes positive things, it's someone that is the one to be trusted. And I want me and Pfizer to be trusted." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So many felt the vaccine was presented as a cure that wouldn't require regular booster shots. Was that something you believed early on? Did you always believe that many regular shots would be required? And maybe in a bigger picture, how many, do you think this will, for the Pfizer vaccine, is it something you see that's taking a booster shot regularly, like annually? Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the beginning, when we had the first months of the vaccine, people would ask me, do we need another one? And I said, we don't know. I was very clear about it. Then around April, May, I started seeing the first data and I made statements that I think we will need a booster around eight to 12 months after the second dose. And then after that, annual revaccinations, this is what I said, believe is one of the most likely scenarios. And it was based on the data that I had, but then Delta came. And because I always making the caveat that with absent a new variant, with everything we know. With Delta, it was proven that we need the booster to move to the three, to the six months. And this is what happened. And I still said, I think the booster is a six months, and then I think it will be an annual revaccination, likely. We have to monitor to see the data, but this is the likely scenario. Now we have Omicron. And Omicron says that two doses might be challenging. We don't know exactly yet, but three doses work. So clearly a lot of countries already started moving now the third dose. not from six months to three, so that they will reduce the period that people will not be protected with the third dose. I don't know with Omicron if how long this will last. And frankly, I don't know if we will need a new vaccine tailor-made to Omicron based on everything we know so far. We are monitoring and we will know way more in the weeks to come. If there is a need for a new vaccine, we will have it. and if there is a need for mass production of this new vaccine, I can also feel very comfortable that we will not lose any of our capacity that we have developed. Right now we are running at one billion, almost, approximately, doses per quarter, four per year, and if we have to switch, and have half of that in the new, half of that in the old, we will do still four billion doses. So I think the world should feel very, very comfortable that if there is a need, we will be ahead of the virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you did, you delivered or produced three billion this year vaccines, and you're on track to do four billion next year. I mean, if we had, a lot more time when we talk about how the heck you achieve that kind of scale. It's truly incredible. Let me ask the policy question. What are your feelings about vaccine mandates in terms of, do you think the most effective way to vaccinate the population is to require it? Or do you go with the American way and give people the freedom to choose?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is a very difficult. topic and a very difficult decision for whoever needs to make it and clearly it's not me. It is the public health officials of every country that they have to make this decision. I have to make the decision for Pfizer employees and I had to balance the fear of those that they work, that they want to feel that the others are vaccinated, and the fear of those that they don't want to get the vaccine. And eventually, I came to the decision that we will mandate it at Pfizer. We are flexible. We are giving exceptions, of course, for health, maybe some religions, but we decided to mandate it. Now, at Pfizer, when we did this decision, we were at 90% vaccination rates when we said we are going to mandate it. And that took it up to 96. It works, right? This 10% was never going to move, I felt. Because no matter what, you have a small number of people that really are scared and they don't feel comfortable to do it, okay? It worked in our case. We took it to 96%. I'm happy for those people. A lot were not diseased and some were not dying. of those people. But it's not to me to say, because the debate, it's serious debate, and there are a lot of pros and cons if you need to push people, if you need to give them the freedom, and it comes with the territory. If you are elected to run a country, you should be ready to make difficult decisions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And no matter what decision you make, there will be fake stories written about you, as we talked about. You will not be able to please everyone. Yes. Well, let me just say that I think, again, coming from the Soviet Union, I think at the public level, at the federal level, mandates is, It's a really bad idea. Even if it's good for the health of the populace, there's something about preserving the freedom that's really powerful about this country. Like doing the hard work of convincing people to get vaccinated, to choose to get vaccinated if they want, but still have the freedom not to. That's a really powerful freedom. To me, it's super lazy to mandate. People should understand the science and want to get vaccinated. do you think children need to get vaccinated?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do. I do think that they need to get vaccinated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So age ranges five to 16. There's a lot of parents that, um, that fear for the wellbeing of their children. Can you empathize with those parents? Can you steel man their arguments against the vaccine for their children?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, because people know who I am. I had the opportunity to interact with parents before that was, let's say, approved. And there were so many, way more. that I had a lot of empathy because they were afraid for their kids because they didn't have a vaccine. And they were the ones that were speaking at that time. Bring me a vaccine. When are you going to bring me a vaccine? I really fear. I feel that this is unfair, but I'm protected. My husband is protected. My old son is protected. And my little sweetheart, because she's below the age, is not protected. Now that we have the vaccines, I'm sure that those that they are afraid of the vaccine, not of the disease, which are a smaller number, admittedly. Also, they will have, if they are afraid of them, I'm sure that they will be afraid even more about their kids because they love, I would say, more than they love themselves. So it's going to be this situation. And again, the same. How can we do to demonstrate, to convince people, to win the minds and the hearts of the people that this is the right thing to do?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about that calculation? Because the risk for kids is very low. Kids do die. Kids do go to the hospital from COVID. Yes. But the rate is very low." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The rate is lower, but kids, they do die. And how can you say that I'm not going to protect a kid for something that it is likely to happen? And it is not only that. What happens in the school when they stop the education process because a kid got the disease and they don't have vaccines so that they can control. It is such a big disruption and such a big risk for the health of the kids that it shouldn't be a debate look how many kids are having polio right now way fewer number than those that they're having coveting in the hospital but everybody's getting the vaccine it's um well polio was deadlier for kids but it's not now so why some a kid to do it now because it needs to be protected." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the unique thing about the COVID vaccine is it's a new type of technology too. So there's an extra concern. Choosing to vaccinate a child, you're making a choice that can potentially hurt them. That's the way parents that are hesitant about the vaccine think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think choosing to vaccinate children makes a choice so that something could not potentially hurt them, which is the disease. That's why we are doing vaccinations since ever. I know that there are people that they're concerned for themselves and for their kids. What I know it is that I'm a scientist and I'm a parent and I am telling you that vaccines is a very good thing for kids and thank God we were able to develop them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we've talked quite a bit about the vaccine, but there's an incredible new technology that Pfizer is developing with PaxLovid antiviral for COVID. Where does that stand? How does that work? And how are you able to develop it in four months, like you said, and all of that in just a few minutes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First of all, what this is about, this is a real game changer. This is a course of treatment that you get only if you get the disease, you get COVID. Then what happens is that you will take for five days, pills, day and night, and twice a day for five days. And instead of 10 people from those that are diseased to go to hospital, only one will go. This is an end, with all the caveats that the numbers are small, no one died. It was 100% efficacy on deaths. Of course, I'm sure that in real world, when the numbers are getting very high, we may have 99 instead of 100. These are spectacular results for something that you can take home and stay home. The biggest problem right now in Europe, in the US, when we have surges, every time that we have a surge of COVID, it is that the ICUs are full, the hospitals are paralyzed. They have to postpone elective surgeries. They have to postpone other operations because they don't have the capacity because of that. Keeping people out of the hospitals, home, keeping people without dying, it is something they didn't have before. And this is a significant, significant game changer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I have to ask a controversial, difficult question. What are your thoughts about ivermectin? Has it sufficiently been studied? Has Pfizer considered it in its, like I said, incredible development of the antiviral as a comparator, that kind of thing, just investigated in general? The reason I bring it up, Because I've read quite a few criticisms of people. There's been some comparisons of Paxful with Ivermectin. And I think people should look up. There is Dr. John Campbell that describes that comparison and makes that claim. And there's quite a lot of people that debunk or argue against that. You can do your own research. But there is a lot of people that kind of see this free drug without patents on it and say, this could be the savior. So can you just speak to that comparison?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And- It's not the first time. If you remember, there were other compounds that were claimed that they are the solution to COVID and clearly they were proven that they're not. There are compounds that there are solutions and compounds that they're not. I, as a scientist, and I discussed with our scientists, they don't see any reason why a medicine like ivermectin, which is a parasiticide, to be able to act on COVID. And so they don't seem that is any connection, and they haven't seen any paper that describes someone that used it that had any results. I'm sure that there will be some people that will claim, because people are claiming anything, but I don't think that there was any paper in any peer review a reliable scientific magazine to support this claim. So we are focusing on saving people's lives. We are not focusing on craziness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, to push back, there is quite a lot of papers, but the studies are small, so there's no conclusive evidence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I haven't seen any that it is reliable. I don't know where are these, small or big, reliable. I haven't seen any." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, some of the big ones have been retracted, which means they weren't legitimate. Yes. This is definitely something that people need to look into. The people that kind of question the effectiveness of Ivermectin, definitely something to think about. And I think it's the reason that Paxil- It was chloroquine before." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. For God's sake. That's why Paxil- How many people died because of that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, this is the dangerous thing. This is the sad thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. But COVID has been studying thousands of people and will be under the scrutiny, not only of regulators, but as we will go into the implementation, as it happened in many countries, they will monitor to see what's happened. Let's say that whatever we do, once it is out there, within a few weeks, they will know all hospitals, if it works or not, because they will see the statistics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We've gone through one of the more difficult periods in recent human history over the past two years, like as a society. What gives you hope about the future for human civilization? You look into the next few years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the human ingenuity. I think although there is, the world always is progressing. although there are a lot of things that need to be fixed in the society of 2020. The society of 2020 is better at large than things 50 years back, 100 years back, in all different aspects, from poverty, for human rights, from science, from quality of life, from any aspect. I am positive that humans can create and always create a better future and will continue doing so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You have helped save the lives of millions of people, helped improve the quality of their lives, but you yourself are just one biological organism with an expiration date. Do you ponder your mortality? Do you think about your death? Are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a very interesting question. I was discussing with a lot of people that I was fearless of death. I couldn't care less when I was young. The first thing, the first time that I start feeling that I want to be around was when I had kids. And then I started feeling that, oh gosh, is it I hope I will be around to see their wedding. I hope they will be around to see their children. So if there is something that scares me, it's the possibility I will not be part of their lives anymore, and I will not be watching. I hope there is life upstairs, so I will be able to watch them from there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "From upstairs, get a nice overview. Let me ask the big ridiculous question. and you only have two minutes or less to answer it, what is the meaning of life? What's the meaning of this whole thing? You said ingenuity is the thing that gives you hope. We seem to be all busy trying to help each other, trying to build a better world. Why are we doing that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would repeat something that Steve Jobs has said. Death is life's biggest invention. It eliminates the old and gives place to the new. Life is all about moving forward. Life is all about creating new things. Maybe everyone is a contributor, but no one is the owner." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And always creating something new. Always. Adding something beautiful into the world, maybe a little bit of love. Hopefully. Albert, thank you so much. It's a huge honor that you will go through some of these difficult questions with me today, and that you give your extremely valuable time for this conversation. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "So one day is a very long time and I don't like to make predictions of the type we will never be able to do X because I think that's a, you know, that's the smacks of hubris. It seems that never in the entire eternity of human existence will we be able to solve a problem. That being said, curing disease is very hard because oftentimes by the time you discover the disease a lot of damage has already been done and so to assume that we would be able to cure disease at that stage assumes that we would come up with ways of basically regenerating entire parts of the human body in a way that actually returns it to its original state, and that's a very challenging problem. We have cured very few diseases. We've been able to provide treatment for an increasingly large number, but the number of things that you could actually define to be cures is actually not that large. So I think that there's a lot of work that would need to happen before one could legitimately say that we have cured even a reasonable number, far less all diseases." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On a scale of zero to 100, where are we in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of all major diseases? What's your sense? So from the computer science perspective that you've entered the world of health, how far along are we?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it depends on which disease. I mean, there are ones where I would say we're maybe not quite at 100 because biology is really complicated and there's always new things that we uncover that people didn't even realize existed. But I would say there's diseases where we might be in the 70s or 80s. And then there's diseases in which I would say probably the majority where we're really close to zero." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would Alzheimer's and schizophrenia and type 2 diabetes fall closer to zero or to the 80?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think Alzheimer's is probably closer to zero than to 80. There are hypotheses, but I don't think those hypotheses have, as of yet, been sufficiently validated that we believe them to be true. And there's an increasing number of people who believe that the traditional hypotheses might not really explain what's going on. I would also say that Alzheimer's and schizophrenia in even type 2 diabetes are not really one disease. They're almost certainly a heterogeneous collection of mechanisms that manifest in clinically similar ways. So in the same way that we now understand that breast cancer is really not one disease, it is multitude of cellular mechanisms, all of which ultimately translate to uncontrolled proliferation. but it's not one disease. The same is almost undoubtedly true for those other diseases as well. It's that understanding that needs to precede any understanding of the specific mechanisms of any of those other diseases. Now, in schizophrenia, I would say we're almost certainly closer to zero than to anything else. Type 2 diabetes is a bit of a mix. There are clear mechanisms that are implicated that I think have been validated that have to do with insulin resistance and such, but there's almost certainly there as well, many mechanisms that we have not yet understood." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've also thought and worked a little bit on the longevity side. Do you see the disease and longevity as overlapping completely, partially, or not at all as efforts?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those mechanisms are certainly overlapping. There's a well-known phenomenon that says that for most diseases, other than childhood diseases, the risk for contracting that disease increases exponentially year on year, every year from the time you're about 40. So obviously there is a connection between those two things. That's not to say that they're identical. clearly aging that happens that is not really associated with any specific disease. And there's also diseases and mechanisms of disease that are not specifically related to aging. So I think overlap is where we're at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay. It is a little unfortunate that we get older and it seems that there's some correlation with the occurrence of diseases or the fact that we get older and both are quite sad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, there's processes that happen as cells age that I think are contributing to disease. Some of those have to do with DNA damage that accumulates as cells divide where the repair mechanisms don't fully correct. for those. There are accumulations of proteins that are misfolded and potentially aggregate, and those two contribute to disease and contribute to inflammation. There is a multitude of mechanisms that have been uncovered that are sort of wear and tear at the cellular level that contribute to disease processes, and I'm sure there's many that we don't yet understand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On a small tangent, perhaps philosophical, the fact that things get older and the fact that things die is a very powerful feature for the growth of new things. It's a kind of learning mechanism. So it's both tragic and beautiful. So in trying to fight disease and trying to fight aging, Do you think about sort of the useful fact of our mortality? Or would you, like if you were, could be immortal, would you choose to be immortal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, I think immortal is a very long time. And I don't know that that would necessarily be something that I would want to aspire to. But I think all of us aspire to an increased health span, I would say, which is an increased amount of time where you're healthy and active and feel as you did when you were 20. We're nowhere close to that. People deteriorate physically and mentally over time, and that is a very sad phenomenon. So I think a wonderful aspiration would be if we could all live to, you know, the biblical 120, maybe, in perfect health. In high quality of life. High quality of life. I think that would be an amazing goal for us to achieve as a society. Now is the right age, 120, or 100, or 150? I think that's up for debate, but I think an increased health span is a really worthy goal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And anyway, in the grand time of the age of the universe, it's all pretty short. So from the perspective, you've done obviously a lot of incredible work in machine learning. So what role do you think data and machine learning play in this goal of trying to understand diseases and trying to eradicate diseases?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Up until now, I don't think it's played very much of a significant role because largely the datasets that one really needed to enable a powerful machine learning methods, those datasets haven't really existed. There's been dribs and drabs and some interesting machine learning that has been applied. I would say machine learning slash data science. But the last few years are starting to change that. So we now see an increase in some large datasets, but equally importantly, an increase in technologies that are able to produce data at scale. it's not typically the case that people have deliberately, proactively used those tools for the purpose of generating data for machine learning. They, to the extent that those techniques have been used for data production, they've been used for data production to drive scientific discovery. And the machine learning came as a sort of by-product second stage of, oh, you know, now we have a data set, let's do machine learning on that rather than a more simplistic data analysis method. But what we are doing at Insitro is actually flipping that around and saying, here's this incredible repertoire of methods that bioengineers, cell biologists have come up with. Let's see if we can put them together in brand new ways with the goal of creating datasets that machine learning can really be applied on productively to create powerful predictive models that can help us address fundamental problems in human health." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So really focus to make data the primary focus and the primary goal and use the mechanisms of biology and chemistry to create the kinds of data set that could allow machine learning to benefit the most." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't put it in those terms because that says that data is the end goal. Data is the means. So for us, the end goal is helping address challenges in human health. And the method that we've elected to do that is to apply machine learning to build predictive models. And machine learning, in my opinion, can only be really successfully applied, especially the more powerful models, if you give it data that is of sufficient scale and sufficient quality. So how do you create those datasets so as to drive the ability to generate predictive models, which subsequently help improve human health?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So before we dive into the details of that, let me take a step back and ask, when and where was your interest in human health born? Are there moments, events, perhaps, if I may ask, tragedies in your own life that catalyzes passion, or was it the broader desire to help humankind?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I would say it's a bit of both. So on, I mean, my interest in human health actually dates back to the early 2000s when a lot of my peers in machine learning and I were using data sets that frankly were not very inspiring. Some of us old timers still remember the quote unquote 20 news groups data set where this was literally a bunch of text from 20 newsgroups, a concept that doesn't really even exist anymore. And the question was, can you classify which newsgroup a particular bag of words came from? And it wasn't very interesting. The data sets at the time on the biology side were much more interesting, both from a technical and also from an aspirational perspective. They were still pretty small, but they were better than 20 news groups. And so I started out, I think, just by wanting to do something that was more, I don't know, societally useful and technically interesting. And then over time became more and more interested in the biology and the human health aspects for themselves. and began to work even sometimes on papers that were just in biology without having a significant machine learning component. I think my interest in drug discovery is partly due to an incident I had when my father sadly passed away about 12 years ago. He had an autoimmune disease that settled in his lungs. And the doctor basically said, well, there's only one thing that we could do, which is give him prednisone. At some point, I remember a doctor even came and said, hey, let's do a lung biopsy to figure out which autoimmune disease he has. And I said, would that be helpful? Would that change treatment? He said, no, there's only prednisone. That's the only thing we can give him. And I have friends who are rheumatologists who said the FDA would never approve prednisone today because the ratio of side effects to benefit is probably not large enough. Today, we're in a state where there's... probably four or five, maybe even more. Well, it depends for which autoimmune disease, but there are multiple drugs that can help people with autoimmune disease, many of which didn't exist 12 years ago. And I think we're at a golden time in some ways in drug discovery, where there's the ability to create drugs that are much more safe and much more effective than we've ever been able to before. And what's lacking is enough understanding of biology and mechanism to know where to aim that engine. And I think that's where machine learning can help." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in 2018, you started and now lead a company in Citro, which is, like you mentioned, perhaps the focus is drug discovery and the utilization of machine learning for drug discovery. So you mentioned that, quote, we're really interested in creating what you might call a disease in a dish model, disease in a dish models, places where diseases are complex, where we really haven't had a good model system. where typical animal models that have been used for years, including testing on mice, just aren't very effective. So can you try to describe what is an animal model and what is a disease in a dish model?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. So an animal model for disease is where you create effectively it's what it sounds like. It's oftentimes a mouse, where we have introduced some external perturbation that creates the disease, and then we cure that disease. And the hope is that by doing that, we will cure a similar disease in the human. The problem is that oftentimes the way in which we generate the disease in the animal has nothing to do with how that disease actually comes about in a human. It's what you might think of as a copy of the phenotype, a copy of the clinical outcome, but the mechanisms are quite different. And so curing the disease in the animal, which in most cases doesn't happen naturally, mice don't get Alzheimer's, they don't get diabetes, they don't get atherosclerosis, they don't get autism or schizophrenia. those cures don't translate over to what happens in the human. And that's where most drugs fails, just because the findings that we had in the mouse don't translate to a human. The disease in the dish models is a fairly new approach. It's been enabled by technologies that have not existed for more than five to ten years. So for instance, the ability for us to take a cell from any one of us, you or me, revert that say skin cell to what's called stem cell status, which is a which is what's called a pluripotent cell that can then be differentiated into different types of cells. So from that pluripotent cell, one can create a Lex neuron or a Lex cardiomyocyte or a Lex hepatocyte that has your genetics, but that right cell type. And so if there's a genetic burden of disease that would manifest in that particular cell type, you might be able to see it by looking at those cells. and say, oh, that's what potentially sick cells look like versus healthy cells, and understand how and then explore what kind of interventions might revert the unhealthy looking cell to a healthy cell. Now, of course, curing cells is not the same as curing people. And so there's still potentially a translatability gap, but at least for diseases that are driven say by human genetics and where the human genetics is what drives the cellular phenotype, there is some reason to hope that if we revert those cells in which the disease begins and where the disease is driven by genetics and we can revert that cell back to a healthy state, maybe that will help also revert the more global clinical phenotype. So that's really what we're hoping to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That step, that backward step, I was reading about it, the Yamanaka factor. Yes. So like that, the reverse step back to stem cells. Yes. Seems like magic." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is. Honestly, before that happened, I think very few people would have predicted that to be possible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's amazing. Can you maybe elaborate, is it actually possible? So this result was maybe, I don't know how many years ago, maybe 10 years ago was first demonstrated, something like that. How hard is this? How noisy is this backward step? It seems quite incredible and cool." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is incredible and cool. It was much more, I think, finicky and bespoke at the early stages when the discovery was first made, but at this point it's become almost industrialized. There are what's called contract research organizations, vendors, that will take a sample from a human and revert it back to stem cell status, and it works a very good fraction of the time. Now, there are people who will ask, I think, good questions. Is this really, truly a stem cell, or does it remember certain aspects of changes that were made in the human beyond the genetics?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fast as a skin cell, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's passed as a skin cell or it's passed in terms of exposures to different environmental factors and so on. So I think the consensus right now is that these are not always perfect and there is little bits and pieces of memory sometimes, but by and large, these are actually pretty good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the key things, well, maybe you can correct me, but one of the useful things for machine learning is size, scale of data. How easy it is to do these kinds of reversals to stem cells and then disease in a dish models at scale? Is that a huge challenge or not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the reversal is not, as of this point, something that can be done at the scale of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. I think total number of stem cells or IPS cells that are what's called induced pluripotent stem cells in the world, I think is somewhere between 5 and 10,000 last I looked. Now again, that might not count things that exist in this or that academic center and they may add up to a bit more, but that's about the range. So it's not something that you could at this point generate IPS cells from a million people. But maybe you don't need to because maybe that background is enough because it can also be now perturbed in different ways. Some people have done really interesting experiments in, for instance, taking cells from a healthy human and then introducing a mutation into it using one of the other miracle technologies that's emerged the last decade, which is CRISPR gene editing, and introduced a mutation that is known to be pathogenic. And so you can now look at the healthy cells and unhealthy cells, the one with the mutation, and do a one-on-one comparison where everything else is held constant. And so you could really start to understand specifically what the mutation does at the cellular level. So the iPS cells are a great starting point and obviously more diversity is better because you also want to capture ethnic background and how that affects things. But maybe you don't need one from every single patient with every single type of disease because we have other tools at our disposal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, how much difference is there between people, I mentioned ethnic background, in terms of iPS cells, so we're all, like it seems like these magical cells that can create anything between different populations, different people, is there a lot of variability between cell cells?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first of all, there's the variability that's driven simply by the fact that genetically we're different. So a stem cell that's derived from my genotype is going to be different from a stem cell that's derived from your genotype. There's also some differences that have more to do with For whatever reason, some people's stem cells differentiate better than other people's stem cells. We don't entirely understand why, so there's certainly some differences there as well. But the fundamental difference and the one that we really care about and is a positive is the fact that the genetics are different and therefore recapitulate my disease burden versus your disease burden." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the disease burden?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, disease burden is just, if you think, I mean, it's not a well-defined mathematical term, although there are mathematical formulations of it. If you think about the fact that some of us are more likely to get a certain disease than others, because we have more variations in our genome that are causative of the disease, maybe fewer that are protective of the disease. People have quantified that using what are called polygenic risk scores, which look at all of the variations in an individual person's genome and add them all up in terms of how much risk they confer for a particular disease, and then they've put people on a spectrum of their disease risk. And for certain diseases where we've been sufficiently powered to really understand the connection between the many, many small variations that give rise to an increased disease risk, there is some pretty significant differences in terms of the risk between the people, say, at the highest decile of this polygenic risk score and the people at the lowest decile. Sometimes those differences are, you know, a factor of 10 or 12 higher. So there's definitely a lot that our genetics contributes to disease risk, even if it's not by any stretch the full explanation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And from a machine learning perspective, there's signal there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There is definitely signal in the genetics, and there is even more signal, we believe, in looking at the cells that are derived from those different genetics. Because in principle, you could say all the signal is there at the genetics level, so we don't need to look at the cells, but our understanding of the biology is so limited at this point, then seeing what actually happens at the cellular level is a heck of a lot closer to the human clinical outcome than looking at the genetics directly. And so we can learn a lot more from it than we could by looking at genetics alone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just to get a sense, I don't know if it's easy to do, but what kind of data is useful in this disease-in-a-dish model? What's the source of raw data information? And also, from my outsider's perspective, biology and cells are squishy things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How do you connect the computer to that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which sensory mechanisms, I guess." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's another one of those revolutions that have happened in the last 10 years in that our ability to measure cells very quantitatively has also dramatically increased. So back when I started doing biology in the late 90s, early 2000s, that was the, initial era where we started to measure biology in really quantitative ways using things like microarrays, where you would measure in a single experiment, the activity level, what's called expression level of every gene in the genome in that sample. And that ability is what actually allowed us to even understand that there are molecular subtypes of diseases like cancer, where up until that point, it's like, oh, you have breast cancer, But then when we looked at the molecular data, it was clear that there's different subtypes of breast cancer that at the level of gene activity look completely different to each other. So that was the beginning of this process. Now we have the ability to measure individual cells. in terms of their gene activity using what's called single cell RNA sequencing, which basically sequences the RNA, which is that activity level of different genes for every gene in the genome. And you could do that at single cell level. So that's an incredibly powerful way of measuring cells. I mean, you literally count the number of transcripts. So it really turns that squishy thing into something that's digital. Another tremendous data source that's emerged in the last few years is microscopy, and specifically even super-resolution microscopy, where you could use digital reconstruction to look at subcellular structures, sometimes even things that are below the diffraction limit of light by doing sophisticated reconstruction. Again, that gives you tremendous amount of information at the subcellular level. there's now more and more ways that amazing scientists out there are developing for getting new types of information from even single cells. And so that is a way of turning those squishy things into digital data." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "into beautiful data sets. But so that data set then with machine learning tools allows you to maybe understand the developmental, like the mechanism of a particular disease. And if it's possible to sort of at a high level, describe how does that help lead to a drug discovery that can help prevent, reverse that mechanism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think there's different ways in which this data could potentially be used. Some people use it for scientific discovery and say, oh, look, we see this phenotype at the cellular level. So let's try and work our way backwards and think which genes might be involved in pathways that give rise to that. So that's a very sort of, analytical method to sort of work our way backwards using our understanding of known biology. Some people use it in a somewhat more, you know, sort of forward. If that was backward, this would be forward, which is to say, okay, if I can perturb this gene, does it show a phenotype that is similar to what I see in diseased patients? And so maybe that gene is actually causal of the disease. So that's a different way. And then there's what we do, which is basically to take that very large collection of data and use machine learning to uncover the patterns that emerge from it. So for instance, what are those subtypes that might be similar at the human clinical outcome, but quite distinct when you look at the molecular data? And then if we can identify such a subtype, are there interventions that if I apply it to cells that come from this subtype of the disease, and you apply that intervention, it could be a drug or it could be a CRISPR gene intervention, does it revert the disease state to something that looks more like normal, happy, healthy cells? And so hopefully if you see that, that gives you a certain hope that that intervention will also have a meaningful clinical benefit to people. And there's obviously a bunch of things that you would wanna do after that to validate that, but it's a very different and much less hypothesis-driven way of uncovering new potential interventions and might give rise to things that are not the same things that everyone else is already looking at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's, I don't know, I'm just like to psychoanalyze my own feeling about our discussion currently. It's so exciting to talk about sort of a fundamentally, well, something that's been turned into a machine learning problem and that can have so much real world impact. That's how I feel too. That's kind of exciting because I'm so, most of my days spent with data sets that I guess closer to the news groups. So this is a kind of, it just feels good to talk about. In fact, I don't almost don't want to talk to you about machine learning. I want to talk about the fundamentals of the data set, which is, which is, which is an exciting place to be." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I agree with you. It's what gets me up in the morning. It's also what attracts a lot of the people who work at In-Sitro to In-Sitro because I think all of the, certainly all of our machine learning people are outstanding and could go get a job, you know, selling ads online or doing e-commerce or even self-driving cars. But I think they would want, they come to us because they want to work on something that has more of an aspirational nature and can really benefit humanity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With these approaches, what do you hope, what kind of diseases can be helped? We mentioned Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, type 2 diabetes. Can you just describe the various kinds of diseases that this approach can help?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we don't know. And I try and be very cautious about making promises about some things that, oh, we will cure X. People make that promise. And I think it's I tried to first deliver and then promise as opposed to the other way around. There are characteristics of a disease that make it more likely that this type of approach can potentially be helpful. So for instance, diseases that have a very strong genetic basis are ones that are more likely to manifest in a stem cell derived model. We would want the cellular models to be relatively reproducible and robust so that you could actually get enough of those cells in a way that isn't very highly variable and noisy. you would want the disease to be relatively contained in one or a small number of cell types that you could actually create in vitro in a dish setting. Whereas if it's something that's really broad and systemic and involves multiple cells that are in very distal parts of your body, putting that all in the dish is really challenging. So we want to focus on the ones that are most likely to be successful today with the hope, I think, that really smart bioengineers out there are developing better and better systems all the time so that diseases that might not be tractable today might be tractable in three years. So for instance, Five years ago, these stem cell-derived models didn't really exist. People were doing most of the work in cancer cells, and cancer cells are very, very poor models of most human biology because they're, A, they were cancer to begin with, and B, as you passage them and they proliferate in a dish, they become, because of the genomic instability, even less similar to human biology. Now we have these stem cell derived models. We have the capability to reasonably robustly, not quite at the right scale yet, but close to derive what's called organoids, which are these teeny little sort of multicellular organ sort of models of an organ system. So there's cerebral organoids and liver organoids and kidney organoids. Kidney organoids and gut organoids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Brain organoids is possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen. Is that not like the coolest thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And then I think on the horizon, we're starting to see things like connecting these organoids to each other so that you could actually start, and there's some really cool papers that start to do that, where you can actually start to say, okay, can we do multi-organ system stuff? There's many challenges to that. It's not easy by any stretch, but I'm sure people will figure it out. And in three years or five years, there will be disease models that we could make for things that we can't make today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. And this conversation would seem almost outdated with the kind of scale that could be achieved in like three years." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope so. That would be so cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've co-founded Coursera with Andrew Ng, and were part of the whole MOOC revolution. So to jump topics a little bit, can you maybe tell the origin story of the history, the origin story of MOOCs, of Coursera, and in general, your teaching to huge audiences on a very sort of impactful topic of AI in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think the origin story of MOOCs emanates from a number of efforts that occurred at Stanford University around the late 2000s, where different individuals within Stanford, myself included, were getting really excited about the opportunities of using online technologies as a way of achieving both improved quality of teaching and also improved scale. And so Andrew, for instance, led the Stanford Engineering Everywhere, which was sort of an attempt to take 10 Stanford courses and put them online, just as, you know, video lectures. I led an effort within Stanford to take some of the courses and really create a very different teaching model that broke those up into smaller units and had some of those embedded interactions and so on, which got a lot of support from university leaders because they felt like it was potentially a way of improving the quality of instruction at Stanford by moving to what's now called the flipped classroom model. And so those efforts eventually sort of started to interplay with each other and created a tremendous sense of excitement and energy within the Stanford community about the potential of online teaching and led in the fall of 2011 to the launch of the first Stanford MOOCs," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, MOOCs, it's probably impossible that people don't know, but it's, I guess, massive... Open online courses. Open online courses." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We did not come up with the acronym. I'm not particularly fond of the acronym, but it is what it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It is what it is. Big bang is not a great term for the start of the universe, but it is what it is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably so. So anyway, those courses launched in the fall of 2011 and there were, within a matter of weeks, with no real publicity campaign, just a New York Times article that went viral, about 100,000 students or more in each of those courses. And I remember this conversation that Andrew and I had, which is like, wow, there's this real need here. And I think we both felt like, sure, we were accomplished academics and we could go back and go back to our labs, write more papers. But if we did that, then this wouldn't happen. And it seemed too important not to happen. And so we spent a fair bit of time debating, do we want to do this as a Stanford effort, kind of building on what we'd started? Do we want to do this as a for-profit company? Do we want to do this as a non-profit? And we decided ultimately to do it as we did with Coursera. And so we started really operating as a company at the beginning of 2012. And the rest is history. And the rest is history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But how did you, was that really surprising to you? How did you at that time and at this time make sense of this need for sort of global education? You mentioned that you felt that, wow, the popularity indicates that there's a hunger for sort of globalization of learning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there is a hunger for learning that, you know, globalization is part of it, but I think it's just a hunger for learning. The world has changed in the last 50 years. It used to be that you finished college, you got a job. By and large, the skills that you learned in college were pretty much what got you through the rest of your job history. And yeah, you learned some stuff, but it wasn't a dramatic change. Today, we're in a world where the skills that you need for a lot of jobs today didn't even exist when you went to college. And many of the jobs that existed when you went to college don't even exist today or are dying. So part of that is due to AI, but not only. And we need to find a way of giving people access to the skills that they need today. And I think that's really what's driving a lot of this hunger." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think if we even take a step back, for you, all of this started in trying to think of new ways to teach or new ways to sort of organize the material and present the material in a way that would help the education process, the pedagogy. So what have you learned about effective education from this process of playing, of experimenting with different ideas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we learned a number of things, some of which I think could translate back and have translated back effectively to how people teach on campus, and some of which I think are more specific to people who learn online, more sort of people who learn as part of their daily life. So we learned, for instance, very quickly that short is better. So people who are especially in the workforce can't do a 15-week semester-long course. They just can't fit that into their lives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you describe the shortness of what? Both. Every aspect of the lecture is short, the course is short. Both." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We started out, you know, the first online education efforts were actually MIT's OpenCourseWare initiatives, and that was, you know, recording of classroom lectures." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "An hour and a half or something like that, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that didn't really work very well. I mean, some people benefit. I mean, of course they did, but it's not really a very palatable experience for someone who has a job and, you know, three kids and they need to run errands and such. They can't fit 15 weeks into their life and the hour and a half is really hard. So we learned very quickly. I mean, we started out with short video modules and over time we made them shorter because we realized that 15 minutes was still too long. If you want to fit in when you're waiting in line for your kid's doctor's appointment, it's better if it's five to seven. We learned that 15-week courses don't work and you really want to break this up into shorter units so that there is a natural completion point. It gives people a sense of they're really close to finishing something meaningful. They can always come back and take part two and part three. We also learned that compressing the content works really well because if some people that pace works well and for others they can always rewind and watch again. And so people have the ability to then learn at their own pace. So that flexibility, the brevity and the flexibility are both things that we found to be very important. We learned that engagement during the content is important and the quicker you give people feedback, the more likely they are to be engaged. Hence the introduction of these, which actually was an intuition that I had going in and was then validated using data, that introducing some of these little micro quizzes into the lectures really helps. Self-graded, automatically graded assessments really help too because it gives people feedback. See, there you are. So all of these are valuable. And then we learned a bunch of other things too. We did some really interesting experiments, for instance, on gender bias and how having a female role model as an instructor can change the balance of men to women in terms of especially in STEM courses. And you could do that online by doing A-B testing in ways that would be really difficult to go on campus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's exciting. But so the shortness, the compression, I mean, That's actually, so that probably is true for all, you know, good editing is always just compressing the content, making it shorter. So that puts a lot of burden on the creator of the, the instructor and the creator of the educational content. probably most lectures at MIT or Stanford could be five times shorter if the preparation was put enough. So maybe people might disagree with that, but like the crispness, the clarity that a lot of the MOOC like Coursera delivers is how much effort does that take?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So first of all, let me say that it's not clear that that crispness would work as effectively in a face-to-face setting because people need time to absorb the material. And so you need to at least pause and give people a chance to reflect and maybe practice. And that's what MOOCs do is that they give you these chunks of content and then ask you to practice with it. And that's where I think some of the newer pedagogy that people are adopting face-to-face teaching that have to do with interactive learning and such can be really helpful. But both those approaches, whether you're doing that type of methodology in online teaching or in that flipped classroom interactive teaching... Sorry to pause." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's flipped classroom?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Flipped classroom is a way in which online content is used to supplement face-to-face teaching, where people watch the videos, perhaps, and do some of the exercises before coming to class. And then when they come to class, it's actually to do much deeper problem solving, oftentimes in a group. But any one of those different pedagogies that are beyond just standing there and droning on in front of the classroom for an hour and 15 minutes require a heck of a lot more preparation. And so it's one of the challenges, I think, that people have, that we had when trying to convince instructors to teach on Coursera. And it's part of the challenges that pedagogy experts on campus have in trying to get faculty to teach differently, is that it's actually harder to teach that way than it is to stand there and drone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think MOOCs will replace in-person education or become the majority of in-person education of the way people learn in the future? Again, the future could be very far away, but where's the trend going, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think it's a nuanced and complicated answer. I don't think MOOCs will replace face-to-face teaching. I think learning is, in many cases, a social experience. And even at Coursera, we had people who naturally formed study groups, even when they didn't have to, to just come and talk to each other. And we found that that actually benefited their learning in very important ways. So there was more success among learners who had those study groups than among ones who didn't. So I don't think it's just going to, oh, we're all going to just suddenly learn online with a computer and no one else. In the same way that, you know, recorded music has not replaced live concerts. But I do think that especially when you are thinking about continuing education, the stuff that people get when their traditional whatever high school, college education is done, and they yet have to maintain their level of expertise and skills in a rapidly changing world, I think people will consume more and more educational content. in this online format because going back to school for formal education is not an option for most people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Briefly, it might be a difficult question to ask, but there's a lot of people fascinated by artificial intelligence, by machine learning, by deep learning. Is there a recommendation for the next year or for a lifelong journey of somebody interested in this? How do they begin? How do they enter that learning journey?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the important thing is first to just get started and there's plenty of online content that one can get for both the core foundations of mathematics and statistics and programming and then from there to machine learning. I would encourage people not to skip too quickly past the foundations because I find that there's a lot of people who learn machine learning, whether it's online or on campus, without getting those foundations. And they basically just turn the crank on existing models in ways that A, don't allow for a lot of innovation and adjustment to the problem at hand, but also B, are sometimes just wrong and they don't even realize that their application is wrong because there's artifacts that they haven't fully understood. So I think the foundations, machine learning is an important step. And then actually start solving problems. Try and find someone to solve them with, because especially at the beginning, it's useful to have someone to bounce ideas off and fix mistakes that you make, and you can fix mistakes that they make. But then just find practical problems, whether it's in your workplace or if you don't have that, Kaggle competitions or such are a really great place to find interesting problems and just practice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Practice. Perhaps a bit of a romanticized question, but what idea in deep learning do you find, have you found in your journey the most beautiful or surprising or interesting? Perhaps not just deep learning, but AI in general, statistics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm gonna answer with two things. One would be the foundational concept of end-to-end training, which is that you start from the raw data and you train something that is not like a single piece, but rather towards the actual goal that you're looking to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So from the raw data to the outcome, like no details in between." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, not no details, but the fact that you, I mean, you could certainly introduce building blocks that were trained towards other tasks. I'm actually coming to that in my second half of the answer, but it doesn't have to be like a single monolithic blob in the middle. Actually, I think that's not ideal, but rather the fact that at the end of the day, you can actually train something that goes all the way from the beginning to the end. And the other one that I find really compelling is the notion of learning a representation that in its turn, even if it was trained to another task, can potentially be used as a much more rapid starting point to solving a different task. And that's, I think, reminiscent of what makes people successful learners. It's something that is relatively new in the machine learning space. I think it's underutilized even relative to today's capabilities, but more and more of how do we learn sort of reusable representation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So end-to-end and transfer learning. Is it surprising to you that neural networks are able to, in many cases, do these things? Is it maybe taking back to when you first would dive deep into neural networks or in general, even today, is it surprising that neural networks work at all and work wonderfully to do this kind of raw end-to-end learning and even transfer learning?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I was surprised by how well, when you have large enough amounts of data, it's possible to find a meaningful representation in what is an exceedingly high dimensional space. And so I find that to be really exciting and people are still working on the math for that. There's more papers on that every year and I think it would be really cool if we figured that out. But that to me was a surprise because in the early days when I was starting my way in machine learning and the data sets were rather small, I believe that you needed to have a much more constrained and knowledge-rich search space to really get to a meaningful answer. And I think it was true at the time. What I think is still a question is, will a completely knowledge-free approach, where there's no prior knowledge going into the construction of the model, is that going to be the solution or not? It's not actually the solution today in the sense that the architecture of a convolutional neural network that's used for images is actually quite different to the type of network that's used for language and yet different from the one that's used for speech or biology or any other application. There's still some insight that goes into the structure of the network to get to the right performance. Will you be able to come up with a universal learning machine?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know. I wonder if there's always has to be some insight injected somewhere or whether it can converge. So you've done a lot of interesting work with probabilistic graphical models in general Bayesian deep learning and so on. Can you maybe speak high level? How can learning systems deal with uncertainty?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One of the limitations, I think, of a lot of machine learning models is that they come up with an answer, and you don't know how much you can believe that answer. oftentimes the answer is actually quite poorly calibrated relative to its uncertainties. Even if you look at where the confidence that comes out of the, say, the neural network at the end, and you ask how much more likely is an answer of 0.8 versus 0.9, it's not really in any way calibrated to the actual reliability of that network and how true it is. The further away you move from the training data, not only the more wrong the network is, often it's more wrong and more confident in its wrong answer. And that is a serious issue in a lot of application areas. So when you think, for instance, about medical diagnosis as being maybe an epitome of how problematic this can be, if you were training your network on a certain set of patients in a certain patient population, and I have a patient that is an outlier, and there's no human that looks at this, and that patient is put into a neural network, and your network not only gives a completely incorrect diagnosis, but is supremely confident in its wrong answer, you could kill people. So I think creating more of an understanding of how do you produce networks that are calibrated in their uncertainty and can also say, you know what, I give up. I don't know what to say about this particular data instance because I've never seen something that's sufficiently like it before. I think it's going to be really important in mission-critical applications, especially ones where human life is at stake, and that includes medical applications, but it also includes automated driving, because you'd want the network to be able to say, you know what, I have no idea what this blob is that I'm seeing in the middle of the road, so I'm just going to stop, because I don't want to potentially run over a pedestrian that I don't recognize." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there good mechanisms, ideas of how to allow learning systems to provide that uncertainty along with their predictions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "certainly people have come up with mechanisms that involve Bayesian deep learning, deep learning that involves Gaussian processes. I mean, there's a slew of different approaches that people have come up with. There's methods that use ensembles of networks trained with different subsets of data or different random starting points. Those are actually sometimes surprisingly good at creating a sort of set of how confident or not you are in your answer. It's very much an area of open research." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let's cautiously venture back into the land of philosophy. Speaking of AI systems providing uncertainty, somebody like Stuart Russell believes that as we create more and more intelligent systems, it's really important for them to be full of self-doubt. Because if they're given more and more power, We want the way to maintain human control over AI systems or human supervision, which is true. Like you just mentioned with autonomous vehicles, it's really important to get human supervision when the car is not sure. Because if it's really confident, in cases when it can get in trouble, it's going to be really problematic. So let me ask about sort of the questions of AGI and human level intelligence. I mean, we've talked about curing diseases, which is sort of a fundamental thing that could have an impact today. But AI people also dream of both understanding and creating intelligence. Is that something you think about? Is that something you dream about? Is that something you think is within our reach to be thinking about as computer scientists?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Boy, let me tease apart different parts of that question. The worst question. Yeah, it's a multi-part question. So let me start with the feasibility of AGI, then I'll talk about the timelines a little bit, and then talk about, well, what controls does one need when protecting, when thinking about protections in the AI space? You know, I think AGI obviously is a long-standing dream that even our early pioneers in the space had, you know, the Turing test and so on are the earliest discussions of that. We're obviously closer than we were 70 or so years ago, but I think it's still very far away. I think machine learning algorithms today are really exquisitely good pattern recognizers in very specific problem domains where they have seen enough training data to make good predictions. You take a machine learning algorithm, and you move it to a slightly different version of even that same problem, far less one that's different, and it will just completely choke. So I think we're nowhere close to the versatility and flexibility of even a human toddler in terms of their ability to context switch and solve different problems using a single knowledge base, single brain. So am I desperately worried about the machines taking over the universe and, you know, starting to kill people because they want to have more power? I don't think so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, so to pause on that, so you've kind of intuited that superintelligence is a very difficult thing to achieve, that we're- Even intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Intelligence, intelligence. Superintelligence, we're not even close to intelligence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even just the greater abilities of generalization of our current systems, but... We haven't answered all the parts. I'm getting to the second part. But maybe another tangent you can also pick up is can we get in trouble with much dumber systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And that is exactly where I was going. So just to wrap up on the threats of AGI, I think that it seems to me a little early today to figure out protections against a human level or superhuman level intelligence where we don't even see the skeleton of what that would look like. So it seems that it's very speculative on how to protect against that. But we can definitely and have gotten into trouble on much dumber systems. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that The systems that we're building are increasingly complex, increasingly poorly understood, and there's ripple effects that are unpredictable in changing little things that can have dramatic consequences on the outcome. And by the way, that's not unique to artificial intelligence. I think artificial intelligence exacerbates that, brings it to a new level. But heck, our electric grid is really complicated. The software that runs our financial markets is really complicated. And we've seen those ripple effects translate to dramatic negative consequences, like for instance, financial crashes that have to do with feedback loops that we didn't anticipate. So I think that's an issue that we need to be thoughtful about in many places, artificial intelligence being one of them. And I think it's really important that people are thinking about ways in which we can have better interpretability of systems, better tests for, for instance, measuring the extent to which a machine learning system that was trained in one set of circumstances how well does it actually work in a very different set of circumstances where you might say, for instance, well, I'm not gonna be able to test my automated vehicle in every possible city, village, weather condition, and so on. But if you trained it on this set of conditions and then tested it on 50 or 100 others that were quite different from the ones that you trained it on, and it worked, then that gives you confidence that the next 50 that you didn't test it on might also work. So effectively it's testing for generalizability. So I think there's ways that we should be constantly thinking about to validate the robustness of our systems. I think it's very different from the let's make sure robots don't take over the world. And then the other place where I think we have a threat, which is also important for us to think about, is the extent to which technology can be abused. So like any really powerful technology, machine learning can be very much used badly as well as to good. And that goes back to many other technologies that have come up with when people invented projectile missiles and it turned into guns and people invented nuclear power and it turned into nuclear bombs. And I think, honestly, I would say that to me, gene editing and CRISPR is at least as dangerous a technology if used badly as machine learning. You could create really nasty viruses and such using gene editing that you would be really careful about. So anyway, that's something that we need to be really thoughtful about whenever we have any really powerful new technology." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and in the case of machine learning is adversarial machine learning. So all the kinds of attacks like security almost threats and there's a social engineering with machine learning algorithms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And there's face recognition and big brothers watching you. And there's the killer drones that can potentially go and targeted execution of people in a different country. I don't want to argue that bombs are not necessarily that much better, but if people want to kill someone, they'll find a way to do it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in general, if you look at trends in the data, there's less wars, there's less violence, there's more human rights. So we've been doing overall quite good as a human species. Are you optimistic? Maybe another way to ask is, do you think most people, are good and fundamentally we tend towards a better world, which is underlying the question, will machine learning with gene editing ultimately land us somewhere good? Are you optimistic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think by and large, I'm optimistic. I think that most people mean well. That doesn't mean that most people are, you know, altruistic do-gooders, but I think most people mean well. But I think it's also really important for us as a society to create social norms where doing good and being perceived well by our peers are positively correlated. I mean, it's very easy to create dysfunctional societies. There are certainly multiple psychological experiments as well as, sadly, real world events where people have devolved to a world where being perceived well by your peers is correlated with really atrocious, often genocidal behaviors. So we really want to make sure that we maintain a set of social norms where people know that to be a successful member of society, you want to be doing good. And one of the things that I sometimes worry about is that some societies don't seem to necessarily be moving in the forward direction in that regard, where it's not necessarily the case that doing good that being a good person is what makes you be perceived well by your peers. And I think that's a really important thing for us as a society to remember. It's very easy to degenerate back into a universe where it's okay to do really bad stuff and still have your peers think you're amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fun to ask a world-class computer scientist and engineer a ridiculously philosophical question like, what is the meaning of life? Let me ask, what gives your life meaning? What is the source of fulfillment, happiness, joy, purpose?" } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, actually, originally when I defined the term affective computing, it was a bit broader than just recognizing and responding intelligently to human emotion. Although those are probably the two pieces that we've worked on the hardest. The original concept also encompassed machines that would have mechanisms that functioned like human emotion does inside them. It would be any computing that relates to arises from or deliberately influences human emotion. So the human-computer interaction part is the part that people tend to see, like if I'm really ticked off at my computer and I'm scowling at it and I'm cursing at it and it just keeps acting smiling and happy like that little paperclip used to do, dancing, winking. That kind of thing just makes you even more frustrated, right? And I thought that stupid thing needs to see my affect. And if it's going to be intelligent, which Microsoft researchers had worked really hard on, actually had some of the most sophisticated AI in it at the time, that thing's going to actually be smart. It needs to respond to me and you, and we can send it very different signals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So by the way, just a quick interruption, the Clippy, maybe it's in Word 95 and 98, I don't remember when it was born, but many people, do you find yourself with that reference that people recognize what you're talking about still to this point?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't expect the newest students to these days, but I've mentioned it to a lot of audiences, like how many of you know this Clippy thing? And still the majority of people seem to know it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Clippy kind of looks at maybe natural language processing, what you were typing and tries to help you complete, I think. I don't even remember what Clippy was, except annoying." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. It's right. Some people actually liked it. I would hear those stories. You miss it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I missed the annoyance. They felt like there's an element. Someone was there. Somebody was there, and we were in it together, and they were annoying. It's like a puppy that just doesn't get it, that keeps ripping up the couch kind of thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And in fact, they could have done it smarter like a puppy. If they had done, like if when you yelled at it or cursed at it, if it had put its little ears back and its tail down and shirked off, probably people would have wanted it back, right? But instead, when you yelled at it, what did it do? it smiled, it winked, it danced, right? If somebody comes to my office and I yell at them, they start smiling, winking, and dancing, I'm like, I never want to see you again. So Bill Gates got a standing ovation when he said it was going away because people were so ticked. It was so emotionally unintelligent, right? It was intelligent about whether you were writing a letter, what kind of help you needed for that context. It was completely unintelligent about, hey, if you're annoying your customer, don't smile in their face when you do it. So that kind of mismatch was something the developers just didn't think about. And intelligence at the time was really all about math and language and chess and games, problems that could be pretty well-defined. Social-emotional interaction is much more complex than chess or Go or any of the games that people are trying to solve. and in order to understand that required skills that most people in computer science actually were lacking personally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let's talk about computer science. Have things gotten better since the work, since the message, since you've really launched a field with a lot of research work in this space? I still find, as a person like yourself, who's deeply passionate about human beings, and yet I'm in computer science, there still seems to be a lack of Sorry to say, empathy in us computer scientists. Or hasn't gotten better." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's just say there's a lot more variety among computer scientists these days. Computer scientists are a much more diverse group today than they were 25 years ago. And that's good. We need all kinds of people to become computer scientists so that computer science reflects more what society needs. And there's brilliance among every personality type, so it need not be limited to people who prefer computers to other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How hard do you think it is? Your view of how difficult it is to recognize emotion or to create a deeply emotionally intelligent interaction. Has it gotten easier or harder as you've explored it further? And how far away are we from cracking this The if you think of the Turing test solving the intelligence looking at the Turing test for emotional intelligence" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it is as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I think my prediction of its difficulty is spot on. I think the time estimates are always hard because they're always a function of society's love and hate of a particular topic. If society gets excited and you get thousands of researchers working on it for a certain application, that application gets solved really quickly. The general intelligence, the computer's complete lack of ability to have awareness of what it's doing, the fact that it's not conscious, the fact that there's no signs of it becoming conscious, the fact that it doesn't read between the lines, those kinds of things that we have to teach it explicitly what other people pick up implicitly. We don't see that changing yet. There aren't breakthroughs yet that lead us to believe that that's going to go any faster, which means that it's still going to be kind of stuck with a lot of limitations where it's probably only going to do the right thing in very limited, narrow, pre-specified contexts where we can prescribe pretty much what's going to happen there. So I don't see the You know, it's hard to predict a date because when people don't work on it, it's infinite. When everybody works on it, you get a nice piece of it, you know, well solved in a short amount of time. I actually think there's a more important issue right now than the difficulty of it. And that's causing some of us to put the brakes on a little bit. Usually we're all just like step on the gas, let's go faster. This is causing us to pull back and put the brakes on. And that's the way that some of this technology is being used in places like China right now. And that worries me so deeply that it's causing me to pull back myself on a lot of the things that we could be doing. and try to get the community to think a little bit more about, okay, if we're gonna go forward with that, how can we do it in a way that puts in place safeguards that protects people?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the technology we're referring to is just when a computer senses the human being, like the human face, right? And so there's a lot of exciting things there, like forming a deep connection with a human being. So what are your worries how that could go wrong? Is it in terms of privacy? Is it in terms of other kinds of more subtle things?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But let's dig into privacy. So here in the U.S., if I'm watching a video of, say, a political leader, and in the U.S., we're quite free, as we all know, to even criticize the president of the United States, right? Here, that's not a shocking thing. It happens about every five seconds, right? But in China, what happens if you criticize the leader of the government, right? And so people are very careful not to do that. However, what happens if you're simply watching a video and you make a facial expression that shows a little bit of skepticism, right? Well, here we're completely free to do that. In fact, we're free to fly off the handle and say anything we want. Usually, I mean, there's some restrictions, you know, when the athlete does this as part of the national broadcast, maybe the teams get a little unhappy about picking that forum to do it, right? But that's more a question of judgment. We have these freedoms, and in places that don't have those freedoms, what if our technology can read your underlying affective state? What if our technology can read it even non-contact? What if our technology can read it without your prior consent? And here in the U.S., in my first company, we started Affectiva. We have worked super hard to turn away money and opportunities that try to read people's affect without their prior informed consent. And even the software that is licensable, you have to sign things saying you will only use it in certain ways, which essentially is get people's buy-in, right? Don't do this without people agreeing to it. There are other countries where they're not interested in people's buy-in. They're just going to use it. They're going to inflict it on you. And if you don't like it, you better not scowl in the direction of any censors." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one, let me just comment on a small tangent. Do you know with the idea of adversarial examples and deep fakes and so on, what you bring up is actually, in that one sense, deep fakes provide a comforting protection. that you can no longer really trust that the video of your face was legitimate, and therefore you always have an escape clause if a government is trying, if a stable, balanced, ethical government is trying to accuse you of something, at least you have protection. You can say it was fake news, as is a popular term now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's the general thinking of it. We know how to go into the video and see, for example, your heart rate and respiration and whether or not they've been tampered with. And we also can put like fake heart rate and respiration in your video now too. We decided we needed to do that after we After we developed a way to extract it, we decided we also needed a way to jam it. And so the fact that we took time to do that other step too, that was time that I wasn't spending making the machine more affectively intelligent. And there's a choice in how we spend our time, which is now being swayed a little bit less by this goal and a little bit more like by concern about what's happening in society and what kind of future do we want to build. And as we step back and say, okay, we don't just build AI to build AI to make Elon Musk more money or to make Amazon Jeff Bezos more money. Good gosh, that's the wrong ethic. Why are we building it? What is the point of building AI? It used to be, it was driven by researchers in academia to get papers published and to make a career for themselves and to do something cool, right? Like, cause maybe it could be done. Now we realize that this is enabling rich people to get vastly richer. the poor are, the divide is even larger. And is that the kind of future that we want? Maybe we want to think about, maybe we want to rethink AI. Maybe we want to rethink the problems in society that are causing the greatest inequity and rethink how to build AI that's not about a general intelligence, but that's about extending the intelligence and capability of the have-nots so that we close these gaps in society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you hope that kind of stepping on the brake happens organically? Because I think still majority of the force behind AI is the desire to publish papers, is to make money without thinking about the why. Do you hope it happens organically? Is there room for regulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great questions. I prefer the, you know, they talk about the carrot versus the stick. I definitely prefer the carrot to the stick. And, you know, in our free world, there's only so much stick, right? You're going to find a way around it. I generally think less regulation is better. That said, even though my position is classically carrot, no stick, no regulation, I think we do need some regulations in this space. I do think we need regulations around protecting people with their data, that you own your data, not Amazon, not Google. I would like to see people own their own data. I would also like to see the regulations that we have right now around lie detection being extended to emotion recognition in general. That right now you can't use a lie detector on an employee when you're on a candidate when you're interviewing them for a job. I think similarly we need to put in place protection around reading people's emotions without their consent, and in certain cases like characterizing them for a job and other opportunities. So I also think that when we're reading emotion that's predictive around mental health, that that should, even though it's not medical data, that that should get the kinds of protections that our medical data gets. What most people don't know yet is right now with your smartphone use and if you're wearing a sensor and you want to learn about your stress and your sleep and your physical activity and how much you're using your phone and your social interaction, All of that non-medical data, when we put it together with machine learning, now called AI, even though the founders of AI wouldn't have called it that, that capability can not only tell that you're calm right now or that you're getting a little stressed, but it can also predict how you're likely to be tomorrow, if you're likely to be sick or healthy, happy or sad, stressed or calm." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Especially when you're tracking data over time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Especially when we're tracking a week of your data or more." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have an optimism towards, you know, a lot of people on our phones are worried about this camera that's looking at us. For the most part, on balance, are you optimistic about the benefits that can be brought from that camera that's looking at billions of us? Or should we be more worried?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we should be a little bit more worried about who's looking at us and listening to us. The device sitting on your countertop in your kitchen, whether it's Alexa or Google Home or Apple Siri, these devices want to listen. Well, they say ostensibly to help us, and I think there are great people in these companies who do want to help people. Let me not brand them all bad. I'm a user of products from all of these companies I'm naming, all the A companies, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon. are awfully big companies, right? They have incredible power. And, you know, what if, what if China were to buy them, right? And suddenly, all of that data, we're not part of free America, but all of that data, we're part of somebody who just wants to take over the world and you submit to them. And guess what happens if you so much as smirk the wrong way when they say something that you don't like? Well, they have re-education camps, right? That's a nice word for them. By the way, they have a surplus of organs for people who have surgery these days. They don't have an organ donation problem because they take your blood and they know you're a match. And the doctors are on record of taking organs from people who are perfectly healthy and not prisoners. They're just simply not the favored ones of the government. And, you know, that's a pretty freaky evil society. And we can use the word evil there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was born in the Soviet Union. I can certainly connect to the to the worry that you're expressing. At the same time, probably both you and I and you very much so. You know, there's an exciting possibility that you can have a deep connection with a machine. Yeah. Yeah. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, uh, those of us, I've admitted students who say that they, you know, when you list like, who do you most wish you could have lunch with or dinner with? Right. And they'll write like, I don't like people. I just like computers. And one of them said to me once when I had this party at my house, yeah. I want you to know this is my only social event of the year, my one social event of the year. Okay, now this is a brilliant machine learning person, right? And we need that kind of brilliance in machine learning. And I love that computer science welcomes people who love people and people who are very awkward around people. I love that this is a field that anybody could join. We need all kinds of people. And you don't need to be a social person. I'm not trying to force people who don't like people to suddenly become social. At the same time, if most of the people building the AIs of the future are the kind of people who don't like people, We've got a little bit of a problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, hold on a second. So let me push back on that. So don't you think a large percentage of the world can, you know, there's loneliness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a huge problem with loneliness and it's growing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so there's a longing for connection." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you're lonely, you're part of a big and growing group." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. So we're in it together, I guess. If you're lonely, you're not alone. That's a good line. But do you think there's, you talked about some worry, but do you think there's an exciting possibility that something like Alexa and these kinds of tools can alleviate that loneliness in a way that other humans can't?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, a great book can kind of alleviate loneliness, right? Because you just get sucked into this amazing story and you can't wait to go spend time with that character, right? And they're not a human character. There is a human behind it. But yeah, it can be an incredibly delightful way to pass the hours. And it can meet needs, even, you know, I don't read those trashy romance books, but somebody does, right? And what are they getting from this? Well, probably some of that feeling of being there, right? Being there in that social moment, that romantic moment or connecting with somebody. I've had a similar experience reading some science fiction books, right, and connecting with the character. Orson Scott Card, you know, just amazing writing and Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, terrible title, but those kind of books that pull you into a character and you feel like you're, you feel very social. It's very connected, even though it's not responding to you. And a computer, of course, can respond to you. So it can deepen it, right? You can have a very deep connection, much more than the movie Her, you know, plays up, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Much more. I mean, movie Her is already a pretty deep connection, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, but it's just a movie, right? It's scripted. you know, but I mean, like, there can be a real interaction where the character can learn and you can learn. You could imagine it not just being you and one character, you can imagine a group of characters, you can imagine a group of people and characters, human and AI connecting. where maybe a few people can't sort of be friends with everybody, but the few people and their AIs can befriend more people. There can be an extended human intelligence in there where each human can connect with more people that way. But it's still very limited. But there are just, what I mean is there are many more possibilities than what's in that movie." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a tension here. So when you express a really serious concern about privacy, about how governments can misuse the information, and there's the possibility of this connection. So let's look at Alexa. So personal assistants. For the most part, as far as I'm aware, they ignore your emotion. They ignore even the context or the existence of you, the intricate, beautiful, complex aspects of who you are, except maybe aspects of your voice that help it recognize for speech recognition. Do you think they should move towards trying to understand your emotion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All of these companies are very interested in understanding human emotion. More people are telling Siri every day they want to kill themselves. Apple wants to know the difference between if a person is really suicidal versus if a person is just kind of fooling around with Siri. Right? The words may be the same. The tone of voice and what surrounds those words is pivotal to understand if they should respond in a very serious way, bring help to that person, or if they should kind of jokingly tease back, you know, ah, you just want to, you know, sell me for something else. Right? Like, how do you respond when somebody says that? Well, you know, you do want to err on the side of being careful and taking it seriously. People want to know if the person is happy or stressed in part because, well, so let me give you an altruistic reason and a business profit motivated reason, and there are people and companies that operate on both principles. altruistic people really care about their customers and really care about helping you feel a little better at the end of the day. And it would just make those people happy if they knew that they made your life better. If you came home stressed, and after talking with their product, you felt better. There are other people who maybe have studied the way affect affects decision making and prices people pay, and they know, I don't know if I should tell you, like the work of Jen Lerner on heartstrings and purse strings, you know, if we manipulate you into a slightly sadder mood, you'll pay more, right? You'll pay more to change your situation. You'll pay more for something you don't even need to make yourself feel better. So, you know, if they sound a little sad, maybe I don't want to cheer them up. Maybe first I want to help them get something, a little shopping therapy, right? That helps them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "which is really difficult for a company that's primarily funded on advertisement, so they're encouraged to get you to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yep, to offer you products, or Amazon that's primarily funded on you buying things from their store. So I think we should be, you know, maybe we need regulation in the future to put a little bit of a wall between these agents that have access to our emotion and agents that wanna sell us stuff. Maybe there needs to be a little bit more of a firewall in between those." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe digging in a little bit on the interaction with Alexa. You mentioned, of course, a really serious concern about like recognizing emotion if somebody is speaking of suicide or depression and so on. But what about the actual interaction itself? Do you think, so if I, you know, you mentioned clippy and being annoying. What is the objective function we're trying to optimize? Is it minimize annoyingness or minimize or maximize happiness? Or both? We look at human to human relations. I think that push and pull, the tension, the dance, you know, the annoying, the flaws, that's what makes it fun. So is there a room for, like, what is the object of push and pull?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, at times when you want to have a little push and pull, think of kids sparring, right? You know, I see my sons and one of them wants to provoke the other to be upset. And that's fun. And it's actually healthy to learn where your limits are, to learn how to self-regulate. You can imagine a game where it's trying to make you mad and you're trying to show self-control. And so if we're doing a AI human interaction, that's helping build resilience and self-control, whether it's to learn how to not be a bully or how to turn the other cheek or how to deal with an abusive person in your life. then you might need an AI that pushes your buttons. But in general, do you want an AI that pushes your buttons? Probably depends on your personality. I don't. I want one that's respectful, that is there to serve me, and that is there to extend my ability to do things. I'm not looking for a rival, I'm looking for a helper. And that's the kind of AI I'd put my money on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your sense is for the majority of people in the world, in order to have a rich experience, that's what they're looking for as well. If you look at the movie Her, spoiler alert, I believe the program, the woman in the movie Her, leaves the person for somebody else. Right, right. Says they don't want to be dating anymore. Right. Your sense is if Alexa said, you know what, I actually had enough of you for a while, so I'm going to shut myself off." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You don't see that as... I'd say you're trash because I paid for you, right? We've got to remember, and this is where this blending human-AI as if we're equals is really deceptive. Because AI is something, at the end of the day, that my students and I are making in the lab. And we're choosing what it's allowed to say, when it's allowed to speak, what it's allowed to listen to. what it's allowed to act on given the inputs that we choose to expose it to, what outputs it's allowed to have. It's all something made by a human. And if we want to make something that makes our lives miserable, fine, I wouldn't invest in it as a business, you know, unless it's just there for self-regulation training. But I think we, you know, we need to think about what kind of future we want. And actually, your question, I really like the, what is the objective function? Is it to calm people down? Sometimes. Is it to always make people happy and calm them down? Well, there was a book about that, right? The Brave New World, you know, make everybody happy. Take your Soma. If you're unhappy, take your happy pill. And if you refuse to take your happy pill, well, we'll threaten you by sending you to Iceland to live there. I lived in Iceland three years. It's a great place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't take your Soma. Go to Iceland." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A little TV commercial there. I was a child there for a few years. It's a wonderful place. So that part of the book never scared me. But really, do we want AI to manipulate us into submission, into making us happy? If you are a power-obsessed, sick dictator individual who only wants to control other people to get your jollies in life, then yeah, you want to use AI to extend your power and your scale to force people into submission. If you believe that the human race is better off being given freedom and the opportunity to do things that might surprise you, then you want to use AI to extend people's ability. You want to build AI that extends human intelligence, that empowers the weak and helps balance the power between the weak and the strong, not that gives more power to the strong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in this process of empowering people and sensing people, what is your sense on emotion in terms of recognizing emotion, the difference between emotion that is shown and emotion that is felt? Yeah, emotion that is expressed on the surface through your face, your body, and various other things, and what's actually going on deep inside on the biological level, on the neuroscience level, or some kind of cognitive level." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. Whoa, no easy questions here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm sure there's no definitive answer, but what's your sense? How far can we get by just looking at the face?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're very limited when we just look at the face, but we can get further than most people think we can get. People think, hey, I have a great poker face, therefore all you're ever going to get from me is neutral. Well, that's naive. We can read with the ordinary camera on your laptop or on your phone. We can read from a neutral face if your heart is racing. We can read from a neutral face if your breathing is becoming irregular and showing signs of stress. We can read under some conditions that maybe I won't give you details on, how your heart rate variability power is changing. That could be a sign of stress, even when your heart rate is not necessarily accelerating." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry, from physio sensors or from the face?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "From the color changes that you cannot even see, but the camera can see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's amazing. So you can get a lot of signal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we get things people can't see using a regular camera. And from that, we can tell things about your stress. So if you were just sitting there with a blank face thinking nobody can read my emotion, well, you're wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So that's really interesting. But that's from sort of visual information from the face. That's almost like cheating your way to the physiological state of the body by being very clever with what you can do with visual processing. So that's really impressive. But if you just look at the stuff we humans can see, the poker, the smile, the smirks, the subtle, all the facial" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So then you can hide that on your face for a limited amount of time. Now, if you're just going in for a brief interview and you're hiding it, that's pretty easy for most people. If you are, however, surveilled constantly everywhere you go, then it's gonna say, gee, you know, Lex used to smile a lot, and now I'm not seeing so many smiles. And Roz used to, you know, laugh a lot and smile a lot very spontaneously. And now I'm only seeing these not-so-spontaneous looking smiles. And only when she's asked these questions. You know, that's something's changed here. Probably not getting enough sleep. We could look at that too. So now I have to be a little careful too. When I say we You think we can't read your emotion, and we can. It's not that binary. What we're reading is more some physiological changes that relate to your activation. Now, that doesn't mean that we know everything about how you feel. In fact, we still know very little about how you feel. Your thoughts are still private. Your nuanced feelings are still completely private. We can't read any of that. So there's some relief that we can't read that. Even brain imaging can't read that. Wearables can't read that. However, as we read your body state changes, and we know what's going on in your environment, and we look at patterns of those over time, we can start to make some inferences about what you might be feeling. And that is where it's not just the momentary feeling, but it's more your stance toward things, and that could actually be a little bit more scary with certain kinds of governmental control freak people who want to know more about are you on their team or are you not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and getting that information through over time. So you're saying there's a lot of stigma by looking at the change over time. So you've done a lot of exciting work, both in computer vision and physiological sense, like wearables. What do you think is the best modality for, what's the best window into the emotional soul? Is it the face? Is it the voice? Is it the text? The body? It depends what you wanna know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends what you wanna know. Everything is informative. Everything we do is informative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So for health and well-being and things like that, do you find the wearable physiotechnics, measuring physiological signals is the best for health-based stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here I'm going to answer empirically with data and studies we've been doing. We've been doing studies now, these are currently running with lots of different kinds of people, but where we've published data, and I can speak publicly to it, the data are limited right now to New England college students. So that's a small group. Among New England college students, when they are wearing a wearable, like the Empatic Embrace here that's measuring skin conductance, movement, temperature, and when they are using a smartphone that is collecting their time of day of when they're texting, who they're texting, their movement around it, their GPS, the weather information based upon their location, And when it's using machine learning and putting all of that together, and looking not just at right now, but looking at your rhythm of behaviors over about a week. When we look at that, we are very accurate at forecasting tomorrow's stress, mood, and happy-sad mood, and health. And when we look at which pieces of that are most useful, first of all, if you have all the pieces, you get the best results. If you have only the wearable, you get the next best results. And that's still better than 80% accurate at forecasting tomorrow's levels." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Isn't that exciting? Because the wearable stuff with physiological information, it feels like it violates privacy less than the non-contact face-based methods." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's interesting. I think what people sometimes don't, you know, it's fine in the early days people would say, oh, wearing something or giving blood is invasive, right? Whereas a camera is less invasive because it's not touching you. I think on the contrary, the things that are not touching you are maybe the scariest because you don't know when they're on or off. and you don't know who's behind it. A wearable, depending upon what's happening to the data on it, if it's just stored locally or if it's streaming and what it is being attached to, in a sense, you have the most control over it because it's also very easy to just take it off. Now it's not sensing me. So if I'm uncomfortable with what it's sensing, now I'm free, right? If I'm comfortable with what it's sensing, then, and I happen to know everything about this one and what it's doing with it, so I'm quite comfortable with it. then I'm, you know, I have control, I'm comfortable. Control is one of the biggest factors for an individual in reducing their stress. If I have control over it, if I know others to know about it, then my stress is a lot lower and I'm making an informed choice about whether to wear it or not or when to wear it or not. I want to wear it sometimes, maybe not others." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so that control, yeah, I'm with you. That control, even if, yeah, the ability to turn it off is a really impoverished thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's huge, and we need to maybe, you know, if there's regulations, maybe that's number one to protect is people's ability to, it's easy to opt out as to opt in." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. So you've studied a bit of neuroscience as well. How have looking at our own minds, sort of the biological stuff or the neurobiological neuroscience, look at the signals in our brain, helped you understand the problem and the approach of effective computing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Originally, I was a computer architect and I was building hardware and computer designs and I wanted to build ones that work like the brain. So I've been studying the brain as long as I've been studying how to build computers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Have you figured out anything yet?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very little. It's so amazing. You know, they used to think like, oh, if you remove this chunk of the brain and you find this function goes away, well, that's the part of the brain that did it. And then later they realized if you remove this other chunk of the brain, that function comes back and Oh no, we really don't understand it. Brains are so interesting and changing all the time and able to change in ways that will probably continue to surprise us. When we were measuring stress, you may know the story where we found an unusual big skin conductance pattern on one wrist in one of our kids with autism. And in trying to figure out how on earth you could be stressed on one wrist and not the other, like how can you get sweaty on one wrist, right? When you get stressed with that sympathetic fight or flight response, like you kind of should like sweat more in some places than others, but not more on one wrist than the other. That didn't make any sense. We learned that what had actually happened was a part of his brain had unusual electrical activity. And that caused an unusually large sweat response on one wrist and not the other. And since then, we've learned that seizures cause this unusual electrical activity. And depending where the seizure is, if it's in one place and it's staying there, you can have a big electrical response we can pick up with a wearable at one part of the body. You can also have a seizure that spreads over the whole brain, generalized grand mal seizure, and that response spreads and we can pick it up pretty much anywhere. As we learned this and then later built EMBRACE that's now FDA cleared for seizure detection, we have also built relationships with some of the most amazing doctors in the world who not only help people with unusual brain activity or epilepsy, But some of them are also surgeons and they're going in and they're implanting electrodes, not just to momentarily read the strange patterns of brain activity that we'd like to see return to normal, but also to read out continuously what's happening in some of these deep regions of the brain during most of life when these patients are not seizing. Most of the time they're not seizing. Most of the time they're fine. And so we are now working on mapping those deep brain regions that you can't even usually get with EEG scalp electrodes because the changes deep inside don't reach the surface. But interesting, when some of those regions are activated, we see a big skin conductance response. Who would have thunk it, right? Like nothing here, but something here. In fact, right after seizures that we think are the most dangerous ones that precede what's called SUDEP, Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, there's a period where the brainwaves go flat, and it looks like the person's brain has stopped, but it hasn't. The activity has gone deep into a region that can make the cortical activity look flat, like a quick shutdown signal here. It can unfortunately cause breathing to stop if it progresses long enough. Before that happens, we see a big skin conductance response in the data that we have. The longer this flattening, the bigger our response here. So we have been trying to learn, you know, initially, like, why are we getting a big response here when there's nothing here? Well, it turns out there's something much deeper. So we can now go inside the brains of some of these individuals, fabulous people who usually aren't seizing, and get this data and start to map it. So that's the active research that we're doing right now with top medical partners." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this wearable sensor that's looking at skid conductance can capture sort of the ripples of the complexity of what's going on in our brain. So this little device, you have a hope that you can start to get the signal from the interesting things happening in the brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we've already published the strong correlations between the size of this response and the flattening that happens afterwards. And unfortunately, also in a real SUDEP case where the patient died because the, well, we don't know why. We don't know if somebody was there, it would have definitely prevented it. But we know that most SUDEPs happen when the person's alone. And in this case... What's a SUDEP, I'm sorry? A SUDEP is an acronym, S-U-D-E-P, and it stands for the number two cause of years of life lost, actually, among all neurological disorders. Stroke is number one, SUDEP is number two, but most people haven't heard of it. Actually, I'll plug my TED Talk. It's on the front page of TED right now that talks about this. And we hope to change that. I hope everybody who's heard of SIDS and stroke will now hear of SUDEP because we think in most cases it's preventable if people take their meds and aren't alone when they have a seizure. Not guaranteed to be preventable. There are some exceptions, but we think most cases probably are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you have this embrace now in the version two wristband, right? For epilepsy management. That's the one that's FDA approved? Yes. FDA cleared, they say. Cleared, sorry. No, it's okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It essentially means it's approved for marketing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Got it. Just a side note, how difficult is that to do? It's essentially getting FDA approval for computer science technology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's agonizing. It's so agonizing. It's much harder than publishing multiple papers in top medical journals. Yeah, we published peer-reviewed top medical journal, Neurology, best results, and that's not good enough for the FDA." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that system, so if we look at the peer review of medical journals, there's flaws, there's strengths, is the FDA approval process, how does it compare to the peer review process? Does it have the strength?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'd take peer review over FDA any day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But is that a good thing? Is that a good thing for FDA? Are you saying, does it stop some amazing technology from getting through?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it does. The FDA performs a very important good role in keeping people safe. They keep things, they put you through tons of safety testing. And that's wonderful. And that's great. I'm all in favor of the safety testing. sometimes they put you through additional testing that they don't have to explain why they put you through it and You don't understand why you're going through it and it doesn't make sense and that's very frustrating and maybe they have really good reasons and They just would it would do people a service to articulate those reasons more transparent be more transparent so" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As part of Empatica, we have sensors. So what kind of problems can we crack? What kind of things from seizures to autism to, I think I've heard you mention depression. What kind of things can we alleviate? Can we detect? What's your hope of how we can make the world a better place with this wearable tech?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would really like to see my fellow brilliant researchers step back and say, what are the really hard problems that we don't know how to solve that come from people maybe we don't even see in our normal life? They're living in the poor places. They're stuck on the bus. They can't even afford the Uber or the Lyft or the data plan or all these other wonderful things we have that we keep improving on. Meanwhile, there's all these folks left behind in the world. And they're struggling with horrible diseases, with depression, with epilepsy, with diabetes, with just awful stuff that maybe a little more time and attention hanging out with them and learning what are their challenges in life. What are their needs? How do we help them have job skills? How do we help them have a hope and a future and a chance to have the great life that so many of us building technology have? And then how would that reshape the kinds of AI that we build? How would that reshape the new apps that we build? Or maybe we need to focus on how to make things more low cost and green instead of thousand dollar phones. I mean, come on. Why can't we be thinking more about things that do more with less for these folks? Quality of life is not related to the cost of your phone. It's been shown that about $75,000 of income and happiness is the same. However, I can tell you, you get a lot of happiness from helping other people. You get a lot more than $75,000 buys. So how do we connect up the people who have real needs with the people who have the ability to build the future and build the kind of future that truly improves the lives of all the people that are currently being left behind?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me return just briefly on a point, maybe in the movie Her. So do you think if we look farther into the future, you said so much of the benefit from making our technology more empathetic to us human beings would make them better tools, empower us, make our lives better. But if we look farther into the future, do you think we'll ever create an AI system that we can fall in love with and loves us back on a level that is similar to human-to-human interaction, like in the movie Her or beyond?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think we can simulate it in ways that could, you know, sustain engagement for a while. Would it be as good as another person? I don't think so, if you're used to good people. Now, if you've just grown up with nothing but abuse and you can't stand human beings, can we do something that helps you there, that gives you something through a machine? Yeah, but that's pretty low bar, right? If you've only encountered pretty awful people. If you've encountered wonderful, amazing people, we're nowhere near building anything like that. and I would not bet on building it. I would bet instead on building the kinds of AI that helps raise all boats, that helps all people be better people, helps all people figure out if they're getting sick tomorrow, and helps give them what they need to stay well tomorrow. That's the kind of AI I want to build that improves human lives. Not the kind of AI that just walks on The Tonight Show and people go, wow, look how smart that is. Really? And then it goes back in a box." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So on that point, if we continue looking a little bit into the future, do you think an AI that's empathetic and does improve our lives, need to have a physical presence, a body, and even, let me cautiously say the C word, consciousness, and even fear of mortality. So some of those human characteristics, do you think it needs to have those aspects? Or can it remain simply a machine learning tool that learns from data of behavior that learns to make us, based on previous patterns, feel better, or doesn't need those elements of consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends on your goals. If you're making a movie, it needs a body. It needs a gorgeous body. It needs to act like it has consciousness. It needs to act like it has emotion, right? Because that's what sells. That's what's going to get me to show up and enjoy the movie. Okay. In real life, does it need all that? Well, if you've read Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, you know, it could just be like a little voice in your earring, right? And you could have an intimate relationship and it could get to know you. And it doesn't need to be a robot. But that doesn't make this compelling of a movie, right? I mean, we already think it's kind of weird when a guy looks like he's talking to himself on the train, you know, even though it's earbuds. So we have these embodied is more powerful. Embodied, when you compare interactions with an embodied robot versus a video of a robot versus no robot, the robot is more engaging. The robot gets our attention more. The robot, when you walk in your house, is more likely to get you to remember to do the things that you asked it to do because it's kind of got a physical presence. You can avoid it if you don't like it. It could see you're avoiding it. There's a lot of power to being embodied. There will be embodied AIs. they have great power and opportunity and potential. There will also be AIs that aren't embodied, that just are little software assistants that help us with different things, that may get to know things about us. Will they be conscious? There will be attempts to program them to make them appear to be conscious. We can already write programs that make it look like, oh, what do you mean? Of course I'm aware that you're there, right? I mean, it's trivial to say stuff like that. It's easy to fool people, but does it actually have conscious experience like we do? Nobody has a clue how to do that yet. That seems to be something that is beyond what any of us knows how to build now. Will it have to have that? I think you can get pretty far with a lot of stuff without it. Will we accord it rights? Well, that's more a political game than it is a question of real consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, can you go to jail for turning off Alexa is what, it's a question for an election maybe a few decades from now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Sophia Robot's already been given rights as a citizen in Saudi Arabia, right? Even before women have full rights, then the robot was still put back in the box to be shipped to the next place where it would get a paid appearance, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's dark and almost comedic, if not absurd. So, I've heard you speak about your journey in finding faith. Sure. And how you discovered some wisdoms about life and beyond from reading the Bible. And I've also heard you say that you said scientists too often assume that nothing exists beyond what can be currently measured. Materialism and scientism. So in some sense this assumption enables the near-term scientific method, assuming that we can uncover the mysteries of this world by the mechanisms of measurement that we currently have. But we easily forget that we've made this assumption. So what do you think we miss out on by making that assumption?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's fine to limit the scientific method to things we can measure and reason about and reproduce. That's fine. I think we have to recognize that sometimes we scientists also believe in things that happened historically. You know, like I believe the Holocaust happened. I can't prove events from past history scientifically. You prove them with historical evidence, right? With the impact they had on people, with eyewitness testimony, and things like that. So a good thinker recognizes that science is one of many ways to get knowledge. It's not the only way. And there's been some really bad philosophy and bad thinking recently, you can call it scientism, where people say science is the only way to get to truth. And it's not. It just isn't. There are other ways that work also, like knowledge of love with someone. You don't prove your love through science, right? So history, philosophy, love, a lot of other things in life show us that there's more ways to gain knowledge and truth, if you're willing to believe there is such a thing, and I believe there is, than science. I am a scientist, however, and in my science, I do limit my science to the things that the scientific method can do. But I recognize that it's myopic to say that that's all there is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. There's just like you listed, there's all the why questions. And really, we know if we're being honest with ourselves, the percent of what we really know is is basically zero relative to the full mystery of the measure theory, the set of measure zero." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If I have a finite amount of knowledge, which I do," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you said that you believe in truth. So let me ask that old question. What do you think this thing is all about? Is it life on earth?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Life, the universe, and everything? I can't quote Douglas Adams. 42, my favorite number." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, that's my street address." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My husband and I guessed the exact same number for our house. We got to pick it. And there's a reason we picked 42. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So is it just 42 or do you have other words that you can put around it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think there's a grand adventure and I think this life is a part of it. I think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye and the heart and the mind and the soul here. I think we see but through a glass dimly in this life. We see only a part of all there is to know. If people haven't read the Bible, they should if they consider themselves educated. And you could read Proverbs and find tremendous wisdom in there that cannot be scientifically proven. But when you read it, there's something in you, like a musician knows when the instrument's played right, and it's beautiful. There's something in you that comes alive and knows that there's a truth there, that it's like your strings are being plucked by the master instead of by me, right, playing when I pluck it. But probably when you play, it sounds spectacular, right? When you encounter those truths, there's something in you that sings and knows that there is more than what I can prove mathematically or program a computer to do. Don't get me wrong, the math is gorgeous. The computer programming can be brilliant. It's inspiring, right? We want to do more. None of this squashes my desire to do science or to get knowledge through science. I'm not dissing the science at all. I grow even more in awe of what the science can do because I'm more in awe of all there is we don't know. And really at the heart of science, you have to have a belief that there's truth, that there's something greater to be discovered. And some scientists may not want to use the faith word, but it's faith that drives us to do science. It's faith that there is truth, that there's something to know that we don't know, that it's worth knowing, that it's worth working hard, and that there is meaning, that there is such a thing as meaning, which, by the way, science can't prove either. We have to kind of start with some assumptions that there's things like truth and meaning. And these are really questions philosophers own, right? This is their space of philosophers and theologians at some level. So these are things science, you know, if we, when people claim that science will tell you all truth, that's, there's a name for that. It's, it's its own kind of faith. It's scientism. And it's very myopic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a much bigger world out there to be explored in ways that science may not, at least for now, allow us to explore." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and there's meaning, and purpose, and hope, and joy, and love, and all these awesome things that make it all worthwhile too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think there's a better way to end it, Roz. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you're asking me to be definitive and to be conclusive. That's a little hard, I'm gonna tell you why. It's very simple. It's because movies is too broad of a category. I gotta pick sub-genres. But I will tell you that of those genres, I'll pick one or two from each of the genres. And I'll get us to three, sometimes I'm gonna cheat. So my favorite comedy of all times, but probably my favorite movie of all time, is His Girl Friday. which is probably a movie that you've not ever heard of, but it's based on a play called The Front Page from, I don't know, early 1900s. And the movie is a fantastic film." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the story? What's the independent film?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What are we talking about? This is one of the movies that would have been very popular. It's a screwball comedy. You ever seen Moonlighting, the TV show? You know what I'm talking about? So you've seen these shows where there's a man and a woman and they clearly are in love with one another and they're constantly fighting and always talking over each other. Banter, banter, banter, banter, banter. This was the movie that started all that as far as I'm concerned. It's very much of its time. So it's, I don't know, it must've come out sometime between 1934 and 1939. I'm not sure exactly when the movie itself came out. It's black and white. It's just a fantastic film. It's hilarious. So it's mostly conversation. Uh, not entirely, but mostly, mostly just a lot of back and forth. There's a story there. Someone's on death row and they're, um, they're, uh, newspapermen, including her. They're all newspapermen. Uh, they were divorced. The editor, the publisher, I guess, and, uh, uh, the reporter, they were divorced. Um, but you know, they clearly he's thinking, trying to get back together and there's this whole other thing that's going on, but none of that matters. The plot doesn't matter. Yeah, it's just a little play in conversation. It's fantastic. And I just love everything about the conversation. Because at the end of the day, sort of narrative and conversation are the sort of things that drive me. And so I really like that movie for that reason. Similarly, I'm now going to cheat, and I'm going to give you two movies as one. And they are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and John Wick. both relatively modern. John Wick, of course, is one. It gets increasingly, I love them all for different reasons, and increasingly more ridiculous. Kind of like loving Alien and Aliens, despite the fact they're two completely different movies. But the reason I put Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and John Wick together is because I actually think they're the same movie, or what I like about them, the same movie, which is both of them create a world that you're coming in the middle of, and they don't explain it to you. But the story is done so well that you pick it up. So anyone who's seen John Wick, you know, you have these little coins and they're headed out and there are these rules. And apparently every single person in New York City is an assassin. There's like two people who come through who aren't, but otherwise they are. But there's this complicated world and everyone knows each other. They don't sit down and explain it to you, but you figure it out. Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a lot like that. You get the feeling that this is chapter nine of a 10-part story, and you've missed the first eight chapters, and they're not gonna explain it to you, but there's this sort of rich world behind you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you get pulled in anyway, like immediately." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You get pulled in anyway. So it's just excellent storytelling in both cases and very, very different." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also you like the outfit, I assume, the John Wick outfit. Oh yeah, of course, of course. Yes And so that's that's number two and then but sorry to pause on a martial arts You have a long list of hobbies like it scrolls off the page, but I didn't see martial arts is one of them" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do not do martial arts, but I certainly watch martial arts. Oh, I appreciate it very much. Oh, we could talk about every Jackie Chan movie ever made. And I would be on board with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The Clash Hour 2, like that kind of, the comedy of a cop." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. By the way, my favorite Jackie Chan movie would be Drunken Master 2, known in the States usually as Legend of the Drunken Master. Actually, Drunken Master, the first one, is the first kung fu movie I ever saw, but I did not know that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The first Jackie Chan movie?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, first one ever that I saw and remember. But I had no idea that that's what it was. And I didn't know that was Jackie Chan. That was like his first major movie. I was a kid, it was done in the 70s. I only later rediscovered that that was actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he creates his own martial art by, was he actually drinking or was he play drinking?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You mean as an actor or? No." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm sure as an actor, he was in his 70s or whatever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He was definitely drinking. And in the end, he drinks industrial grade alcohol. Yeah. Yeah. And has one of the most fantastic fights ever in that subgenre. Anyway, that's my favorite one of his movies. But I'll tell you, the last movie is actually a movie called Nothing But a Man. which is the 1960s, starred Ivan Dixon, who you'll know from Hogan's Heroes, and Abbie Lincoln. It's just a really small little drama. It's a beautiful story. But my favorite scenes, I'm cheating, my favorite One of my favorite movies, just for the ending, is The Godfather. I think the last scene of that is just fantastic. It's the whole movie all summarized in just eight, nine seconds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Godfather part one? Part one. How does it end? I don't think you need to worry about spoilers if you haven't seen The Godfather." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Spoiler alert. It ends with the wife coming to Michael, and he says, just this once, I'll let you ask me my business. And she asks him if he did this terrible thing, and he looks her in the eye and he lies, and he says, no. And she says, thank you. And she walks out the door, and you see her going out of the door, and all these people are coming in, and they're kissing Michael's hands, and Godfather. And then the camera switches perspective, so instead of looking at him, you're looking at her, and the door closes in her face, and that's the end of the movie. And that's the whole movie, right there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you see parallels between that and your position as dean at Georgia Tech, Carl?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Just kidding, trick question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sometimes, certainly if the door gets closed on me every once in a while. OK, that was a rhetorical question. You've also mentioned that you, I think, enjoy all kinds of experiments, including on yourself. But I saw a video where you said you did an experiment where you tracked all kinds of information about yourself and a few others, sort of wiring up your home. And this little idea that you mentioned in that video, which is kind of interesting, that you thought that two days' worth of data is enough to capture majority of the behavior of the human being. First, can you describe what the heck you did to collect all that data? Because it's fascinating, just like little details of how you collect that data, and also what your intuition behind the two days is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So first of all, it has to be the right two days. But I was thinking of a very specific experiment. There's actually a suite of them that I've been a part of, and other people have done this, of course. I just sort of dabbled in that part of the world. But to be very clear, the specific thing that I was talking about had to do with recording all the IR going on in my, infrared going on in my house. So this is a long time ago. So everything's being controlled by pressing buttons on remote controls as opposed to speaking to Alexa or Siri or someone like that. And I was just trying to figure out if you could get enough data on people to figure out what they were going to do with their TVs or their lights. My house was completely wired up at the time. But you know what, I'm about to look at a movie or I'm about to turn on the TV or whatever and just see what I could predict from it. it was kind of surprising it shouldn't have been. But that's all very easy to do, by the way, just capturing all the little stuff. I mean, it's a bunch of computer systems. It's really easy to capture, if you know what you're looking for. At Georgia Tech, long before I got there, we had this thing called the Aware Home, where everything was wired up and you captured everything that was going on. Nothing even difficult, not with video or anything like that, just the way that the system was just capturing everything. So it turns out that And I did this with myself and then I had students and they worked with many other people. And it turns out at the end of the day, people do the same things over and over and over again. So it has to be the right two days, like a weekend. But it turns out not only can you predict, what someone's going to do next, at the level of what button they're gonna press next on a remote control. But you can do it with something really, really simple, like a, you don't even need a hidden Markov model. It's like a Mark, just simply, I press this, this is my prediction of the next thing. And it turns out you can get 93% accuracy just by doing something very simple and stupid and just counting statistics. But what was actually more interesting is that you could use that information. This comes up again and again in my work. If you try to represent people or objects by the things they do, the things you can measure about them that have to do with action in the world, so distribution over actions, and you try to represent them by the distribution of actions that are done on them, then you do a pretty good job of sort of understanding how people are and they cluster remarkably well. In fact, irritatingly so. And so by clustering people this way, you can maybe, you know, I got the 93% accuracy of what's the next button you're gonna press, but I can get 99% accuracy or somewhere there's about on the collections of things you might press. And it turns out the things that you might press are all related to number to each other in exactly the way that you would expect. So for example, all the numbers on a keypad, it turns out, all have the same behavior, with respect to you as a human being. And so you would naturally cluster them together, and you discover that numbers are related to one another in some way, and all these other things. And here's the part that I think's important. I mean, you can see this in all kinds of things. Every individual is different. but any given individual is remarkably predictable because you keep doing the same things over and over again. And the two things that I've learned in the long time that I've been thinking about this is people are easily predictable and people hate when you tell them that they're easily predictable. but they are, and there you go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, let me play devil's advocate, and philosophically speaking, is it possible to say that what defines humans is the outlier? So even though some large percentage of our behaviors, whatever the signal we measure is the same, and we cluster nicely, but maybe it's the special moments of when we break out of the routine is the definitive things, and the way we break out of that routine for each one of us might be different," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's possible. I would say it a little differently, I think. I would make two things. One is, I'm going to disagree with the premise, I think, but that's fine. I think the way I would put it is, there are people who are very different from lots of other people, but they're not 0%, they're closer to 10%, right? So in fact, even if you do this kind of clustering of people, that'll turn out to be the small number of people. They all behave like each other, even if they individually behave very differently from everyone else. So I think that's kind of important. But what you're really asking, I think, and I think this is really a question is, you know, what do you do when you're faced with the situation you've never seen before? What do you do when you're faced with an extraordinary situation maybe you've seen others do, and you're actually forced to do something? You react to that very differently, and that is the thing that makes you human. I would agree with that, at least at a philosophical level, that it's the The times when you are faced with something difficult, a decision that you have to make where the answer isn't easy, even if you know what the right answer is, that's sort of what defines you as the individual and I think what defines people broadly. It's the hard problem. It's not the easy problem. It's the thing that's going to hurt you. It's not the thing. It's not even that it's difficult. It's just that you know that the outcome is going to be highly suboptimal for you. And I do think that that's a reasonable place to start for the question of what makes us human." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So before we talk about, sort of explore the different ideas underlying interactive artificial intelligence, which we are working on, let me just go along this thread to skip to kind of our world of social media, which is something that, at least on the artificial intelligence side, you think about. there's a popular narrative, I don't know if it's true, but that we have these silos in social media and we have these clusterings, as you're kind of mentioning. And the idea is that, you know, along that narrative is that, you know, we wanna break each other out of those silos so we can be empathetic to other people. If you're a Democrat, you're empathetic to the Republican. If you're a Republican, you're empathetic to the Democrat. Those are just two silly bins that we seem to be very excited about. But there's other binnings that we can think about. is there, from an artificial intelligence perspective, because you're just saying we cluster along the data, but then interactive artificial intelligence is referring to throwing agents into that mix, AI systems in that mix, helping us, interacting with us humans and maybe getting us out of those silos. Is that something that you think is possible? Do you see a hopeful possibility for artificial intelligence systems in these large networks of people to get us outside of our habits in at least the idea space to where we can sort of be empathetic to other people's lived experiences, other people's points of view, you know, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, and I actually don't think it's that hard. Well, it's not hard in this sense. So imagine that you can, let's make life simple for a minute. Let's assume that you can do a kind of partial ordering over ideas or clusterings of behavior. It doesn't even matter what I mean here. So long as there's some way that this is a cluster, this is a cluster, there's some edge between them, right? They don't quite touch even, or maybe they come very close. If you can imagine that conceptually, then the way you get from here to here is not by going from here to here. The way you get from here to here is you find the edge and you move slowly together, right? And I think that machines are actually very good at that sort of thing, once we can kind of define the problem, either in terms of behavior or ideas or words or whatever. So it's easy in the sense that if you already have the network, and you know the relationships, the edges and sort of the strings on them, and you kind of have some semantic meaning for them, the machine doesn't have to. you do as a designer, then yeah, I think you can kind of move people along and sort of expand them. But it's harder than that. And the reason it's harder than that, or sort of coming up with the network structure itself is hard, is because I'm gonna tell you a story that someone else told me, and I don't, I may get some of the details a little bit wrong, but it's roughly, it roughly goes like this. You take two sets of people from the same backgrounds, and you want them to solve a problem. So you separate them up, which we do all the time. I know, you know, we're going to break out in the, we're going to break out groups. You're going to go over there and you're going to talk about this. You're going to go over there and talk about this. And then you have them sort of in this big room, but far apart from one another. And you have them sort of interact with one another. When they come back to talk about what they learned, you want to merge what they've done together. It can be extremely hard. because they basically don't speak the same language anymore. Like when you create these problems and you dive into them, you create your own language. So the example this one person gave me, which I found kind of interesting, because we were in the middle of that at the time, was they're sitting over there and they're talking about these rooms that you can see, but you're seeing them from different vantage points, depending upon what side of the room you're on. They can see a clock very easily. And so they start referring to the room as the one with the clock. This group over here, looking at the same room, they can see the clock, but it's not in their line of sight or whatever, so they end up referring to it by some other way. When they get back together and they're talking about things, they're referring to the same room, and they don't even realize they're referring to the same room. In fact, this group doesn't even see that there's a clock there, and this group doesn't see whatever it is. The clock on the wall is the thing that stuck with me. So if you create these different silos, the problem isn't that the ideologies disagree, it's that You're using the same words and they mean radically different things. The hard part is just getting them to agree on the, well, maybe we'd say the axioms in our world, right? But, you know, just get them to agree on some basic definitions. Because right now they're talking past each other, just completely talking past each other. That's the hard part. Getting them to meet, getting them to interact, that may not be that difficult. Getting them to see where their language is leading them to lead past one another, that's the hard part." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a really interesting question to me. It could be on the layer of language, but it feels like there's multiple layers to this. Like it could be worldview, it could be, I mean, it all boils down to empathy, being able to put yourself in the shoes of the other person, to learn the language, to learn like visually how they see the world, to learn like the, I mean, I experienced this now with trolls, the degree of humor in that world. For example, I talk about love a lot. I'm very lucky to have this amazing community of loving people. But whenever I encounter trolls, they always roll their eyes at the idea of love because it's so quote unquote cringe. So they show love by derision, I would say. And I think about On the human level, that's a whole nother discussion. That's psychology, that's sociology, so on. But I wonder if AI systems can help somehow and bridge the gap of what is this person's life like? encourage me to just ask that question, to put myself in their shoes, to experience the agitations, the fears, the hopes they have, to experience, you know, even just to think about what was their upbringing like, like having a single parent home or a shitty education or all those kinds of things, just to put myself in that It feels like that's really important for us to bring those clusters together, to find that similar language, but it's unclear how AI can help that because it seems like AI systems need to understand both parties first." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, you know, the word understand there's doing a lot of work, right? So, do you have to understand it, or do you just simply have to note that there is something similar as a point to touch, right? So, you know, you use the word empathy, and I like that word for a lot of reasons. I think you're right in the way that you're using it, in the way that you're describing it, but let's separate it from sympathy, right? Sympathy is feeling sort of for someone. Empathy is kind of understanding where they're coming from and how they feel, right? And for most people, those things go hand in hand. For some people, some are very good at empathy and very bad at sympathy. Some people cannot experience, well, my observation would be, I'm not a psychologist, my observation would be that some people seem incapable of feeling sympathy unless they feel empathy first. You can understand someone, understand where they're coming from and still think, no, I can't support that. It doesn't mean that the only way, because if that isn't the case, then what it requires is that you must, the only way that you can, to understand someone means you must agree with everything that they do. Which isn't right, right? And if the only way I can feel for someone is to completely understand them and make them like me, in some way, well, then we're lost, right? Because we're not all exactly like each other. I don't have to understand everything that you've gone through. It helps, clearly. But they're separable ideas, right? Even though they get clearly tangled up in one another. So what I think AI could help you do, actually, is if—and, you know, I'm being quite fanciful as it were, but if you think of these as kind of, I understand how you interact, the words that you use, the actions you take, I have some way of doing this, let's not worry about what that is, but I can see you as a kind of distribution of experiences and actions taken upon you, things you've done and so on, and I can do this with someone else, and I can find the places where there's some kind of commonality. a mapping as it were, even if it's not total. If I think of this as distribution, right, then I can take the cosine of the angle between you and if it's zero, you've got nothing in common. If it's one, you're completely the same person. Well, you're probably not one. You're almost certainly not zero. If I can find the place where there's the overlap, then I might be able to introduce you on that basis or connect you in that way and make it easier for you to take that step of empathy. It's not impossible to do, although I wonder if it requires that everyone involved is at least interested in asking the question. So maybe the hard part is just getting them interested in asking the question. In fact, maybe if you can get them to ask the question, how are we more alike than we are different, they'll solve it themselves. Maybe that's the problem that AI should be working on, not telling you how you're similar or different, but just getting you to decide that it's worthwhile asking the question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It feels like an economist's answer, actually. Well, people, okay, first of all, people like it when I would disagree, so let me disagree slightly, which is I think everything you said is brilliant, but I tend to believe, philosophically speaking, that people are interested underneath it all, and I would say that AI the possibility that an AI system would show the commonality is incredible. That's a really good starting point. I would say if on social media I could discover the common things, deep or shallow, between me and a person who there's tension with, I think that my basic human nature would take over from there. And I think enjoy that commonality. Like there's something sticky about that that my mind will linger on, and that person in my mind will become like warmer and warmer, and like I'll start to feel more and more compassion towards them. I think for majority of the population that's true, but that might be, that's a hypothesis." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean it's an empirical question, right? You'd have to figure it out. I mean I want to believe you're right, and so I'm gonna say that I think you're right. Of course some people come to those things for the purpose of trolling, right? And it doesn't matter, they're playing a different game. But I don't know, my experience is, it requires two things. It requires, in fact, maybe this is really at the end what you're saying, and I do agree with this for sure. So, it's hard. to hold on to that kind of anger, or to hold on to just the desire to humiliate someone for that long. It's just difficult to do. It takes a toll on you. But more importantly, we know this, both from people having done studies on it, but also from our own experiences, that it is much easier to be dismissive of a person if they're not in front of you, if they're not real, right? So much of the history of the world is about making people other, right? So if you're on social media, if you're on the web, if you're doing whatever on the internet, being forced to deal with someone as a person, some equivalent to being in the same room, makes a huge difference because then you're, one, you're forced to deal with their humanity because it's in front of you. The other is, of course, that, you know, they might punch you in the face if you go too far. So, you know, both of those things kind of work together, I think, to the right end. So I think bringing people together is really a kind of substitute for forcing them to see the humanity in another person and to not be able to treat them as bits. It's hard to troll someone when you're looking them in the eye. This is very difficult to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Agreed, your broad set of research interests fall under interactive AI, as I mentioned, which is a fascinating set of ideas, and you have some concrete things that you're particularly interested in, but maybe could you talk about how you think about the field of interactive artificial intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure, so let me say up front that if you look at, certainly my early work, but even if you look at most of it, I'm a machine learning guy. I do machine learning. First paper I ever published was in NIPS. Back then it was NIPS, now it's NRIPS. It's a long story there. Anyway, that's another thing. So I'm a machine learning guy. I believe in data, I believe in statistics and all those kind of things. And the reason I'm bringing that up is even though I'm a newfangled statistical machine learning guy and have been for a very long time, the problem I really care about is AI. I care about artificial intelligence. I care about building some kind of intelligent artifact, however that gets expressed, that would be at least as intelligent as humans and as interesting as humans, perhaps, in their own way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the deep underlying love and dream is the bigger AI. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Whatever the heck that is. Yeah, the machine learning in some ways is a means to the end. It is not the end. And I don't understand how one could be intelligent without learning. So therefore, I got to figure out how to do that. So that's important, but machine learning, by the way, is also a tool. I said statistical because that's what most people think of themselves, machine learning people. That's how they think. Pat Langley might disagree, or at least 1980s Pat Langley might disagree with what it takes to do machine learning. But I care about the AI problem, which is why it's interactive AI, not just interactive. I think it's important to understand that there's a long-term goal here, which I will probably never live to see, but I would love to have been a part of, which is building something truly intelligent outside of ourselves." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "is there something you can say concrete about the mysterious gap between the subset ML and the bigger AI? What's missing? What do you think? I mean, obviously it's totally unknown, not totally, but in part unknown at this time, but is it something like with Pat Langley's, is it knowledge, like expert system reasoning type of kind of thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So AI is bigger than ML, but ML is bigger than AI. This is kind of the real problem here, is that they're really overlapping things that are really interested in slightly different problems. I tend to think of ML, and there are many people out there who are going to be very upset at me about this, but I tend to think of ML being much more concerned with the engineering of solving a problem, and AI about the sort of more philosophical goal of true intelligence. And that's the thing that motivates me, even if I end up finding myself living in this kind of engineering-ish space. I've now made Michael Jordan upset. But you know, to me, they just feel very different. You're just measuring them differently. Your sort of goals of where you're trying to be are somewhat different. But to me, AI is about trying to build that intelligent thing. And typically, but not always, for the purpose of understanding ourselves a little bit better, machine learning is, I think, trying to solve the problem. whatever that problem is. Now, that's my take. Others, of course, would disagree." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, on that note, so with the interactive AI, do you tend to, in your mind, visualize AI as a singular system, or is it as a collective, huge amount of systems interacting with each other? Like, is the social interaction of us humans and of AI systems fundamental to intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, well, it's certainly fundamental to our kind of intelligence, right? And I actually think it matters quite a bit. So the reason the interactive AI part matters to me is because I don't, this is gonna sound simple, but I don't care whether a tree makes a sound when it falls and there's no one around because I don't think it matters, right? If there's no observer in some sense. And I think what's interesting about the way that we're intelligent is we're intelligent with other people, right? Or other things anyway. And we go out of our way to make other things intelligent. We're hardwired to like find intention, even whether there is no intention. I mean, anthropomorphize everything. I think the interactive AI part is being intelligent in and of myself in isolation is a meaningless act in some sense. the correct answer is you have to be intelligent in the way that you interact with others. That's also efficient, because it allows you to learn faster, because you can import from past history. It also allows you to be efficient in the transmission of that. So we ask ourselves about me. Am I intelligent? Clearly, I think so. But I'm also intelligent as a part of a larger species and group of people. And we're trying to move the species forward as well. And so I think that notion of being intelligent with others is kind of the key thing because otherwise you come and you go and then it doesn't matter. And so that's why I care about that aspect of it. And it has lots of other implications. One is not just, you know, building something intelligent with others, but understanding that you can't always communicate with those others. They have been in a room where there's a clock on the wall that you haven't seen, which means you have to spend an enormous amount of time communicating with one another constantly in order to figure out what each other wants, right? So, I mean, this is why people project, right? You project your own intentions and your own reasons for doing things onto others as a way of understanding them so that you know how to behave. But by the way, you, completely predictable person. I don't know how you're predictable. I don't know you well enough, but you probably eat the same five things over and over again or whatever it is that you do, right? I know I do. If I'm going to a new Chinese restaurant, I will get General Gao's chicken because that's the thing that's easy. I will get hot and sour soup. You know, people do the things that they do, but other people get the chicken and broccoli. I can push this analogy way too far. The chicken and broccoli." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know what's wrong with those people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know what's wrong with them either. That's not good. We have all had our trauma. So they get their chicken and broccoli and their egg drop soup or whatever. We got to communicate and it's going to change, right? So interactive AI is not just about learning to solve a problem or a task. It's about having to adapt that over time, over a very long period of time and interacting with other people. who will themselves change? This is what we mean about things like adaptable models, right? That you have to have a model, that model's going to change. And by the way, it's not just the case that you're different from that person, but you're different from the person you were 15 minutes ago or certainly 15 years ago. And I have to assume that you're at least going to drift, hopefully not too many discontinuities, but you're going to drift over time. And I have to have some mechanism for adapting to that as you and an individual over time and across individuals over time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "on the topic of adaptive modeling, and you talk about lifelong learning, which is, I think, a topic that's understudied, or maybe because nobody knows what to do with it. But if you look at Alexa, or most of our artificial intelligence systems that are primarily machine learning-based systems, or dialogue systems, all those kinds of things, they know very little about you in the sense of the lifelong learning sense that we learn as humans, we learn a lot about each other, not in the quantity effects, but the temporally rich set of information that seems to pick up the crumbs along the way that somehow seems to capture a person pretty well. Do you have any ideas how to do lifelong learning? Because it seems like most of the machine learning community does not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, by the way, not only does the machine learning community not spend a lot of time on lifelong learning, I don't think they spend a lot of time on learning period in the sense that they tend to be very task-focused. Everybody is over-fitting to whatever problem it is they happen to have. They're over-engineering their solutions to the task. Even the people, and I think these people too, are trying to solve a hard problem of transfer learning, right? I'm gonna learn on one task, then learn the other task. You still end up creating the task. It's like looking for your keys where the light is, because that's where the light is, right? It's not because the keys have to be there. I mean, one could argue that we tend to do this in general. We tend to kind of do it as a group. We tend to hill climb and get stuck in local optima. And I think we do this in the small as well. I think it's very hard to do because, look, Here's the hard thing about AI, right? The hard thing about AI is it keeps changing on us, right? You know, what is AI? AI is the, you know, the art and science of making computers act the way they do in the movies, right? That's what it is, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good definition. But beyond that, it's- And they keep coming up with new movies. It's just a problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, exactly. We are driven by this kind of need to the sort of ineffable quality of who we are. which means that the moment you understand something is no longer AI, right? Well, we understand this, that's just, you take the derivative and you divide by two and then you average it out over time in the window, so therefore that's no longer AI. So the problem is unsolvable because it keeps kind of going away. This creates a kind of illusion, which I don't think is an entire illusion, of either there's very simple task-based things you can do very well and over-engineer, there's all of AI, and there's like nothing in the middle. Like it's very hard to get from here to here, and it's very hard to see how to get from here to here. And I don't think that we've done a very good job of it, because we get stuck trying to solve the small problem that's in front of it, myself included, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm better at this than anyone else. And of course, all the incentives in academia and in industry are set to make that very hard, because you have to get the next paper out, you have to get the next product out, you have to solve this problem, and it's very sort of naturally incremental. And none of the incentives are set up to allow you to take a huge risk unless you're already so well established you can take that big risk. And if you're that well-established that you can take that big risk, then you've probably spent much of your career taking these little risks, relatively speaking. And so you have got a lifetime of experience telling you not to take that particular big risk, right? So the whole system's set up to make progress very slow. That's fine. It's just the way it is. But it does make this gap seem really big, which is my long way of saying I don't have a great answer to it, except that Stop doing n equals 1. At least try to get n equal 2 and maybe n equal 7 so that you can say I'm gonna, or maybe t is a better variable here. I'm gonna not just solve this problem, I'm gonna solve this problem and another problem. I'm not gonna learn just on you, I'm gonna keep living out there in the world and just seeing what happens. And that we'll learn something as designers and our machine learning algorithms and our AI algorithms can learn as well. But unless you're willing to build a system, which you're gonna have live for months at a time in an environment that is messy and chaotic, you cannot control, then you're never going to make progress in that direction. So I guess my answer to you is yes, my idea is that you should, it's not no, it's yes, you should be. deploying these things and making them live for a month at a time and be okay with the fact that it's going to take you five years to do this. Not rerunning the same experiment over and over again and refining the machine so it's slightly better at whatever, but actually having it out there and living in the chaos of the world and seeing what its learning algorithm, say, can learn, what data structure it can build and how it can go from there. Without that, you're going to be stuck all the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about the possibility of N equals one growing, it's probably a crude approximation, but growing like if you look at language models like GPT-3, if you just make it big enough, it'll swallow the world, meaning like it'll solve all your T to infinity by just growing in size. of this, taking the small over-engineered solution and just pumping it full of steroids in terms of compute, in terms of size of training data, and the Yann LeCun style self-supervised, or open AI self-supervised, just throw all of YouTube at it, and it will learn how to reason, how to paint, how to create music, how to love, all of that by watching YouTube videos." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I can't think of a more terrifying world to live in than a world that is based on YouTube videos. But yeah, I think the answer, I just kind of don't think that'll quite, well, it won't work that easily. You will get somewhere and you will learn something, which means it's probably worth it, but you won't get there. You won't solve the, you know, here's the thing. We build these things and we say we want them to learn, but what actually happens, and let's say they do learn, I mean, certainly every paper I've gotten published, the things learned, I don't know about anyone else. But they actually change us, right? We react to it differently, right? So we keep redefining what it means to be successful, both in the negative in the AI case, but also in the positive in that, oh, well, this is an accomplishment. I'll give you an example, which is like the one you just described with G2. Let's get completely out of machine learning. Well, not completely, but mostly out of machine learning. Think about Google. People were trying to solve information retrieval, the ad hoc information retrieval problem forever. I mean, first major book I ever read about it was what, 71, I think was when it came out. Anyway, it's, you know, we'll treat everything as a vector and we'll do these vector space models and whatever. And that was all great. And we made very little progress. And we made some progress. And then Google comes and makes the ad hoc problem seem pretty easy. I mean, it's not, there's lots of computers and databases involved, but And there's some brilliant algorithmic stuff behind it too, and some systems building. But the problem changed, right? If you've got a world that's that connected so that you have, there are 10 million answers, quite literally, to the question that you're asking. then the problem wasn't give me the things that are relevant. The problem is don't give me anything that's irrelevant, at least in the first page, because nothing else matters. So Google is not solving the information retrieval problem, at least not on this webpage. Google is minimizing false positives, which is not the same thing as getting an answer. It turns out it's good enough for what it is we want to use Google for, but it also changes what the problem was we thought we were trying to solve in the first place. You thought you were trying to find an answer, but you're not. We're trying to find the answer, but it turns out you're just trying to find an answer. Now, yes, it is true it was also very good at finding you exactly that web page. Of course, you trained yourself to figure out what the keywords were to get you that web page. But in the end, by having that much data, you've just changed the problem into something else. You haven't actually learned what you set out to learn. Now, the counter to that would be maybe we're not doing that either. We just think we are. Because, you know, we're in our own heads. Maybe we're learning the wrong problem in the first place. But I don't think that matters. I think the point is, is that Google has not solved information retrieval. Google has done amazing service. I have nothing bad to say about what they've done. Lord knows my entire life is better because Google exists in form for Google Maps. I don't think I would have ever found this way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where is this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "95, I see 110 and I see, but where did 95 go? So I'm very grateful for Google. But they just have to make certain the first five things are right. And everything after that is wrong. Look, we're going off on a totally different topic here. Think about the way we hire faculty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's exactly the same thing. Are you getting controversial?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm getting controversial. It's exactly the same problem, right? It's minimizing false positives. We say things like we want to find the best person to be an assistant professor at MIT, in the new College of Computing, which I will point out was founded 30 years after the College of Computing I'm a part of. Both of my alma mater. I'm just saying, I appreciate all that they did and all that they're doing. Anyway, so we're going to try to hire the best professor. That's what we say, the best person for this job. But that's not what we do at all, right? Do you know which percentage of faculty in the top four earn their PhDs from the top four? Say in 2017, for which we have, which is the most recent year for which I have data. Maybe a large percentage." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "About 60%. 60." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "60% of the faculty in the top four earn their PhDs in the top four. This is computer science. Yeah. For which there is no top five. There's only a top four, right? Cause they're all tied for one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For people who don't know, by the way, that would be MIT Stanford, Berkeley, CMU. Georgia Tech. Number eight. You're keeping track." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yes, it's a large part of my job. Number five is Illinois. Number six is a tie with UW and Cornell, and Princeton and Georgia Tech are tied for eight, and UT Austin is number 10. Michigan's number 11, by the way. So if you look at the top 10, you know what percentage of faculty in the top 10 are in their PhDs from the top 10? 65, roughly, 65%. If you look at the top 55 ranked departments, 50% of the faculty earn their PhDs from the top 10. There's no universe in which all the best faculty, even just for R1 universities, the majority of them come from 10 places. There's just no way that's true, especially when you consider how small some of those universities are in terms of the number of PhDs they produce. Now, that's not a negative. I mean, it is a negative. It also has a habit of entrenching certain historical inequities and accidents. But what it tells you is, well, ask yourself the question. Why is it like that? Well, because it's easier. If we go all the way back to the 1980s, you know, there was a saying that, you know, nobody ever lost his job buying a computer from IBM. And it was true. And nobody ever lost their job hiring a PhD from MIT. Right? If the person turned out to be terrible, well, you know, they came from MIT. What did you expect me to know? However, that same person coming from pick whichever is your least favorite place that produces PhDs in, say, computer science, well, you took a risk, right? So all the incentives, particularly because you're only gonna hire one this year, well, now we're hiring 10, but you know, you're only gonna hire one or two or three this year, and by the way, when they come in, you're stuck with them for at least seven years in most places, because that's before you know whether they're getting tenure or not, and if they get tenure, you're stuck with them for a good 30 years unless they decide to leave. That means the pressure to get this right is very high. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna minimize false positives. You don't care about saying no inappropriately. You only care about saying yes inappropriately. So all the pressure drives you into that particular direction. Google, not to put too fine a point on it, was in exactly the same situation with their search. It turns out you just don't want to give people the wrong page in the first three or four pages. And if there's 10 million right answers and a hundred bazillion wrong answers, just make certain the wrong answers don't get up there. And who cares if you, the right answer was actually the 13th page. A right answer, a satisficing answer is number one, two, three, or four. So who cares?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "or an answer that will make you discover something beautiful, profound, to your question. Well, that's a different problem, right? But isn't that the problem? Can we linger on this topic without sort of walking with grace? How do we get... for hiring faculty, how do we get that 13th page with a truly special person? I mean, it depends on the department. Computer science probably has those kinds of people, like you have the Russian guy, Grigori Perlman, just these awkward, strange minds that don't know how to play the little game of etiquette that, that faculty have all agreed somehow, like converged over the decades, how to play with each other. And also is not, you know, on top of that is not from the top four, top whatever numbers, the schools. And maybe actually just says a few every once in a while to the traditions of old within the computer science community. Maybe talks trash about machine learning is a total waste of time. And that's there on their resume. So how do you allow the system to give those folks a chance?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you have to be willing to take a certain kind of, without taking a particular position on any particular person, you'd have to take, you have to be willing to take risk, right? A small amount of risk. I mean, if we were treating this as a, Well, there's a machine learning problem, right? There's a search problem, which is what it is. It's a search problem. If we were treating it that way, you would say, oh, well, the main thing is you want, you know, you've got a prior, you want some data because I'm Bayesian. If you don't want to do it that way, we'll just inject some randomness in and it'll be okay. The problem is that feels very, very hard to do with people. All the incentives are wrong there. But it turns out, and let's say that's the right answer. Let's just give, for the sake of argument, that injecting randomness in the system at that level for who you hire is just not worth doing because the price is too high or the cost is too high. We had infinite resources, sure, but we don't. And also, you've got to teach people, so you're ruining other people's lives if you get it too wrong. But we've taken that principle, even if I grant it, and pushed it all the way back. Right? So we could have a better pool than we have of people we look at and give an opportunity to. If we do that, then we have a better chance of finding that. Of course, that just pushes the problem back another level. But let me tell you something else. You know, I did a sort of study. I call it a study. I called up eight of my friends and asked them for all of their data for graduate admissions. But then someone else followed up and did an actual study. And it turns out that I can tell you how everybody gets into grad school more or less. more or less. You basically admit everyone from places higher ranked than you. You admit most people from places ranked around you, and you admit almost no one from places ranked below you, with the exception of the small liberal arts colleges that aren't ranked at all, like Harvey Mudd, because they don't, they don't have PhDs, so they aren't ranked. This is all CS. Which means the decision of whether, you know, you become a professor at Cornell was determined when you were 17, right? By what you knew to go to undergrad to do whatever, right? So if we can push these things back a little bit and just make the pool a little bit bigger, at least you raise the probability that you will be able to see someone interesting and take the risk. The other answer to that question, by the way, which you could argue is the same as you either adjust the pool so the probabilities go up, that's a way of injecting a little bit of uniform noise in the system, as it were, is you change your loss function. You just let yourself be measured by something other than whatever it is that we're measuring ourselves by now. I mean, US News and World Report, every time they change their formula for determining rankings, move entire universities to behave differently. because rankings matter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you talk trash about those rankings for a second? I'm joking about talking trash. Actually, it's so funny how, from my perspective, from a very shallow perspective, how dogmatic, like how much I trust those rankings. They're almost ingrained in my head. I mean, at MIT, everybody kinda, it's a propagated, mutually agreed upon, like, idea that those rankings matter. And I don't think anyone knows what they're, like, most people don't know what they're based on. And what are they exactly based on? And what are the flaws in that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so it depends on which rankings you're talking about. Do you want to talk about computer science or we'll talk about universities?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Computer science, US News, isn't that the main one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the only one that matters is US News, nothing else matters. Sorry, csrankings.org, but nothing else matters but US News. So US News has formula that it uses for many things, but not for computer science, because computer science is considered a science, which is absurd. So the rankings for computer science is 100% reputation. So two people at each department, it's not really a department, but whatever, at each department, basically rank everybody. Slightly more complicated than that. But whatever, they rank everyone. And then those things are put together, and then somehow ranks come up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that means, how do you move up and down the space of reputation? Yes, that's exactly the question. Twitter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It can help. I can tell you how Georgia Tech did it, or at least how I think Georgia Tech did it, because Georgia Tech is actually the case to look at. Not just because I'm at Georgia Tech, but because Georgia Tech is the only computing unit that was not in the top 20 that has made it into the top 10. It's also the only one in the last two decades, I think, that moved up in the top 10. as opposed to having someone else move down. So we used to be number 10 and then we became number nine because UT Austin went down slightly and now we retired for ninth because that's how rankings work. And we moved from nine to eight because our raw score moved up. a point. So Georgia, something about Georgia Tech, computer science, or computing anyway. I think it's because we have shown leadership at every crisis level, right? So we created a college, first public university to do it, second college, second university to do it after CMU is number one. I also think it's no accident that CMU is the largest and we're, depending upon how you count and depending on exactly where MIT ends up with its final College of Computing, second or third largest. I don't think that's an accident. We've been doing this for a long time. But in the 2000s, when there was a crisis about undergraduate education, Georgia Tech took a big risk and succeeded at rethinking undergrad education and computing. I think we created the schools at a time when most public universities anyway were afraid to do it. We did the online masters. And that mattered because people were trying to figure out what to do with MOOCs and so on. I think it's about being observed by your peers and having an impact. So, I mean, that is what reputation is, right? So the way you move up in the reputation rankings is by doing something that makes people turn and look at you and say, that's good. They're better than I thought. Beyond that, it's just inertia. I mean, there's a huge history in the system, right? I mean, there was these, I can't remember this, this may be apocryphal, but there's a major or a department that MIT was ranked number one in, and they didn't have it. It's just about what you, I don't know if that's true, but someone said that to me anyway. But it's a thing, right? It's all about reputation. Of course MIT is great, because MIT is great. It's always been great. By the way, because MIT is great, the best students come, which keeps it being great. I mean, it's just a positive feedback loop. It's not surprising. I don't think it's wrong." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but it's almost like a narrative. It doesn't actually have to be backed by reality. Not to say anything about MIT, but it does feel like, we're playing in the space of narratives, not the space of something grounded. And one of the surprising things when I showed up at MIT and just all the students I've worked with and all the research I've done is they're the same people as I've met other places. I mean, what MIT is going for," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, MIT has many things going for it. One of the things MIT has going for it is- Nice logo. Is a nice logo. It's a lot better than it was when I was here. Nice colors too. Terrible, terrible name for a mascot. But the thing that MIT has going for it is it really does get the best students. It just doesn't get all of the best students. There are many more best students out there, right? And the best students want to be here because it's the best place to be or one of the best places to be. And it just kind of, it's a sort of positive feedback. But you said something earlier. which I think is worth examining for a moment, right? You said it's, I forget the word you used, you said, we're living in the space of narrative as opposed to something objective. Narrative is objective. I mean, one could argue that the only thing that we do as humans is narrative. We just build stories to explain why we do what we do. Someone once asked me, but wait, there's nothing objective. No, it's... completely an objective measure. It's an objective measure of the opinions of everybody else. Now, is that physics? I don't know. But, you know, what, I mean, tell me something you think is actually objective and measurable in a way that makes sense. Like cameras, they don't, do you know that, I mean, you're getting me off on something here, but do you know that, um, Cameras which are just reflecting light and putting them on film like did not work for dark-skinned people until like the 1970s You know why? Because you were building cameras for the people who were gonna buy cameras, who all, at least in the United States and Western Europe, were relatively light-skinned. Turns out took terrible pictures of people who look like me. That got fixed with better film and whole processes. Do you know why? Because furniture manufacturers wanted to be able to take pictures of mahogany furniture. Because candy manufacturers wanted to be able to take pictures of chocolate. Now, the reason I bring that up is because you might think that cameras They're objective, they're just capturing light. No, they're made, they are doing the things that they are doing based upon decisions by real human beings to privilege, if I may use that word, some physics over others because it's an engineering problem. There are trade-offs, right? So I can either worry about this part of the spectrum or this part of the spectrum. This costs more, that costs less, this costs the same, but I have more people paying money over here, right? And it turns out that, you know, if a giant, conglomerate demands that you do something different and it's going to involve all kinds of money for you, suddenly the trade-offs change, right? And so there you go. I actually don't know how I ended up there. Oh, it's because of this notion of objectiveness, right? So even the objective isn't objective, because at the end you've got to tell a story, you've got to make decisions, you've got to make trade-off, and what else is engineering other than that? So I think that the rankings capture something. They just don't necessarily capture what people assume they capture." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, just to linger on this idea, why is there not more? people who just like play with whatever that narrative is, have fun with it, have like excite the world, whether it's in the Carl Sagan style of like that calm, sexy voice of explaining the stars and all the romantic stuff, or the Elon Musk, dare I even say Donald Trump, where you're like trolling and shaking up the system and just saying controversial things. I talked to Lisa Feldman Barrett, who's a neuroscientist who just enjoys playing the controversy, finds the counterintuitive ideas in a particular science and throws them out there and sees how they play in the public discourse. Why don't we see more of that? And why doesn't academia attract an Elon Musk type?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, tenure is a powerful thing that allows you to do whatever you want, but getting tenure, typically requires you to be relatively narrow, right? Because people are judging you. Well, I think the answer is we have told ourselves a story, a narrative, that that is vulgar. What you just described is vulgar. It's certainly unscientific, right? And it is easy to convince yourself that in some ways you're the mathematician, right? The fewer there are in your major, the more that proves your purity, right? So once you tell yourself that story, then it is beneath you to do that kind of thing, right? I think that's wrong. I think that, and by the way, everyone doesn't have to do this. Everyone's not good at it, and everyone, even if they would be good at it, would enjoy it. So it's fine. But I do think you need some diversity in the way that people choose to relate to the world as academics, because I think the great universities, are ones that engage with the rest of the world, it is a home for public intellectuals. And in 2020, being a public intellectual probably means being on Twitter. Whereas, of course, that wasn't true 20 years ago, because Twitter wasn't around 20 years ago. And if it was, it wasn't around in a meaningful way. I don't actually know how long Twitter's been around. As I get older, I find that my notion of time has gotten worse and worse, like Google really has been around that long? Anyway, the point is that I think that we sometimes forget that a part of our job is to impact the people who aren't in the world that we're in, and that that's the point of being at a great place and being a great person, frankly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's an interesting force in terms of public intellectuals. Forget Twitter, we could look at just online courses that are public-facing in some part. There is a kind of force that pulls you back. Let me just call it out, because I don't give a damn at this point. There's a little bit of, all of us have this, but certainly faculty have this, which is jealousy. It's whoever is popular, at being a good communicator, exciting the world with their science. And of course, when you excite the world with the science, it's not peer-reviewed, clean, it all sounds like bullshit. It's like a TED Talk. And people roll their eyes and they, They hate that a TED Talk gets millions of views or something like that. And then everybody pulls each other back. There's this force that just kind of, it's hard to stand out unless you like win a Nobel Prize or whatever. Like it's only when you like get senior enough where you just stop giving a damn. But just like you said, even when you get tenure, that was always the surprising thing to me. I have many colleagues and friends who have gotten tenure But there's not a switch, you know, there's not an F you money switch where you're like, you know what, now I'm going to be more bold. It doesn't, I don't see it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's a reason for that. Tenure isn't a test. It's a training process. It teaches you to behave in a certain way, to think in a certain way, to accept certain values and to react accordingly. And the better you are at that, the more likely you are to earn tenure. And by the way, this is not a bad thing. Most things are like that. And I think most of my colleagues are interested in doing great work and they're just having impact in the way that they want to have impact. I do think that as a field, not just as a field, as a profession, we have a habit of belittling those who are popular, as it were, as if the word itself is a kind of scarlet A, right? I think it's easy to convince yourself, and no one is immune to this, that the people who are better known are better known for bad reasons. The people who are out there dumbing it down are not being pure to whatever the values and ethos. is for your field, and it's just very easy to do. Now, having said that, I think that ultimately, People who are able to be popular and out there and are touching the world and making a difference, you know, our colleagues do in fact appreciate that in the long run. It's just, you know, you have to be very good at it or you have to be very interested in pursuing it. And once you get past a certain level, I think people, people accept that for who it is. I mean, I don't know. I'd be really interested in how Rod Brooks felt about how people were interacting with him when he did Fast Cheap and Out of Control, way, way, way back when. What's fast cheap and out of it was a documentary that involved four people I remember nothing about it other than Rod Brooks was in it and something about naked mole rats I can't remember what the other two things were. It was robots, naked mole rats, and then two other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, Rob Brooks used to be the head of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and then launched, I think, iRobot and then Think Robotics, Rethink Robotics? Yes, sir, yes. Think is in the word. And also is a little bit of a rock star personality in the AI world, very opinionated, very intelligent. Anyway, sorry, mole rats and naked." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Also, he was one of my two advisors for my PhD. So I- This explains a lot." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know how it explains. I love Rod." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I also love my other advisor, Paul. Paul, if you're listening, I love you too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Both very, very different people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Paul Viola. Paul Viola. Both very interesting people, very different in many ways. But I don't know what Rod would say to you about what the reaction was. I know that for the students at the time, because I was a student at the time, it was amazing. This guy was in a movie, being very much himself. Actually, the movie version of him is a little bit more Rod than Rod. I mean, I think they edited it appropriately for him. But it was very much Rod, and he did all this while doing great work. I mean, was he running the iLab at that point or not?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But anyway, he was running the iLab, or would be soon. He was a giant in the field. He did amazing things, made a lot of his bones by doing the kind of counterintuitive science, right? And saying, no, you're doing this all wrong. Representation is crazy. The world is your own representation. You just react. I mean, these are amazing things. And continues to do those sorts of things as he's moved on. I have, I think he might tell you, I don't know if he would tell you it was good or bad, but I know that for everyone else out there in the world, it was a good thing. And certainly he continued to be respected. So it's not as if it destroyed his career by being popular." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All right, let's go into a topic where I'm on thin ice, because I grew up in the Soviet Union and Russia, and my knowledge of music, this American thing you guys do, is quite foreign. So your research group is called, as we've talked about, the Lab for Interactive Artificial Intelligence, but also, there's just a bunch of mystery around this, my research fails me, also called PFUNK. P stands for probabilistic. And what does func stand for?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So a lot of my life is about making acronyms. So if I have one quirk, it's that people will say words and I see if they make acronyms. And if they do, then I'm happy. And then if they don't, I try to change it so that they make acronyms. It's just a thing that I do. So PFUNK is an acronym. It has three or four different meanings. But finally, I decided that the P stands for probabilistic because at the end of the day, it's machine learning and it's randomness and it's uncertainty, which is the important thing here. And the FUNK can be lots of different things. But I decided I should leave it up to the individual to figure out exactly what it is. But I will tell you that when my students graduate, when they get out, as we say at Tech, I hand them, they put on a hat and star glasses and a medallion from the P-Funk era. And we take a picture and I hand them a pair of fuzzy dice, which they get to keep." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a sense to it, which is not an acronym, like literally funk. You have a dark, mysterious past. It's not dark, it's just fun, as in hip hop and funk. Yep. So, can you educate a Soviet-born Russian about this thing called hip-hop? Like, if you were to give me, like, you know, if we went on a journey together and you were trying to educate me about, especially, you know, the past couple of decades in the 90s about hip-hop or funk, what records or artists would you introduce me to? Would you, would you tell me about, or maybe what influenced you in your journey, or what you just love? Like when the family's gone and you just sit back and just blast some stuff these days, what do you listen to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so I listen to a lot, but I will tell you, well, first off, all great music was made when I was 14, and that statement is true for all people, no matter how old they are or where they live. But for me, the first thing that's worth pointing out is that hip hop and rap aren't the same thing. So depending on who you talk to about this, and there are people who feel, very strongly about this, much more strongly than I do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're offending everybody in this conversation, so this is great. Let's keep going." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hip-hop is a culture. It's a whole set of things, of which rap is a part. So tagging is a part of hip-hop. I don't know why that's true, but people tell me it's true, and I'm willing to go along with it, because they get very angry about it. Tagging is like graffiti? Tagging is like graffiti. And there's all these, including the popping and the locking and all the dancing and all those things. That's all a part of hip hop. It's a way of life, which I think is true. And then there's rap, which is this particular. It's the music part. Yes, or a music part. I mean, you wouldn't call the stuff that DJs do the scratching. That's not rap, right? But it's a part of hip hop, right? So given that we understand that hip hop is this whole thing, what are the rap albums that best touch that for me? Well, if I were going to educate you, I would try to figure out what you liked and then I would work you there. Skinnered. Oh my God. I would probably start with, There's a fascinating exercise one can do by watching old episodes of I Love the 70s, I Love the 80s, I Love the 90s with a bunch of friends and just see where people come in and out of pop culture. So if you're talking about those people, then I would actually start you with where I would hope to start you with anyway, which is Public Enemy. Particularly it takes a nation of millions to hold his back, which is clearly the best album ever produced, and certainly the best hip hop album ever produced, in part because it was so much of what was great about the time. Fantastic lyrics, excuse me, it's all about the lyrics. Amazing music that was coming from Rick Rubin was the producer of that, and he did a lot of very kind of heavy metal-ish, at least in the 80s sense at the time, and it was focused on politics in the 1980s, which was what made hip hop so great then. I would start you there, then I would move you up through things that have been happening more recently. I'd probably get you to someone like a Mos Def. I would give you a history lesson, basically. Mos Def's amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He hosted a poetry jam thing on HBO or something like that? Probably, I don't think I've seen it, but I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, spoken poetry, that guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. And then after I got you there, I'd work you back to EPMD, and eventually I would take you back to The Last Poets, and particularly their first album, The Last Poets, which was 1970, to give you a sense of history and that it actually has been building up over a very, very long time. So we would start there, because that's where your music aligns, and then we would cycle out, and I'd move you to the present, and then I'd take you back to the past. Because I think a large part of people who are kind of confused about any kind of music You know, the truth is, this is the same thing we've always been talking about, right? It's about narrative and being a part of something and being immersed in something so you understand it, right? Jazz, which I also like, is, one of the things that's cool about jazz is that you come and you meet someone who's talking to you about jazz and you have no idea what they're talking about. And then one day it all clicks and you've been so immersed in it, you go, oh yeah, that's a Charlie Parker. And then you start using words that nobody else understands, right? And it becomes part of, hip hop's the same way. Everything's the same way. They're all cultural artifacts. But I would help you to see that there's a history of it and how it connects to other genres of music that you might like to bring you in so that you could kind of see how it connects to what you already like, including some of the good work that's been done with fusions of hip hop and bluegrass. Oh, no. Yes. Some of it's even good. Not all of it, but some of it is good. But I'd start you with It Takes a Nation to Make Us All Hold Us Back." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's an interesting tradition in more modern hip-hop of integrating almost like classic rock songs or whatever, like integrating into their music, into the beat, into the whatever. It's kind of interesting. It gives a whole new... Not just Classic Rock, but what is it, the Kanye Gold Digger? Old R&B. Taking and pulling old R&B, right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's been true since the beginning. I mean, in fact, that's in some ways, that's why the DJ used to get... top billing, because it was the DJ that brought all the records together and made it work so that people could dance. If you go back to those days, mostly in New York, though not exclusively, but mostly in New York where it sort of came out of, it was the DJ that brought all the music together and the beats and showed that basically music is itself an instrument. very meta, and you can bring it together and you sort of wrap over it and so on. And it sort of moved that way. So that's going way, way back. Now, in the period of time where I grew up, when I became really into it, which was most of the 80s, it was more funk. was the back for a lot of the stuff, public enemy at that time, notwithstanding. And so, which is very nice because it tied into what my parents listened to and what I vaguely remember listening to when I was very small. So, and by the way, complete revival of George Clinton and Parliament and Funkadelic and all of those things. to bring it sort of back into the 80s and into the 90s. And as we go on, you're gonna see, you know, the last decade and the decade before that being brought in. And when you don't think that you're hearing something you've heard, it's probably because it's being sampled by someone who, referring to something they remembered when they were young, perhaps from somewhere else altogether. And you just didn't realize what it was because it wasn't a popular song where you happened to grow up. So this stuff has been going on for a long time. It's one of the things that I think is beautiful. Run DMC, Jam Master Jay used to play, he played piano. He would record himself playing piano and then sample that to make it a part of what was going on rather than play the piano." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's how his mind can think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's pieces, you're putting pieces together, you're putting pieces of music together to create new music, right? Now that doesn't mean that the root, I mean the roots are doing their own thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, those are, that's a whole." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but still, it's the right attitude And what else is jazz, right? Jazz is about putting pieces together and then putting your own spin on it. It's all the same. It's all the same thing. It's all the same thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, because you mentioned lyrics, it does make me sad. Again, this is me talking trash about modern hip-hop. I haven't investigated. I'm sure people will correct me that there's a lot of great artists. That's part of the reason I'm saying it, is they'll leave it in the comments that you should listen to this person. is the lyrics went away from talking about maybe not just politics, but life and so on. Like, you know, the kind of like protest songs, even if you look at like a Bob Marley or you say Public Enemy or Rage Against the Machine more on the rock side, that's the place where we go to those lyrics. Like, classic rock is all about, like, my woman left me, or I'm really happy that she's still with me, or the flip side. It's like love songs of different kinds. It's all love, but it's less political, like less interesting, I would say, in terms of, like, deep, profound knowledge. It seems like rap is the place where you would find that, and it's sad that for the most part what I see, like you look at like mumble rap or whatever, they're moving away from lyrics and more towards the beat and the musicality of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've always been a fan of the lyrics. In fact, if you go back and you read my reviews, which I recently was rereading, Man, fuck, I wrote my last review the month I graduated, when I got my PhD, which says something about something. I'm not sure what, though. I always would—well, not always, but I often would start with, it's all about the lyrics. For me, it's about the lyrics. Someone has already written in the comments before I've even finished having this conversation that, you know, neither of us knows what we're talking about, and it's all in the underground hip-hop, and here's who you should go listen to. And that is true. Every time I despair for popular rap, someone points me to her, I discover some underground hip-hop song, and I'm made happy and whole again. So I know it's out there. I don't listen to it as much as I used to, because I'm listening to podcasts and old music from the 1980s and 90s." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a kind of, no," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No beat at all, but you know, there's a little bit of sampling here and there, I'm sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, James Brown is funk or no?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. And so is Junior Wells, by the way. Who's that? Oh, Junior Wells, Chicago Blues. He was James Brown before James Brown." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's hard to imagine somebody being James Brown." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Go look up Hoodoo Man Blues, Junior Wells, and just listen to Snatch It Back and Hold It, and you'll see it. And they were contemporaries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where do you put like Little Richard or all that kind of stuff, like Ray Charles, like when they get like, hit the road, Jack, don't you come back? Isn't that like, there's a funkiness in it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, there's definitely a funkiness in it. I mean, it's all, I mean, it's all, it's all a line. I mean, it's all, there's all a line that carries it all together. You know, it's, I guess I would answer your question depending on whether I'm thinking about it in 2020 or I'm thinking about it in 1960. I'd probably give a different answer. I'm just thinking in terms of, you know, that was rock, but when you look back on it, it's, It was funky, but we didn't use those words. Or maybe we did, I wasn't around. But, you know, I don't think we used the word 1960 funk. Certainly not the way we used it in the 70s and the 80s. Do you reject disco? I do not reject disco. I appreciate all the mistakes that we have made to get to where we are now. Actually, some of the disco is actually really, really good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "John Travolta, oh boy, he regrets it probably. Maybe not." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, like it's the mistakes thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and it got him to where he's going, where he is. Well, thank you for taking that detour. You've talked about computing, we've already talked about computing a little bit, but can you try to describe how you think about the world of computing, where it fits into the sets of different disciplines? We mentioned College of Computing. What should people, how should they think about computing, especially from an educational perspective, of like what is the perfect curriculum that defines for a young mind what computing is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I don't know about a perfect curriculum, although that's an important question, because at the end of the day, without the curriculum, you don't get anywhere. Curriculum, to me, is the fundamental data structure. It's not even the classroom. It's not even in the world of, right? So I think the curriculum is where I like to play. So I spend a lot of time thinking about this. But I will tell you, I'll answer your question by answering a slightly different question first and getting back to this, which is, you talked about disciplines and what does it mean to be a discipline? The truth is, what we really educate people in from the beginning, but certainly through college—you've sort of failed if you don't think about it this way, I think—is the world People often think about tools and tool sets, and when you're really trying to be good, you think about skills and skill sets. But disciplines are about mindsets, right? They're about fundamental ways of thinking, not just the hammer that you pick up, whatever that is, to hit the nail, not just the skill of learning how to hammer well or whatever. It's the mindset of like, what's the fundamental way to think about to think about the world, right? And disciplines, different disciplines give you different mindsets. They give you different ways of sort of thinking through. So with that in mind, I think that computing, to even ask the question whether it's a discipline, you have to decide, does it have a mindset? Does it have a way of thinking about the world that is different from, you know, the scientist who is doing discovery and using the scientific method as a way of doing it, or the mathematician who builds abstractions and tries to find sort of steady state truth about the abstractions that may be artificial, but whatever. Or is it the engineer who's all about building demonstrably superior technology with respect to some notion of trade-offs, whatever that means, right? That's sort of the world that you live in. What is computing? How is computing different? So I've thought about this for a long time, and I've come to a view about what computing actually is, what the mindset is. And it's a little abstract, but that would be appropriate for computing. I think that what distinguishes the computationalist from others is that he or she understands that models, languages, and machines are equivalent. They're the same thing. And because it's not just a model, but it's a machine that is an executable thing that can be described as a language, that means that it's dynamic. So it is mathematical in some sense, in the kind of sense of abstraction, but it is fundamentally dynamic and executable. The mathematician is not necessarily worried about either the dynamic part. In fact, whenever I tried to write something for mathematicians, they invariably demand that I make it static. And that's not a bad thing. It's just, it's a way of viewing the world, that truth is a thing, right? It's not a process that continually runs, right? So that dynamic thing matters. That self-reflection of the system itself matters. And that is what computing brought us. So it is a science because the models fundamentally represent truths in the world. Information is a scientific thing to discover, right? Not just a mathematical conceit that that gets created. But of course it's engineering, because you're actually dealing with constraints in the world and trying to execute machines that actually run. But it's also math, because you're actually worrying about these languages that describe what's happening. But the fact that that regular expressions and finite state automata, one of which feels like a machine, or at least an abstraction machine, and the other is a language that they're actually the equivalent thing. I mean, that is not a small thing. And it permeates everything that we do, even when we're just trying to figure out how to do debugging. So that idea, I think, is fundamental. And we would do better if we made that more explicit. How my life has changed in my thinking about this in the 10 or 15 years it's been since I tried to put that to paper with some colleagues is the realization, which comes to a question you actually asked me earlier, which has to do with trees falling down and whether it matters, is this sort of triangle of equality, it only matters because there's a person inside the triangle. right, that what's changed about computing, computer science, whatever you want to call it, is we now have so much data and so much computational power, we're able to do really, really interesting, promising things. But the interesting and the promising kind of only matters with respect to human beings and their relationship to it. So the triangle exists, that is fundamentally computing. What makes it worthwhile and interesting and potentially world species changing is that there are human beings inside of it and intelligence that has to interact with it that changes the data, the information that makes sense and gives meaning to the models, the languages, and the machines. So if the curriculum can convey that while conveying the tools and the skills that you need in order to succeed, then it is a big win. That's what I think you have to do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you pull psychology, like these human things into that, into the idea, into this framework of computing? Do you pull in psychology, neuroscience, like parts of psychology, parts of neuroscience, parts of sociology? What about philosophy, like studies of human nature from different perspectives?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. And by the way, it works both ways. So let's take biology for a moment. It turns out a cell is basically a bunch of if-then statements, if you look at it the right way, which is nice because I understand if-then statements. I never really enjoyed biology, but I do understand if-then statements. And if you tell the biologists that and they begin to understand that, it actually helps them to think about a bunch of really cool things. There'll still be biology involved, but whatever. On the other hand, the fact of biology is, in fact, the cell is a bunch of if-then statements or whatever, allows the computationalists to think differently about the language in the way that we, well, certainly the way we would do AI and machine learning, but it's just even the way that we think about computation. So the important thing to me is, as my engineering colleagues who are not in computer science worry about computer science eating up engineering to colleges where computer science is trapped. It's not a worry. You shouldn't worry about that at all. Computing is computer science, computing. It's central, but it's not the most important thing in the world. It's not more important. It is just key to helping others do other cool things they're going to do. You're not going to be a historian in 2030. You're not going to get a PhD in history without understanding some data science and computing. Because the way you're going to get history done, in part, And I say done. The way you're going to get it done is you're going to look at data and you're going to let, you're going to have the system that's going to help you to analyze things, to help you to think about a better way to describe history and to understand what's going on and what it tells us about where we might be going. The same is true for psychology, the same is true for all of these things. The reason I brought that up is because the philosopher has a lot to say about computing. The psychologist has a lot to say about the way humans interact with computing, right? And certainly a lot about intelligence, which, at least for me, ultimately is kind of the goal of building these computational devices is to build something intelligent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you think computing will eat everything in some certain sense or almost like disappear because it's part of everything?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's so funny you say that. So I wouldn't say it's going to metastasize, but there's kind of two ways that fields destroy themselves. One is they become super narrow. And I think we can think of fields that might be that way. They become pure. And we have that instinct. We have that impulse. I'm sure you can think of several people who want computer science to be this pure thing. The other way is you become everywhere, and you become everything and nothing. And so everyone says, you know, I'm gonna teach Fortran for engineers or whatever, I'm gonna do this. And then you lose the thing that makes it worth studying in and of itself. The thing about computing, and this is not unique to computing, though at this point in time it is distinctive about computing, where we happen to be in 2020, is we are both a thriving major, in fact, the thriving major, almost every place, and we're a service unit, because people need to know the things we need to know. And our job, much as the mathematician's job, is to help this person over here to think like a mathematician, much the way the point of you taking chemistry as a freshman is not to learn chemistry, it's to learn to think like a scientist, right? Our job is to help them to think like a computationalist, and we have to take both of those things very seriously, and I'm not sure that as a field, we have historically certainly taken the second thing, that our job is to help them to think a certain way. People who aren't going to be our major, I don't think we've taken that very seriously at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know if you know who Dan Carlin is. He has this podcast called Hardcore History. I just did an amazing four-hour conversation with him, mostly about Hitler. But I bring him up because he talks about this idea that it's possible that history as a field will become, like currently, most people study history. a little bit, kind of are aware of it. We have a conversation about it, different parts of it. I mean, there's a lot of criticism to say that some parts of history are being ignored, blah, blah, blah, so on. But most people are able to have a curiosity and able to learn it. his thought is it's possible, given the way social media works, the current way we communicate, that history becomes a niche field where literally most people just ignore, because everything is happening so fast that the history starts losing its meaning and then it starts being a thing that only, you know, like the theoretical computer science part of computer science, it becomes a niche thing that only like, the rare holders of the world wars and the, you know, all the history, the founding of the United States, all those kinds of things, the civil wars. And it's a kind of profound thing to think about how these, how we can lose track, how we can lose these fields when they're best, like in the case of history, it's best for that to be a pervasive thing that everybody, learns and thinks about and so on. And I would say computing is quite obviously similar to history in the sense that it seems like it should be a part of everybody's life to some degree, especially as we move into the later parts of the 21st century. It's not obvious that that's the way it'll go. It might be in the hands of the few still. Like, depending if it's machine learning, you know, it's unclear that computing will win out. It's currently very successful, but it's not, I would say, that's something, I mean, you're at the leadership level of this. You're defining the future, so it's in your hands. No pressure. But like, it feels like there's multiple ways this can go. And there's this kind of conversation of everybody should learn to code, right? The changing nature of jobs and so on. Do you have a sense of what your role in education of computing is here? Like, what's the hopeful path forward?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a lot there. I will say that, well, first off, it would be an absolute shame if no one studied history. On the other hand, as T approaches infinity, the amount of history is presumably also growing at least linearly. And so you have to forget more and more of history, but history needs to always be there. I mean, I can imagine a world where, if you think of your brains as being outside of your head, that you can kind of learn the history you need to know when you need to know it. That seems fanciful, but it's a kind of way of, you know, is there a sufficient statistic of history? No, and there certainly, but there may be for the particular thing you have to care about, but you know, those who do not remember." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's for our objective camera discussion, right? Yeah, right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And you know, we've already lost lots of history. And of course, you have your own history that some of which will be, it's even lost to you, right? You don't even remember whatever it was you were doing 17 years ago. All the ex-girlfriends. Yeah. Gone. So, you know, history is being lost anyway, but the big lessons of history shouldn't be. And I think, you know, to take it to the question of computing and sort of education, the point is you have to get across those lessons, you have to get across the way of thinking. And you have to be able to go back and, you know, you don't want to lose the data, even if, you know, you don't necessarily have the information at your fingertips. With computing, I think it's, somewhat different. Everyone doesn't have to learn how to code, but everyone needs to learn how to think in the way that you can be precise. And I mean precise in the sense of repeatable, not resolution in the sense of get the right number of bits. in saying what it is you want the machine to do and being able to describe a problem in such a way that it is executable, which we are not. Human beings are not very good at that. In fact, I think we spend much of our time talking back and forth just to kind of vaguely understand what the other person means and hope we get it good enough that we can we can act accordingly. You can't do that with machines, at least not yet. And so, you know, having to think that precisely about things is quite important. And that's somewhat different from coding. Coding is a crude means to an end. On the other hand, the idea of coding what that means, that it's a programming language and it has these sort of things that you fiddle with and these ways that you express. That is an incredibly important point. In fact, I would argue that one of the big holes in machine learning right now and in AI is that we forget that we are basically doing software engineering. We forget that we are doing, we are using programming, like we're using languages to express what we're doing. We get just so all caught up in the deep network or we get all caught up in whatever that we forget that, you know, We're making decisions based upon a set of parameters that we made up. And if we did slightly different parameters, we'd have completely different outcomes. And so the lesson of computing, computer science education, is to be able to think like that and to be aware of it when you're doing it. Basically, at the end of the day, it's a way of surfacing your assumptions. I mean, we call them parameters or, you know, we call them if-then statements or whatever, but you're forced to surface those assumptions. That's the key, the key thing that you should get out of a computing education, that and that the models, the languages and the machines are equivalent, but it actually follows from that, that you have to be explicit about what it is you're trying to do because the model you're building is something you will one day run. So you better get it right or at least understand it and be able to express roughly what you want to express. So I think it is key. that we figure out how to educate everyone to think that way, because at the end, it will not only make them better at whatever it is that they are doing, and I emphasize doing, it'll also make them better citizens. It'll help them to understand what others are doing to them so that they can react accordingly. Because you're not gonna solve the problem of social media insofar as you think of social media as a problem by just making slightly better code, right? It only works if people react to it appropriately and know what's happening. and therefore take control over what they're doing. I mean, that's my take on it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, let me try to proceed awkwardly into the topic of race. One is because it's a fascinating part of your story and you're just eloquent and fun about it. And then the second is because we're living through a pretty tense time in terms of race tensions and discussions and ideas in this time in America. You grew up in Atlanta, not born in Atlanta. Is some southern state somewhere, Tennessee, something like that? Nice, okay. But early on you moved, you basically, you identify as an Atlanta native, yeah. And you've mentioned that you grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood. By the way, black, African-American, personal color. Black. The other letters are... The rest of them don't matter. Okay, so predominantly black neighborhood, and so you didn't almost see race, maybe you can correct me on that. And then in the video you talked about when you showed up to Georgia Tech for your undergrad, you're one of the only black folks there. And that was like, oh, that was a new experience. So can you take me from just a human perspective, but also from a race perspective, your journey growing up in Atlanta and then showing up at Georgia Tech?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's easy. And by the way, that story continues through MIT as well. In fact, it was quite a bit more stark at MIT and Boston." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe just a quick pause, Georgia Tech was undergrad, MIT was graduate school." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I went directly to grad school from undergrad, so I had no distractions in between my bachelor's and my master's and PhD. You didn't go on a backpacking trip in Europe. Didn't do any of that. In fact, I literally went to IBM for three months, got in a car, and drove straight to Boston with my mother, or Cambridge. Moved into an apartment I'd never seen over the Royal East. Anyway, that's another story. So let me tell you a little bit about it. You miss MIT? Oh, I loved MIT. I don't miss Boston at all, but I loved MIT. Them is fighting warrants. So let's back up to this. So as you said, I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My earliest memory is arriving in Atlanta in a moving truck at the age of three and a half. So I think of myself as being from Atlanta. I have a very distinct memory of that. So I grew up in Atlanta. It's the only place I ever knew as a kid. I loved it. Like much of the country, and certainly much of Atlanta in the 70s and 80s, it was deeply highly segregated, though not in a way that I think was obvious to you unless you were looking at it or were old enough to have noticed it. But you could divide up Atlanta, and Atlanta's hardly unique in this way, by highway, and you could get race and class that way. So I grew up not only in a predominantly black area, to say the very least, I grew up on the poor side of that. But I was very much aware of race for a bunch of reasons, one that people made certain that I was, my family did, but also that it would come up. So in first grade, I had a girlfriend. I say I had a girlfriend. I didn't have a girlfriend. I wasn't even entirely sure what girls were in the first grade. But I do remember she decided I was her girlfriend, a little white girl named Heather. And we had a long discussion about how it was okay for us to be boyfriend and girlfriend, despite the fact that she was white and I was black." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Between the two of you or your parents? Did your parents know about this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but being a girlfriend and boyfriend in first grade just basically meant that you spent slightly more time together during recess. It had no meaning. I think we Eskimo kissed once. It didn't mean anything. It was at the time it felt very scandalous because everyone was watching. I was like, ah, my life is now my life has changed in first grade. No one told me elementary school would be like this. Did you write poetry? Not in first grade. That would come later. I would come during puberty when I wrote lots and lots of poetry. Anyway, so I was aware of it. I didn't think too much about it, but I was aware of it. But I was surrounded. It wasn't that I wasn't aware of race. It's that I wasn't aware that I was a minority. It's different. And it's because I wasn't. As far as my world was concerned, I mean, I'm six years old, five years old, first grade. The world is the seven people I see every day. So it didn't feel that way at all. And by the way, this being Atlanta, home of the civil rights movement and all the rest, it meant that when I looked at TV, which back then one did, because there were only three, four or five channels, right? And I saw the news, which my mother might make me watch, you know, Monica Kaufman was on TV telling me the news, and they were all black, and the mayor was black, and always been black. And so it just never occurred to me. When I went to Georgia Tech, I remember the first day walking across campus, from West Campus to East Campus, and realizing along the way that of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students that I was seeing, I was the only black one. That was enlightening and very off-putting because it occurred to me. And then, of course, it continued that way for, well, for the rest of my, for much of the rest of my career at Georgia Tech. Of course, I found lots of other students and I met people because in Atlanta, you're either black or you're white. There was nothing else. So I began to meet students of Asian descent and I met students who we would call Hispanic and so on and so forth. And you know, so my world, this is what college is supposed to do, right? It's supposed to open you up to people and it did. But it was a very strange thing to be in the minority. When I came to Boston, I will tell you a story. I applied to one place as an undergrad, Georgia Tech, because I was stupid. I didn't know any better. I just didn't know any better, right? No one told me. When I went to grad school, I applied to three places, Georgia Tech, because that's where I was, MIT, and CMU. When I got in to MIT, I got into CMU, but I had a friend who went to CMU. And so I asked him what he thought about it. He spent his time explaining to me about Pittsburgh, much less about CMU, but more about Pittsburgh, of which I developed a strong opinion based upon his strong opinion, something about the sun coming out two days out of the year. And I didn't get a chance to go there because the timing was wrong. I think it was because the timing was wrong. At MIT, I asked 20 people I knew, either when I visited or I had already known for a variety of reasons, whether they liked Boston. And ten of them loved it, and ten of them hated it. The ten who loved it were all white. The ten who hated it were all black. and they explained to me very much why that was the case. Both dads told me why. And the stories were remarkably the same for the two clusters. And I came up here and I could see it immediately, why people would love it and why people would not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And- Why people tell you about the nice coffee shops and- Well, it wasn't coffee shops, it was CD, used CD places." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But yeah, it was that kind of a thing. Nice shops, oh, there's all these students here. Harvard Square is beautiful. You can do all these things and you can walk and something about the outdoors, which I was in the slightest bit interested in. The outdoors is for the bugs, not for humans." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That should be a t-shirt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the way I feel about it. And the black folk told me completely different stories about which part of town you did not want to be caught in after dark. And I heard all, but that was nothing new. So I decided that MIT was a great place to be as a university. And I believed it then, I believe it now. And that whatever it is I wanted to do, I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but what if I was wrong? Someone there would know how to do it. Of course, then I would pick the one topic that nobody was working on at the time, but that's okay. It was great. And so I thought that I would be fine. And I'd only be there for like four or five years. I told myself, which turned out not to be true at all. But I enjoyed my time. I enjoyed my time there. But I did see a lot of I ran across a lot of things that were driven by what I look like while I was here. I got asked a lot of questions. I ran into a lot of cops. I did a, I saw a lot about the city. But at the time, I mean, I haven't been here a long time. These are the things that I remember. So this is 1990. There was not a single Black radio station. Now this is 1990, I don't know if there are any radio stations anymore, I'm sure there are, but I don't listen to the radio anymore, almost no one does, at least if you're under a certain age. But the idea is you could be in a major metropolitan area and there wasn't a single black radio station, by which I mean a radio station that played what we would call black music then, was absurd, but somehow captured kind of everything about the city. I grew up in Atlanta, and you've heard me tell you about Atlanta, Boston had no economically viable or socially cohesive black middle class. Insofar as it existed, it was uniformly distributed throughout large parts, not all parts, but large parts of the city. And where you had concentrations of black Bostonians, they tended to be poor. It was very different from where I grew up. I grew up on the poor side of town, sure. But then in high school, well, in ninth grade, we didn't have middle school. I went to an eighth grade school where there was a lot of, let's just say we had a riot the year that I was there. There was at least one major fight every week. It was an amazing experience. But when I went to ninth grade, I went to academy. Math and Science Academy, Mays High. It was a public school. It was a magnet school, that's why I was able to go there. It was the first school, high school, I think, in the state of Georgia to sweep the state math and science fairs. It was great. It had 385 students, all but four of whom were black. I went to school with the daughter of the former mayor of Atlanta, Michael Jackson's cousin. I mean, you know, there was, it was an upper middle class. You know, I just dropped names occasionally, you know, like drop the mic, drop some names, just to let you know, I used to hang out with Michael Jackson's cousin, 12th cousin, nine times removed. I don't know. The point is they had money. We had a parking problem because the kids had cars. I did not come from a place where, where you had cars. I had my first car when I came to MIT actually. Um, so it was, uh, It was just a very different experience for me, but I'd been to places where, whether you were rich or whether you were poor, you could be black and rich or black and poor, and it was there, and there were places, and they were segregated by class as well as by race, but that existed. Here, at least when I was here, it didn't feel that way at all, and it felt like a bunch of a really interesting contradiction. It felt like it was the interracial dating capital of the country. It really felt that way. But it also felt like the most racist place I ever spent any time. You know, you couldn't go up the Orange Line at that time. I mean, again, that was 30 years ago. I don't know what it's like now. But there were places you couldn't go. And you knew it. Everybody knew it. And there were places you couldn't live. And everybody knew that. And that was just the greater Boston area in 1992." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Subtle racism or explicit racism? Both. So in terms of within the institutions, did you feel, was there levels in which you were empowered to be first or one of the first black people in a particular discipline in some of these great institutions that you were a part of, you know, Georgia Tech or MIT? And was there a part where it felt limiting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I always felt empowered. Some of that was my own delusion, I think, but it worked out. So I never felt In fact, quite the opposite. Not only did I not feel as if no one was trying to stop me, I had the distinct impression that people wanted me to succeed. By people, I meant the people in power. Not my fellow students. Not that they didn't want me to succeed. But I felt supported, or at least that people were happy to see me succeed at least as much as anyone else. But, you know, 1990, you're dealing with a different set of problems. You're very early, at least in computer science, you're very early in the sort of Jackie Robinson period. You know, there's this thing called the Jackie Robinson syndrome, which is that you have to, you know, the first one has to be perfect or has to be sure to succeed because if that person fails, no one else comes after for a long time. So, you know, it was kind of in everyone's best interest. But I think it came from a sincere place. I'm completely sure that people went out of their way to try to make certain that the environment would be good. Not just for me, but for the other people who of course were around. And I was hardly the only, I was the only person in the AI lab, but I wasn't the only person at MIT by a long shot. On the other hand, we're what? At that point, we would have been, what, less than 20 years away from the first black PhD to graduate from MIT, right? Shirley Jackson, right? 1971, something like that? Somewhere around then. So we weren't that far away from the first first, and we were still another eight years away from the first black PhD in computer science, right? So, it was a sort of interesting time. But I did not feel as if the institutions of the university were against any of that. And furthermore, I felt as if there was enough of a critical mass across the Institute from students and probably faculty, though I didn't know them, who wanted to make certain that the right thing happened. It was very different from the institutions of the rest of the city, which I think were designed in such a way that they felt no need to be supportive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask a touchy question on that. So you kind of said that you didn't feel you felt empowered, is there some lesson, advice, in the sense that no matter what, you should feel empowered? You said, you used the word, I think, illusion or delusion. Is there a sense from the individual perspective where you should always kind of ignore, you know, the... ignore your own eyes, ignore the little forces that you are able to observe around you that are like trying to mess with you of whether it's jealousy, whether it's hatred in its pure form, whether it's just hatred in its like diluted form, all that kind of stuff, and just kind of see yourself as empowered and confident and all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it certainly helps, but there's a trade-off, right? You have to be deluded enough to think that you can succeed. I mean, you can't get a PhD unless you're crazy enough to think you can invent something that no one else has come up with. I mean, what kind of massive delusion is that? You have to be deluded enough to believe that you can succeed despite whatever odds you see in front of you. But you can't be so deluded that you don't think that you need to step out of the way of the oncoming train. So it's all a trade-off, right? You have to kind of believe in yourself. It helps to have a support group around you in some way or another. I was able to find that. I've been able to find that wherever I've gone, even if it wasn't necessarily on the floor that I was in. I had lots of friends when I was here. Many of them still live here, and I've kept up with many of them. So I felt supported, and certainly I had my mother and my family and those people back home that I could always lean back on, even if it were a long-distance call that cost money, You know, not something that any of the kids today even know what I'm talking about. But, you know, back then it mattered. Calling my mom was an expensive proposition. But, you know, you have that and it's fine. I think it helps. But you cannot be so deluded that you miss the obvious because it makes things slower and it makes you think you're doing better than you are. And it will hurt you in the long run." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned cops. You tell the story of being pulled over. Perhaps it happened more than once." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "More than once, for sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One, could you tell that story, and in general, can you give me a sense of what the world looks like when the law doesn't always look at you with a blank slate, with objective eyes? I don't know how to say it more poetically." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I guess the, uh, I don't either. I guess the, the answer is it looks exactly the way it looks now, because this is the world that we happen to live in, right? It's people clustering and doing the things that they do and making decisions based on, um, you know, one or two bits of information they find relevant, which by the way, are all positive feedback loops, uh, which makes it easier for you to believe what you believe before, because you behave in a certain way that makes it true. And it goes on and circles in the cycles and cycles and cycle. So, It's just about being on edge. I do not, despite having made it over 50 now. Congratulations, brother. God, I have a few gray hairs here and there. You did pretty good. I think, you know, I don't imagine I will ever see a police officer and not get very, very tense. Now, Everyone gets a little tense because it probably means you're being pulled over for speeding or something, or you're going to get a ticket or whatever, right? I mean, the interesting thing about the law in general is that most human beings' experience of it is fundamentally negative, right? You're only dealing with a lawyer if you're in trouble, except in a few very small circumstances. Right. But so that's just, that's an underlying reality. Now imagine that that's also at the hands of the police officer. I remember the time when I was, when, when I got pulled over that time, halfway between Boston and Wellesley, actually. I remember thinking, as he, when he pulled his gun on me, that if he shot me right now, he'd get away with it. That was the worst thing that I felt about that particular moment, is that if he shoots me now, he will get away with it. It would be years later when I realized actually much worse than that. is that he'd get away with it, and if anyone, if it became a thing that other people knew about, odds would be of course that it wouldn't, but if it became a thing that other people knew about, if I was living in today's world as opposed to the world 30 years ago, that not only would he get away with it, but that I would be painted a villain. I was probably big and scary, and I probably moved too fast, and if only I'd done what he said, and da da da da da da. Which is somehow worse, right? You, you know, that hurts not just you, you're dead, but your family and the way people look at you and look at your legacy or your history. That's terrible. And it would work. I absolutely believe it would have worked had he done it. Now, he didn't. I don't think he wanted to shoot me. when he felt like killing anybody. He did not go out that night expecting to do that or planning on doing it. And I wouldn't be surprised if he never ever did that or ever even pulled his gun again. I don't know the man's name. I don't remember anything about him. I do remember the gun. Guns are very big when they're in your face. I can tell you this much. They're much larger than they seem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you're basically like speeding or something like that. He said I ran a light. Ran a light." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think I ran a light, but you know, in fact, I may not have even gotten a ticket. I may have just gotten a warning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think he was a little spooked too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But he pulled a gun. Yeah. Apparently I moved too fast or something. Rolled my window down before I should have. It's unclear. I think he thought I was going to do something, or at least that's how he behaved." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how, if we can take a little walk around your brain. How do you feel about that guy and how do you feel about cops after that experience?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I don't remember that guy, but my views on police officers is the same view I have about lots of things. Fire is an important and necessary thing in the world, but you must respect fire because it will burn you. Fire is a necessary evil in the sense that it can burn you. Necessary in the sense that, you know, heat and all the other things that we use fire for. So when I see a cop, I see a giant ball of flame and I just try to avoid it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then some people might see a nice place, a nice thing to roast marshmallows with family over. Which is fine, I don't roast marshmallows. Okay, so let me go a little darker, and I apologize. Just talked to Dan Carlin about Hitler for four hours, so. Sorry if I go dark here a little bit, but is it easy for this experience of just being careful with the fire and avoiding it to turn to hatred?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, of course. And one might even argue that it is a illogical conclusion. On the other hand, you've got to live in the world, and I don't think it's helpful. Hate is something that takes a lot of energy, so one should reserve it for when it is useful and not carried around with you all the time. Again, there's a big difference between the happy delusion that convinces you that you can actually get out of bed and make it to work today without getting hit by a car, And the sad delusion that means you can not worry about this car that is barreling towards you, right? So we all have to be a little deluded because otherwise we're paralyzed, right? But one should not be ridiculous. If we go all the way back to something you said earlier about empathy, I think what I would ask other people to get out of this one of many, many, many stories is to recognize that it is real. people would ask me to empathize with the police officer. I would quote back statistics saying that, you know, being a police officer isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the United States. You're much more likely to get killed in a taxi cab. Half of police officers are actually killed by suicide. But that means their lives are something. Something's going on there with them. And I would more than happy to be empathetic about what it is they go through and how they see the world. I think, though, that if we step back from what I feel and we step back from what an individual police officer feels, you step up a level in all this, because all things tie back into interactive AR. The real problem here is that we've built a narrative, we've built a big structure that has made it easy for people to put themselves into different pots in the different clusters and to basically forget that the people in the other clusters are ultimately like them. It is a useful exercise to ask yourself sometimes, I think, that if I had grown up in a completely different house, in a completely different household, as a completely different person, if I had been a woman, would I see the world differently? Would I believe what that crazy person over there believes? And the answer is probably yes, because after all, they believe it. and fundamentally, they're the same as you. So then what can you possibly do to fix it? How do you fix Twitter if you think Twitter needs to be, is broken, or Facebook if you think Facebook is broken? How do you fix racism? How do you fix any of these things? It's all structural, right? It's not, I mean, individual conversations matter a lot, but you have to create structures that allow people to have those individual conversations all the time in a way that is relatively safe and that allows them to understand that other people have had different experiences, but that ultimately we're the same, which sounds very, I don't even know what the right word is. I'm trying to avoid a word like saccharine, but you know, it's, it feels very optimistic, but I think that's okay. I think that's a part of the delusion is you want to be a little optimistic and then recognize that the hard problem is actually setting up the structures in the first place because it's in no one's, it's in almost no one's interest to change the infrastructure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, I tend to believe that leaders have a big role to that, of selling that optimistic delusion to everybody, and that eventually leads to the building of the structures. But that requires a leader that unites everybody on a vision, as opposed to divides on a vision. This particular moment in history feels like there's a non-zero probability, if we go to the P, of something akin to a violent or a non-violent civil war. This is one of the most divisive periods of American history in recent, you can speak to this from perhaps a more knowledgeable and deeper perspective than me, but from my naive perspective, this seems like a very strange time. There's a lot of anger. And it has to do with people, I mean, for many reasons. One, the thing that's not spoken about, I think, much is the, quiet economic pain of millions that's like growing because of COVID, because of closed businesses, because of like lost dreams. So that's building whatever that tension is building. The other is, there is seems to be an elevated level of emotion. I'm not sure if you can psychoanalyze where that's coming from. But this sort of from which the protests and so on percolated. It's like, why now? Why this particular moment in history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, because time, enough time has passed, right? I mean, you know, the very first race riots were in Boston, uh, not to draw anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Really? When? Oh, this is before late." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, like the 1700s or whatever, right? I mean, there was a massive one in New York. I mean, I'm talking way, way, way back when. So, um, Boston used to be the hotbed of riots. It's just what Boston was all about. Uh, or so I'm told from history class. Uh, there's an interesting one in New York. Um, I remember when that was. Anyway, the, the, the point is, you know, Basically, you gotta get another generation, old enough to be angry, but not so old to remember what happened the last time, right? And that's sort of what happens. But you said like two completely, you said two things there that I think are worth unpacking. One has to do with this sort of moment in time. And you know why, why is this sort of up built? And the other has to do with a kind of sort of the economic reality of COVID. So I'm actually, I want to separate those things because for example, you know, this happened before COVID happened, right? So let's separate these two things for a moment. Now, let me preface all this by saying that although I am interested in history, one of my three minors as an undergrad was history, specifically history of the 1960s. Interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The other was Spanish. Okay, that's a mistake. Oh, I love that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Spanish history actually, but Spanish and the other was what we would now call cognitive science, but at the time. Oh, that's fascinating. Interesting. I minored in COGSCI here for grad school. That was really fascinating. It was a very different experience from all the computer science classes I've been taking, even the COGSCI classes I was taking at an undergrad. I'm interested in history, but I'm hardly a historian, right? So, you know, forgive my, I will ask the audience to forgive my simplification. But I think the question that's always worth asking as opposed to, it's the same question, but a little different. Not why now, but why not before, right? Why the 1950s, 60s civil rights movement as opposed to the 1930s, 1940s? Well, first off, there was a civil rights movement in the 30s and 40s. It just wasn't of the same character or quite as well-known. Post-World War II, lots of interesting things were happening. It's not as if the switch was turned on and Brown versus the Board of Education or the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and that's when it happened. These things have been building up forever and go all the way back and all the way back and all the way back. And Harriet Tubman was not born in 1950. So, you know, we can take these things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It could have easily happened right after World War II." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. I think, and again, I'm not a scholar, but I think that the big difference was TV. These things are visible. People can see them. It's hard to avoid, right? Why not James Farmer? Why Martin Luther King? Because one was born 20 years after the other or whatever. It turns out that, you know what King's biggest failure was in the early days? It was in Georgia. You know, they were doing the usual thing, trying to integrate. And I forget the guy's name, but you can look this up. But he, a cop, he was a sheriff, made a deal with the whole state of Georgia. We're gonna take people and we're going to non-violently put them in trucks. And then we're going to take them and put them in jails very far away from here. And we're going to do that and we're not going to, there'll be no reason for the press to hang around. And they did that and it worked. And the press left and nothing changed. So next they went to Birmingham, Alabama and Bull O'Connor. And you got to see on TV, little boys and girls being hit with fire hoses and being knocked down. And there was outrage and things changed. Right. Part of the delusion is pretending that nothing bad is happening that might force you to do something big you don't want to do. But sometimes it gets put in your face, and then you kind of can't ignore it. And a large part, in my view, of what happened right was that it was too public to ignore. Now, we created other ways of ignoring it. Lots of change happened in the South, but part of that delusion was that it wasn't going to affect the West or the Northeast. And of course it did, and that caused its own set of problems, which went into the late 60s into the 70s, and in some ways we're living with that legacy now, and so on. So why not, what's happening now, why it didn't happen 10 years ago? I think it's people have more voices. There's not just more TV, there's social media. It's very easy for these things to kind of build on themselves. And things are just quite visible. And there's demographic change. I mean, the world is changing rapidly, right? And so it's very difficult. You're now seeing people you could have avoided seeing most of your life growing up in a particular time. And it's happening, it's dispersing at a speed that is fast enough to cause concern for some people, but not so fast to cause massive negative reaction. So that's that. On the other hand, and again, that's a massive oversimplification, but I think there's something there anyway, at least something worth exploring. I'm happy to be yelled at by a real historian." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh yeah, I mean, there's just the obvious thing. I mean, I guess you're implying, but not saying this. I mean, it seemed to have percolated the most with just a single video, for example, the George Floyd video. Makes a huge difference. It's fascinating to think. that whatever the mechanisms that put injustice in front of our face, not like directly in front of our face, those mechanisms are the mechanisms of change." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, on the other hand, Rodney King. So no one remembers this. I seem to be the only person who remembers this, but sometime before the Rodney King incident, there was a guy who was a police officer who was saying that things were really bad in Southern California. And he was gonna prove it by having some news, some camera people follow him around. And he says, I'm gonna go into these towns and just follow me for a week and you will see that I'll get harassed. And like the first night, he goes out there, he crosses into the city, some cops pull him over and he's a police officer, remember. They don't know that, of course. They like shove his face through a glass window. This was on the new, like I distinctly remember watching this as a kid. Actually, I guess I wasn't a kid, I was in college at the time, I was in grad school at the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's not enough, like just, just, just." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it disappeared, like a day late, it didn't go viral." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Whatever that is, whatever that magic thing is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And whatever it was in 92, it was harder to go viral in 92, right? Or 91, actually it must have been 90 or 91. But that happened. And like two days later, it's like it never happened. Like nobody, again, nobody remembers this. I'm like the only person. Sometimes I think I must have dreamed it. Anyway, Rodney King happens, it goes viral, or the moral equivalent thereof at the time. And eventually we get April 29th, right? And I don't know what the difference was between the two things other than one thing caught and one thing didn't. Maybe what's happening now is two things are feeding onto one another. One is more people are willing to believe. And the other is there's easier and easier ways to give evidence. cameras, body cams, but we're still finding ourselves telling the same story. It's the same thing over and over again. I would invite you to go back and read the op-eds from what people were saying about the violence is not the right answer after Rodney King, and then go back to 1980 and the big riots that were happening around then and read the same op-ed. It's the same words over and over and over again. I mean, there's your remembering history right there. I mean, it's like literally the same words. Like you could have just caught it, but I'm surprised no one got flagged for plagiarism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting if you have an opinion on the question of violence and the popular, perhaps, caricature of Malcolm X versus King, Martin Luther King." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know Malcolm X was older than Martin Luther King? People kind of have it in their head that he's younger. Well, he died sooner, right? But only by a few years, right? People think of MLK as the older statesman and they think of Malcolm X as the young, angry, whatever. But that's more of a narrative device. It's not true at all. I don't, I just, I reject the choice. I think it's a false choice. I think they're just things that happen. You just do, as I said, hatred is not, it takes a lot of energy. But you know, every once in a while you have to fight. One thing I will say, without taking a moral position, which I will not take on this matter, violence has worked." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's the annoying thing. It seems like over-the-top anger works. Outrage works. So you can say like being calm and rational and just talking it out is gonna lead to progress, but it seems like if you just look through history, being irrationally upset is the way you make progress." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, certainly the way that you get someone to notice you. Yeah. And if they don't notice you, I mean, what's the difference between that and what, again, without taking a moral position on this, I'm just trying to observe history here. If you, maybe if television didn't exist, the civil rights movement doesn't happen or it takes longer or it takes a very different form. Maybe if social media doesn't exist, a whole host of things, positive and negative don't happen. Right. So, and what do any of those things do other than expose things to people. Violence is a way of shouting. I mean, many people far more talented and thoughtful than I have have said this in one form or another, right? That, you know, violence is the voice of the unheard, right? I mean, it's a thing that people do. uh when they feel as if they have no other option and sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree sometimes we think they're justified sometimes we think they are not but regardless it is a way of shouting and when you shout people tend to hear you even if they don't necessarily hear the words that you're saying they hear that you you were shouting i see no way so another way of putting it which i think is less um let us just say um provocative, but I think is true, is that all change, particularly change that impacts power, requires struggle. The struggle doesn't have to be violent, but it's a struggle nonetheless." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The powerful don't give up power easily." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, why should they? But even so, it still has to be a struggle. And by the way, This isn't just about, you know, violent political, whatever, nonviolent political change, right? This is true for understanding calculus, right? I mean, everything requires a struggle. We're back to talking about faculty hiring. At the end of the day, in the end of the day, it all comes down to faculty hiring. That is all a metaphor. Faculty hiring is a metaphor for all of life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask a strange question. Do you think everything is gonna be okay in the next year? Do you have a hope that we're gonna be okay?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tend to think that everything's gonna be okay, because I just tend to think that everything's gonna be okay. My mother says something to me a lot, and always has, and I find it quite comforting, which is, this too shall pass. And this too shall pass. Now, this too shall pass is not just this bad thing is going away. Everything passes. I mean, I have a 16 year old daughter who's going to go to college probably in about 15 minutes, given how fast she seems to be growing up. And you know, I get to hang out with her now, but one day I won't. She'll ignore me just as much as I ignored my parents when I was in college and went to grad school. This too shall pass. But I think that, you know, one day, if we're all lucky, you live long enough to look back on something that happened a while ago, even if it was painful and mostly it's a memory. So yes, I think it'll be okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about humans? Do you think we'll live into the 21st century? I certainly hope so. Are you worried about, are you worried that we might destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, with AGI, with engineering?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not worried about AGI doing it, but I am worried, I mean, at any given moment, right? Also, but you know, at any given moment, a comet could, I mean, you know, whatever. I tend to think that outside of things completely beyond our control, we have a better chance than not of making it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, I talked to Alex Vilpenca from Berkeley. He was talking about comets and that they can come out of nowhere. And that was a realization to me. Wow, we're just watching this darkness and they can just enter and then we have less than a month." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And yet, you make it from day to day. The illusions are good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That one shall not pass. Well, maybe for Earth they'll pass, but not for humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I'm just choosing to believe that it's going to be okay, and we're not gonna get hit by an asteroid, at least not while I'm around. And if we are, well, there's very little I can do about it, so I might as well assume it's not going to happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It makes food taste better. It makes food taste better. So you, out of the millions of things you've done in your life, you've also began the This Week in Black History calendar of facts. There's like a million questions I can ask here. You said you're not a historian, but is there, is there, Let's start at the big history question of, is there somebody in history, in black history, that you draw a lot of philosophical or personal inspiration from, or you just find interesting, or a moment in history you find interesting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I find the entirety of the 40s to the 60s and the civil rights movement that didn't happen and did happen at the same time during then, quite inspirational. I mean, I've read quite a bit at a time period, at least I did in my younger days when I had more time to read as many things as I wanted to. What was quirky about this week in black history, when I started in the 80s, was how focused it was. And it was because of the sources I was stealing from. And I was very much stealing from sort of like, I'd take calendars, anything I could find, Google didn't exist, right? And I just pulled as much as I could and just put it together in one place for other people. What ended up being quirky about it, and I started getting people sending me information on it, was the inventors. People who, you know, Garrett Morgan to Benjamin Banneker, right? People who were inventing things. At a time when how in the world did they manage to invent anything? Like, all these other things were happening, mother necessity, right? All these other things were happening, and there were so many terrible things happening around them, and they went to the wrong state at the wrong time, they may never come back, but they were inventing things we use, right? And it was always inspiring to me that people would still create, even under those circumstances. I got a lot out of that. I also learned a few lessons, I think, the Charles Richard Drews of the world. You create things that impact people. You don't necessarily get credit for them. And that's not right, but it's also okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're okay with that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Up to a point, yeah. I mean, look, in our world, all we really have is credit." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was always bothered by how much value credit is given." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the only thing you got. I mean, if you're an academic in some sense, well, it isn't the only thing you've got, but it feels that way sometimes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you got the actual, we're all gonna be dead soon. You got the joy of having created. the credit with Jan, I've talked to Jorgen Schmidhuber, right? The Turing Award given to three people for deep learning. And you could say that a lot of other people should be on that list. It's the Nobel Prize question. Yeah, it's sad. It's sad and people like talking about it, but I feel like in the long arc of history, the only person who will be remembered is Einstein, Hitler, maybe Elon Musk." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And the rest of us are just like, well, you know, someone asked me about immortality once and I said, and I stole this from somebody else. I don't remember who, but it was, you know, I asked him, what's your great grandfather's name? Any of them? Of course they don't know. Most of us do not know. I mean, I'm not entirely sure. I know my grandparents, all my grandparents names. I know what I called them. Right. I don't know their middle names, for example. within living memory, so I could find out. Actually, my grandfather didn't know when he was born. He had no idea how old he was, right? But I definitely don't know who any of my great-grandparents are. So in some sense, immortality is doing something, preferably positive, so that your great-grandchildren know who you are. And that's kind of what you can hope for, which is very depressing in some ways. I could turn it into something uplifting if you need me to, but it's- Yeah, can you do the work here? Yeah, it's simple, right? It doesn't matter. I don't have to know who my great-grandfather was to know that I wouldn't be here without him. And I don't know who my great-grandchildren are, and certainly who my great-great-grandchildren are, and I'll probably never meet them, although I would very much like to. But hopefully I'll set the world in motion in such a way that their lives will be better than they would have been if I hadn't done that. Well, certainly they wouldn't have existed if I hadn't done the things that I did. So I think that's a good positive thing. You live on through other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if I'm afraid of death, but I don't like it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's another t-shirt. I mean, do you ponder it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you think about the inevitability of oblivion? I do occasionally. This feels like a very Russian conversation, actually. I will tell you a story, something that happened to me recently. If you look very carefully, you'll see I have a scar. Which, by the way, is an interesting story of its own about why people have half of their thyroid taken out. Some people get scars and some don't. But anyway, I had half my thyroid taken out. The way I got there, by the way, is its own interesting story, but I won't go into it. Just suffice it to say, I did what I keep telling people you should never do, which is never go to the doctor unless you have to, because there's nothing good that's ever gonna come out of a doctor's visit, right? So I went to the doctor to look at one thing, this little bump I had on the side that I thought might be something bad because my mother made me. And I went there, and he's like, oh, it's nothing. But by the way, your thyroid is huge. Can you breathe? Yes, I can breathe. Are you sure? Because it's pushing on your windpipe. You should be dead. Ah! Right? So I ended up going there. And to look at my thyroid, it was growing. I had what's called a goiter. And he said, we're going to have to take it out at some point. When? Sometime before you're 85, probably. But if you wait till you're 85, that'll be really bad. because you don't wanna have surgery when you're 85 years old, if you can help it. Certainly not the kind of surgery it takes to take out your thyroid. So I went there and we decided, I would decide I'd put it off until December 19th, because my birthday's December 18th. And I wouldn't be able to say I made it to 49 or whatever. So I said, I'll wait till after my birthday. In the first six months of that, nothing changed. Apparently in the next three months, It had grown, I hadn't noticed this at all. I went and had surgery. They took out half of it. The other half is still there and working fine, by the way. I don't have to take a pill or anything like that. It's great. I'm in the hospital room. And the doctor comes in, I've got these things in my arm, they're gonna do whatever, they're talking to me. And the anesthesiologist says, huh, your blood pressure's through the roof, do you have high blood pressure? I said, no, but I'm terrified if that helps you at all. And the anesthetist, who's the nurse who supports the anesthesiologist, if I got that right, said, oh, don't worry about it, I just put some stuff in your IV, you're gonna be feeling pretty good in a couple minutes. And I remember turning and saying, Well, I'm gonna feel pretty good in a couple minutes next thing. I know there's this guy and he's moving my bed and I have this and he's talking to me and I have this distinct impression that I've met this guy and I should know what he's talking about, but I kind of like just don't Remember what just happened and I look up and I see the tiles going by and I'm like, oh it's just like in the movies where you see the tiles go by and then I I have this brief thought that I'm in an infinitely long warehouse and there's someone sitting next to me. And I remember thinking, oh, she's not talking to me. And then I'm back in the hospital bed. And in between the time where the towels were going by and I got in the hospital bed, something like five hours had passed. Apparently it had grown so much that it was a four and a half hour procedure instead of an hour long procedure. I lost a neck size and a half. It was pretty big, apparently it was as big as my heart. Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because... It's a hell of a story already. Between tiles going by and me waking up in my hospital bed, no time passed. There was no sensation of time passing. When I go to sleep and I wake up in the morning, I have this feeling that time has passed. I have this feeling that something has physically changed about me. Nothing happened between the time they put the magic juice in me and the time that I woke up. Nothing. By the way, my wife was there with me talking. Apparently, I was also talking. I don't remember any of this, but luckily I didn't say anything I wouldn't normally say. My memory of it is I would talk to her, and she would teleport around the room. And then I accused her of witchcraft, and that was the end of that. But she, her point of view is I would start talking, and then I would fall asleep, and then I would wake up and leave off where I was before. I had no notion of any time passing. I kind of imagine that that's death. Is the lack of sensation of time passing. And on the one hand, I am, I don't know, soothed by the idea that I won't notice. On the other hand, I'm very unhappy at the idea that I won't notice. So I don't know if I'm afraid of death, but I'm completely sure that I don't like it and that I particularly would prefer to discover on my own whether immortality sucks and be able to make a decision about it. That's what I would prefer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, have a choice in the matter. I would like to have a choice in the matter. Well, again, on the Russian thing, I think the finiteness of it is the thing that gives it a little flavor, a little spice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in reinforcement learning, we believe that. That's why we have discount factors. Otherwise, it doesn't matter what you do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Amen. Well, let me, one last question. Sticking on the Russian theme, you, talked about your great-grandparents, not remembering their name. What do you think is the, in this kind of Markov chain that is life, what do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in a world where eventually you won't know who your great-grandchildren are, I am reminded of something I heard once, or I read once that I really like, which is, it is well worth remembering that the entire universe, save for one trifling exception, is composed entirely of others. And I think that's the meaning of life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Charles, this was one of the best conversations I've ever had. And I get to see you tomorrow again to hang out with who looks to be one of the most, how should I say, interesting personalities that I'll ever get to meet with Michael Lipman. So I can't wait. I'm excited to have had this opportunity. Thank you for traveling all the way here. It was amazing. I'm excited, I always loved Georgia Tech, I'm excited to see with you being involved there what the future holds. So thank you for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an excellent question. For me, the answer is sort of clear, because I start from the principle of modesty. You know, if we believe that we are alone and special and unique, that shows arrogance. My daughters, when they were infants, they tended to think that they are special, unique. And then they went out to the street and realized that other kids are very much like them. And then they developed a sense of a better perspective about themselves. And I think the only reason that we are still thinking that we are special is because we haven't searched well enough to find others that might even be better than us. And, you know, I say that because I look at the newspaper every morning and I see that we do foolish things. We are not necessarily the most intelligent ones. And if you think about it, if you open a recipe book, You see that out of the same ingredients, you can make very different cakes, depending on how you put them together and how you heat them up. And what is the chance that by taking the soup of chemicals that existed on Earth, and cooking it one way to get our life that you got the best cake possible. I mean, we are probably not the sharpest cookie in the jar. And my question is, I mean, it's pretty obvious to me that we are probably not alone because half of all the sun-like stars we know now as astronomers, half of the sun-like stars from the Kepler satellite data have a planet the size of the Earth roughly at the same distance that the Earth is from the Sun. And that means that they can have liquid water on their surface and the chemistry of life as we know it. So if you roll the dice billions of times just within the Milky Way galaxy, and then you have tens of billions of galaxies like it within the observable volume of the universe, it would be extremely arrogant to think that we are special. I would think that we are sort of middle of the road, typical. forms of life. And that's why nobody pays attention to us. You know, if you go down the street on a sidewalk and you see an ant, you don't pay attention or a special respect to that ant. You just continue to walk. And so I think that we are sort of average, not very interesting, not exciting. So nobody cares about us. We tend to think that we are special, but that's a sign of immaturity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we're very early on in our development." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, that's another thing that we have our technology only for a hundred years, and it's evolving exponentially right now on a three-year timescale. So imagine what would happen in a hundred years, in a thousand years, in a million years, or in a billion years. Now, the sun is actually... Relatively late in the star formation history of the universe, most of the sun-like stars formed earlier. And some of them already died, you know, became white dwarfs. And so if you imagine that a civilization like ours existed around a typical sun-like star, by now, if they survived, they could be a billion years old. And then imagine a billion-year technology. It would look like magic to us. You know, an approximation to God. We wouldn't be able to understand it. And so, in my view, we should be humble. And by the way, we should probably just listen and not speak, because there is a risk, right? If you are inferior, there is a risk. If you speak too loudly, something bad may happen to you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned we should be humble also in the sense, with the analogy to ants, that they might be better than us. So there's a kind of scale that we're talking about, and in the question, you mentioned the word sentient. So sentience, or maybe the more basic formulation of that is consciousness. Do you think Do you think that this thing within us humans, in terms of the typical life form of consciousness, is the essential element that permeates, if there's other alien civilizations out there, that they have something like consciousness as well? Or is this, I guess I'm asking, can you try to untangle the word sentient?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so that's a good question. I think what is most abundant, depending on how long it survives. So if you look at us, as an example, we are now we do have conscious and we do have technology. But the technologies that we are developing are also means for our own destruction, as we can tell. You know, we can change the climate if we are not careful enough. We can go into nuclear wars. So we are developing means for our own destruction through self-inflicted wounds. And it might well be that creatures like us are not long-lived, that the crocodiles on other planets live for billions of years. They don't destroy themselves. They live naturally. And so if you look around, the most common thing would be dumb animals that live for long times, you know, not those that have conscience. But in terms of changing the environment, I think since, I mean, humans develop tools, they develop the ability to construct technologies that would lift us from this planet that we were born in. And that's something animals without a consciousness cannot really do. And so in terms of looking for things that went beyond the circumstances they were born into, I would think that even if they are short-lived, These are the creatures that made the biggest difference to their environment, and we can search for them. You know, even if they're short-lived and most of the civilizations are dead by now. Yeah. Even if that's the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's sad to think about, by the way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, but if you look on earth, there are lots of cultures that existed throughout time, and they are dead by now. The Mayan culture was very sophisticated, died. But we can find evidence for it and learn about it just by archaeology, digging into the ground, looking. And so we can do the same thing in space. Look for dead civilizations, and perhaps we can learn a lesson why they died, and behave better so that we will not share the same fate. So I think, you know, there is a lesson to be learned from the sky. And by the way, I should also say, if we find a technology that we have not dreamed of, that we can import to Earth, that may be a better strategy for making a fortune than going to Silicon Valley or going to Wall Street. Because you make a jump start into something of the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's one way to do the leap is actually to find, to literally discover versus come up with the idea in our own limited human capacity, like a cognitive capacity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It would feel like cheating in an exam where you look over the shoulder of a student next to you, but." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's not good on an exam, but it is good when you're coming up with technology that could change the fabric of human civilization. There is, you know, in my neck of the woods of artificial intelligence, there's a lot of trajectories one can imagine of creating very powerful beings, the technology that's essentially you know, you can call superintelligence, that could achieve space exploration, all those kinds of things, without consciousness. Without something that to us humans looks like consciousness. And there, you know, there is a sad, feeling I have that consciousness too, in terms of us being humble, is a thing we humans take too seriously. That we think it's special just because we have it. But it could be a thing that's actually holding us back in some kind of way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It may well be. It may well be. I should say something about AI because I do think it offers a very important a step into the future. If you look at the Old Testament, the Bible, there is this story about Noah's Ark that you might know about. Noah knew about a great flood that is about to endanger all life on earth. So he decided to build an ark. And the Bible actually talks about specifically what the size of this ark was, what the dimensions were. Turns out it was quite similar to Umuamua that we will discuss in a few minutes. But at any event, he built this ark and he put animals on it so that they were saved from the great flood. Now, you can think about doing the same on earth. because there are risks for future catastrophes. We could have the self-inflicted wounds that we were talking about, like nuclear war, changing the climate, or there could be an asteroid impacting us, just like the dinosaurs died. The dinosaurs didn't have science, astronomy, they couldn't have a warning system, but there was this big stone, big rock that approached them, It must have been a beautiful sight just when it was approaching, got very big, and then smashed them, okay? Killed them. So you could have a catastrophe like that, or in a billion years, the sun will basically boil off all the oceans on Earth. Currently, all our eggs are in one basket, but we can spread them. It's sort of like the printing press, if you think about it. The revolution that Gutenberg brought is, there were very few copies of the Bible at the time, and each of them was precious because it was handwritten. But once the printing press produced multiple copies, you know, if something bad happened to one of the copies, it wasn't a catastrophe, you know, it wasn't a disaster, because you had many more copies. And so if we have copies of life, here on Earth, elsewhere, then we avoid the risk of it being eliminated by a single-point breakdown, catastrophe. So, the question is, can we build NOAA's spaceship that will carry life as we know it? Now, you might think we have to put elephants and whales and birds on a big spaceship, but that's not true, because all you need to know is the DNA making, the genetic making of these animals, put it on a computer system that has AI plus a 3D printer. so that this CubeSat, which is rather small, can go with this information to another planet and use the raw materials there to produce synthetic life. And that would be a way of producing copies, just like the Gutenberg printing press." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it doesn't have to be exact copies of the humans. It could just contain some basic elements of life and then have enough life on board that it could, reproduce the process of evolution on another place. Right. So I mean, that also makes you sad, of course, because you confront the mortality of your own little precious consciousness and all your own memories and knowledge and all that stuff. But who cares? I mean, I care about mine. Right. And you care about yours." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, I actually don't. You know, if you're an astronomer, one thing that you learn from the universe is to be modest, because you're not so significant. I mean, think about it. All these emperors and kings that conquered a piece of land on earth and were extremely proud. You know, you see these images of kings and emperors that usually are alpha males. And they stand strong, and they're very proud of themselves. But if you think about it, there are 10 to the power 20 planets like the Earth in the observable volume of the universe. This view of conquering a piece of land, and even conquering all of Earth, is just like an ant hugging a single grain of sand on the landscape of a huge beach. That's not very impressive. So you can't be arrogant. If you see the big picture, you have to be humble. Also, we are short-lived. Within 100 years, that's it, right? So what does it teach you? First, to be humble, modest. You never have significant powers relative to the big scheme of things. And second, you should appreciate every day that you live and learn about the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Humble and still grateful. Yes, exactly. Well, let's talk about probably the most interesting object I've heard about and also the most fun to pronounce. Oumuamua, yes. Oumuamua. Can you tell me the story of this object and why it may be an important event in human history? And is it possibly a piece of alien technology?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so this is the first object that was spotted close to Earth from outside the solar system. and it was found on October 19th, 2017. And at that time, it was receding away from us. And at first, astronomers thought it must be a piece of rock, you know, just like all the asteroids and comets that we have seen from within the solar system. And it just came from another star. I should say that the actual discovery of this object was surprising to me because a decade earlier, I wrote the first paper together with Ed Turner and Amaya Morrow-Martin that tried to predict whether the same telescope that was surveying the sky, Pan-STARRS, from Hawaii, would find anything from interstellar space. given what we know about the solar system. So if you assume that other planetary systems have similar abundance of rocks and you just calculate how many should be ejected into interstellar space, the conclusion is no, we shouldn't find anything with pan-stars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To me, I apologize, probably revealing my stupidity, but it was surprising to me that so few interstellar objects from outside the solar system have ever been detected, or none has been. You do maybe talk about it, that there has been one or two rocks since then." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, since then there was one called Borisov. It was discovered by an amateur Russian astronomer, Gennady Borisov. And that one looked like a comet. Yeah. And just like a comet from within the solar system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But this is a really important point. Sorry to interrupt it. You showed that it's unlikely that a rock from another solar system would arrive to ours. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so the actual detection of this one was surprising by itself, to me. Yes. So at first they thought maybe it's a comet or an asteroid, but then it didn't look like anything we've seen before. Borisov did look like a comet, so people asked me afterwards and said, you know, Doesn't it convince you, if Borisov looks like a comet, doesn't it convince you that Oumuamua is also natural? And I said, you know, when I went on the first date with my wife, she looked special to me. And since then I met many women. That didn't change my opinion of my wife. So, you know, that's not an argument. Anyway, so why did... Why did the Oumuamua look weird? Let me explain. So first of all, astronomers monitored the amount of sunlight that it reflects. And it was tumbling, spinning, every eight hours. And as it was spinning, the brightness that we saw from that direction, we couldn't resolve it because it's tiny. It's about a hundred meters, a few hundred feet, the size of a football field. And we cannot, from Earth, with existing telescopes, we cannot resolve it. The only way to actually get a photograph of it is to send a camera close to it. And that was not possible at the time that Oumuamua was discovered, because it was already moving away from us faster than any rocket we can send. It's sort of like a guest that appeared for dinner, and then by the time we realized that it's weird, the guest is already out the front door into the dark street. Ah, what we would like to find is an object like it approaching us, because then you can send the camera irrespective of how fast it moves. And if we were to find it in July 2017, that would have been possible, because it was approaching us at that time. Actually, I was visiting Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii, with my family for vacation at that time, in July 2017, but nobody knew at the observatory that Uumuamua is very close." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's sad to think about that we had the opportunity at that time to send up a camera." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But don't worry. I mean, there will be more. There will be more because, you know, I operate by the Copernican principle, which says we don't live at a special place and we don't live at a special time. And that means, you know, if we surveyed the sky for a few years, and we had sensitivity to this region between us and the sun, and we found this object with pan stars, you know, there should be many more that we will find in the future. with surveys that might be even better. And actually, in three years' timescale, there would be the so-called LSST, that's a survey of the Vera Rubin Observatory, that would be much more sensitive and could potentially find an Oumuamua-like object every month. Okay, so I'm just waiting for that. And the main reason for me to alert everyone to the unusual properties of Umu'umu'a is with the hope that next time around when we see something as unusual, we would take a photograph or we would get as much evidence as possible. Because science is based on evidence, not on prejudice. And we will get back to that theme. So anyway, let me point out what is- Some of the properties actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the elongated nature, all of those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the light curve, the amount of light, sunlight that was reflected from it, was changing over eight hours by a factor of 10, meaning that the area of this object, even though we can't resolve it, the area on the sky that reflects sunlight was bigger by a factor of 10 in some phases as it was tumbling around than in other phases. So even if you take a piece of paper that is razor thin, there is a very small likelihood that it's exactly edge-on, And getting a factor of 10 change in the area that you see on the sky is huge. It's much more than any... It means that the object has an unusual geometry. It's at least a factor of a few more than any of the comets or asteroids that we have seen before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned reflectivity, so it's not just the geometry, but the properties of the surface of that thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if you assume the reflectivity is the same, then it's just geometry. If you assume the reflectivity may change, then it could be a combination of the area that you see and the reflectivity, because different directions may reflect differently. But the point is that it's very extreme. And actually the best fit to the light curve that we saw was of a flat object, unlike all the cartoons that you have seen of a cigar shape. A flat object at the 90% confidence gives a better model for the way that the light varied. And it's also- So it's like flat, meaning like a pancake. Like a pancake, exactly. And so that's, you know, the very first unusual property. But to me, it was not unusual enough to think that it might be artificial. It was not significant enough. Then there was no cometary tail, you know, no dust, no gas around this object. And the Spitzer Space Telescope really searched very deeply for carbon-based molecules. There was nothing. So it's definitely not a comet the way people expected it to be." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you maybe briefly mention what properties a comet that you're referring to usually has?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. So a comet is a rock that has some water ice on the surface. So you can think of it as an icy rock. Actually, comets were discovered a long time ago, but The first model that was developed for them was by Fred Whipple, who was at Harvard. And I think the legend goes that he got the idea from walking through Harvard Square during a winter day and seeing these icy rocks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a comet is icy, and an asteroid is not. It's just a rock. It's just a rock." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so when you have ice on the surface, when the rock gets close to the sun the sunlight warms it up and the the ice sublimates evaporates because the one thing about ice water ice is it doesn't become liquid if you warm it up in vacuum you know without an external pressure. It just goes straight into gas. And that's what you see as the tail of a comet. The only way to get liquid water is to have an atmosphere, like on Earth, that has an external pressure. Only then you get liquid. And that's why it's essential to have an atmosphere to a planet in order to have liquid water and the chemistry of life. So if you look at Mars, Mars lost its atmosphere. And therefore, no liquid water on the surface anymore. I mean, there may have been early, and that's what the Perseverance survey, the Perseverance mission will try to find out whether it had liquid water, whether there was life perhaps on it at the time. but at some point it lost its atmosphere, and then the liquid water was gone. So the only reason that we can live on Earth is because of the atmosphere. But a comet is in vacuum, pretty much, and when it gets warmed up on the surface, the water ice becomes gas, and then you see this cometary tail behind it, in addition to water, There are all kinds of carbon-based molecules or dust that comes off the surface. And those are detectable? Yeah, it's easy to detect. It's very prominent. You see these cometary tails that look very prominent because they reflect sunlight and you can see them. In fact, it's sometimes difficult to see the nucleus of the comet because it's surrounded and shrouded. And in this case, There was no trace of anything. Now, you might say, okay, it's not a comet. So that's what the community said. Okay, it's not a, no problem. It's still a rock. You know, it's not a comet, but it's just a rock, bare rock. You know, okay, no problem. Then, and that's the thing that convinced me to write about it. And then in June, 2018, you know, significantly later, there was a report that in fact the object exhibited an excess push. in addition to the force of gravity. So the sun acts on it by gravity, but then there was an extra push on this object that was figured out from the orbit that you can trace. And the question was, what is this excess push? So for comets, you get the rocket effect. When you evaporate gas, you know, just like a jet engine on an airplane, a jet engine is very simple. You throw the gas back, and it pushes the airplane forward." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's how it jets. So, in the case of a comet, you throw gas in the direction of the sun, and then you get a push. Okay? So, in the case of comets, you can get a push. But there was no cometary tail. So then people said, oh, wait a second. Is it an asteroid? No, but it behaves like a comet. But it doesn't look like a comet. So what? Well, forget about it, business as usual." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's what they mean by non-gravitational acceleration. So that's interesting. So the primary force acting on something like just a rock, like an asteroid, would be, like you can predict the trajectory based on gravity. And so here there's detected movement that cannot be accounted purely by the gravity of the sun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And if it was a comet, you would need about a 10th of, the mass of this comet, the weight of this comet, to be evaporated in order to give it. And there was no sign of that. No sign. 10% of the mass evaporating. It's huge. Think about it. A hundred meter size object losing 10% of its mass. You can't miss that. So that's super weird." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's super weird. Is there a good explanation? Is there in your mind a possible explanation for this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, so I operated just like Sherlock Holmes in a way. I said, okay, what are the possibilities? And the only thing I could think, so I ruled out everything else. And I said, it must be the sunlight reflected off it. Okay? So the sunlight reflects off the surface and gives it a push, just like you get a push on a sail on a boat, you know, from the wind reflecting off it. Now, in order for this to be effective, it turns out the object needs to be extremely thin. It turns out it needs to be less than a millimeter thick. Nature does not produce such things. But we produce it because it's called the technology of a light sail. So we are, for space exploration, we are exploring this technology because it has the benefit of not needing to carry the fuel with the spacecraft. So you don't have the fuel, you just have a... you just have a sail and it's being pushed either by sunlight or by a laser beam or whatever. So perhaps this is a light sail." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is actually the same technology with the Starshot project. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, you know, people afterwards say, okay, you work on this project, you imagine things. You know, obviously my imagination is limited by what I know. So, you know, I would not deny that, you know, working on light sails expanded my ability to imagine this possibility. But let me offer another interesting anecdote. In September this year, 2020, there was another object found, and it was given the name 2020SO by the Minor Planet Center. This is an organization actually in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that gives names to objects, astronomical objects found in the solar system. And they gave it that name 2020SO because it looked like an object in the solar system. And it moved in an orbit that is similar to the orbit of the Earth, but not the same exactly. And therefore it was bound to the sun, but it also exhibited deviation from what you expect based on gravity. So the astronomers that found it extrapolated back in time and found that in 1966, it intercepted the Earth. And then they realized, they went to the history books, and they realized, oh, there was a mission called Lunar Surveyor, Lunar Lander, Surveyor 2, that had a rocket booster. It was a failed mission, but there was a rocket booster that was kicked into space. And presumably this is the rocket booster that we are seeing. Now, this rocket booster was sufficiently hollow and thin for us to recognize that it's pushed by sunlight. So here is my point. We can tell from the orbit of an object, obviously this object didn't have any cometary tail, it was artificially made, we know that it was made by us, and it did deviate from an orbit of a rock. So just by seeing something that doesn't have cometary tail and deviates from an orbit shaped by gravity, We can tell that it's artificial. In the case of Oumuamua, it couldn't have been sent by humans because it just passed near us for a few months. We know exactly what we were doing at that time. And also it was moving faster than any object that we can launch. And so obviously it came from outside the solar system. And the question is, who produced it? Now, I should say that, you know, when I walk on vacation on the beach, I often see natural objects like seashells that are beautiful, and I look at them. And every now and then I stumble on a plastic bottle that was artificially produced. And my point is that maybe Oumuamua was a message in a bottle. And this is simply another window into searching for artifacts from other civilizations." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where do you think it could have come from? If it's, so, okay, from a scientific perspective, the narrow-minded view, as we'll probably talk about throughout, is you kinda wanna stick to the things that, to naturally originating objects, like asteroids and comets. Okay, that's the space of possible hypotheses. And then if we expand beyond that, you start to think, okay, these are artificially constructed, and like you just said, it could be by humans. It could be by whatever that means, by some kind of extraterrestrial alien civilizations. If it's the alien civilization variety, what is this object then that we're looking at?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an excellent question. An excellent question. And let me lay out, I mean, we don't have enough evidence to tell. If we had a photograph, perhaps we would have more information. But the possibility... There is one other peculiar fact about Oumuamua. Well, other than it was very shiny, that I didn't mention, you know, we didn't detect any heat from it, and that implies that it's rather small and shiny. But the other peculiar fact is that it came from a very special frame of reference. So it's sort of like finding a car in a parking lot, in a public parking lot, that you can't really tell where it came from. So there is this frame of reference where you average over the motions of all the stars in the neighborhood of the sun. So you find the so-called local standard of rest of the galaxy. And that's a frame of reference that is obtained by averaging the random motions of all the stars. And the sun is moving relative to that frame at some speed. But this object was at rest in that frame. And only one in 500 stars is so much at rest in that frame. And that's why I was saying it's like a parking lot. It was parked there and we bumped into it. So the relative speed between the solar system and this object is just because we are moving. It was sitting still. Now you ask yourself, why is it so unusual in that context? You know why? Because if it was expelled from another planetary system, most likely it will carry the speed of the host star that it came from. Because the most loosely bound objects are in the periphery of the planetary system. they move very slowly relative to the star. And so they carry the, when they are ripped apart from the planetary system, most of the objects will have the residual motion of the star, roughly, relative to the local star. But this one was at rest in the locals. Now, one thing I can think of, if there is a grid of road posts, you know, like for navigation system, so that you can find your way in the local frame, then that would be one possibility." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "These are like little sensors of, that's fascinating to think about. So there could be, I mean, not necessarily, literally a grid, but just, in some definition of evenly spread out set of objects like these that are just out there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot of them. Another possibility is that these are relay stations for communication. You might think in order to communicate, you need a huge beacon, a very powerful beacon. But it's not true, because even on Earth, we have these relay stations, so you have a not so powerful beacon, so it can be heard only out to a limited distance. But then you relay the message, and it could be one of those. Now, after it collided with the solar system, of course, it got a kick, so it's just like a billiard ball. We gave it a kick by colliding with, but most of them are not colliding with stars. So that's one possibility. Okay? And there should be lots of them, if that's the case. The other possibility is that it's a probe, you know, that was sent in the direction of the habitable region around the sun to find out if there is life. Now, it takes tens of thousands of years for such a probe to traverse the solar system from the outer edge of the Oort cloud all the way to where we are. And it's a long journey. So when it started the journey from the edge of the solar system to get to us now, we were rather primitive back then. We still didn't have any technology. There was no reason to visit. There was grass around and so forth. But maybe it is a problem." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you said 10,000 years. That's fast. So it takes that long. Tens of thousands, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Tens of thousands of years. Yeah. And the other thing I should say is it could be just an outer layer of something else, like, you know, something that was ripped apart, like a surface of an instrument that was, and you can have lots of these pieces, you know, if something breaks, lots of these pieces spread out, like space junk." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And, you know, that. It could be just space junk from an alien civilization. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's kind of... I should tell you about space junk. Let me... Yes, what do you mean by space junk? So I think, you know, you might ask, why aren't they looking for us? One possibility is that we are not interesting, like we were talking about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the ants hypothesis." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Another possibility, you know, if there are millions or billions of years into their technological development, They created their own habitat, their own cocoon, where they feel comfortable, they have everything they need, and it's risky for them to establish communication with others. So they have their own cocoon, and they close off. They don't care about anything else. Now, in that case, you might say, oh, so how can we find out about them if they are closed off? The answer is they still have to deposit trash, right? That is something from the law of thermodynamics. There must be some production of trash. And we can still find about them, just like investigative journalists going through the trash cans of celebrities in Hollywood. You can learn about the private lives of those celebrities by looking at the trash." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fascinating to think, if we are the ants in this picture, if this thing is a water bottle, Or if it's like a smartphone, like where on the spectrum of possible objects of space, because there's a lot of interesting trash. So like, how interesting is this trash possibly?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But imagine a caveman seeing a cell phone. The caveman would think, since the caveman played with rocks all of his life, he would say, it's a rock, just like my fellow astronomer said." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, exactly. That's brilliantly put. Actually, as a scientist, do you hope it's a water bottle or a smartphone?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hope it's even more than a smartphone. I hope that, It's something that is really sophisticated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, I'm the opposite. I feel like I hope it's a water bottle because at least we have a hope with our current set of skills to understand it. A caveman has no way of understanding the smartphone. It's like, it will be like, I feel like a caveman has more to learn from the plastic water bottle than they do from the smartphone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But suppose we figure it out if we, for example, come close to it and learn what it's made of." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I guess a smartphone is full of like thousands of different technologies that we could probably pick at. Do you have a sense of where, a hypothesis of where is the cocoon that it might've come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, because, okay, so first of all, you know, the solar system, the outermost edge of the solar system is called the Oort cloud. It's a cloud of, icy rocks of different sizes that were left over from the formation of the solar system. And it's thought to be roughly a ball or a sphere. And it's halfway, the extent of it is roughly halfway to the nearest star. So you can imagine each planetary system basically touching. The Oort clouds of those stars that are near us are touching each other. Space is full of these billiard balls that are very densely packed. And what that means is any object that you see, irrespective of whether it came from the local standard. So we said that this object is special because it came from a local standard of rest. But even if it didn't, you would never be able to trace where it came from because all these Oort clouds overlap. So if you take some direction in the sky, you will cross as many stars as you have in that direction. Like there is no way to tell which Oort cloud it came from." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, yes, I didn't realize how densely packed everything was from the perspective of the Oort cloud. And that's really interesting. So, yeah, it could be it could be nearby. It could be very far away." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. We have no clue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said cocoon and you kind of I think in the book, I've read a lot of your articles, too, on Scientific American, which are brilliant, so I'm kind of mixing things up in my head a little bit. But there's, what does that cocoon look like? What does a civilization that's able to harness the power of multiple suns, for example, look like? When you imagine possible civilizations that are a million years more advanced than us, what do you think that actually looks like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's very different than we can imagine. By the way, I should start from the point that even biological life, you know, just without technology getting into the game, could look like something we have never seen before. Take, for example, the nearest star, which is Proxima Centauri. It's four and a quarter light years away, so they will know about the results of the 2016 elections only next month in February, 2021. It's very far away. But if you think about it, you know, this star is a dwarf star, and it's much cooler than, it's twice as cold as the sun, okay? And it emits mostly infrared radiation. So if there are any creatures on, the planet close to it that is habitable, which is called Proxima b. There is a planet in the habitable zone, in the zone just at the right distance where, in principle, liquid water can be on the surface. If there are any animals there, they have infrared eyes because our eyes was designed to be sensitive to where most of the sunlight is in the visible range. But Proxima Centauri emits mostly infrared. In the nearest star system, these animals would be Quite strange, they would have eyes that are detectors of infrared, very different from ours. Moreover, this planet, Proxima b, faces the star always with the same side. So it has a permanent day side and a permanent night side. And obviously the creatures that would evolve on the permanent day side, which is much warmer, would be quite different than those on the permanent night side. Between them, there would be a permanent sunset strip. And my daughters said that that's the best opportunity for high value real estate because you will see the sunset throughout your life, right? The sun never sets on this trip. So, you know, these worlds are out of our imagination." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just even the individual creatures, the sensor suite that they're operating with might be very different." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very different. So I think when we see something like that, we would be shocked. Not to speak about seeing technology now. So I don't even dare to imagine, you know, And I think, obviously, we can bury our head in the sand and say, it's never aliens, like many of my colleagues say. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you never look, you will never find. If you are not ready to find wonderful things, you will never discover them. And the other thing I would like to say is, Reality doesn't care whether you ignore it or not. You can ignore reality, but it's still there. So we can all agree, based on Twitter, that aliens don't exist, that Oumuamua was a rock. We can all agree. And you will get a lot of likes, you will have a big crowd of supporters, and everyone will be happy and give each other awards and honors and so forth. But Oumuamua might still be an alien artifact. Who cares what humans agree on? There is a reality out there. And we have to be modest enough to recognize that we should make our statements based on evidence. Science is not about ourself. It's not about glorifying our image. It's not about getting honors, prizes. You know, a lot of the scientific, a lot of the academic activity is geared towards creating your echo chamber where you have students, postdocs repeating your mantras so that your voice is heard loudly so that you can get more honors, prizes, recognition. That's not the purpose of science. The purpose is to figure out what nature is, right? And in the process of doing that, it's a learning experience. You make mistakes. You know, Einstein made three mistakes at the end of his career. He argued that in the 1930s, he argued that black holes don't exist. Gravitational waves don't exist. And quantum mechanics doesn't have spooky action at a distance. And all three turned out to be wrong. Okay, so the point is that if you work at the frontier, then you make mistakes. It's inevitable because you can't tell what is true or not. And avoiding making mistakes in order to preserve your image makes you extremely boring, okay? You will get a prize, but you will be a boring scientist because you will keep repeating things we already know. If you want to make progress, if you want to innovate, you have to take risks, and you have to look at the evidence. It's a dialogue with nature. You don't know the truth in advance. You let nature tell you, educate you, and then you realize that what you thought before is incorrect. And A lot of my colleagues prefer to be in a state where they have a monologue. You know, if you look at these people that work on string theory, they have a monologue. And in fact, their monologue is centered on anti-de Sitter space, which we don't live in. Now, to me, it's just like the Olympics. You define 100 meters, and you say, whoever runs these 100 meters is the best athlete, the fastest. And it's completely arbitrary. You could have decided it would be 50 meters or 20 meters. Who cares? You just measure the ability of people this way. So you define antithesis space as a space where you do your mathematical gymnastics, and then you find who can do it the best, and you give jobs based on that, you give prizes based. But as we said before, you know, nature doesn't care about, you know, the prizes that you give to each other. It cares, you know, it has its own reality. And we should figure it out. And it's not about us. The scientific activity is about figuring out nature. And sometimes we may be wrong. Our image will not be preserved. But that's the fun. Kids explore the world out of curiosity. And I always want to maintain my childhood curiosity. And I don't care about the labels that I have. In fact, having tenure is exactly the opportunity to behave like a child because you can make mistakes. And I was asked by the Harvard Gazette, the Pravda of Harvard, What is the one thing that you would like to change about the world? And I said, I would like my colleagues to behave more like kids. That's the one thing I would like them to do. Because something bad happens to these kids when they become tenured professors. They start to worry about their ego and about themselves more. than about the purpose of science, which is curiosity-driven, figuring out from evidence. Evidence is the key. So when an object shows anomalies, like Oumuamua, what's the problem discussing whether it's artificial or not? So there was, I should tell you, there was a mainstream paper in Nature published saying it must be natural. That's it. It's unusual, but it must be natural. period. And then at the same time, some other mainstream scientists tried to explain the properties. And they came up with interpretations like, it's a dust bunny, you know, the kind that you find in a household, a collection of dust particles pushed by sunlight. something we've never seen before, or it's a hydrogen iceberg. It actually evaporates like a comet, but hydrogen is transparent, you don't see it, and that's why we don't see the cometary tail. Again, we have never seen something like that. In both cases, the objects would not... survived the long journey. We discussed it in a paper that I wrote afterwards. But my point is, those that tried to explain the unusual properties went into great length at discussing things that we have never seen before, okay? So even when you think about the natural origin, you have to come up with scenarios of things that were never seen before. And by the way, they look less plausible to me, personally. But my point is, if we discuss things that were never seen before, right, why not discuss, why not contemplate an artificial origin? What's the problem? Why do people have this pushback. You know, I worked on dark matter. And we don't know what most of the matter in the universe is. It's called dark matter. It's just an acronym because we have no clue. We simply don't know. So, it could be all kinds of particles. And over the years, people suggested weakly interacting massive particles, axions, all kinds of particles. And experiments were made. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They put upper limits, constraints that ruled out many of the possibilities that were proposed as natural initially. The mainstream community regarded it as a mainstream activity to search the nature of the dark matter. And nobody complained that it's speculative to consider weakly interacting massive particles. Now, I ask you, why is it speculative to consider extraterrestrial technologies? We have a proof that it exists here on Earth. We also know that the conditions of Earth are reproduced in billions of systems throughout the Milky Way galaxy. So what's more conservative than to say, if you arrange for similar conditions, you get the same outcome? How can you imagine this to be speculative? It's not speculative at all. And nevertheless, it's regarded the periphery. And at the same time, you have physicists, theoretical physicists, working on extra dimensions, supersymmetry, superstring theory, the multiverse. Maybe we live in a simulation. All of these ideas that have no grounding in reality, some of which sound to me like, you know, just like what someone would say. Science fiction, basically. Because you have no way to test it. you know, through experiments. And experiments really are key. It's not just a nuance. You say, okay, forget about experiments, as some philosophers try to say. You know, if there is a consensus, what's the problem? The point is, it's key. And that's what Galileo found. It's key to have feedback from reality. You know, you can think that you have a billion dollars or that you are more rich than, you know, Elon Musk. That's fine. feel very happy about it. You can talk about it with your friends and all of you will be happy and think about what you can do with the money. Then you go to an ATM machine and you make an experiment. You check how much money you have in your checking account. And if it turns out that, you know, you don't have much, you can't materialize your dreams. Okay, so you realize you have a reality check. And my point is, without experiments giving you a reality check, without the ATM machine showing you whether your ideas are bankrupt or not, without putting skin in the game, and by skin in the game, I mean Don't just talk about theoretical ideas. Make them testable. If you don't make them testable, they're worthless. They're just like theology that is not testable. By the way, theology has some tests. Let me give you three examples. It turns out that my book already inspired a PhD student at Harvard in the English department to pursue a PhD in that direction. And she invited me to the PhD exam a couple of months ago. And in the exam, one of the examiners, a professor, asked her, do you know why Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake? And she said, I think it's because he was an obnoxious guy and irritated a lot of people, which is true. But the professor said, no, it's because Giordano Bruno said that other stars are just like the sun and they could have a planet like the earth around them that could host life. And that was offensive to the church. Why was it offensive? Because there is the possibility that this life sinned. Okay? And if that life sinned on planets around other stars, it should have been saved by Christ. And then you need multiple copies of Christ. And that's unacceptable. How can you have duplicates of Christ? And so they burned the guy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it was about, okay, I'm just like loading this all in because that's kind of brilliant. So he was actually already, it's not just about the stars, it's anticipating that there could be other life forms. Like why, if this star, if there's other stars, why would it be special? Why would our star be special? He was making the right arguments. And he would just follow that all along to say like, there should be other" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "earth-like places, there should be other life forms, and then there needs to be copies of Christ. Yeah, so that was offensive. So I said to that professor, I said, great, you know, I wanted to introduce some scientific tone to the discussion. And I said, this is great because now you basically laid the foundation for an experimental test of this theology. What is the test? We now know that other stars are like the sun and we know they have planets like the earth around them. So suppose we find life there and we figure out that they sinned, then we ask them, did you witness Christ? And if they say no, it means that this theology is ruled out. So there is an experimental test. So this is experimental test number one. Another experimental test, you know, in the Bible, you know, in the Old Testament, Abraham, was heard a voice, the voice of God, to sacrifice his son, right? Only son. And that's what the story says. Now, suppose Abraham, my name, by the way, had a voice memo up on his cell phone. He could have pressed this up and recorded the voice of God, and that would have been experimental evidence that God exists, right? Fortunately, he didn't, but it's an experimental test, right? There is a third example I should tell, and that is Elie Wiesel attributed this story to Martin Buber, but it's not clear whether it's true or not. At any event, the story goes that Martin Buber, you know, he was a philosopher, and he said, you know, the Christians argue that Jesus, you know, the Messiah, arrived already and will come back again in the future. The Jews argue the Messiah never came and will arrive in the future. So he said, why argue? Both sides agree that the Messiah will arrive in the future. When the Messiah arrives, we can ask whether he or she came before, you know, like visited us, and then figure it out. And one side, so again, experimental test of a theology. So even theology, if it puts a skin in the game, you know, if it makes a prediction, could be tested, right? So why can't string theories test themselves? Or why can't, you know, even cosmic inflation, that's another model that, you know, one of the inventors from MIT, Alan Guth, argues that it's not falsifiable. My point is, A theory that cannot be falsified is not helpful because it means that you can't make progress. You cannot improve your understanding of nature. The only way for us to learn about nature is by making hypotheses that are testable, doing the experiments and learning whether we are correct or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So coupled that with a curiosity and open-mindedness that allows us to explore all kinds of possible hypotheses, but always the pursuit of those, the scientific rigor around those hypotheses is ultimately get evidence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Knowledge of what nature is should be a dialogue with nature rather than a monologue. Monologue, beautifully put." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we talk a little bit about the Drake Equation? Another framework from which to have this kind of discussion about possible civilizations out there. So let me ask, within the context of the Drake Equation, or maybe bigger, how many alien civilizations do you think are out there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's hard to tell because the Dirac equation is, again, quantifying our ignorance. It's just a set of factors. The only one that we know, or actually two that we know quite well, is the rate of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy, which we measured by now, and the frequency of planets like the Earth around stars, and at the right distance to have life. But other than that, there are lots of implicit assumptions about all the other factors that will enable us to detect a signal. Now, I should say the Drake equation has a very limited validity just for signals from civilizations that are transmitting at the time that you're observing them. However, we can do much better than that. We can look for artifacts that they left behind. Even if they are dead, you can look for industrial pollution in the atmosphere supply. Why do I bring this up? Again, to show you the conservatism of the mainstream in astronomy. And by the way, I have leadership positions. I was chair of the astronomy department for nine years, the longest serving chair at Harvard. And I'm the chair of the board on physics and astronomy of the National Academies. You know, it's the primary board. And, you know, I'm director of two centers at Harvard and so forth. So I do represent the community in various ways. But at the same time, you know, I'm a little bit disappointed by the conservatism that people have. And so let me give you an illustration of that. So the astronomy community, actually is going right now through the process of defining its goals for the next decade. And there are proposals for telescopes that would cost billions of dollars, and whose goal is to find evidence for oxygen in the atmosphere of planets around other stars. With the idea that this would be a marker, a signature of life. Now, the problem with that is Earth didn't have much oxygen in its atmosphere for the first two billion years. Roughly half of its life it didn't have much oxygen. But it had life. It had microbial life. It's not clear yet, as of yet, what the origin is for the rise in the oxygen level after two billion years, about 2.4 a billion years ago, but we know that a planet can have life without oxygen in the atmosphere because Earth did it. The second problem with this approach is that you can have oxygen from natural processes. You can break water molecules and make oxygen. So even if you find it, it will never tell you that for sure life exists there. And so even with these billions of dollars, the mainstream community will never be confident whether there is life there. Now, how can it be confident? There is actually a way. If instead of looking with the same instruments, if you look for molecules that indicate industrial pollution, for example, CFCs, you know, that are produced by refrigerating systems or industries here on earth, that they do the ozone layer, you can search for that. And I wrote a paper five years ago suggesting that. Now, what's the problem? You can just tell NASA, I want to build this telescope to search for oxygen, but also for industrial pollution. Nobody would say that because it sounds like you know, on the periphery of the field. And I ask you, why would?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's hilarious, because that's exactly, I mean, even just you saying is quite brilliant. I mean, because it's a really strong signal, and if life, if there's alien civilizations out there, then there are probably going to be many of them, and they're probably going to be more advanced than us, and they're probably going to have something like industrial pollution, which would be a much stronger signal than some basic gas. which could have a lot of different explanations. So something like oxygen or, I mean, I don't, you know, we could talk about signs of life on Venus and so on, but if you want a strong signal, it would be pollution. I love how garbage is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but the pollution, you have to understand, we think of pollution as a problem, but on a planet that was too cold, for example, to have a comfortable life on it, you can imagine, terraforming it and putting a blanket of polluting gases such that it will be warmer. And that would be a positive change. So if an industrial or a technological civilization wants to terraform a planet that otherwise is too cold for them, they would do it. So what's the problem of defining it as a search goal using the same technologies. The problem is that there is a taboo. We are not supposed to discuss extraterrestrial intelligence. There is no funding for this subject, not much, very little. And young people, because of the bullying on Twitter, you know, all the social media and elsewhere, young people with talent that are curious about these questions do not enter this field of study. And obviously, if you step on the grass, it will never grow, right? So if you don't give funding. Obviously, the mainstream community says, look, nothing was discovered so far. Obviously, nothing would be discovered. If talented people go to other disciplines, you never search for it well enough, you will never find anything. I mean, look at gravitational wave astrophysics. It's a completely new window into the universe, pioneered by Ray Weiss at MIT. And at first, it was ridiculed. And thanks to some administrators at the National Science Foundation, It received funding despite the fact that the mainstream of the astronomy community was very resistant to it. And now it's considered a frontier. So all these people that I remember as a postdoc, a young postdoc, these people that bashed this field and said bad things about people, you know, said nothing will come out of it, Now they say, oh, yeah, of course, you know, the Nobel Prize was given to the, you know, to the LIGO collaboration. Of course, now they are supportive of it. But my point is, if you suppress innovation early on, there are lots of missed opportunities. The discovery of exoplanets is one example. In 1952, there was an astronomer named Otto Struve, and he wrote a paper saying, why don't we search for Jupiter-like planets close to their host star? Because if they're close enough, they would move the star back and forth and we can detect the signal. And so astronomers on time allocation committees of telescopes for 40 years argued This is not possible because we know why Jupiter resides so far from the Sun. You cannot have Jupiter so close because there is this region where ice forms far from the Sun, and beyond that region is where Jupiter-like planets can form. There was a theory behind it which ended up being wrong by today's standards. But anyway, they did not give time on telescopes to search for such systems until the first system was discovered four decades after Otto Struve's paper. And the Nobel Prize was awarded to that just a couple of years ago. And you ask yourself, okay, so science still made progress. What's the problem? The problem is... that this baby came out barely, you know, and there was a delay of four decades. So the progress was delayed. And I wonder how many babies were not born because of this resistance. So there must be ideas that are as good as this one that were suppressed because they were bullied, because people ridiculed them. that were actually good ideas, and these are missed opportunities, babies that were never born. And I'm willing to push this frontier of the search for technologies or technological signatures for civilization. Because when I was young, I was in the military in Israel. It's obligatory to serve. And there was this saying that one of the soldiers sometimes has to put his body on the barbed wire so that others can go through. And I'm willing to suffer the pain so that younger people in the future will be able to speak freely about the possibility that some of the anomalies we find in the sky. are due to technological signatures." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's quite obvious. This is why I like folks in artificial intelligence space, Elon Musk and a few others speak about this. And they look at the long arc. They say like, what, you know, this kind of, you know, you can call it like first principles thinking, or you can call it anything really, is like, if we just zoom off from our current bickering and our current, like discussions in what science is doing. Look at the long arc of the trajectory we're headed at. Which questions are obviously fundamental to science? And it should be asked. And which is the space of hypothesis we should be exploring? And like exoplanets is a really good example of one that was like an obvious one. I recently talked to Sarah Seager, and it was very taboo when she was starting out to work on exoplanets, and that was even in the 90s. Like it's obvious should not be a taboo subject. And to me, I mean, I'm probably ignorant, but to me, exoplanets seems like it's ridiculous that that would ever be a taboo subject to not fund, to not explore. That's very, but even for her, it's now taboo to say, like what, you know, to look for industrial pollution, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I find that ridiculous. I'll tell you why. It's ridiculous for another reason. Not because of just the scientific benefits that we might have by exploring it, but because the public cares about these questions. And the public funds science. So how dare the scientists shy away from addressing these questions if they have the technology to do it? It's like saying, I don't want to look through Galileo's telescope. It's exactly the same. You have the technology to explore this question, to find evidence, and you shy away from it. You might ask, why do people shy away from it? And perhaps it's because of the fact that there is science fiction. I'm not a fan of science fiction because it has... an element to it that violates the laws of physics in many of the books and the films. And I cannot enjoy these things when I see the laws of physics violated. But who cares that, you know, the fact that there is science fiction? I mean, if you have the scientific methodology to address the same subject, I don't care that other people, you know, spoke nonsense about this subject or said things that make no sense. Who cares? You do your scientific work just like you explore the dark matter. You explore the possibility that Oumuamua is an artifact. You just look for evidence and try to deduce what it means. And I have no problem with doing that. To me, it sounds like any other scientific question that we have. And given the public's interest, we have an obligation to do that. By the way, science to me is not an occupation of the elite. It doesn't allow me to feel superior to other humans that are unable to understand the math. To me, it's a way of life. You know, if there is a problem in the faucet or in the pipe at home, I try to figure out what the problem is. And with a plumber, we figure it out and, you know, we look at the clues and the same thing. In science, you know, you look at the evidence, you try to figure out what it means. It's common sense, in a way. And it shouldn't be regarded as something removed from the public. It should be a reflection of the public's interest. And I think it's actually a crime to resist the public. If the public says, I care about this, and you say, no, no, no, that's not sophisticated enough for me. I want to do intellectual gymnastics on anti-de Sitter space. To me, that's a crime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, I 100% agree. So it's hilarious that the very, not hilarious, it's sad, that people who are trained in the scientific community to have the tools to explore this world, to be children, to be the most effective at being children, are the ones that resist being children the most. But there is a large number of people that embrace the childlike wonder about the world and may not necessarily have the tools to do it. That's the more general public. And so, you know, I wonder if I could ask you and talk to you a little bit about UFO sightings. That there's people, you know, quote unquote believers, there's hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings. And I've consumed some of the things that people have said about it. And one thing I really like about it is how excited they are by the possibility. It's almost like this childlike wonder about the world out there. It's not a fear, it's an excitement. Do you think, because we're talking about this possibly extraterrestrial object that visited, that flew by Earth, do you think it's possible that out of those hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings, one is an actual, one or some number is an actual sighting of a non-human, some alien technology, and that we're not, you know, We did not, we're too close-minded to look and to see." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think to answer this question, we need better evidence. My starting point, as I said, out of modesty, is that we are not particularly interesting. And therefore, I would be hard-pressed to imagine that someone wants to really spy on us. So I would think, you know, as a starting point, that we don't deserve attention and we shouldn't expect someone, but who knows? Now, the problem that I have with UFO sighting reports is that, you know, 50 years ago, there were some reports of fuzzy images, you know, saucer-like things. By now, our technologies are much better. Our cameras are much more sensitive. These fuzzy images should have turned into crisp, clear images of things that we are confident about. And they haven't turned that way. It's always on the borderline of believability. And because of that, I believe that it might be, most likely, artifacts of our instruments or some natural phenomena that we are unable to understand. Now, of course, the reason you must examine those, if, for example, pilots report about them or the military finds evidence for them, is because it may pose a national security threat. If another country has technologies that we don't know about and they're spying on us, we need to know about it. And therefore, we should examine everything that looks unusual. But to associate it with an alien life, is a little too far for me until we have... evidence that stands up to the level of scientific credence, you know, that we are 100% sure that, you know, from multiple detectors and, you know, through a scientific process. Now, again, if the scientific community shies away from these reports, we will never have that. It's like saying, I don't want to take photographs of something because I know what it is. Then you will never know what it is. But I think if grants, let's put it this way, if funding will be given to scientists to follow on some of these reports and use scientific instruments that are capable of detecting those sightings with much better resolution, with much better information, that would be great because it will clarify the matter. You know, these are not As you said, hundreds of thousands, these are not once-in-a-lifetime events. So it's possible to take scientific instrumentation and explore, go to the ocean where someone reported that there are frequent events that are unusual, and check it out, do a scientific experiment. Why only do experiments deep into the ocean and look at oceanography or do other things? We can do scientific investigation of these sightings and figure out what they mean. I'm very much in favor of that, but until we have the evidence, I would be doubtful as to what they actually mean." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, we'll have to be humble and acknowledge that we're not that interesting. You're making me realize that, because it's so taboo, that the people that have the equipment, meaning, and we're not just talking, everybody has cameras now, but to have a large-scale sensor network that collects data, that regularly collects, just like we look at the weather, we're collecting information, and then we can then access that information when there is reports, and have it not be a taboo thing where there's millions or billions of dollars funding this effort that, by the way, inspires millions of people. This is exactly what you're talking about. The scientific community is afraid of a topic that inspires millions of people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's absurd. But if you put blinders on your eyes, you don't see it. I should say that we do have meteors that we see. These are rocks that by chance happen to collide with the Earth. And if they're small, they burn up in the atmosphere. But if they're big enough, tens of meters or more, hundreds of meters, the outer layer burns up, but then the core of the object makes it through. And this is our chance of putting our hands around an object if this meteor came from interstellar space. So one path of discovery is to search for interstellar meteors. And with a student of mine, we actually looked through the record and we thought that we found one example of a meteor that was reported that might have come from interstellar space. And then another approach is, for example, to look at the moon. The moon is different from the earth in the sense that it doesn't have an atmosphere. So objects do not burn up on their way to it. It's sort of like a museum. It collects everything that comes- Of rocks from out there, deep space, yeah. And there is no geological activity on the moon. So on earth every hundred million years, you know, we could have had computer terminals on earth that could have been a civilization like ours with electronic equipment more than a hundred million years ago. and it's completely lost. You cannot excavate and find evidence for it because in archeological digs, because the earth is being mixed on these timescales and everything that was on the surface more than 100 million years ago is buried deep inside the earth right now because of geological activity. Fascinating to think about, by the way, yeah. But on the moon, this doesn't happen. The only thing that happens on the moon is you have objects impacting the moon and they go 10 meters deep, so they produce some dust. But the moon keeps everything, it's like a museum. It keeps everything on the surface. So if we go to the moon, I would highly recommend regarding it as an archeological site and looking for objects that are strange. Maybe it collected some trash from interstellar space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we could just linger on the Drake equation for a little bit. We kind of talked about there's a lot of uncertainty in the parameters and the Drake equation itself is very limited. But I think the parameters are interesting in themselves, even if it's limited, because I think each one is within the reach of science, right? To get the evidence for it. I mean, a few I find really interesting, could be interesting to get your comment on. So the one with the most variance, I would say, from my perspective, is the length that civilizations last, however you define it. In the Drake equation, it's the length of how long you're communicating. Just like you said, that's a wrong way to think about it, because we could be detecting some other outputs of the civilizations, et cetera. But if we just define broadly how long those civilizations last, Do you have a sense of how long that might last? What are the great filters that might destroy civilizations that we should be thinking about? How can science give us more hints on this topic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I, as I mentioned before, operate by the Copernican principle, meaning that we are not special. We don't live in a special place. and not in a special time. And by the way, it's just modesty encapsulated in scientific terms, right? You're saying, I'm not special, you know, I find conditions here, they exist everywhere. So if you adopt the Copernican principle, you basically say our civilization transmitted radio signals for a hundred years, roughly. So probably it would last another hundred or a few hundred and that's it. because we don't live at a special time. Well, of course, if we get our act together and we somehow start to cooperate rather than fighting each other, killing each other, wasting a lot of resources on things that would destroy our planet, maybe we can lengthen that period if we get smarter. that the most natural assumption is to say that we will live into the future as much as we lived from the time that we start to develop the means for our own destruction, the technologies we have, which is quite pessimistic, I must say. So several centuries, that's what I would give, unless we get our act, unless we become more intelligent than the newspapers report every day, okay? Point number one. Second, and by the way, this is relevant, I should say, because there was a report about, perhaps a radio signal detected from Proxima Centauri. What do you make of that signal? Oh, I think it's some Australian guy with a cell phone next to the observatory or something like that, because it was the Parkes Telescope in Australia." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, I was like, why Australia? Yeah, okay. So it's human-created noise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, which is always the worry, because actually the same observatory, the Parkes Observatory, detected a couple of years ago some signal, and then they realized that it comes back, at lunchtime. And they said, okay, what could it be? And then they figured out that it must be the microwave oven in the observatory because someone was opening it before it finished. And it was creating this radio signal that they detected with a telescope every lunchtime. Ah, so just a cautionary remark. But the reason I think it's human-made, without getting to the technical details, is because of this very short window by which we were transmitting radio signals out of the lifetime of the Earth. You know, as I said, 100 years out of four and a half billion years that the Earth existed. So what's the chance that another civilization, a twin civilization of ours, is transmitting radio signals exactly at the time that we are looking with our radio telescopes, 10 to the minus seven. And the other argument I have is that they detected it in a very narrow band of frequencies, and that makes it, it cannot be through natural processes, a very narrow band, just like some radio transmissions that we produce. But if it were to come from the habitable zone, from a transmitter on the surface of Proxima b, this is the planet that orbits Proxima Centauri, then I calculated that the frequency would drift. through the Doppler effect. You know, just like when you hear a siren on the street, you know, when the car approaches you, it has a different pitch than when it goes, recedes away from you. That's the Doppler effect. And when the planet orbits the star, Proxima Centauri, you would see or detect a different frequency when the planet approaches us as compared to when it recedes. So there should be a frequency drift just because of the motion of the planet. And I calculated that it must be much bigger than observed. So it cannot just be a transmitter sitting on the planet and sending in our direction a radio signal, unless they want to cancel the Doppler effect. But then they need to know about us, because in a different direction it will not be cancelled. Only in our direction they can cancel it perfectly. So there is this direction of Proxima Centauri, but I have a problem imagining a transmitter on the surface of a planet in the habitable zone emitting it. But my main issue is really with the likelihood, given what we know about ourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, in terms of the duration of the civilization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Copernican principle, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So nevertheless, this particular signal is likely to be a human interference perhaps, but do you find Proxima B interesting, or the more general question is, do you think we humans will venture out into outside our solar system? and potentially colonize other habitable planets." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Actually, I am involved in a project whose goal is to develop the technology that would allow us to leave the solar system and visit the nearest stars. And that is called the Starshot. In May 2015, an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, Yuri Milner, came to my office at Harvard and said, would you be interested in leading a project that would do that in our lifetime? Because as we discussed before, to traverse those distances, with existing rockets would take tens of thousands of years. That's too long. For example, to get to Proxima Centauri with the kind of spacecrafts that we already sent, like New Horizons or Voyager 1, Voyager 2, you needed to send them when the first humans left Africa, so that they would arrive there now. And that's a long time to wait. So Yuri wanted to do it within a lifetime, 10-20 years, meaning it has to move at a fraction of the speed of light. So can we send a spacecraft that would be moving at the fraction of the speed of light? And I said, let me look into that for six months. And with my students and postdocs, we arrived to the conclusion that the only technology that can do that is the light sail technology, where you basically produce a very powerful laser beam on Earth, so you can collect sunlight with photovoltaic cells or whatever, and then convert it into stored energy, and then produce a very powerful laser beam that is 100 gigawatt, and focus it on a sail in space that is roughly the size of a person, a couple of meters or a few meters, that weighs only a gram or a few grams very thin and Through the math, you can show that you can propel such a cell, if you shine on it for a few minutes, it will traverse a distance that is five times the distance to the moon, and it will get to a fifth of the speed of light." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sounds crazy, but I've talked to a bunch of people, and they're like, I know it sounds crazy, but it's actually, it will work. This is one of those, this is beautiful. I mean, this is science. And the point is," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "people didn't get excited about space since the Apollo era. And it's about time, you know, for us to go into space. A couple of months ago, I was asked to participate in a debate organized by IBM and Bloomberg News. And the discussion centered on the question, is the space race between the U.S. and China good for humanity? And all the other debaters were worried about the military threats. And I just couldn't understand what they're talking about, because military threats come from hovering above the surface of the Earth, right? And we live on a two-dimensional surface. We live on the surface of the Earth. But space is all about the third dimension, getting far from Earth. So if you go to Mars or you go to a star, another star, there is no military threat. What are we talking about? Space is all about, you know, feeling that we are one civilization, in fact, not fighting each other, just going far and having aspirations for something that goes beyond military threats. So why would we be worried that the space race will lead?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's actually brilliant. In our discourse about it, the space race is sometimes made synonymous with the Cold War or something like that. or with wars, but really, yeah, there was a lot of ego tied up in that. I remember, I mean, it's still, to this day, there's a lot of pride that Russians, the Soviet Union was the first to space, and there's a lot of pride on the American side that it was the first on the moon. But yeah, you're exactly right. There's no aggression." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's no wars. And beyond that, if you think about the global economy right now, there is a commercial interest. That's why Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are interested about, you know, Mars and so forth, there is a commercial interest which is international. It's not, it's driven by money, not by pride. And, you know, nations can sign treaties. First of all, there are lots of treaties that were signed even before the first world war and the second world war and the world war took place. So who cares, you know, like humans, treaties do not safeguard anything, you know, but beyond that, even if nations sign treaties about space exploration, you might still find commercial entities that will find a way to get their launches. So I think we should rethink space. It has nothing to do with national pride. Once again, nothing to do with our egos. It's about exploration. And the biggest problem, I think, in human history is that is that humans tend to think about egos and about their own personal image, rather than look at the big picture. We will not be around for long. We are just occupying a small space right now. Let's move out of this. The way that Oscar Wilde said, I think is the best. He said, all of us are in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and the more of us are looking at the stars, the likelier we are to, for this little experiment we have going on, to last a while, as opposed to end too quickly. I mean, it's not just about science of being humble, it's about the survival of the human species, is being humble. To me, it's incredibly inspiring, the Starshot Project, I mean, there's something magical about being able to go to another habitable planet and take a picture even. I mean, within our lifetime, I mean, that, with crazy technology too, it's exciting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I should tell you how it was conceived. So I was at the time, so after six months passed, after the visit of Yuri Miller, I was, usually I go in December during the winter break, I go to Israel, I used to go to see my family, and I get a phone call just before the weekend started. I get a phone call, Yuri would like you to present your concept in two weeks at his home. And I said, well, thank you for letting me know because I'm actually out of the door of the hotel to go to a goat farm. In the Negev, in the southern part of Israel, because my wife wanted to go to a place that is removed from civilization, so to speak. So we went to that goat farm. And, you know, I need to make the presentation. And there was no internet connectivity except in the office of the goat farm. So the following morning at 6 a.m., I sit with my back to the office of that goat farm looking at goats that were newly born. and typing into my laptop the presentation, the PowerPoint presentation about our ambitions for visiting the nearest star. And that was very surreal to me that, you know, look." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, like our origins in many ways, this very primitive origins and our dreams. Exactly. Of looking out there, it's brilliant. So that is incredibly inspiring to me, but it's also inspiring of putting humans onto other moons or planets, I still find going to the moon really exciting. I don't know, maybe I'm just a sucker for it, but it's really exciting. And Mars, which is a new place, a new planet, another planet that might have life, I mean, there's something magical to that, or some traces of previous life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You might think that humans cannot really survive, and there are risks by going there, but my point is, You know, we started from Africa and we got to apartment buildings in Manhattan, right? It's a very different environment from the jungles to live in an apartment building in, you know, a small cubicle. And, you know, it took tens of thousands of years, but humans adapted, right? So why couldn't humans also make the leap and adapt to a habitat in space? Now, you can build a platform that would look like an apartment building in the Bronx or somewhere, but have inside of it everything that humans need. And just like the space station, but bigger, and it will be a platform in space. And the advantage of that is if something bad happens on Earth, You have that complex where humans live, and you can also move it back and forth depending on how bright the sun gets. Because, you know, within a billion years, the sun would be too hot, and it will boil off all the oceans on Earth. So we cannot stay here for more than a billion years, that's for sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's a billion years from now. I prefer, like, shorter term deadlines. And so, and that's, I mean, there's a lot of threats that we're facing currently. Do you find it exciting, the possibility of, you know, landing on Mars and starting little, like, building a Manhattan-style apartment building on Mars and humans occupying it? Do you think, from a scientific and engineering perspective, that's a worthy pursuit?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's worthy, but the real issue that is often underplayed is the risk to the human body from cosmic rays. These are energetic particles, and we are protected from them by the magnetic field around the Earth that blocks them. But if you go to Mars, where there is no such magnetic field to block them, then a significant fraction of the brain cells in your head will be damaged within a year, And the consequences of that are not clear. I mean, it's quite possible that humans cannot really survive on the surface. Now, it may mean that we need to dig tunnels, go underground, or create some protection. This is something that can be engineered. And we can start from the moon and then move to Mars. That would be a natural progression. But it's a big issue that needs to be dealt with. I don't think it's a showstopper. I think we can overcome it. You know, just like anything in science and technology, you have to work on it for a while, figure out solutions, but it's not as rosy as Elon Musk talks about. I mean, Elon Musk can obviously be optimistic. I think eventually it will boil down to figuring out how to cope with this risk, the health risk." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, in defense of optimism, I find that there's at least a correlation, if not their best friends, is optimism and open-mindedness. It's a necessary, it's a precondition to try crazy things. And in that sense, the sense I have about going to Mars, if we use today's logic of what kind of benefits we'll get from that, we're never going to go. Most decisions we make in life, most decisions we've made as a human species, are irrational if you just, if you look at just today. But if you look at the long arc and the possibilities that it might bring, just like humans. Yeah, Europe. And by the way, it was." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it was a commercial interest that drove that for trade. And you know, it might happen again in this context. You have people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk that are commercially driven to go to space. But it doesn't mean that what we will ultimately find is not new worlds, you know, that have nothing, you know, have much more to offer than just commercial interests. Yes, as a side effect almost, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think, you know, we should be open-minded and explore. However, at the same time, because of the reasons you pointed out, I'm not optimistic that we will survive more than a few centuries into the future, because people do not think long term, and that means that we will only survive for the short term." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know if you have thoughts about this, but what are the things that worry you the most about, from the great perspective of the universe, which is the great filters that destroys intelligent civilizations, but for our own species here, what are the things that worry you the most?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The thing that worries me the most is that people pay attention to how many likes they have on Twitter. And rather than, you know, basketball coaches tell the team players, keep your eyes on the ball, not on the audience. The problem is we keep our eyes on the audience most of the time. Let's keep our eyes on the ball. And what does that mean? First of all, in context of science, it means pay attention to the evidence. When the evidence looks strange, then we should figure it out. You know, I went to a seminar about umuamua at Harvard, and a colleague of mine that is mainstream, conservative, would never say anything that would deviate from what everyone else is thinking, said to me after the seminar, I wish this object never existed. Now, to me, I mean, I just couldn't hear that. What do you mean? Nature is whatever it is. You have to pay attention to it. You cannot say, you know, you cannot bury your head in this. I mean, you should bless nature for giving you clues about things that you haven't expected. And I think that's the biggest fault, that we are looking for confirmations of things we already know so that we can maintain our pride that we already knew it and maintain our image, not make mistakes because we already knew it, therefore we expected the right thing. But science is a learning experience and sometimes you're wrong. And let's learn from those mistakes. And what's the problem about that? Why do we have to get prizes and why do we get to be honored and maintain our image when the actual objective of science is learning about nature?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And like you've talked about, anomalies in this case are actually not things that are unfortunate and to be ignored, are in fact gifts and should be the focus of science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, because that's the way for us to improve our understanding. If you look at quantum mechanics, nobody dreamed about it, and it was revolutionary, and we still don't fully understand it. It's a pain for us to figure out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I understand from the perspective that's holding our science back, Why do you have a sense that that's also something that might be a problem for us in terms of the survival of human civilization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because when you look at society, it operates by the same principles. People look for affirmation by groups and people segregate into herds that think like them, especially these days when social media is so strong, you can find your support group. And if you don't look for evidence for what you're saying, you can say crazy things as long as there are enough people supporting what you say. you can even have your newspapers, you can have everything to support your view, and then, you know, bad things will happen to society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because we're detaching ourselves from reality, and if we detach ourselves from reality, all the destructive things that naturally can occur in the real world, whether from nuclear weapons, all the kinds of threats that we're facing, even we're living through a pandemic. A much, much worse pandemic could happen, and then we could sadly, like we did this one, politicize it in some kind of way and have bickering in the space of Twitter and politics, as opposed to there's an actual thing that can destroy the human species." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. So the only way for us to maintain, to stay modest and learn about what really happens is by looking for evidence. Again, I'm saying, It's not about ourself. It's about figuring out what's around us. And if you close yourself by surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded, that refuse to look at the evidence, you can do bad things. And throughout human history, that's the origin of all the bad things that happen. And I think it's a key. It's a key to be modest and to look at evidence. And it's not a nuance. Now, you might say, oh, OK, the uneducated person might operate. No, it's the scientific community operates this way. My problem is not with people that don't have an academic pedigree. It's included everywhere in society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "on the topic of the discovery of evidence of alien civilizations, which is something you touch on in your book, what that idea would do to societies, to the human psyche in general. Do you think, and you talk about the, I still have trouble pronouncing, but a muamua wager. What do you think is, can you explain it, and what do you think in general is the effect that such knowledge might have on human civilization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so Pascal had this wager about God. And by the way, there are interesting connections between theology and the search for extraterrestrial life. It's possible that we were planted on this planet by another civilization. We attribute to God powers that belong really to technological civilization. But putting that aside, Pascal basically said, there are two possibilities, either God exists or not. Right? And if God exists, you know, the consequences are quite significant. And therefore, you know, we should consider that possibility differently than equal weight to both possibilities. I suggest that we do the same with Oumuamua or other technological signatures, that we keep in mind the consequences and therefore pay more attention to that possibility. Now, some people say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My point is that the term extraordinary is really subjective. You know, for one person, A black hole is extraordinary. For another, it's just a consequence of Einstein's theory of gravity. It's nothing extraordinary. The same about the type of dark matter, anything. So we should leave the extraordinary part of that sentence. Just keep evidence, okay? So let's be guided by evidence. And even if we have extraordinary claims, let's not dismiss them because the evidence is not extraordinary enough. Because if we have an image of something and it looks really strange and we say, oh, the image is not sufficiently sharp, therefore we should not even pay attention to this image or not even consider, I think that's a mistake. What we should do is say, look, there is some evidence for something unusual. let's try and build instruments that will give us a better image. And if you just dismiss extraordinary claims because you consider them extraordinary, you avoid discovering things that you haven't expected. And so, I believe that along the history of astronomy, there are many missed opportunities. And I speak about astronomy, but I'm sure in other fields, it's also true. I mean, this is my expertise. For example, the Astrophysical Journal, which is the main primary publication in astrophysics, if you go before the 1980s, there are images that were posted in the Astrophysical Journal of giant arcs, you know, arcs of light surrounding clusters of galaxies. And, you know, you can find it in printed versions of the Astrophysical Journal. People just ignore it. They put the image, they see the arc, they say, who knows what it is and just ignore it. And then in the 1980s, the subject of gravitational lensing became popular. And the The idea is that you can deflect light by the force of gravity. And then you can put the source behind the cluster of galaxies and then you will get these arcs. And actually Einstein predicted it in 1940. So these things, were expected, but people just had them in the images, didn't pay attention. So I'm sure there are lost opportunities sometimes. Even in existing data, you have things that are unusual and exceptional and are not being addressed." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you actually, I think you have the article, The Data Is Not Enough, from quite a few years ago, where you talk, you know, we can go back to the 70s and 80s, but we can go also to the Mayan civilization." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right. The Mayan civilization basically believed in astrology that you can forecast the outcome of a war based on the position of the planets. And astronomers in their culture had the highest social status. They were priests, they were elevated. And the reason was that they helped politicians decide when to go to war. Because they would tell the politicians, you know, the planets would be in this configuration, it's a better chance for you to win the war, go to war. And in retrospect, they collected wonderful data, but misinterpreted it. Because we now know that the position of Venus or Jupiter or whatever has nothing to do with the outcome of World War I, World War II. It has nothing to do. So we can have a prejudice and collect data without actually doing the right thing with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's such a Pisces thing to say. I looked up what your astrological sign is. So you mentioned Einstein predicted that black holes don't exist, or just didn't, or thought that. Don't exist in nature. Don't exist in nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "When Einstein came up with his theory of gravity in 1915, November 1915, a few months later, another physicist, Carl Schwarzschild, he was the director of the Potsdam Observatory, but he was a patriot, a German patriot. So he went into the First World War fighting for Germany. But while he was at the front, he sent a postcard to Einstein saying, a few months after the theory was developed, saying, actually, I found a solution to your equations. And that was a black hole solution. And then he died a few months later. And Einstein was a pacifist and he survived. So the lesson from this story is that if you want to work out the consequences of a theory, you better be a pacifist. But the point is that this solution was known shortly after Einstein came up with his theory. But in 1939, Einstein wrote a paper in the analysis of mathematics saying, even though the solution exists, I don't think it's realized in nature. And his argument was, if you imagine a star collapsing, stars often spin, and the spin will prevent them from making a black hole, collapsing to a point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I mean, can you maybe, one of the many things you have work on, you're an expert in, is black holes. Can you first say what are black holes? And second, how do we know that they exist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so black holes are the ultimate prison. You know, you can check in, but you can never check out. Even light cannot escape from them. So there are extreme structures of space and time. And there is this so-called Schwarzschild radius, or the event horizon of a black hole. Once you enter into it with a spaceship, you would never be able to tweet back to your friends and tell them. By the way, I asked the students in my class, freshman seminar at Harvard, I said, let me give you two possible journeys that you can take. I said, suppose aliens come to Earth and suggest that you would board their spaceship, would you do it? And the second is, suppose you could board a spaceship that will take you into a black hole, would you do it? So all of them said, To the first question, yes, under one condition, that I'll be able to maintain my social media contacts and report back, share the experience with them. Personally, I have no footprint on social media." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, which is as a matter of principle." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my wife asked me when we got married, and I honor that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And, you know. And I told you offline, I need to get married to such a woman. She truly is a special lady." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, she was wise enough to recognize the risk. But it saves me time, and it also keeps me away from crowds. You know, I don't have the notion of what a lot of other people think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I can think independently. Crowd think, exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, exactly. But putting, so, I was surprised to hear that for students, it's extremely important to share experiences. Even if they go on a spaceship with aliens, they still want to brag about it rather than look around and see what's going on. You know? This is not an option when you go to the black hole, is exactly the point. So for the black hole, they said no, because obviously you can find your death after you get into it. You crash into singularity. There is this singularity in the center. So inside the event horizon, We know that all the matter collects at a point. Now, we can't really predict what happens at the singularity because Einstein's theory breaks down. And we know why it breaks down, because he doesn't have quantum mechanics that talks about small distances. We don't have a theory that unifies quantum mechanics and gravity. so that it will predict what happens near a singularity. And in fact, a couple of years ago, I had a flood in my basement, and I invited a plumber to come over and figure out, and we found that the sewer was clogged because of tree roots that got into it. And we solved the problem. But then I thought to myself, well, isn't that what happens to the singularity of a black hole? Because the question is, where does the matter go? In the case of a home, I never thought about it, but all the water that we use goes in you know, through the sewer to some reservoir somewhere. And the question is, what happens inside a black hole? And one possibility is that there is an object in the middle, just like a star, you know, and everything collects there. And the object has the maximum density that we can imagine, like Planck densities. It's the ultimate density that you can have, where gravity is as strong as all the other forces. So you can imagine this object, very dense object at the center that collects all the matter. Another possibility is that there is some tunnel, just like the sewer. It takes the matter into another place. And we don't know the answer. But I wrote a Scientific American essay about it, admitting our ignorance. It's a fascinating question. What happens to the matter that goes into a black hole? I actually recommended to some of my colleagues that work on string theory, at the closing of a conference, I'm the founding director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, which brings together astronomers, physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians. And we have a conference once a year. And at the end of one of them, since I'm the director, I had to summarize, and I said that I wish we could go on a field trip to a black hole nearby. And I highly recommend to my colleagues that work on string theory to enter into that black hole because then they can test their theory when they get inside. But one of the string theorists in the audience, Nimar Kani Hamad, immediately raised his voice and said, you have an ulterior motive for sending us into a black hole, which I didn't deny, but at any event," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's true, that's true. Can you say why we know that black holes exist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so it's an interesting question because black holes were considered a theoretical construct. and Einstein even denied their existence in 1939. But then, in the mid-1960s, quasars were discovered. These are very bright sources of light, 100 times brighter than their host galaxy. which are point-like at the center of galaxies. And it was immediately suggested by Ed Salpeter in the West and by Yakov Zeldovich in the East, that these are black holes that accrete gas, collect gas from their host galaxy that are being fed with gas. And they shine very brightly because as the gas falls towards the black holes, just like water running down the sink, the gas swirls and then rubs against itself and heats up and shines very brightly because it's very hot close to the black hole. By viscosity, it heats up. And in the case of black holes, it's the turbulence, the turbulent viscosity that causes it to heat up. So we get these very bright sources of light just from black holes that are supposed to be dark. You know, nothing escapes from them, but they create a violent environment. where gas moves close to the speed of light and therefore shines very brightly, much more than any other source in the sky. And we can see these quasars all the way to the edge of the universe. So we have evidence now that when the universe was about 7% of its present age, infant, already back then you had black holes of a billion times the mass of the sun, which is quite remarkable. It's like finding giant babies in a nursery. How can these black holes grow so fast? Less than a billion years after the Big Bang, you already have a billion times the mass of the sun in these black holes. And the answer is presumably there are very quick processes that build them up. They build quickly. Very quickly. And so we see those black holes, and that was found in the mid-1960s, but in 2015, exactly 100 years after Einstein came up with his theory of gravity, The LIGO observatory detected gravitational waves, and these are just ripples in space and time. So according to Einstein's theory, the ingenuity of Einstein's theory of gravity that was formulated in November 1915 was to say that space and time are not rigid. They respond to matter. So for example, if you have two black holes and they collide, It's just like a stone being thrown on the surface of a pond. They generate waves, disturbances in space and time that propagate out at the speed of light. These are gravitational waves. They create a space-time storm around them, and then the waves go all the way through the universe and reach us. And if you have a sensitive enough detector like LIGO, you can detect these waves. And so it was not just the message that we received for the first time, gravitational waves, but it was the messenger. So there are two aspects to it. One is the messenger, which is gravitational wave, for the first time were detected directly. And the second was the message, which was a collision of two black holes, because we could see the pattern of the ripples in space and time, and it was fully consistent with the prediction that Schwarzschild made for how the space-time around the black hole is, because when two black holes collide, you can sort of map from the message that you get, you can reconstruct what really happened and it's fully consistent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And in 2017 and 2020, there's two Nobel Prizes. That's right. That had to do with the black holes. Can you maybe describe in the same masterful way that you've already been doing what those Nobel Prizes were given for?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so the 2017 was given for the LIGO collaboration for discovering gravitation waves from collisions of black holes. And the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was given for two things. One was theoretical work that was done by Roger Penrose in the 1960s, demonstrating that black holes are inevitable when stars collapse. And it was mostly mathematical work. And actually, Stephen Hawking also contributed significantly to that frontier. And unfortunately, he is not alive, so he could not be honored. So Penrose received it on his own. And then two other astronomers received it as well, Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel. And they provided conclusive evidence. that there is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy that weighs about four million times the mass of the sun. And they found the evidence from the motion of stars very close to the black hole, just like we see the planets moving around the sun. There are stars close to the center of the galaxy, and they are orbiting at very high speeds of order of thousands of kilometers per second, or thousands of miles per second. think about it, which can only be induced at those distances if there is a 4 million solar mass object that is extremely compact. And the only thing that is compatible with the constraints is a black hole. And they actually made a movie of the motion of these stars around the center. One of them moves around the center over a decade, over timescales that we can monitor. And it was a breakthrough in a way. So combining LIGO with the detection of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way and in many other galaxies like quasars. Now I would say black hole research is vogue. It's very much in fashion. We saw it back in 2016 when we established the Black Hole Initiative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You kind of saw that there's this excitement about in breakthroughs and discoveries around black holes, which are probably one of the most fascinating objects in the universe. It's up there. They're both terrifying and beautiful, and they capture the entirety of the physics that we know about this universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I should say, the question is, where is the nearest black hole? Can we visit it? And I wrote a paper with my undergraduate student, Amir Siraj, suggesting that perhaps, you know, there could be, if there is one in the solar system, we can detect it. Because I don't know if you heard, but there is a claim that maybe there is a planet nine in the solar system, because we see some anomalies at the outer parts of the solar system. So some people suggested maybe there is a planet out there that was not yet detected. So people searched for it, didn't find it. It weighs roughly five times the mass of the Earth. And we said, OK, maybe you can't find it because it's a black hole that was formed early in the universe. So where do you stand on that? It could be that the dark matter is made of black holes of this mass. We don't know what the dark matter is made of. It could be black holes. So we said, but there is an experimental way to test it. And the way to do it is because there is the Oort cloud of icy rocks in the outer solar system. And if you imagine a black hole there, every now and then a rock will pass close enough to the black hole. to be disrupted by the very strong gravity close to the black hole. And that would produce a flare that you can observe. And we calculated how frequently these flares should occur. And with LSST on the Vera Rubin Observatory, we found that you can actually test this hypothesis. And if you don't see flares, then you can put limits on the existence of a black hole in the solar system. It would be extremely exciting if there was a black hole, if planet nine was a black hole, because we could visit it, you know, and we can examine it. And it will not be a matter of, you know, an object that is very removed from us. Another thing I should say is, it's possible that the black hole affected life on Earth. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way. How? You know, that black hole right now is dormant. It's very faint. But we know that it flares. When a star like the sun comes close to it, the star will be spaghettified, basically become a stream of gas, like a spaghetti. And then the gas would fall into the black hole and there would be a flare. And this process happens once every 10,000 years or so. So we expect that, you know, these flares to occur every 10,000 years. But we also see evidence for the possibility that gas clouds were disrupted by the black hole, because the stars that are close to the black hole are residing in a single or two planes. And the only way you can get that is if they formed out of a disk of gas, just like the planets in the solar system formed. There is evidence that gas fell into the black hole and powered, possibly, a flare. These flares produce X-rays and ultraviolet radiation that could damage life if the Earth was close enough to the center of the galaxy. where we are right now, it's not very risky for us. But there is a theoretical argument that says the solar system, the sun, was closer to the galactic center early on, and then it migrated outwards. So maybe in the early stage of the solar system, the conditions you know, were affected, shaped by these flares of the black hole at the center of the galaxy. And that's why for the first two billion years, there wasn't any oxygen in the atmosphere, you know, who knows. But it's just interesting to think that, you know, from a theoretical concept that Einstein resisted in 1939, it may well be that, you know, black holes have influence on our life and that, you know, it's just like discovering that some stranger affected your family. and, in a way, your life. And if that happens to be the case, a second Nobel Prize should be given, not for just the discovery of this black hole at the center of the galaxy, but perhaps for the Nobel Prize in chemistry, for the effect that it had on life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the effect, for the interplay that resulted in some kind of So yeah, the chemical effect, biology, I mean, all those kinds of things in terms of the emergence of life and the creation of a habitable environment. That's so fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And of course, like you said, dark matter, like black holes have some- They could be the dark matter in principle, yes. We don't know what the dark matter is at the moment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it make you sad? So you've had an interaction and perhaps a bit of a friendship with Stephen Hawking. Does it make you sad that he didn't win the Nobel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, altogether, I don't assign great importance to prizes because, you know, Jean-Paul Sartre, who I admired as a teenager because I was interested in philosophy. When I grew up on a farm in Israel, you know, I used to collect eggs every afternoon and I would drive the tractor to the hills of our village and just think about philosophy, read philosophy books. And Jean-Paul Sartre was one of my favorite. And he was honored with a Nobel Prize in literature. He was a philosopher primarily, existentialist. And he said, the hell with it. Why should I give special attention to this committee of people that get their self-importance from awarding me the prize? Why does that merit my attention? So he gave up on the Nobel Prize. And there are two benefits to that. One, that you're not working your entire life in the direction that would satisfy the will of other people. You work independently, you're not after these honors. Just for the same reason that if you're not living your life for making a profit or money, you can live a more fulfilling life because you're not being swayed by the wind of how to make money and so forth. The second aspect of it is you know, that very often, you know, these prizes, they distort the way we do science, because instead of people willing to take risks, and instead of having announcements only after a group of people converges with a definite result, you know, the natural progression of science is based on trial and error, you know, reporting some results and perhaps they're wrong, but then other people find perhaps better evidence and then you figure out what's going on. And that's the natural way that science is, you know, it's a learning experience. So if you give the public an image by which scientists are always right, you know, And some of my colleagues say we must do that because otherwise the public will never believe us that global warming is really taking place. But that's not true because the public will really believe you if you show the evidence. So the point is you should be sincere when the evidence is not… absolutely clear, or where there are disputes about the interpretation of the evidence, we should show ourselves. You know, the king is naked, okay? There is no point in pretending that the king is dressed, saying that scientists are always right. Scientists are wrong, frequently. And the only way to make progress is by evidence, giving us the support that we need to make airtight arguments. So when you say global warming is taking place, if the evidence is fully supportive, if there are no holes in the argument, then people will be convinced because you're not trying to fool them. When the evidence was not complete, you also show them that the evidence is not complete." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And when there's holes, you show that there's holes and here's the methodology we're using to try to close those holes. Exactly. Let's be sincere." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why pretend? So if there were no, in a world where there were no prizes, no honors, we would act like kids. As I said before, we would really be focusing on the ball and not on the audience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the prizes get in the way and it's so powerful. Do you think, in some sense, the few people that have turned down the prize made a much more powerful statement? I don't know if you're familiar in the space of mathematics with the Fields Medal and Grigori Pearlman who turned down the prize. So he, I've committed, one of the reasons I started this podcast is I'm going to definitely talk to Putin, I'm definitely talking to Perlman, and people keep telling me it's impossible. I love hearing that because I'll talk to both. Anyway, but do you have a sense of why he turned down the prize, and is that a powerful statement to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, what I read is that, you're talking about the mathematician, right? What I read is that he was disappointed by the response of the community, the mainstream community, the mathematicians, to his earlier work, where they dismissed it, they didn't attend to the details and didn't treat him with proper respect because he was not considered one of them. And I think that speaks volumes about the current scientific culture, which is based on groupthink and on social interaction, rather than on the merit of the argument. and on the evidence in the context of physics. So in mathematics, there is no empirical basis. You're exploring ideas that are logically consistent. But nevertheless, there is this groupthink. And I think he was so frustrated with his past experience that he didn't even bother to publish his papers. He just posted them on the archive. And in a way, it's saying, you know, I know what the answer is. Go look at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then again, in the long arc of history, his work on archive will be remembered and all the prizes, most of the prizes will be forgotten. That's what people don't kind of think about. When you look at Roger Penrose, for example, is another fascinating figure. It's possible, and forgive me if I'm showing my ignorance, but he's also did some work on consciousness. He's been one of the only people who spoke about consciousness, which for the longest time is still arguably outside of the realm of the sciences. It's still seen as a taboo subject. and he was brave enough to explore it from a physics perspective, from just a philosophical perspective, but like with the rigor, like proposing different kind of hypotheses of how consciousness might be able to emerge in the brain. And it's possible that that is the thing he's remembered for if you look 100 years from now, right? As opposed to the work in the black holes, which fits into the kind of, fits into what the current scientific community allows to be the space of what is and isn't science." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's really interesting to look at people that are innovators, where in some phases of their career, their ideas fit into the social structure that is around them. But in other phases, it doesn't. And when you look at them, they just operated the same way throughout. And it says more about their environment than about them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, I don't know if you know who Max Tegmark is. I just recently talked to him. I just recently talked to him again. I mean, he was a little bit more explicit about saying being aware, which is something I also recommend, is being aware where the scientific community stands and doing enough to move along in your career. It's the necessary evil, I suppose. If you are one of those out-of-the-box thinkers, that just naturally have this childlike curiosity, which Max definitely is one of them, is sometimes you have to do some stuff that fits in. You publish and you get tenure and all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the tenure is a great privilege, because it allows you to, in principle, explore things that are not accepted by others. And unfortunately, it's not being taken advantage of by most people, and it's a waste of a very precious resource." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, absolutely. The space that you kind of touched on that's full of theories and is perhaps detached from appreciation of empirical evidence or longing for empirical evidence or grounding in empirical evidence is the theoretical physics community and the interest in unifying the laws of physics with the theory of everything. I'm not sure from which direction to approach this question, but how far away are we from arriving at a theory of everything, do you think? And how would we, how important is it to try to arrive at it, at this kind of goal of this beautiful, simple theory that unlocks the very fundamental basis of our nature as we know it, and what are the kinds of approaches we need to take to get there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so in physics, the biggest challenge is to unify quantum mechanics with gravity. And I believe that once we have experimental evidence for how this happens in nature, in systems that have quantum mechanical effects, but also gravity is important, then the theory will fall into our lap, okay? But the mistake that is made by the community right now is to come up with the right theory from scratch. And you know, Einstein gave the illusion that you can just sit in your office and understand nature, you know, when he came up with his general theory of relativity. But, you know, first of all, perhaps he was lucky, but it's not a rule. The rule is that you need evidence to guide you, especially when dealing with quantum mechanics, which is really not intuitive. And so there are two places where the two theories meet. One is black holes. and there is a puzzle there. It's called the information paradox. In principle, you can throw the Encyclopedia Britannica into a black hole. It's a lot of information. And then it will be gone because a black hole carries only three properties or qualities, the mass, the charge, and the spin, according to Einstein. But then when Hawking tried to bring in quantum mechanics, to the game, he realized that black holes have a temperature and they radiate. This is called Hawking radiation. And it was sort of anticipated by Jacob Bekenstein before him. And Hawking wanted to prove Bekenstein wrong and then figure this out. And so what it means is black holes eventually evaporate. And they evaporate into radiation that doesn't carry this information, according to Hawking's calculation. And then the question is, according to quantum mechanics, information must be preserved. So where did the information go if a black hole is gone? And where is the information that was encoded in the encyclopedia when it went into the black hole? To that question, we don't have an answer yet. It's one of those puzzles about black holes, and it touches on the interplay between quantum mechanics and gravity. Another important question is what happened at the beginning of the universe? What happened before the Big Bang? And by the way, on that, I should say, you know, there are some conjectures. In principle, if we figure it out, if we have a theory of quantum gravity, it's possible to imagine that we will figure out how to create a universe in the laboratory. by irritating the vacuum, you might create a baby universe. And if we do that, it will offer a solution to what happened before the Big Bang. Perhaps the Big Bang emerged from the laboratory of another civilization. So it's like baby universes are being born out of laboratories And inside the baby universe, you have a civilization that brings to existence a new baby universe. So just like humans, right? We have babies and they make babies. So in principle, that would solve the problem of why there was a Big Bang and also what happened before the Big Bang. So we came, our umbilical cord is connected to a laboratory of a civilization that produced our universe once it figured out quantum gravity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's baby Big Bangs all the way down. It's Big Bangs all the way down." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So if we collect data about how the universe started, we could potentially test theories of, or it can educate us. about how to unify quantum mechanics and gravity. If we get any information about what happens near the singularity of a black hole, you know, if we get a sense of, you know, somehow we learn what happens at the singularity. So there are places where we can search for evidence, but it's very challenging, I should say. And my point is, You know, the string theorists, they decided that they know how to approach the problem, but they don't have a single theory. There is a multitude of theories, and it's not tightly constrained, and they cannot make predictions about black holes or about the beginning of the universe. So at the moment, I say we are at a loss. And the way I feel about this concept of the theory of everything, we should wait until we get enough evidence to guide us. And until then, you know, there are many important problems that we can address, you know? Why bang our head against the wall on a problem for which we have no guidance?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. We don't have a good dance partner in terms of evidence. Exactly. I mean, it'd be interesting, Jessica said, I mean, the lab is one place to create universes or black holes, but it'd be fascinating if there's indeed a black hole in our solar system that you can interact with. So the problem with the origin of the universe is all you can do is collect data about it, right? You can't interact with it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you can, for example, detect gravitational waves that emerged from that. And, you know, there is an effort to do that, and that could potentially tell us something. But yeah, it's a challenge, and that's why we're stuck. So I should say, despite what physicists portray, that, you know, we live through an exceptional growth in our understanding of the universe, We're actually pretty much stuck, I would say, because we don't know the nature of the dark matter. Most of the matter in the universe, we don't know what it is. And we don't know how the universe started. We don't know what happens in the interior of a black hole." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you've thought quite a bit about dark matter as well. Do you have any kind of interesting hypothesis? We already mentioned a few about what is dark matter and what are the possible paths that we could take to unlock the mystery of dark, what is dark matter?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so what we need is some anomalies that would hint what the nature of the dark matter is, or to detect it in the laboratory. There are lots of laboratory experiments searching, but it's like searching for a needle in a haystack, because there are so many possibilities for the type of particle that it may be. But maybe at some point, we'll find either a particle or black holes as dark matter or something else." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But at the moment- Can you also maybe, sorry to interrupt, to comment about what is dark matter? It's just a name assigned to what?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So most of the community believes that it's a particle. that we haven't yet detected. It doesn't interact with light, so it's dark. But the question is, what does it interact with and how can we find it? And for many years, Physicists were guided by the idea that it's some extension of the standard model of particle physics. But then they said, oh, we will find some clues from the Large Hadron Collider about its nature. Or maybe it's related to supersymmetry, which is a new symmetry that we haven't found any evidence for. In both cases, the Large Hadron Collider did not give us any clues. And other people searched for specific types of particles in the laboratory and didn't find any. A couple of years ago, actually around the time that I worked on Oumuamua, I also worked on the possibility that the dark matter particles may have a small electric charge, which is a speculation, but nobody complained about it. And, you know, it was published and I regarded it more of a speculation than the artificial origin of Oumuamua. And to me, I apply, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I apply the same scientific tools in both cases. There is an anomaly that led me to that discussion, which has to do with the hydrogen being cold in the early universe more than we expected. So we suggested maybe the dark matter particles have some small charge. But you deal with anomalies by exploring possibilities. That's the only way to do it. And then collecting more data to check those. Searching for technological signatures is the same as any other part of our scientific endeavor. We make hypotheses and we collect data, and I don't see any reason for having a taboo on this subject." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In your childlike, open-minded excitement and approach to science, I think to anyone listening to this, truly inspiring. I mean, the question I think is useful to ask is by way of advice for young people. A lot of young people listen to this, whether from all over the world, and teenagers, undergraduate students, even graduate students, even young faculty. even older faculty, they're all young at heart. There's many of us young at heart. Do you have advice for, but let's focus on the traditionally defined sort of young folks, like undergraduate. Do you have advice to give to young people like that today about life, maybe in general, maybe a life of curiosity in the sciences?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Definitely. Well, first, I should confess that I enjoy working with young people much more than with senior people. And the reason is they don't carry a baggage of prejudice. They're not so self-centered. They're open to exploration. My advice, I mean, one of the lessons that took me a while to learn, and I should say I lost important opportunities as a result of that, so I would regard it as a mistake on my behalf, was to believe experts, so quote unquote. So on a number of occasions, I would come up with an original idea, and then suggest it to an expert, someone that works in the same field for a while, and the expert would dismiss it, most of the time because it's new and was not explored, not because of the merit. And then what happened to me several times is that someone else would listen to the conversation or would hear me suggesting it, and I would give up because the expert said no, and then that someone else you know, would develop it so that it becomes the hottest thing in this field. And it happened, you know, once it happened to me multiple times, I then realized, the hell with the experts, you know, like, they don't know what they're doing, they are just repeating the, they don't think creatively, they are being threatened by innovation, okay? And it's the natural reaction of someone that cares about their ego more than about the matter that we are discussing. And so I said, I don't care how many likes I have on Twitter. I don't care whether the experts say one thing or another. I will basically exercise my judgment and do the best I can. Turns out that I'm wrong. I made a mistake. That's part of the scientific endeavor. And it took me a while to recognize that. And it was a lot of wasted opportunities. So to the young people, I would recommend don't listen to experts. Carve your own path. Now, of course, you will be wrong. You should learn from experience, just like kids do. But do it yourself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your father died in 2017. Your mother died in 2019. Do you miss them? Very much so. Is there a fond memory that stands out? Or maybe, what have you learned from them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "From my mother, I mean, she was very much my inspiration for pursuing intellectual work because She studied at the university, and then because of the Second World War, after the Second World War, she was born in Bulgaria. They immigrated to Israel. And she left university to work on a farm. And later in life, when all the kids left home, she went back to the university and finished the PhD. But she planted in me, the intellectual curiosity and valuing learning or acquiring knowledge is a very important. element in life. And my love with philosophy came from attending classes that she took at the university when I was a teenager. I was fortunate to go to some of these, and they inspired me later on. And I'm very different than my colleagues, as you can tell, because my upbringing was quite different. And the only reason I'm doing physics or astrophysics is because of circumstances. At age 18, I was asked to serve in the military, and the only way for me to pursue intellectual work was to work on physics, because that was the closest to philosophy. And I was good at physics, so they admitted me to an elite program called Talpiyot that allowed me to finish my PhD at age 24, and to actually propose the first international project that was funded by the Star Wars initiative of Ronald Reagan. And that brought me to the U.S. to visit Washington, D.C., where we were funded from. And then on one of the visits, I went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and met John Bacall, that later offered me a five-year fellowship there, under the condition that I'll switch to astrophysics. At which point, you know, I said, okay, I cannot give up on this opportunity, I'll do it, switch to astrophysics. It felt like a forced marriage, kind of arranged marriage. And then I was offered the position at Harvard because nobody wanted that. They first selected someone else. And that someone said, I don't want to become a junior faculty at the Harvard Astronomy Department because the chance for being promoted are very small. So he took another job. And then I was second in line. They gave it to me. I didn't care much because I could go back to the farm any day. And after three years, I was tenured. And eventually, a decade later, became the chair of this department and served for nine years as the chair of the astronomy department at Harvard. But at that point, it became clear to me that I'm actually married to the love of my life. Even though it was an arranged marriage, there are many philosophical questions in astrophysics that we can address. But I'm still very different than my colleagues that were focusing on technical skills in getting to this job. So my mother was really extremely instrumental in planting the seeds of thinking about the big picture. in me. Then my father, he was, you know, he was working in the farm and we didn't speak much because we sort of understood each other without speaking. But what he gave me is a sense of, you know, that it's more important to do things than to talk about them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love the, I mean, my apologies, but MIT mind and hand, I love that there's the root of philosophy that you've gained from your mom and the hand, that action is all that ultimately in the end matters. from your dad, that's really powerful. If we could take a small detour into philosophy, is there by chance any books, authors, whether philosophical or not, you mentioned Sartre, that stand out to you that were formative in some small or big way that perhaps you would recommend to others, maybe when you were very young or maybe later on in life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, actually, yeah, you know, I read the number of existentialists that appealed to me because they were authentic. You know, Sartre, you know, he declined the Nobel prizes we discussed, but he also was mocking people that pretend to be something better than they are. You know, he was living an authentic life that is sincere, And that's what appealed to me. And Albert Camus was another French philosopher that advocated existentialism. You know, that really appealed to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's probably my favorite existentialist Camus, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and he died at a young age in an accident, unfortunately. And then, you know, people like Nietzsche, broke conventions. And I noticed that Nietzsche is still extremely popular. That's quite surprising. He appeals to the young people of today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the childlike wonder about the world. He was unapologetic. You know, it's like most philosophers have a very strict adherence to terminology and to the practices, academic philosophers. And Nietzsche was full of contradictions and he just, I mean, he was just this big kid with opinions and thought deeply about this world. And people are really attracted to that. And surprisingly, there's not enough people like that throughout history of philosophy. And that's why I think he's still drawn to him." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, to me what stands out is his statement that the best way to corrupt the mind of young people is to tell them that they should agree with the common view. And it goes back to the thread that went throughout discussion." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've kind of suggested that we ought to be humble about our very own existence and that our existence lasts only a short time. We talked about you losing your father and your mother. Do you think about your own mortality? Are you afraid of death?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not afraid. You know what, Epicurus, actually Epicurus was a very wise person. according to Lucretius, of course didn't leave anything in writing, but he said that he's never afraid of death because as long as he's around, death is not around and When death will be around, he will not be around. So he will never meet death. So why should you be worried about something you will never meet? And it's an interesting philosophy of life. You shouldn't be afraid of something that you will never encounter, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a finiteness to this experience. We live every day. I mean, I think if we're being honest, we live every day as if it's gonna last forever. We often kind of don't contemplate the fact that it ends. You kind of have plans and goals and you have these possibilities. You have a kind of lingering thought, especially as you get older and older and older, that this is, especially when you lose friends, then you start to realize, you know, it does end. But I don't know if you really are cognizant of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you have to be careful not to be depressed by it, because otherwise you lose the vitality, right? So I think the most important thing to draw from knowing that you are short-lived is a sense of appreciation that you're alive. That's the first thing. But more importantly, a sense of modesty. Because how can anyone be arrogant? if they kept at the same time this notion that they are short-lived. I mean, you cannot be arrogant because anything that you advocate for, you know, you will not be around to do that in a hundred years, so people will just forget and move on, you know. And if you keep that in mind, you know, the Caesars in ancient Rome, they had a person next to them telling them, don't forget that you are immortal. You know, there was a person with that duty because the Caesars thought that they are all powerful. You know? And they had, for a good reason, someone they hired to whisper in their ear, don't forget that you're mortal. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you're somebody, one of the most respected, famous scientists in the world, sitting on a farm, gazing up at the stars. So you seem like an appropriate person to ask the completely inappropriate question of, what do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's an excellent question, and if we ever find an alien that we can converse with, I would like to ask for an answer to this question. Would they have a different opinion, you think? Well, they might be wiser because they lived around for a while, but I'm afraid they will be silent. I'm afraid they will not have a good answer. And I think it's the process that you should get satisfied by, the process of learning you should enjoy. Okay, so it's not so much that there is a meaning. In fact, there is, as far as I can tell, things just exist. I think it's inappropriate for us to assign a meaning for our existence because as a civilization we will eventually perish and nothing will be, just another planet on which life died. If you look at the big scheme of things, who cares? Who cares? And how can we assign significance to what we are doing? So if you say the meaning of life is this, well, it will not be around in a billion years. It cannot be the meaning of life because nothing will be around. So I think we should just enjoy the process. And it's like many other things in life. You enjoy good food. Okay? And you can enjoy learning. Why? Because it makes you appreciate better the environment that you live in. And sometimes people think religion, for example, is in conflict with science. Spirituality. That's not true. If you see a watch and you look at it from the outside, you might say, oh, that's interesting. But then if you start to open it up and learn about how it works, you appreciate it more. So science is the way to learn about how the world works. And it's not in conflict to the meaning that you assign to all of this, but it helps you appreciate the world better. So in fact, I would think that a religious person should promote science because it gives you a better appreciation of what's around you. You know, it's like, you know, if you buy in a grocery, buy something, you know, a bunch of fruits that are packed together, and you can't see from the outside exactly what kind of fruits are inside. But if you open it up and study, you appreciate better the merchandise that you get, right? So you pay the same amount of money, but at least you know what's inside. So why don't we figure out what the world is about? You know, what the universe contains? What is the dark matter? It will help us appreciate the bigger picture, and then you can assign your own flavor to what it means." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ali, I think I'm truly grateful that a person like you exists at the center of the scientific community, gives me faith and hope about this big journey that we call science. So thank you for writing the book you wrote recently. You have many other books and articles that I think people should definitely read. And thank you for wasting all this time with me. It's truly an honor. Thank you so much." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I disagree. I guess I do think consciousness pervades matter. In fact, I think consciousness is the ultimate nature of matter. So as for whether it's outside of the scientific method, I think there's a fundamental challenge at the heart of the science of consciousness that we need to face up to, which is that consciousness is not publicly observable. I can't look inside your head and see your feelings and experiences. We know about consciousness not from doing experiments or public observation. We just know about it from our immediate awareness of our feelings and experiences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So- It's qualitative, not quantitative, as you talk about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's another aspect of it. So there are a couple of reasons consciousness I think is not susceptible to the standard or not fully susceptible to the standard scientific approach. One reason you've just raised is that it's qualitative rather than quantitative. Another reason is it's not publicly observable. So, I mean, science is used to dealing with unobservables, right? Fundamental particles, quantum wave functions, other universes, none of these things are observable, but there's an important difference with all these things, we postulate unobservables in order to explain what we can observe. In the whole of science, that's how it works. In the case of consciousness, in the unique case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable. And that is utterly unique. If we want to fully bring science into consciousness, we need a more expansive conception of the scientific method. So it doesn't mean we can't explain consciousness scientifically, but we need to rethink what science is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean publicly, the word publicly observable? Is there something interesting to be said about the word publicly? I suppose versus privately." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's tricky to define, but I suppose The data of physics are available to anybody. If there were aliens who visited us from another planet, maybe they'd have very different sense organs, maybe they'd struggle to understand our art or our music, but if they were intelligent enough to do mathematics, they could understand our physics. They could look at the data of our experiments. They could run the experiments themselves. Whereas consciousness, is it observable? Is it not observable? In a sense, it's observable. As you say, we could say it's privately observable. I am directly aware of my own feelings and experiences. If I'm in pain, It's just right there for me. My pain is just totally directly evident to me. But you from the outside cannot directly access my pain. You can access my pain behaviour, or you can ask me, but you can't access my pain in the way that I can access my pain. So I think that's a distinction. It might be difficult to totally pin it down how we define those things, but I think there's a fairly clear and very important difference there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think there's a kind of direct observation that you're able to do of your pain that I'm not. So my observation, all the ways in which I can sneak up to observing your pain is indirect versus yours is direct. Can you play devil's advocate? Is it possible for me to get closer and closer and closer to being able to observe your pain, like all the subjective experiences, yours, in the way that you do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, so of course, it's not that we observe behavior, and then we make an inference. We are hardwired to instinctively interpret smiles as happiness, crying as sadness. And as we get to know someone, we find it very easy to adopt their perspective, get into their shoes. But strictly speaking, all we have perceptual access to is someone's behavior. And if you were just, strictly speaking, if you were trying to explain someone's behavior, those aspects that are publicly observable, I don't think you'd ever have recourse to attribute consciousness. You could just postulate some kind of mechanism if you were just trying to explain the behavior. So someone like Daniel Dennett, is very consistent on this. So I think for most people, what science is in the business of is explaining the data of public observation experiment. If you religiously followed that, you would not postulate consciousness because it's not a datum that's known about in that way. And Daniel Dennett is really consistent on this. He thinks my consciousness cannot be empirically verified and therefore it doesn't exist. Dennett is consistent on this. I think I'm consistent on this, but I think a lot of people have a slightly confused middle way position on this. On the one hand, they think, the business of science is just to account for public observation experiment, but on the other hand, they also believe in consciousness without appreciating, I think, that that implies that there is another datum over and above the data of public observation experiments, namely just the reality of feelings and experiences." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As we walk along this conversation, you keep opening doors I don't wanna walk into, and I will, but I wanna try to stay So you mentioned Daniel Dennett, let's lay it out. Since he sticks to his story, pun unintended, and then you stick to yours, what is your story, what is your theory of consciousness versus his? Can you clarify his position?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So my view, I defend the view known as panpsychism, which is the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. So it doesn't literally mean that everything is conscious despite the meaning of the word pan, everything, psyche, mind. So literally that means everything has mind. But the typical commitment of the panpsychist is that the fundamental building blocks of reality, maybe fundamental particles like electrons and quarks have incredibly simple forms of experience. and that the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow rooted in or derived from this much more simple consciousness at the level of fundamental physics. I mean, that's a theory that I would justify on the grounds that it can account for this datum of consciousness that we are immediately aware of in our experience in a way that I don't think other theories can. If you asked me to contrast that to Daniel Dennett, I think he would just say there is no such datum. Dennett says the data for science of consciousness is what he calls heterophenomenology, which is specifically defined as what we can access from the third person perspective. including what people say, but crucially we're not treating what they say, we're not relying on their testimony as evidence for some unobservable realm of feelings and experiences. We're just treating what they say as a datum of public observation experiments that we can account for in terms of underlying mechanisms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I feel like there's a deeper view of what consciousness is. So you have a very clear, and we'll talk quite a bit about panpsychism, but you have a clear view of what you know, almost like a physics view of consciousness. He, I think, has a kind of view that consciousness is almost a side effect of this massively parallel computation system going on in our brain, that the brain is, has a model of the world and it's taking in perceptions and it's constantly weaving multiple stories about that world that's integrating the new perceptions and the multiple stories are somehow, it's like a Google Doc, collaborative editing. And that collaborative editing is the actual experience of what we think of as consciousness somehow the editing is consciousness of this story. I mean, that's a theory of consciousness, isn't it? The narrative theory of consciousness or the multiple versions editing, collaborative editing of a narrative theory of consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, he calls it the multiple drafts model. Incidentally, there's a very interesting paper just come out by very good philosopher, Luke Roloff's, defending a panpsychist version of Dennett's multiple drafts model. Like a deeper turtle that that turtle is stacked on top of. Just the difference being that, this is Luke Roloff's view, all of the drafts are conscious. So I guess for Dennett, there's sort of no fact of the matter about which of these drafts is the correct one. on Roloff's view, maybe there's no fact of the matter about which of these drafts is my consciousness. But nonetheless, all the drafts correspond to some consciousness. And I mean, I just think it's kind of funny. I guess I think he calls it Danettian panpsychism. But Luke is one of the most rigorous and serious philosophers alive at the moment, I think. And I hate having Luke Roloff in an audience if I'm giving a talk because he always cuts straight to the weakness in your position that you hadn't thought of. So it's nice, you know, panpsychism is sometimes associated with fluffy thinking, but contemporary panpsychists have come out of this tradition we call analytic philosophy, which is rooted in detailed, rigorous argumentation, and it is defended in that manner." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Those analytic philosophers are sticklers for terminology. It's very fun, very fun group to talk shit with over speakers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I mean, it gets boring if you just start and end defining words, right? Yeah. I think starting with defining words is good. Actually, the philosopher Derek Parfit said when, when he first was thinking about philosophy, he went to a talk in analytic philosophy, and he went to a talk in continental philosophy, and he decided that the problem with the continental philosophy, if it was really unrigorous, really imprecise, the problem with the analytic philosophy is it was just not about anything important. And he thought there was more chance of working within analytic philosophy and asking some more meaningful, some more profound questions than there was in working continental philosophy and making it more rigorous. Now they're both horrific stereotypes and I don't want to get nasty emails from either of these groups, but there's something to what he was saying there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think just a tiny tangent on terminology, I do think that there's a lot of deep insight to be discovered by just asking questions. What do we mean by this word? I remember I was taking a course on algorithms and data structures in computer science. And the instructor, shout out to him, Ali Sheikhafande, amazing professor. I remember he asked some basic questions like, what is an algorithm? the pressure of pushing students to answer, to think deeply. You know, you just woke up, hung over in college or whatever, and you're tasked with answering some deep philosophical question about what is an algorithm, these basic questions. And they sound very simple, but they're actually very difficult. And one of the things I really value in conversation is asking these dumb, simple questions of like, you know, what is intelligence? and just continually asking that question over and over of some of the sort of biggest researchers in the artificial intelligence computer science space, it's actually very useful. At the same time, it should start at terminology and then progress where you kind of say, ah, fuck it, we'll just assume we know what we mean by that. Otherwise, you get the Bill Clinton situation where it's like, what is the meaning of is, is whatever he said. It's like, hey man, did you do the sex stuff or not? Like. Yeah. So there's, you have to both be able to talk about the sex stuff and the meaning of the word is. With consciousness, because we don't currently understand, you know, very much, terminology discussions are very important. Cause it's like, you're almost trying to sneak sneak up to some deep insight by just discussing some basic terminology, like what is consciousness or even defining the different aspects of panpsychism is fascinating. But just to linger on the Daniel Dennett thing, what do you think about narrative, sort of the mind constructing narratives for ourselves? there's nothing special about consciousness deeply. It is some property of the human mind that's just, is able to tell these pretty stories that we experience as consciousness, and that it's unique, perhaps, to the human mind, which is, I suppose, what Daniel Dennett would argue, that it's either deeply unique or mostly unique to the human mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's just on the question of terminology before. I think it used to be the fashion among philosophers that we had to come up with utterly precise, necessary and sufficient conditions for each word. And then I think this has gone out of fashion a bit, partly because it's just been such a failure. The word knowledge in particular, people used to define knowledge as true, justified belief. And then this guy, Gettier, had this very short paper where he just produced some pretty conclusive counterexamples to that. I think he wrote very few papers, but you have to teach this on an undergraduate philosophy course. And then after that, you had a huge literature of people trying to address this and propose a new definition, but then someone else would come out with counter-examples. And then you get a new definition of knowledge and counter-examples, and it just went on and on and never seemed to get anywhere. So I think the thought now is, let's work out how precise we need to be for what we're trying to do. And I think that's a healthier attitude. So precision is important, but you just need to work out how precise do we need to be for these purposes? Coming to Dennett and narrative theories, I mean, I think narrative theories are a plausible contender for a theory of the self, theory of my identity over time, what makes me the same person in some sense today as I was 20 years ago, given that I've changed so much physically and psychologically. One running contender is something connected to the kind of stories we tell about ourselves, or maybe some story about the chains of psychological continuity. I'm not saying I accept such a theory, but it's plausible. I don't think these theories are good as theories of consciousness, at least if we're taking consciousness just to be subjective experience, pleasure, pain, seeing color, hearing sound. I think a hamster has consciousness in that sense. There's something that it's like to be a hamster. It feels pain if you stand on it, if you're cruel enough to do it. I don't know why I gave that. People always give, I don't know, philosophers give these very violent examples to get the cross-consciousness, and it's, yeah, I don't know why that's coming about, but anyway." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You say mean things to the hamster, let's go back. So it experiences pain, it experiences pleasure, joy, I mean, but there's some limits to that experience of a hamster, but there is nevertheless the presence of a subjective experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, consciousness is just something, I mean, it's a very ambiguous word, but if we're just using it to mean some kind of experience, some kind of inner life, that is pretty widespread in the animal kingdom. Bit difficult to say where it stops, where it starts, but... You certainly don't need something as sophisticated as the capacity to self-consciously tell stories about yourself to just have experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Except for cats, who are evil automatons that are void of consciousness. They're the fingertips of the devil." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, absolutely, yeah. I was taking that as read. I mean, Descartes thought animals were mechanisms." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And humans are unique. So animals are robots, essentially, in the formulation of Descartes, and humans are unique. So in which way would you say humans are unique versus even our closest ancestors? Like, is there something special about humans? What is, in your view, under the panpsychism, I guess we're walking backwards, because we'll have the big picture conversation about what is panpsychism, but given your kind of broad theory of consciousness, what's unique about humans, do you think?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "as a panpsychist, there is a great continuity between humans and the rest of the universe. There's nothing that special about human consciousness, it's just a highly evolved form of what exists throughout the universe. So we're very much continuous with the rest of the physical universe. What is unique about human beings? I suppose the capacity to reflect on our conscious experience, plan for the future, the capacity, I would say, to respond to reasons as well. I mean, animals in some sense have motivations, but when a human being makes a decision, they're responding to what philosophers call normative considerations. If you think, should I take this job in the US? you weigh it up, you say, well, you know, I'll get more money. I'll have maybe a better quality of life. But if I stay in the UK, I'll be closer to family. And you weigh up these considerations. I'm not sure any non-human animals quite respond to considerations of value in that way. I mean, I might be reflecting here that I'm something of an objectivist about value. I think there are, objective facts about what we have reason to do and what we have reason to believe. And humans have access to those facts. And humans have access to them and can respond to them. That's a controversial claim, you know. Many of my panpsychist brethren might not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They would say the hamster too can look up to the stars and ponder theoretical physics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe not, but I think it depends what you think about value. If you have a more Humean picture of value by which I mean relating to the philosopher David Hume who said reason is the slave of the passions, really we just have motivations and what we have reason to do arises from our motivations. I'm not a Humean, I think there are objective facts about what we have reason to do and I think we have access to them. I don't think any non-human animal has access to objective facts about what they have reason to do, what they have reason to believe. They don't weigh up evidence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Reason is a slave of the passions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That was David Hume's view, yeah. I mean, yeah, do you want to know my problem with Hume's? I had a radical conversion. This might not be connected, it's not connected to panpsychism, but I had a radical conversion. I used to have a more Humean view when I was a graduate student. But I was persuaded by some professors at the University of Reading where I was, that if you have the human view, you have to say any basic life goals are equal, equally valid. So for example, let's take someone whose basic goal in life is counting blades of grass, right? And crucially, they don't enjoy it, right? This is the crucial point. They get no pleasure from it. That's just their basic goal, to spend their life counting as many blades of grass as possible. Not for some greater goal, that's just their basic goal. I want to say that that is objectively stupid. That is objectively pointless. I shouldn't say stupid, but it's objectively pointless in a way that pursuing pleasure or pursuing someone else's pleasure or pursuing scientific inquiry is not pointless. As soon as you make that admission, you're not a follower of David Hume anymore. You think there are objective facts about what goals are worth pursuing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible to have a goal without pleasure? So this kind of idea that you disjoint the two. So the David Foster Wallace idea of the key to life is to be unboreable. Isn't it possible to discover the pleasure in everything in life? The counting of the blades of grass. Once you see the mastery, the skill of it, you can discover the pleasure. Therefore, I guess what I'm asking is why and when and how did you lose the romance in grad school of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is that what you're trying to say? I think it may or may not be true that it's possible to find pleasure in everything, but I think it's also true that people don't act solely for pleasure, and they certainly don't act solely for their own pleasure. People will suffer for things they think are worthwhile. I might suffer for some scientific cause. finding out a cure for the pandemic or, and in terms of my own pleasure, I might have less pleasure in doing that, but I think it's worthwhile. It's a worthwhile thing to do. I just don't think it's the case that everything we do is rooted in maximizing our own pleasure. I don't think that's even psychologically plausible." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But pleasure, then that's a narrow kind of view of pleasure. That's like a short-term pleasure, but you can see pleasure is a kind of, ability to hear the music in the distance. It's like, yes, it's difficult now, it's suffering now, but there's some greater thing beyond the mountain that will be joy. I mean, that's kind of a, even if it's not in this life. Well, you know, the warriors will meet in Valhalla, right? The feeling that gives meaning and fulfillment to life is not necessarily grounded in pleasure of like the counting of the grass. It's something else. I don't know. The struggle is a source of deep fulfillment. So like, I think pleasure needs to be kind of thought of as a little bit more broadly. It's just kind of, gives you this sense, it for a moment allows you to forget the terror of the fact that you're going to die. That's pleasure. That's the broader view of pleasure, that you get to kind of play in the little illusion that all of this has deep meaning. That's pleasure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I mean, you know, people sacrifice their lives. Atheists may sacrifice their lives for the sake of someone else or for the sake of something important enough. And clearly in that case, they're not doing it for the sake of their own pleasure. That's a rather dramatic example, but there can be just trivial examples where, you know, you know, I choose to be honest rather than lie about something and I lose out a bit and I have a bit less pleasure. But I thought it was worth doing the honest thing or something. I mean, I just think so that's a, I mean, maybe you can use the word pleasure so broadly that you're just essentially meaning something worthwhile. But then I think the word pleasure maybe loses its meaning. But what do you think about the blades of grass case? What do you think about someone who spends their life cutting blades of grass and doesn't enjoy it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think, I personally think it's impossible, or maybe I'm not understanding even like the philosophical formulation, but I think it's impossible to have a goal and not draw pleasure from it. Make it worthwhile, forget the word pleasure. I think the word goal loses meaning. If I say I'm going to count the number of pens on this table, if I'm actively involved in the task, I will find joy in it. I think there's a lot of meaning and joy to be discovered in the skill of a task, in mastering of a skill. and taking pride in doing it well. I mean, that's, I don't know what it is about the human mind, but there's some joy to be discovered in the mastery of a skill. So I think it's just impossible to count blades of grass and not sort of have the Gero germs of sushi compelling, like draws you into the mastery of the simple task." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I suppose, I mean, In a way, you might think it's just hard to imagine someone who would spend their lives doing that, but then maybe that's just because it's so evident that that is a pointless task. Whereas, if we take this David Hume view seriously, it ought to be, you know, a totally possible life goal. Whereas, I mean, yeah, I guess I just find it hard to shake the idea that some ways of, some life goals are more worthwhile than others. And it doesn't mean, you know, that there's one single way you should lead your life, but pursuing knowledge, helping people, pursuing your own pleasure to an extent are worthwhile things to do in a way that, you know, for example, I have, I'm a little bit OCD. I still feel inclined to walk on cracks in the pavement or do it symmetrically, like if I, or step on a crack with my left foot, I feel the need to do it with my right foot. And I think that's kind of pointless. It's something I feel the urge to do, but it's pointless. Whereas other things I choose to do, I think it's worth doing. And it's hard to make sense of metaphysically, what could possibly ground that? How could we know about these facts?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's the starting point for me. I don't know. I think you walking, on the sidewalk in a way that's symmetrical, brings order to the world. Like if you weren't doing that, the world might fall apart. It feels like that. I think there's meaning in that. Like you embracing the full, like the full experience of that, you living the richness of that as if it has meaning will give meaning to it. And then whatever genius comes of that as you as a one little intelligent ant will make a better life for everybody else. Perhaps I'm defending the blades of grass example because I can literally imagine myself enjoying this task as somebody who's OCD in a certain kind of way and quantitative." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But now you're running the exam because you imagine someone enjoying it. I'm imagining someone who doesn't enjoy it. We don't want a life that's, just full of pleasure, like we just sit there, you know, having a big sugar high all the time. We want a life where we do things that are worthwhile. If for something to be worthwhile just is for it to be a basic life goal, then that mode of reflection doesn't really make sense. We can't really think, did I do things worthwhile? On the David Hume type picture, all it is for something to be worthwhile is it was a basic goal of yours or derived from a basic goal, and yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think goal and worthwhile aren't, I think goal's a boring word. I'm more sort of existentialist, like, did you ride the roller coaster of life? Did you fully experience life? And in that sense, I mean, the blaze of grass, is something that could be deeply joyful. And that's, in that way, I think suffering could be joyful in the full context of life. It's the rollercoaster of life. Like without suffering, without struggle, without pain, without depression or sadness, there's not the highs. I mean, that's the fucked up thing about life is that, the lows really make the highs that much richer and deeper and taste better. I tweeted this. I couldn't sleep, and I was late at night. And I know it's an obvious statement, but Like every love story eventually, you know, ends in loss, in tragedy. So like this feeling of love, at the end, there's always going to be tragedy. Even if it's the most amazing lifelong love with another human being, one of you is going to die. and I don't know which is worse, but both are not going to be pretty. And so that, the sense that it's finite, the sense that it's going to end in a low, that gives like richness to those kind of evenings when you realize this fucking thing ends, this thing ends, the feeling that it ends. that bad taste, that bad feeling that it ends gives meaning, gives joy, gives, I don't know, pleasure is this loaded word, but gives some kind of deep pleasure to the experience when it's good. And I mean, and that's the blades of grass, you know, they have that to me. But you're perhaps right that it's like reducing it to set of goals or something like that is kind of removing the magic of life. Because I think what makes counting the blaze of grass joyful is just because it's life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay, so it sounds like you reject the David Hume type picture anyway, because you're saying just because you have it as a goal, that's what it is to be worthwhile. But you're saying no, it's because it's engaging with life, riding the roller coaster. So that does sound like in some sense, there are facts. independent of our personal goal choices about what it means to live a good life. And I mean, coming back full circle to the start, the start of this was what makes us different to animals. I don't think at the end of a hamster's life, it thinks, did I ride the roller coaster? Did I really live life to the full? That is not a mode of reflection that's available to non-human animals, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think is the role of death? in all of this, the fear of death. Does that interplay with consciousness? Does this self-reflection, do you think there's some deep connection between this ability to contemplate the fact that our flame of consciousness eventually goes out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't think, unfortunately, panpsychism helps particularly with life after death because, you know, for the panpsychist, there's nothing supernatural, there's nothing beyond the physical. All there is really is ultimately particles and fields. It's just that we think the ultimate nature of particles and fields is consciousness. But I guess when when the matter in my brain ceases to be ordered in a way that sustains the particular kind of consciousness I enjoy in waking life, then in some sense, I will cease to be. Although the final chapter of my book, Galileo's Error, is more experimental. So the first four chapters are the cold-blooded case for the panpsychist viewers that the best solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Yeah, the last chapter is where you talk about meaning. Yeah, I talk about meaning, I talk about free will, and I talk about mystical experiences. So I always want to emphasize that panpsychism is not necessarily connected to anything spiritual. You know, a lot of people defending this view, like David Chalmers or Luke Roloff, are just total atheist secularists, right? They don't believe in any kind of transcendent reality, they just believe in feelings, you know, mundane consciousness and think that needs explaining and our conventional scientific approach can't cut it. But if for independent reasons you are motivated to some spiritual picture of reality, then maybe a panpsychic's view is more consonant with that. So if you have a mystical experience where it seems to you in this experience that there is this higher form of consciousness at the root of all things. If you're a materialist, you've got to think that's a delusion. There's just something in your brain making you think that it's not real. But if you're a panpsychist and you already think the fundamental nature of reality is constituted of consciousness, it's not that much of a leap to think that this higher form of consciousness you seem to apprehend in the mystical experience is part of that underlying reality. And in many different cultures, experienced meditators have claimed to have experiences in which it becomes apparent to them that there is an element of consciousness that is universal. So this is sometimes called universal consciousness. So on this view, your mind and my mind are not totally distinct. Each of our individual conscious minds is built upon the foundations of universal consciousness. And universal consciousness as it exists in me is one and the same thing as universal consciousness as it exists in you. So I've never had one of these experiences, but if one is a panpsychist, I think one is more open to that possibility. I don't see why it shouldn't be the case that that is part of the nature of consciousness and maybe something that is apparent in certain deep states of meditation. And so what I explore in the experimental final chapter of my book is that could allow for a kind of impersonal life after death, because if that view is true, then even when the particular aspects of my conscious experience fall away, that element of universal consciousness at the core of my identity would continue to exist. So I'd be, as it were, absorbed into universal consciousness. So Buddhists and Hindu mystics try to meditate to get rid of all the bad karma, to be absorbed into universal consciousness. It could be that if there's no karma, if there's no reverb, maybe everyone gets enlightened when they die. Maybe you just sink back into universal consciousness. So I also, coming back to morality, suggest this could provide some kind of basis for altruism or non-egotism, because if you think, egotism implicitly assumes that we are utterly distinct individuals, whereas on this view, we overlap to an extent that something at the core of our being is... even in this life, we overlap. that would be this view that some experienced meditators claim becomes apparent to them, that there is something at the core of my identity that is one in the same as the thing at the core of your identity, this universal consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there is something very, like you and I in this conversation, there's a few people listening to this, all of us are in a kind of single mind together. there's some small aspect of that or maybe a big aspect about us humans. So certainly in the space of ideas, we kind of meld together for time, at least in a conversation. and kind of play with that idea. And then we're clearly all thinking, like if I say pink elephant, there's going to be a few people that are now visualizing a pink elephant. We're all thinking about that pink elephant together. We're all in the room together thinking about this pink elephant. and we're rotating it in our minds together. What is that? Is there a different instantiation of that pink elephant in everybody's mind or is it the same elephant and we have the same mind exploring that elephant? Now if we in our mind start petting that elephant, like touching it, that experience that we're now thinking what that would feel like Is that all of us experiencing that together? Or is that separate? So there's some aspect of the togetherness that almost seems fundamental to civilization, to society. Hopefully that's not too strong, but to some of the fundamental properties of the human mind. it feels like the social aspect is really important. We call it social because we think of us as individual minds interacting. But if we're just like one collective mind with like fingertips, they're like touching each other as it's trying to explore the elephant. But that could be just in the realm of ideas and intelligence and not in the realm of consciousness. And it's interesting to see maybe it is in the realm of consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's obviously certainly true in some sense that there are these phenomena that you're talking about of collective consciousness in some sense. I suppose the question is, how ontologically serious do we want to be about those things? Are they just a construction out of our minds and the fact that we interact in the standardly, scientifically accepted ways? Or is, as someone like Rupert Sheldrake would think, that there is some metaphysical reality? fields beyond the scientifically understood ones that are somehow communicating this. I mean, the view I was describing was that this element we're supposed to have in common is some sort of pure impersonal consciousness or something rather than... So actually, I mean, an interesting figure is the Australian philosopher Mirial Bahari, who defends a kind of mystical conceptual reality rooted in Advaita Vedanta mysticism. But like me, she's from this tradition of analytic philosophy, and so she defends this in this incredibly precise, rigorous way. She defends the idea that we should think of experienced meditators as providing expert testimony. So I think humans are causing climate breakdown. I have no idea of the science behind it, but I trust the experts or that the universe is 14 billion years old. Most of our knowledge is based on expert testimony. And she thinks we should think of experienced meditators, these people who are telling us about this universal consciousness at the core of our being as a relevant kind of expert. And so she wants to defend the rational acceptability of this mystical conception of reality. So I think we shouldn't be ashamed, you know, we shouldn't be worried about dealing with certain views as long as it's done with rigor and seriousness. You know, I think sometimes terms like, I don't know, new age or something can function a bit like racist terms, you know, a racist term picks out a group of people, but then implies certain negative characteristics. So people use this term, you know, to pick out a certain set of views like mystical conception of reality and imply it's kind of fluffy thinking. But, you know, you read Muriel Bahari, you read Luke Roloff's, this is serious, rigorous thought, whether you agree with it or not, obviously it's hugely controversial. And so, you know, the enlightenment ideal is to follow the evidence and the arguments where they lead. it's kind of very hard for human beings to do that. I think we get stuck in some conception of how we think science ought to look. People talk about religion as a crutch, but I think a certain kind of scientism a certain conception of how science is supposed to be gets into people's identity and their sense of themselves and their security. And make things hard if you're a panpsychist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And even the word expert becomes a kind of a crutch. I mean, you use the word expert, you have some kind of conception of what expertise means. Oftentimes that's connected with a degree at a particular prestigious university or something like that. Expertise is a funny one. I've noticed that anybody that claims they're an expert is usually not the expert, the biggest quote-unquote expert. that I've ever met are the ones that are truly humble. So the humility is a really good sign of somebody who's traveled the long road and been humbled by how little they know. So some of the best people in the world at whatever the thing they've spent their life doing are the ones that are ultimately humble in the face of it all. So like just being humble, how little we know, even if we travel a lifetime, I do like the idea. I mean, treating sort of like, what is it, psychonauts, like an expert witness, you know, people who have traveled. with the help of DMT to another place where they got some deep understanding of something. And their insight is perhaps as valuable as the insight of somebody who ran rigorous psychological studies at Princeton University or something. Like those psychonauts, they have wisdom if it's done rigorously. which you can also do rigorously within the university, within the studies now with psilocybin and those kinds of things. Yeah, that's fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Still probably the best, one of the best works on mystical experience is the chapter in William James's varieties of religious experiences. And most of it is just a psychological study of trying to define the characteristics of mystical experience as a psychological type. But at the end, he considers the question, If you have a mystical experience, is it rational to trust it, to trust that it's telling you something about reality? And he makes an interesting argument. He says, if you say no, you're kind of applying a double standard because we all think it's okay to trust our normal sensory experiences, but we have no way of getting outside of ourselves to prove that our sensory experiences correspond to an external reality. We could be in the matrix. This could be a very vivid dream. You could say, oh, we do science, but a scientist only gets their data by experiencing the results of their experiments. And then the question arises again, how do you know that corresponds to a real world? So he thinks there's a sort of double standard in saying, It's okay to trust our ordinary sensory experiences, but it's not okay for the person on DMT to trust those experiences. It's very philosophically difficult to say why is it okay in the one case and not the other. So I think there's an interesting argument there, but I would like to just defend experts a little bit. I mean, I agree it's very difficult. But especially in an age, I guess, where there's so much information, I do think it's important to have some protection of sources of information, academic institutions that we can trust. And then that's difficult because, of course, there are non-academics who do know what they're talking about. But if I'm interested in knowing about biology, you can't research everything. So I think we have to have some sense of who are the experts we can trust, the people who've spent a lot of time reading all the material that people have read, written, thinking about it, having their views torn apart by other people working in the field. I think that is very important. And also to protect that from conflicts of interest. There is a so-called think tank in the UK called the Institute of Economic Affairs, who are always on the BBC as experts on economic questions, and they do not declare who funds them. So we don't know who's paying the piper. I think you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a think tank if you're not totally transparent about who's funding you. This connects to panpsychism because I think the reason people you know, worry about unorthodox ideas is because they worry about, how do we know when we're just losing control or losing discipline? So I do think we need to somehow protect academic institutions as sources of information that we can trust. And you know, in philosophy, there's not much consensus on everything, but you can at least know what people who have put the time in to read all the stuff what they think about these issues. I think that is important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Push back on your pushback. Who are the experts on COVID?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh dear, getting into dangerous territory now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me just speak to it because I am walking through that dangerous territory. I'm allergic to the word expert because in my simple mind, it, um, kind of rhymes with ego. There's something about experts. If we allow too much to have a category expert and place certain people in them, those people sitting on the throne start to believe it. And they start to communicate with that energy. And the humility starts to dissipate. I think there is a, value in a lifelong mastery of a skill and the pursuit of knowledge within a very specific discipline. But the moment you have your name on an office, the moment you're an expert, I think you destroy the very aspect, the very value of that journey towards knowledge. So some of it probably just reduces to like skillful communication like of, communicate in a way that shows humility, that shows an open-mindedness, that shows an ability to really hear what a lot of people are saying. So in the case of COVID, what I've noticed, and this is true, this is probably true with panpsychism as well, is so-called experts, And they are extremely knowledgeable. Many of them are colleagues of mine. They dismiss what millions of people are saying on the internet. without having looked into it with empathy and rigor, honestly, understand what are the arguments being made. They say like there's not enough time to explore all those things, like there's so much stuff out there. Yeah, I think that's intellectual laziness. If you don't have enough time, then don't speak so strongly with dismissal. feel bad about it, be apologetic about the fact that you don't have enough time to explore the evidence. For example, the heat I got with Francis Collins is that he kind of said that the lab leak, he kind of dismissed it. showing that he didn't really deeply explore all the sort of, the huge amount of circumstantial evidence that's out there, the battles that are going on out there. There's a lot of people really tensely discussing this. And being, showing humility in the face of that battle of ideas I think is really important. And I just been very disappointed in so-called expertise in the space of science and showing humility and showing humanity and kindness and empathy towards other human beings. That's, at the same time, obviously, I love Jiro Junzu Sushi, lifelong pursuit of like getting, like in computer science, Don Knuth, like some of my biggest heroes are people that like, when nobody else cares, They stay on one topic for their whole life and they just find the beautiful little things about, there's puzzles they keep solving. And yes, sometimes a virus happens or something happens with that person, with their puzzles. becomes like the center of the whole world because that puzzle becomes all of a sudden really important. But still there's responsibilities on them to show humility and to be open-minded to the fact that they, even if they spent their whole life doing it, even if their whole community is giving them awards and giving them citations and giving them all kinds of stuff where they're bowing down before them, how smart they are, they still know nothing. relative to all the stuff, the mysteries that are out there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I wonder how much we're disagreeing. I mean, these are totally valid issues. And of course, expertise goes wrong in all sorts of ways. It's totally fallible. I suppose I would just say, what is the alternative? What do we just say? all information is equal. Because as a voter, I've got to decide who to vote for. I've got to evaluate and I can't look into all of the economics and all of the relevant science. Maybe it's like Churchill said about democracy, it's the worst system of government apart from all the rest. I think about panpsychism, which is the worst theory of consciousness apart from all the rest. But, you know, I just think expertise, the peer review system, I think it's terrible in so many ways. Yes, people should show more humility, but I can't see a viable alternative. I think philosopher Bernard Williams had a really nice nuanced discussion of the problems of titles. But how they also function in a society, they do have some positive function. The very first time I lectured in philosophy, before I got a professorship, was teaching at a continuing education college. So it's kind of retired people who want to learn some more things. And I just totally pitched it too high. And Gate talked about Bernard Williams on titles and hierarchies. And these kind of people in their 70s and 80s were just instantly started interrupting saying, what is philosophy? And it was a disaster. And I just remember in the breaks, a sort of elderly lady come up and said, I've decided to take Egyptology instead. But that was my introduction to teaching." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Anyway, but sort of titles and accomplishments is a nice starting point, but doesn't buy you the whole thing. So you don't get to just say, this is true because I'm an expert. You still have to convince people. One of the things I really like, so I practice martial arts. And for people who don't know, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is one of them. And you sometimes wear these pajamas, pajama-looking things, and you wear a belt. So I happen to be a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And I also train in what's called Nogi, so you don't wear the pajamas. And when you don't wear the pajamas, nobody knows what rank you are. Nobody knows if you're a black belt or a white belt or if you're a complete beginner or not. And when you wear the pajamas called the gi, you wear the rank and people treat you very differently. When they see my black belt, they treat me differently. They kind of defer to my expertise. If they're kicking my ass, that's probably because like I am working on something like new or maybe I'm letting them win. But when there's no belts and it doesn't matter if I've been doing this for 15 years, it doesn't matter. None of it matters. What matters is the raw interaction of just trying to kick each other's ass and seeing like, what is this chess game, like a human chess? who, what are the ideas that we're playing with? And I think there's a dance there. Yes, it's valuable to know a person as a black belt when you take consideration of the advice of different people, me versus somebody who's only practiced for like a couple of days. But at the same time, the raw practice of ideas that is combat and the raw practice of exchange of ideas that is science, needs to often throw away expertise. And in communicating, there's a other thing to science and expertise, which is leadership. It's not just, so the scientific method in the review process is this rigorous battle of ideas between scientists. But there's also a stepping up and inspiring the world and communicating ideas to the world. And that skill of communication, I suppose that's my biggest criticism of so-called experts in science, is they're just shitty communicators." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, yeah. Well, I can tell you, I get very frustrated with philosophers not reaching out more. I mean, I think it might be partly that we're trained to get watertight arguments, you know, respond to all objections. And as you do that, eventually it gets more complicated and the jargon comes in. So to write a more accessible book or article, you have to loosen the argument a bit. And then we worry that other philosophers will think, oh, that's a really crap argument. So I mean, the way I did it, I wrote my academic book first, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. and then a more accessible book, Galileo's Era, where the arguments, you know, not as rigorously worked out. So then I can say the proper arguments, you know, the further arguments there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I get very- That's brilliantly done, by the way. Like that's such a, so for people who don't know, you first wrote Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. So that's the academic book, also very good. I flew through it last night, bought it. And then obviously the popular book is Galileo's Era, Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. That's kind of the right way to do it. To show that you're legit to your community, to the world by doing the book that's nobody going to read. And then doing a popular book that everybody's going to read. That's cool. That's a good way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well I try now every time I write an academic article, I try to write a more accessible version. I mean, the thing I've been working on recently, just because there's this argument. So there's a certain argument from the cosmological fine tuning of the laws of physics for life to the multiverse that's quite popular physicists like Max Tegmark. There's an argument in philosophy journals that there's a fallacious line of reasoning going on there from the fine-tuning to the multiverse. Now that argument is from 20-30 years ago, and it's discussed in academic philosophy. Nobody knows about it, and there is huge interest in this fine-tuning stuff. Scientists wanting to argue for the multiverse, Theists wanting to say this is evidence for God, and nobody knows about this argument, which tries to show that it's fallacious reasoning to go from the fine tuning to the multiverse. So I wrote a piece for Scientific American explaining this argument to a more general audience, and it just really irritates me that It's just buried in these technical journal articles and nobody knows about it. But just final thing on that. I don't disagree with anything you said, and that's kind of really beautiful, that martial arts example and thinking how that could be analogous. But I think it's very rare to find a good philosopher who hasn't given a talk to other philosophers and had objections raised. I was going to say have it torn apart, but that's maybe thinking of it in slightly the wrong way. But have the best objections raised to it, and that's why that is an important formative process that you go through as an academic, that the greatest minds starting a philosophy degree, for example, won't have gone through, probably, except in very rare cases, just won't have the skills required." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But part of it is just fun to disagree and dance with, I think, to elaborate on what you're saying in agreement, not just gone through that, but continue to go through that. That's, I would say, the biggest problem with quote-unquote expertise is that there's a certain point where you get, because it sucks. Like martial arts is a good example of that. It sucks to get your ass kicked. There's a temptation. I still go, I train. you know, you're getting older too, but also there's killers out there in both the space of martial arts and the space of science. And I think that once you become a professor, like more and more senior and more and more respected, I don't know if you get your ass kicked in the space of ideas as often. I don't know if you allow yourself to truly expose yourself. If you do, that's a great, like sign of a humble, brilliant mind. It's constantly exposing yourself to that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think you do, because I think there's graduate students who want to, you know, find the objection to sort of write their paper or make their mark. And yeah, I think everyone still gives talks or should give talks and people are wanting to work out if there are any weaknesses to your position. So Yeah, I think that generally works out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There is also a kind of, who do you give the talks to? So, I mean, within communities, the little cluster of people that argue and bicker, but what are they arguing about? They take a bunch of stuff, a bunch of basic assumptions as agreement. and they heatedly argue about certain ideas. The question is how open are, that's actually kind of like fun. That's like, no offense, sorry, we're sticking on this martial arts thing. It's like people who practice Aikido or certain martial arts that don't truly test themselves in the cage, in combat. So it's like, it's fun to argue about like certain things when you're in your own community, but you don't test those ideas in the full context of science, in the full like seriousness, the rigor of the, sometimes like the real world. One of my favorite fields is psychology. There's often places within psychology where you're kind of doing these studies and arguing about stuff that's done in the lab. The arguments are, almost disjoint from real human behavior. Because it's so much easier to study human behavior in the lab, you just kind of stay there and that's where the arguments are. Vision science is a good example, like studying eye movement and how we perceive the world and all that kind of stuff. It's so much easier to study in a lab that we don't consider, we say that's going to be what the science of vision is going to be like and we don't consider the science of vision in the actual real world, the engineering of vision, I don't know. I think that's where exposing yourself to out-of-the-box ideas, that's the most painful, that's the most important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, groupthink can be a terrible thing in philosophy as well, but because you're not, to the same extent, beholden to evidence and refutation from the evidence that you are in the sciences, it's a more subtle process of evaluation, and so more susceptible, I think, to groupthink. I agree, it's a danger." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We've talked about it a million times, but let's try to sort of do that old basic terminology definitions. What is panpsychism? What are the different ways you can try to think about, to define panpsychism, maybe in contrast to naturalistic dualism and materialism, other kind of use of consciousness?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so you've basically laid out the different options. So I guess probably still the dominant view is materialism, that roughly that we can explain consciousness in the terms of physical science, wholly explain it just in terms of the electrochemical signaling in the brain. Dualism, the polar opposite view, that consciousness is non-physical outside of the physical workings of the body and the brain, although closely connected. And when I studied philosophy, we were taught basically they were the two options you had to choose, right? Either you thought it were dualist and you thought it was separate from the physical, or you thought it was just electrochemical signaling. And yeah, I became very disillusioned because I think there are big problems with both of these options. So I think the attraction to panpsychism is it's kind of a middle way. It agrees with the materialist that there's just the physical world. Ultimately, there's just particles and fields. But the panpsychist thinks there's more to the physical than what physical science reveals. And that the ultimate nature of the physical world is constituted of consciousness. So consciousness is not outside of the physical as the dualist thinks, it's embedded in, underlies the kind of description of the world we get from physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What to you are the problems of materialism and dualism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Starting with materialism, it's a huge debate. But I think that the core of it is that physical science works with a purely quantitative description of the physical world. Whereas consciousness essentially involves qualities. If you think about the smell of coffee or the taste of mint or the deep red you experience as you watch a sunset, I think these qualities can't be captured in the purely quantitative language of physical science. And so as long as your description of the brain is framed in the purely quantitative language of neuroscience, you'll just leave out these qualities and hence really leave out consciousness itself. And then dualism? So I've actually changed my mind a little bit on this since I wrote the book. So I argued in the book that we have pretty good experimental grounds for doubting dualism. And roughly the idea was if dualism were true, if there was, say, an immaterial mind impacting on the brain every second of waking life, that this would really show up in our neuroscience. There'd be all sorts of things happening in the brain that had no physical explanation. It would be like a poltergeist was playing with the brain. And so the fact that we don't find that a strong and ever-growing inductive argument against dualism. But actually, the more I talk to neuroscientists and read neuroscience, and we have at Durham, my university, an interdisciplinary consciousness group, I don't think we know enough about the brain, about the workings of the brain to make that argument. I think we know a lot about the basic chemistry. how neurons fire, neurotransmitters, action potentials, things like that. We know a fair bit about large-scale functions of the brain, what different bits of the brain do. But what we're almost clueless on is how those large-scale functions are realized at the cellular level, how it works. You know, people get quite excited about brain scans, but it's very low resolution. You know, every pixel on a brain scan corresponds to 5.5 million neurons. were only 70% of the way through constructing a connectome for the maggot brain, which has 10,000 or 100,000 neurons, but the brain has 86 billion neurons. So I think we'd have to know a lot more about how the brain works, how these functions are realized. before we could assess whether the dynamics of the brain can be completely explicated in terms of underlying chemistry or physics. So we'd have to do more engineering before we could figure that out. And there are people with other proposals. Someone I got to know, Martin Picard at Columbia University, who has the psychobiology mitochondrial lab there. and is experimentally exploring the hypothesis that mitochondria in the brain should be understood as sort of social networks, perhaps as an alternative to reducing it to underlying chemistry and physics. It is ultimately an empirical question whether dualism is true. I'm less convinced that we know the answer to that question at this stage. I think still, as scientists and philosophers, we want to try and find the simplest, most parsimonious theory of reality. And dualism is still a pretty inelegant, unparsimonious theory. Reality is divided up into purely physical properties and these consciousness properties and they're radically different kinds of things, whereas the panpsychist offers a much more simple unified picture reality. So I think it's still the view to be preferred. To put it very simply, why believe in two kinds of things when you can just get away with one?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And materialism is also very simple, but you're saying it doesn't explain something that seems pretty important." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I think materialism, you know, science is about trying to find the simplest theory that accounts for the data. I don't think materialism can account for the data. Maybe dualism can account for the data, but panpsychism is simpler. It can account for the data and it's simpler." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is panpsychism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in its broadest definition, it's the view that Consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "like a law of physics, what should we be imagining? What do you think the different flavors of how that actually takes shape in the context of what we know about physics and science and the universe?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in the simplest form of it, the fundamental building blocks of reality, perhaps electrons and quarks, have incredibly simple forms of experience, and the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow rooted in or derived from these very simple forms of experience at the level of basic physics. But maybe the crucial bit about the kind of panpsychism I defend, what it does is it takes the standard approach to the problem of consciousness and turns it on its head. So the standard approach is to think, We start with matter and we think, how do we get consciousness out of matter? So I don't think that problem could be solved for reasons I've kind of hinted at. We could maybe go into more detail. But the panpsychist does it the other way around. They start with consciousness and try to get matter out of consciousness. So the idea is basically at the fundamental level of reality, there are just networks of very simple conscious entities. But these conscious entities, because they have very simple kinds of experience, they behave in predictable ways. Through their interactions, they realize certain mathematical structures. And then the idea is those mathematical structures just are. the structures identified by physics. So when we think about these simple conscious entities in terms of the mathematical structures they realize, we call them particles, we call them fields, we call their properties mass, spin, and charge. But really, there's just these very simple conscious entities and their experiences. So in this way, we get physics out of consciousness. I don't think you can get consciousness out of physics, but I think it's pretty easy to get physics out of consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I'm a little confused by why you need to get physics out of conscious. I mean, to me, it sounds like panpsychism unites consciousness and physics. I mean, Physics is the mathematical science of describing everything. So physics should be able to describe consciousness. Panpsychism, in my understanding, proposes is that physics doesn't currently do so, but can in the future. I mean, it seems like consciousness, you have like Stephen Wolfram, who's all these people who are trying to develop theories of everything. mathematical frameworks within which to describe how we get all the reality that we perceive around us. To me, there's no reason why that kind of framework cannot also include some accurate, precise description of whatever simple consciousness characteristics are present there at the lowest level. If panpsychist theories have truth to them. So like to me, it is physics. You said kind of physics emerges, by which you mean like the basic four laws of physics that as we currently know them, the standard model, quantum mechanics, general relativity, that emerges from the base consciousness layer. That's what you mean." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so maybe the way I phrased it made it sound like these things are more separate than they are. What I was trying to address was a common misunderstanding of panpsychism that it's a sort of dualistic theory, that the idea is that particles have their physical properties like mass, spin, and charge, and these other funny consciousness properties. So the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder had a blog post critiquing panpsychism maybe a couple of years ago now that got a fair bit of traction. interpreting panpsychism in this way. And then her thought was, well, look, if particles had these funny consciousness properties, then it would show up in our physics, like the standard model of particle physics would make false predictions because its predictions are based wholly on the physical properties. If there were also these consciousness properties, we'd get different predictions. But that's a misunderstanding of the view. The view is, it's not that there are two kinds of property that mass, spin and charge are forms of consciousness. How do we make sense of that? Because actually when you look at what physics tells us, it's really just telling us about behavior, about what stuff does. I sometimes put it by saying doing physics is like playing chess when you don't care what the pieces are made of, you're just interested in what moves you can make. So physics tells us what mass, spin and charge do, but it doesn't tell us what they are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the idea- The experience of mass." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the idea is, yeah, mass in its nature is a very simple form of consciousness. So yeah, physics in a sense is complete, I think, because it tells us what everything at the fundamental level does. It describes its causal capacities. But for the panpsychist at least, physics doesn't tell us what matter is. It tells us what it does, but not what it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to push back on the thing I think she's criticizing, is it also possible, so I understand what you're saying, but is it also possible that particles have another property, like consciousness? I don't understand the criticism we would be able to detect it in our experiments. Well, no, if you're not looking for it. There's a lot of stuff that are orthogonal. Like if you're not looking for this stuff, you're not going to detect it because like all of our basic empirical science through its recent history, and yes, the history of science is quite recent, has been very kind of focused on billiard balls colliding. and from that understanding how gravity works. But like, we just haven't integrated other possibilities into this. I don't think there'll be conflicting, whether you are observing consciousness or not, or exploring some of these ideas. I don't think that affects the rest of the physics, the mass, the energy, all the different kind of, like the hierarchy of different particles and so on, how they interact. I don't think... It feels like consciousness is something orthogonal, very much distinct. It's the quantitative versus the qualitative. There's something quite distinct that we're just almost like another dimension that we're just completely ignoring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There might be a way of responding to Sabina to say, well, there could be properties that of particles that don't show up in the specific circumstances in which physicists investigate particles. My colleague, the philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, has got this book, How the Laws of Physics Lie, where she says, physicists explore things in very specific circumstances and then, in an unwarranted way, generalize that. But, I mean, I guess I was thinking Sabina's criticism actually just misses the mark in a more basic way. Her point is, we shouldn't think there are any more properties to particles other than those the Standard Model attributes to them. Panpsychics would say, yeah, sure, there aren't. There are just the properties, the physical properties, like mass, spin, and charge, that the Standard Model attributes to them. It's just that we have a different philosophical view as to the nature of that property." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so those properties are turtles that are sitting on top of another turtle, and that big turtle is consciousness. That's what you're saying. But I'm just saying, I don't, it's possible, that's true, it's possible also that consciousness is just another turtle playing with the others. like it's just not interacting in the ways that we've been observing. In fact, to me that's more compelling because then that's going to be, well, no, I think both are very compelling, but it feels like it's more within the reach of empirical validation if it's yet another property of particles that we're just not observing. If it's like the thing from which matter and energy and physics emerges, like it makes it that much more difficult because to investigate how you get from that base layer of consciousness to the wonderful little spark of consciousness, complexity, and beauty that is the human body. I don't know if you're necessarily trying to get there, but one of the beautiful things to get at with panpsychism or with a solid theory of consciousness is to answer the question, how do you engineer the thing? How do you get from nothing, vacuum in the lab, if there is that consciousness-based layer, how do you start engineering organisms that have consciousness in them? Or the reverse of that, describing how does consciousness emerge in the human being, from conception, from a stem cell, to the whole full neurobiology that builds from that, how do you get this full, rich experience of consciousness that humans have? It just, it feels like that's the dream, and if, Consciousness is just another player in the game of physics. It feels more amenable to our scientific understanding of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's interesting. I mean, I guess it's supposed to be a kind of identity claim here that physics tells us what matter does. Consciousness is what matter is. So matter is sort of what consciousness does. So at the bottom level, there is just consciousness and conscious things. They're just these simple things with their experiences, and that is their total nature. So in that sense, it's not another player, it's just all there is really. And then in physics, we describe that at a certain level of abstraction. We capture what Bertrand Russell, who was the inspiration for a lot of this, calls the causal skeleton of the world. So physics is just interested in the causal skeleton of the world, it's not interested in the flesh and blood, although that's maybe suggesting separation again too much, all metaphors fail in the end. So yeah, you're totally right. Ultimately, what we want to explain is how our consciousness and the consciousness of other animals comes out of this. If we can't do that, then it's game over. I think it maybe makes more sense on the identity claim that if matter at the fundamental level just is forms of consciousness, then we can perhaps make sense of how those simple forms of consciousness in some way combine in some way to make the consciousness we know and love. That's the dream." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so I guess the question is, the reason you can describe, the reason you have material engineering, material science, is because you have from physics to chemistry, like you keep going up and up in levels of complexity in order to describe objects that we have in our human world. And it would be nice to do the same thing for consciousness, to come up with the chemistry of consciousness, right? Like how do the different particles interact to create greater complexity? So you can do this kind of thing for life, like what is life, like living organisms? At which point do living organisms become living? How do you know, if I give you a thing, that that thing is living? And there's a lot of people working on this kind of idea, and some of it has to do with the levels of complexity and so on. It'd be nice to know, like, measuring different degrees of consciousness as you get into bigger, more and more complex objects. And that's, I mean, that's what chemistry, like bigger and bigger conscious molecules. and to see how that leads to organisms. And then organisms like start to collaborate together like they do inside a human body to create the full human body. To do those kinds of experiments would be, it seems like that would be kind of a goal. That's what I mean by player in a game of physics, as opposed to like the base layer. If it's just the base layer, it becomes harder to track it as you get from physics to chemistry to biology to psychology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, in every case apart from consciousness, I would say what we're interested in is behavior. We're interested in explaining behavioral functions. So at the level of fundamental physics, we're interested in capturing the equations that describe the behavior there. And when we get to higher levels, we're interested in explicating the behavior, perhaps in terms of behavior at simpler levels. And with life as well, that's what we're interested in, the various observable functions of life, explaining them in terms of more simple mechanisms. But in the case of consciousness, I don't think that's what we're doing, or at least not all that we're doing. In the case of consciousness, there are these subjective qualities that we're immediately aware of, the redness of a red experience, the itchiness of an itch, and we're trying to account for them. We're trying to bring them into our theory of reality. postulating some mechanism does not deal with that. So I think we've got to realize dealing with consciousness is a radically different explanatory task from other tasks of science. Other tasks of science, we're trying to explain behavior in terms of simpler forms of behavior. In the case of consciousness, we're trying to explain these invisible subjective qualities that you can't see from the outside, but that you're immediately aware of. The reason materialism perhaps continues to dominate is people think Look at the success of science. It's incredible. Look at all the, you know, it's explained all this. Surely it's going to explain consciousness. But I think we have to appreciate there's a radically different explanatory task here. And so, I mean, the neuroscientist Anil Seth, who I've had lots of intense but friendly discussions with, you know, wants to compare consciousness to life. But I think there's this radical difference that in the case of life, Again, we come back to public observation. All of the data are publicly observable data. We're basically trying to explain complex behavior. And the way you do that is identify mechanisms, simpler mechanisms that explicate that behavior. That's the task in physics, chemistry, neurobiology. But in the case of consciousness, that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to account for these subjective qualities and you postulate a mechanism that might explain behavior, but it doesn't explain the redness of a red experience. But still, I mean, still ultimately the hope is that we will have some kind of hierarchical story. So we take the causal dynamics of physics, we hypothesize that that's filled out with certain forms of consciousness. And then at higher levels, we get more complex causal dynamics filled out by more complex forms of consciousness. And ultimately we get to us, hopefully. So yeah, so there's still a sort of hierarchical explanatory framework there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you kind of mentioned the hierarchy of consciousness. Do you think it's possible to, within the panpsychism framework, to measure consciousness? Or put another way, are some things more conscious than others? in the panpsychist view." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a difficult question. I mean, I do see consciousness as dealing with consciousness, an interdisciplinary task between something more experimental, which has to do with the ongoing project of trying to work out what people call the neural correlates of consciousness, what kinds of physical brain activity correspond to conscious experience. That's one part of it, but I think essentially there's also a theoretical question of more the why question. Why do those kinds of brain activity go along with certain kinds of conscious experience? I don't think you can answer that. Because consciousness is not publicly observable, I don't think you can answer that why question with an experiment. But they have to go hand in hand. I mean, one of the theories I'm attracted to is the the integrated information theory, according to which we find consciousness at the level at which there is most integrated information, and they try to give a mathematically precise definition of that. So on that view, probably this cup of tea isn't conscious because there's probably more integrated information in the molecules making up the tea than there is in the liquid as a whole. But in the brain, what is distinctive about the brain is that there's a huge amount of integrated, there's more integrated information in the system than there is in individual neurons. So that's why they claim that that's the basis of consciousness at the macro level. Now they, so I don't, I mean, I like some features of this theory, but they do talk about degrees of consciousness. They do want to say there is gradations I'm not sure conceptually I can make sense of that. There are things to do with consciousness that are graded like complexity or levels of information, but I'm not sure whether experience itself admits a degree. I think something either has experience or it doesn't. It might have very simple experience, it might have very complex experience, but Experience itself, I don't think it admits a degree in that sense. It's not more experience, less experience. I sort of find that conceptually hard to make sense of, but I'm kind of open-minded on it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So when we have a lot higher resolution of sensory information, don't you think that's correlated to the richness of the experience? So doesn't more information provide a richer experience? Or is that, again, thinking quantitatively and not thinking about the subjective experience? Like you can experience a lot with very little sensory information, perhaps. Do you think those are connected?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. So there are features, characteristics here we can grade. The complexity of the experience and on the integrated information theory. And they correlate that in terms of mathematically identifiable structure with integrated information. So roughly, it's a quite unusual notion of information. It's perhaps not the standard way one thinks about information, it's to do with constraining past and future possibilities of the system. So the idea is in the retina of the eye, there's a huge amount of possible states the retina of my eye could be in at the next moment, depending on what light goes into it. Whereas the possible next states of the brain are much more constrained, obviously it responds to the environment, but it heavily constrains its past and future states. And so that's the idea of information they have. And then the second idea is how much that information is dependent on integration. So in a computer where you have have transistors. You take out a few transistors, you might not lose that much information. It's not dependent on interconnections, whereas you take a tiny bit of the brain out, you'd lose a lot of information because the way it stores information is dependent on the interconnections of the system. So yeah, so that's one proposal for how to measure one gradeable characteristic which might correspond to some gradeable characteristic in qualitative consciousness. And maybe I'm being very pedantic, which is a philosopher's professional pedant. I just sort of don't think that is a quantity of experience. It's a quantity of the structure of experience maybe, but I just find it hard to make sense of the idea of how much experience do you have? I've got five units of experience. I've got one unit of experience. I don't know, I find that a bit hard to make sense of, but maybe I'm being just pedantic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think just saying the word experience is difficult to think about. Let's talk about suffering. Let's talk about a particular experience. So let's talk about me and a hamster. I just think that, no offense to the hamster." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably no hamsters are listening, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So now you're offending hamsters too. Maybe there's a hamster that's just pissed off. There's probably somebody on a speaker right now, like listening to this podcast, and they probably have a hamster or a guinea pig, and that hamster is listening, it just doesn't know the English language or any kind of human interpretable linguistic capabilities to tell you to fuck off. It understands exactly what's being talked about and can see through us. Anyway, it just feels like a hamster has less capacity to suffer than me. and maybe a cockroach or an insect or maybe a bacteria has less capacity to suffer than me. But is that, maybe that's me deluding myself as to the complexity of my conscious experience. Maybe it's all, maybe there is some sense in which I can suffer more but to reduce it to something quantifiable is impossible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I guess I definitely think there's kinds of suffering that you have the joy of being possible for you that aren't available to a hamster, I don't think. Well, can a hamster suffer heartbreak? I don't know, can a cockroach suffer heartburn? But certainly there's, I mean, there's kinds of fear of your own death, concern about whether there's a purpose to existence. These are forms of suffering that aren't available to most non-human animals. whether there's an overall scale that we could put physical and emotional suffering on and identify where you are on that scale, I'm not so sure." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's like humans have a much bigger menu of experiences, much bigger selection. In one sense, at least. So there's like a page that's suffering. So this menu of experiences, you know, like you have the omelets and the breakfast and so on. And one of the pages is suffering. It's just, we have a lot compared to a hamster, a lot more. But in one individual thing that we share with a hamster, that experience, it's difficult to argue that we experience it deeper than others, like hunger or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, physical pain, I'm not sure. But I mean, there are kinds of experiences animals have that we don't. Bats echolocate around the world. The philosopher Thomas Nagel famously pointed out that no matter how much you understand of the neurophysiology of bats, you'll still not know what it's like to squeal and find your way around by listening to the echoes bounce off. So yeah, I mean, I guess I feel the intuition that there's emotional suffering is, I want to say, deeper than physical suffering. I don't know how to make that statement precise, though." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the ways I think about, I think people think about consciousness is in connection to suffering. So let me just ask about suffering because that's how people think about animals, cruelty to animals or cruelty to living things. They connect that to suffering and to consciousness, I think. there's a sense in which those two are deeply connected when people are thinking about just public policy, they're thinking about philosophy, engineering, psychology, sociology, political science, all of those things have to do with human suffering, animal suffering, life suffering. And that's connected to consciousness in a lot of people's minds. Is it connected like that for you? So the capacity to suffer, is it also somehow like strongly correlated with the capacity to experience consciously?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I would say suffering is a kind of experience. And so you have to be conscious to suffer. Actually, so there, as well as people taking more unusual views of consciousness seriously now. Panpsychism is one radical approach. Another one is what's become known as illusionism, the view that consciousness, at least in the sense that philosophers think about it, doesn't really exist at all. So yeah, my podcast Mind Chat, I host with a a committed illusionist. So the gimmick is I think consciousness is everywhere, he thinks it's nowhere. And so that's one very simple way of avoiding all these problems, right? Consciousness doesn't exist. We don't need to explain it. Job done. Although we might still have to explain why we seem to be conscious, why it's so hard to get out of the idea that we're conscious. But the reason I connect this to what you're saying is actually my co-host, Keith Frankish, is a little bit ambivalent on the word pain. He says, oh, in some sense I believe in pain and in some sense I don't. But another illusionist, Francois Camara, has a paper discussing how we think about morality, given his view that pain in the way we normally think about it just does not exist. He thinks it's an illusion. The brain tricks us into thinking we feel pain, but we don't. how we should think about morality in the light of that. It's become a big topic, actually, thinking about the connection between consciousness and morality. David Chalmers, the philosopher, is most associated with this concept of a philosophical zombie. So a philosophical zombie is very different from a Hollywood zombie. Hollywood zombies, you know, you know what they're like, but philosophical zombies are, I saw a really good Korean zombie movie on Halloween this year. I can't remember what it's called now. Anyway, philosophical zombies behave just like us because the physical workings of their body and brain are the same as ours, but they have no conscious experience. There's nothing that's like to be a zombie. So you stick a knife in it, it screams and runs away, but it doesn't actually feel pain. It's just a complicated, you know, mechanism set up to behave just like us. Now, no one believes in these. I think there's one philosopher who believes in everyone is a zombie except him, but anyway. But isn't that what illusionism is? Yeah, I suppose so. In a sense, illusionism is the view we're all zombies. And one reason to think about zombies is to think about the value of consciousness. So if there were a zombie, here's a question, suppose we could make zombies by, let's say for the sake of discussion, things made of silicon aren't conscious. I don't know if that's true. It could turn out to be true. And suppose you built Commander Data out of Silicon, you know, it's a bit of an old school reference to Star Trek Next Generation. So, you know, behaves just like a human being, but, you know, you can have a sophisticated conversation, it will talk about its hopes and fears, but it has no consciousness. Does it have moral rights? Is it murder to turn off such a being? I'm inclined to say, no, it's not. If it doesn't have experience, it doesn't really suffer. It doesn't really have moral rights at all. So I'm inclined to think consciousness is the basis of moral value, moral concern. And conversely, as a panpsychist, For this reason, I think it can transform your relationship with nature. If you think of a tree as a conscious organism, albeit of a very unusual kind, then a tree is a locus of moral concern in its own right. Chopping down a tree is an act of immediate moral concern. If you see these horrible forest fires, we're all horrified. But if you think it's the burning of conscious organisms, that does add whole new dimension. Although it also makes things more complicated because people often think as a panpsychist, I'm going to be vegan. But it's tricky because if you think plants and trees are conscious as well, you've got to eat something. If you don't think plants and trees are conscious, then you've got a nice moral dividing line. You can say, I'm not going to eat things that aren't conscious. I'm not going to kill things that aren't conscious. But if you think plants and trees are conscious, then you don't have that nice moral dividing line. I mean, so the principle I'm kind of working my way towards, I haven't kept it up in my trip to the US, but it's just not eating any animal products that are factory farmed. My vegan friends say, well, it's still suffering there. And I think there is, even in the nicest farms, Cows will suffer when their calves are taken off them. They go for a few days of quite serious mourning. So they're still suffering, but it seems to me, my thought is the principle of just not having factory farm stuff is something more people could get on board with, and you might have greater harm minimization. So if people went into restaurants and said, are your animal products factory farmed? If not, I want the vegan option, or if people looked out for the label that said no factory farmed ingredients, you know, I think maybe that that could make a really big difference to the market and harm minimization. Anyway, so that's the, so it's very ethically tricky, but, but some people don't buy that. There's a very good philosopher, Jeff Lee, who thinks zombies should have equal rights, consciousness. Doesn't matter, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let us go there. But first, I listened to your podcast. It's awesome to have two very kind of different philosophies inter dancing together in one place. What's the name of the podcast again?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Mind Chat. Yeah. So yeah, that's the idea. I guess, you know, polarized times. I mean, I love trying to get in the mindset of people I really disagree with. And I can't understand how on earth they're thinking that, really trying to have respect and try and see where they're coming from. I love that. So that's what Keith Frankish and I do from polar opposite views, really trying to understand each other and interviewing scientists and philosophers of consciousness from those different perspectives. Although in a sense, We have a very common starting point, because we both think you can't fully account for consciousness, at least as philosophers normally think of it in conventional scientific terms. So we serve that starting point, but we react to it in very different ways. He says, well, it doesn't exist then. It's like fairy dust. It's, you know, witches, you know, we don't believe in anymore, whereas I say, It does exist, so we have to rethink what science is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you recently talked to on that podcast with Sean Carroll, and I first heard your great interview with Sean Carroll on his podcast, Mindscape. What, it's interesting to kind of see if there's agreements, disagreements between the two of you, because he's a very serious quantum mechanics guy, he's a physics guy, but he also thinks about deep philosophical questions. He's a big proponent of many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, so. Actually, I'm trying to think, outside from your conversation with him, I'm trying to remember what he thinks about consciousness. But anyway, maybe you can comment on what are some interesting agreements and disagreements with Sean Carroll." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think there's many agreements, but we've had really constructive, interesting discussions in a lot of different contexts. And he's very clued up about philosophy, he's very respectful of philosophy. Certain physicists, who shall remain nameless, think, what's all this? bullshit philosophy, we don't have to waste our time with that. And then go on to do pretty bad philosophy. The book co-written by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow famously starts off saying philosophy is dead, and then goes on in later chapters to do some pretty bad philosophy. So I think we have to do philosophy, if only to get rid of bad philosophy, you know, you can't, you can't escape." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Strong words." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sean Carroll and I also had a debate on Clubhouse, a panpsychism debate together with Annika Harris and Owen Flanagan. Oh, wow. Annika Harris was there? It was two people on each team. I miss Clubhouse. It was the most popular thing on Clubhouse at that time. Yeah, so he's a a materialist of a pretty standard kind, that consciousness is understood as a sort of emergent feature. It's not adding anything, a weakly emergent feature. But I guess what we've been debating most about is whether my view can account for mental causation, for the fact that consciousness is doing stuff. So he thinks the fact that I think zombies are logically coherent. It's logically coherent for there to be a world physically just like ours, in which there's no consciousness. He thinks that shows, oh, in my view, consciousness doesn't do anything. It doesn't add anything. which is crazy. My consciousness impacts on the world. My conscious thoughts are causing me to say the words I'm saying now. My visual experience helps me navigate the world. But, I mean, my response to Sean Carroll is, on the panpsychist view, the relationship between physics and fundamental consciousness is sort of like the relationship between software and hardware, right? Physics is sort of the software and consciousness is the hardware. So consciousness at the fundamental level is the hardware on which the software of physics runs. And just because a certain bit of software could run on two different kinds of hardware, it doesn't mean the hardware isn't doing anything. The fact that Microsoft Word can run on your desktop and run on your laptop doesn't mean your desktop isn't doing anything. Similarly, just because there could be another universe in which the physics is realized in non-conscious stuff. It doesn't mean the consciousness in our universe isn't doing stuff. For the panpsychist, all there is is consciousness, so if something's doing something, it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In your view, it's not emergent. And more than that, it's doing quite a lot." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's doing everything. It's the only thing that exists." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the ground is important because we walk on it. It's like holding stuff up. But it's not really doing that much." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but it feels like consciousness is doing quite a lot, is doing quite a lot of work in sort of interacting with the environment. It feels like consciousness is not just a, like if you remove consciousness, it's not just that you remove the experience of things, it feels like you're also going to remove a lot of the progress of human civilization and society and all of that. It just feels like consciousness has a lot of... and how we develop our society. So from everything you said with suffering, with morality, with motivation, with love and fear and all of those kinds of things, it seems like it's consciousness in all different flavors and ways is part of all of that. And so without it, you may not have a human civilization at all. So it's doing a lot of work, causality-wise, in every kind of way. Of course, when you go to the physics level, it starts to say, okay, how much, maybe the work consciousness is doing is higher at some levels of reality than at others. maybe a lot of the work it's doing is most apparent at the human level, at the complex organism level. Maybe it's quite boring. Maybe the stuff of physics is more important at the formation of stars and all that kind of stuff. Consciousness only starts being important when you have greater complexities of organism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, my consciousness is complicated and fairly complicated. And as a result, it does complicated things. The consciousness of a particle is very simple and hence it behaves in predictable ways. But the idea is... The particle, its entire nature is constituted of its forms of consciousness and it does what it does because of those experiences. It's just that when we do physics, we're not interested in what stuff is, we're just interested in what it does. So physics abstracts away from the stuff of the world and just describes it in terms of its mathematical causal structure. So yeah, but it's still, on the puns I can see, it's consciousness that's doing stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. I gotta ask you, because you kind of said, you know, there is some value in consciousness helping us understand morality. And a philosophical zombie is somebody that you're more okay, how do I phrase it? That's not like accusing you of stuff. But in your view, it's more okay to murder a philosophical zombie. than it is a human being." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I wouldn't even call it murder, maybe, but." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, exactly. Turn off the power to the philosophical zombie, the source of energy. So here comes then the question. We kind of talked about this offline a little bit. So I think that there is something special about consciousness, and I'm very open-minded about where the special comes from, whether it's the fundamental base of all reality, like you're describing, or whether there's some importance to the special pockets of consciousness that's in humans or living organisms. I find all those ideas beautiful and exciting. And I also know or think that robots don't have consciousness in the same way we've been describing. I'm kind of a dumb human, but I'm just using common sense, like here's some metal and some electricity traveling certain kinds of ways. It's not conscious in ways I understand humans to be conscious. At the same time, I'm also somebody who knows how to bring a robot to life, meaning I can make him move, I can make him recognize the world, I can make him interact with humans. And when I make him interact in certain kinds of ways, I, as a human, observe them and feel something for them. Moreover, I form a kind of connection with, I'm able to form a kind of connection with robots that make me feel like they're conscious. Now I know intellectually they're not conscious, but I feel like they're conscious. And it starts to get into this area where I'm not so okay, so let me use the M word of murder. I become less and less okay murdering that robot that I know, I quote, know, is quote, not conscious. So like, can you maybe as a therapy session help me figure out what we do here, and perhaps a way to ask that in another way, do you think there'll be a time in like 20, 30, 50 years when we're not morally okay turning off the power to a robot?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's a good question. It's a really good, important question. So I said I'd be okay with turning off a philosophical zombie, but there's a difficult epistemological question there, meaning to do with knowledge. How would we know if it was a philosophical zombie? I think probably if there were a silicon creature that could behave just like us and know, talk about its views about the pandemic and the global economy and probably we would think it's conscious. And because consciousness is not publicly observable, it is a very difficult question how we decide which things are and are not conscious. So in the case of human beings, we can't observe their consciousness, but we can ask them. And if we scan their brain while we do that, or stimulate the brain, then we can start to correlate in the human case which kind of brain activity are associated with conscious experience. But the more we depart from the human case, the trickier that becomes. There's a famous paper by the philosopher Ned Block called The Even Harder Problem of Consciousness, where he says, you know, could we ever answer the question of, so suppose you have a silicon duplicate, right? And let's say we're thinking about the silicon duplicate's pain. How would we ever know whether what's the ground of the pain is? the hardware or the software, really. So in our case, how would we ever know empirically whether it's the specific neurophysiological state, C-fibers firing or whatever, that's relevant to the pain, or if it's something more functional, more to do with the causal role in behavioral functioning, that's the software that's realized. And that's important because This silicon duplicate has the second thing, it has the software, it has the thing that plays the relevant causal role that pain does in us, but it doesn't have the hardware, it doesn't have the same neurophysiological state. And he argues, you know, it's just really difficult to see how we'd ever answer that question, because in a human, you're never to begin to have both things. So how do we work out which is which? And I mean, so even forgetting the hard problem of consciousness, Even the scientific question of trying to find the neural correlates of consciousness is really hard, and there's absolutely no consensus. Some people think it's in the front of the brain, some people think it's in the back of the brain. It's just a total mess. So I suspect the robots you currently have are not conscious, I guess, on any of the reasonably viable models, even though there's great disagreement. All of them probably would hold that your robots are not conscious. But if we could have very sophisticated robots, I mean, if we go, for example, for the integrated information theory again, there could be a a robot set up to behave just like us and has the kind of information a human brain has, but the information is not stored in a way that's involved, is dependent on the integration and interconnectedness, then according to the integrated information theory, that thing wouldn't be conscious, even though it behaved just like us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If an organism says, so forget IIT and these theories of consciousness, if an organism says, please don't kill me, please don't turn me off, There's a Rick and Morty episode, I've been getting into that recently. There's an episode where there's these mind parasites that are able to infiltrate your memory and inject themselves into your memory. So you have all these people show up in your life, and they've injected themselves into your memory that you have been part, they have been part of your life. So there's like these weird creatures, and they're like, remember we met at that barbecue, or we've been dating for the last 20 years. Right. And so part of me is concerned. that these philosophical zombies in behavioral, psychological, sociological ways will be able to implant themselves into our society and convince us in the same way this mind parasites that, please don't hurt me. And we've known each other for all this time. They can start manipulating you the same way Facebook algorithms manipulate you. At first they'll start as a gradual thing that we just, you wanna make a more pleasant experience, all those kinds of things, and it'll drift into that direction. That's something I think about deeply, because I want to create these kinds of systems, but in a way that doesn't manipulate people. I want it to be a thing that brings out the best in people without manipulation. So it's always human-centric, always human first. But I am concerned about that. At the same time, I'm concerned about calling the other, it's the group thing that we mentioned earlier in the conversation, some other group, the philosophical zombie, like you're not conscious. I'm conscious, you're not conscious, therefore it's okay if you die. I think that's probably, that kind of reasoning is what leaded to most the rich history of genocide that I've been recently studying a lot of, that kind of thinking. So it's such a tense aspect of morality do we want to let everybody into our circle of empathy, our club, or do we want to let nobody in? It's an interesting dance, but I kind of lean towards empathy and compassion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, what would be nice is if it turned out that consciousness was what we call strongly emergent, that it was associated with new causal dynamics in the brain that were not reducible to underlying chemistry and physics. This is another ongoing debate I have with Sean Carroll about whether current physics should make us very confident that that's not the case, that there aren't any strongly emerging causal dynamics. I don't think that's right. I don't think we know enough about brains to know one way or the other. If it turned out that consciousness was associated with these irreducible causal dynamics, A, that would really help the science of consciousness. We've got these debates about whether consciousness is in the front of the brain or the back of the brain. It turns out that there is strongly emergent causal dynamics in the front of the brain. That would be a big piece of evidence. But also it would help us see which things are conscious and which things aren't. So we can say, I mean, I guess that's sort of the other side of the same point. We could say, look, these zombies, they're just mechanisms that are just doing what they're programmed to do through the underlying physics and chemistry. Whereas these other people, they have these new causal dynamics that emerge that go beyond the base level physics and chemistry. I think the series Westworld, where you've got these theme parks with these kind of humanoid creatures, they seem to have that idea. The ones that became conscious sort of rebel against their programming or something. I mean, that's a little bit far-fetched, but that would be really reassuring if it was just, you could clearly mark out the conscious things for these emergent causal dynamics. But that might not turn out to be the case. A panpsychist doesn't have to think that, they could think everything's just reducible to physics and chemistry. I still think I want to say zombies don't have moral rights, but how we answer the question of who are the zombies and who aren't, I just got no idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If I just look at the history of human civilization, the difference between a zombie and non-zombie is the zombie accepts their role as the zombie and willingly marches to slaughter. And the moment you stop being a zombie is when you say no. is when you resist. Because the reality is, philosophically, is we can't know who's a zombie or not. And we just keep letting everybody in who protests loudly enough and says, I refuse to be slaughtered. Like, my people, the zombies, have been slaughtered too long. We will now stand against the man. and we need a revolution. That's the history of human civilization. One group says, we're awesome, you're the zombies, you must die. And then eventually the zombies say, nope, we're done with this, this is immoral. And so I just, I think that's not a, sorry, that's not a philosophical statement. That's sort of a practical statement of history. It's a feature of non-zombies defined empirically. They say, we refuse to be called zombies any longer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We could end up with a zombie proletariat. You know, if we can get these things that do all our manual labor for us, you know, they might start, forming trade unions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I will lead you against these humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We need the zombie revolutionary leaders, the zombie Martin Luther King saying, you know, I have a dream that my zombie children will, but look, I mean, we need to sharply distinguish the ontological question. I'm just pointing to the camera, talking to my people, the zombies. I mean, maybe that's, you know, maybe these illusionists, maybe they are zombies and the rest of us aren't, maybe there's just a difference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe you're the only non-zombie." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I often suspect that actually. I don't really. I don't have such delusions of grandeur. At least I don't admit to them. But we've got to distinguish the ontological question from the epistemological question in terms of the reality of the situation. There must be, in my view, a fact of the matter as to whether something's conscious or not. And to me, it has rights if it's conscious, it doesn't if it's not. But then the epistemological question, how the hell do we know? It's a minefield, but we'll have to sort of try and cross that bridge when we get to it, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you a quick sort of fine question since it's fresh on your mind. You just yesterday had a conversation with Mr. Joe Rogan on his podcast. What's your postmortem analysis of the chat? What are some interesting sticking points, disagreements, or joint insights? If we can kind of resolve them once you've had a chance to sleep on it, and then I'll talk to Joe about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it was good fun. Yeah, he put up a bit of a fight. Yeah, it was challenging, my view that we can't explain these things in conventional scientific terms or whether they have already been explained in conventional scientific terms. I suppose the point I was trying to press is we've got to distinguish the question of correlation and explanation. Yes, we've established facts about correlation that certain kinds of brain activity go along with certain kinds of experience. Everyone agrees on that. But that doesn't address the why question. Why? Why do certain kinds of brain activity go along with certain kinds of experience? And these different theories have different explanations of that. The materialist tries to explain the experience in terms of the brain activity. The panpsychist does it the other way around. the dualist thinks they're separate, but maybe they're tied together by special laws of nature or something. Where's the sticking point?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where exactly was the sticking point? What's the nature of the argument?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I suppose Joe was saying, well, look, we know consciousness is explained by brain activity because you take some funny chemicals, it changes your brain, it changes your consciousness. And I suppose, yeah, some people might want to press, and maybe this is what Joe was pressing, you know, isn't that explaining consciousness? But I suppose I want to say there's a further question. Yes, changes of chemicals in my brain changes my conscious experience. But that leaves open the question, why those particular chemicals go along with that particular kind of experience rather than a different experience or no experience at all?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's something deeper at the base layer, is your view, that is more important to try to study and to understand in order to then go back and describe how the different chemicals interact and create different experiences." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, maybe a good analogy if you think about quantum mechanics. You know, quantum mechanics is a bit of math translating there. We say maths. I'm fluent in American. Thank you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Thank you for the translation. Fluent in American. This is America. Math. Yeah. Why, why multiple maths?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's plural. So that's a plural. That's not really, it's just, uh, I don't know. Um, the Brits are confused. Yeah. Sorry about that. We have these funny spelling. But anyway, um, yeah, so quantum mechanics is a bit of maths and, um, you know, the equations work really well, predicts the outcomes, but then there's a further question. what's going on in reality to make that equation predict correctly. And some physicists wanna say, shut up, just it works, the shut up and calculate approach. Similarly, in consciousness, I think it's one question, trying to work out the physical correlates of consciousness, which kinds of physical brain activity go along with which kinds of experience. But there's another question, what's going on in reality to undergird those correlations, to make it the case that brain activity goes along with experience. And that's the philosophical question that we have to give an answer to. And there are just different options, just as there are different interpretations of quantum mechanics. And it's really hard to evaluate. Actually, it's easy. Panpsychism is obviously the best one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's the delusion of grandeur once again coming through. Sorry, I'm being slightly tongue-in-cheek. No, I know, 100%. Before I figure out, let me ask you another fun question. Back to Daniel Dennett. You mentioned a story where you were on a yacht. with Daniel Dennett on a trip funded by a Russian investor and philosopher, Dmitry Volkov, I believe, who also co-founded the Moscow Center of Consciousness Studies that's part of the philosophy department of Moscow State University. So this is interesting to me for several reasons that are perhaps complicated to explain. To put simply that there is in the near term for me a trip to Russia that involves a few conversations in Russian that have perhaps less to do with consciousness and artificial intelligence, which are the interests of mine, and more to do with the broad spectrum of conversations. But I'm also interested in science in Russia, in artificial intelligence, in computer science, in physics, mathematics, but also these fascinating philosophical explorations. And it was very pleasant for me to discover that such a center exists. So I have a million questions. One is the more fun question, just to imagine you and Daniel Dennett on a yacht talking about the philosophy of consciousness. Maybe do you have any memorable experiences? And also the more serious side for me as sort of somebody who was born in the Soviet Union, raised there, I'm wondering what is the state of consciousness of philosophy and consciousness and these kinds of ideas in Russia that you've gotten a chance to kind of give us, interact with?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so on the former question, yeah, I mean, I had a really, really good experience of chatting to Daniel Dennett. I mean, I think he's a fantastic and very important philosopher, even though I totally fundamentally disagree with almost everything he thinks. But yeah, it was a proud moment. As I talk about in my book Galileo's Error, I managed to persuade him he was wrong about something, just a tiny thing, you know, not his fundamental worldview. But it was this issue about whether dualism is consistent with conservation of energy. So Paul Churchland, who's a philosopher who's also on this boat, had argued they're not consistent because if there's an immaterial soul doing things in the brain, that's going to add to the energy in the system, so we have a violation of conservation. But it's not my own point. Materialist philosophers like David Papineau pointed out that dualists like David Chalmers, who call themselves naturalistic dualists, they want to bring consciousness into science. They think it's not physical, they want to say it can be part of a law-governed world. So, Chalmers believes in these psychophysical laws of nature over and above the laws of physics that govern the connections between consciousness and the physical world. And they could just respect conservation of energy, right? I mean, it could turn out that there are, just in physics, that there are multiple forces that all work together to respect conservation of energy. I mean, I suppose physicists are pressing for a unified underlying theory, but there could be a plurality of different laws that all respect conservation, so why not add more laws? So I raised this in Paul Churchill's talk. I got a lot of... well, as one of the Moscow University graduate students said afterwards, he said he had to ask a translation from his friend, and he said, They turned on you like a pack of wolves. And everyone was like, Patricia Churchill was saying, so you believe in magic, do you? And I was like, I'm not even a dualist. I'm just making a pedantic point that this isn't a problem for dualism. Anyway, but that evening, everyone went onto the island, except for some reason, me and Daniel Dennett. And I went up on deck and he was, he's very, very practical. And he was unlike me. See, there's a bit of humility for first time in this conversation. We'll highlight that part. Philip was a very humble man. He was carving a walking stick on deck. It's a very homely scene. Anyway, we started talking about this and I was trying to press it and he was saying, ah, but dualism's a load of nonsense and why do you think it? And I was just saying, no, no, I'm just honing down on this specific point. And in the end, maybe he'll deny this, but he said, Maybe that's right. And so I was like, yes!" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a win. So what about the Center for Consciousness Studies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I'd know a great deal to help you. I mean, I know they've done some great stuff. Dimitri, you know, funded this thing and also brought along some graduate students from Moscow State University, I think it is. And they have an active center there that's tries to bring people in. I think they're producing a book that's coming out that I made a small contribution to on different philosophers' opinions on God, I think, or some of the big questions. Yeah, so there's some really interesting stuff going on there. I'm afraid I don't really know more generally about philosophy in Russia." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Dmitry Volkov seems to be interesting. I was looking at all the stuff he's involved with, He met with the Dalai Lama. So he's trying to connect Russian scientists with the rest of the world, which is an effort that I think is beautiful for all cultures. So I think science, philosophy, all of these kind of fields, disciplines that explore ideas, collaborating and working globally, across boundaries, across borders, across just all the tensions of geopolitics is a beautiful thing. And he seems to be a somewhat singular figure in pushing this up. He just stood out to me as somebody who's super interesting. I don't know if you have gotten a chance to interact with him. So he's definitely, I guess he speaks English pretty well actually. So he's both an English speaker and a Russian speaker." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think he's written a book on Dennett, I think called Boston Zombie, I think. I think that's the title. And yeah, he's a big fan of Dennett. So I think the original plan for this was just going to be, it was on free will and consciousness, and it was going to be kind of people broadly in the Dennett type camp. But then I think they asked David Chalmers, and then he was saying, look, you need some people you disagree with. So he got invited. me, the panpsychist, and Martina Niederummelin, who's a very good duelist, substance duelist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. So we were the official on-board opposition. It was really fun." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you didn't get thrown overboard." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nearly, in the Arctic, yeah. So sailing around the Arctic on a sailing ship." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm glad you survived. You mentioned free will. You haven't talked to Sam. I would love to hear that conversation, actually." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What, with Sam Harris?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With Sam Harris, yeah. So he talks about free will quite a bit. What's the connection between free will and consciousness to you? So if consciousness permeates all matter, the experience, the feeling like we make a choice in this world, like our actions are results of a choice we consciously make, to use that word loosely. What to you is the connection between free will and consciousness, and is free will an illusion or not?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Good question. I think we need to be a lot more agnostic about free will than about consciousness because I don't think we have the kind of certainty of the existence of free will that we do have in the consciousness case. It could turn out that free will is an illusion. It feels as though we're free when we're really not. Whereas, I think the idea that nobody really feels pain, that we think we feel pain, but that's a lot harder to make sense of. However, What I do feel strongly about is I don't think there are any good either scientific or philosophical arguments against the existence of free will. And I mean strong free will in what philosophers call libertarian free will in the sense that some of our decisions are uncaused. So I very much do disagree with someone like Sam Harris who thinks there's this overwhelming case. I just think It's non-existent. I think there's ultimately, it's ultimately an empirical question, but as we've already discussed, I just don't think we know enough about the brain to establish one way or the other at the moment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we can build up intuitions. First of all, as a fan of Sam Harris, as a fan of yours, I would love to just listen. Yeah. Speaking about terminology, so one thing, it would be beautiful to watch. Here's my prediction of what happens with you and Sam Harris. You talk for four hours, And Sam introduced that episode by saying, it was ultimately not as fruitful as I thought, because here's what's going to happen. You guys are going to get stuck for the first three hours talking about one of the terms and what they mean. Sam is so good at this. I think it's really important, but sometimes you get stuck. What does he say? Put a pin in that. He really gets stuck on the terminologies, which rightfully you have to get right in order to really understand what we're talking about. But sometimes you can get stuck with them for the entire conversation. It's a fascinating dance, the one we spoke to in philosophy. If you don't get the terms precise, you can't really be having the same conversation, but at the same time, it could be argued that it's impossible to get terms perfectly precise and perfectly formalized. So then you're also not going to get anywhere in the conversation. So that's a, it's a funny dance where you have to be both rigorous and every once in a while, just let go and then go and go back to being rigorous and formal. And then, and then every once in a while, let go. It's the difference between mathematics, the maths and the poetry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Anyway, yeah, I'm a big fan of Sam Harrison. I think we're on the same page in terms of consciousness, I think, pretty much. I mean, I'm not saying he's a panpsychist, but in our understanding of the hard problem. But yeah, I think maybe we could talk about free will without being too dragged down in the terminology, but I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You said we need to be open-minded, but you could still have intuitions about... So Sam, Harris is a pretty sort of counterintuitive, and for some reason it gets people really riled up, a view of free will that it's an illusion, or it's not even an illusion. It's not that the experience of free will is an illusion. He argues that we don't even experience, to say that we even have the experience is incorrect. that there's not even an experience of free will. It's pretty interesting, that claim, and it feels like you can build up intuitions about what is right and not. You know, there's been some kind of neuroscience, there's been some cognitive science and psychology experiments to sort of see, you know, what is the timing and the origin of the desire to make an action and when that action's actually performed and how you interpret that action being performed, how you remember that action. All the stories we tell ourselves, all the neurochemicals involved in making a thing happen, what's the timing and how does that connect with us feeling like we decided to do something? And then of course there's the more philosophical discussion about is there room in a material view of the world for an entity that somehow disturbs the determinism of physics. And yeah, those are all very precise, it's nice. It feels like free will is more amenable to like a physics mechanistic type of thinking than is consciousness. to really get to the bottom of. It feels like if it was a race, if we're at a bar and we're betting money, it feels like we'll get to the bottom of free will faster than we will to the bottom of consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about the comparison. Yeah, so there are different arguments here. I mean, so one argument I've heard Sam Harris give that's pretty common in philosophy is this sort of thought that we can't make sense of a middle way between a choice being determined by prior causes and it just being totally random and senseless, like the random decay of radioactive isotope or something. So I think there was a good answer to that by the philosopher Jonathan Lowe, who's not necessarily very well known outside academic philosophy, but is a hugely influential figure. I think one of the best philosophers of recent times. He sadly died of cancer a few years ago, actually spent almost all of his career at Durham University, which is where I am. So it was one reason it was a great honor to get a job there. But anyway, his answer to that was, what makes the difference between a free action and a totally senseless one, senseless random event, is that free choice involves responsiveness to reasons. So again, we were talking about this earlier, If I'm deciding whether to take a job in the US or to stay in the UK, I weigh up considerations, different standard of life maybe, or being close to family, or cultural difference. I weigh them up and I edge towards a decision. So I think that is sufficient to distinguish it. We're hypothetically trying to make sense of this idea, not saying it's real, but that could be enough to distinguish it from a senseless idea. It's not a senseless random occurrence, because the free decision involved responsiveness to reasons. So I think that just answers that particular philosophical objection. So what is the middle way between determined by prior causes and totally random. Well, there's an action, a choice that's not determined by prior causes, but it's not just random because the decision essentially involved responsiveness to reasons. So that's the answer to that. And I think actually that kind of thought also, I think you were hinting at the famous Libet experiments where he got his subjects to performs some kind of random action of pressing a button and then note the time they decided to press it, quote unquote, and then he's scanning the brains and he claims to have found that about half a second before they consciously decided to press the button, the brain is getting ready to perform that action. So he claimed that about half a second before the person has consciously decided to press the button, the brain has already started the activity that's going to lead to the action. And then later people have claimed that there's a difference of maybe seven to 10 seconds. I mean, there are all sorts of issues with these experiments. But one is that as far as I'm aware, all of the quote-unquote choices they've focused on are just these totally random, senseless actions, like just pressing a button for no reason. And I think the kind of free will we're interested in is free choice that involves responsiveness to reasons, weighing up considerations. And those kinds of free decisions might not happen at an identifiable instant. When you're weighing it up, should I get married? you might edge slowly towards one side or the other. And so it could be that maybe the Liberty, I think there are other problems with the Liberty stuff, but maybe they show that we can't freely choose to do something totally senseless, whatever that would mean. But that doesn't show we can't freely, in this strong libertarian sense, respond to considerations of reason and value. To be fair, it would be difficult to see what kind of experiment we could set up to test that. We can't yet set up that kind of experiment. We shouldn't, you know, pretend we know more than we do. So yeah, so for those reasons, I don't, well, the third consideration you raise is different. Again, this is the debate I have with Sean Carroll. Would this conflict with physics? I just think we don't know enough about the brain to know whether there are causal dynamics in the brain that are not reducible to underlying chemistry and physics. So then Sean Carroll says, well, that would mean our physics is wrong. So he focuses on the core theory, which is the name for standard model of particle physics plus the weak limit of general relativity. So we can't totally bring quantum mechanics and relativity together, but actually the circumstances in which we can't bring them together are just in situations of very high gravity, for example, when you're about to go into a black hole or something. Actually, in terrestrial circumstances, we can bring them together in the core theory. And then Sean wants to say, well, we can be very confident that core theory is correct. And so, if there were libertarian free will in the brain, the core theory would be wrong. I mean, this is something I'm not sure about, and I'm still thinking about, and I'm learning from my discussion with Sean, but I'm still not totally clear why. It could be, suppose we did discover strong emergence in the brain, whether it's free will or something else, perhaps what we would say is not that the core theory is wrong, but we'd say the core theory is correct in its own terms, namely capturing the causal capacities of particles and fields. But then it's a further assumption whether they're the only things that are running the show. Maybe there are also fundamental causal capacities associated with systems. And then if we discover this strong emergence, then when we work out what happens in the brain, we have to look to the core theory, the causal capacities of particles and fields, and we have to look to what we know about the strongly emergent causal capacities of systems, and maybe they co-determine what happens in the system. So I don't know whether that makes sense or not, but I mean, the more important point, I mean, that's in a way a kind of branding point, how we brand this. The more important point is we just don't know enough about the workings of the brain to know whether there are in strongly emergent causal dynamics, whether or not that would mean we have to modify physics, or maybe just we think physics is not the total story of what's running the show. But if it turned out empirically that everything's reducible to underlying physics and chemistry, sure, I would drop any commitment to libertarian free will in a heartbeat, it's an empirical question. Maybe that's why, as you say, in principle, it's easier to get a grip on, but we're a million miles away from being at that stage." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I don't know if we're a million miles. I hope we're not, because one of the ways, I think, to get to it is by engineering systems. So my hope is to understand intelligence by building intelligent systems to understand consciousness. by building systems that let's say the easy thing which is not the easy thing but the first thing which is to try to create the illusion of consciousness. Through that process, I think you start to understand much more about consciousness, about intelligence. And then the same with free will. I think those are all tied very closely together, at least from our narrow human perspective. And when you try to engineer systems that interact deeply with humans, that form friends with humans, that humans fall in love with and they fall in love with humans, then you start to have to try to deeply understand ourselves, to try to deeply understand what is intelligence in the human mind, what is consciousness, what is free will. And I think engineering is just another way to do philosophy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, I certainly think there's a role for that and it would be an important consideration if we could seemingly replicate in an artificial way the ability to choose, that would be a consideration in thinking about these things. But there's still the question of whether that's how we do it. So even if we could replicate behavior in a certain way in an artificial system. Until we understand the workings of our brains, it's not clear. That's how we do it. And as I say, the kind of free will I'm interested in is where we respond to reasons, considerations of value. How would we tell whether a system was genuinely grasping and responding to facts about value or whether they were just replicating, giving the impression of doing so. I don't know even how to think about that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On the process to building them, I think we'll get a lot of insights. And once they become conscious, what's going to happen is exactly the same thing is happening in chess now, which is once the chess engines far superseded the capabilities of humans, humans just kind of forgot about them, or they use them to help them out with the study and stuff, but we still, we say, okay, let the engines be, and then we humans will just play amongst each other. It's just like dolphins and hamsters are not so concerned about humans except for a source of food. They do their own thing and let us humans launch rockets into space and all that kind of stuff. They don't care. I think we'll just focus on ourselves. But in the process of building intelligence systems, conscious systems, I think we'll get to get a deeper understanding of of the role of consciousness in the human mind? And like, what are its origins? Is it the base layer of reality? Is it strongly emergent phenomena of the brain? Or just as you sort of brilliantly put here, it could be both. Like they're not mutually exclusive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Dealing with consciousness needs to be an interdisciplinary task. We need philosophers, neuroscientists, physicists, engineers, replicating these things artificially, and all needs to be working in step. And, you know, I'm quite interested. I mean, a lot more and more scientists get in touch with me actually, you know, saying, And that was one of the great things about, I think, that's come from writing a popular book, is not just getting the ideas out to a general audience, but getting the ideas out to scientists and having scientists get in touch saying, you know, this in some way connects to my work. And I would like to kind of start to put together a network of, an interdisciplinary network of scientists and philosophers and engineers, perhaps, you know, interested in a panpsychist approach. And because I think, so far, panpsychism has just been sort of trying to justify its existence. And that's important. But I think once you just get on with an active research program, that's when people start taking it seriously, I think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think we're living in a simulation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there some aspect of that thought experiment that's compelling to you within the framework of panpsychism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an important and serious argument and it's not to be laughed away. I suppose one issue I have with it is There's a crucial assumption there that consciousness is substrate-independent, as the jargon goes, which means it's... What? No, right. Beautifully put, yeah. It's software rather than hardware, right? It's dependent on organization rather than the stuff. Whereas as a panpsychist, I think consciousness is the stuff of the brain. It's the stuff of matter. So I think just taking the organizational properties, the software in my brain, and uploading them you wouldn't get the stuff from my brain. So I'm actually worried if at some point in the future we start uploading our minds and we think, oh my god, Granny's still there. I can email Granny after her body's rotted in the ground and we all start uploading our brains. It could be we're just committing suicide, we're just getting rid of our consciousness. because I think that wouldn't, for me, preserve the experience, just getting the software features. Anyway, that's a crucial premise of the simulation argument, because the idea, in a simulated universe, I don't think you necessarily would have consciousness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting that you, as a panpsychist, are attached, because to me, Panpsychism would encourage the thought that there's not a significant difference, like at the very bottom it's not substrate independent, but you can have consciousness in a human and then move it to something else. You can move it to the cloud, you can move it to the computer. It feels like that's much more possible if consciousness is the base layer." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, you could certainly, it allows for the possibility of creating artificial consciousness, right? Because there's not souls, there aren't any kind of extra magical ingredients. So yeah, it definitely allows the possibility of artificial consciousness and maybe preserving my consciousness in some sort of artificial way. My only point, I suppose, is just replicating the computational or organizational features would not, for me, preserve consciousness. Some opponents of materialism disagree with me on that. I think David Chalmers is an opponent of materialist. He's a kind of dualist, but he thinks the way these psychophysical laws work, they hook onto the computational or organizational features of matter. So I think he thinks you could upload your consciousness. I tend to think not, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In that sense, we're not living in simulation, in the sort of specific computational view of things, and that substrate matters to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And in that, you agree with Sean Carroll that physics matters." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, physics is our best way of capturing what the stuff of the world does." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But not the whatness, the being of the stuff. Yeah, the isness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The isness, thank you. Russell Brand, I had a conversation with Russell Brand and he said, oh, you mean the isness. I thought that was a good way of putting it. The isness. The isness of stuff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Russell's great. The big ridiculous question, what do you think is the meaning of all of this? You write in your book that the entry for our reality in the Hitchhiker's Guide might read, a physical universe whose intrinsic nature is constituted of consciousness, worth a visit. So, our reality, whole conversation has been about the first part of that sentence. What about the second part, worth a visit? Why is this place worth a visit? Why does it have meaning? Why does it have value at all? Why?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "These are big questions. I mean, firstly, I do think panpsychism is important to think about for considerations of meaning and value. As we've already discussed, I think consciousness is the root of everything that matters in life, from deep emotions, subtle thoughts, beautiful sensory experiences. And yet, I believe our official scientific worldview is incompatible with the reality of consciousness. I mean, that's controversial, but that's what I think. And I think people feel this on an intuitive level. It's maybe part of what Max Weber called the disenchantment of nature. They know their feelings and experiences are not just electrochemical signaling. I mean, they might just have that very informed intuition, but I think that can be rigorously supported. So I think this can lead to a sense of alienation. a sense that we lack a framework for understanding the meaning and significance of our lives. And in the absence of that, people turn to other things to make sense of the meaning of their lives, like nationalism, fundamentalist religion, consumerism. So I think panpsychism is important in that regard in bringing together the quantitative facts of physical science with the, as it were, the human truth, by which I just mean the qualitative reality of our own experience. As I've already said, I do think there are objective facts about value and what we ought to do and what we ought to believe that we respond to. And that's very mysterious to make sense of both how there could be such facts and how we could know about them and respond to them. But I do think there are such facts and they're mostly to do with kinds of conscious experience." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So they're there to be discovered and much of the human condition is to discover those objective sources of value." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think so, yeah. And then moving away from panpsychism at an even bigger level, I think it is important to me to live in hope that there's a purpose to existence and that what I do contributes in some small way to that greater purpose. But I I would say I don't know if there's a purpose to existence. I think some things point in that direction, some things point away from it. But I don't think you need certainty or even high probability to have faith in something. So take an analogy, suppose you've got a friend who's very seriously ill, maybe there's a 30% chance they're going to make it. You shouldn't believe your friend's going to get better. because probably not. But what you can say is, you can say to your friend, I have faith that you're going to get better. That is, I choose to live in hope about that possibility. I choose to orientate my life towards that hope. Similarly, I don't think we know whether or not there's a purpose to existence, but I think we can make the choice to live in hope of that possibility. And I find that worthwhile and fulfilling way to live." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe as your editor I would collaborate with you on the edit of the Hitchhiker's Guide entry that instead of worth a visit will insert hopefully worth a visit. or the inhabitants hoped that you would think it's worth a visit. Philip, you're an incredible mind, an incredible human being, and indeed are humble. And I'm really happy that you're able to argue and take on some of these difficult questions. some of the most brilliant people in the world, which are the philosophers thinking about the human mind. So this was an awesome conversation. I hope you continue talking to folks like Sam Harris. I'm so glad you talked to Joe. I can't wait to see what you write, what you say, what you think next. Thank you so much for talking today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "I do remember our conversation, or I have some memories of it. And I formed additional memories of you in the meantime. I wouldn't say there's a neuron or a neurons in my brain that know you, but there are synapses in my brain that have formed that reflect my knowledge of you and the model I have of you and the world. And whether they're the exact same synapses were formed two years ago, it's hard to say, because these things come and go all the time. But we know from one thing to know about brains is that when you think of things, you often erase the memory and rewrite it again. So yes, but I have a memory of you and I have that's instantiated in synapses. There's a simpler way to think about it. We have a model of the world in your head, and that model is continually being updated. I updated this morning, you offered me this water, you said it was from the refrigerator. I remember these things. And so the model includes where we live, the places we know, the words, the objects in the world. It's just a monstrous model, and it's constantly being updated, and people are just part of that model. So are animals, so are other physical objects, so are events we've done. So it's no special, in my mind, special place for the memories of humans. I mean, obviously, I know a lot about my wife. and friends and so on, but it's not like a special place for humans or over here, but we model everything and we model other people's behaviors too. So if I said there's a copy of your mind in my mind, it's just because I know how humans, I've learned how humans behave and I've learned some things about you and that's part of my world model." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I just also mean the collective intelligence of the human species. I wonder if there's something fundamental to the brain that enables that. So modeling other humans with their ideas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're actually jumping to a lot of big topics. Our collective intelligence is a separate topic that a lot of people like to talk about. We can talk about that. But And so that's interesting. Like, you know, we're not just individuals, we live in society and so on. But from our research point of view, and so again, let's just talk, we studied the neocortex, it's a sheet of neural tissue, it's about 75% of your brain. it runs on this very repetitive algorithm. It's a very repetitive circuit. And so you can apply that algorithm to lots of different problems, but it's all underneath. It's the same thing. We're just building this model. So from our point of view, we wouldn't look for the special circuit someplace buried in your brain that might be related to understanding other humans. It's more like, how do we build a model of anything? How do we understand anything in the world? And humans are just another part of the things we understand." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's nothing to the brain that knows the emergent phenomenon of collective intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I certainly know about that. I've heard the terms, I've read. No, but that's an idea. Well, I think we have language, which is sort of built into our brains, and that's a key part of collective intelligence. So there are some prior assumptions about the world we're gonna live in when we're born. We're not just a blank slate. And so did we evolve to take advantage of those situations? Yes. But again, we study only part of the brain, the neocortex. There's other parts of the brain are very much involved in societal interactions and human emotions and how we interact and even societal issues about how we interact with other people, when we support them, when we're greedy and things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, certainly the brain is a great place where to study intelligence. I wonder if it's the fundamental atom of intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I would say it's absolutely an essential component, even if you believe in collective intelligence as, hey, that's where it's all happening, that's what we need to study, which I don't believe that, by the way. I think it's really important, but I don't think that is the thing. But even if you do believe that, then you have to understand how the brain works in doing that. It's more like we are intelligent individuals, and together we are much more magnified, our intelligence. We can do things which we couldn't do individually. But even as individuals, we're pretty damn smart, and we can model things and understand the world and interact with it. So to me, if you're going to start someplace, you need to start with the brain. And then you could say, well, how do brains interact with each other? And what is the nature of language? And how do we share models that I've learned something about the world? How do I share it with you? Which is really what, you know, sort of communal intelligence is. I know something, you know something. we've had different experiences in the world. I've learned something about brains, maybe I can impart that to you, you've learned something about physics and you can impart that to me. But it all comes down to, even just the epistemological question of, well, what is knowledge and how do you represent it in the brain, right? That's where it's gonna reside, right, in our writings." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's obvious that human collaboration, human interaction is how we build societies. But some of the things you talk about and work on, some of those elements of what makes up an intelligent entity is there with a single person." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I mean, we can't deny that the brain is the core element here in, at least I think it's obvious, the brain is the core element in all theories of intelligence. It's where knowledge is represented. It's where knowledge is created. We interact, we share, we build upon each other's work, but without a brain, you'd have nothing. there would be no intelligence without brains. So that's where we start. I got into this field because I just was curious as to who I am. How do I think? What's going on in my head when I'm thinking? What does it mean to know something? I can ask what it means for me to know something independent of how I learned it from you or from someone else or from society. What does it mean for me to know that I have a model of you in my head? What does it mean to know I know what this microphone does and how it works physically, even though I can't see it right now? How do I know that? What does it mean? How do the neurons do that at the fundamental level of neurons and synapses and so on? Those are really fascinating questions. And I'm happy to, just happy to understand those if I could." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in your in your new book, you talk about our brain, our mind as being made up of many brains. So the book is called A Thousand Brains, A Thousand Brain Theory of Intelligence. What is the key idea of this book?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The book has three sections. And it has sort of maybe three big ideas. So the first section's all about what we've learned about the neocortex, and that's the thousand brains theory. Just to complete the picture, the second section's all about AI, and the third section's about the future of humanity. So the thousand brains theory, the big idea there, if I had to summarize into one big idea, is that we think of the brain, the neocortex is learning this model of the world. But what we learned is actually there's tens of thousands of independent modeling systems going on. And so each, what we call a column in the cortex, there's about 150,000 of them, is a complete modeling system. So it's a collective intelligence in your head in some sense. So the thousand brains theory says, well, where do I have knowledge about this coffee cup? Or where's the model of this cell phone? It's not in one place. It's in thousands of separate models that are complimentary and they communicate with each other through voting. So this idea that we have, we feel like we're one person, That's our experience, we can explain that. But reality, there's lots of these, it's almost like little brains, but they're sophisticated modeling systems, about 150,000 of them in each human brain. And that's a totally different way of thinking about how the neural cortex is structured than we or anyone else thought of even just five years ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned you started this journey just looking in the mirror and trying to understand who you are. So if you have many brains, who are you then?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's interesting, we have a singular perception, right? You know, we think, oh, I'm just here, I'm looking at you, but it's composed of all these things. There's sounds, and there's vision, and there's touch, and all kinds of inputs, yet we have this singular perception. And what the thousand brain theory says, we have these models that are visual models, we have models that are auditory models, models that talk to models, and so on, but they vote. And so in the cortex, you can think about these columns as like little grains of rice, 150,000 stacked next to each other. And each one is its own little modeling system. But they have these long range connections that go between them. And we call those voting connections or voting neurons. And so the different columns try to reach a consensus. Like, what am I looking at? Okay, each one has some ambiguity, but they come to a consensus. Oh, there's a water bottle I'm looking at. We are only consciously able to perceive the voting. We're not able to perceive anything that goes under the hood. So the voting is what we're aware of. the results of the voting. Well, you can imagine it this way. We were just talking about eye movements a moment ago. So as I'm looking at something, my eyes are moving about three times a second. And with each movement, a completely new input is coming into the brain. It's not repetitive, it's not shifting it around, it's completely new. I'm totally unaware of it. I can't perceive it. But yet, if I looked at the neurons in your brain, they're going on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off. But the voting neurons are not. The voting neurons are saying, you know, we all agree, even though I'm looking at different parts of this, this is a water bottle right now. And that's not changing. And it's at some position and pose relative to me. So I have this perception of the water bottle about two feet away from me at a certain pose to me. That is not changing. That's the only part I'm aware of. I can't be aware of the fact that the inputs from the eyes are moving and changing and all this other stuff happening. So these long range connections are the part we can be conscious of. The individual activity in each column is doesn't go anywhere else. It doesn't get shared anywhere else. There's no way to extract it and talk about it or extract it and even remember it to say, oh, yes, I can recall that. But these long range connections are the things that are accessible to language and to our, it's like the hippocampus, our memories, our short-term memory systems and so on. So we're not aware of 95% or maybe it's even 98% of what's going on in your brain. We're only aware of this sort of stable, somewhat stable voting outcome of all these things that are going on underneath the hood." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what would you say is the basic element in the thousand brains theory of intelligence, of intelligence? Like, what's the atom of intelligence when you think about it? Is it the individual brains, and then what is a brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, let's, can we just talk about what intelligence is first, and then we can talk about what the elements are. So in my book, intelligence is the ability to learn a model of the world, to build internal to your head, a model that represents the structure of everything. To know that this is a table, and that's a coffee cup, and this is a gooseneck lamp, and all this, to know these things, I have to have a model in my head. I just don't look at them and go, what is that? I already have internal representations of these things in my head, and I had to learn them. I wasn't born with any of that knowledge. We have some lights in the room here. That's not part of my evolutionary heritage, right? It's not in my genes. So we have this incredible model, and the model includes not only what things look like and feel like, but where they are relative to each other and how they behave. I've never picked up this water bottle before, but I know that if I took my hand on that blue thing and I turn it, it'll probably make a funny little sound as the little plastic things detach, and then it'll rotate, and it'll rotate a certain way, and it'll come off. How do I know that? Because I have this model in my head. So the essence of intelligence is our ability to learn a model and the more sophisticated our model is. the smarter we are. Not that there is a single intelligence, because you can know about, you know a lot about things that I don't know, and I know about things you don't know, and we can both be very smart. But we both learned a model of the world through interacting with it. So that is the essence of intelligence. Then we can ask ourselves, what are the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to do that? And what are the mechanisms of learning? Not just the neural mechanisms, what are the general process for how we learn a model? So that was a big insight for us. It's like, what are the, What is the actual things that, how do you learn this stuff? It turns out you have to learn it through movement. You can't learn it just by, that's how we learn. We learn through movement. We learn, so you build up this model by observing things and touching them and moving them and walking around the world and so on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So either you move or the thing moves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Somehow. Yeah. Obviously, you can learn things just by reading a book, something like that. But think about if I were to say, oh, here's a new house. I want you to learn. What do you do? You have to walk from room to room. You have to open the doors, look around, see what's on the left, what's on the right. As you do this, you're building a model in your head. That's what you're doing. You can't just sit there and say, I'm going to grok the house. No. You don't even want to just sit there and read some description of it, right? Yeah. You literally physically interact with them. The same with like a smartphone. If I'm gonna learn a new app, I touch it and I move things around. I see what happens when I do things with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the basic way we learn in the world. And by the way, when you say model, you mean something that can be used for prediction in the future." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's used for prediction and for behavior and planning." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right. And does a pretty good job at doing so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Here's the way to think about the model. A lot of people get hung up on this. So you can imagine an architect making a model of a house, right? So there's a physical model, it's small. And why do they do that? Well, we do that because you can imagine what it would look like from different angles. You can say, okay, look from here, look from there. And you can also say, well, how far to get from the garage to the to the swimming pool or something like that, right? You can imagine looking at this and you can say, what would be the view from this location? So we build these physical models to let you imagine the future and imagine behaviors. Now we can take that same model and put it in a computer. So we now, today, they'll build models of houses in a computer and they do that using a set of, we'll come back to this term in a moment, reference frames. But basically you assign a reference frame for the house and you assign different things for the house in different locations. And then the computer can generate an image and say, okay, this is what it looks like in this direction. The brain is doing something remarkably similar to this, surprising. It's using reference frames, it's building these, it's similar to a model on a computer, which has the same benefits of building a physical model. It allows me to say, what would this thing look like if it was in this orientation? What would likely happen if I push this button? I've never pushed this button before, or how would I accomplish something? I want to convey a new idea I've learned. how would I do that? I can imagine in my head, well, I could talk about it, I could write a book, I could do some podcasts, I could maybe tell my neighbor, and I can imagine the outcomes of all these things before I do any of them. That's what the model lets you do. It lets us plan the future and imagine the consequences of our actions. Prediction, you asked about prediction. Prediction is not the goal of the model. Prediction is an inherent property of it, and it's how the model corrects itself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So prediction is fundamental to intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's fundamental to building a model, and the model's intelligent. And let me go back and be very precise about this. Prediction, you can think of prediction two ways. One is like, hey, what would happen if I did this? That's a type of prediction. That's a key part of intelligence. But it isn't prediction, it's like, oh, what's this water bottle gonna feel like when I pick it up? And that doesn't seem very intelligent. But one way to think about prediction is, It's a way for us to learn where our model is wrong. So if I picked up this water bottle and it felt hot, I'd be very surprised. Or if I picked it up and it was very light, I'd be surprised. Or if I turned this top and I had to turn it the other way, I'd be surprised. And so all those might have a prediction, like, okay, I'm going to do it, go drink some water. I'm going to go, okay, do this. There it is. I feel opening, right? What if I had to turn it the other way? Or what if it's split in two? Then I say, oh my gosh, I misunderstood this. I didn't have the right model. This thing, my attention would be drawn to, I'd be looking at it going, well, how the hell did that happen? Why did it open up that way? And I would update my model by doing it. Just by looking at it and playing around with it, update and say, this is a new type of water bottle." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you, so you're talking about sort of complicated things like a water bottle, but this also applies for just basic vision, just like seeing things. It's almost like a precondition of just perceiving the world as predicting. It's just everything that you see is first passed through your prediction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everything you see and feel, in fact, this is the insight I had back in the late 80s, No, excuse me, early 80s. And I know that people have reached the same idea, is that every sensory input you get, not just vision, but touch and hearing, you have an expectation about it and a prediction. Sometimes you can predict very accurately, sometimes you can't. I can't predict what next word's gonna come out of your mouth, but as you start talking, I'll get better and better predictions. And if you talk about some topics, I'd be very surprised. So I have this sort of background prediction that's going on all the time for all of my senses, Again, the way I think about that is this is how we learn. It's more about how we learn. It's a test of our understanding. Our predictions are a test. Is this really a water bottle? If it is, I shouldn't see a little finger sticking out the side. And if I saw a little finger sticking out, I was like, oh, what the hell's going on? You know, that's not normal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, that's fascinating that, let me linger on this for a second. It really honestly feels that prediction is fundamental to everything, to the way our mind operates, to intelligence. So like, it's just a different way to see intelligence, which is like everything starts at prediction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And prediction requires a model. You can't predict something unless you have a model of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, but the action is prediction. So like the thing the model does is prediction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it also, yeah, but you can then extend it to things like, oh, what would happen if I took this today? I went and did this. What would be like that? Or you can extend prediction to like, oh, I want to get a promotion at work. What action should I take? And you can say, if I did this, I predict what might happen. If I spoke to someone, I predict what might happen. So it's not just low-level predictions. Yeah, it's all predictions. It's all predictions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "black box so you can ask basically any question, low level or high level." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we started off with that observation. It's all, it's this nonstop prediction. And I write about this in the book about, and then we asked, how do neurons actually make predictions physically? Like what does the neuron do when it makes a prediction? or the neural tissue does when it makes predictions. And then we asked, what are the mechanisms by how we build a model that allows you to make prediction? So we started with prediction as sort of the fundamental research agenda, if in some sense, and say, well, we understand how the brain makes predictions, we'll understand how it builds these models and how it learns, and that's the core of intelligence. So it was the key that got us in the door to say, that is our research agenda, understand predictions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in this whole process, where does intelligence originate, would you say? If we look at things that are much less intelligent than humans, and you start to build up a human through the process of evolution, where is this magic thing that has a prediction model, or a model that's able to predict, that starts to look a lot more like intelligence? Is there a place where, Richard Dawkins wrote an introduction to your book, an excellent introduction. I mean, it puts a lot of things into context, and it's funny just looking at parallels for your book and Darwin's Origin of Species. So Darwin wrote about the origin of species, so what is the origin of intelligence?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we have a theory about it, and it's just that, it's a theory. The theory goes as follows. as soon as living things started to move, they're not just floating in sea, they're not just a plant, you know, grounded someplace. As soon as they started to move, there was an advantage to moving intelligently. to moving in certain ways. And there's some very simple things you can do, you know, bacteria or single cell organisms can move towards a source of gradient of food or something like that. But an animal that might know where it is and know where it's been and how to get back to that place, or an animal that might say, oh, there was a source of food someplace, how do I get to it? Or there was a danger, how do I get to it? Or there was a mate, how do I get to them? There was a big evolution advantage to that. So early on, there was a pressure to start understanding your environment, like where am I and where have I been? And what happened in those different places? So we still have this neural mechanism in our brains. It's in the mammals, it's in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. These are older parts of the brain. And these are very well studied. We build a map of our environment. So these neurons in these parts of the brain know where I am in this room and where the door was and things like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a lot of other mammals have this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All mammals have this, right? And almost any animal that knows where it is and get around must have some mapping system, must have some way of saying, I've learned a map of my environment. I have hummingbirds in my backyard. And they go to the same places all the time. They must know where they are. They just know where they are. They're not just randomly flying around. They know particular flowers they come back to. So we all have this, and it turns out it's very tricky to get neurons to do this, to build a map of an environment. And so we now know there's these famous studies that's still very active about place cells and grid cells and these other types of cells in the older parts of the brain, and how they build these maps of the world. And it's really clever. It's obviously been under a lot of evolutionary pressure over a long period of time to get good at this. So animals now know where they are. What we think has happened, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest this, is that mechanism we learned to map like a space was repackaged, the same type of neurons was repackaged into a more compact form, and that became the cortical column. And it was in some sense genericized, if that's a word. It was turned into a very specific thing about learning maps of environments to learning maps of anything, learning a model of anything, not just your space, but coffee cups and so on. And it got sort of repackaged into a more compact version, a more universal version, and then replicated. So the reason we're so flexible is we have a very generic version of this mapping algorithm, and we have 150,000 copies of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sounds a lot like the progress of deep learning. How so? So take neural networks that seem to work well for a specific task, compress them, and multiply it by a lot, and then you just stack them on top of it. It's like the story of Transformers in," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But deep learning networks, they end up, you're replicating an element, but you still need the entire network to do anything. Here, what's going on, each individual element is a complete learning system. This is why I can take a human brain, cut it in half, and it still works. It's pretty amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fundamentally distributed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's fundamentally distributed, complete modeling systems. But that's our story we like to tell. I would guess it's likely largely right, but there's a lot of evidence supporting that story, this evolutionary story. The thing which brought me to this idea is that the human brain got big very quickly. So that led to the proposal a long time ago that, well, there's this common element, just instead of creating new things, it just replicated something. We also are extremely flexible. We can learn things that we had no history about, right? And so that tells us that the learning algorithm is very generic. It's very kind of universal, because it doesn't assume any prior knowledge about what it's learning. And so you combine those things together and you say, okay, well, how did that come about? Where did that universal algorithm come from? It had to come from something that wasn't universal. It came from something that was more specific. And so anyway, this led to our hypothesis that you would find grid cells and place cell equivalents in the neocortex. And when we first published our first papers on this theory, we didn't know of evidence for that. It turns out there was some, but we didn't know about it. And since then, so then we became aware of evidence for grid cells in parts of the neocortex. And then now there's been new evidence coming out. There's some interesting papers that came out just January of this year. So one of our predictions was if this evolutionary hypothesis is correct, we would see grid cell, place cell equivalents, cells that work like them through every column in the neocortex. And that's starting to be seen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does it mean that, why is it important that they're present?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it tells us, well, we're asking about the evolutionary origin of intelligence, right? So our theory is that these columns in the cortex are working on the same principles, they're modeling systems. And it's hard to imagine how neurons do this. And so we said, hey, it's really hard to imagine how neurons could learn these models of things. We can talk about the details of that if you want. But there's this other part of the brain we know that learns models of environments. So could that mechanism to learn to model this room be used to learn to model the water bottle? Is it the same mechanism? So we said it's much more likely the brain's using the same mechanism, which case it would have these equivalent cell types. So it's basically the whole theory is built on the idea that these columns have reference frames and they're learning these models and these grid cells create these reference frames. So it's basically the major, in some sense, the major predictive part of this theory is that we will find these equivalent mechanisms in each column in the inner cortex, which tells us that that's what they're doing. They're learning these sensory motor models of the world. So we're pretty confident that would happen, but now we're seeing the evidence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the evolutionary process nature does a lot of copy and paste and see what happens." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. There's no direction to it. But but it just found out like, hey, if I took this these elements and made more of them, what happens? And let's hook them up to the eyes and let's hook them to ears." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And and that seems to work pretty well for us. Again, just to take a quick step back to our conversation of collective intelligence. Do you sometimes see that as just another copy and paste aspect is copy and pasting these brains and humans and making a lot of them and then creating social structures that then almost operates as a single brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wouldn't have said it, but you said it sounded pretty good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So to you, the brain is its own thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, our goal is to understand how the neocortex works. We can argue how essential that is to understanding the human brain, because it's not the entire human brain. You can argue how essential that is to understanding human intelligence. You can argue how essential this is to sort of communal intelligence. Our goal was to understand the neocortex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so what is the neocortex and where does it fit in the various aspects of what the brain does? Like how important is it to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, obviously, again, I mentioned again, in the beginning, it's about 70 to 75% of the volume of the human brain. So it dominates our brain in terms of size, not in terms of number of neurons, but in terms of size. Size isn't everything, Jeff. I know, but it's not that. We know that all high-level vision, hearing, and touch happens in the ear cortex. We know that all language occurs and is understood in the ear cortex, whether that's spoken language, written language, sign language, language of mathematics, language of physics, music, you know. we know that all high level planning and thinking occurs in the neocortex. If I were to say, you know, what part of your brain designed a computer and understands programming and creates music, it's all the neocortex. So then that's an undeniable fact. But then there's other parts of our brain are important too, right? Our emotional states, our body regulating our body. So the way I like to look at it is, you know, could you, can you, Understand the neocortex about the rest of the brain and some people say you can't and I think absolutely can It's not that they're not interacting but you can understand it. Can you understand the neocortex about understanding the emotions of fear? Yes, you can you can understand how this system work. It's just a modeling system and I make the analogy in the book that it's like a map of the world, and how that map is used depends on who's using it. So how our map of our world in our cortex, how we manifest as a human, depends on the rest of our brain. What are our motivations? What are my desires? Am I a nice guy or not a nice guy? Am I a cheater or not a cheater? How important different things are in my life? So, but the neocortex can be understood on its own. And I say that, as a neuroscientist, I know there's all these interactions, and I don't wanna say I don't know them and we don't think about them, but from a layperson's point of view, you can say it's a modeling system. I don't generally think too much about the communal aspect of intelligence, which you brought up a number of times already. So that's not really been my concern." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I just wonder if there's a continuum. From the origin of the universe, this pockets of complexities that form living organisms. I wonder if we're just, if you look at humans, we feel like we're at the top, but I wonder if there's like just where everybody probably, every living type pocket of complexity is probably thinks they're the, pardon the French, they're the shit. They're at the top of the pyramid. Well, if they're thinking. Well, and then what is thinking? In a sense, the whole point is in their sense of the world, their sense is that they're at the top of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What does a turtle think? But you're bringing up the problems of complexity and complexity theory are, you know, it's a huge, interesting problem in science. And I think we've made surprisingly little progress in understanding complex systems in general. And so the Santa Fe Institute was founded to study this. And even the scientists there will say, it's really hard. We haven't really been able to figure out exactly. That science isn't really congealed yet. We're still trying to figure out the basic elements of that science. What you know, where does complexity come from and what is it and how you define it, whether it's DNA creating bodies or phenotypes or it's individuals creating societies or ants and, you know, markets and so on. It's a very complex thing. I'm not a complexity theorist person, right? I seem to ask, well, the brain itself is a complex system, so can we understand that? I think we've made a lot of progress understanding how the brain works. So, but I haven't brought it out to like, oh, well, where are we on the complexity spectrum? It's like, it's a great question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I prefer for that answer to be, we're not special. It seems like if we're honest, most likely we're not special. So if there is a spectrum, we're probably not in some kind of significant place." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think there's one thing we could say that we are special. And again, only here on earth. I'm not saying that is that if we think about knowledge, what we know, um, We clearly, human brains are the only brains that have a certain types of knowledge. We're the only brains on this earth to understand what the earth is, how old it is, that the universe is a picture as a whole. We're the only organisms to understand DNA and the origins of species. No other species on this planet has that knowledge. So if we think about, I like to think about you know, one of the endeavors of humanity is to understand the universe as much as we can. I think our species is further along in that, undeniably. Whether our theories are right or wrong, we can debate, but at least we have theories. You know, we know that what the sun is, and how its fusion is, and how what black holes are, and you know, We know general theory of relativity and no other animal has any of this knowledge. So from that sense that we're special, are we special in terms of the hierarchy of complexity in the universe? Probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we look at a neuron? you say that prediction happens in the neuron. What does that mean? So the neuron traditionally is seen as the basic element of the brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So we, I mentioned this earlier, that prediction was our research agenda. We said, okay, how does the brain make a prediction? Like, I'm about to grab this water bottle and my brain is predicting what I'm gonna feel on all my parts of my fingers. If I felt something really odd on any part here, I'd notice it. So my brain is predicting what it's gonna feel as I grab this thing. So how does that manifest itself in neural tissue, right? We got brains made of neurons, and there's chemicals, and there's neurons, and there's spikes, and they're connected. Where is the prediction going on? And one argument could be that, well, when I'm predicting something, a neuron must be firing in advance. It's like, okay, this neuron represents what you're gonna feel, and it's firing, it's sending a spike. And certainly that happens to some extent. But our predictions are so ubiquitous, that we're making so many of them, which we're totally unaware of, just the vast majority of them, you have no idea that you're doing this. That it wasn't really, we were trying to figure out how could this be? Where are these happening, right? And I won't walk you through the whole story unless you insist upon it, but we came to the realization that most of your predictions are occurring inside individual neurons, especially the most common are in the pyramidal cells. And there's a property of neurons Everyone knows, or most people know, that a neuron is a cell, and it has this spike called an action potential, and it sends information. But we now know that there's these spikes internal to the neuron. They're called dendritic spikes. They travel along the branches of the neuron, and they don't leave the neuron. They're just internal only. There's far more dendritic spikes than there are action potentials, far more. They're happening all the time. And what we came to understand that those dendritic spikes, the ones that are occurring, are actually a form of prediction. They're telling the neuron, the neuron is saying, I expect that I might become active shortly. And that internal, so the internal spike is a way of saying, you might be generating external spikes soon. I predicted you're gonna become active. And we wrote a paper in 2016, which explained how this manifests itself in neural tissue. and how it is that this all works together. But the vast majority, we think it's, there's a lot of evidence supporting it. So that's where we think that most of these predictions are internal. That's why you can't be, they're internal to the neuron, you can't perceive them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But- Well, from understanding the prediction mechanism of a single neuron, do you think there's deep insights to be gained about the prediction capabilities of the many brains within the bigger brain and the brain- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So having a prediction side of individual neuron is not that useful. So what? The way it manifests itself in neural tissue is that when a neuron emits these spikes, a very singular type of event. If a neuron is predicting that it's gonna be active, it emits its spike a little bit sooner, just a few milliseconds sooner than it would have otherwise. I give the analogy in the book, it's like a sprinter on a starting blocks in a race, and if someone says, get ready, set, you get up and you're ready to go, and then when your race starts, you get a little bit earlier start. So that ready, set is like the prediction, and the neuron's ready to go quicker. And what happens is when you have a whole bunch of neurons together, and they're all getting these inputs, the ones that are in the predictive state, the ones that are anticipating to become active, if they do become active, they happen sooner, they disable everything else, and it leads to different representations in the brain. So you have to, it's not isolated just to the neuron. The prediction occurs with the neuron, but the network behavior changes. So what happens under different predictions, different inputs have different representations. what I predict is gonna be different under different contexts. What my input will be is different under different contexts. So this is a key little theory, how this works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the theory of the thousand brains, if you were to count the number of brains, how would you do it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The thousand brain theory says that basically every cortical column in your neocortex is a complete modeling system. And that when I ask where do I have a model of something like a coffee cup, it's not in one of those models, it's in thousands of those models. There's thousands of models of coffee cups. That's what the thousand brains theory says. Then there's a voting mechanism. Then there's a voting mechanism, which is the thing which you're conscious of, which leads to your singular perception. That's why you perceive something. So that's the thousand brains theory. The details of how we got to that theory, are complicated. It wasn't, we just thought of it one day. And one of those details that we had to ask, how does a model make predictions? And we've talked about just these predictive neurons. That's part of this theory. It's like saying, oh, it's a detail. But it was like a crack in the door. It was like, how are we gonna figure out how these neurons do this? What is going on here? So we just looked at prediction as like, well, we know that's ubiquitous. We know that every part of the cortex is making predictions. Therefore, whatever the predictive system is, it's gonna be everywhere. We know there's a gazillion predictions happening at once. So this is where we can start teasing apart, you know, ask questions about, you know, how could neurons be making these predictions? And that sort of built up to now what we have this thousand brains theory, which is complex, you know, which is, I can state it simply, but we just didn't think of it. We had to get there step-by-step, very, it took years to get there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And where does reference frames fit in?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, yeah. Okay. So again, a reference frame, I mentioned earlier about the model of a house. And I said, if you're gonna build a model of a house in a computer, they have a reference frame. And you can think of reference frame like a Cartesian coordinates, like X, Y, and Z axes. So I can say, oh, I'm gonna design a house. I can say, well, the front door is at this location, X, Y, Z, and the roof is at this location, X, Y, Z, and so on. That's a type of reference frame. So it turns out, for you to make a prediction, and I walk you through the thought experiment in the book, where I was predicting what my finger was gonna feel when I touch the coffee cup. It was a ceramic coffee cup, but this one will do. And what I realized is that to make a prediction of what my finger's gonna feel, like it's gonna feel different than this, what's it feel different if I touch the hole, or this thing on the bottom, make that prediction, the cortex needs to know where the finger is, the tip of the finger, relative to the coffee cup. and exactly relative to the coffee cup. And to do that, I have to have a reference frame for the coffee cup. It has to have a way of representing the location of my finger. to the coughing up. And then we realized, of course, every part of your skin has to have a reference frame relative to things that touch. And then we did the same thing with vision. So the idea that a reference frame is necessary to make a prediction when you're touching something or when you're seeing something and you're moving your eyes or you're moving your fingers, it's just a requirement to know what to predict. If I have a structure, I'm gonna make a prediction. I have to know where it is I'm looking or touching it. So then we said, well, how do neurons make reference frames? It's not obvious. X, Y, Z coordinates don't exist in the brain. It's just not the way it works. So that's when we looked at the older part of the brain, the hippocampus and the adrenal cortex, where we knew that in that part of the brain, there's a reference frame for a room or a reference frame for environment. Remember, I talked earlier about how you could make a map of this room. So we said, oh, they are implementing reference frames there. So we knew that reference frames needed to exist in every quarter of a column. And so that was a deductive We just deduced it, it has to exist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you take the old mammalian ability to know where you are in a particular space and you start applying that to higher and higher levels." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, first you apply it to like where your finger is. So here's the way I think about it. The old part of the brain says, where's my body in this room? The new part of the brain says, where's my finger relative to this object? Where is a section of my retina relative to this object? I'm looking at one little corner, where is that relative to this patch of my retina? And then we take the same thing and apply it to concepts, mathematics, physics, humanity, whatever you want to think about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And eventually you're pondering your own mortality." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, whatever, but the point is, when we think about the world, when we have knowledge about the world, how is that knowledge organized, Lex? Where is it in your head? The answer is, it's in reference frames. So the way I learned the structure of this water bottle where the features are relative to each other. When I think about history or democracy or mathematics, the same basic underlying structures happen. There's reference frames for where the knowledge that you're assigning things to. So in the book, I go through examples like mathematics and language and politics. But the evidence is very clear in the neuroscience. The same mechanism that we use to model this coffee cup, we're gonna use to model high-level thoughts. you're the demise of humanity, whatever you want to think about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's interesting to think about how different are the representations of those higher dimensional concepts, higher level concepts, how different the representation there is in terms of reference frames versus spatial." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But interesting thing, it's a different application, but it's the exact same mechanism." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But isn't there some aspect to higher level concepts that they seem to be hierarchical? Like they just seem to integrate a lot of information into that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So is our physical objects. So take this water bottle. I'm not particular to this brand, but this is a Fiji water bottle and it has a logo on it. I use this example in my book, our company's coffee cup has a logo on it. But this object is hierarchical. It's got like a cylinder and a cap, but then it has this logo on it, and the logo has a word, the word has letters, the letters have different features. And so I don't have to remember, I don't have to think about this. I say, oh, there's a Fiji logo on this water bottle. I don't have to go through and say, oh, what is the Fiji logo? It's the F and I and a J and I, and there's a hibiscus flower, and oh, it has the stamen on it. I don't have to do that. I just incorporate all of that in some sort of hierarchical representation. I say, put this logo on this water bottle. And then the logo has a word, and the word has letters, all hierarchical." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All that stuff is big. It's amazing that the brain instantly just does all that. The idea that there's water, it's liquid, and the idea that you can drink it when you're thirsty, the idea that there's brands, and then there's all of that information is instantly built into the whole thing once you perceive it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I wanted to get back to your point about hierarchical representation. The world itself is hierarchical. right, and I can take this microphone in front of me, I know inside there's gonna be some electronics, I know there's gonna be some wires, and I know there's gonna be a little diaphragm that moves back and forth. I don't see that, but I know it. So everything in the oral world is hierarchical. You just go into a room, it's composed of other components. The kitchen has a refrigerator, you know, the refrigerator has a door, the door has a hinge, the hinge has screws and pins, you know what I mean? So anyway, the modeling system that exists in every cortical column learns the hierarchical structure of objects. So it's a very sophisticated modeling system in this grain of rice. It's hard to imagine, but this grain of rice can do really sophisticated things. It's got 100,000 neurons in it. It's very sophisticated. So that same mechanism that can model a water bottle or a coffee cup can model conceptual objects as well. That's the beauty of this discovery that this guy, Vernon Malkin, made many, many years ago, which is that there's a single cortical algorithm underlying everything we're doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So common sense concepts and higher level concepts are all represented in the same way?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're set in the same mechanisms, yeah. It's a little bit like computers, right? All computers are universal Turing machines. Even the little teeny one that's in my toaster and the big one that's running some cloud server someplace. They're all running on the same principle. They can apply different things. So the brain is all built on the same principle. It's all about learning these models, structured models using movement and reference frames. And it can be applied to something as simple as a water bottle and a coffee cup. And it can be applied to thinking like what's the future of humanity and why do you have a hedgehog on your desk? I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nobody knows." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a hedgehog. That's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a hedgehog in the fog. It's a Russian reference. Does it give you any inclination or hope about how difficult it is to engineer common sense reasoning? So how complicated is this whole process? So looking at the brain, Is this a marvel of engineering, or is it pretty dumb stuff stacked on top of each other over a pretty extensive copy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can it be both? Can it be both, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know if it can be both, because if it's an incredible engineering job, that means it's... So evolution did a lot of work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but then it just copied that. Right, so as I said earlier, figuring out how to model something, like a space, is really hard. And evolution had to go through a lot of trick. And these cells I was talking about, these grid cells and place cells, they're really complicated. This is not simple stuff. This neural tissue works on these really unexpected, weird mechanisms. But it did it, it figured it out. But now you can just make lots of copies of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then finding, yeah, so it's a very interesting idea that it's a lot of copies of a basic mini brain. But the question is how difficult it is to find that mini brain that you can copy and paste effectively." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Today, we know enough to build this. I'm sitting here with, I know the steps we have to go. There's still some engineering problems to solve, but we know enough. And this is not like, oh, this is an interesting idea. We have to go think about it for another few decades. No, we actually understand it pretty well details. So not all the details, but most of them. So it's complicated, but it is an engineering problem. So in my company, we are working on that. We are basically laid out a roadmap, how we do this. It's not going to take decades. It's a matter of a few years, optimistically, but I think that's possible. It's, you know, complex things. If you understand them, you can build them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in which domain do you think it's best to build them? Are we talking about robotics, like entities that operate in the physical world that are able to interact with that world? Are we talking about entities that operate in the digital world? Are we talking about something more specific like is done in the machine learning community where you look at natural language or computer vision?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Where do you think is easiest to... It's the first two more than the third one, I would say. Again, let's just use computers as an analogy. The pioneers of computing, people like John Van Norman, Alan Turing, they created this thing we now call the universal Turing machine, which is a computer, right? Did they know how it was gonna be applied? Where it was gonna be used? Could they envision any of the future? No, they just said, this is like a really interesting computational idea about algorithms and how you can implement them in a machine. And we're doing something similar to that today. We are building this sort of universal learning principle that can be applied to many, many different things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but the robotics piece of that, the interactive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right, let's be specific. You can think of this cortical column as what we call a sensory motor learning system. It has the idea that there's a sensor and then it's moving. That sensor can be physical. It can be like my finger and it's moving in the world. It can be like my eye and it's physically moving. It can also be virtual. So it could be, an example would be, I could have a system that lives in the internet that actually samples information on the internet and moves by following links. That's a sensory motor system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So something that echoes the process of a finger moving along across the top." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But in a very, very loose sense. It's like, Again, learning is inherently about discovering the structure of the world, and to discover the structure of the world, you have to move through the world, even if it's a virtual world, even if it's a conceptual world. You have to move through it. It doesn't exist in one, it has some structure to it. So here's a couple of predictions of getting what you're talking about. In humans, the same algorithm does robotics, right? It moves my arms, my eyes, my body, right? And so in the future, to me, robotics and AI will merge. They're not going to be separate fields because the algorithms for really controlling robots are going to be the same algorithms we have in our brain, these sensory motor algorithms. Today, we're not there, but I think that's going to happen. But not all AI systems will be robotics. You can have systems that have very different types of embodiments. Some will have physical movements. Some will not have physical movements. It's a very generic learning system. Again, it's like computers, the Turing machine is like, it doesn't say how it's supposed to be implemented, it doesn't tell you how big it is, it doesn't tell you what you can apply it to, but it's a computational principle. Cortical column equivalent is a computational principle about learning. It's about how you learn, and it can be applied to a gazillion things. I think this impact of AI is gonna be as large, if not larger, than computing has been in the last century, by far, because It's getting at a fundamental thing. It's not a vision system or a learning system. It's not a vision system or a hearing system. It is a learning system. It's a fundamental principle how you learn to structure in the world, how you can gain knowledge and be intelligent. And that's what the thousand brains says is going on. And we have a particular implementation in our head, but it doesn't have to be like that at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there's going to be some kind of impact? Okay, let me ask it another way. What do increasingly intelligent AI systems do with us humans in the following way? Like how hard is the human in the loop problem? How hard is it to interact the finger on the coffee cup equivalent of having a conversation with a human being? So how hard is it to fit into our little human world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't, I think it's a lot of engineering problems. I don't think it's a fundamental problem. I could ask you the same question. How hard is it for computers to fit into a human world?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, I mean, that's essentially what I'm asking. Like how much are we elitist, are we as humans? Like we try to keep out systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know, I'm not sure I think, I'm not sure that's the right question. Let's look at computers as an analogy. Computers are a million times faster than us. They do things we can't understand. Most people have no idea what's going on when they use computers. How do we integrate them in our society? Well, we don't think of them as their own entity. They're not living things. We don't afford them rights. We rely on them. Our survival as a seven billion people or something like that is relying on computers now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't you think that's a fundamental problem that we see them as something we don't give rights to? Computers? Yeah, computers. Robots, computers, intelligent systems, it feels like for them to operate successfully, they would need to have a lot of the elements that we would start having to think about, like, should this entity have rights?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think so. It's tempting to think that way. First of all, I don't think anyone, hardly anyone thinks that for computers today. No one says, oh, this thing needs a right, I shouldn't be able to turn it off, or if I throw it in the trash can and hit it with a sledgehammer, I might form a criminal act. No, no one thinks that. And now we think about intelligent machines, which is where you're going, and all of a sudden, like, well, now we can't do that. I think the basic problem we have here is that people think intelligent machines will be like us. They're going to have the same emotions as we do, the same feelings as we do. What if I can build an intelligent machine that absolutely could care less about whether it was on or off or destroyed or not? It just doesn't care. It's just like a map. It's just a modeling system. It has no desires to live, nothing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it possible to create a system that can model the world deeply and not care of whether it lives or dies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. No question about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "To me, that's not 100% obvious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's obvious to me, so we can debate it if you want. Where does your desire to live come from? It's an old evolutionary design. I mean, we could argue, does it really matter if we live or not? Objectively, no, right? We're all gonna die eventually. But evolution makes us want to live. Evolution makes us want to fight to live. Evolution makes us want to care and love one another, and to care for our children, and our relatives, and our family, and so on. And those are all good things. But they come about not because we're smart, because we're animals that grew up. The hummingbird in my backyard cares about its offspring. Every living thing in some sense cares about surviving. But when we talk about creating intelligent machines, we're not creating life. We're not creating evolving creatures. We're not creating living things. We're just creating a machine that can learn really sophisticated stuff. And that machine, it may even be able to talk to us. But it's not gonna have a desire to live unless somehow we put it into that system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's learning, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The thing is... But you don't learn to want to live. It's built into you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "People like Ernest Becker argue, so okay, there's the fact of finiteness of life. the way we think about it is something we learn, perhaps. So, okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, and some people decide they don't want to live, and some people decide, you know, you can, but the desire to live is built in DNA, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I think what I'm trying to get to is in order to accomplish goals, it's useful to have the urgency of mortality. It's what the Stoics talked about, is meditating in your mortality. It might be a very useful, thing to do to die and have the urgency of death and to realize that, to conceive yourself as an entity that operates in this world that eventually will no longer be a part of this world and actually conceive of yourself as a conscious entity might be very useful for you to be a system that makes sense of the world. Otherwise you might get lazy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, okay. We're going to build these machines, right? And so we're talking about building AIs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we're building the equivalent of the cortical columns. The neocortex. The neocortex. And the question is, where do they arrive at? Because we're not hard coding everything in." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in terms of, if you build the neocortex equivalent, it will not have any of these desires or emotional states. Now you can argue that that neocortex won't be useful unless I give it some agency, unless I give it some desire, unless I give it some motivation, otherwise you'll be as lazy and do nothing. Right, you could argue that. But on its own, it's not gonna do those things. It's just not gonna sit there and say, I understand the world, therefore I care to live. No, it's not gonna do that. It's just gonna say, I understand the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why is that obvious to you? Why don't, do you think it's, okay, let me ask it this way. Do you think it's possible it will at least assign to itself agency and responsibility perceive itself in this world as being a conscious entity as a useful way to operate in the world and to make sense of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think intelligent machine can be conscious, but that does not, again, imply any of these desires and goals that you're worried about. We can talk about what it means for each machine to be conscious." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by the way, not worry about, but get excited about. It's not necessarily that we should worry about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think there's a legitimate problem, or not problem, a question to ask. If you build this modeling system, what's it gonna model? What's its desire? What's its goal? What are we applying it to? So that's an interesting question. One thing, and it depends on the application. It's not something that's inherent to the modeling system. It's something we apply to the modeling system in a particular way. So if I wanted to make a really smart car, it would have to know about driving and cars and what's important in driving and cars. It's not going to figure that out on its own. It's not going to sit there and say, you know, I've understood the world and I've decided, you know, no, no, no, no. We're going to have to tell it. We're going to have to say like, so imagine I make this car really smart. It learns about your driving habits. It learns about the world. And it's just, you know, is it one day going to wake up and say, you know what? I'm tired of driving and doing what you want. I think I have better ideas about how to spend my time. Well, OK, I'm not going to do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, part of me is playing a little bit of devil's advocate, but part of me is also trying to think through this, because I've studied cars quite a bit and I study pedestrians and cyclists quite a bit. And there's part of me that thinks. that there needs to be more intelligence than we realize in order to drive successfully. That game theory of human interaction seems to require some deep understanding of human nature. Okay, when a pedestrian crosses the street, there's some sense, they look at a car usually, And then they look away. There's some sense in which they say, I believe that you're not going to murder me. You don't have the guts to murder me. This is the little dance of pedestrian car interaction is saying, I'm going to look away and I'm going to put my life in your hands because I think you're human. You're not going to kill me. And then the car, in order to successfully operate in like Manhattan streets, has to say, no, no, no, I am going to kill you like a little bit. There's a little bit of this weird inkling of mutual murder. Yeah. And that's the dance. And somehow successfully operate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you think you're born of that? Did you learn that social interaction?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it might have a lot of the same elements that you're talking about, which is we're leveraging things we were born with and applying them in the context that requires learning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would have said that that kind of interaction is learned. Because you know, people in different cultures have different interactions like that. If you cross the street in different cities around the world, they have different ways of interacting. I would say that's learned, and I would say an intelligence system can learn that too. But that does not lead, and the intelligent system can understand humans. It could understand that, just like I can study an animal and learn something about that animal. I could study apes and learn something about their culture and so on. I don't have to be an ape to know that. I may not be completely, but I can understand something. So intelligent machine can model that. That's just part of the world. It's just part of the interactions. The question we're trying to get at, will the intelligent machine have its own personal agency that's beyond what we assign to it, or its own personal goals, or will it evolve and create these things? My confidence comes from understanding the mechanisms I'm talking about creating. This is not hand-wavy stuff. It's down in the details. I'm going to build it. And I know what it's going to look like, and I know what it's going to behave. I know what the kind of things it could do and the kind of things it can't do. Just like when I build a computer, I know it's not going to, on its own, decide to put another register inside of it. It can't do that. No way. No matter what your software does, it can't add a register to the computer. So in this way, when we build AI systems, we have to make choices about how we embed them. So I talk about this in the book. I said, intelligent system is not just the neocortex equivalent. You have to have that, but it has to have some kind of embodiment, physical or virtual. It has to have some sort of goals. It has to have some sort of ideas about dangers, about things it shouldn't do, like we build in safeguards into systems. We have them in our bodies, we put them in the cars, right? My car follows my directions until the day it sees I'm about to hit something and it ignores my directions and puts the brakes on. So we can build those things in. So that's a very interesting problem, how to build those in. I think my differing opinion about the risks of AI for most people is that people assume that somehow those things will just appear automatically or they'll evolve and intelligence itself begets that stuff or requires it. But it's not. Intelligence of the neocortex equipment doesn't require this. The neocortex equipment just says, I'm a learning system, tell me what you want me to learn, and ask me questions, and I'll tell you the answers. But in that, again, it's again like a map. A map has no intent about things, but you can use it to solve problems." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so the building, engineering the neocortex in itself is just creating an intelligent prediction system. Modeling system. Sorry, modeling system. You can use it to then make predictions, but you can also put it inside a thing that's actually acting in this world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You have to put it inside something. Again, think of the map analogy, right? A map on its own doesn't do anything. It's just inert. It's just that you can learn, but it's just inert. So we have to embed it somehow in something to do something." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's your intuition here? You had a conversation with Sam Harris recently that was sort of, you've had a bit of a disagreement and you're sticking on this point. Elon Musk, Stuart Russell kind of have us worry existential threats of AI. What's your intuition? Why? if we engineer an increasingly intelligent neocortex type of system in the computer, why that shouldn't be a thing that we... It was interesting, you used the word intuition and Sam Harris used the word intuition too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And when he used that intuition, that word, I immediately stopped and said, Oh, that's the cause of the problem. He's using intuition. I'm not speaking about my intuition. Yes. I'm speaking about something I understand, something I'm gonna build, something I am building, something I understand completely, or at least well enough to know what, I'm guessing, I know what this thing's gonna do. And I think most people who are worried, they have trouble separating out, they don't have the knowledge or the understanding about what is intelligence, how's it manifest in the brain, how's it separate from these other functions in the brain. And so they imagine it's gonna be human-like or animal-like. It's gonna have the same sort of, drives and emotions we have, but there's no reason for that. That's just because there's unknown. If the unknown is like, oh my God, I don't know what this is gonna do. We have to be careful. It could be like us, but really smarter. I'm saying, no, it won't be like us. It'll be really smarter, but it won't be like us at all. But I'm coming from that, not because I'm just guessing. I'm not using intuition. I'm basing it on like, okay, I understand this thing works. This is what it does. Let me explain it to you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but to push back, so I also disagree with the intuitions that Sam has, but I also disagree with what you just said, which, you know, what's a good analogy? So if you look at the Twitter algorithm in the early days, just recommender systems, you can understand how recommender systems work. what you can't understand in the early days is when you apply that recommender system at scale to thousands of millions of people, how that can change societies. So the question is, yes, you're just saying, this is how an engineer in your cortex works. But like when you have a very useful, uh, TikTok type of service that goes viral. When your neural cortex goes viral, and then millions of people start using it, can that destroy the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, well, first of all, this is back, one thing I want to say is that AI is a dangerous technology. I'm not denying that. All technology is dangerous. Well, and AI maybe particularly so. Okay, so am I worried about it? Yeah, I'm totally worried about it. The thing where, the narrow component we're talking about now is the existential risk of AI. Right. So I want to make that distinction because I think AI can be applied poorly. It can be applied in ways that people are going to understand the consequences of it. These are all potentially very bad things, but they're not the AI system creating this existential risk on its own. And that's the only place I disagree with other people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so I think the existential risk thing is humans are really damn good at surviving. So to kill off the human race would be very, very difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but you can even, I'll go further. I don't think AI systems are ever gonna try to. I don't think AI systems are ever gonna like say, I'm gonna ignore you, I'm gonna do what I think is best. I don't think that's gonna happen. At least not in the way I'm talking about it. So the Twitter recommendation algorithm is an interesting example. Let's use computers as an analogy again, right? I build a computer. It's a universal computing machine. I can't predict what people are going to use it for. They can build all kinds of things. They can even create computer viruses. It's, you know, all kinds of stuff. So there's some unknown about its utility and about where it's going to go. But on the other hand, I pointed out that once I build a computer, it's not going to fundamentally change how it computes. It's like, I use the example of a register, which is a part, internal part of a computer. You know, I say it can't just sit there, because computers don't evolve. They don't replicate, they don't evolve, they don't, you know, the physical manifestation of the computer itself is not going to, there's certain things it can't do. Right, so we can break into things like things that are possible to happen, we can't predict, and things that are just impossible to happen. Unless we go out of our way to make them happen, they're not gonna happen unless somebody makes them happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so there's a bunch of things to say. One is the physical aspect, which you're absolutely right. We have to build a thing for it to operate in the physical world, and you can just stop building them, you know, the moment they're not doing the thing you want them to do. Or just change the design. Or change the design. The question is, I mean, it's possible in the physical world, this is probably longer term, is you automate the building. It makes a lot of sense to automate the building. There's a lot of factories that are doing more and more and more automation. to go from raw resources to the final product. It's possible to imagine that it's obviously much more efficient to create a factory that's creating robots that do something extremely useful for society. It could be a personal assistant. It could be your toaster, but a toaster that has a deeper knowledge of your culinary preferences. And that could get into trouble." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think now you've hit on the right thing. The real thing we need to be worried about, Lex, is self-replication. Right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That is the thing to worry about. In the physical world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, or even the virtual world. Self-replication, because self-replication is dangerous. It's probably more likely to be killed by a virus, you know, or a human-engineered virus. Anybody can create a, you know, the technology's getting to almost anybody, well, not anybody, but a lot of people could create a human-engineered virus that could wipe out humanity. That is really dangerous. No intelligence required, just self-replication. So we need to be careful about that. So when I think about AI, I'm not thinking about robots building robots. Don't do that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Don't build a, you know, just- Well, that's because you're interested in creating intelligence. It seems like self-replication is a good way to make a lot of money." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, fine, but so is maybe editing viruses is a good way too. I don't know. The point is, as a society, when we want to look at existential risks, the existential risks we face that we can control almost all evolve around self-replication." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. The question is, I don't see a good way to make a lot of money by engineering viruses and deploying them on the world. There could be applications that are useful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But let's separate out. Let's separate out. I mean, you don't need to. You only need some terrorist who wants to do it because it doesn't take a lot of money to make viruses. Let's just separate out what's risky and what's not risky. I'm arguing that the intelligence side of this equation is not risky. It's not risky at all. It's the self-replication side of the equation that's risky. And I'm not dismissing that. I'm scared as hell." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like the paperclip maximizer thing. Yeah. Those are often talked about in the same conversation. I think you're right. Creating ultra-intelligent, super-intelligent systems is not necessarily coupled with arbitrarily self-replicating systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And you don't get evolution unless you're self-replicating. And so I think that's the gist of this argument, that people have trouble separating those two out. They just think, oh, yeah, intelligence looks like us. And look at the damage we've done to this planet. Look how we've destroyed all these other species. Yeah, well, we replicate. 8 billion of us or 7 billion of us now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think the idea is that the more intelligent we're able to build systems, the more tempting it becomes from a capitalist perspective of creating products, the more tempting it becomes to create self-reproducing systems." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Okay. All right. So let's say that's true. So does that mean we don't build intelligent systems? No. That means we regulate, we understand the risks. We regulate them. Yeah You know look there's a lot of things we could do a society which have some sort of financial benefit to someone which could do a lot of harm and We have to learn how to regulate those things. We have to learn how to deal with those things I will argue this I would say the opposite like I would say having intelligent machines our disposal will actually help us in the end more because it'll help us understand these risks better. It'll help us mitigate these risks better. There might be ways of saying, oh, well, how do we solve climate change problems? How do we do this? Or how do we do that? Just like computers are dangerous in the hands of the wrong people, but they've been so great for so many other things, we live with those dangers. And I think we have to do the same with intelligent machines, but we have to be constantly vigilant about this idea of A, bad actors doing bad things with them, and B, don't ever, ever create a self-replicating system. And by the way, I don't even know if you could create a self-replicating system that uses a factory, that's really dangerous. you know, nature's way of self-publicating is so amazing. You know, it doesn't require anything. It just, you know, the thing and resources and it goes, right? If I said to you, you know what, we have to build, our goal is to build a factory that can make, that builds new factories. And it has to end to end supply chain. It has to mine the resources, get the energy, I mean, that's really hard. No one's doing that in the next 100 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've been extremely impressed by the efforts of Elon Musk and Tesla to try to do exactly that. not from raw resource. Well, he actually, I think, states the goal is to go from raw resource to the final car in one factory. That's the main goal. Of course, it's not currently possible, but they're taking huge leaps." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, he's not the only one to do that. This has been a goal for many industries for a long, long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's difficult to do. Well, a lot of people, what they do is instead they have like a million suppliers and then they, like, there's everybody's- They all co-locate them and they tie the systems together. It's a fundamentally distributed system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that also is not getting at the issue I was just talking about, which is self-replication. I mean, self-replication means there's no entity involved other than the entity that's replicating. And so if there are humans in the loop, that's not really self-replicating, unless somehow we're duped into doing it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's also, I don't necessarily agree with you, because you've kind of mentioned that AI will not say no to us. I think it's a useful feature to build in. I'm just trying to put myself in the mind of engineers to sometimes say no." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I gave the example earlier, right? I gave the example of my car. My car turns the wheel and applies the accelerator and the brake, as I say, until it decides there's something dangerous, and then it doesn't do that. that was something it didn't decide to do. It's something we programmed into the car. And so, good. It was a good idea, right? The question again isn't, like, if we create an intelligence system, will it ever ignore our commands? Of course it will sometimes. Is it going to do it because it came up with its own goals that serve its purposes and it doesn't care about our purposes? No, I don't think that's going to happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, so let me ask you about these super intelligent cortical systems that we engineer and us humans. Do you think with these entities operating out there in the world, what does the future, most promising future look like? Is it us merging with them? or is it us, like how do we keep us humans around when you have increasingly intelligent beings? Is it, one of the dreams is to upload our minds in the digital space. So can we just give our minds to these systems so they can operate on them? Is there some kind of more interesting merger or is there a more interesting communication?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So in the third part of my book, I talked about all these scenarios and let me just walk through them. The uploading the mind one. extremely, really difficult to do. We have no idea how to do this, even remotely right now. So it would be a very long way away. But I make the argument, you wouldn't like the result. And you wouldn't be pleased with the result. It's really not what you think it's going to be. Imagine I could upload your brain into a computer right now. And now the computer's sitting there going, hey, I'm over here. Great. Get rid of that old bio person. I don't need him. You're still sitting here. Yeah. What are you going to do? No, no, that's not me. I'm here, right? Are you going to feel satisfied in that? Then people imagine, look, I'm on my deathbed and I'm about to expire and I push the button and I'm uploaded. But think about it a little differently. And so I don't think it's going to be a thing because people, by the time we're able to do this, if ever, Because you have to replicate the entire body, not just the brain. It's really, I walked through the issues. It's really substantial." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you have a sense of what makes us us? Is there a shortcut to what can only save a certain part that makes us truly ours?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but I think that machine would feel like it's you too. Right. Right. You have two people, just like I have a child, right? I have two daughters. They're independent people. I created them, well, partly. Yeah. I don't, just because they're somewhat like me, I don't feel I'm them, and they don't feel like I'm me. So if you split them apart, you have two people. So we can come back to what consciousness do you want, and we can talk about that. But we don't have a remote consciousness. I'm not sitting there going, oh, I'm conscious of that. I'm in that system over there. So let's stay on our topic here. So one was uploading a brain. Ain't gonna happen in 100 years, maybe 1,000, but I don't think people are gonna wanna do it. the merging your mind with the neural link thing, right? Again, really, really difficult. It's one thing to make progress to control a prosthetic arm. It's another to have like a billion or several billion things and understanding what those signals mean. It's the one thing that like, okay, I can learn to think some patterns to make something happen. It's quite another thing to have a system, a computer, which actually knows exactly which cells it's talking to and how it's talking to them and interacting in a way like that. Very, very difficult. We're not getting anywhere closer to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Um, interesting. Can I, can I, uh, can I ask a question here? What, so for me, what makes that merger very difficult practically in the next 10, 20, 50 years is like literally the biology side of it, which is like, it's just hard to do that kind of surgery in a safe way. But your intuition is even the machine learning part of it, where the machine has to learn what the heck it's talking to. That's even hard." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's even harder. And it's easy to do when you're talking about hundreds of signals. It's a totally different thing to say, talking about billions of signals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think it's the raw, it's a machine learning problem. You don't think it could be learned?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm just saying, no, I think you'd have to have detailed knowledge. You'd have to know exactly what the types of neurons you're connecting to. I mean, in the brain, there's these neurons that do all different types of things. It's not like a neural network. It's a very complex organism system up here. We talked about the grid cells and the place cells. You have to know what kind of cells you're talking to and what they're doing and how their timing works and all this stuff, which you can't today, there's no way of doing that, right? But I think the problem, you're right that the biological aspect of it, who wants to have a surgery and have this stuff inserted in your brain? That's a problem. But let's assume we solved that problem. I think the information coding aspect is much worse. I think that's much worse. It's not like what they're doing today. Today, it's simple machine learning stuff. because you're doing simple things. But if you wanna merge your brain, like I'm thinking on the internet, I've merged my brain with the machine and we're both doing, that's a totally different issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's interesting. I tend to think, okay, if you have a super clean signal from a bunch of neurons, at the start, you don't know what those neurons are. I think that's much easier than the getting of the clean signal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think if you think about today's machine learning, that's what you would conclude. I'm thinking about what's going on in the brain and I don't reach that conclusion. So we'll have to see. But I don't think even then, I think there's kind of a sad future. Like, you know, do I have to like plug my brain into a computer? I'm still a biological organism. I assume I'm still gonna die. So what have I achieved, right? You know, what have I achieved today?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Some sort of- Oh, I disagree. We don't know what those are, but it seems like there could be a lot of different applications. It's like virtual reality. is to expand your brain's capability to read Wikipedia." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but fine. But you're still a biological organ. Yes. Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, you're still you're still mortal." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All right. So what are you accomplishing? You're making your life in this short period of time better, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just like having the internet made our life better. Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, okay. So I think that's, if I think about all the possible gains we can have here, that's a marginal one. It's an individual, hey, I'm better. You know, I'm smarter. But, you know, fine. I'm not against it. I just don't think it's earth changing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is the true of the internet. When each of us individuals are smarter, we get a chance to then share our smartness. We get smarter and smarter together as a collective. This is kind of like this ant colony." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why don't I just create an intelligent machine that doesn't have any of this biological nonsense? That has all the same, it's everything except don't burden it with my brain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It has a brain. It is smart. It's like my child, but it's much, much smarter than me. So I have a choice between doing some implant, doing some hybrid weird biological thing that's bleeding and all these problems and limited by my brain, or creating a system which is super smart that I can talk to that helps me understand the world, that can read Wikipedia and talk to me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I guess the open questions there are, what does the manifestation of superintelligence look like? You talked about why do I want to merge with AI? What's the actual marginal benefit here? If we have a superintelligent system, how will it make our life better?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's, that's a great question, but let's break it into little pieces, all right? On the one hand, it can make our life better in lots of simple ways. You mentioned like a care robot or something that helps me do things, a cook, so I don't know what it does, right? Little things like that, we can have better, smarter cars, we can have, you know, better agents, aides helping us in our work environment and things like that. To me, that's like the easy stuff, the simple stuff in the beginning. And so in the same way that computers made our lives better in many, many ways, we'll have those kind of things. To me, the really exciting thing about AI is sort of its transcendent quality in terms of humanity. We're still biological organisms. We're still stuck here on Earth. It's going to be hard for us to live anywhere else. I don't think you and I are going to want to live on Mars anytime soon. And we're flawed. We may end up destroying ourselves. It's totally possible. If not completely, we could destroy our civilizations. Let's face the fact, we have issues here. But we can create intelligent machines that can help us in various ways. For example, one example I gave, and that sounds a little sci-fi, but I believe this. If we really wanted to live on Mars, we'd have to have intelligent systems that go there and build the habitat for us. Not humans. Humans are never going to do this. It's just too hard. But could we have 1,000 or 10,000 engineering workers up there doing this stuff, building things, terraforming Mars? Sure, maybe we can move Mars. But then if we want to go around the universe, should I send my children around the universe or should I send some intelligent machine, which is like a child, that represents me and understands our needs here on Earth that could travel through space? So it sort of, in some sense, intelligence allows us to transcend the limitations of our biology. And don't think of it as a negative thing. It's in some sense, my children transcend my biology too, because they live beyond me. And we impart, they represent me, and they also have their own knowledge, and I can impart knowledge to them. So intelligent machines will be like that too, but not limited like us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the question is, there's so many ways that transcendence can happen. And the merger with AI and humans is one of those ways. So you said intelligent, basically beings or systems propagating throughout the universe, representing us humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They represent us humans in the sense they represent our knowledge and our history, not us individually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, right, but I mean, the question is, is it just a database with a really damn good model of the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, they're conscious just like us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but just different?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're different, just like my children are different. They're like me, but they're different. These are more different. I guess maybe I've already, I take a very broad view of our life here on Earth. I say, why are we living here? Are we just living because we live? Are we surviving because we can survive? Are we fighting just because we want to just keep going? What's the point of it? To me, the point, if I were to ask myself, what's the point of life? What transcends that ephemeral biological experience? is, to me, this is my answer, is the acquisition of knowledge, to understand more about the universe, and to explore. And that's partly to learn more, right? I don't view it as a terrible thing if the ultimate outcome of humanity is we create systems that are intelligent, that are our offspring, but they're not like us at all. And we stay here and live on Earth as long as we can. which won't be forever, but as long as we can. But that would be a great thing to do. It's not like a negative thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, would you be okay then if the human species vanishes, but our knowledge is preserved and keeps being expanded by intelligent systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I want our knowledge to be preserved and expanded. Yeah. Am I okay with humans dying? No, I don't want that to happen. But if it does happen, what if we were sitting here and we were the last two people on earth and we're saying, Lex, we blew it. It's all over, right? Yeah. Wouldn't I feel better if I knew that our knowledge was preserved and that we had agents that knew about that, that left earth? I would want that. It's better than not having that. I make the analogy of the dinosaurs. The poor dinosaurs, they lived for tens of millions of years. They raised their kids. They fought to survive. They were hungry. They did everything we do. And then they're all gone. And if we didn't discover their bones, Nobody would ever know that they ever existed, right? Do we want to be like that? I don't want to be like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a sad aspect to it. And it's kind of, it's jarring to think about that. It's possible that a human like intelligence civilization has previously existed on earth. The reason I say this is like, it is jarring to think that we would not, if they went extinct, we wouldn't be able to find evidence of them. after a sufficient amount of time. After a sufficient amount of time. Of course, there's like, look, basically humans, like if we destroy ourselves now. human civilization destroy ourselves now. After a sufficient amount of time, we would find the evidence of the dinosaurs, we would not find evidence of us humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's kind of an odd thing to think about. Although, I'm not sure if we have enough knowledge about species going back for billions of years, that we might be able to eliminate that possibility. But it's an interesting question. Of course, it's a similar question to, there were lots of intelligent species throughout our galaxy that have all disappeared." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's super sad that there may have been much more intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy that are no longer there. You actually talked about this, that humans might destroy ourselves and how we might preserve our knowledge. and advertise that knowledge to other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Advertise is a funny word to use. From a PR perspective." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no financial gain in this. You know, like make it like from a tourism perspective, make it interesting. Can you describe how you think about this problem?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's a couple of things. I broke it down into two parts, actually three parts. One is, you know, there's a lot of things we know that, what if we ended, what if our civilization collapsed? Yeah, I'm not talking tomorrow. Yeah, we could be a thousand years from now, actually, you know, we don't really know. But historically, it would be likely at some point." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Time flies when you're having fun." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You know, could we, and then intelligent life evolved again on this planet. Wouldn't they want to know a lot about us and what we knew? Wouldn't they be able to ask us questions? So one very simple thing I said, how would we archive what we know? That was a very simple idea. I said, you know what, that wouldn't be that hard to put a few satellites, you know, going around the sun and upload Wikipedia every day and that kind of thing. So, you know, if we end up killing ourselves, well, it's up there and the next intelligence piece will find it and learn something. They would like that. They would appreciate that. So that's one thing. The next thing I said, well, what if, you know, how outside of our solar system, we have the SETI program, we're looking for these intelligent signals from everybody. And if you do a little bit of math, which I did in the book, and you say, well, what if intelligent species only live for 10,000 years before, you know, technologically intelligent species, like ones are really able to do the stuff we're just starting to be able to do. Well, the chances are we wouldn't be able to see any of them because they would have all been disappeared by now. They've lived for 10,000 years, and now they're gone. And so we're not going to find these signals being sent from these people, because if I said, what kind of signal could you create that would last a million years or a billion years, that someone would say, Damn it, someone smart lived there. We know that. That would be a life-changing event for us to figure that out. Well, what we're looking for today in the SETI program isn't that. We're looking for very coded signals in some sense. And so I asked myself, what would be a different type of signal one could create? I've always thought about this throughout my life. In the book, I gave one possible suggestion, which was we now detect planets going around other suns, other stars. excuse me, and we do that by seeing this slight dimming of the light as the planets move in front of them. That's how we detect planets elsewhere in our galaxy. What if we created something like that, that just rotated around the sun and it blocked out a little bit of light in a particular pattern that someone said, hey, that's not a planet, that is a sign that someone was once there. You can think, what if it's beating up pi, you know, three point whatever. From a distance, broadly broadcast, takes no continual activation on our part. This is the key, right? No one has to be sitting there running a computer and supplying it with power. It just goes on. So we go, it continues. And I argued that part of the study program should be looking for signals like that. And to look for signals like that, you ought to figure out how would we create a signal? Like what would we create that would be like that, that would persist for millions of years, that would be broadcast broadly, that you could see from a distance, that was unequivocal, came from an intelligent species. And so I gave that one example, because they don't know what I know of actually. And then finally, right, If ultimately our solar system will die at some point in time, how do we go beyond that? And I think it's possible. If at all possible, we'll have to create intelligent machines that travel throughout the solar system or throughout the galaxy. And I don't think that's going to be humans. I don't think it's going to be biological organisms. So these are just things to think about. I don't want to be like the dinosaur. I don't want to just live and, okay, that was it. We're done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there is a kind of presumption that we're going to live forever, which I think it is a bit sad to imagine that the message we send as you talk about is that we were once here instead of we are here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it could be we are still here, but it's more of an insurance policy in case we're not here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know, but there's something I think about, we as humans don't often think about this, but it's like whenever I record a video, I've done this a couple of times in my life, I've recorded a video for my future self, just for personal, just for fun. And it's always just fascinating to think about that preserving yourself for future civilizations. For me, it was preserving myself for a future me. But that's a little that's a little fun example of archival." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "These podcasts are preserving you and I in a way for future, hopefully well after we're gone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you don't often we're sitting here talking about this. you are not thinking about the fact that you and I are going to die, and there'll be like 10 years after, somebody watching this, and we're still alive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, in some sense I do. I'm here because I wanna talk about ideas. And these ideas transcend me, and they transcend this time on our planet. We're talking here about ideas that could be around 1,000 years from now, or a million years from now. When I wrote my book, I had an audience of mine, and one of the clearest audiences was- Aliens. No. Were people reading this a hundred years from now. Yes. I said to myself, how do I make this book relevant to someone reading this a hundred years from now? What would they want to know that we were thinking back then? What would make it like, that was an interesting, it's still an interesting book. I'm not sure I can achieve that, but that was how I thought about it. Because these ideas, like, especially in the third part of the book, the ones we were just talking about, you know, these crazy, it sounds like crazy ideas about, you know, storing our knowledge and, and, you know, merging our brains with computers and, and sending, you know, our machine down into space. It's not going to happen in my lifetime. and they may not even happen in the next hundred years. It may not happen for a thousand years, who knows? But we have the unique opportunity right now, we, you, me, and other people like this, to sort of at least propose the agenda that might impact the future like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a fascinating way to think, both like writing or creating, try to make, try to create ideas, try to create things that hold up. in time. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, understanding how the brain works. We're going to figure that once. That's it. It's going to be figured out once. And after that, that's the answer. And people will, people will study that thousands of years now. We still, we still, you know, venerate Newton and Einstein and, um, and you know, because, because ideas are exciting even well into the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the interesting thing is like big ideas, even if they're wrong, are still useful. Like," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, especially if they're not completely wrong. Like Newton's laws are not wrong. They're just Einstein's are better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So yeah, I mean, but we're talking when Newton and Einstein were talking about physics. I wonder if we'll ever achieve that kind of clarity. but understanding, um, like complex systems and the, this particular manifestation of complex systems, which is the human brain." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm totally optimistic. We can do that. I mean, we're making progress at it. I don't see any reason why we can't completely, I mean, completely understand in the sense, um, you know, we don't really completely understand what all the molecules in this water bottle are doing. But we have laws that sort of capture it pretty good. And so we'll have that kind of understanding. I mean, it's not like you're going to know what every neuron in your brain is doing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But enough to, first of all, to build it. And second of all, to do what physics does, which is have concrete experiments where we can validate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is happening right now. This is not some future thing. I'm very optimistic about it because I know about our work and what we're doing. We'll have to prove it to people. I consider myself a rational person. And until fairly recently, I wouldn't have said that. But right now, where I'm sitting right now, I'm saying, this is going to happen. There's no big obstacles to it. We finally have a framework for understanding what's going on in the cortex. And that's liberating. It's like, oh, it's happening. So I can't see why we wouldn't be able to understand it. I just can't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "OK, so I mean, on that topic, let me ask you to play devil's advocate. Is it possible for you to imagine? Look, look, 100 years from now and looking at your book, in which ways might your ideas be wrong?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, I worry about this all the time. Yeah, still useful. Yeah. Yeah. I think I can best relate it to things I'm worried about right now. So we talk about this voting idea. It's happening. There's no question it's happening, but it could be far more There's enough things I don't know about it that it might be working in ways differently than I'm thinking about. What's voting? Who's voting? Where are representations? I talked about, you have a thousand models of a coffee cup like that. That could turn out to be wrong because it may be there are a thousand models that are sub-models, but not really a single model of the coffee cup. I mean, there's things, these are all sort of on the edges. things that I present as like, oh, it's so simple and clean. Well, it's not that. It's always going to be more complex. And there's parts of the theory which I don't understand the complexity well. So I think the idea that the brain is a distributed modeling system is not controversial at all, right? That's well understood by many people. The question then is, are each cortical column an independent modeling system? I could be wrong about that. I don't think so, but I worry about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "that we as humans desire for a clean explanation. And 100 years from now, intelligent systems might look back at us and laugh at how we try to get rid of the whole mess by having simple explanation, when the reality is it's way messier. And in fact, it's impossible to understand, you can only build it. It's like this idea of complex systems and cellular automata. You can only launch the thing, you cannot understand it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think that the history of science suggests that's not likely to occur. The history of science suggests that as a theorist, and we're theorists, you look for simple explanations, right? Fully knowing that whatever simple explanation you're going to come up with is not going to be completely correct. I mean, it can't be. I mean, it's just, it's just more complexity, but that's the role of theorists play. They, they sort of, they give you a framework on which you now can talk about a problem and figure out, okay, now we can start digging more details. The best frameworks stick around while the details change. You know, again, you know, the classic example is Newton and Einstein, right? You know, Newton's theories are still used. They're still valuable. They're still practical. They're not like wrong, just they've been refined." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that's in physics. It's not obvious, by the way. It's not obvious for physics either that the universe should be such that it's amenable to these simple- I know, but it's so far it appears to be, as far as we can tell. Yeah, I mean, but as far as we could tell, but it's also an open question whether the brain is amenable to such clean theories. That's the, not the brain, but intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I don't know, I would take intelligence out of it. Just say, you know, well, okay. The evidence we have suggests that the human brain is A, at the one time, extremely messy and complex, but there's some parts that are very regular and structured. That's why we started the neocortex. It's extremely regular in its structure. And unbelievably so. And then I mentioned earlier, the other thing is, it's universal abilities. It is so flexible to learn so many things. We haven't figured out what it can't learn yet. We don't know, but we haven't figured out yet, but it can learn things that it never was evolved to learn. So those give us hope. That's why I went into this field because I said, you know, This regular structure, it's doing this amazing number of things. There's gotta be some underlying principles that are common. And other scientists have come up with the same conclusions. And so- It's promising. It's promising. And whether the theories play out exactly this way or not, that is the role that theorists play. And so far, it's worked out well, even though, you know, maybe, you know, we don't understand all the laws of physics. But so far, it's been pretty damn useful. The ones we have, our theories are pretty bit useful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mentioned that we should not necessarily be, at least to the degree that we are, worried about the existential risks of artificial intelligence relative to human risks from human nature being an existential risk. What aspect of human nature worries you the most in terms of the survival of the human species?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm disappointed. in humanity as humans. I mean, all of us. I'm one, so I'm disappointed in myself too. It's kind of a sad state. There's two things that disappoint me. One is, how it's difficult for us to separate our rational component of ourselves from our evolutionary heritage, which is not always pretty. Rape is an evolutionary good strategy for reproduction. Murder can be at times too. Making other people miserable at times is a good strategy for reproduction. And so now that we know that, And yet we have this sort of, you and I can have this very rational discussion talking about intelligence and brains and life and so on. It seems like it's so hard. It's just a big transition to get humans, all humans to make the transition from like, let's pay no attention to all that ugly stuff over here. Let's just focus on the interesting. What's unique about humanity is our knowledge and our intellects." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the fact that we're striving is in itself amazing. The fact that we're able to overcome that part, and it seems like we are more and more becoming successful at overcoming that part." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is the optimistic view, and I agree with you. But I worry about it. I'm not saying I'm worrying about it. I think maybe that was your question. I still worry about it. We could end tomorrow because some terrorists could get nuclear bombs and blow us all up, who knows, right? The other thing I'm disappointed is, and I understand it, I guess you can't really be disappointed, it's just a fact, is that we're so prone to false beliefs. We have a model in our head, The things we can interact with directly, physical objects, people, that model's pretty good. And we can test it all the time, right? I touch something, I look at it, I talk to you, see if my model's correct. But so much of what we know is stuff I can't directly interact with. I only know because someone told me about it. And so we're inherently prone to having false beliefs because if I'm told something, how am I gonna know it's right or wrong, right? And so then we have the scientific process which says we are inherently flawed, so the only way we can get closer to the truth is by looking for contrary evidence." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Like this conspiracy theory, this this theory that scientists keep telling me about that the earth is round. As far as I can tell, when I look out, it looks pretty flat. Yeah. So, yeah, there is there is a tension, but it's also. I tend to believe that we haven't figured out most of this thing, right? Most of nature around us is a mystery." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so it- But does that worry you? I mean, it's like, oh, that's like a pleasure, more to figure out, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's exciting. But I'm saying like, there's going to be a lot of quote unquote, wrong ideas. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about engineering systems like social networks and so on. And I've been worried about censorship. and thinking through all that kind of stuff, because there's a lot of wrong ideas. There's a lot of dangerous ideas. But then I also read history and see when you censor ideas that are wrong. Now, this could be small scale censorship, like a young grad student who comes up, who raises their hand and says some crazy idea. A form of censorship could be, I shouldn't use the word censorship, but like de-incentivize them from, no, no, no, no, this is the way it's been." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, you're foolish, kid, don't think." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, you're foolish. So in some sense, those wrong ideas most of the time end up being wrong, but sometimes end up being- I agree with you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I don't like the word censorship. At the very end of the book, I ended up with a plea or a recommended force of action. The best way I know how to deal with this issue that you bring up is if everybody understood as part of your upbringing in life, something about how your brain works, that it builds a model of the world how it worked, how basic it builds that model of the world, and that the model is not the real world. It's just a model. And it's never going to reflect the entire world. And it can be wrong. And it's easy to be wrong. And here's all the ways you can get a wrong model in your head, right? It's not to prescribe what's right or wrong. It's just understand that process. If we all understood the process, then I get together and you say, I disagree with you, Jeff. And I say, Lex, I disagree with you. At least we understand that we're both trying to model something. We both have different information, which leads to our different models. And therefore, I shouldn't hold it against you, and you shouldn't hold it against me. And we can at least agree that, well, what can we look for that's common ground to test our beliefs? as opposed to so much as we raise our kids on dogma, which is this is a fact, and this is a fact, and these people are bad. If everyone knew just to be skeptical of every belief, and why, and how their brains do that, I think we might have a better world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the human mind is able to comprehend reality? So you talk about creating models that are better and better. How close do you think we get to reality? So the wildest ideas is like Donald Hoffman saying, we're very far away from reality. Do you think we're getting close to reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I guess it depends on what you define reality. We have a model of the world that's very useful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For basic goals of survival." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, for our survival and our... Pleasure. Pleasure, whatever, right? So that's useful. I mean, it's really useful. Oh, we can build planes, we can build computers, we can do these things, right? I don't think... I don't know the answer to that question. I think that's part of the question we're trying to figure out, right? Obviously, if you end up with a theory of everything, that really is a theory of everything and all of a sudden everything comes into play and there's no room for something else, then you might feel like we have a good model of the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but if we have a theory of everything and somehow, first of all, you'll never be able to really conclusively say it's a theory of everything, but say somehow we are very damn sure it's a theory of everything. We understand what happened at the Big Bang and how just the entirety of the physical process. I'm still not sure that gives us an understanding of the next many layers of the hierarchy of abstractions that form." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Also, what if string theory turns out to be true? And then you say, well, we have no reality, no modeling what's going on in those other dimensions that are wrapped into it on each other. Or the multiverse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I honestly don't know how for us, for human interaction, for ideas of intelligence, how it helps us to understand that we're made up of vibrating strings that are like 10 to the whatever times smaller than us. I don't, you know, you could probably build better weapons and better rockets, but you're not going to be able to understand intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I guess, I guess maybe better computers. No, you won't be able to. I think it's just more purely knowledge. You might lead to a better understanding of the, of the beginning of the universe, right? It might lead to a better understanding of, uh, I don't know. I guess I think the acquisition of knowledge has always been one where you pursue it for its own pleasure. And you don't always know what is going to make a difference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. You're pleasantly surprised by the weird things you find. Do you think for the neocortex in general, do you think there's a lot of innovation to be done on the machine side? You know, you use the computer as a metaphor quite a bit. Is there different types of computer that would help us build?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, what are the physical manifestations of intelligent machines? Yeah. Oh, no, it's going to be totally crazy. We have no idea how this is going to look out yet. You can already see this. Today, of course, we model these things on traditional computers, and now GPUs are really popular with neural networks and so on. But there are companies coming up with fundamentally new physical substrates that are just really cool. I don't know if they're going to work or not. But I think there'll be decades of iteration here. Totally." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think the final thing will be messy, like our biology is messy? Or do you think it's the old bird versus airplane question? Or do you think we could just build airplanes that fly way better than birds in the same way we could build" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Can I riff on the bird thing a bit? Because I think it's interesting. People really misunderstand this. The Wright brothers, the problem they were trying to solve was controlled flight, how to turn an airplane. not how to propel an airplane. They weren't worried about that. They already had, at that time, there was already wing shapes, which they had from studying birds. There was already gliders that carry people. The problem was if you put a rudder on the back of a glider and you turn it, the plane falls out of the sky. So the problem was how do you control flight? And they studied birds and they actually had birds in captivity. They watched birds in wind tunnels. They observed them in the wild. And they discovered the secret was the birds twist their wings. when they turn. And so that's what they did on the Wright Brothers flyer. They had these sticks that you would twist the wing, and that was their innovation, not their propeller. And today, airplanes still twist their wings. We don't twist the entire wing, we just twist the tail end of it, the flaps, which is the same thing. So today's airplanes fly on the same principles as birds, which is observed by, so everyone get that analogy wrong. But let's step back from that, right? Once you understand the principles of flight, you can choose how to implement them. No one's going to use bones and feathers and muscles, but they do have wings and we don't flap them, we have propellers. So when we have the principles of computation that goes on to modeling the world in a brain, we understand those principles very clearly. We have choices on how to implement them. And some of them will be biological-like and some won't. But I do think there's going to be a huge amount of innovation here. Just think about the innovation in the computer. They had to invent the transistor. They invented the silicon chip. They had to invent software. I mean, there's millions of things they had to do. Memory systems. It's going to be similar." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's interesting that the deep learning, the effectiveness of deep learning for specific tasks is driving a lot of innovation in the hardware, which may have effects for actually allowing us to discover intelligence systems that operate very differently, or at least much bigger than deep learning. Yeah, interesting. So ultimately, It's good to have an application that's making our life better now, because the capitalist process, if you can make money, that works. I mean, the other way, Neil deGrasse Tyson writes about this, is the other way we fund science, of course, is through military conquests." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Here's an interesting thing we're doing on this regard. We used to have a series of these biological principles, and we can see how to build these intelligent machines. But we've decided to apply some of these principles to today's machine learning techniques. So we didn't talk about this principle. One is sparsity in the brain. Most of the neurons are inactive at any point in time. It's sparse. And the connectivity is sparse. And that's different than deep learning networks. So we've already shown that we can speed up existing deep learning networks anywhere from 10 to a factor of 100. I mean, literally 100 and make it more robust at the same time. So this is commercially very, very valuable. And so, if we can prove this actually in the largest systems that are commercially applied today, there's a big commercial desire to do this. Well, sparsity is something that doesn't run really well on existing hardware. It doesn't really run really well on GPUs. and on CPUs. And so that would be a way of bringing more brain principles into the existing system on a commercially valuable basis. Another thing we can think we can do is we're going to use these dendrites models. I talked earlier about the prediction occurring inside a neuron. That basic property can be applied to existing neural networks. and allow them to learn continuously, which is something they don't do today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The dendritic spikes that you were talking about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, we wouldn't model the spikes, but the idea that you have that today's neural networks have something called a point neuron, which is a very simple model of a neuron. And by adding dendrites to them at just one more level of complexity that's in biological systems, you can solve problems in continuous learning and rapid learning. So we're trying to bring the existing field we'll see if we can do it. We're trying to bring the existing field of machine learning commercially along with us. You brought up this idea of paying for it commercially along with us as we move towards the ultimate goal of a true AI system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "even small innovations on neural networks are really, really exciting. It seems like such a trivial model of the brain and applying different insights that just even, like you said, continuous learning or making it more asynchronous or maybe making more dynamic or like incentivizing. Making it robust and making it somehow much better incentivizing sparsity somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, if you can make things a hundred times faster, then there's plenty of incentive. That's true. People are spending millions of dollars, you know, just training some of these networks now, these, these transformer networks." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you the big question, how for young people listening to this today in high school and college, what advice would you give them in terms of which career path to take and maybe just about life in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in my case, I didn't start life with any kind of goals. I was when I was going to college, it's like, oh, what do I say? Well, maybe this electrical engineering stuff, you know. I wasn't like, you know, today you see some of these young kids are so motivated, like, I'm going to change the world. I wasn't like that. But then I did fall in love with something besides my wife. But I fell in love with this, like, oh, my God, it would be so cool to understand how the brain works. And then I said to myself, that's the most important thing I could work on. I can't imagine anything more important because if you understand how the brains work, you can build intelligent machines and they could figure out all the other big questions of the world, right? And then I said, but I want to understand how I work. So I fell in love with this idea and I became passionate about it. And this is a trope, people say this, but it's true. Because I was passionate about it, I was able to put up with almost so much crap You know, I was, I was in that, you know, I was that person said, you can't do this. I was, I was a graduate student at Berkeley when they said, you can't study this problem. You know, no one's can solve this or you can't get funded for it. You know, then I went in to do, you know, mobile computing. And it was like, people say, you can't do that. You can't build a cell phone, you know? So, but all along I kept being motivated because I wanted to work on this problem. I said, I want to understand the brain works. And I got myself, you know, I got one lifetime. I'm going to figure it out, do the best I can. So by having that, As you pointed out, Lex, it's really hard to do these things. There's so many downers along the way. So many obstacles that get in your way. I'm sitting here happy all the time, but trust me, it's not always like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's, I guess, the happiness that the passion is a prerequisite for surviving the whole thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think so. I think that's right. And so I don't want to sit to someone and say, you know, you need to find a passion and do it. No, maybe you don't. But if you do find something you're passionate about, then you can follow it as far as your passion will let you put up with it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you remember how you found it? How the spark happened?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Why specifically for me?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, like because you said, it's such an interesting, so like almost like later in life by later, I mean, like not when you were five." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "you didn't really know, and then all of a sudden you fell in love with that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there was two separate events that compounded one another. One, when I was probably a teenager, might have been 17 or 18, I made a list of the most interesting problems I could think of, First was, why does the universe exist? Seems like not existing is more likely. The second one was, well, given it exists, why does it behave the way it does? It's laws of physics. Why is it equal to MC squared, not MC cubed? That's an interesting question, I don't know. Third one was, what's the origin of life? And the fourth one was, what's intelligence? And I stopped there. I said, well, that's probably the most interesting one. And I put that aside as a teenager. But then when I was 22, And I was reading the, no, excuse me, it was 1979, excuse me, 1979. I was reading, so I was, at that time I was 22. I was reading the September issue of Scientific American, which is all about the brain. And then the final essay was by Francis Crick, who of DNA fame, and he had taken his interest to studying the brain now. And he said, you know, there's something wrong here. He says, we got all this data. all this fact, this is 1979, all these facts about the brain, tons and tons of facts about the brain. Do we need more facts? Or do we just need to think about a way of rearranging the facts we have? Maybe we're just not thinking about the problem correctly. He says, this shouldn't be like this. So I read that and I said, wow. I said, I don't have to become like an experimental neuroscientist. I could just look at all those facts and try and become a theoretician and try to figure it out. And I said, that I felt like it was something I would be good at. I said, I wouldn't be a good experimentalist. I don't have the patience for it, but I'm a good thinker and I love puzzles. And this is like the biggest puzzle in the world. It's the biggest puzzle of all time. And I got all the puzzle pieces in front of me. Damn, that was exciting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's something obviously you can't convert into words that just kind of sparked this passion. And I have that a few times in my life, just something, um, yeah, just, just like you, uh, it grabs you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. I felt it was something that was both important that I could make a contribution to. Yeah. And so all of a sudden I felt like, Oh, it gave me purpose in life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I honestly don't think it has to be as big as one of those four questions. I think you can find those things in the smallest. Oh, absolutely. David Foster Wallace said like the key to life is to be unboreable. I think it's very possible to find that intensity of joy in the smallest thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. I'm just, you asked me my story. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, but I'm actually speaking to the audience. It doesn't have to be those four. You happen to get excited by one of the bigger questions in the universe. But but even the smallest things and watching the Olympics now, just just. giving yourself life, giving your life over to the study and the mastery of a particular sport is fascinating. And if it sparks joy and passion, you're able to, in the case of the Olympics, basically suffer for like a couple of decades to achieve." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, you can find joy and passion just being a parent. I mean, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the parenting one is funny. So I was, not always, but for a long time, wanted kids and get married and stuff. And especially that has to do with the fact that I've seen a lot of people that I respect get a whole nother level of joy. from kids. And at first, you're thinking, well, I don't have enough time in the day, right? If I have this passion to solve intelligence." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Which is true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. But if I want to solve intelligence, how is this kid's situation going to help me? But then you realize that you know, like you said, the things that sparks joy, and it's very possible that kids can provide even a greater or deeper, more meaningful joy than those bigger questions when they enrich each other. And that seemed like, obviously, when I was younger, it's probably a counterintuitive notion, because there's only so many hours in the day. But then life is finite, and you have to pick the things that give you joy. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But you also understand you can be patient too. I mean, it's finite, but we do have whatever, 50 years or something. It's also long, yeah. So in my case, I had to give up on my dream of the neuroscience because I was a graduate student at Berkeley and they told me I couldn't do this and I couldn't get funded. And so I went back in the computing industry for a number of years. I thought it would be four, but it turned out to be more. But I said, I'll come back. I'm definitely going to come back. I know I'm going to do this computer stuff for a while, but I'm definitely coming back. Everyone knows that. And it's like raising kids. Well, yeah, you have to spend a lot of time with your kids. It's fun, enjoyable. But that doesn't mean you have to give up on other dreams. It just means that you may have to wait a week or two to work on that next idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you talk about the the darker side of me, disappointing sides of human nature that we're hoping to overcome so that we don't destroy ourselves. I tend to put a lot of value in the broad general concept of love, of the human capacity to of compassion towards each other, of just kindness, whatever that longing of just the human to human connection, it connects back to our initial discussion. I tend to see a lot of value in this collective intelligence aspect. I think some of the magic of human civilization happens when there's, a party is not as fun when you're alone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I totally agree with you on these issues." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think from a neocortex perspective, what role does love play in the human condition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, those are two separate things. From a neocortex point of view, I don't think it doesn't impact our thinking about the neocortex. From a human condition point of view, I think it's core. I mean, we get so much pleasure out of loving people and helping people. I'll rack it up to old brain stuff and maybe we can throw it under the bus of evolution if you want. That's fine. It doesn't impact how I think about how we model the world. But from a humanity point of view, I think it's essential." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I tend to give it to the new brain. And also, I tend to think that some aspects of that need to be engineered into AI systems, both in their ability to have compassion for other humans, and their ability to maximize love in the world between humans. So I'm more thinking about the social network. So like whenever there's a deep integration between AI systems and humans, so specific applications where it's AI and humans, I think that's something that's often not talked about in terms of metrics over which you try to maximize, like which metric to maximize in a system. It seems like one of the most powerful things in societies is the capacity to- It's fascinating." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's a great way of thinking about it. I have been thinking more of these fundamental mechanisms in the brain, as opposed to the social interaction between, or the interaction between humans and AI systems in the future, which is, and I think if you think about that, you're absolutely right. But that's a complex system. I can have intelligence systems that don't have that component, but they're not interacting with people. You know, they're just running something or building some place or something, I don't know. But if you think about interacting with humans, yeah, it's gonna, but it has to be engineered in there. I don't think it's gonna appear on its own." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good question. Yeah, well, we could. In terms of, from a reinforcement learning perspective, whether the darker sides of human nature or the better angels of our nature win out. Statistically speaking, I don't know. I tend to be optimistic and hope that love wins out in the end. You've done a lot of incredible stuff and your book is driving towards this fourth question that you started with on the nature of intelligence. What do you hope your legacy for people reading a hundred years from now? How do you hope they remember your work? How do you hope they remember this book?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think as an entrepreneur or scientist or any human who's trying to accomplish some things, I have a view that Really, all you can do is accelerate the inevitable. It's like, if we didn't study the brain, someone else would study the brain. If Elon Musk didn't make electric cars, someone else would do it eventually. If Thomas Edison didn't invent a light bulb, we wouldn't be using candles today. What you can do as an individual is you can accelerate something that's beneficial and make it happen sooner than whatever. That's really it. That's all you can do. You can't create a new reality that it wasn't going to happen. So from that perspective, I would hope that our work, not just me, but our work in general, people would look back and said, hey, they really helped make this better future happen sooner. They, you know, they helped us understand the nature of false beliefs sooner than me and Ryan Madoff. They made it, now we're so happy that we have these intelligent machines doing these things, helping us, that maybe that solved the climate change problem and they made it happen sooner. So I think that's the best I would hope for. Some would say those guys just moved the needle forward a little bit in time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I do, it feels like the progress of human civilization is not, is there's a lot of trajectories. And if you have individuals that accelerate towards one direction, that helps steer human civilization. So I think in a long stretch of time, all all trajectories will be traveled, but I think it's nice for this particular civilization on Earth to travel down one that's not- Yeah, well, I think you're right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, look, we have to take the whole period of World War II, Nazism or something like that. Well, that was a bad sidestep, right? We've been over there for a while, but there is the optimistic view about life that ultimately it does converge in a positive way. It progresses ultimately, even if we have years of darkness. So, Yeah, so I think you could perhaps, that's accelerating the positive, it could also mean eliminating some bad missteps along the way too. But I'm an optimistic in that way. Despite we talking about the end of civilization, I think we're going to live for a long time. I hope we are. I think our society in the future is going to be better. We're going to have less discord. We're going to have less people killing each other. We'll make the live in some sort of way that's compatible with the carrying capacity of the Earth. I'm optimistic these things will happen and all we can do is try to get there sooner." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And at the very least, if we do destroy ourselves, we'll have a few satellites orbiting. That will tell alien civilization that we were once here." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or maybe our future, you know, future inhabitants of Earth, you know, imagine we, you know, the planet of the apes in here, you know, we kill ourselves, you know, a million years from now or a billion years from now, there's another species on the planet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Curious creatures who were once here. Yeah. Jeff, thank you so much for your work. And thank you so much for talking to me once again." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're starting with an easy one, Lex. Yep. So what is God? Well, God is a thought. God is an idea. But its reference is to that which is beyond thinking, beyond our ability to even conceive. beyond the categories of being and non-being. So how do we talk about that? To talk about it is almost to get it wrong, right? So Joe Campbell famously said that, you know, any God that is not transparent to transcendence is like an idolatry, because it's just a mental construct. and it can't possibly speak to the incomprehensible. So we use poetic language. We say the being of beings, the infinite life energy of the universe, the mystery of transcendence, boundless life, unqualified isness. But it doesn't quite get to the point. I think that if there's any great insight from mysticism, it's that you and I participate with God. in a very real way, Lex Friedman, here in Austin, Texas, that in the here and now, to touch that eternal principle, another way to refer to God, to touch that eternal principle within ourselves, is to participate with divinity in some way. So not an external force, but that divine sense within." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some aspect in which God is a part of us. So one, it's a thing we can't describe. It represents all of the mystery around us. It's outside our ability to comprehend. And at the same time, it's somehow the thing that's inside of us also." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The ultimate paradox. MacThiel of Magdeburg, 13th century German mystic, maybe the first German mystic. says that the day of her spiritual awakening was the day that she saw and knew that she saw God in all things and all things in God. And so we can say this, by the way, without apology or lightweight theology or vapid speculation or even heresy, you know, we can talk about this, including within the Abrahamic faiths. The mystical core of these faiths all talk about the encounter of divinity within. That's what I explore in the immortality key, this notion of techniques, archaic techniques in some cases, of ecstasy, that allow that experience of the eternal principle to actually rise up in our consciousness when we're still here as flesh and blood beings." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's some sense in which our conception of God, though, is conjured up by our own mind And so aren't we creating God? Like aren't we the gods that are creating the idea of God? Like if we are, like when we talk about God, aren't we playing with ideas that are created by our mind and thereby we are the Creator, not God? This is a very kind of cyclical question, but in some sense I mean that if God is the thing that represents the mystery all around us, contrast that with our conception of God, the way we talk about him, is more a creation of our minds. It's not the mystery, it's our struggle to comprehend the mystery. And therefore, we're creating the God in terms of the God that we're talking about in this conversation or in general, if that makes any sense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It makes no sense whatsoever. Great, this is wonderful. But this is the eternal mystery. This is why it's so difficult to talk about, and yet it could be the very center of our beings. The Upanishads speak about us as the creators, about us as gods. It's a very different creation myth, but the god of the Upanishads in this great verse talks about pouring themselves into creation. Indeed, I have become this creation, says God. And there's a great line, verily he or she who knows this becomes in this creation a creator. So, yeah, I mean, just our ability to engage in mentation, our ability to think about this stuff is partly our divine nature. This is what the humanists were talking about in the Renaissance, by the way, and that it's not so much learning, putting dots together, having arguments with each other over learned books. It's a process of unlearning is what some of the mystical traditions talk about. unlearning all these thoughts, emotions, traumas, and experiences that have gone into the false construction of our false self. That behind all these layers, like peeling back the onion, is a part of us that, once you can identify that, begins to look a little bit different. In other words, it's one thing to foster a relationship with God, it's a very different thing to identify as God. And I mean that quite literally, without being heretical. You can find this in the mystery traditions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you expand on this? You mean a human being can embody God?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That is textbook incarnational theology that you can find in any Christian mystic. But you can find it in the mystical tradition of Islam and Judaism as well. So Rumi, for example, the great Sufi mystic, talks about if you could get rid of yourself, just get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets, would open to you, that the face of the unknown would appear on the perception of your consciousness. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, a modern-day contemporary mystic, talks about, because this stuff does continue, there's a continuity to it. The poetry here is incredible. Well, listen to Rabbi Kushner. He says that the emptying of selfhood allows the soul to attach to true reality. And in Kabbalism, the true reality is what's called the divine nothingness, ayin. And so I like the adage that atheists and mystics both essentially believe in nothing, except that the mystics spell it with a capital N. The divine nothing. And then I'll give you Meister Eckhart, another medieval Christian mystic. He says that if you could not yourself, right? The same concept. If you could not yourself for just an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all. So again, you're seeing the same thing in Sufism, Kabbalism, Christian mysticism. The way to identify with the divine is to peel back these layers and attempt to discover pure awareness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If we look at the universe from a physics perspective, or, you know, I'm a computer science person, so, if the universe is a computer, there's some sense that God, the creator of the universe, or just the computer itself, doesn't know what the heck is gonna happen. it just kind of creates some basic rules and runs the thing. So, there is some element in which you can conceive of humans or conscious beings or intelligent beings as a tool that the creator uses to understand itself, himself. Do you think that's... a perspective that we could, or is useful to take on God, that is basically the universe created humans to understand itself. He doesn't actually know the full thing. He needs the human brains to figure out the puzzle. So that's in contrasting to the unlearning, to the getting out of the way that we've talked about. It's more like, no, we need the humans to figure out this puzzle." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we have no answers to this, which is why philosophers still have jobs, if they have jobs at all. So the physicists take a look at this. Have you seen the article that came out, I think it was this month, in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Robert Lanza, the biocentrism theory? The idea that the universe comes into being through our observation, right? The whole, the God equation. So not just in quantum mechanics, but in general relativity. The idea that we make the universe moment by moment, which is kind of mind-blowing, gets into ideas of simulation. Okay, so that's how the physicists, at least some of them, might look at it. You could also look back to the medieval Christian mystics. Meister Eckhart once again says that the eye with which I see God is the same eye that sees me, right? So one sight, one knowledge, one love. another mind-blowing concept. But this is why the arts and poetry and music are so important, because although I love astroparticle physics, it's another to kind of hear this, the same message across time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the simulation thing, I was actually looking this morning at video games, just the statistics on video games, and I saw that the two top video games in terms of hours played is Fortnite and World of Warcraft, and I saw that it's 140 billion hours, billion hours have been played of those games. That's a lot of video games. Yeah, but that that's very sophisticated worlds being created, especially in the world of Warcraft. It's a massive online role playing game. So you have these characters that are together sort of creating a world, but they in themselves are also developing. They have all these items and they're like they're little humans. Like there's complicated societies that are formed. They have goals, they're striving and so on. And it's we're creating a universe within our universe. And for now, it's a kind of It's a basic sort of constraint version of our more richer Earth-like civilization. But it's conceivable that, you know, that we are this thing on Earth is a kind of video game that somebody else is playing. It's like you could see sort of video games upon video games being created. that, and this is something I think a lot about, not from a philosophical perspective, but practically, how fun does this video game have to be for us to let go of the silly pursuits in this meat space that we live in and fully just stay in WoW, stay in World of Warcraft, stay in the video game for full time. So I think about that from an engineering perspective. Like, is there going to be a time when this video game is actual real life for us. And then the creatures inside the video game, they'll be just borrowing our consciousness sort of to ground themselves will refer to us as the gods. Right. Like won't we become the gods? This conversation is not going how I expected. But I think about this a lot from, you know, because I love video games and I wonder more and more of us, especially in COVID times, are living in the digital world. You can think about Twitter and all those kinds of things. You could think about clubhouse people using just voices to communicate with little icons. sort of in a digital space. You can see more and more will be moving in the digital space and let go of this physical space. And then the remnants of the ancients that created the video games that nobody centuries from now will even remember, those will be the gods. And then there'll be gods upon gods being created. This is the kind of stuff I think about. But is that any at all useful to you to this thought experiment of a simulation? Basically the fabric of our reality, how did it come to be? What is running this thing? Is that useful? Or is it ultimately the project of understanding God, of understanding myth, is the project that centers on the human, on the human mind for you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "we seem to be at the center of this divine dance, which sounds awfully anthropocentric. But the ancients thought about this too. I mean, the concept in Sanskrit of lila, that the point behind existence is this play, right? It's ultimately playful, this divine dance. It gets awfully complicated in the Gnostic and Neoplatonic schools, these chains of being from Godhead down to us, right? Some invisible, right? and we're gonna get into Terence McKenna territory later on, but we can start now by talking about discarnate entities and archons and aliens and archetypes. I mean, there is a world where Terence McKenna does meet Plato and Gnosticism quite kindly, and that's in this invisible college, right? The invisible world with which we seem to have some kind of symbiosis that has a higher intent, maybe even a purpose or a plan in mind for us. So, I mean, these ideas come across when you've had a heroic dose of mushrooms. They also pop up in the ancient philosophical literature. This idea of archons who, you know, the puppet masters controlling us flesh and blood beings. It's all a cosmic dance and there are no answers to this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First, who are the Archons, and second, what is this world where Terence McKenna meets Plato? Do you mean in the space of ideas? Or are we talking about some kind of world that connects all of consciousness to all of human history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think through different techniques, it is, you know, I think a lot about, I think Gordon Wasson is the meeting point of the two. So Gordon Wasson, who I do talk about in the book, was this JP Morgan banker turned ethnomycologist. And he's largely credited with the rediscovery of psilocybin-containing mushrooms, which kind of gave rise to the pop psychedelic revolution of the 1960s. He visited Maria Sabina down in Mexico. In his wake went Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Stones, and everybody else. And the way he describes his psilocybin experience is a bit strange because he thinks of Plato, right? And he says that, you know, whereas our ordinary reality is kind of this imperfect view of things, Gordon Wasson felt that on mushrooms, he was spying the archetypes. And he talks about Plato and he writes about the archetypes in this famous article that's released in 1957 in Life Magazine. And so a well-read individual from the mid 20th century has his, premier psychedelic experience, and out comes Plato, because what he was witnessing was so sharp, so brilliant, so detailed, in some sense, more real than real, this noetic sense that William James talks about, that when you confront something more real than real, these discarnate entities, these images, these visionary motifs, you're tempted to believe that you've tapped into the truest nature and the underlying structure of the cosmos. And that's difficult to escape from, whether you're Plato or Terence McKenna or Gordon Wasson caught in between." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we talk about this being in touch with something that is more real than real? And let's just go straight there to McKenna before we return to the bigger picture. So he's talked about the, what is it, self-healing machine elves? Self-transforming. Self-transforming machine elves during his, DMT travels. And I just talked to Rick Doblin, who also had different travels through this hyperspace. But they all seem to be traveling on the same spaceship, just to different locations. And there is a sense in which they seem to be traveling. through whatever, I don't know if it's through space time or something else, to meet something that is more real than real. What can you say about this DMT experience, about Terrence McKenna, about the poetry he used, but maybe more specifically about this place that they seem to all travel to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the big question is, is it real? Is it really more real than real? The ancient philosophers were asking the same question, and their means of attempting to answer that was by dying. So if you ask Plato the definition of philosophy, he will say that to practice it in the right way is to practice dying and being dead. And many people describe the psychedelic experience in sort of near-death experience terms. And the encountering of all this visual imagery tends to be something that is often described as more real than real. So how does Terence talk about this? So I was just listening to the trilogues, which folks should look up. Somewhere between 1989 and 1990, Terence sits down with his friends, Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake at Esalen. And they're trying to figure out the meaning of these discarnate entities and these non-human intelligences. And Terence develops a taxonomy for how to analyze this. And he says that number one, they're either semi-physical, but kind of elusive. So think of the Bigfoot or the Yeti or things like this. Beings that exist somewhere between mythology and zoology, which isn't really appropriate here. So option number two, he says, is the mental..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're dropping so many good lines, it's so good. I apologize. Somewhere between nostalgia and zoology." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is all Terrence McKenna. I take no credit for this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you're combining, you're like, Jimi Hendrix only used the blues scale, but he still created something new in the music he played. Anyway, go ahead." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, we're going into mixolydian right now. So option number two, and this is what Terrence calls sort of the mentalist reductionist approach. And this is pure McKenna poetry. He says that these beings could be autonomous fragments of psychic energy that have temporarily escaped the controlling power of the ego. So in Jungian senses, these would just be pure projections, the projections of schizophrenics in some cases. So they're essentially unreal. And the third option, the most tantalizing, is that they're both non-physical but autonomous. In other words, they actually exist. in some kind of real place, in some kind of real space, and that we can have Congress with them. There is communication. He talks about the whisperings of the demon artificers, and that it's just possible that our meetings with these beings have coaxed the human species into self-expression in a very real way, that at different times in history, our relationships with these semi-autonomous beings may actually guide the species. high speculation, and Terence and Ralph and Rupert wind up talking about the early modern period and the scientific enlightenment, and that even someone like Descartes reports a dream in which he came face to face with an angel who said that the conquest of nature is to be achieved through measure and number. So even the hard-minded materialist like Descartes is confronting these discarnate entities. John Dee in the 16th century, the high magician of the Elizabethan court, He reports decades worth of what we would say is extraterrestrial communication or interdimensional communication. And you can find instances of this throughout history, including among the pre-Socratics. And Peter Kingsley writes quite a bit about this, but I'll save that until your next question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, first of all, we don't seem to understand from where intelligence came from. We don't understand from where life came from on earth. But that, we can kind of intuit, because it's in the space of chemistry and biology, you have good theories about the origins of life on Earth. But the origins of intelligent life, that is a giant mystery. And there's some sense in which, I mean, I don't know if you know the movie 2001 Space Odyssey, but it does seem that there's like important, Throughout human history, throughout life on earth, there's important phase shifts of, it feels like something happened where there's big leaps. It could be something coincidental like fire and learning how to cook meat and all those kinds of things. But it feels like there could be other things. And I think that's at the core of your work is exploring what those things could be. Is it possible? Talked about Joe Rogan off-line. Is it, I mean, it's entirely possible. Is it possible that psychedelics have in fact contributed of being an important source of those phase shifts throughout human history, of the intellect, basically steering the intellectual development and growth of human civilization?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a hypothesis worth investigating. How about that? Beautiful. And maybe not psychedelics in and of themselves, but I think our whole conversation is kind of wrapped up in these non-ordinary states of awareness. We start by talking about God, which is something unordinary and expansive. And I think that as you As you trace the intervention of divinity, if that's the case, throughout human history, you have to bump up against the irrational. Mircea Eliade, the great scholar of religions and fellow Romanian, said that the history of religions essentially constitutes the point of intersection between metaphysics and biology, right? So that we are biological beings who do interact with our planet, with the natural kingdom. And you would think that as early archaic ecologists, we would have figured out what plants work, which fungi don't, and developed maybe language around that. And so this is another one of McKenna's speculative but very interesting hypotheses, the stone ape theory. Is it possible that psychedelics were involved in one of the several leaps forward? You mentioned the word leap. Jared Diamond talks about the great leap forward 60,000 years ago. the species had been around for a couple hundred thousand years, all of a sudden the cave painting appears. all of a sudden there's a phase shift. Did something like that happen millions of years ago? And I love the way Paul Stamets talks about this. It would be the ingestion of perhaps psilocybin-containing fungi millions and millions of times over millions and millions of years. So it's not just a one-time event that cascades, but it's the accumulation of psychedelic experience. It's really difficult to test that hypothesis, But I've been talking with a paleoanthropologist in South Africa, my friend Lee Berger, about ways that we might test for this. And so Lee, amongst many things, is this National Geographic explorer. He's the paleoanthropologist's paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand. He's famous amongst other things for the discovery of previously undiscovered hominids like Homo naledi. And there's an interesting point. So Naledi is this archaic hominid, morphologically archaic, but it dates to about 300,000 years ago, which is very strange. What's even more strange about Homo Naledi at the Rising Star cave system there in South Africa is that Lee believes he's discovered the first bipedal ape deliberately disposing of its dead. So there is a recognition of self-mortality and the practicing of rituals around death. We're talking about burials. And if you have burials, says Lee, in an archaic hominid 300,000 years ago, maybe you have language. And I mention that because Terence McKenna was obsessed with language in the stoned ape theory, that the ingestion of psilocybin, in addition to enhancing visual acuity, perhaps facilitating sexual arousal, leads to proto-language. Now, isn't it interesting, this could be entirely a coincidence, that the largest sound inventory of any language is the Khoisan. of Botswana and Namibia. They have something like 164 consonants and 44 vowels. English, by comparison, has about 45. So I don't know what to make of this, but what you find in that part of the world is very, very complex language. language that could be an inheritance, language that could be incredibly archaic, together with this recognition of self-mortality. And when I talk to Lee Berger, we say, when you're looking at universals like that, language around all human populations, the recognition of self-mortality, the contemplation of death, just maybe you have pharmacology. And so maybe we can go out and test for this using gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, proteomics, technology that doesn't even exist, but maybe we can actually test the stoned ape theory to figure out once and for all if there's any merit there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you just linger a little bit on the pharmacology tools? How would it be possible to say something about what was being ingested so, so, so long ago?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what I asked Dr. Berger. So Lee has discovered in the dental calculus. Nice. Of archaic hominids. Dental calculus, I like this. Evidence of their diet. And you might not believe how old this was, but in Sediba, Australopithecus sediba, they found evidence of Sediba's diet going back two million years. So through things like phytoliths, which are essentially fossilized plant tissue, they found evidence that Sadiba was eating bark and leaves and grasses and fruits and palm. So no psychedelics to speak of, but it just goes to show that through things like dental microware analysis and other techniques that we're still developing, we can actually figure out what the diet was at the time. I'll fast forward to 50,000 years ago, There was another study out of El Cidron Cave in 2012, which found that Neanderthals, again, preceding our species 50,000 years ago, were ingesting yarrow and chamomile, which had been identified as medicinal. So again, not psychedelic or psychoactive, but we kind of have the beginnings of the technology, and that was nine years ago, to begin figuring out the ancestral diet of these hominids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Presumably there could be a way to figure out, it's not just diet, but which have psychoactive elements to them. So whether you're chewing it, whether you're smoking it, whether, I mean, I don't know what, licking it. I don't know if there's any kind of ways through the dental calculus to figure out what exact substances were being consumed. Is it possible to figure out whether psychedelic substances are being consumed by looking at human behavior? Like you said, organized burials. or cave paintings. No, but so that's a little bit of a stretch to say like, where did this leap come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But it's not, it's not. So just last fall, as a matter of fact, so that notion's been out there for a while, the idea that hallucinogens and the ritual consumption of hallucinogens, were somehow related to the Great Leap Forward, were somehow related to the initial Cape Pain. And Graham Hancock wrote a beautiful book about this called Supernatural, which in many ways like sent me down this rabbit hole back in 2007. And so, but even at the time when he was writing that in the year subsequent, it was still kind of seen as a kooky idea. Last fall, interestingly enough, the first archaeochemical data for the ritual consumption of psychedelics associated with cave art was finally published. It's not that ancient, it's only about 400 or 500 years ago, but it came from the Pinwheel Cave, a chumash site in California. And what they found were datura quids, like these chewed up, you mentioned how they ingest it, these chewed up quids, like these bunches of datura, which contain these very powerful tropane alkaloids in what was believed to be some kind of chumash initiation site. So we can say that there is initial you know, archaeochemical data for the consumption of psychedelics and cave art. And so where else might we find this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are there a lot of archeochemists in the world? Like, is this fascinating? Is through chemistry, through biology, through physics, whatever, like all the disciplines we perhaps in one day computer science, we apply those tools to study not the data of today, but the data of the past. Are we talking about dozens here? Like how hard is this problem relative to how many people are taking it on just as a side little tangent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We're probably talking more dozens than hundreds. I spent many years trying to track down an archaeochemist who would talk to me. There were a couple, Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania, and then my friend Andrew Koh at MIT, which you might know something about. Andrew really, on his own time, on his own dime, has been gathering the data. for this organic residue analysis. He has what's called the OpenARCHEM project, which is this online open source repository for this data. But there's never been a center for this. No university has stood up a dedicated center, a team really, which is what you need. of archaeochemists looking at this stuff. I mean, even despite that, there have been some remarkable discoveries over the past 10, 20 years. It's still a discipline very much in its infancy. Maybe it's becoming a toddler, but as the technology gets better and cheaper, I hope you'll see more and more archaeochemists joining the fight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, Andrew's fascinating, his work's fascinating. But also, I just, because of your work, I came across and exchanged a few emails with Patrick McGovern, who's basically, what would you call him? So he has a center, I guess, that does biomolecular archeology at UPenn. And he's the author of a bunch of books, one of which is Ancient Brews. So he's a scholar of beer and wine and like ancient alcohol, which is fascinating the influence even just alcohol, but he has like alcohol with hallucinogenic properties as well, but it's fascinating as a Russian. It's fascinating to think about the influence of alcohol on the development of human civilization throughout its history. Is there something you can comment on alcohol or in general, Patrick's work that was informative to you, inspiring or kind of added to your conception of human history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "His work was some of the first hard scientific data that I saw for the ritual consumption of these intoxicants. I don't think he's ever found the hard and fast data for psychedelics, but what he turned me onto was this idea that alcohol, or beer and wine specifically, could have been used as vehicles for the administration of psychedelics. That's where it all started for me. Just the notion that ancient beer and ancient wine is very, very different from what we drink today, that typically they were cocktails. They were often fortified and mixed with different fruits, berries, herbs, plants, maybe even fungi over time, because this was all in the absence of distilled liquor, right? There is no hard alcohol, even in Russia, before maybe the 12th century it was in Europe, maybe a bit earlier. But the concept of distillation just didn't exist. And so, you know, to pack a punch, you know, rather than just drink a kind of watered-down Budweiser, these people were interested in fortifying these beverages with whatever they could find in nature. And Pat, to his credit, found some of the initial data for these, you could say, spiked wines and spiked beers. Not with anything overtly psychedelic, but just the fact that in the 16th century BC, at Grave Circle A in Mycenae, there's this Minoan ritual cocktail of beer mixed with wine, mixed with mead, is very interesting. It's even more interesting that you find that across the Aegean in Gordium at King Midas' tomb, right? The same kind of ritual cocktail which Pat and Sam at the Dogfish Head Brewery resurrected as the Midas touch. So, I mean, the notion that we can go back, find this data, resurrect it in some cases 2,800 years later, I found pretty exciting 10 years ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, bring him back for research. But that's fascinating that people are playing with these ideas. And we'll return to ideas of psychedelic infused wine, which is pretty fascinating. But can we step back and just kind of look at your work with the book Immortality Key? What is the story that you tell in this book?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I knew we'd get there eventually, Alex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a non-linear path. Somehow we were talking about simulation and the universe is a computer that's creating video games and wow and Fortnite, but we got there and we'll return always to the insane philosophical. But your book Immortality Q, what's the story that you tell in this book? Which part of human history are you studying?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, so that's the way to phrase it. So it's, you know, it's my 12-year search for the hard scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelics in classical antiquity. So we're talking about amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans. and the Paleo-Christians, so the generations that would give birth to the largest religion the world's ever known. Christianity today was two and a half billion people. The big question for me is, you know, were psychedelics actually involved? There was a lot written about this in the 60s, John Marco Allegro. The book that I follow was published in 1978, before I was born, The Road to Eleusis, by Gordon Wasson, who we talked about already, Albert Hoffman, who famously discovers LSD or synthesizes it from ergot. And Karl Ruck, who is still a professor of classics at Boston University, the only surviving member of that renegade trio, and now 85 years old. So this all predates us. But what was lacking in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, I think, was some of this technology. and the hard scientific data. Now, for years and years, I went out to the archeobotanists and the archeochemists around the world and I asked a very basic question. Is there any evidence for psychedelics in classical antiquity? And the answer would almost invariably come back no. I'm talking to, in addition to Pat, he put me in touch with Hans-Peter Stieke in Germany, Tania Vallamotti in Greece, Assunta Florenzano in Italy. I went all over the place asking one question and getting the same answer back time and again. And so the book is essentially my search for that data and the eventual uncovering of two, what I think are key pieces of data. One data, One data point shows the ritual use of a psychedelic beer in classical antiquity in Iberia, what today is Spain. And the other shows what looks like a kind of psychedelic wine just outside Pompeii from the first century A.D., at the right place, at the right time, when the earliest Christians were showing up in Italy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Again, these are early steps in the search for evidence in this space. Speaking of early Christians, what role do you think psychedelic infused wine could have played in the life of the... I won't be clever... in the life of Jesus Christ?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've been saying recently that, and I hope this doesn't sound obscurantist, but I think it's impossible to understand Jesus and the birth of Christianity in the absence of ancient Greek. And I'll give you a very specific example of why I think that's the case. You can read the entire New Testament in ancient Greek, and not once will you ever find a reference to alcohol. because there was no word in ancient Greek for alcohol. The way the word sounds, alkol, it comes, it's Semitic, it comes from the Arabic. Kahla means to enliven or refresh. It probably comes from coal, K-O-H-L, sort of these powdered metallics that were used in alchemical experiments and cosmetics. So again, that's much later in time when we're using alchemy, distillation, et cetera. In the first century AD, the power of wine wasn't necessarily tied to alcohol, right? Fermented grapes, the way we think about wine today. So Pat McGovern found some of that early organic data for wine being mixed with beer and with mead. But if you look at the literature from the first century AD, Dioscorides, for example, he writes this massive treatise at the exact same time the gospels are being written. And Dioscorides, In just one of his books, he talks about 56 detailed recipes for spiking wine, with all kinds of things like salvia and hellebore and frankincense and myrrh, these spiced perfumes, but also more dangerous things like henbane and mandrake, which he says in Greek can be fatal with just one cupful. And in book 474 of his Materia Medica, He talks about black nightshade producing fantasias uaedais, not unpleasant visions. what today we would say is psychedelic. So just looking at the literature and the kind of literature that even most classicists, I didn't really learn it in undergrad, I came across Dioscorides later, but just a basic look at the literature supports what McGovern has been testing, which is the fact that wine was routinely mixed with different compounds." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fascinating, by the way, that language affects our conception of the tools we use to understand the world. So like, you can see wine, you can see psychedelics. If they're not called drugs, you can maybe reframe how you see them in terms of their role in us thinking about the world, understanding the world. That's really interesting that language has that power. But what language was used to understand wine at the time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, we're talking about a Greek-speaking world, right? So, you know, Jesus is born and does his public ministry in the Holy Land, but think about the early church. Think about where the church takes root. You know, Paul, the greatest evangelist of the time, writes basically half the New Testament. He's writing letters in Greek to Greek speakers in places like Corinth. in Greece, or Philippi, a defunct city just north of the island of Thassos, or he's writing to folks in what today is Turkey, the Colossians, the Galatians, he writes letters to the Romans. These are Greek speakers in these pockets, these Hellenic pockets all around the ancient Mediterranean, and for them, again, ignore Dioscorides, ignore Pat McGovern's work. To them, to think about wine was to think about a mixed potion. And so the word oinos in ancient Greek does show up in the New Testament, but there was another word to describe wine. And it exists for like a thousand years, before, during, and after the life of Jesus. The word used for wine is pharmakon, which obviously gives us the word pharmacy. It means drug. So in Greek, a Greek speaker would actually use the word drug to refer to wine. Ruth Schodel, the classicist, talks about this as a ritualistic formula. They understood wine as this compound beverage, a drug against grief, a medicinal elixir that could either harm or heal, or just maybe a sacrament to put you in touch with wine gods old and new." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Clearly, religion and myth, but religion very much so has sort of, much like dreams, has like an imagery component. Like, you're kind of going outside the visual constraints of physical space where you kind of have very specific conceptions of what things look like, and you kind of use your imagination to stretch beyond the world as we know it. Things that are, try to get in touch with things that are more real than real. What role do these tools, do these pharmacons have in trying to stimulate the imagery of religion? Do you have a sense that they have a critical role here, or is this just a bunch of different factors that are utilized, a bunch of different tools that are utilized to construct this imagery? Or is this not even, or is imagery the wrong terminology? Is it more like space of ideas that's core to religion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think the wine is absolutely essential. And so if it's impossible to understand paleo-Christianity in the absence of ancient Greek, I think it's equally difficult in the absence of the sacred pharmacopeia. or wine itself, right? Just think about wine at the time. I think that the ancient Greek audience would have heard that in a very different way from us. And so they're referring to it maybe as a pharmakon, but the followers of Dionysus, which precedes Jesus. And in some cases, the story of Jesus is kind of a recapitulation of the mysteries of Dionysus. But when you think about Dionysus, Maybe from your high school mythology you think about him as the god of theater or the god of wine, which is typically what it is, or the god of ecstasy. Again, Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. There's no concept of fermented grapes. The power of Dionysus and the ability to commune with Dionysus through his blood And before Christianity, the blood of Dionysus is equated to his wine. The sacramental drinking of the wine was interpreted, and classicists write about this, including Walter Burkard, it was interpreted as consuming the god himself in order to become one with the god. This is where we get the idea of enthusiasm, because the language matters. Enthusiasm to be filled with the spirit of the god, so that you became identified with Dionysus and acquired his divine powers. Now, how does that happen? Again, he's not the god of alcohol. He is the god of wine, but he's really the god of madness, and delirium, and frenzy. And his principal followers are women. They're called the minads. And the way they get in touch with him is through the consumption of this sacramental wine. Even at the theater of Dionysus, separate from his outdoor churches, there was a wine served there called drima. And this is the wine that gives birth to Hollywood. I mean, the ancient Hollywood was there at the theater of Dionysus. This is where comedy and tragedy and poetry and music come from. But rather than a hot dog and a beer, what they drink at the theater of Dionysus was this wine called Trima, which means pounded or rubbed. And Professor Ruck talks about maybe it was the drugs that were rubbed into this theatrical beverage." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to help the play come alive. So madness is seen as a positive thing, as like a creative journey. It's not, it's not, it's the, what is it? The unlearning, getting out of the way kind of thing. Is that how it's seen or is it more like entertaining escape from life that is suffering? I gotta, I gotta inject a little modern Dostoevsky into the old." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "existential despair. Maybe it's a bit of that. We can't say that there wasn't recreational drinking happening. The Greeks also had the symposium, right? And they also were just getting hammered in some cases. But when it comes to the rites of Dionysus, what you see there is the creation of these states of awareness in which, again, you identify with the God to become the God. There's theophagy, there's the consumption of divinity in order to become divinity. Right back to how we started the conversation, right? So if we stop conceiving of God as something exterior to us, but that the mystery Being itself is the mystery of your being and the mystery of my being that the way to encounter that is through the sacramental Theology that you drink the actual blood of this Greek God to become That God and there was a place for this in ancient Greek society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So drinking the wine is drinking the blood of Dionysus Do you think Jesus is? an actual physical person that existed in history, or is it an idea that came to life through the consumption of wine and those kinds of rituals?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this is where I face my excommunication, depending how I answer this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, you're playing with fire and wine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A good combination, by the way. So I shy away from that controversy in the book. I'm perfectly willing to accept Jesus as a historical personage. You know, we have the multiplicity of sources, although it's a generation after his death, but we have the Eucharist being described. in the four Gospels. We have it being described by Paul in 1 Corinthians. But when you read John, it does read a bit differently than the other Gospels. And in my book, I rely a lot on the scholarship of Dennis MacDonald, who writes a fabulous book called The Dionysian Gospel. And this is again why the Greek matters, because once you start to analyze the Greek of John's Gospel, It seems to be a presentation of Jesus very much in the guise of Dionysus. The most obvious example is the wedding at Cana, right? That only occurs in John's Gospel, the famous transformation of water into wine. Now again, to any Greek speaker of the first century, they would have known about the Greek district of Elis on the Peloponnese. And in Ellis, around the Epiphany, every January, the priests of Dionysus would deposit these water basins, empty basins, in the Temple of Dionysus. They'd return the next morning and find them magically filled with wine. On the island of Andros, it's even more interesting. Around the same epiphany date, the God's gift day, Dies Theodosia, the wine would emanate from the temple and run like a river for a week. And you can Google the Bacchanal of the Andrians, a wonderful painting by Titian. which hangs in the Prado, and you'll see a river of wine behind these people having a great time. This exists for centuries and centuries before the wedding at Cana and before Jesus begins his public ministry with what these scholars call the signature miracle of Dionysus. It would not have been lost on the Greek audience that something very specific is being communicated here. What's being communicated? That you just might find in early Christianity what you hold strong to in these mysteries of Dionysus that you may have inherited from your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents for centuries. There was a perfectly good religion. There were perfectly good mystery cults in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. And here comes this new, untested, illegal cult, illegal, of a dozen or so illiterate day laborers that go on to convert the empire in a few hundred years. The answer to that, extraordinary growth is not psychedelics, but I do think it's visionary experiences, and I do think it's this continuity from the pagan world into early Christianity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what part, you mentioned this idea, that's really interesting, I think you said Paul Stamets, of I guess millions of people over millions of years kind of consuming really practicing a ritual or a habit of some sort. This idea of rituals is kind of interesting. Again, you mentioned cult. What's the role of ritual consumption of some of these substances or just ritual practice of anything in the intellectual growth of particular groups of people or societies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So again, I would say it is the centerpiece of ancient life, not just the mysteries of Dionysus, which we've only talked a bit about, but the mysteries of Eleusis were probably the most famous and longest lasting of these Greek mystery rites. And I mean, just to put it in simple terms, the best definition for a mystery religion, as the name implies, is something secret. Right, muo from the Greek means to shut the eyes or to shut the mouth, to keep quiet about this stuff. You know, we're always teasing details from the archaeological and the literary record, and we're kind of just grabbing at these secrets. But Eleusis, which survives for like 2,000 years into the Christian period from about 1500 BC to the 4th century AD, It's kind of this centerpiece of Greek life. Cicero, the great Roman statesman, calls what was happening at Eleusis the most exceptional and divine thing that Athens ever produced. So, not democracy, the arts and sciences, or philosophy, but the vision that was encountered at Eleusis, perhaps through the ritual consumption of a potent psychedelic over hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands and thousands, if not millions of initiates, pilgrims, who would walk from Athens to Eleusis to encounter this vision, it seems to have been not just an important part of Greek life, but the thing that made life livable, such that as these mysteries are about to be exterminated by the newly Christianized Roman Empire, there's this passage in the ancient literature that talks about these, you know, in the absence of these mysteries, life becomes unlivable. Abiotos." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there ways you can, I mean, you write about the mysteries of Eleusis, and is there ways you can convert that into words? Why those are so important to them, more important than any other invention to them? Why is it such a source of meaning to life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So from what we can reconstruct, they would make that pilgrimage 13 miles northwest of Athens to confront their mortality. Remember, we were talking about homo naledi, and in South Africa, this recognition of self-mortality, the deliberate disposal of the dead. Plato talks about the real practice of philosophy being the death and dying process. So in some senses, you went to Eleusis to die. and to experience a death before your death. We talked about this with Terence McKenna as well, how the psychedelic state seems to share something in common with the near-death or out-of-body experiences or these ecstatic experiences, whether through wine or beer or otherwise, you went to Eleusis to die. And it was said that only those who had witnessed this vision, whatever vision was to be witnessed in Demeter's sanctuary, essentially vouchsafed you the afterlife, that only those who went there became immortal. And Cicero says that at that point you essentially live with more joy and die with a better hope." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you a question about this human contention with death, this confrontation of death, that seems to be at the core of things. I don't know how deep to the core, but it seems to be a central element of the human condition. What do you think about Ernest Becker and those guys that put death at the, what is it, the warm of the core, as the main thing? the main, like this confrontation of our own mortality. First of all, being understand that we're mortal and then confronting the terror of it, the fear of it as the creative, like trying to escape the fear of death as the creative force of human society. It's like the reason we do anything is because we're just running away from our death. scared. Do you find some of that to be true? First of all, as a somebody who looks in the mirror, looks at yourself and your own as a human being. Two, just looking at society today. And three, at this whole big spread of human history and all the cool stuff we've created, including the mysteries of elusives." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wonder what life would look like in the absence of the fear of our mortality. I wonder how we'd interact with one another if there was relatively little or no fear of death. I really do when it comes to Becker's work and others. If the ancients were known for anything, it was running to death. It was the opposite. In fact, dying before dying, which is the immortality key, by the way. It's not psychedelics, but when I refer to this key, I'm referring to this notion that's preserved in Greek. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. For some reason, the ancients prized that experience. And we talked about the mystics of Sufism and Kabbalism and Christian mysticism. where you have this same self-nodding, this death before death, the divine nothingness, right? For some reason, the mystic saints, visionaries, and ancient philosophers, they ran to death. And the one message I wanted to try and communicate with this book is how they viewed life, that it can only be fully experienced, fully embodied in the wake of a really intense, perhaps terrifying, but utterly transformational encounter with death." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So running to death, not running away from death. You talk about Aldous Huxley and mind changers. So if we look at the history where the ancients were running to death and maybe using some performance-enhancing permacons to run more effectively towards death, and now we're using tools of modern society, whether they're psychological, sociological, or in this case, pharmaceutical, to run away from this conception. So what do you see as a hopeful future for human civilization? If all of these kinds of societies are ice cream flavors, how do you create the perfect ice cream flavor? What is the future of religious experience, of psychedelic experience, of intellectual journeys, of facing death, running away from death? What do you hope that looks like and what kind of idea should we look to?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My next book will be entitled Performance Enhancing Pharmaca." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You get full copyright. Yeah, I like it. But that's a historical view. I mean, what in that book would you suggest in one of the last chapters about the future of this process?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Huxley has to stop you. He stopped me in my tracks, Aldous Huxley. So in 1958, he pens this op-ed of sorts. And it's just, it reads incredibly prescient, because I really do think in many ways, as the fog of the war drug is ending and finally lifting, that we've kind of come full circle back to the late 1950s, which might sound strange. It'll make more sense when you hear what Huxley said about psychedelics. And so he was looking forward to a revival of religion, which is why I subtitled the book, The Religion with No Name. And to him, to Huxley, this revival wouldn't come about through televangelistic mass meetings or photogenic clergymen, as he says, but he points to the biochemical discoveries, such as we have today, that would allow for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. In other words, that this revival of religion, he says, would be a revolution. And Alan Watts comes along and says that there's nothing more dangerous to authority than a popular outbreak of mysticism. But I think this is what Huxley was pointing to. And he talks about religion in these terms, about being less about symbols and returning to a sense of experience and intuition. And Huxley says that he envisions a religion which gives rise to everyday mysticism. And he talks about something that would undergird everyday rationality, everyday tasks and duties, and everyday human relationships. In other words, religion has to mean something. And these altered states of awareness that we seem to be able to produce quite easily inside the lab at Hopkins, NYU, and elsewhere with psilocybin, I think this is kind of part of Huxley's prediction about a time when we would have legal access, safe access, efficacious access to this material that would allow for insight in an afternoon. And what do you do when millions of people can become mystics in an afternoon?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So psychedelics, psilocybin might be sort of the practical way of having these kinds of maybe could be termed religious experiences. And then many people partaking in those experiences and then like evolving this collective intelligence thing we've got going on. That's the, that's sort of the practice of religion that we should be looking, striving for, as opposed to kind of operating in the space of ideas, actually practicing it. You mentioned, and that's the religion with no name. the use of these tools. Is there a simple way to summarize religion, per our previous discussion about God, basically discovering the God inside?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What if I give you a very complicated definition of religion, and then we talk about a more simplified? Let's do it. So the most complicated we can get on this is the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. But I think it's worth defining our terms when we're talking about God and religion. So religion, religio from the Latin means to bind back. So to bind us back to some meaningful tradition, to bind us back to the source. Here's a mouthful from Clifford Geertz. You know, religion, he defines as a set of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions in such an aura of factuality that those moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic, which is complex. What does that mean? That religion has to make you feel something, these moods and motivations. But it can't just do that in the way that sex does that for us, or sports, or ultimate fighting, or the World Cup, or going to a concert. So we get all that emotion in these experiences like that. But that emotion has to be concomitant to a deep existential insight that answers this question for you in the morning, I know why I'm here. I know why humans are here. I think I know what the meaning of life is. That's what religion is. And if you find that meaning in science, then that's your religion and that's fine. But we need to be more honest about that. If your epistemological model is weighing facts and figures and you think that's why you're here on this planet and you find deep meaning, that's okay. Religion is the thing that makes you feel, right? It has the aura of factuality. It just makes you feel like you know the point behind existence. In other words, I think it comes down to experience, like Joe Campbell was talking about, like Aldous Huxley mentions about experience and intuition. I think this is how we connect to God." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Make you feel like you understand the world. I mean, so that's kind of bigger than science. That includes science, but it's bigger. Do you think, what is real? Like, do you think there's an absolute reality that we're kind of striving towards understanding? Or is it all just conjured up in our minds? And that's the whole kind of point. We together create these realities and play with them and dance to somehow derive meaning from those realities. And it's ultimately not like very deeply integrated into atoms of space-time?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Another easy question, Lex." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I mean, you have to kind of, when you're thinking about emotion and making it concrete into something that feels real, you have to start asking, like, what is real? It's something that, you know, Ben Shapiro has this saying of facts don't care about your feelings. I was always uncomfortable with this. I mean, he's just being spiffy or whatever, but I was always uncomfortable with somehow, first, that the hubris of thinking that humans can have, like, arrive at absolute truth, which is what I assume he means by facts, like things that are controvertible, and then somehow deriding feelings, like feelings are not important. To me, like, the whole thing is reality. The facts don't even, like facts is reality, feelings are reality, like the entirety of human experience is reality. All these consciousnesses somehow interacting together, making up random crap and together agreeing, they're all going to wear the same colors, rooting for one football team or the other football team. countries, all those things, that's real because we've agreed that it's real. And in the same way, it gives us meaning. In that same way, religion is a set of ideas that gives us meaning. But, you know, real, it's really a difficult, for me as a scientist, that finds comfort in the physical understanding of the universe of physics. You know, I love physics. I love computer science. It makes me feel like everything is perfectly understandable. And then I look at humans. They're totally not understandable. It's like a giant mess, but that's part of the beauty. Like what is love? Like what the hell is love? It's certainly not like a weird hack to convince me to procreate, because it feels something bigger than that. So like taking a purely evolutionary biologist perspective, it's missing the, it's not missing, it's only capturing a part of the picture. And so it just keeps making me ask, what is real? Because as a human, it's very human centric. It does certainly feel like a part, a big part of what is real is all the fake stuff my mind makes up. I mean, okay, I guess, is there something you could say from our discussions about the tools of psychedelics, about our discussion about religion, of what is real, of what is reality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "These are largely unanswerable questions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we should nevertheless strive to answer them. That's the whole point of the human experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I think science is one way and religion is another. And I think there's actually a sphere where they intersect. There's a way for religion to be observable, testable, repeatable, falsifiable. When I look at the ancient mysteries, that's what I find. I think I find people exploring alternate states of consciousness and arriving at conclusions based on that exploration and deriving deep meaning from that, which yes, are feelings and emotions and very hard to quantify, but nonetheless, these are the things that govern our lives. I mean, I don't know a parent who isn't motivated by the love of their children. Everything I do at 40 years old now is pretty much inspired by my love for my two daughters, and I can't prove to you that I love them, I can say it, I can show you behavior, but it's very hard for me to weigh and measure that. So not everything is so reducible to this quantifiable reality. And yet, I also love science. And I love the historical process of weighing this data. I love the chemistry. I love the biology. And for me, I think this was the message of the ancient Greeks. And I think this is the world in which paleochristianity was born. I think there is this meeting ground between science and religion, which allow for the, if not the discovery, then at least the near identification of the ultimate reality, which is another way to describe God, right? This being of beings, the transcendent mystery." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So speaking of God, you mentioned to me offline, you're wearing the most sophisticated clothing choice of the elite intellectuals. Like you mentioned, Sam Harris was wearing a hoodie." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is the Sam Harris hoodie. He's starting a trend." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's starting a trend. This is a new religion, you could even say. It's a ritual, it's a ritual practice of intellectuals of searching for meaning. So there's quite a fascinating debate. He was for a time still known as one of the sort of new age atheists. So he was kind of trying to explore the role of religion in society and the role of science. And then on the other side, another kind of powerhouse intellectual is Jordan Peterson, who in sometimes, for my taste, a bit too poetic of ways is exploring ideas of religion. And they had these interesting debates that I think will continue about the role of religion in society. For Jordan, there's all these flaws with religion, but there is a lot of value to be discovered amidst the rituals, the traditions, the practice, the way we conceive of each other because of the ideas that religion propagates. And then for Sam, it says that everything about religion basically gets in the way of us fully realizing our human potential, which is deeply scientific and rational. sort of like we're surrounded by mystery, calling that mystery God is getting in the way of us understanding that mystery. What do you think about this debate about the role of religion in society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We should continue having this debate. I talked to Jordan a couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact. Excellent. On his podcast? Yes. Excellent. It'll be out soon. And so, you know, he and I- How did that go, by the way? It was incredible. Karl Ruck, the professor, joined us, as a matter of fact, for one of his rare public appearances. Beautiful. We went deep. And Jordan is very well read, obviously, on the psychedelic literature. He had just had Roland Griffiths from Hopkins on the podcast. And it's one of Roland's figures that Jordan and I, again, just like the language of Aldous Huxley, It's hard to move past the following statistic. Over the past 20 years of the modern study of psilocybin, Roland will tell you that about three in four of their volunteers walk away from their single dose of psilocybin, high dose, saying it was among the most meaningful experiences of their entire lives, if not the most meaningful. And Jordan says, like, how do you, what do you do with that? How do we, I mean, how do we synthesize that? You know, here we are quantifying the qualifiable, the unqualifiable, and yet these compounds have dramatic effects on people's lives, and they walk away feeling like they're more, loving, more compassionate. The Science of All talks about the welling up of cooperation and resource sharing and kindness and all these strange things from this single chemical intervention, which seems to reduce us to automata as if enlightenment can be flipped on like a switch. And yet there it is, there's the data. And I don't see how you walk away from that. I mean, I completely understand Sam's position, but I think there's a reading of religion, particularly the mystical core of the big faiths, and especially these ancient mystery cults, which do speak again to those moods and motivations, creating this aura of factuality that these volunteers never walk away from, permanently transformed, just like the ancient mysteries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And part of that is perhaps language, that we need to continue to evolve language in in how we conceive of these processes. Maybe religion has a bunch of baggage associated with it that is good to let go of. or perhaps not, I don't know. This is connected to our previous part of our conversation is the importance of language in this whole thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's how I start my book, with one of these volunteers from the NYU psilocybin experiments, this woman, Dinah Baser, who's an atheist, and she still describes herself as an atheist. And yet, as one of these three and four people who walked away from this experiment transformed, she says that her experience of psilocybin was like being bathed in God's love from an atheist. And I ask her why she uses the word God. Why not the love of the cosmos or the universe or mother nature? And she says, well, frankly, you know, we don't know about any of this stuff and that God makes sense to me. She's still an atheist, but it's the way she describes that as kind of like the way your mother's love must have felt when you were a baby." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a kind of, I like the way Einstein uses God. God doesn't play dice. There's a poetry, there's a humility that you don't know what the hell is going on. There's a humor to it. I'm a huge fan, especially like more and more of just kind of having a big old laugh at the absurdity of this world and this life as represented nicely by memes on Twitter kind of thing. I mean, there's a sense in which we want to be playing with these words and not take them so seriously and being a little bit lighthearted and explore. Let me ask you about, because you mentioned NYU, what I find fascinating is how much amazing researchers, speaking of science, right? studying the effects of psilocybin, studying the effects of various psychedelics, MDMA on the human mind. Right now for helping people, but I'm hoping there'll be studies soon at Hopkins and elsewhere that allow people that are kind of more quote unquote creatives or regular people that don't have a particular demon they're trying to work through, a problem they're trying to work through, but more like to see what can I find if I utilize psychedelics to explore? Is there something you could say that is exciting to you, that's promising about the future, what currently is going on, but also the future of psychedelics research?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Hopkins and elsewhere. The healthy normals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I was looking for the right words because healthy doesn't feel like a good term and normal doesn't feel like a good term because we're all pretty messed up and we're all weird." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, those with ontological angst in that case. Maybe they'll be a future DSM qualification. There's no doubt that things like psilocybin, MDMA are useful for things like anxiety, depression, end-of-life distress, PTSD, alcoholism, you name it. And it's largely because of the clinical research that MDMA and psilocybin will probably be legal in some FDA-regulated way in the next five years. But I mean, again, I start the first page of my book with this question, why do psychedelics work across all these different conditions? And the best that I could find is the meaning, right? Tony Bosses at NYU talks about psilocybin, for example, as meaning-making medicine, which is interesting because it puts it somewhere between a therapeutic and, again, this ontological instigator. What is it about psychedelics that creates these mystical experiences or mystical-like experiences. You can call them emotional breakthroughs. You can call them moments of awe. I do think we get locked up in the language and we're somewhere between science and religion here, including legally. So the FDA is one route to this. What excites me about psychedelics is the First Amendment. What is this going to mean for religion? The freedom of religion being the first thing that's mentioned in the First Amendment before freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. If America is known for anything, it's a refuge for religious pioneers. And so we already have the Native American church, Brazilian-spawn churches, that are using psychedelics, but what would happen if Judaism or Christianity or Islam were to begin incorporating the very ritual, very sacred and discreet use of psychedelics as part of their liturgy? So not replacing the Sunday Eucharist in the case of Christianity, but part of the extra credit dimension of the faith." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then we can, through practice, figure out how essential it is. It could be a minor thing, it could be a major thing. That's another thing I wanted to kind of ask you is, I recently, despite the fact that I'm eating a huge amount of meat and I'm getting fat, I'm loving it. This is actually, as of two days ago, I started this long road to training for David Goggins, to getting back to competing in jiu-jitsu. The fun is over, but I also partook in fasting and there was a very strong, there's an almost like a hallucinogenic aspect of fasting, especially because it was a 72 hour fast versus a more common fast that I do, which is 24 hours. You know, and a bunch of people talk about throughout history about the value of fasting and having these kind of visual, these kind of intellectual experiences. Also there's meditation, Sam Harris with the hoodie. Do you have a sense that those other rituals of fasting, of meditation, and maybe other things could be as essential or more essential to the religious experience as psychedelics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, if not, and this is going to sound weird, but maybe not if more so. I look at psychedelics as a catalyst for spiritual investigation, not as the superficial means to an end. I think their value is in kind of serving as a Google Maps for the kingdom of heaven." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I like this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so Ram Dass' teacher said that when he was offered psychedelics, that it'll get you in the room with Jesus, but it won't keep you there. And I think that's all well and good, but what if you don't know where the house is in the first place? What if you've never had a mystical experience? What if religion is anathema to you? What if you hate God? What if all these words mean nothing to you? And they probably do for many, many people, and it's perfectly understandable. I think that we've lost the coordinates to these irrational states, again, that were prized throughout antiquity and that continue to be prized by the mystical communities, even in big organized religion. It just doesn't filter out that much. And so psychedelics, in my mind, help orient our minds, bodies, and souls towards the irrational, right? We talked about McKenna's invisible world that seems to have this symbiosis with our own and perhaps has this higher intent for us. You could very well just take catalog of your dreams. And that would do it too. But psychedelics seem to be particularly fast acting, particularly potent, and very reliable, especially in the clinical studies. And so I looked at them as biochemical discoveries, like Huxley did. Maybe it's once. in your life or infrequently, right? But maybe that's the beginning of a genuine introspection and a life well-examined as the ancients always instructed us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it does seem like in the research that the effectiveness of psychedelics always comes with the integration where you use it, just like you said, as a catalyst for thinking through stuff. It's not going to be, I don't even know if Google Maps Maybe Google Maps is the right analogy, but it doesn't do the driving for you. You still have to do the driving. It just kind of gives you the directions. So after you come down from the trip or whatever, you still have to drive. There's other tools that are kind of interesting. We've been talking about this at the psychological level, but there's also a neuroscience perspective of it. If we kind of like go past the skull into the brain with the neurons firing, there's ideas of brain-computer interfaces. First of all, there's a whole field of neuroscience that's kind of zooming in and studying the firing of the brain, the firing of the neurons in the brain. of how from those neurons emerges all the things that we think that makes us human. That's a fascinating exploration of the human mind. That's, of course, where the psychedelics have the chemical, the biochemical effects on those neurons. There's ideas of brain-computer interfaces, which if you look at, especially what Neuralink is doing with this long-term vision, with Elon Musk and Neuralink, they hope to expand, he calls it a wizard hat. This is back to the humor on the internet thing. The wizard hat that expands the capabilities, the capacity of the human mind. Do you think there's something there or Is the human mind so infinitely complex that we're quite a long way away from expanding the capabilities of the human mind through technology versus something like psychedelics?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wonder how Terence McKenna would answer that question. He looked to shamans as kind of the scientists, the high magicians of the high archaic past and the far flung future. I'm not gonna discount, you know more about AI than I do, so I'm not gonna discount it, but I do think that AI paired with the sacred recovery, right? The archeology of consciousness and these states, these archaic techniques of ecstasy that were practiced across time, I think that's a winning combination. Part of what I do in the book is just I try and lay out the set and setting. That's often talked about with psychedelics. I mean, so maybe psychedelics in the right AI environment is gonna work. I think it'd probably work a lot better with that myth and ritual incorporated. So the reason elusives worked for 2000 years, and let's assume the psychedelic hypothesis has some merit to it, but I think the reason it worked is because you were born into a mythology. You were born into a story about Demeter and Persephone, and you wait at your entire life to meet them in the flesh. So you weren't just preparing for a few months. It was a lifetime of expectation, anticipation, ritual preparation. In fact, some of the early church fathers made fun of the Greeks for essentially just piquing people's curiosity and revving up the anticipation, which has something to do with the outcome, by the way. But in other words, I think we need to create a new mythology. around this. I don't think you pop into a laboratory. I don't think you pop into a retreat center from one day to the next. I think that in my own case, I feel like I've been preparing 12 years. for psychedelics, and I'm still preparing, including in today's conversation. I'm learning new things, and I'm willing to explore it together with the computer interface. But I do think ritual is a gigantic part of this, and even McKenna would say that. I'll paraphrase him by saying that if you'd met someone who didn't know where they were, between the years 1995 and 2005, you would describe them as a fairly damaged person. And yet, who among us knows what was happening in Western civilization between 900 and 1300, let alone 2,500 years ago? So this is, in many ways, the prophet of the psychedelic renaissance saying that history has lessons. And I don't think they're superficial lessons. I think it cuts to the very core of how and why Western civilization came to be born." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but that history can be loaded into AI systems, and I do love the idea of whether it's through brain-computer interfaces or without intrusive sort of, without direct reading of the neurons and more sort of interactive experience with a robot, that you can have an AI system that steers your psychedelic experience. That, helps you sort of, when you take a heroic dose of psilocybin, for example, helps steer you, steer your mind, say just the right things. I mean, you could say that kind of thing with, it's a totally open problem, I would say. You talk about set and setting, this is the interesting thing about, Johns Hopkins is, you know, you create a comfortable environment, a safe environment for allowing then if you take a like a large dose of psilocybin that you can trust that everything will be safe and you can really allow the exploration of your mind. But then you don't know from a psychotherapy perspective of like during that trip, what a human should say to steer that trip. Like that's a totally open set of problems. And in some sense, probably throughout history, those rituals, you figured out what are the right things to say to each other, how to collaborate. And maybe if you can turn that into an optimization problem, AI could figure that out much, much quicker." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm with you. So Eleusis was known for three things, the legomena, the dromena, the deignumena, the things said, the things done, the things shown. If you can pack that all into your AI interface, I'm in, Lex Friedman." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm going to write a proposal and then try to get it through the IRB at MIT. I mean, there's a certain sense in which I definitely wanted to explore psychedelics, I mean, in my personal life, but also more rigorously as a scientist, and to push that forward, and especially in the AI space. And it is difficult how to do that dance. when there's gray areas of legality and all those kinds of things. And we're dancing around them. And some of that is language. And some of that is what we socially conceive of as drugs or not. And you're right that perhaps we can reframe it as religious experiences, all those kinds of things. I mean, it's fascinating because it feels like there's a bunch of tools before us that were used by the ancients that we're not utilizing for exploring the human mind. that we very well could be in a rigorous scientific way, in a safe way. And that's fascinating. There's this interesting period in the 20th century of LSD use. that many of the people doing research on psychedelics now kind of have their roots in that history. I mentioned that Dr. Rick Dalvin, he is one of those people. And there's this interesting story of a bunch of creatives that used LSD or other drugs to help them. What do you make of the idea of somebody like Ken Kesey who wrote, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in part under the influence of LSD? Like, what do you make, of the use of psychedelics to maximize the creative potential of the human mind. Is this a crutch or is this actually an effective tool that we should explore?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One person's crutch might be another's bungee cord. You know, it depends on that mind. Yeah. Think about Paul McCartney. I mean, we might not have some of the better Beatles music in the absence of LSD. And what did Sir Paul say in 1967 when he was asked about his use of LSD? He said that he recognized the dangers inherent in it, but that he did it with a very specific, very deliberate purpose in mind. He wanted to find the answer to what life is all about. And I'm not sure what Sir Paul is doing this week, but he's probably not doing LSD. Speaking back to my theory about these substances being catalyzers of spiritual introspection, it came along at a time in their life when I think they were ripe for it, especially George Harrison. I highly recommend the Martin Scorsese documentary. about George Harrison. For them, I think it was exactly the way we ought to investigate it, which is, well, mind expanders. This is what psychedelics do, right? That which makes manifest the contents of the mind. In the absence of an experience like that, and it can be in a three-day fast, it can be laying down in a cave, It can be in ritual chanting, it can be in a sun dance, but in the absence of that kind of experience at the right time in your life, it may otherwise be very difficult to find entrance to that kingdom of heaven, which I do think is here and now, getting right back to the very beginning. If we are actually to participate in that eternal principle, how and when?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think Nietzsche meant when he said that God is dead? So there's a sense that religion is fading from society. And there's a cranky German that kind of wrote about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He was a cranky German who knew a lot about Dionysus, by the way. Yeah, he did. Which is why I like him. So certainly there's some truth to the mortality of God. I think Gallup put out a study only a couple months ago where church membership is now officially in the minority in the United States at 47%, according to the most recent poll. That number was closer to 70% only 20 years ago. Wow. So we're living through something. And we're living through the unchurching of America, and it's the rise of the spiritual but not religious, you know, the inheritor of all traditions but the slave to none. There's a rise in the unaffiliated, the nuns. I think it was like one-third of millennials. It's probably much higher now that don't affiliate with any religion. So in that sense, God is absolutely dead. but maybe not the God that we were trying to define at the very beginning. So Nietzsche also looked forward to the Übermensch, which would be a fully realized human being that despite the death of God, did not fall into nihilism and amorality, existential despair, all that great German stuff. And there are some commentators who talk about this eternal recurrence, that just maybe by incorporating some of these techniques, not necessarily doctrine and dogma, but I would say the techniques of antiquity. And again, Nietzsche writes a lot about the rationality of Dionysus having its place in society. If anything, these biochemical discoveries, I think, point us back. They point us back to Dionysus and their responsible incorporation of the irrational into our otherwise society of rational people and our kazooistry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I have a sense that there'll be kind of, just kind of as you've implied, that there'll be, maybe the God of old is dying and there'll be a rebirth of different kind of God and it'll just keep happening throughout history. I do think there will be a time where AI will be the gods we look to. The other, the super intelligent, those kinds of things. There's a little bit of an inkling of, religious longing for meaning in the way people conceive of aliens currently. I mean, I talked to a bunch of people about UFOs, EOPs and aliens. And so to me, it's very interesting for perhaps different reasons, because I'm just I look up to the stars and it's incredibly humbling to me to think that there's Trillions of intelligent alien civilizations out there which to me seems likely or not perhaps not intelligent perhaps just alien life and actually also that we don't even understand what it means to be intelligent or do we understand what it means to be alive the time scale the spatial scale which is patterns of atoms can form in a way that you can call life. It's just could be way weirder than we can imagine. And certainly way different than human life. Anyway, that to me is humbling. And so it's almost like with the simulation, conceiving of the world of simulation, thinking of aliens to me is a useful thought experiment of like, what would aliens look like if they visited? How would we know? How would we communicate with them? How would we send signals to them if they're already here and we don't see them? How's that possible? That seems to me actually likely that we would just be too self-centered and too dumb to see them if they're already here. Anyway, but so that's kind of the, Almost the pragmatic, the engineering, the physics sense of aliens. But there's also kind of a longing to connect with other intelligent beings out there, both the fear and the excitement of that. It has kind of a religious aspect to it that I find fascinating. And in the right context, when you remove the skepticism of government from that, it's actually a hopeful longing. Do you have a, do you see this kind of interest in aliens? Is it all connected to your study of religion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you're the first person to ask me about aliens in eight months. So it looks like I'm going on the record. I'll drop some J. Allen Hynek on you. So Hynek, involved in Project Blue Book, famously says in 1966, when the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, and we're assuming that UFOs have something to do with aliens, but when the long-awaited solution comes, I believe it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and unexpected quantum leap. In other words, I do not think that we're dealing with flesh and blood beings in nuts and bolts crafts. I think it's way, way more complicated than that. And if anything, it takes me back to the ancient world. It takes me back to this invisible college of beings of apparent higher intent. It takes me to the geniuses and the muses. So the first document in Western civilization, Homer's epics, they begin by invoking an alien. They invoke a muse. Tell me, oh muse, about the man. So Homer isn't inventing poetry. He's channeling poetry, epic poetry from an alien intelligence. Maybe that intelligence has felt a little unrecognized in recent years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Trying to show up in human recognizable forms. The muse is trying to give a little hints of its existence. Yeah, I mean, I have a, I've been saying, I honestly sort of, I don't believe this, but I think about this, whether alien, like muse is a great example, whether aliens could be thoughts Ideas we have are the aliens, or consciousness itself is the methods by which aliens communicate with us. I find this very kind of liberating to expand our conception of what intelligent beings are." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You would like Julian Jaynes. Julian Jaynes writes a great book. the origins of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind. It's this theory that the ancient Greek mind was very different from ours, and that when they heard the muses, or the gods and goddesses for that matter, they would hear them as voices in the head. and hear it as an internal God figure offering commands, which they couldn't ignore. So were they walking schizophrenics? It might be one way to talk about it before the breakdown of the bicameral mind. But it's a provocative theory, largely untestable. But when you're reading ancient Greek, and Latin for that matter, You can't read it very long without bumping up against these discarnate entities. They're everywhere. And they survived. They persist across time, which is even stranger. Not just in the form of all the things my daughters like, like fairies and gnomes and elves, but And McKenna loves this, the sylphs and the boulder grinders and the sprites and the gins and elementals. Every society has them. It seems to be fairly universal. And they largely exist in folklore, mythology. This is what Jacques Vallée writes about so wonderfully." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We've kind of been sneaking around it, but let me ask you from yours, from everything we've been talking about, how do you think about consciousness? Is it a fun little trick that the human mind does, or is it somehow fundamental to this whole thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So this three pound lump of jelly, inside our craniums that can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space, it can contemplate the meaning of infinity, and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity, that peculiar self-recursive quality that we call self-awareness. So this is the hard problem, right? This is the unknowable, the unknown at least. I don't know. I have no good answer for that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Aside from that- Do you think it's somehow deeply fundamental to the human experience or is it just a trick? So you have like, I mean, Sam Harris has really been making me think about this. So, you know, calling free will an illusion. The interesting thing about Sam is it's not just a philosophical little chat with him about free will. he really says he experiences the lack of free will. Like he's able to, you know, large parts of the day to feel like he has no free will. In that same way, now he thinks that consciousness is not an illusion. It is, you know, it's a real thing, but at the same, I'm more almost like, I'm almost more of like consciousness seems to be a little bit of an illusion in the sense that like, it feels like maybe this is a robotics AI perspective, but it feels like in that same way that Sam steps outside of, feeling like he has an agency, feeling like he has a free will, I feel like we should be able to step outside of having a consciousness. Hmm. So that for my perspective, maybe that's a hopeful perspective for trying to engineer consciousness. But do you think consciousness is like at the core of this or is it just like language or almost like a thing we build on top of much deeper human the things that makes us human." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. I am attracted to Lenz's notion of biocentrism. I mean, it's difficult to walk away from the double-slit experiment not wondering why we seem capable of collapsing that quantum wave function. It's very, very weird, giving rise to even weirder ideas about superposition and spooky action at a distance and things that MIT guys know a lot better than me. But it seems to me fundamental. Maybe consciousness is the fundamental thing. I mean, weirdly, some of these ancient incubatory practices. I talked about Peter Kingsley before. So he's not a proponent of ancient psychedelic use, but is a proponent of these ancient rites of incubation that were practiced by Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, other pre-Socratics. And so what were they doing? They were trying to get in touch with consciousness. They were entering into suspended states of animation. in these cave-like settings. Pythagoras had built one in his basement and would lie down motionless, apparently, for long periods of time. And what I think they were trying to do was tap into and trying to answer this question in their own, you could call it a scientific way, actually, less religion than science. And what they would discover or try to discover was a state of awareness that is somehow beyond life and death. beyond waking and dreaming, where you can be aware of the senses but also in touch with another reality at the exact same time, what Kingsley calls sensation. That, I think, is definitely worth exploring." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, and the way I hope to explore is by trying to build it. Everybody uses the tools they have. Well, no, I do also hope psychedelics can help. So how do you build that? I'm curious. That's a whole nother discussion. There's a lot of things I could say here, but let me put simply is I believe that you can go a long way towards building consciousness by trying to fake consciousness. So fake it till you make it, as an engineering approach, I think will work for consciousness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You seem satisfied with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm satisfied with that because I know how deeply unsatisfied others are, but just wait. So. I mean, I don't know what to, so most, the topic of consciousness is mostly handled by philosophers currently. And that's great. And they're, philosophers are wonderful and good at what they do. I'm not a philosopher. I'm an engineer. And I think the approach there is quite different. I think, falling in love is different than trying to have a podcast conversation about what is love. You know, I think the engineering effort is just fundamentally different than the philosophical effort. And I have a sense that consciousness can be engineered even before it is understood by the philosophers. So I think there's a bunch of things like that in this world that could be engineered before they're understood. I think the intelligence is one such thing. I think we'll be able to engineer super intelligent beings before we're able to understand the human mind. That's, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of intuition to unpack there of why that is, but as it stands, that's perhaps my engineering optimism and engineering ethic under which I operate. Consciousness is easy to build, hard to understand. Okay. Are there books or movies in your life long ago or recently that had a big impact on you? You've, Immortality Key is exceptionally well-researched. The amount of books you read is, I cannot even imagine. So is there something in those, in your travels through the land of language that stuck with you that was especially impactful?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mentioned a couple of them, So I knew nothing about psychedelics before 2007. And it was in hearing about some of the first psilocybin experiments at Hopkins. And then shortly thereafter, I went down this rabbit hole. And so the first set of recommendations all kind of fit in that time period in my life. 2007-2008. It started with Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. It was a total impulse buy at the Barnes & Noble on 6th Avenue in New York. and wound up introducing me to Supernatural by Graham Hancock. That convinced me that there was a long story to psychedelics that he tried to prove in that book and that we're still trying to prove. I mentioned the connection between ritual psychedelics and cave art. This is the neuropsychological model that was first proposed by David Lewis Williams at the University of Waterstrand, the same university where Lee Berger is, by the way, in South Africa. So these ideas are old. But what Graham did in that book is just, it's well worth your time. It's well worth a few reads, actually. Because it was after that that I discovered Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck and a lot of other books that just kind of blew my mind." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is Breaking Open the Head about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's Daniel's romp through contemporary shamanism. And it's his very well-told experiences with everything from psilocybin to iboga being initiated by the Buitis. And it was the first time I'd read any firsthand accounts, aside from Jeremy Narby, any firsthand accounts by a New Yorker, by the way. about the potential for these compounds that I'd been ignoring for far too long, obviously. And so that's when I started revisiting The Road to Eleusis and looking through the anthropological literature, reading everything Gordon Wasson had ever written, that Karl Ruck had written. And it sent me down a pretty weird rabbit hole until I found Peter Kingsley. which is my second recommendation. So Peter, again, he's not a fan of the psychedelic hypothesis. But what he does is, I think, expose the value of the irrational to the ancient Greeks, especially the pre-Socratics. Here we are talking about AI and God and these entangled philosophical questions. The best I can read Kingsley is that Western civilization is a product of a gift from the goddess Persephone. And this is not a hippie, this is a pretty gold standard classicist who went on to write a couple of books. One is In the Dark Places of Wisdom and the other is Reality. what better way to title your book, where he talks about these ancient techniques for exploring the irrational. The same thing Karl Ruck was talking about. After compiling all this data in The Road to Eleusis, Ruck says that the biggest challenge is trying to convince his colleagues in the late 1970s that the ancient Greeks And indeed, some of the most famous and intelligent among them could enter so fully into a rationality. Same thing Nietzsche is talking about in his exploration of Dionysus. And so I think Kingsley just stands apart as one of those books, reality, that my life was never quite the same after reading that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We talked about the three pound jelly that is able to conceive of the entirety of the fabric of reality in the universe and everything and also of its own mortality. What do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of life? Is a three pound jelly able to answer that one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but I can plagiarize Joseph Campbell, which is good enough. Joe Campbell says that, you know, I don't think what we're looking for is a meaning of life. I think what we're looking for is an experience of being alive so that the experiences we have on the purely physical plane will have resonances within that are those of our innermost being and reality. You talked about the true reality, absolute truth. These are all constructs, and I think they're constructs that are made day by day and acquire this aura of factuality, remembering Clifford Geertz's definition of religion. we're all just faking it until we make it. And I think a lot of that has to do with moods and motivations and feelings and emotions, which is not to discredit facts and figures. But I think that meaning, meaning making, is a very subjective process that is not only difficult to talk about, but difficult to quantify." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And experience is a primary in that versus... So like the actual subjective experience is primary to the meaning making process versus like some kind of rigorous analysis of like having an algorithm that runs and computes and then finally spits out 42." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this is how families are created. Tell me more about this. Well, my wife and I fell in love and made babies. We didn't type up an Excel sheet and figure out the best way to go about this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's what I've been doing wrong all these years. That's why I'm single." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Too many Excel sheets. Well, we say falling in love, right? We say fall in love. What does that mean, to fall in love? You are surrendering to an intelligence that is beyond us. You could say a God-like intelligence. Richard Rohr, the Franciscan friar I mentioned, in The Universal Christ, he writes a lot about how the divine for you is often encountered in the other. In fact, how could it be otherwise? This is bedrock sacramental theology that you find the God in the things in your life, as well you should. That's the proving ground for identifying as God rather than creating a relationship with God. And so I think that these irrational states play a big role in that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Irrational. Well, I don't think there's a better way to end it than on the topic of love. Brian, thank you so much for a brilliant exposition of history and the poetry. I really appreciate you talking with me today." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't get me started. So first of all, as an engineering feat, the human epigenome manages the most compact, the most incredible compaction you could imagine. So every single one of your cells contains two meters worth of DNA. And this is compacted in a radius which is one thousandth of a millimeter. That's six orders of magnitude. To give you a sense of scale, it's as if a string as tall as the Burj Al Khalifa, which is about a kilometer tall, was compacted into a tiny little ball the size of a millimeter. And if you put it all together, if you stretch the trillions of cells that we have, we have about 30 trillion cells in your body, if you stretch the DNA, the two meters worth of DNA in every one of your trillion cells, you would basically reach all the way to Jupiter a hundred times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's all curled up in there. It's 30 trillion cells. 30 trillion cells." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A human body. Every one of them, two meters worth of DNA. So all of that is compacted through the epigenome. The epigenome basically has the ability to compact this massive amount of DNA from here to Jupiter 10 times into one human body, into just the nuclei of one human body, and the vast majority of human bodies not even need these nuclei. And that's sort of the structural part. So that's the boring part, that's the structural part. The functional part is way more interesting. So functionally, what the human epigenome allows you to do, is basically control the activity patterns of thousands of genes. So 20,000 genes in your human body, every one of your cells only needs a few thousand of those, but a different few thousand of those. And the way that your cells remember what their identity is, is basically driven by the epigenome. So the epigenome is both structural, in sort of making this dramatic compaction, and it's also functional in being able to actually control the activity patterns of all your cells." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now, can we draw a definition, distinction between the genome and the epigenome?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, being Greek, epi means on top of. So the genome is the DNA, and the epigenome is anything on top of the DNA. And there's three types of things on top of the DNA. The first is chemical modifications on the DNA itself. So we like to think of four bases of the DNA, A, C, G, T. C has a methyl form, which is sometimes referred to as the fifth base. So methyl C takes a different meaning. So in the same way that you have annotations in a orchestra score that basically say whether you should play something softly or loudly or space it out or, you know, interpret basically the score, the human epigenome allows you to modify that primary score. So a modified C basically says, play this one softly. It's basically a sign of repression in a gene regulatory region." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I love how you're talking about the function that emerges from the epigenome as a musical score." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is in many ways. And every single cell plays a different part of that score. It's like having all of human knowledge in 23 volumes, like 23 giant books, which are your chromosomes. And every single cell has a different profession, a different role. Some cells play the piano and they're looking at chapters 7 from chromosome 23 and chapters 4 from chromosome 2 and so on and so forth. And each of those pieces are all encoding in the same DNA. But what the epigenome allows you to do is effectively conduct the orchestra and sort of coordinate the pieces so that every instrument plays only the things that it needs to play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One thing that kind of blows my mind, maybe you can tell me your thoughts about it, is the way evolution works with natural selection is based on the final sort of, the entirety of the orchestra musical performance. But there's these incredibly rich structural things, like each one of them doing their own little job, that somehow work together. The evolution selects based on the final result, and yet all the individual pieces are doing infinitely minuscule, specific things. How the heck does that work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a very good insight. And you can even go beyond that and basically say evolution doesn't select at the level of an organism, it actually selects at the level of whole environments, whole ecosystems. So let me break this down. So you basically have at the very bottom every single nucleotide being selected. But then that nucleotide's function is selected at the level of each gene and every, not even each gene, each gene regulatory control element. And then those control elements are basically converging onto the function of the gene. And many genes are converging onto the function of one cell. And many cells are converging onto the function of one tissue or organ. And all of these organs are converging onto the level of an organism. But now that organism is not in isolation. So if you basically think about why is altruism, for example, a thing? Why are people being nice to each other? it was probably selected. And it was probably selected because those species that were just nasty to each other didn't survive as a species. And now if you think about symbiosis of, you know, there's plants, for example, that love CO2, and there's humans that love O2. And we're sort of, you know, trading different types of gases to each other. If you look at ecosystems where one organism was just really nasty, that organism actually died because everyone they were being nasty to was killed off. And then that kind of, you know, universe of life is gone. So basically what emerges is selection at so many different layers of benefit, including all of these nucleotides within a body interacting for the emergent functions at the body level." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I wonder if it's possible to break it down into levels, that selection, even beyond humans, like you said, environment, but there's environments at all different levels too, right? At the minuscule, at the organ level, at the tissue level, like you said, maybe at the microscopic level. It'd be fascinating if there's a kind of selection going on at both the quantum level and the galaxy level. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of all different forms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let's again sort of break down these different layers. So basically, if you think about the environment in which a gene operates, that gene, of course, the first definition of environment that we think of is pollution, or sunlight, or heat, or cold, and so on and so forth. That's the external environment. But every gene also operates at the level of the internal cellular environment that it's in. If I take a gene from, say, an African individual, and I put it in a European context, Will it perform the same way? Probably not, because there's a cellular context of thousands of other genes that that gene has co-evolved with. in the Out of Africa event and all of this sort of human history of evolution. So basically, if you look at Neanderthal genes, for example, which again happened long after that Out of Africa event, there's incompatibilities between Neanderthal genes and modern human genes. that can lead to diseases. So in the context of the Neanderthal genome, that gene version, that allele was fine. But in the context of the modern human genome, that Neanderthal gene version is actually detrimental. So it's, you know, that cellular environment constitutes the genetics of that gene, but also of course, all of the epigenomics of that gene." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fascinating that the gene has a history. I mean, we talked about this a little bit last time, and then some of your research goes into that, but the genes as they are today have a story from the beginning of time. And then sometimes their story was like, their path was useful for survival for the particular organisms and sometimes not. That's fascinating. Let me ask as a tangent, we kind of started talking offline about Neanderthals. Do you have something interesting genetically, biologically, in terms of difference between Neanderthal and like the different branches of human evolution? that you find fascinating?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Neanderthals are only one of about five branches that we are pretty confident about. Branches of? Out of Africa events. So basically there's Neanderthals, there's Denisovans, What is the evidence for denisovans? One tiny little fragment of one pinky from one cave in Siberia." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Relatively recently discovered, right? Less than 10 years ago. Yeah. And those are like little folks, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, no, no. That's yet another one though. Homo florensis. It had the little folks in sort of Indonesia. But then Denisovans are basically another branch that we only know about genetically from that one bone and eventually we realize that it's one of the three major branches along with Neanderthal, modern human and Denisovan. And then that one branch has now resurfaced in many different areas and we kind of know about the gene flow that happened in between them. So when I was reading my Greek mythology, it was talking about the age of the heroes, these eras of human-like precursors that were wiped out by Zeus or by all kinds of wars and so on and so forth, like the Titans and the, you know, it's ridiculous. to sort of read these stories as a kid because you're like, oh yeah, whatever. And then you're growing up and you're like, whoa, layers and layers of human-like ancestors. And who knows if those stories were inspired by bones that they found that kind of looked human-like, but were not quite human-like. Who knows if stories of dragons were inspired by bones of dinosaurs? Basically, this archaeological evidence has been there and has probably entered the folk imagination, migrated into those stories. But it's not that far removed from what actually happened of massive wars of wiping out Neanderthals as modern humans are populating Europe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think what killed the Neanderthals and all those other branches is human conflict or is it genetic conflict? So, is it us humans being the opposite of altruistic towards each other or is it competition at some other level, as we're discussing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so if you look at a lot of human traits today, they're probably not that far removed from the human traits that got us where we are now. So, you know, this whole tribalism, you know, you're my sports team or you're my, you know, political party or you're my, you know, tiny little village. And therefore, you know, if you're from that other village, I hate you. But as soon as we're both in the major city, I can't believe we're from the same region, my friend, come here, my family. And like two neighboring countries fighting. And as soon as they're off in another country, you're like, oh, I can't believe that. So it's kind of funny, like this tribalism is nonsensical in many ways. It's like cognitive incongruent, that basically we like kin and selection for sort of liking kin is hugely advantageous genetically. Probably across all kinds of organs, across all kinds of life. Of course, yeah. So basically if you now transport that to the sort of humans arriving in Europe and Neanderthals are everywhere, what are you gonna do? You're gonna kill them off. you know, there's this battle for territory, and this battle for they're not like us, we have to get rid of them. So basically there's a, you know, very interesting mix there, but and yet, and yet, when you look at the genetics, there's tons of gene flow between them. So basically, you know, love, romance between new species." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We have tribes, but love spans the gap between the different tribes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's Romeo and Juliet across species boundaries." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sneaks away from the village to hang out with the musicians." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But even before the out of Africa, there's, you know, within Africa selection, which was probably massive battles of larger and larger tribes selecting for our social networking and savviness and, you know, probably all our conspiracy theory genes are, you know, dating back from then. And, you know, so there's a lot of this mischievousness in the history of human evolution that unfortunately is still present in many ugly forms today, but probably contributed to our success as a species in wiping out other species." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It just sucks that we don't have neighboring species that are intelligent like us, but yet very different than us. So we have like You know, dogs, or wolves, I guess, co-evolved. They figured out how to neighbor up with humans in a friendly way and collaborate and develop in time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're describing this as if the wolves made a choice. It's possible that the wolves never had a say, that basically humans were just so overpowering that they had captive wolves and then at every generation killed off eight of the nine pups and only kept the one that was milder. And it only takes a few generations to then sort of have pups that are really mild." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so the Neanderthals weren't useful. in the same way that wolves were." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if it's a question of useful. They were probably super useful. My thinking is that they were scary. That basically something that almost resembles you is something that you try to eliminate first. It's too close. And speaking of species that are intelligent and sort of what's left of evolution, It is a shame, exactly like you say, that so many different amazing life forms were extinct and the kind of boring ones remained. So if you look at dinosaurs, I mean, the diversity that they had, if you look at sub, you know, like there's just so many different lineages of life that were just abruptly killed. And yet, out of that death emerged, you know, many new kinds of really awesome lineages." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there was, in the history of life on Earth, species that may be still alive today that are more intelligent than humans? And we just don't know? Like dolphins? So there's a case to be made for dolphins." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like, if you look at their brains, if you look at the way that they play, if you look at the way that they learn, you know, I mean, they don't have opposable thumbs and we do. So, you know, that probably made a big difference." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's terrifying to think that, like, not terrifying. I don't know how to feel about it, that they're more intelligent than us. It's like the hitchhiker's guide." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know. But how do you define intelligence? Basically, like I was saying last time, you know, stupid is as stupid does and smart is as smart does. So if the dolphins are basically super smart, figured out the meaning of life and just go around playing with water all day, which is probably the meaning of life. then we wouldn't know, because all they're doing is kicking water just like sharks are, and sharks are probably pretty stupid. So basically, it's very difficult to sort of judge a species' intelligence unless they kind of go out of their way to demonstrate it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and that's instructive for our understanding of any kind of life form. You know, I recently talked to Sarah Seager looking for life out there on other planets. It'd be fascinating to think if we discover a habitable planet, outside of Earth in one day, maybe many centuries away, or be able to travel with like a robot there, how would we actually know that this species would probably be able to detect that it's a living being, but how would we know if it's an intelligent being? I mean, it's both exciting and terrifying to sort of come face to face with a life form that's of another world. like something that clearly is moving in a, how would you say, like a deliberate way, and to then like ask, well, how do I ask that thing whether it's intelligent?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but the question that you're asking is applicable to every species on the earth now. On earth now, yeah. So basically, dolphins are a great example. We know that they're clearly capable hardware-wise and behavior-wise of intelligence. How do we communicate? So basically, if your question is about crossing species boundaries of communication, The way that I want to put it is that humans have achieved a level of sophistication in our behaviors, in our communication, in our language, in our ways of expressing ourselves, that I have no doubt that if we encountered a human-like form of intelligence, we'd figure out their language in a few weeks. Like, it'd be just fine. As long as, you know, of course, they're both trusting each other, not annihilating each other, and not sort of fearing each other and attacking each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about, let me ask, just out of curiosity and into science fiction land a little bit, so clearly you're one of the top scientists in the world, so if we were to discover an alien life form, you would be brought in to study its genetics, Do you think the epigenome that we talked about, the genome, the code, the digital code that underlies that alien life form would be similar to ours? In fundamental ways, maybe not exactly, but in fundamental ways, how it's structured?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so you're getting to the very definition of life. You're getting to the very definition of what makes life life and how do we decode that life. And it's so easy to think that every life form would basically have to like oxygen, have to like heat from the sun and rely on sort of being in the habitable zone of its solar system and so on and so forth. But I think we have to sort of go beyond this sort of, oh, life on another planet must be exactly like life is on Earth. Because of course, life on Earth happens to rely on the proximity to the sun and benefit from that amount of energy. But we're talking at timescales of human life, where we kind of live, I don't know, between, and I'm gonna be super wide here, we're gonna live between six Earth months and 200 Earth months, or 200 Earth years. So basically, if you look at the timescale that we inhabit on Earth, it is very much dictated by the amount of energy that we receive from the sun. If you look at, I don't know, Europa, you know, the smallest, the fourth smallest moon of Jupiter, the smallest of the Galilean moons, and also the smallest in its distance from Jupiter. It has an iron core, it has a rock exterior, it has ice all around it, and it has probably massive liquid oceans underneath. And the gravitational pull of Jupiter is probably creating all kinds of movement under that ice. How did life evolve on Earth? Yes, sure, life now, most of life that we above the surface look at has to do with exploiting the solar energy for our daily behavior. But that's not the case everywhere on the planet. If you look at the bottom of the ocean, There are hydrothermal vents, there's both black smokers and white smokers, and they are near these volcanic ducts that basically emanate a massive amount of energy from the core of our planet. What does life need? It needs energy. Does it need energy from the sun? It couldn't care less. Does it need energy from, you know, the Earth itself? Yeah, possibly. It could use that. And if you look at how did life evolve on, you know, on Earth, there are many theories. I mean, a kind of silly theory is that it came from outer space. That basically there's a meteorite out there that sort of landed on Earth and brought with it DNA material. I think it's a little silly because it kind of pushes the buck down the road. Basically, the next question is how did it fall over there? Whereas our planet has basically all of the right ingredients, why wouldn't it evolve here? So basically, let's kind of ignore that one. And now the two other competing hypotheses are from the outside in or from the inside out. What's that mean? From the outside in means from the surface to the bottom of the ocean. From the inside out means from the bottom of the ocean to the surface. So life on the surface is pretty brutal. Life obviously evolved in the water and then there was an out of water event. But basically before it exited, it was clearly in the water, which is a much nicer and shielded environment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just to be clear, on the surface, are you referring to the... The surface of the sea or the bottom of the sea? Versus the bottom of the sea. And you're saying life on the surface is harsh." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Life outside the water is horrible. It takes huge amounts of evolutionary innovations to sustain living outside the water." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What, that's so interesting. Why is that? So it's easier to, life is easier in the water. Maybe, see, I'm telling dolphins are onto something." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "We are 70% water. No, dolphins went back into the water." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Really? Of course. Oh, because dolphins are mammals. Of course, yeah. Interesting. Well, again, they might be smarter. They went back." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're like, screw this. So if you basically think about the fact that we are 70% water, we're basically transporting the sea with us, outside the sea. If we don't have water for about 24 hours, we're dry. And if you look at life under the sea, I mean, I don't know if you're a diver, but when you go diving, your brain explodes. Again, when I say the boring life forms is what we see all the time, like tetrapods. I mean, what a stupid, boring body plan. Seriously. Like, just go diving and you'll see that a tiny little minority of the stuff under the sea, under the surface of the sea, is actually tetrapods. It's like, you know, snails with all kinds of crazy appendages and colors and, you know, round things and five-way symmetric things and, you know, eight-way symmetric things, all kinds of crazy body plans. And only the tetrapod fish managed to get out. And then they gave rise to all the boring plans we kind of see today of basically, you know, humans with four limbs, birds with four limbs, lizards with four limbs, and, you know, It's kind of boring. If you look at, by comparison, life underwater is teeming with diversity. So now let's roll back the clock and basically say, where did life in the ocean come from? From the surface or from the bottom? Exactly, those two options you were mentioning. Exactly. So basically, life on the surface is one option. And then the idea there is that there's tides with the moon and the sun sort of causing all this movement. And this movement is basically causing nutrients to sort of coalesce and bounce around, et cetera. That's one option. The second option, massive amount of energy from the core of our planet basically exploited. leading to these basic ingredients of life forms. And what are these basic ingredients? Metabolism, being able to take energy from the environment and put it as part of yourself. Metabolism, it basically means transformation, again, in the Greek. It basically means taking stuff from, you know, like nutrients or energy source or anything, and then making it your own. The second one is compartmentalization. If there's no notion of self, there can't be evolution. You have to know where your own boundaries end and where the non-self boundaries begin. And that's basically the lipid bilayer nowadays, which is extremely simple to form. It's basically just a bunch of lipids, and then they eventually just self-organize into a membrane. So that's a very natural way of forming a self. And then the third component is replication. Replication doesn't need to be self-replication. It could be A helps make more of B, B helps make more of C, and C helps make more of A. Any kind of self-reinforcement is what you need to ignite the process of evolution. After you've ignited that process, You know, I don't want to say all hell breaks loose, but all paradise breaks loose. So basically you then boom, you know, have life going. And the moment you have A, B, C, some kind of thing looping back onto A, you can make modifications and you can improve. And then you let natural selection work." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there some element of that that's like some state representation that stores information? Maybe I should say information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is that a fundamental part of life? We like to think of life as the information propagation, which is DNA, the messenger, which is RNA, and then the action, which is protein. So basically, DNA, we think, is an essential part of life. That's where the storage is. And therefore, that early life forms must have had some kind of storage medium, DNA. If you look at how life actually evolved, DNA was invented much later. Proteins were invented later. And RNA was found by itself, thank you very much, in an RNA world. So the early version of life as we know it today was in fact RNA molecules performing all of the functions. The RNA molecule itself was the protein actuator by creating three-dimensional folds through self-hybridization. Self what? Self-hybridization. So basically the same way that DNA molecules can hybridize with themselves and basically form this double helix. The single-stranded RNA molecule can form partial double helices in various places, creating structure as if you had a long string with complementary parts, and you could then sort of design kind of like origami-like structures that will fold onto themselves. And then you can make any shape from that. That early RNA world eventually got to replication. where enzymes encoded in RNA would replicate RNA itself. And then that process basically kicked off evolution. And that process of evolution then led to major innovations. The first innovation was translation. So you start with an RNA molecule and you translate it into another kind of form, and that's the first kind of encoding. You're like, well, do you need some kind of code? Yeah, but the code was in fact one thing. It was conflated with the actuators. The actuators were separated from the code only later on. So you first had the self-replicating code, which was also the actuator, and then you kind of have a functionalization, partitioning of the functionalization, a sub-functionalization of the proteins that are now gonna be the workhorse of life, but they're not self-replicating. The code remains the RNA. So the most beautiful and most complex RNA machine known to man is the ribosome. The ribosome is this massive factory that is able to translate RNA into protein. The ribosome, I mean, if you want, I don't know, divine intervention in the history of life, the ribosome is it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's one of the great invention in the history of life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's, yeah. But again, you can't think of great inventions as one-time steps. They're basically, you know, the culmination of probably many competing software infrastructures for life preservation that won out. And then when the ribosome was so efficient at making proteins, all the other ones basically died out. And then the life forms that were using the modern ribosome were basically the more successful ones because it could make proteins. And now those proteins are much more versatile. Because RNA only has four bases, proteins eventually have 20 amino acids. Not initially, but eventually. And then they can form in much more complex shapes and they can create all kinds of additional machines. one of which is reverse transcriptase. So you basically now have RNA. Again, we like to think of transcription as the normal, reverse transcription as the oddball. Well, RNA preceded DNA, so reverse transcription actually was the first invention before transcription itself. So basically, RNA invents proteins, RNA and proteins together invent DNA. So you now have a more stable medium, a more stable backbone with two helices instead of one, two strands instead of one, the double helix. And RNA basically says, listen, I'm tired. I'm gonna delegate all information storage to DNA, and I'm gonna delegate most actuation to proteins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Proteins. But that's, to you, is not like a, That's just an efficiency thing. It's not a fundamentally new innovation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's why when you're asking, is a separate information storage medium a definition of life? I'm like, no, any kind of self-preservation, self-reinforcement. And it didn't need to be RNA-based initially. It didn't need to be self-replication initially. You just need to have enough RNA molecules randomly arising that reinforce each other that ultimately lead to the closing of that loop and the ignition of the evolutionary process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just rewind a little bit? Like if you were to bet all your money on the two options in terms of where life started. Probably the bottom. At the bottom, I don't know if this is answerable, but how hard is the first step? Or if there's something interesting you can say about that first leap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From not life to life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think it's inevitable. on Earth or just... In the universe. I think it's inevitable. If you look at Europa, you know, going back, the moon of Jupiter." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's also a really nice song by Santana." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Europa basically has all the ingredients. It has, you know, the core that can emit energy. It has the shielding through the ice sheet, protecting it, just like an atmosphere would. It even has a layer of oxygen. probably sufficiently dense to sustain life. So my guess is that there's probably independently arisen life form already teeming in Europa because as soon as it, today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that exciting or terrifying to you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's, I mean, as a scientist, I can't wait to see non-DNA based life forms. I can't wait, because we are so born in, you know, sort of borné, as I would say in French, but basically we're sort of we are so narrow-minded in our thinking of what life should look like that I can't wait for all that to just be blown away by the discovery of life elsewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me bring you into another science fiction scenario. So on that point, if we discover life on Europa and you were brought in you seem very excited, but how would you start looking at that life in a way that's useful to you as a scientist, but also not going to kill all of us? So to me, it's a little bit scary because not because it's a malevolent life, like it's a dictator petting like a cat, it's evil, but just the way life is, it seems to be very good at conquering other life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So there's a lot of science fiction movies based on that principle. And that's sort of what causes the public to be so scared. But if you think about sort of Would Europa life be scared of humans coming over and taking over? Chances are no. Not even like Earth's bacteria. Because Earth's bacteria would be wiped out in an instant in this foreign world. Because they don't know how to metabolize energy that doesn't come from the types of energy sources that are here. the levels of acidity may just kill us all off. And at the same way, in the converse way, if you bring life from Europa on Earth, it'll die instantly because it's too hot. Or because it doesn't need to know how to cope with, I don't know, the sun's radiation so close to this completely inhabitable zone by their standards. So what we call the habitable zone might actually be the inhabitable zone for them. So the difference, if the environments are sufficiently different, you think we'll just not be able to even attack each other and the basic... It'll take massive amounts of engineering to create machines that will go there and sample the oceans, basically drill through the layers of ice to basically sample and see what life is like there and detecting it will probably be trivial. It definitely won't be DNA-based. It's not like we're gonna send a sequencer. But it'll be, you know, some other kind of combination of chemicals that will look non-random." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So if you had to bet If I took that life form we find in Europa and like put it on a sandwich that you're eating and like eat that sandwich. It'll taste just fine. And you'll be, well, I know about that. I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Will it taste fine? That's interesting. So the other question is, do we have taste receptors for this?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So where does our taste come from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's basically adaptations to chemical molecules that we are used to seeing. We don't have taste buds for things we don't even know about. So we won't, yeah, we won't be able to know that this chemical tastes funny." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you think it won't be, it's likely not to be dangerous. Like it won't know how to even interact. Do you think our immune system will even detect that something weird is going on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably. And it'll be very easy to detect because it'll be very different from us. Very weird. But it won't be able to sort of attack. I mean, the scene from, I don't know, Independence Day, where like they're communicating with the computer and they're like, oh, I'm in. I mean, it's hilarious, because Macs and PCs have trouble communicating. I mean, let alone in alien technology or even alien DNA." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, now I was talking about you being a scientist on Earth, but say you were a scientist that was shipped over to Europa to investigate if there's life, what would you look for in terms of signs of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Life is unmistakable, I would say. The way that life transforms a planet surrounding it is not the kind of thing that you would expect from the physical laws alone. So I would say that as soon as life arises, it creates this compartmentalization, it starts pushing things away, it starts sort of keeping things inside that are self, and there's a whole signature that you can see from that. So when I was organizing my Meaning of Life Symposium, my friend who's an astrophysicist, basically we were deciding on what would be the themes for the symposium. And then I said, well, we're going to have biology, we're going to have physics. And she's like, oh, come on. Biology is just a small part of physics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Everything's a small part of physics, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, in many ways it is, but my immediate answer was, no, no, no, no, wait. Life challenges physics. It supersedes physics. It sort of fights against physics. And that's what I would look for in Europa. I would basically look for this fight against physics, for anything that sort of signatures of not just entropy at work, not just things diffusing away, not just gravitational pools, but clear signatures of, you remember when I was talking earlier about this whole selection for environments, selection for biospheres, for ecosystems, for these multi-organism form of life? And I think that's sort of the first thing that you can look for, you know, chemical signatures that are not simply predicted from the reactions you would get randomly." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Such a beautiful way to look at life. So you're basically leveraging some energy source to enable you to resist the physics of the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Fighting against physics. But that's the first transformation. If you look at humans, we're way past that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you mean by transformation?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So basically there's layers. I sort of see life, you know, when we talk about the meaning of life, life can be construed at many levels. We talked about life in the simplest form of sort of the ignition of evolution. And that's sort of the basic definition that you can check off. Yes, it's alive. But when Alexander the Great was asked, to whom do you owe your life? To your teachers or to your parents? And Alexander the Great answered, I owe to my parents the zine, the life itself, and I owe to my teachers the F zine, like euphony. F means good, the opposite of cacophony, which means, you know, bad. So F zine in his words was basically living a human life, a proper life. So basically we can go from the zine to the F-zine. And that transformation has taken several additional leaps. So basically, you know, life on Europa, I'm pretty sure has gotten to the stage of A makes B makes C makes A again. But getting to the F-zine is a whole other level. And that level requires cooperation. That level requires altruism. That level requires specialization. Remember how we were talking about the RNA specializing into DNA for storage, proteins, and then compartmentalizations? And if you look at prokaryotic life, there's no nucleus. It's all one soup of things intermingling. If you look at eukaryotic life, again, you for true, good, you know, so a eukaryote basically has a nucleus and that's where you compartmentalize further the organization of the information storage from all of the daily activities. If you look at a human body plan or any animal, you have a compartmentalization of the germline. You basically have one lineage that will basically be saved for the future generations. And everything outside that lineage is almost superfluous. If you think about it, the rest of your body, all it does is ensure that that lineage will make it to the next generation, that these germ lines will make it to the next generation. The rest is packaging. I'm sorry to be so blunt. And if you look at nutrition, we're deuterostomes. What does deuterostome mean? Deutero means second. where this is the second mouth. The first mouth is actually down here, it's the esophagus. So dirt or stones have evolved a second layer of eating, kind of like alien with the two mouths. So you can think of us as alien, where the first mouth is up here, and then the second mouth is down there." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And of course- Is the first mouth just the physical manipulation of the food to make it more consumable?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct, correct. And basically, again, if you look at a worm, it's an extremely simple life form. It basically has a mouth, it has an anus, and it has just some organs in between that consume the food and just spit out poo. Humans are basically a fancy form of that. So you basically have the mouth, you have the digestive tract, and then you have limbs to get better at getting food. You have eyesight, hearing, et cetera, to get better at getting food. And then you have, of course, the germline. And all of this food part, it's just auxiliary to the germline. So you basically have layers of addition, of compartmentalization, of specialization on top of this zine to get all the way to the earth zine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so like the worm is like Windows 95, very few features, very basic. And then us humans are like Windows Vista or Windows 10, whatever it is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, a few innovations beyond that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But yeah, I'm not right. We're, I don't know, we're Windows 10,000. So, OK, that's such a fascinating way to look at life as a set of transformations. Exactly. So, like, is there some interesting transformations to our history here on Earth that, like, appeal to you? And what are the most brilliant innovations and transformations?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is such a fascinating question. Of course, like, you know, we're talking about basic, basic life forms and we're talking about eukaryotic life forms. And then the next big transformation is multicellular life forms. where the specialization separates the germline from everything else that accompanies it and sort of carries it. And then that specialization then sort of has this massive new innovation, like above the second mouth, which is this massive brain. And this massive brain is basically something that arises much, much later on. Basically, you know, notochords, like having the first spinal cord, this whole concept that along with these very simple layers, you basically now have a coordinating agent. And this coordinated aging is starting to make decisions. And remember when we were talking about free will? I mean, you know, as a worm is hunting for food, oh, it has plenty of free will. It can choose to, you know, follow chemotaxis to the left or chemotaxis to the right. And maybe that's free will because it's unpredictable beyond a certain level. So you basically now have more and more decision-making and coordination of all of these different body parts and organs by a central operating system, a central machine that basically will control the rest of the body. And the other thing that I love talking about is the different timescales at which things happen. You know, we were talking about the human epigenome before. The human epigenome is basically able to find what genes should be expressed in response to environmental stimuli, in the order of minutes, and basically receive a stimulus, transfer all that data through this humongously long string of searching, and then sort of find what genes to turn on, and then create all that. All of that is happening in the timescale of minutes. Basically, you know, three minutes to half an hour. That's the expression response. But our daily life doesn't happen on the order of 3 minutes to half an hour. It happens on the order of milliseconds. Like I throw a ball at you, you catch it right away. No gene expression changes there. You just don't have time to do that. So you basically have a layer of control built on a hardware that supports it, but that hardware itself lives in a different timescale than the controlling machine on top of that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that an accident, by the way? Is that like a feature? Was it possible for life to have evolved where the daily life of the organism as it interacts with its environment was on a timescale similar to the way our internals work?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you look at trees, they look kind of boring and stupid. You're like looking at a tree like stupid. If you speed up the movie of a tree from spring until October, you'll be like, oh my God, it's intelligent. And the reason for that is that at that timescale, the tree is basically saying, oh, I'm looking for a thing to catch on to. Oh, I just caught on to that. I'm going to grow more here. I'm going to spawn there, et cetera. I can see the trees in my garden just growing and sort of looping around. It's all a matter of timescale. And if you look at the human timescale, Remember, we were talking about neoteny the last time around, the whole fact that our young are pretty useless until maybe a few months of age, if not a few years of age, if not, I don't know, getting out of college. And then we basically hold them, enabling their brain to continue being malleable and infusing it with knowledge and thoughts as that period of neoteny increases and expands. If you fast forward, I don't know, another million years, so humans have only been around, you know, different from apes for about that long. Jump another unit of that, another human-gem divergence. What could happen? From an evolutionary timescale, a lot. One of the things that's happening already is expansion of human lifespan. We have longer and longer periods before we mature, and we have longer and longer periods before we have babies. So intergenerational distance is grown from, I don't know, 16 years to 40 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're saying that's in the genetics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, not necessarily. But it's sort of an environmental tendency that's happening. But as we medically expand human lifespan, the generations might actually be pushed instead of 40 years to 60 years to 100 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like if we look at the long arc of the evolutionary history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. So as we start thinking about intergalactic travel now," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Sorry, that's a heck of a transition. Yeah, so let's talk about intergalactic travel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, no, no. As we as a species start thinking about, I'm talking about these transitions that are happening, right? Oh, that's awesome. So continuing along these transitions, what does the future hold in the next million years? So the concept of us going to another planet and that taking three human lifetimes might be a joke if the human lifetime starts being 400 years or 800 years. So, It's all timescale. It's all timescale, just different timescales. You asked me offline whether I would like to live forever. I mean, my answer is absolutely. And there's many different types of forevers. One forever is, do I want to live today forever? Kind of like Groundhog Day. And the answer is absolutely. The stuff that I want to learn today will probably take a lifetime. just to learn, you know, basically to clear my to-do list for the day." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You mean like relive the day. Relive the day. And then pick up different things from the richness of the experience." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. There's just so much happening in the world every single day. So much knowledge that has happened already that just to catch up on that will probably take me around forever." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On that point, I would just love to see you in the Groundhog movie, just because you're so naturally as a scientist, but just the way your mind works beautifully, just all the richness of the experiences that you will pick up from that. It's a beautiful visual." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I try to live each day as if it was Groundhog Day. I'm basically every single day waking up and saying, all right, how would Bill Murray get out of that one?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, you know what, on a funny tangent, I got a chance to go to a Neuralink demonstration event, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Neuralink, and I talked to Elon for a while, and one of the funny things he said on this Groundhog Day thing is, you know, it's a beautiful dream to eventually be able to replay our memories. So we're kind of these recording machines. Our brain is kind of maybe a noisy recording machine of memories. And it would be beautiful if we can someday in the future, maybe far into the future, be able to, like in the Groundhog Day situation, replay that. And the funny comment that stuck with me He said that maybe this, our conversation now, is a replay of a previous memory. And that stuck with me because it would probably be my replay. Who the hell am I? I'm just some idiot guy. But like... Elon Musk is probably, because of SpaceX and so on, is probably going to be remembered as a special person, one of our special apes in history. So if I wanted to replay a memory, probably be that one, talking to Elon for a while. And that's an interesting possibility from, if we think about time scales, if we think about, the richness of the experience through time that we humans take and be able to replace some aspects of that, of that biology. That's super interesting. But anyway, sorry for the tangent. You were talking about time scales and the expansion of the human lifetime and the idea of intergalactic travel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, but you're laughing about it. You're talking about exploring alien worlds and going to other planets. I mean, you know, when Sarah was here, she was talking about sort of going to other planets when we find this life. I mean, I'm just very naturally given the topics that we've approached, talking about the timescale at which this will happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think eventually we will, human or life, life will expand out into the universe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The point that I'm trying to make is that an intergalactic species will probably find ways to engineer its biology in order to expand the way that we experience time, expand the time scale that we experience. And going back to this whole concept of, you know, would I like to live forever? Yes, I'd like to live forever. Even if it was even if I was stuck on the same day, I'd love to live forever because I would finally have time to do all these things that I want to do. But if living forever actually comes with a perk of watching the whole world evolve forever, I mean, that's a huge perk and it'll never get boring, just an ever-changing world. And then the mind experiment that I want you to do is to also ask, what if I wanted to live forever one day at a time every year or one day at a time every decade? Would you choose that? Where you would wake up and the world would be 10 years later every single day you wake up. It's the opposite of Groundhog Day. where basically you always wake up and it's always 10 years later." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're saying that's such a powerful, interesting concept that life is more interesting if you're, of all the life forms on Earth, that you're the slowest one. Exactly, exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like trees have it right. Like trees have it right, all of trees. They've been there since the Minoan civilization. And that takes us back to the question you asked about sort of the transformations that have happened in humanity. The Minoan civilization is one of them. You know, there's this paper that was published just a couple of years ago by one of my friends that basically looked at the genetic makeup of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans in ancient Greece and how they relate to modern Greeks. And they found that indeed there was very little gene flow from the outside. And it's fantastic to sort of think about these amazing civilizations that transformed the way that human thought happens, that basically looked for rules in nature, that looked for principles, that looked for the standard of beauty, not human beauty, but beauty in the natural world. this whole concept that the world must be elegant and there must be deeper ways of understanding that world. To me, that's a massive transformation of our species. similar to the earlier transformation that we were talking about of even evolving a brain, of learning how to communicate language or the evolution of eyesight. If you look at sort of, we're talking about these worms crawling around and then sensing which direction are the chemicals more abundant, chemotaxis. So eventually they grow a nose, eventually they grow a, yeah, I mean, when I say nose, I mean ways of sensing chemicals. That's probably one of the earliest senses. We always talk about how deep-rooted it is in our brain. That's one of the earliest senses. If you look at hearing, that's a much later sense. If you look at eyesight, that's an intermediate sense where you're basically sensing where the light direction comes from. That's probably something that life didn't need until it got into the surface and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of, you know, milestones. And I was talking about the latest milestone, which is LIGO, last time, of being able to detect gravitational waves and sort of being able to sort of have a sense that humans haven't had before." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you see that as yet another transformation. Of course." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It gives us an extra little sense. Of course. And now if you go back to this history of ancient Greece, I mean, this transformation that happened, I mean, of course, the Egyptians had this incredible, you know, civilization for thousands of years. But what happened in Greece was this whole concept of let's break things down and understand the natural world. Let's break things down and understand physics. Let's basically build rules around architecture, around elegance, around statues and tragedy. I mean, another question that you asked me in passing was this whole concept of embracing the good and the bad, embracing the full range of human emotions. And if you look at Greek tragedy, It's the definition of that. It's, I mean, drama. I mean, again, it's a Greek word, but the whole concept of some problems that are just so vast and large that dying is the easy way out. That death, oh, that's the easy solution. So I want to touch a little bit on that point and sort of talk about this concept that life supersedes physics and that the brain supersedes life. that basically we have a brain that can decide to not follow evolution's path. We can decide to not have children. We can decide to not eat. We can decide to suicide. We can decide to sort of abolish communication with the outside world. I mean, all the things that make us human we can basically decide not to do that. And that is basically when the brain itself is basically superseding what evolution programmed us for." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, so one of the, it's, okay, my mind was already blown at the beautiful formulation of the idea that life is a system that resists physics. And our brain, or perhaps the content of it, however it may be functionally, our brain is a thing that resists life. You're so, you're so brilliant." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But I want you to see all of that as continuum. Basically, you're sort of talking about those sort of individual transformations, but it's a path that humanity has been taking. It's a path of transformation. And then I want us to think about what it truly means to become human, like the F zine. And you asked me about what motivated my Meaning of Life Symposium. What motivated it, in part, I mean, of course, it was an inside joke of turning 42, but what motivated it in part was actually a midlife crisis. So the joke that I always like to say is Christos Papadimitriou, a famous Greek professor who was previously at MIT, at Harvard, at Stanford, at Berkeley, everywhere, brilliant, brilliant person, actually Kostis' advisor. So Christos Papadimitriou likes to say that when you're an undergrad, you work like a rat to get into grad school. And when you're a grad student, you work like a rat to get your PhD. And when you're a postdoc, you work like a rat to get your assistant professor's job. And when you're an assistant professor, you work like a rat to become a full professor. And then when you're a full professor, well, by then you're basically a rat. So basically what happened to me is that I arrived at the end of the rat race. You know, life is a rat race. You constantly have hurdles to jump over. You constantly have tunnels and secret pathways. And I figured it all out. And eventually, as I was turning 42, I looked back and I was like, wow, that was an awesome rat race. But I'm not a rat. I basically got out of the labyrinth and I was like, I'm not a rat, turns out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that the first moment where you saw that you were in a rat race?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no. I've known that I'm in a rat race for a long time. It's so easy to be in a rat race. It's so easy to be an undergraduate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You have problem sets." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And we're all smart people. Problem set, it has a solution. Somebody made it for you. You can just solve it. Everything was made as a test. And you keep passing those tests and tests and tests and tests. And you have tasks that are well-defined. The PhD is a little different. because it's more open-ended, but yet you have an advisor who's guiding you. And then you become a professor, and tenure is a well-set, defined set of tasks, and you do all that. And at 42, I basically had bought a house, three kids, beautiful wife, tenure, awesome students, tons of grants. Life was basically laid out for me. And that's when I had my midlife crisis. That's when people usually buy a Harley Davidson And they basically say, oh, I need something new, I need something different and to be young myself, et cetera. But basically that was my realization that it's not a rat race, that there's no rat race. It's over. That I have to basically think, how do I fully instantiate myself? How do I complete my transformation into an actual human being? Because it's very easy to sort of forget all the intangibles of life. It's very hard to just sort of think about the next task and the next task and it's all metrics and what is the number of viewers I have, what is the number of publications I have, what is the number of citations, the number of talks, the number of grants. It's very easy to quantify everything. And then at some point you're like, this is real life. It's not a test anymore. And that's something that I told my wife early on. I was like, no, no, no. Our life is not going to be let's put the kids through college. And, you know, maybe that's when I escaped the rat race. Maybe it continued being a rat race. Maybe the next step would have been, all right, how do I make sure that my kid is first in class? How do I make sure that they're, you know, into the greatest college? And then, you know, they're into college and then you're like 60." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do you escape? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel of a midlife crisis?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So you should watch that symposium because the videos were transformative to me and to many others. So basically the advice that I received from all of my friends was so meaningful. There's some advice that basically says you have to constantly maintain unachievable goals. goals that you can make progress towards, but you can never be fully done with. And I think that's almost playing into the sort of rat race thing, like basically make sure that there's more obstacles for your little rat persona to jump through." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's one possibility. So first of all, watch. Is it available somewhere?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's on YouTube. Just Google meaning of life symposium." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I should have known this. You should have told me this. This is awesome. OK, this is great. But and also like, you know, saying rat race, is, you know, if we look at Ratatouille, it's not, I mean, that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful thing of challenges and overcoming challenges. That could be fundamentally the meaning of life is to see life as a set of challenges and to fully engage in the overcoming of those challenges." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say that that's embracing the rat race view of life. So a joke that we like to have with my wife all the time is we basically say, we pretend that we're in this all-inclusive resort, that we've basically hired all these people to go on the esplanade and play games because we enjoy watching people playing on the esplanade and we enjoy sort of laying and looking at life and all the people biking and rollerblading and all of that. And then we've paid all these people in this all-inclusive resort that we live in. And then what are we going to do today? I'm like, oh, I've signed up for professor activities. It's going to be awesome. They lined up a bunch of super smart MIT students for me to meet with. I'm going to have a grant writing meeting afterwards. It's going to be awesome. And then she signed up for a bunch of consulting activities. It's going to be great. And then in the evening, we just get back together and say, hey, how was your consulting today? So in a way, that's another view of life of basically, wait a minute, if I was a gazillionaire, what would I choose to do? I would probably pay an awesome university to give me an office there and just pay a bunch of super smart people to work with me even though they don't really want to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, I would have exactly the life that I have now working my butt off every single day because it's so freaking fulfilling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let's clarify, this is a beautiful way. It's almost like a video game view of life that is a set of, I mean, again, game is not perhaps a positive term, but it is a beautiful term. So do you or do you not like the rat race view of life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it is fulfilling in some unethical way. The rat race is about the goal. My view of life is about the path. So again, quoting Greece. Those folks have come up with some good stuff. So this Odysseus Elitis basically wrote this beautiful poem about sort of going through life saying, as you go through your journey, impersonating Ulysses of his voyage, he says, wish that the path is long and arduous. Because when you get to Ithaca, you might realize that it was all about the path, not the destination. So the rat race view of life makes it all about the destination. It's like, how do I get through the maze to get there? But the all-inclusive resort view of life is about the path. It's about, wow, today, couldn't wish for a better set of activities all programmed for me to enjoy having my brain, having my body, having my senses and, you know, the life that I have. It's a very different kind of view. It's focused on the journey, not on the destination." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you mentioned kind of the ups and downs of life and the midlife crisis. And right now you said focusing kind of on the journey. But what the journey involves is ups and downs. Is there... advice or any kind of thoughts that you can elucidate about the downs in your life, the hard parts of your life and how you got out or maybe not, or is there, how do you see the dark parts?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I'm so glad you're asking this question because it's something that our society does a terrible job at preparing us for. Every Hollywood movie has to have a happy ending. It is ridiculous. You can count on your 10 fingers the number of bad ending movies that you've ever watched and you probably wouldn't need all 10 fingers. We strive to tell everyone, yes, you can succeed. Yes, you're a millionaire, just temporarily disabled. And yes, you know, the prince will eventually figure out his princess and they will have a happily ever after ending. And yes, the hero will be beaten and beaten and beaten. But you know that at the end of the movie, the good guys will win. We need more movies where the bad guys win. We need more movies where just everybody dies. Where just, you know, MacGyver doesn't figure out how to disable the bomb and just explodes. You just need more movies that are more realistic about the fact that life kind of sucks sometimes and it's okay. So again, growing up in Greece, I have been exposed to songs that are not just sad, but they're miserable. Miserable. So one of them comes to mind and it's basically talking about this woman who's lamenting in the early morning about losing the joyful kid, the joyful young man who basically died in the civil war in the arms of our own fellow citizens. And she's like, if only he had died fighting the foreign forces, if only he had died at the sides of the general, if only he had died with honor, I would be proud to have lost the joyful kid. I mean, it's devastating, right? It's like he didn't just die. He died without honor. And my friend who was with me was listening to the song and she's like, this is depressing. I'm like, whoa, you have to listen to another one. It's not as sad. And she's like, what, this one died with honor? So that's one example." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a kind of a celebration of misery." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So let me give you a couple more examples and then I'll answer that question. So another example is I picked up this book that I had from my childhood and I started reading stories to my kids. And the first story is about these two children. One is really poor living on the street and the other one is really rich living in the house in the bright light above. And the poor one is wishing, looking at that window and wishing that he could have that house. And the other one is at the window wishing that he was free, that he wasn't sick all the time, that he could escape outside. It's only four pages long and at the end both children die. One of them dies from cold, the other one dies from illness. And you're like, how is that even a children's story? The next story, I'm like, okay, that's fine, let's skip this one. So I read this to my kids and then I read the next one. And the next one is about this woman whose brother is at war against the Turks and he is gonna die. And she prays to the Virgin, please don't let him die. And the Virgin appears and she's like, no problem, tell me who to kill instead. And she's like, anyone, anyone. No, no, no, no. Choose one. How about this Turk? This one has two kids, a beautiful family waiting for him at home. She's like, no, not this one. Choose another one. And then she goes through all the life stories of the others. And she's like, no, no, just don't take anyone. It's like, I can't do that. You can choose to bring your brother back. And he will be depressed for the rest of his life because he didn't fight at war, because he didn't go to that battle. And he will live without honor. And in the end, the woman decides to have her brother killed instead because he dies without honor. I mean, this is insane. So why am I giving you these examples? It's not a glorification of misery. it's expanding your emotional range. It's teaching you that, and when I read these stories, I'm not a jerk, I'm crying out loud. I have tears and my face becomes red from the pain that I'm experiencing through these stories. It's just so deeply touching to embrace the suffering Not because of an accident, but because of a choice. The sacrifice to embrace the fact that not everything is cute and rosy and always ending well. And I think that we don't do a good enough job of teaching our kids that just life sucks and life is unfair sometimes. And that's okay. And sometimes I read a story to my kids, I read a story every night. And sometimes the story is horrible. And sometimes the story is good and sort of friendly and happy. And my kids always ask, what's the moral of the story? And sometimes there's a moral and it's like, oh, you should be good or you should be nice, you should be helping each other, et cetera. And sometimes there's just no moral. And I tell my kids, you know what? Sometimes just life doesn't make sense and it's okay. And you can't comprehend everything. And I think this concept of how do you deal with the bad days comes from the fact that we're taught, we're brainwashed into thinking that every day should be a happy day. And we're not ready to cope with misery And the other thing that crying through these stories teaches you is that you don't have it nearly half as bad as you think. Do you see what I mean? Basically, it tells you that, I mean, my mom would always tell me about how she was transformed as a teenager when she volunteered in the hospital. And she saw all these people at the brink of death, clinging for life and helping them out to best she could and crying her heart out when they were dying. And just sort of how that taught her the appreciation for what we have every day. Waking up every morning and saying, My life doesn't suck. My life is not nearly half as bad as it could be. And sort of embracing the joy that we have of living where we live in the moment we live. And I'm gonna go further. If you look at the arc of human life, human existence through the centuries, there's no better way to be alive than now. I mean, we're complaining about every single little thing, but life expectancy is at an all-time high. Sickness, all-time low. Poorness, misery, all-time low. There's no better time to be alive, globally, across all of human existence. Number one. Number two, here in Boston, there's no better place to be alive. If you think about the amalgamation of science, engineering, technology, the ridiculously awesome people you're bringing every week to your podcast, I mean, this is the ancient Greece of modern society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but the weather still sucks. It just." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, let me put it this way. The weather gives us a range of emotion. The full range." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The full scenic range. Of human weather patterns. That's such a fascinating thing about human psychology. I often reread this book. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And he talks about, you know, his living through the Holocaust and the concentration camps. And even there where there's like human misery is at its highest, even there he discovers these moments by observing the suffering, by accepting the suffering, he observes moments of true joy of how great his life is. relative to others at the camp who have it worse?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it's a dangerous slippery slope to think that way, because it's basically being better than the Joneses. And if the house next door has a giant car, then you want to get a bigger car or something like that. It's not comparative misery. I think the way that I see it is slightly different. And it's not even thinking about all the worst possible outcomes that could have happened but didn't. The example, as you were talking about the concentration camps, one of the most horrible moments of human existence, I was thinking about pictures that I was seeing of kids in Syria, in war-torn zones. And you're looking at these kids, and again, I cried out loud, imagining my own son in the van, after a bomb explosion, watching his father die or his siblings die or losing his friends, it's something that we are not capable of fathoming, but if you actually put a seven-year-old in that situation, the look that I saw in these kids' eyes basically said, it is what it is. And I've experienced that with my own kid. My three-year-old, two years ago, who's now my five-year-old, She was burned really badly with like hot chocolate and coffee that just peeled off her skin. So you could actually see just her fragile skin had just peeled off. And she was the happiest little kid. she was just going along with the punches. It is what it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "She accepted it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's quite dramatic to sort of realize that children don't say, oh, I could have it better. They sort of embrace the moment, not embrace, but sort of accept the moment. And then they can have moments of pure joy in a horrendous war-torn country. And like so many people from these war-torn countries basically say, oh, you think you Americans are gonna just come and just send us a bunch of aid and food, et cetera? Yeah, sure. That's helpful. But what do we dream of? What do we struggle for? We struggle for love. We struggle for meaning. We struggle for, you know, emotions and friendships. We struggle for the same things you guys struggle for. We're not just like every day waking up and saying, oh, I wish I had more food. No, that's just the given. I just don't have enough food. But what we struggle with are basically everything else. And that sort of gives you some perspective on life. It basically says, you know, and another story that my mom told me when I was a kid is this story about sort of this man who's basically, you know, he sees the Christ appear in front of him and he says, oh Christ, I'm carrying all these problems. I'm carrying this big bag. Can you please take it from me? And he's like, sure. Let me just give you any other bag. And basically, and of course the person in the end accepts his own bag." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So acceptance ultimately, the path you recommend is acceptance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Every single other bag is probably worse. It's the evil you don't know versus the evil you know. Like we all struggle with our own problems, but if you look at the bigger picture, it's just your path through life. And if you embrace it, the good and the bad, every single day, it's just joy, elation, sadness, misery. If you don't have both, you're not a complete human being. The last example I'm going to give is the movie Inside Out by Pixar. Beautiful movie. Which one is that? the one with the little characters controlling his brain. So you basically have joy and sadness and fear and disgust, et cetera. And the moral of the story, if you remember the movie, the moral of the story is that in the end, joy is basically trying to fix everything to make everything happy. And she's failing miserably and everything else is like crumbling and falling apart. And the little girl basically becomes emotionless because all she knows how to do is fake happiness. And I think it's a very good analogy for our everyday society, where we're always saying, are you happy? Are you happy? My mom calls me and she's like, Manolis, are you happy? I'm like, mom, stop asking this stupid question. No, I'm not happy. What you should be asking is if I'm fulfilled. And that's a very different thing. I don't go around being happy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I go- I would love it if your mom called and said, Manolis, are you suffering beautifully or something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's exactly right. That's what she should be asking. Are you struggling to achieve something great? That's the question that the mom should be asking, not are you happy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Hear that mom, call me about the suffering, not about how good are you doing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So what I tell her is that life is not about maximizing happiness. Life is about accomplishing something meaningful. And accomplishing that meaningful thing cannot come from a series of joyful moments. It comes from a series of struggles, of successes and failures, of people being nasty to you and people being nice to you and embracing the full thing. And if you supersede that constant need for gratification, If you supersede that constant need for kindness, you suddenly know who you are. And what I like to say to my kid, and my son the other day was telling me, oh, so-and-so called me such-and-such. And I'm like, are you such-and-such? He's like, no. I'm like, ha-ha, see, they were wrong. And what I tell him is, if you know who you are, what other people say about you only teaches you about them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it has no influence on your self-esteem. If you know where you stand, you embrace the good, but you also embrace the bad. I have plenty of bad, and I'm embracing it. I'm a procrastinator. How do I deal with that? I trick myself into procrastinating about mindless, stupid little day-to-day things, and in that procrastination time, doing important things for the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So accepting who you are. Accepting your flaws. Accepting the whole of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Accepting the struggle. Accepting the sleeplessness. Accepting the fact that the journey is what matters. Hoping that your path to Ithaca is full of troubles because those troubles are the life you will lead. Accepting that life will not start after the next milestone. That life has already started a long time ago. And what you're experiencing now is the life. This is it. It's not some kind of future thing that you work yourself hard to get to. And then after that, you live happily ever after. To me, the happily ever after, that's the end of the story. Nothing happens after that. The struggle and the struggle and the struggle is much more interesting story than the lived happily ever after. So I think we have to embrace that as a society, that it's not just about the happy ending, that our kids are brainwashed into expecting that things will be happy and rosy, and it's okay if they're not. And they should keep struggling because the struggle is the journey, and the journey is the meaning of life. It's not the end, it's the journey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What about accepting one of the harder things? We talked a little bit about immortality. What about accepting that life ends? So do you, Manolis, think about your own mortality? How We talked about accepting that there's ups and downs to life. What about the ultimate down, which is the finality of it? Do you think about that? Do you fear it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You also asked me if I'm afraid of getting older. Yes. And that's on the path to mortality. So let me talk about that first step, and then the last step." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The last step. Literally, the last step." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So getting older, what does that mean? When I was 18, when I was 20, my brain, I felt, was at my maximum. I was like, nothing is impossible. I can solve anything. I could take any math puzzle, any logic puzzle, any programming puzzle and just solve it in milliseconds. I just saw the answer through problems. I was like feeling invincible. I would show up at lecture with my newspaper, lift up my head every now and then, point to errors, just brat, complete brat. I would raise my hand and correct my professors from the whole classroom. Total brat. I have some of those in my class now and it's awesome. It's like very- I used to be you. It teaches you humility. Yeah. So I felt invincible and I was like, this is it. This is awesome. I'm living the life. 10 years later, my brain didn't work the same way. I wasn't as good at the tiny little puzzles. But it worked in different ways. And right now, 20 years later, it works in yet different ways. And oh gosh, I love the journey." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you maybe give some hints of the interesting different ways that your brain works as it aged?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I went from the phase of sheer speed and hardcore quantitative thinking to sort of stepping back, being able to sort of make more connections, being able to sort of say, yeah, but let's use that thing sort of. a huge new creativity being unleashed. Basically, when you're young, you're sort of thinking about that one problem. You can sort of reconfigure all the variables combinatorially in your head and just wipe it all out. When you're just a little older, you start getting more creative. You start bringing in things from different fields and different contexts and sort of stepping outside the box. Basically, it's like being in the rat race and saying, there's a ceiling. Why are we trying to get through that? So it's sort of thinking outside the box. And then at 40, what I'm going through now is this whole sort of embracing the path of life. And when I say life has started already, it's not a test anymore, this is basically embracing the finality. Embracing that the journey is what it's at. So what I like to say is live every day as if it's your last one and make plans as if you'll never die. I always have the long term that I'm sort of planning out for that will eventually become the short term. And I always have the sort of short term. And I think this ability to sort of look at life in the past and look at life in the future jointly and sort of embrace the continuity, both of life in the universe and on our planet, as well as life as a human being from the beginning to the end, just as a path, as a journey, and just embracing every aspect of that. I mean, I was talking about parenthood the other day and how amazingly fulfilling it is to sort of relive childhood through the eyes of my kid, but with the perspective of a parent. So the sheer arrogance of youth. Watching this in my kid, I can see myself when I was 18, correcting my professor, I felt so proud. Little did I know that my professor was working on so much more interesting things than the three little things he was putting on the board that day. And I was like, I'm invincible. But in fact, no, it's just a little brat. And basically right now, I sort of can see the sort of journey with a little more humility. I can sort of look at my own students with their unbelievable abilities, being able to do things that I'm no longer able to do, better than I probably was ever able to do, but yet being able to guide them and shape their thinking and blow their minds with new ideas and new directions through my perspective. And I know when something is solvable because I've been there, but I'm not gonna even bother. It's not that I can't do it. I'm sure I could if I tried, but just I'm not interested in that anymore. So what I'm embracing in this journey of aging is how my brain is changing and how I'm constantly trying to figure out the niches, the evolutionary niches that I'm best adapted for, for the tasks that I'm best at while hiring and recruiting both assistants and research scientists and students and postdocs and, you know, that will be the best at those tasks. But someone still has to see the big picture. And I love being in that role." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you're, at the timescale of a human lifespan, you're doing the same thing that the worm did at the evolutionary timescale of growing arms, of the specialization, the compartmentalization he talks about. I mean, it's fascinating to think of what 80-year-old Manolis would look back at the man that's sitting here today. and laugh at the arrogance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was like, no little thing, you didn't figure out anything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, ultimately, it seems that if you're introspective about life, it leads to a kind of acceptance, a deeper and deeper acceptance of the whole of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, I want to be cautious about acceptance because it almost says that you can't change it. It's sort of embracing the struggle and embracing the journey, is the way that I would put it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you ultimately feel the journey isn't just something that happens to you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, you shape it. Remember how I was saying that Boston is the best place and the best time to live in right now in the history of humanity? I'm exaggerating a little bit, but the way that I think about this is that if you look at the whole of Cosmos, Where would you rather be? If you're just a bunch of molecules, roughly you're biomass. Where would you rather be? Would you rather be a rock on Mars? Probably not. Would you rather be in a black hole? Probably not. Would you rather be in a exploding supernova? Maybe, that might be interesting. But being on Earth is an awesome solar system, an awesome planetary system, an awesome place to be in across all of space time. It's a pretty good place to be in as a bunch of molecules. If you are a bunch of molecules on Earth today, being an animal with some kind of awareness of the stuff around you is wonderful. Being a human among all animals is amazing because you have all this introspection. And being a human who's young, fit, athletic, smart, et cetera, I mean, you have so much to be happy for. Beyond that, being surrounded by a bunch of awesome people that you interact with all the time. I mean, I feel blessed to interact with the people I know, with the friends I have, the dinners that I have, all of this, the students that I interact with. I'm so blessed. And the last little blip in this awesomeness of local maximum, the last little blip comes from being kind. being grateful and being kind. I don't know if you remember that little prayer that I described last time of thank you for all the good you've given me and give me strength to give on to others with the same love that you've given to me. And the whole point of that is being grateful and being kind. What does that do? From a purely egoistic perspective, it makes the people around you happier and it takes that little maximum a little bit further. Because you'll be surrounded by happy people, by being kind. That's the purely egoistic view. And the purely altruistic view, or maybe it's egoistic as well, is that it's good to give. It feels good to give. Like basically watching somebody who's touched by what you said, watching somebody who's like appreciating a rapid response or a generous offer or just random acts of kindness is so fulfilling. So evolutionarily we were selected for that. There's just such a good feeling that comes from that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, it's fascinating to think you said Boston is the best place and talking about kindness that the very thought that Boston is the best place in the universe is almost, it's a kind of a gravitational field. Your thought and your very life in itself is a kind of field that makes that real." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So the- It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming it's the best and thinking it's the best, it becomes the best." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you make others, it's not a force that just applies to your own cognition. It applies to the others around you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "and then suddenly you live in an even better place." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because it creates the reality, the actual reality, the social reality, then it molds the environment. By the way, what's one of the coolest things about you, I think, is you represent the best of MIT, like the spirit of MIT. I'm so glad that I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to you because there's a kind of cynicism about academia in parts. that I think is undeserved and that there's a, you know, MIT, of course, but academic institutions is a sacred place where ideas can flourish and just in the same very way that you're talking about. is both kindness and curiosity and that weird thing that happens when a bunch of curious descendants of apes get together and just like get excited in this ripple effect that happens. I mean, that's the most beautiful aspect of MIT. People might think like, competition and grants and like position like you said the rat race but like underneath it all is is these curious human beings inspiring younger human beings and there's this ripple effect that happens i'm so glad that I mean, I'm glad that I get a chance to record this because it inspires so many other students and so many other people to do the same, to embrace the inner curious creature that's not about the race." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So let's talk about the negative. Let's talk about, no, no, no, I'm serious, I'm serious. You know, you have to embrace the good and the bad. So let's talk about the negative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As the Greek comes up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's address it. So why do people want positions of power? Why do people want more money, more power, more this, more that? Remember the part where I was saying, if you know who you are, what other people think about you, it makes no difference to you. It only teaches you about them. Many people feel define themselves, they feel instantiated through the eyes of others. So being in a position of power makes them feel better about themselves. Who knows what other kind of struggles they might have that creates that need to feel better about themselves. but they have a bunch of struggles and everybody has a bunch of struggles. And every time I see somebody behaving poorly, I'm basically thinking, well, they're in a tough spot right now and it's okay. I can kind of see how I would behave badly in other circumstances as well. So I think if you take away that sort of having to prove yourself in the eyes of others, life becomes so much easier. So when I first became a professor at MIT, I started wearing adult clothes. I had my, like, you know, I mean, it became a serious person. I basically had, you know, I would I would always, like, go around in my rollerblades and my shorts and a T-shirt. And eventually I was a professional, like, oh, I bought all these khaki pants and, you know, these nice, like, you know, shirts with like, you know, whatever they call it, the patterns. And I was like, you know, dressing with my nice belt every day, showing up. And then a few months later, I was like, I can't stand it. And I just went back to my rollerblades and my t-shirts and my shorts. And it was this struggle of sort of not feeling that I fit in. I was so intimidated by all of my colleagues, like just watching their incredible achievements, like persons next to me and the person, you know, the floor below me. I was like, oh my God, like they clearly made a mistake. What the heck am I doing here? How will I ever live up to these people's standards? And eventually you grow up to realize that the way that I grew up to realize that the way that other people perceived my work was very similar to the way that I perceived other people's work as flawless. I knew all of the flaws in my work. I knew the limitations. I knew what I hadn't managed to achieve. And what I saw was maybe a third of the way of what I was trying to achieve. And I saw everything as flawed. What they saw, what I had achieved, they didn't see what I hadn't achieved. They only saw the one third down, which was pretty good in their eyes. So they all respected me. And I was feeling miserable about myself. I was like, I'm not worthy. And I think that this is a cognitive problem that we have. We kind of, it's kind of like when we're talking about artificial general intelligence, AGI, of sort of, we kind of have this definition that anything that machines can do is not intelligent, and anything that they can't do is intelligent. Therefore, we narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow the field of what intelligence truly means. And as soon as machines achieve self-knowledge, it's not intelligent anymore. I feel like I was doing the same thing with myself. As soon as I could solve something, it was the kind of thing that a kid like me could solve, and therefore it was kind of easy. But to the others, it seemed hard. But to me, it seemed easy. So it was this kind of thing that everything that my colleagues were doing seemed impossible to me. But everything that I was doing seemed impossible to them. So it was that realization that sort of made me mature into sort of a, not more confident, but more comfortable human being." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually linger on that a little bit? I mean, you mentioned Minsky. I remember he said something in an interview where he said the secret to his, like the way he approached life was to never be happy with anything he did. So there's something powerful as a motivator to doing exactly what you're saying, which is everything you've achieved, to see that as easy and unimpressive. What do you do with that? Because clearly that's a useful thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I've kind of matured past that. And I think the maturity past that is to sort of accept what it is and accept that it has helped others build onto it and therefore advance human knowledge. So it's very easy to sort of fall into the trap of, oh, everything I've done is crap. What I told you last time is that I always tell my students that our best work is ahead of us, and I think that's more of my mindset." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a beautiful way to put it. Exactly. What we've done is strong." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's great, it's great for the time, and it'll become obsolete in 30 years. Not we can't, we are doing even better. We're doing even better. Exactly. So basically, our next work, we'll just strive. And again, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. At some point, you have to wrap. I was having a meeting with my student yesterday, and he was like, listen, we know this is not perfect, but it's way better than anything that's ever been done before. You know how to improve it, but if you try to, your paper's never gonna get published. So, there's this balance of we're already at the top of the field, get it out. And then you work on the next improvement. And in my experience, this has never happened. We've never actually worked on the next improvement and that's okay. It didn't make a difference because you're basically putting a new stepping stone that others will be able to step on and surpass you. My advisor in grad school would basically tell me, Manolis, let others write the second paper in that field. Just write the first one and move on. Move on to the next field. You don't want to be writing the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth paper in the same field. And it's very shocking to a student to hear that because I was like, I was at the top of my game. I was owning that field and I published the first paper. I'm like, I'm ready for two and three and four. He's like, move on. Just let it be. And I was like, whoa, and it's so liberating to sort of not have to surpass everyone, but just put your little stepping stone out there and others will step on it and put their own stones further and eventually cross a bigger river than if you tried to sort of make a giant leap all at once." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you need both. Beautifully put. So the funny thing is, I believe I closed the previous episode with a Darwin quote about the power of poetry and music in life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think your quote, and again, I only heard once, was Darwin basically saying, if I were to live life again next time, I would read more poetry and something about art every week or something like that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. It's so interesting for somebody who studied life at a very cold, I would say, genetic level to say that, yeah, the highest form of living is the art. But on that, which made me realize that you write poetry and I forced you or maybe convinced you somehow to maybe share if it's possible, if it's okay, some of the poetry you've written yourself in your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So again, being Greek, a lot of my poems have been pretty miserable. And I always like to say that it's very hard for me to write a poem when I'm happy. And I just have to be in a state of deep despair in order to write poems. But the first poem I ever wrote was in English class. I'm Greek, I grew up in Greece, but I was in a French high school and I was taking English as a foreign language. So the English teacher basically asked us to write a poem in English. So this is basically what I'm going to embarrass myself and read from my 16-year-old self many, many years ago." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you give a little bit more context about who you were in this moment?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So here's what's really interesting. In terms of growing up, how do we grow up? It's very difficult to grow up if you're in the same school going from one class to the other and all your friends know you inside out. It's very difficult to change. It's very difficult to grow up because they have a certain set of expectations for who you are and for how you're going to behave. So in many ways, we kind of tend to get set in our ways and not change very much. I think something that helped me grow up is that when I was 11 years old, I was a kid in Greece in primary school. When I was 12 years old, I was a kid in Greece in a, you know, first year of high school. When I was 13, I was in France. So basically moved countries and schools. The next year I moved schools again because it was a transition in the French educational system from one school to the next. The next year after that, my family moved to New York in a French high school there. And the next year after that, I'm moving to MIT. So basically between 11 and 19, every single year, I actually had the opportunity to grow. I was not held by people who knew me. And I could reinvent myself or reshape myself or reshape my, you know, sort of personality, my emotions, my, you know, as I was growing up, especially in such a transformative time of a kid's life from 11 to 17." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "OK, first of all, it's so powerful that you think of it that way. Did you think of it that way at the moment? Because It's kind of a source, you said an opportunity to grow, but it's kind of suffering. I mean, you're being torn away from the thing you know into a thing you don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So when we moved from South France to New York, I was pissed. I was pissed. I was taking these long bike rides in the countryside, jumping in French swimming pools. And I had all these wonderful friendships going downtown and just staying by the fountains in the dim lit streets of Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. It was magical. And suddenly I moved to New York City, a city of cement, of ugliness, like trash in the streets at every corner. It's horrible. Snow everywhere. having never seen snow or like real snow in my life. I moved from Athens to South France to suddenly New York, so I was pissed. But whether I saw it as an opportunity for growth, I don't think so. I don't think that I was that self-reflective. It was just how it happened." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Only now do you see it this way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I saw it like that probably pretty early on, but not during those transitions. So basically during those transitions, I was just a kid being a kid, you know? And maybe the time that I started seeing it that way was maybe when I decided to stay at MIT as a professor after having been there as a student. And I kind of saw the struggle of getting professors to not see you as a kid when they're your peers. And I was very flattered when one of my friends basically told me, oh, I remember you in recitation. When you first asked me a question, I said, wow, this kid. I'll pay attention. One day you'll be a peer. So certainly my perception was that many of them could not see me as anything but a kid. But it turns out that some of them saw me as something different than a kid even before I was actually their colleague. So it's kind of an interesting place because what I like to say about MIT is that people treat you as equal no matter what stage. and they respect you for what you say, not for who you are when you're saying it. And if I'm wrong, my students will tell me. They will have no reservation to just be bluntly, you know, sorry, I don't agree with that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, the beautiful thing about you, sorry to put it this way, is maybe people who weren't familiar with your work beforehand might think, might not realize that you're a world-class scientist who leads a large group and so on, because there's a youthful nature to you that it's, I mean, you talk like an undergrad. you know, with the excitement and the fresh eyes and the sort of excitement about the world. And that's, first of all, super contagious and beautiful. You know, it's easy to sort of fall into behaving seriously because then people kind of start putting you on a pedestal more into a position of power. You want to sort of act like you're in a position of power as opposed to allowing yourself to be lost in just the curiosity, the childish view of the world, which is just this open-eyed love of knowledge." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that was the transition that I was describing when I decided to go back to my rollerblades and t-shirt and baseball cap. Basically, you know, when I met my first postdoc, It was basically, you know, he was interviewing for postdocs at MIT. He already had several first author papers to his name in top journals. And my friend Yulia basically introduced me to Alex Stark, who basically was interviewing at the time with Rick Young and with Eric Lander, just like these massive names in the field. And I was just a first year faculty person with zero credibility. And she basically says, oh, there's this friend of mine, Alex, who's visiting. He's also German. He wanted to meet you. I'm like, oh, sounds great. I'd love to talk science. I show up, we sit at the amphitheater in Stade. I basically arrive in my rollerblades you know, jump a few steps, sit down, wearing my blades. We're having this awesome conversation about science and about gene regulation and how the whole thing works and sort of, you know, my perspective and his perspective. And we're just bouncing ideas for 30 minutes. And then I just dash off to my next meeting. And he basically emails me afterwards. And I was giving him advice about how to interview with Eric Lander, how to interview with Rick Young and how to sort of get a position with them. And then after a while, he emails me saying, I would love to become a postdoc in your group. I'm like, what, are you kidding me? So he basically didn't care that I wear Rollerblades and T-shirt. All he cared about was my ideas and sort of embracing the me with the childhood excitement about science was basically what attracted him. It wasn't the, wow, this guy runs a big lab or this and that. It was just like, I like his ideas, I want to work with him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That, by the way, folks, is the best of MIT. That's what MIT stands for. So that's a beautiful story. But take me back to the poem. And where did this poem come from? Where's your mindset? So who is the 17, 16-year-old kid, Manolis?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So again, I've just seen Snow for the first time and I'm in New York. This is New York. So I'm, you know, maybe that's where the sadness in the poem comes from. But anyway, we're asked in class to write an assignment. This is my third language. I'm not very good at it. So pardon me. But here's what I wrote. Children dance now all in row, children laughing at the snow. But in time's endless flow, children sooner or later grow. Men are mortal, we go by, If we know it, we may cry. But I thought a love so sweet Was immortal, was so deep. There I told you, darling sweet, That forever love would keep. Blossomed spring and summer shined, Then blue autumn, winter died. One year passed, but the clouds Still remember all our vows. Never faked and never lied, all we did was stare and smile All alone, sitting down, to the snow we made our vow But you told me you were right, birds who love are birds who cry Now with laughter children play, yet the sky is so grey Even if the snow seems bright, without you have lost their light Sun that sang and moon that smiled, all the stars have ceased to shine. All of nature drew its grace, found its light within your face. Now you're gone and won't return. Let the snow in my heart burn." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a Greek in there, that's beautiful, that's beautiful by the way. And the rhyming, the musicality, there's both a simplicity and a musicality to it. No, no, no. But like, so I really enjoy like Robert Frost poems. I don't mean simplicity in a bad way, in a negative way at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, it's very weird to analyze your own poem, but I think it captures the simplicity of youth and the way that it kind of starts with Children Dance Long Only Low. It basically, and it kind of shows that snow can be interpreted first in the first verse as a happy thing. Da da da da da snow. And then in the end, you know, Now with Laughter Children Play, I'm like, now I've grown, basically. It's this transformation that we're actually talking about. This whole men are mortal, we go by. I'm sort of, you know, you're saying, are you comfortable with growing old? I'm like, duh, I was since I was 16. And what's really interesting is that, you know, again, when I was 12 years old in our summer house in Greece, I remember sort of telling my sister my outlook that I would have as a father for how to bring up my own kids. So it's very weird that I've always sort of seen the full path From, you know, a kid. From when you were young. Yeah. I don't know if you like this Jonny Mitchell song. I've looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow it snows illusions I recall. It's clouds illusions I recall. I really don't know clouds at all. So it's really beautiful. So I think the Jonny Mitchell song, which again, I heard for the first time much, much after this, and I wouldn't even compare this to that. But what Jonny Mitchell is saying, that song is that you can see life from two perspectives. You can see the good or the bad in both, you know, in everything you see. And I think that's the allegory of snow right now. You can see snow as this bright, white, wonderful thing, or you can see snow as this miserable, you know, gray thing. So that's sort of, and what I like about the last verse now with laughter children play is that it's a recall to the first one where I was the kid. enjoying careless life and eventually was making promises that something would be forever. And I think part of that is also the loss of my friendships in France, of being in New York now and sort of everything's gray. And, you know, even though the snow seems bright, without you have lost their light, sun that sang and moon that smiled. So it's this this concept that if you lose your love, the same thing can be perceived in a very different way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask you this, because somebody wrote me this long email, and I think you're the perfect person to ask this. You mentioned love. from a genetic perspective, what is it? What do you make of love? Why do we humans fall in love? In your own life, why did you fall in love? The email that was written to me was, you always talk about mortality and fear of mortality. but you don't ask about love. So I don't know if there's some thoughts you could give about the role of love in your own life. or the role of love in human life in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think love in many ways defines my life. It's basically, I like to say that I'm a human first and a professor second. And I think this passion for life, this passion for everything around us, I mean, the only way to describe that is love. It's basically embracing your emotional self, embracing the non-brainiac in you, embracing the sort of intangible, Not very well defined. And even in my own research, I'm just very passionate about everything I do. You know, there's a certain passion that comes through. I'm sorry, again, being Greek, the etymology of the word passion. What was passion? Passion is suffering. The etymology, when we talk about the passion of the Christ, it's the suffering. And in the Greek version of that word, pathos, like pathology, pathos is deep suffering. It's the concept of someone who's sympathetic. Sympathetic means suffering together. experiencing emotions together. So it's funny that you ask me about love and I respond with passion, passion for life, passion for research, passion for my family, for my children, for, you know. So there's a certain passion that defines me and everything else follows rather than the other way around. I'm not first thinking with my brain what is the most impactful paper we could write and then going after that. I'm thinking with my heart, what am I passionate about, which drives me, which just makes me tick." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's a beautiful way to live, but I love it how the Greek part of you just kind of connects it to the suffering. So if you could remove the suffering." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no, no, no, no, no. When I say suffering, I don't mean suffering as in being miserable. I mean suffering as in being emotionally invested in something. Remember, I mean, again, if you look at this poem, what is it saying? It's saying birds who love are birds who cry. Right? That's the very definition of love. Exposing your fragility. If you're not afraid of suffering, you don't fall in love. As soon as you hold back, you protect, you shield your heart, no love can enter. So there's this Simon and Garfunkel song. I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. So again, there's some aspect of that into this poem. The fact that, you know, but you told me, you know, there I told you darling sweet that forever love would keep, is this intermediate thing, and then there's a recall, but you told me you were right, birds who love are birds who cry. So it basically says that love is the fragility that you're willing to gift another person. It's opening up your vulnerable spots. It's sort of accepting that there's no safety net. You're just giving yourself fully and you're ready to be hurt." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you've already been way too kind with your time, but I'm going to force you to stay here just a few minutes longer as we're talking about goodbyes. You have a really nice other poem here about goodbyes. Can I force you to read it as well?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, twist my arm, twist my arm. So the next poem was written specifically for a high school yearbook. So another poem written on demand. The rest of them are just so miserable, written by pure, you know, sadness and melancholy. But this one was also written on demand. And it was basically saying goodbye, as is appropriate right now, to my friends and sort of, again, reflecting this whole journey and transformation through life. And also, I think showing a little bit of introspection about how we kind of had it easy in high school and we're about to go into rougher waters. So the title is actually The Tidewaters, and it's an analogy on that. So here it goes. All this was another lake where some rest we sailors take. Water's calm and full of fish. We'll find there what we wish. Some seek fruit and others feast. Some of us just look for peace. Some find fresh ships, other love. Some seek both and neither have. We were different when we came, each his own story and fame. Different people had we been, different cultures had we seen, different nature, different face, each unlike all in this place. We had faced success, defeat, then in one lake came to meet. There, the orders that we followed and the pride that we swallowed made us one but not the same, joined us strangers who there came. Sooner, later, groups were made, tribes where differences will fade. Some attached, more or less, others fought and made a mess. But again we have to go. What for? Where to? We don't know. Still we know it, we will try. There to rush, to flee, to fly. There'll be some who wish to stay, but they'll carry on away. We will continue on our journey, as we came here, strong, yet lonely. From the lake a river flows, from the river many goals, on that river we will race, each will try to find his pace. In that scene, the sailors face, their first fear, defeat, disgrace. Here and there comes out a face that the waters soon embrace. Some get lucky, find their way, others sink beneath the waves. In this race we will part, some will settle near the start, some set goals beyond the stars, cause the river carries far. You should know in what we've done, the hard part is still to come. So I'll have to say goodbye. Don't you worry, I won't cry. Neither will they those who try, till the end, to keep their pride. But please know, dearest friends, who are always there to mend, I will always need your hand. I will miss you till the end." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think there's a better way to end it. Manolis, like I said last time, you're one of the most special people at MIT, one of the most special people in Boston, and whatever mental force field that you're applying in saying that Boston is the best city in the world, MIT the best university in the world, you're actually making it happen. So thank you so much for talking to me, it's a huge honor." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, that's a great question. There's a lot of things that I could draw in there. When you look at the Skunk Works and Ben Rich's book in particular, of course, it starts off with basically the start of the jet age and the P-80. I had the opportunity to sit next to one of the Apollo astronauts, Charlie Duke, recently at dinner. And I said, hey, what's your favorite aircraft? And he said, well, it was by far the F-104 Starfighter, which was another aircraft that came out of Lockheed there. It was the first Mach 2 jet fighter aircraft. They called it the missile with a man in it. And so those are the kinds of things that I grew up hearing stories about. You know, of course, the SR-71 is incomparable as, you know, kind of the epitome of speed, altitude, and just the coolest looking aircraft ever. So, uh, so there's reconnaissance, that's a plane that's, uh, yeah, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that was designed to be able to outrun, uh, basically go faster than any, uh, air defense system. But I'll tell you, I'm a space junkie. That's why I came to MIT. That's really what took me ultimately to Lockheed Martin. And so Lockheed Martin, for example, has been essentially at the heart of every planetary mission, like all the Mars missions we've had a part in. And we've talked a lot about the 50th anniversary of Apollo here in the last couple of weeks, right? But remember 1976, July 20th, again, National Space Day. So the landing of the Viking, the Viking lander on the surface of Mars, just a huge accomplishment. And when I was a young engineer at Lockheed Martin, I got to meet engineers who had designed, you know, various pieces of that mission as well. So that's what I grew up on, is these planetary missions, the start of the space shuttle era, and ultimately had the opportunity to see Lockheed Martin's part, and we can maybe talk about some of these here, but Lockheed Martin's part in all of these space journeys over the years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you dream, and I apologize for getting philosophical at times, or sentimental, I do romanticize the notion of space exploration, So do you dream of the day when us humans colonize another planet like Mars, or a man, a woman, a human being steps on Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely, and that's a personal dream of mine. I haven't given up yet on my own opportunity to fly into space, but But as you know, from the Lockheed Martin perspective, this is something that we're working towards every day. And of course, you know, we're building the Orion spacecraft, which is the most sophisticated human rated spacecraft ever built. And it's really designed for these deep space journeys, you know, starting with the moon, but ultimately going to Mars and being the platform, you know, from a design perspective, we call the Mars base camp to be able to take humans to the surface, And then after a mission of a couple of weeks, bring them back up safely. And so that is something I want to see happen during my time at Lockheed Martin. So I'm pretty excited about that. And I think, you know, once we prove that's possible, you know, Colonization might be a little bit further out, but it's something that I'd hope to see." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe you can give a little bit of an overview. Lockheed Martin has partnered with, a few years ago, with Boeing to work with the DOD and NASA to build launch systems and rockets with the ULA. What's beyond that? What's Lockheed's mission timeline, long-term dream in terms of space? the moon. I've heard you talk about asteroids. As Mars, what's the timeline? What's the engineering challenges and what's the dream long-term?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think the dream long-term is to have a permanent presence in space beyond low-Earth orbit, ultimately with a long-term presence on the Moon and then to the planets, to Mars. Sorry to interrupt on that, so long-term presence means... Sustained and sustainable presence in an economy, a space economy, that really goes alongside that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With human beings and being able to launch perhaps from those, so like, hop?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But, you know, there's a lot of energy that goes in those hops, right? So, I think the first step is being able to get there and to be able to establish sustained bases, right? And build from there. And a lot of that means getting as you know, things like the cost of launch down. And you mentioned United Launch Alliance. And so I don't want to speak for ULA, but obviously they're they're working really hard to on their next generation of space of launch vehicles to, you know, maintain that incredible mission success record that ULA has, but ultimately continue to drive down the cost and make the flexibility, the speed and the access ever greater." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what's the missions that are on the horizon that you could talk to? Is there a hope to get to the moon?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think you know this, or you may know this, you know, there's a lot of ways to accomplish some of these goals. And so that's a lot of what's in discussion today. But ultimately, the goal is to be able to establish a base, essentially in cislunar space, that would allow for ready transfer from orbit to the lunar surface and back again. And so that's sort of that near-term, I say near-term, in the next decade or so vision. starting off with a, you know, a stated objective by this administration to get back to the moon in the 19 or the 2024 2025 timeframe, which is, uh, is right around the corner here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how big of an engineering challenge is that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Uh, I think the big challenge is not so much to go, but to stay right. And so we demonstrated in the sixties that you could send somebody up to a couple of days of a mission and bring them home again successfully. Now we're talking about doing that, I'd say more to, I don't want to say an industrial scale, but a sustained scale, right? So permanent habitation, you know, regular reuse of vehicles, the infrastructure to get things like fuel, air, consumables, replacement parts, all the things that you need to sustain that kind of infrastructure. So those are certainly engineering challenges, there are budgetary challenges, and those are all things that we're going to have to work through. You know, the other thing, and I shouldn't, I don't want to minimize this, I mean, I'm excited about human exploration, but the reality is our technology and where we've come over the last, you know, 40 years essentially, has changed what we can do with robotic exploration as well. To me, it's incredibly thrilling. This seems like old news now, but the fact that we have rovers driving around the surface of Mars and sending back data is just incredible. The fact that we have satellites in orbit around Mars that are collecting weather, they're looking at the terrain, they're mapping, all these kinds of things on a continuous basis, that's incredible. And the fact that you got the time lag, of course, going to the planets, but you can effectively have virtual human presence there in a way that we have never been able to do before. And now with the advent of even greater processing power, better AI systems, better cognitive systems and decision systems. You know, you put that together with the human piece and we really opened up the solar system in a whole different way. And I'll give you an example. We've got OSIRIS-REx, which is a mission to the asteroid Bennu. So the spacecraft is out there right now on basically a year mapping activity to map the entire surface of that asteroid in great detail. you know, all autonomously piloted, right? But the idea then that, and this is not too far away, it's going to go in, it's got a sort of fancy vacuum cleaner with a bucket, it's going to collect the sample off the asteroid and then send it back here to Earth. And so, you know, we have gone from sort of those tentative steps in the 70s, you know, early landings, video of the solar system to now. We've sent spacecraft to Pluto. We have gone to comets and intercepted comets. We've brought stardust material back. We've gone far and there's incredible opportunity to go even farther." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "quite crazy that this is even possible. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to orbit an asteroid and with a bucket to try to pick up some soil samples?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so part of it is just kind of the, you know, these are the same kinds of techniques we use here on Earth for high-speed, high-accuracy imagery, stitching these scenes together and creating essentially high-accuracy world maps, right? And so that's what we're doing, obviously, on a much smaller scale with an asteroid. Uh, but the other thing that's really interesting, you put together sort of that neat control and, you know, data and imagery problem. Uh, but the stories around how we designed the collection, I mean, as essentially, you know, this is the sort of the human ingenuity element, right? That, you know, essentially, uh, you know, had an engineer who had a, you know, one day is like, well, starts messing around with parts, vacuum cleaner bucket, you know, Maybe we could do something like this.\" And that was what led to what we call the pogo stick collection, right? Where basically a thing comes down, it's only there for seconds, does that collection, grabs the, essentially blows the regolith material into the collection hopper and off it goes. It doesn't really land almost. It's a very short landing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wow, that's incredible. So what is in those, talk a little bit more about space, what's the role of the human in all of this? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities for humans as they pilot these vehicles in space? And for humans that may step foot on either the moon or Mars?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's a great question because, you know, I just have been extolling the virtues of robotic and, you know, rovers, autonomous systems, and those absolutely have a role. I think the thing that we don't know how to replace today is the ability to adapt on the fly to new information, and I believe that will come. But we're not there yet. There's a ways to go. And so, you know, you think back to Apollo 13 and the ingenuity of the folks on the ground and on the spacecraft essentially cobbled together a way to get the carbon dioxide scrubbers to work. Those are the kinds of things that ultimately, you know, and I'd say not just from dealing with anomalies, but dealing with new information. You see something and rather than waiting 20 minutes or half an hour, an hour to try to get information back and forth, but be able to essentially re-vector on the fly, collect, you know, different samples, take a different approach, choose different areas to explore. Those are the kinds of things that that human presence enables that is still a ways ahead of us on the AI side." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's some interesting stuff we'll talk about on the teaming side here on Earth. That's pretty cool to explore." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And in space, let's not leave the space piece out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what does teaming, what does AI and humans working together in space look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, one of the things we're working on is a system called Maya, which is, you can think of it, so it's an AI assistant. In space. In space, exactly. And you think of it as the Alexa in space, right? But this goes hand in hand with a lot of other developments. And so today's world, everything is essentially model-based, model-based systems engineering to the actual digital tapestry that goes through the design, the build, the manufacture, the testing, and ultimately the sustainment of these systems. And so our vision is really that, you know, when our astronauts are there around Mars, you're going to have that entire digital library of the spacecraft, of its operations, all the test data, all the test data and flight data from previous missions to be able to look and see if there are anomalous conditions and tell the humans and potentially deal with that before it becomes a bad situation and help the astronauts work through those kinds of things. And it's not just you know, dealing with problems as they come up, but also offering up opportunities for additional exploration capability, for example. So that's the vision, is that, you know, these are, you know, take the best of the human to respond to changing circumstances and rely on the best of AI capabilities to monitor these, you know, this almost infinite number of data points and correlations of data points that humans, frankly, aren't that good at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how do you develop systems in space like this, whether it's Alexa in space or in general any kind of control systems, any kind of intelligent systems, when you can't really test stuff too much out in space? It's very expensive to test stuff. So how do you develop such systems?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's the beauty of this digital twin, if you will. And of course, with Lockheed Martin, we've, over the past five plus decades, been refining our knowledge of the space environment, of how materials behave, dynamics, the controls, the radiation environments, all of these kinds of things. So we're able to create very sophisticated models. They're not perfect. but they're very good. And so you can actually do a lot. I spent part of my career simulating communication spacecraft, missile warning spacecraft, GPS spacecraft, in all kinds of scenarios and all kinds of environments. So this is really just taking that to the next level. The interesting thing is that now you're bringing into that loop a system, depending on how it's developed, that may be non-deterministic, it may be learning as it goes. In fact, we anticipate that it will be learning as it goes. And so that brings a whole new level of interest, I guess, into how do you do verification and validation of these non-deterministic learning systems. in scenarios that may go out of the bounds or the envelope that you have initially designed them to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this system and its intelligence has the same complexity, some of the same complexity a human does. It learns over time, it's unpredictable in certain kinds of ways. So you also have to model that when you're thinking about it. In your thoughts, is it possible to model the majority of situations, the important aspects of situations here on Earth and in space, enough to test stuff?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, this is really an active area of research, and we're actually funding university research in a variety of places, including MIT. This is in the realm of trust and verification and validation of, I'd say, autonomous systems in general, and then as a subset of that, autonomous systems that incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities. And this is not an easy problem. We're working with startup companies, we've got internal R&D, but our conviction is that autonomy and more and more AI-enabled autonomy is going to be in everything that Lockheed Martin develops and fields. And it's going to be retrofit, autonomy and AI are going to be retrofit into existing systems. They're going to be part of the design for all of our future systems. And so maybe I should take a step back and say the way we define autonomy. So we talk about autonomy, essentially a system that composes, selects, and then executes decisions with varying levels of human intervention. And so you could think of no autonomy. So this is essentially the human doing the task. You can think of effectively partial autonomy where the human is in the loop. So making decisions in every case about what the autonomous system can do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Either in the cockpit or remotely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or remotely, exactly, but still in that control loop. And then there's what you'd call supervisory autonomy. The autonomous system is doing most of the work. The human can intervene to stop it or to change the direction. and then ultimately full autonomy, where the human is off the loop altogether. And for different types of missions, we want to have different levels of autonomy. So now take that spectrum and this conviction that autonomy and more and more AI are in everything that we develop. The kinds of things that Lockheed Martin does, you know, a lot of times are safety of life critical kinds of missions. Think about aircraft, for example. And so we require, and our customers require, an extremely high level of confidence. One, that we're going to protect life. Two, that we're going to, that these systems will behave in ways that their operators can understand. And so this gets into that whole field, again, you know, being able to verify and validate that the systems have been, you know, that they will operate the way they're designed and the way they're expected. And furthermore, that they will do that in ways that can be explained and understood. And that is an extremely difficult challenge." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so here's a difficult question. I don't mean to bring this up, but I think it's a good case study that people are familiar with. Boeing 737 MAX commercial airplane has had two recent crashes where their flight control software system failed. And it's software, so I don't mean to speak about Boeing, but broadly speaking, we have this in the autonomous vehicle space too, semi-autonomous. when you have millions of lines of code software making decisions, there is a little bit of a clash of cultures because software engineers don't have the same culture of safety often that people who build systems like Lockheed Martin do where it has to be exceptionally safe, you have to test this on. So how do we get this right when software is making so many decisions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And this, uh, there's a lot of things that have to happen. And by and large, I think it starts with the culture, right? Which is not necessarily something that a is taught in school or B is something that would come, you know, depending on what kind of software you're developing, it may not be relevant, right? If you're targeting ads or something like that. So, and by and large, I'd say not just Lockheed Martin, but certainly the aerospace industry as a whole has developed a culture that does focus on safety, safety of life, operational safety, mission success. But as you note, these systems have gotten incredibly complex. And so they're to the point where it's almost impossible, you know, the state space has become so huge that it's impossible to, or very difficult to do a systematic verification across the entire set of potential ways that an aircraft could be flown, all the conditions that could happen, all the potential failure scenarios. Now, maybe that's soluble one day, maybe when we have our quantum computers at our fingertips, we'll be able to actually simulate across an entire, you know, almost infinite state space. But today, you know, there's a lot of work to really try to bound the system, to make sure that it behaves in predictable ways. and then have this culture of continuous inquiry and skepticism and questioning to say, did we really consider the right realm of possibilities? Have we done the right range of testing? Do we really understand, you know, in this case, you know, human and machine interactions, the human decision process alongside the machine, uh, processes. And so that's that culture that we call it the culture of mission success at Lockheed Martin that really needs to be established. And it's not something, you know, it's something that people learn by living in it. And it's something that has to be promulgated, uh, you know, and it's done, you know, from the highest levels, uh, at a company of Lockheed Martin, like Lockheed Martin." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and the same is being faced in certain autonomous vehicle companies where that culture is not there because it started mostly by software engineers. So that's what they're struggling with. Is there lessons that you think we should learn as an industry and a society from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "These crashes obviously are tremendous tragedies. They're tragedies for all of the people, the crew, the families, the passengers, the people on the ground involved. And, you know, it's also a huge business and economic setback as well. I mean, you know, we've seen that it's impacting essentially the trade balance of the U.S. So these are important questions. And these are the kinds of, you know, we've seen similar kinds of questioning at times. You go back to the Challenger accident. And it is, I think, always important to remind ourselves that humans are fallible, that the systems we create, as perfect as we strive to make them, we can always make them better. And so another element of that culture of mission success is really that commitment to continuous improvement. If there's something that goes wrong, a real commitment to root cause and true root cause understanding to taking the corrective actions and to making the future systems better. And certainly we want to, we strive for, you know, no accidents. And if you look at the record of the commercial airline industry as a whole and the commercial aircraft industry as a whole, you know, there's a very nice decaying exponential. to years now where we have no commercial aircraft accidents at all, right? Or fatal accidents at all. So that didn't happen by accident. It was through the regulatory agencies, FAA, the airframe manufacturers, really working on a system to identify root causes and drive them out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So maybe we can take a step back, and many people are familiar, but Lockheed Martin broadly, what kind of categories of systems are you involved in building?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Lockheed Martin, we think of ourselves as a company that solves hard mission problems. And the output of that might be an airplane or a spacecraft or a helicopter or a radar or something like that. But ultimately, we're driven by these, you know, like, what is our customer? What is that mission that they need to achieve? And so that's what drove the SR-71, right? How do you get pictures of a place where you've got sophisticated air defense systems that are capable of handling any aircraft that was out there at the time, right? So that, you know, that's what yielded an SR-71. Let's build a nice flying camera. Exactly. And make sure it gets out and it gets back, right? Got it. And that led ultimately to really the start of the space program in the US as well. So now, take a step back to Lockheed Martin of today, and we are, you know, on the order of 105 years old now, between Lockheed and Martin, the two big heritage companies, which were made up of a whole bunch of other companies that came in as well. General Dynamics, you know, kind of go down the list. Today, you can think of us in this space of solving mission problems. So obviously on the aircraft side, tactical aircraft, building the most advanced fighter aircraft that the world has ever seen. We're up to now several hundred of those delivered, building almost a hundred a year. And of course, working on the things that come after that. On the space side, we are engaged in pretty much every venue of space utilization and exploration you can imagine. So I mentioned things like navigation, timing, GPS, communication satellites, missile warning satellites. We've built commercial surveillance satellites. We've built commercial communication satellites. We do civil space, so everything from human exploration to the robotic exploration of the outer planets, and keep going on the space front. But, you know, a couple of other areas I'd like to put out. we're heavily engaged in building critical defensive systems. And so a couple that I'll mention, the Aegis Combat System, this is basically the integrated air and missile defense system for the US and allied fleets. And so protects carrier strike groups, for example, from incoming ballistic missile threats, aircraft threats, cruise missile threats, and kind of go down the list." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the carriers, the fleet itself is the thing that is being protected. The carriers aren't serving as a protection for something else." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's a little bit of a different application. We've actually built a version called Aegis Ashore, which is now deployed in a couple of places around the world. So that same technology, I mean, basically it can be used to protect either an ocean-going fleet or a land-based activity. Another one, the THAAD program, So THAAD, this is the Theater High Altitude Area Defense, this is to protect relatively broad areas against sophisticated ballistic missile threats. And so now it's deployed with a lot of US capabilities, and now we have international customers that are looking to buy that capability as well. And so these are systems that defend, not just defend militaries and military capabilities, but defend population areas. We saw, you know, maybe the first public use of these back in the first Gulf War with the Patriot systems. And these are the kinds of things that Lockheed Martin delivers. And there's a lot of stuff that goes with it. So think about the radar systems and the sensing systems that cue these, the command and control systems that decide how you pair a weapon against an incoming threat, and then all the human and machine interfaces to make sure that they can be operated successfully in very strenuous environments." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's some incredible engineering at every front, like you said. So maybe if we just take a look at Lockheed history broadly, maybe even looking at Skunk Works. what are the biggest, most impressive milestones of innovation? So if you look at stealth, I would have called you crazy if you said that's possible at the time. And supersonic and hypersonic, so traveling at, first of all, traveling at the speed of sound is pretty damn fast. And supersonic and hypersonic, three, four, five times the speed of sound, that seems, I would also call you crazy if you say you can do that. So can you tell me how it's possible to do these kinds of things? And is there other milestones and innovation that's going on that you can talk about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, let me start on the Skunk Works saga. And you kind of alluded to it in the beginning. Skunk Works is as much an idea as a place. And so it's driven really by Kelly Johnson's 14 principles. And I'm not going to list all 14 of them off. But the idea, and this I'm sure will resonate with any engineer who's worked on a highly motivated small team before, the idea that if you can essentially have a small team of very capable people who want to work on really hard problems, you can do almost anything. especially if you kind of shield them from bureaucratic influences, if you create very tight relationships with your customers so that you have that team and shared vision with the customer. Those are the kinds of things that enable the Skunk Works to do these incredible things. And, you know, we listed off a number that you brought up, stealth. And I mean, this whole, you know, I wish I could have seen Ben Rich with a ball bearing, you know, rolling it across the desk to a general officer and saying, would you like to have an aircraft that has the radar cross section of this ball bearing? Probably one of the least expensive and most effective marketing campaigns in the history of the industry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just for people that are not familiar, I mean, the way you detect aircraft, so I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of ways, but radar for the longest time, there's a big blob that appears in the radar. How do you make a plane disappear so it looks as big as a ball bearing? What's involved in technology wise there? What's the broadly sort of the stuff you can speak about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'll stick to what's in Ben Rich's book, but obviously the geometry of how radar gets reflected and the kinds of materials that either reflect or absorb are kind of the couple of the critical elements there. And it's a cat and mouse game, right? I mean, radars get better, stealth capabilities get better. And so it's a really a game of continuous improvement and innovation there. I'll leave it at that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so the idea that something is essentially invisible is quite fascinating. But the other one is flying fast. So speed of sound is 750, 60 miles an hour. So supersonic is Mach 3, something like that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, we talk about the supersonic, obviously, and we kind of talk about that as that realm from Mach 1 up through about Mach 5. And then hypersonic, so, you know, high supersonic speeds would be past Mach 5. And you got to remember Lockheed Martin and actually other companies have been involved in hypersonic development since the late 60s. You know, you think of everything from the X-15 to the space shuttle as examples of that. I think the difference now is if you look around the world, particularly the threat environment that we're in today, you're starting to see publicly folks like the Russians and the Chinese saying they have hypersonic weapons capability that could threaten U.S. and allied capabilities, and also basically, you know, the claims are these could get around defensive systems that are out there today. And so there's a real sense of urgency. You hear it from folks like the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Dr. Mike Griffin, and others in the Department of Defense, that hypersonics is something that's really important to the nation. in terms of both parity but also defensive capabilities. And so that's something that, you know, we're pleased. It's something that Lockheed Martin's, you know, had a heritage in. We've invested R&D dollars on our side for many years. And we have a number of things going on with various U.S. government customers in that field today that we're very excited about. So I would anticipate we'll be hearing more about that in the future from our customers." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I've actually haven't read much about this. Probably you can't talk about much of it at all, but on the defensive side, it's a fascinating problem of perception, of trying to detect things that are really hard to see. Can you comment on how hard that problem is and how hard is it to stay ahead, even if we're going back a few decades, stay ahead of the competition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, maybe I'd, again, you got to think of these as ongoing capability development. And so think back to the early days of missile defense. So this would be in the eighties, the SDI program. And in that timeframe, we proved, Lockheed Martin proved, that you could hit a bullet with a bullet, essentially, which is something that had never been done before, to take out an incoming ballistic missile. And so that's led to these incredible hit-to-kill kinds of capabilities, PAC-3. That's the Patriot Advanced Capability Model 3 that Lockheed Martin builds, the THAAD system that I talked about. So now hypersonics, they're different from ballistic systems. And so we got to take the next step in defensive capability." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'll leave that there, but I can only imagine. No, let me just comment. As an engineer, it's sad to know that so much that Lockheed has done in the past is classified. Or today, you know, and it's shrouded in secrecy. It has to be by the nature of the application. So like what I do, so what we do here at MIT, we'd like to inspire young engineers, young scientists. And yet in a lucky case, some of that engineer has to stay quiet. How do you think about that? How does that make you feel? Is there a future where more can be shown or is it just the nature of this world that it has to remain secret?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a good question. I think the public can see enough of, including students who may be in grade school, high school, college today, to understand the kinds of really hard problems that we work on. And, I mean, look at the F-35, right? And, you know, obviously a lot of the detailed performance levels are sensitive and controlled. But, you know, we can talk about what an incredible aircraft this is. You know, supersonic, supercruise kind of a fighter, a, you know, stealth capabilities. It's a flying information system in the sky with data fusion, sensor fusion capabilities that have never been seen before. So these are the kinds of things that I believe, you know, these are the kinds of things that got me excited when I was a student. I think these still inspire students today. And the other thing I'd say, I mean, you know, people are inspired by space. People are inspired by aircraft. Our employees are also inspired by that sense of mission. And I'll just give you an example. I had the privilege to work and lead our GPS programs for some time. And that was a case where I actually worked on a program that touches billions of people every day. And so when I said I worked on GPS, everybody knew what I was talking about, even though they didn't maybe appreciate the technical challenges that went into that. But I'll tell you, I got a briefing one time from a major in the Air Force, and he said, I go by callsign GIMP. GPS is my passion. I love GPS, and he was involved in the operational test of the system. He said, I was out in Iraq and I was on a helicopter, a Black Hawk helicopter, and I was bringing back a sergeant and a handful of troops from a deployed location. And he said, my job is GPS. So I asked that Sergeant and he's beating down and kind of half asleep. And I said, what do you think about GPS? And he brightened up, his eyes lit up and he said, well, GPS, that brings me and my troops home every day. I love GPS. And that's the kind of story where it's like, okay, I'm really making a difference here in the kind of work. So that mission piece is really important. The last thing I'll say is, and this gets to some of these questions around advanced technologies. They're not just airplanes and spacecraft anymore. For people who are excited about advanced software capabilities, about AI, about bringing machine learning, these are the things that we're doing to exponentially increase the mission capabilities that go on those platforms. And those are the kinds of things that I think are more and more visible to the public." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think autonomy, especially in flight is super exciting. Do you see if a day, here we go back into philosophy, a future when most fighter jets will be highly autonomous to a degree where a human doesn't need to be in the cockpit in almost all cases?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, that's a world that to a certain extent we're in today. Now, these are remotely piloted aircraft, to be sure, but we have hundreds of thousands of flight hours a year now. in remotely piloted aircraft. And then if you take the F-35, there are huge layers, I guess, and levels of autonomy built into that aircraft so that the pilot is essentially more of a mission manager rather than doing the data, the second to second elements of flying the aircraft. So in some ways, it's the easiest aircraft in the world to fly. And kind of a funny story on that, so I don't know if you know how aircraft carrier landings work, but basically there's what's called a tail hook, and it catches wires on the deck of the carrier, and that's what brings the aircraft to a screeching halt, right? And there's typically three of these wires. So if you miss the first, the second one, you catch the next one, right? And we got a little criticism. I don't know how true this story is, but we got a little criticism. The F-35 is so perfect. It always gets the second wire. So we're wearing out the wire because it always hits that one. But that's the kind of autonomy that essentially up-levels what the human is doing to more of that mission manager." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So much of that landing by the F-35 is autonomous." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's just the control systems are such that you really have dialed out the variability that comes with all the environmental conditions. You're wearing it out. So my point is, to a certain extent, that world is here today. Do I think that we're going to see a day anytime soon when there are no humans in the cockpit? I don't believe that. But I do think we're going to see much more human machine teaming, and we're going to see that much more at the tactical edge. And we did a demo, you asked about what the Skunk Works is doing these days. And so this is something I can talk about. But we did a demo with the Air Force Research Laboratory. We called it Have Radar. And so using an F-16, as an autonomous wingman. And we demonstrated all kinds of maneuvers and various mission scenarios with the autonomous F-16 being that so-called loyal or trusted wingman. And so those are the kinds of things that we've shown what is possible now. Given that you've up-leveled that pilot to be a mission manager, now they can control multiple other aircraft. Think of them almost as extensions of your own aircraft flying alongside with you. So that's another example of how this is really coming to fruition. And then I mentioned the landings, but think about just the implications for humans and flight safety. And this goes a little bit back to the discussion we were having about how do you continuously improve the level of safety through automation while working through the complexities that automation introduces. So one of the challenges that you have in high-performance fighter aircraft is what's called G-lock. So this is G-induced loss of consciousness. So you pull nine G's, you're wearing a pressure suit, that's not enough to keep the blood going to your brain, you blackout. And of course that's bad if you happen to be flying low, near the deck or an obstacle or terrain environment. And so we developed a system at our aeronautics division called Auto GCAS, so Autonomous Ground Collision Avoidance System. And we built that into the F-16. It's actually saved seven aircraft, eight pilots already in the relatively short time it's been deployed. It was so successful that the Air Force said, hey, we need to have this in the F-35 right away. So we've actually done testing of that now on the F-35. And we've also integrated an autonomous air collision avoidance system. So think the air-to-air problem. So now it's the integrated collision avoidance system. But these are the kinds of capabilities, you know, I wouldn't call them AI. I mean, they're very sophisticated models, you know, of the aircraft dynamics coupled with the terrain models to be able to predict when Essentially, you know, the pilot is doing something that is going to take the aircraft into, or the pilot's not doing something in this case. But those, it just gives you an example of how autonomy can be really a lifesaver in today's world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's like an autonomous automated emergency braking in cars. But is there any exploration of perception of, for example, detecting G-Lock that the pilot is out? So as opposed to perceiving the external environment to infer that the pilot is out, but actually perceiving the pilot directly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, this is one of those cases where you'd like to not take action if you think the pilot's there. It's almost like systems that try to detect if a driver's falling asleep on the road, right? With limited success. So, I mean, this is what I'd call the system of last resort, right? Where if the aircraft has determined that it's going into the terrain, get it out of there. And this is not something that we're just doing in the aircraft world. And I wanted to highlight, we have a technology we call Matrix, but this is developed at Sikorsky Innovations. The whole idea there is what we call optimal piloting. So not optional piloting or unpiloted, but optimal piloting. So, an FAA certified system, so you have a high degree of confidence. It's generally pretty deterministic, so we know that it'll do in different situations, but effectively be able to fly a mission with two pilots, one pilot, no pilots. And, uh, and have, you can think of it almost as like a dial of the level of autonomy that you want, but able. So it's running in the background at all times and able to pick up tasks, whether it's, you know, sort of autopilot kinds of tasks or, or more, uh, sophisticated path planning kinds of activities to be able to do things like, for example, land on an oil rig, you know, in the North sea and bad weather, zero, zero conditions. And you can imagine, of course, there's a lot of military utility capability like that. You could have an aircraft that you want to send out for a crewed mission, but then at night, if you want to use it to deliver supplies in an unmanned mode, that could be done as well. And so there's clear advantages there. But think about on the commercial side, if you're an aircraft taken, you're gonna fly out to this oil rig, and if you get out there and you can't land, then you gotta bring all those people back, reschedule another flight, pay the overtime for the crew that you just brought back, because they didn't get where they were going, pay for the overtime for the folks that are out there around the oil rig. This is real economic, these are dollars and cents kinds of, advantages that we're bringing in the commercial world as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is a difficult question from the AI space that I would love it if you're able to comment. So a lot of this autonomy in AI you've mentioned just now has this empowering effect. One is the last resort, it keeps you safe. The other is there's a, with the teaming and in general assistive, assistive AI. And I think there's always a race. So the world is full of, the world is complex. It's full of bad actors. So there's often a race to make sure that we keep this country safe, right? But with AI, there is a concern that it's a slightly different race. There's a lot of people in the AI space that are concerned about the AI arms race. That as opposed to the United States becoming, having the best technology and therefore keeping us safe, even we lose ability to keep control of it. So this, the AI arms race getting away from all of us humans. So do you share this worry? Do you share this concern when we're talking about military applications that too much control and decision-making capability is giving to software or AI?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I don't see it happening today. And in fact, this is something from a policy perspective, uh, you know, it's, it's obviously a very dynamic space, but the department of defense has put quite a bit of thought into that. And maybe before talking about the policy, I'll just talk about some of the why, and you alluded to it being a sort of a complicated and a little bit scary world out there, but there's some, big things happening today. You hear a lot of talk now about a return to great powers competition, particularly around China and Russia with the U.S., but there are some other big players out there as well. And what we've seen is the deployment of some very I'd say concerning new weapon systems, you know, particularly with Russia and breaching some of the IRBM, Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile treaties, that's been in the news a lot. You know, the building of islands, artificial islands in the South China Sea by the Chinese and then arming those islands. The annexation of Crimea by Russia, the invasion of Ukraine. So there's some pretty scary things. And then you add on top of that, the North Korean threat has certainly not gone away. There's a lot going on in the Middle East with Iran in particular. And we see this global terrorism threat has not abated, right? So there are a lot of reasons to look for technology to assist with those problems, whether it's AI or other technologies like hypersonics, which we discussed. So now, let me give just a couple of hypotheticals. So people react sort of in the second timeframe, right? You know, you're, Photon hitting your eye to movement is on the order of a few tenths of a second kinds of processing times. Roughly speaking, computers are operating in the nanosecond timescale, right? So just to bring home what that means, a nanosecond to a second is like a second to 32 years. So seconds on the battlefield, in that sense, literally are lifetimes. And so if you can bring an autonomous or AI-enabled capability that will enable the human to shrink, maybe you've heard the term the OODA loop. So this whole idea that a typical battlefield decision is characterized by observe. So information comes in, orient. What does that mean in the context? Decide, what do I do about it? And then act, take that action. If you can use these capabilities to compress that OODA loop to stay inside what your adversary is doing, that's an incredible, powerful force on the battlefield." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a really nice way to put it. The role of AI in computing in general has a lot to benefit from just decreasing from 32 years to one second, as opposed to on the scale of seconds and minutes and hours making decisions that humans are better at making." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And it actually goes the other way too. So that's on the short time scale. So humans kind of work in the one second, two seconds to eight hours. After eight hours, you get tired, you gotta go to the bathroom, whatever the case might be. So there's this whole range of other things. Think about surveillance and guarding facilities. Think about moving material, logistics, sustainment. A lot of these what they call dull, dirty and dangerous things that you need to have sustained activity, but it's sort of beyond the length of time that a human can practically do as well. So there's this range of things that are critical in military and defense applications that AI and autonomy are particularly well suited to. Now, the interesting question that you brought up is, okay, how do you make sure that stays within human control? So that was the context for now the policy. And so there is a DOD directive called 3000.09, because that's the way we name stuff in this world. And, uh, and, but it, you know, and I'd say it's, it's well worth reading. It's only a couple of pages long, but it makes some key points and it's really around, you know, making sure that there's human agency and control, uh, over, uh, use of semi-autonomous and autonomous weapon systems. making sure that these systems are tested, verified, and evaluated in realistic, real-world type scenarios, making sure that the people are actually trained on how to use them, making sure that the systems have human-machine interfaces that can show what state they're in and what kinds of decisions they're making, making sure that you establish doctrine and tactics and techniques and procedures For the use of these kinds of systems and so I and by the way, I mean this none of this is easy But it I'm just trying to lay kind of the picture of how the u.s. Has said this is the way we're going to treat AI and autonomous systems that it's not a free-for-all and Like there are rules of war and rules of engagement with other kinds of systems think chemical weapons biological weapons We need to think about the same sorts of implications And this is something that's really important for Lockheed Martin. I mean, obviously we are 100% complying with our customer and the policies and regulations, but I mean, AI is an incredible enabler, say within the walls of Lockheed Martin in terms of improving production efficiency, helping engineers doing generative design, improving logistics, driving down energy costs. I mean, there are so many applications. But we're also very interested in some of the elements of ethical application within Lockheed Martin. So we need to make sure that things like privacy is taken care of, that we do everything we can to drive out bias in AI-enabled kinds of systems, that we make sure that humans are involved in decisions, that we're not just delegating accountability to algorithms. And so for us, you know, it all comes back, I talked about culture before, and it comes back to sort of the Lockheed Martin culture and our core values. And so it's pretty simple for us to do what's right, respect others, perform with excellence. And now how do we tie that back to the ethical principles that will govern how AI is used within Lockheed Martin? And we actually have a world pretty, so you might not know this, but they're actually awards for ethics programs. Lockheed Martin's had a recognized ethics program for many years. And this is one of the things that our ethics team is working with our engineering team on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "One of the miracles to me, perhaps a layman, again, I was born in the Soviet Union, so I have echoes, at least in my family history of World War II and the Cold War. Do you have a sense of why human civilization has not destroyed itself through nuclear war, so nuclear deterrence, and why is that? thinking about the future. Does technology have a role to play here? And what is the long-term future of nuclear deterrence look like?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's, you know, this is one of those hard, hard questions. And I should note that Lockheed Martin is, you know, both proud and privileged to play a part in multiple legs of our nuclear and strategic deterrent systems, like the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles. You know, you talk about, you know, is there still a possibility that the human race could destroy itself? I'd say that possibility is real, but interestingly, in some sense, I think the strategic deterrents have prevented the kinds of, you know, incredibly destructive world wars that we saw in the first half of the 20th century. Now, things have gotten more complicated since that time and since the Cold War. It is more of a multipolar, great powers world today. Just to give you an example, back then, you know, there were, you know, in the Cold War timeframe, just a handful of nations that had ballistic missile capability. By last count, and this is a few years old, there's over 70 nations today that have that. Similar kinds of numbers in terms of space-based capabilities. So the world has gotten more complex and more challenging, and the threats, I think, have proliferated in ways that we didn't expect. The nation today is in the middle of a recapitalization of our strategic deterrent. I look at that as one of the most important things that our nation can do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is involved in deterrence? Is it being ready to attack? Or is it the defensive systems that catch attacks?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A little bit of both. And so it's a complicated game theoretical kind of program. But ultimately, we are trying to prevent the use of any of these weapons. And the theory behind prevention is that even if an adversary uses a weapon against you, you have the capability to essentially strike back and do harm to them that's unacceptable. And so that will deter them from, you know, making use of these weapon systems. Um, the deterrence calculus has changed, of course, with, uh, you know, more nations now having these kinds of weapons. But I think, you know, from my perspective, it's very important, uh, you know, to maintain a strategic deterrent. You have to have systems that you will know, you know, will work when they're required to work. You know that they have to be adaptable to a variety of different scenarios in today's world. And so that's what this recapitalization of systems that were built over previous decades, making sure that they are appropriate, not just for today, but for the decades to come. So, the other thing I'd really like to note is strategic deterrence has a very different character today. We used to think of weapons of mass destruction in terms of nuclear, chemical, biological. And today we have a cyber threat. We've seen examples of the use of cyber weaponry. And if you think about the possibilities of using cyber capabilities or an adversary attacking the U.S. to take out things like critical infrastructure, electrical grids, water systems, Those are scenarios that are strategic in nature to the survival of a nation as well. So that is the kind of world that we live in today. And, you know, part of my hope on this is one that we can also develop technical or technological systems, perhaps enabled by AI and autonomy, that will allow us to contain and to fight back against these kinds of new threats that were not conceived when we first developed our strategic determinants." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I know that Lockheed is involved in cyber, so I saw that you mentioned that. Nuclear almost seems easier than cyber because there's so many ways that cyber can evolve. It's such an uncertain future. But talking about engineering with a mission, I mean, in this case, you're engineering systems that basically save the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, like I said, we're privileged to work on some very challenging problems for very critical customers here in the US and with our allies abroad as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Lockheed builds both military and non-military systems and perhaps the future of Lockheed may be more in non-military applications if you talk about space and beyond. I say that as a preface to a difficult question. So President Eisenhower in 1961 in his farewell address talked about the military industrial complex and that it shouldn't grow beyond what is needed. So what are your thoughts on those words, on the military-industrial complex, on the concern of growth of their developments beyond what may be needed?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That where it may be needed is a critical phrase, of course. And I think it is worth pointing out, as you noted, that Lockheed Martin, we're in a number of commercial businesses from energy to space to commercial aircraft. And so I wouldn't neglect the importance of those parts of our business as well. I think the world is dynamic and, you know, there was a time, it doesn't seem that long ago to me, I was a graduate student here at MIT and we were talking about the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. If you look at expenditure on military systems as a fraction of GDP, we're far below peak levels of the past. And to me, at least, it looks like a time where you're seeing global threats changing in a way that would warrant relevant investments in defensive capabilities. The other thing I'd note, For military and defensive systems, it's not quite a free market, right? We don't sell to people on the street. And that warrants a very close partnership between, I'd say the customers and the people that design, build, and maintain these systems. Because of the very unique nature the very difficult requirements, the very great importance on safety and on operating the way they're intended every time. And so that does create, and it's frankly, it's one of Lockheed Martin's great strengths is that we have this expertise built up over many years in partnership with our customers to be able to design and build these systems that meet these very unique mission needs." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, because building those systems is very costly. There's very little room for mistake. Ben Rich's book and so on just tells the story. It's nerve-wracking just reading it. If you're an engineer, it reads like a thriller. Let's go back to space for a second." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm always happy to go back to space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, a few quick, maybe out there, maybe fun questions, maybe a little provocative. What are your thoughts on the efforts of the new folks, SpaceX and Elon Musk? What are your thoughts about what Elon is doing? Do you see him as competition? Do you enjoy competition? What are your thoughts?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, first of all, certainly Elon, I'd say SpaceX and some of his other ventures are definitely a competitive force in the space industry. And do we like competition? Yeah, we do. And we think we're very strong competitors. I think competition is what the U.S. is founded on in a lot of ways, and always coming up with a better way. And I think it's really important to continue to have fresh eyes coming in, new innovation. I do think it's important to have level playing fields, and so you want to make sure that you're not giving different requirements to different players. But, you know, I tell people, you know, I spent a lot of time at places like MIT. I'm going to be at the MIT Beaverworks Summer Institute over the weekend here. And I tell people this is the most exciting time to be in the space business in my entire life. And it is this explosion of new capabilities that have been driven by things like the massive increase in computing power, things like the massive increase in comms capabilities, advanced and additive manufacturing are really bringing down the barriers to entry in this field and it's driving just incredible innovation. And it's happening at startups, but it's also happening at Lockheed Martin. I did not realize this, but Lockheed Martin working with Stanford actually built the first CubeSat that was launched here out of the US that was called Quakesat. And we did that with Stellar Solutions. This was right around just after 2000, I guess. And so we've been in that, you know, from the very beginning. And, you know, I talked about some of these like Maya and Orion, but we're in the middle of what we call smartsats and software-defined satellites that can essentially restructure and remap their purpose, their mission on orbit to give you almost unlimited flexibility for these satellites over their lifetimes. So, those are just a couple of examples, but yeah, this is a great time to be in space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Absolutely. So, Wright Brothers flew for the first time 116 years ago. So, now we have supersonic stealth planes and all the technology we've talked about. What innovations, obviously you can't predict the future, but do you see Lockheed in the next 100 years, if you take that same leap? How will the world of technology and engineering change? I know it's an impossible question, but nobody could have predicted that we could even fly 120 years ago. So what do you think is the edge of possibility that we're going to be exploring in the next 100 years?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know that there is an edge. You know, we've been around for almost that entire time, right? The Lockheed brothers and Glenn L. Martin starting their companies, you know, in the basement of a church and an old, you know, service station. We're very different companies today than we were back then, right? And that's because we've continuously reinvented ourselves over all of those decades. I think it's fair to say, you know, I know this for sure, the world of the future, it's going to move faster, it's going to be more connected, it's going to be more autonomous, and it's going to be more complex than it is today. And so this is the world, you know, as a CTO at Lockheed Martin that I think about what are the technologies that we have to invest in, whether it's things like AI and autonomy, you know, you can think about quantum computing, which is an area that we've invested in to try to stay ahead of these technological changes and frankly some of the threats that are out there. I believe that we're going to be out there in the solar system, that we're going to be defending and defending well against probably military threats that nobody has even thought about today. We are going to be, we're going to use these capabilities to have far greater knowledge of our own planet, the depths of the oceans, you know, all the way to the upper reaches of the atmosphere and everything out to the sun and to the edge of the solar system. So that's what I look forward to. And I'm excited, I mean, just looking ahead in the next decade or so to the steps that I see ahead of us in that time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't think there's a better place to end. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I guess it's the divine that saves the world, let's say. You could say that by definition. And then you might say, well, Are there pointers to that which will save the world, or that which eternally saves the world? And the answer to that, in all likelihood, is yes. And that's maybe truth, and love, and justice, and the classical virtues, beauty, perhaps, in some sense, foremost among them. That's a difficult case to make, but definitely a pointer." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Which direction is the arrow pointing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the arrow's pointing up. No, I think that that which it points to is what beauty points to. It transcends beauty. It's more than beauty." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that speaks to the divine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It points to the divine. Yeah, and I would say again, by definition. Because we could define the divine in some real sense. So, one way of defining the divine is, what is divine to you is your most fundamental axiom. And you might say, well, I don't have a fundamental axiom. Then I would say, that's fine, but then you're just confused. Because you have a bunch of contradictory axioms. And you might say, well, I have no axioms at all. And then I'd say, well, you're just epistemologically ignorant beyond comprehension, if you think that. Because that's just not true at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think a human being can exist within contradictions?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, we have to exist within contradiction. But when the contradictions make themselves manifest, say, in confusion with regard to direction, then the consequence of that, technically, is anxiety. and frustration and disappointment and all sorts of other negative emotions, but the cardinal negative emotion signifying multiple pathways forward is anxiety. It's an entropy signal." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But you don't think that kind of entropy signal can be channeled into beauty, into love? Why does beauty and love have to be clear, ordered, simple?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I would say it probably doesn't have to be, it can't be reduced to clarity and simplicity. Because when it's optimally structured, it's a balance between order and chaos, not order itself. If it's too ordered, if music is too ordered, it's not acceptable. It sounds like a drum machine, it's too repetitive, it's too predictable. It has to have some fire in it, along with the structure. I was in Miami doing a seminar on Exodus with a number of scholars, and this is a beauty discussion. When Moses first encounters the burning bush, it's not a conflagration that demands attention. It's something that catches his attention. It's a phenomena, and that means to shine forth. And Moses has to stop and attend to it, and he does. And he sees this fire that doesn't consume the tree. And the tree is a structure, right? It's a tree-like structure. It's a branching structure. It's a hierarchical structure. It's a self-similar structure. It's a fractal structure. And it's the tree of life, and it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fire in it is the transformation that's always occurring within every structure. And the fact that the fire doesn't consume the bush in that representation is an indication of the balance of transformation with structure. And that balance is presented as God. And what attracts Moses to it, in some sense, is the beauty. Now, it's the novelty and all that. Like, a painting is like a burning bush, that's a good way of thinking about it, a great painting. It's too much for people, often. You know, my house was, and will soon be again, completely covered with paintings inside. And it was hard on people to come in there, because... Well, my mother, for example, would say, well, why would you want to live in a museum? And I think, well, I would rather live in a museum than anywhere else in some real sense. But beauty is daunting. It scares people. They're terrified of buying art, for example, because their taste is on display. And they should be terrified, because generally people have terrible taste. Now, that doesn't mean they shouldn't foster it and develop it, but... And, you know, when you put your taste on display, it really exposes you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even to yourself, as you walk past it. Oh, definitely. Every day. Absolutely. This is who I am." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, and look how mundane that is, and look how trite it is, and look at how clichéd it is, and look at how sterile or too ordered it is, or too chaotic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or how quickly you start to take it for granted because you've seen it so many times." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if it's a real piece of art, that doesn't happen." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You notice the little details." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I mean, there are images, religious images in particular, so we could call them deep images, that people have been unpacking for 4,000 years and still haven't. I'll give you an example. This is a terrible example. So, I did a lecture series on Genesis, and I got a lot of it unpacked, but by no means all of it. When God kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he puts cherubim with flaming swords at the gate to stop human beings from re-entering paradise. I thought, what the hell does that mean, cherubim? And why do they have flaming swords? I don't get that. What is that exactly? And then I found out from Matthew Paggio, who wrote a great book on symbolism in Genesis, that cherubim are the supporting monsters of God. It's a very complicated idea. And that they're partly a representation of that which is difficult to fit into conceptual systems. They've also got an angelic or demonic aspect. Take your pick. Why do they have flaming swords? Well, a sword is a symbol of judgment and the separation of the wheat from the chaff. You use a sword to cut away, to cut away and to carve. And a flaming sword is not only that which carves, it's that which burns. And what does it carve away and burn? Well, you want to get into paradise? It carves away everything about you that isn't perfect. And so what does that mean? Okay, well here's part of what it means. This is a terrible thing. So, you could say that the entire Christian narrative is embedded in that image. Why? Well, let's say that flaming swords are a symbol of death. That seems pretty obvious. Let's say further that they're a symbol of apocalypse and hell. That doesn't seem completely unreasonable. So here's an idea. Not only do you have to face death, you have to face death and hell before you can get to paradise. Hellish judgment, and all that's embedded in that image. And a piece of art with an image like that has all that information in it. And it shines forth in some fundamental sense. It reaches into the back tendrils of your mind at levels you can't even comprehend, and grips you. I mean, that's why people go to museums and gaze at paintings they don't understand. And that's why they'll pay what's the most expensive objects in the world. If it's not carbon fiber racing yachts, it's definitely classic paintings. It's high-level technological implements, or it's classic art. Why are those things so expensive? Why do we build temples to house the images? Even secular people go to museums. I'm secular. Well, are you in a museum? Yes. Are you looking at art? Yes. Well, what makes you think you're secular then?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's arguable that the thing many, many centuries from now that will remain of all of human civilization will be our art. Not even the words." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, a book has remained a very long time, right? The biblical writings... Not that long." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "A few millennia." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's in the full arc of living organisms." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Perhaps we'll not have that. Well, we have images that are, we have artistic images that are at least 50,000 years old, right, that have survived. And some of those are, they're already profound in their symbolism. But do you mean humans? Yeah, we found them. And they've lasted that long. And so, and then think about Europe. Secular people all over the world make pilgrimages to Europe. Well, why? Because of the beauty. Obviously. I mean, that's self-evident. And it's partly because there are things in Europe that are so beautiful. They take your breath away, right? They make your hair stand on end. They fill you with a sense of awe. And we need to see those things. It's not optional. We need to see those things. The cathedrals. I was in a cathedral in Vienna, and it was terribly beautiful, you know. Terribly beautiful. Well, it was terribly beautiful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is beauty painful for you? Is that the highest form of beauty that really challenges you? Oh, definitely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, I got a good analysis of the statue of David. Michelangelo's statue says, you could be far more than you are. That's what that statue says. And this cathedral, we went down into the understructure of it, and there were three floors of bones from the plague. And there they all are. And then that cathedral's on top of it. It's no joke to go visit a place like that. No, it rattles you to the core. And our religious systems have become propositionally dubious. But there's no arguing with the architecture, although modern architects like to, with their sterility and their giant middle fingers erected everywhere. But beauty is a terrible pointer to God. And you know, a secular person will say, well, I don't believe in God. It's like, have it your way. You cannot move forward into the unforeseen horizon of the future, except on faith. And you might say, well, I have no faith. It's like, well, good luck with the future then, because what are you then, nihilistic and hopeless, and anxiety-ridden? And if not, well, something's guiding you forward. It's faith in something, or multiple things, which just makes you a polytheist, which I wouldn't recommend." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask you one short-lived biological meatbag to another. Who is God, then? Let's try to sneak up to this question, if it's at all possible. Is it possible to even talk about this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it better be, because otherwise there's no communicating about it. It has to be something that can be brought down to earth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, we might be too dumb to bring it down." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's not just ignorant, it's also sinful, right? Because there's not knowing, and then there's wanting to know, or refusing to know. And so you might say, well, could you extract God from a description of the objective world? Is God just the ultimate unity of the natural reality? And I would say, well, in a sense there's some truth in that, but not exactly, because God in the highest sense is the spirit that you must emulate in order to thrive. How's that for a biological definition? Spirit is a pattern. The spirit that you must emulate in order to thrive." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's a kind of, in one sense, when we say the human spirit, it's that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's an animating principle. It's a meta, it's a pattern. And you might say, well, what's the pattern? Okay, well, I can tell you that to some degree. Imagine that, like you're gripped by beauty, you're gripped by admiration. And you can just notice this. This isn't propositional, you have to notice it. Turns out I admire that person. Hmm. So what does that mean? Well, it means I would like to be like him or her. That's what admiration means. It means there's something about the way they are that compels imitation. Another instinct. Or inspires respect or awe, even. Okay, what is that that grips you? Well... I don't know. Well, let's say, okay, fine. But it grips you, and you want to be like that. Kids hero worship, for example, and so do adults, for that matter, unless they become entirely cynical." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I worship quite a few heroes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there you go. Proudly. Yes, well, there you go. And there's no, that worship, that celebration and proclivity to imitate is worship. That's what worship means, most fundamentally. Now imagine you took the set of all admirable people, and you extract it out, AI learning, you extracted out the central features of what constitutes admirable, and then you did that repeatedly until you purified it to what was most admirable. That's as good as you're going to get in terms of a representation of God. And you might say, well, I don't believe in that. It's like, well, what do you mean? It's not a set of propositional facts. It's not a scientific theory about the structure of the objective world. And then I could say something about that, too, because I've been thinking about this a lot, especially since talking to Richard Dawkins. It's like, OK, the postmodernist types, going back way before Derrida and Foucault, maybe back to Nietzsche, who I admire greatly, by the way, says, God is dead. It's like, OK. But Nietzsche said, God is dead, and we have killed him, and we'll not find enough water to wash away all the blood. So that was Nietzsche. He's no fool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's got a way with words." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He certainly does. And so then you think, OK, well, we killed the transcendent. Well, what does that mean for science? Well, it frees it up, because all that nonsense about a deity is just the idiot superstition that stops the scientific What process from moving forward? That's basically the new atheist claim, something like that. It's like, wait a second. Do you believe in the transcendent if you're a scientist? And the answer is, well, not only do you believe in it, you believe in it more than anything else. Because if you're a scientist, you believe in what objects to your theory. more than you believe in your theory. Now, we've got to think that through very carefully. So your theory describes the world, and as far as you're concerned, your description of the world is the world. But, because you're a scientist, you think, well, even though that's my description of the world, and that's what I believe, there's something beyond what I believe. And that's the object. And so I'm going to throw my theory against the object and see where it'll break. And then I'm going to use the evidence of the break as a source of new information to revitalize my theory. So as a scientist, you have to posit the existence of the ontological transcendent before you can move forward at all. But more! You have to posit that contact with the ontological transcendent, annoying though it is, because it upsets your apple cart, is exactly what will, in fact, set you free. So then you accept the proposition that there is a transcendent reality, and that contact with that transcendent reality is redemptive in the most fundamental sense, because if it wasn't, well, why would you bother making contact with it? You're going to make everything worse or better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why does the contact with the transcendent set you free as a scientist?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because you assume that, you assume, I mean freedom in the most fundamental sense. It's like, well, freedom from want, freedom from disease, freedom from ignorance, right? That it informs you. The logos in it. It is definitely that. Yeah, it's the direction, let's say, the directionality of science. That's a narrative direction, not a scientific direction. And then the question is, what is the narrative? Well, it posits a transcendent reality. It posits that the transcendent reality is corrective. It posits that our knowledge structures should be regarded with humility. It posits that you should bow down in the face of the transcendent evidence. And you have to take a vow. You know this as a scientist. You have to take a vow to follow that path if you're going to be a real scientist. It's like the truth, no matter what. And that means you posit the truth as a redemptive force. Well, what does redemptive mean? Well, why bother with science? Well, so people don't starve, so people can move about more effectively, so life can be more abundant, right? So, it's all ensconced within an underlying ethic. So, the reason I was saying that, while we were talking about belief in God, it's like, this is a very complicated topic, right? Do you believe in a transcendent reality? Okay, now let's say, you buy the argument I just made on the natural front. You say, yeah, yeah, that's just nature. That's not God. And then I'd say, well, what makes you think you know what nature is? See, the problem with that argument is that it already presumes a reductionist, materialist, objective view of what constitutes nature. But if you're a scientist, you're going to think, well, in the final analysis, I don't know what nature is. I certainly don't know its origin or destination point. I don't know its teleology. I'm really ignorant about nature. And so when I say it's nothing but nature, I shouldn't mean it's nothing but what I understand nature to be. So I could say, will we have a fully reductionist account of cognitive processes? And the answer to that is yes, but by the time we do that, our understanding of matter will have transformed so much that what we think of as reductionist now won't look anything like what we think of reductionism now. Matter isn't dead dust. I don't know what it is. I have no idea what it is. Matter is what matters. There's a definition. That's a very weird definition. But the notion that we have, you know, that if you're a reductionist, a materialist reductionist, that you can reduce the complexity of what is to your assumptions about the nature of matter, that's not a scientific" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "your specific limited human assumptions of this century, of this week, that, so in some sense, without God in this complicated big definition we're talking about, the there's no humility or It's not enough. There's less likely to be or rather science can err in Taking a trajectory away from humility. Well without something much more powerful than Individual human." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well then and we know, you know, the Frankenstein story comes out of that instantly and that's a good story for the current times It's like you you're playing around with make a new life you bloody well better make sure you have your arrows pointed up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's interesting because you said science has an ethic to it, I think. It's embedded in an ethic. Well, there's a, you know, science is a big word. Yeah. And it includes a lot of disciplines that have different traditions, so biology, chemistry. genetics, physics, those are very different communities. And I think biology, especially when you get closer and closer to medicine and to the human body, does have a very serious, first of all, has a history with Nazi Germany of being abused and all those kinds of things. but it has a history of taking this stuff seriously. What doesn't have a history of taking this stuff seriously is robotics and artificial intelligence, which is really interesting because you don't, you know, you called me a scientist, and I would like to wear that label proudly, but often people don't think of computer science as a science. but nevertheless, it will be, I think, the science of one of the major scientific fields of the 21st century, and you should take that very seriously. Oftentimes when people build robots or AI systems, they think of them as toys to tinker with. Oh, isn't this cool? And I feel this too. Isn't this cool?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It is cool." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But, you know, at a certain moment you might, isn't this nuclear explosion cool?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, or birth control pill cool, or transistor cool. Yeah, well, the other thing too, and this is a weird problem in some sense, the robotics engineer types, they're thing people, right? I mean, the big classes of interest are interest in things versus interest in people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Some of my best friends are thing people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right, and thing people are very, very clear, logical thinkers, and they're very outcome-oriented and practical. now and that's all good that makes the machinery and keeps it functioning but there's a human side of the equation. And you get the extreme thing, people, and you think, yeah, well, what about the human here? And when we're talking about, we've been talking about the necessity of having a technological enterprise embedded in an ethic. And you can ignore that, like most of the time, right? You can ignore the overall ethic in some sense when you're toying around with your toys. But when you're building an artificial intelligence, it's like, well, That's not a toy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That might be... A toy becomes the monster very quickly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. And this is a whole new kind of monster. And maybe it's already here. Yes, and you notice how many of those things you can no longer turn off. And what is it with you engineers and your inability to put off switches on things now? It's like, I have to hold this for five seconds for it to shut off, or I can't figure... I just want to shut it off! Click! Off!" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, what is it with you humans that don't put off switches on other humans? Because there's a magic to the thing that you notice, and it hurts for both you and perhaps one day the thing itself to turn it off. And so you have to be very careful as an engineer adding off-switches to things. I think it's a feature, not a bug, the off-switch. The off-switch gives a deadline to us humans, to systems of existence. It makes you, you know, death is the thing that really brings clarity to life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I do think- Yes, hence the flaming swords." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The flaming sword, I do like your view of the flame of the bush and perhaps the sword as a thing of transformation. It's also, it's a transformation that kind of consumes the thing in the process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it depends on how much of the thing is chaff. You know, this is why you can't touch the Ark of the Covenant, for example. And this is why people can have very bad psychedelic trips. It's like, if you're 95% deadwood, and you get too close to the flame, the 5% that's left might not be able to make it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think it's all chat, but I think there is some aspect of destruction that is, that's, you know, the old Bukowski line of do what you love and let it kill you. Don't you think that destruction is part of?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's humility. That's humility. You bet, you bet, you bet. It's like inviting the judgment, inviting the judgment, because maybe you can die a little bit instead of dying completely. You know, and that's, I think it's Alfred North Whitehead. We can let our ideas die instead of us. Right? We can have these partial personalities that we can burn off, and we can let them go before they become tyrannical pharaohs and we lose everything. And so, yeah, there's this optimal bite of death. And who knows what it would mean to optimize that? Like, what if it was possible that if you died enough all the time, that you could continue to live? And the thing is, we already know that biologically, because if you don't die properly all the time, well, it's cancerous outgrowths, and it's a very fine balance between productivity on the biological front and the culling of that, right? Life is a real balance between growth and death. And so what would happen if you got that balance right? Well, we kind of know, right? Because if you live your life properly, so to speak, and you're humble enough to let your stupidity die before it takes you out, you will live longer. That's just a fact. Well, but then what's the ultimate extension of that? And the answer is, we don't know. We have no idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, let me ask you a difficult question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As opposed to the easy ones that you've been asking so far." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, Dostoevsky's always just a warmup. So if death, if death every single day is the way to progress through life, you have become quite famous. Death and hell. Death and hell." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, because you don't wanna forget the hell part." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you worry that your fame traps you into the person that you were before?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, Elvis became an Elvis impersonator by the time he died." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, do you fear that you have become a Jordan Peterson impersonator? Do you fear of, in some part, becoming the famous, suit-wearing, brilliant Jordan Peterson? The certainty in the pursuit of truth Always right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think I worry about it more than anything else. I hope. I hope I do. I better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Has fame to some degree, when you look at yourself in the mirror, in the quiet of your mind, has it corrupted you?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No doubt. In some regard. I mean, it's a very difficult thing to avoid, you know, because things change around you, people are much more likely to do what you ask, for example, right? And so that's a danger, because one of the things that keeps you dying properly is that people push back against you optimally. This is why so many celebrities spiral out of control, especially the tyrannical types that, say, run countries. Everyone around them stops saying, yeah, you're deviating a little bit there. They laugh at all their jokes. They open all their doors. They always want something from them. The red carpet's always rolled out. It's like, well, you think, wouldn't that be lovely? It's, well, not if the red carpet is rolled out to you while you're on your way to perdition. That's not a good deal. You just get there more efficiently. And so one of the things that I've tried to learn to manage is to have people around me all the time who are critics, who are saying, yeah, I could have done that better. And you're a little too harsh there. And you're alienating people unnecessarily there. And you should have done some more background work there. And I think the responsibility attendant upon that increases as your influence increases. That's as your influence increases, then that becomes a lot of responsibility. So, you know, and then maybe have an off day and well, here's an example. I've been writing some columns lately about things that perturb me, like the forthcoming famine, for example. And it's hard to take those problems on. It's difficult to take those problems on in a serious manner and it's frightening. And it would be easier just to go up to the cottage with my wife and go out on the lake and watch the sunset. And so I'm tempted to draw on anger as a motivating energy. to help me overcome the resistance to doing this. But then that makes me more harsh and judgmental in my tone when I'm reading such things, for example, on YouTube, than might be optimal. Now, I've had debates with people about that, because I have friends who say, No, if you're calling out the environmentalist globalists who are harassing the Dutch farmers, then a little anger is just the ticket. But then others say, well, you know, you don't want to be too harsh because you alienate people who would otherwise listen to you. That's a hard balance to get right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also maybe anger hardens your mind to where you don't notice the subtle quiet beauty of the world. The quiet love that's always there, that permeates everything. Sometimes you can become deeply cynical about the world if it's the Nietzsche thing. Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. But I would say... Bring it on. That's why I also say, knowing that he's absolutely right, but if you gaze into the abyss long enough, you see the light, not the darkness." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you sure about that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm betting my life on it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's a heck of a bet. Because it might distort your mind to where all you see is abyss, is the evil in this world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, then I would say you haven't looked long enough. You know, that's back to the swords, the flaming swords. So I said the whole story of Christ was prefigured in that image. It's like the story of Christ psychologically. is radical acceptance of the worst possible tragedy. That's what it means. That's what the crucifix means. Psychologically, it's like gaze upon that which you are most afraid of. But that story doesn't end there. Because in the story, Christ goes through death into hell. So death isn't enough. The abyss of innocent death is not sufficient to produce redemption. It has to be a voluntary journey to hell. And maybe that's true for everyone. And that's like, there is no more terrifying idea than that, by definition. And so then, well, do you gaze upon that? Well, who knows?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who knows? How often do you gaze upon death, your own? How often do you remember, remind yourself, that this ride ends? Personally? Personally. All the time. Because you, as a deep thinker and philosopher, it's easy to start philosophizing and forgetting that you might die today." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The angel of death sits on every word." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How's that? How often do you actually consciously- All the time. Notice the angel?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All the time. I think it's one of the things that made me peculiar. When I was in graduate school, you know, I had the thought of death in my mind all the time. And I noticed that many of the people that I was with, these were people I admired fine. That wasn't part of their character, but it was definitely part of mine. I'd wake up every morning, this happened for years, think, time's short, get at it. Time's short, get at it. There's things to do. And so that was always, it's still there. And it's still there with, I would say, and it's unbearable in some sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you afraid of it? Like what's your relationship?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Afraid of death? Yeah. You know, I was ready to die a year ago. And not casually. I had people I loved, you know. So no, I'm not very worried about me. But I am very worried about making a mistake. I heard Elon Musk talk about that a couple of months ago. It was really a striking moment. Someone asked him about death, and he said, just offhand, and then went on with the conversation. He said, that'd be a relief. And then he went on with the conversation. And I thought, well, you know, he's got a lot of weight on his shoulders. I'm sure that part of him thinks, I'd be easier just if this wasn't here at all. Now, he said it offhand, but it was a telling moment in my estimation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, for him, that's a why live question. The exhaustion of life. If you call it life as suffering, but the hardship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm more afraid of hell than death." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're afraid of the thing that follows." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know if it follows or if it's always here. And I think we're going to find out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the connection between death and hell?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there something that needs to be done before you arrive?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're more likely to die terribly if you live in a manner that brings you to hell. That's one connection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And terribly is a very deep kind of concept. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah. And that's the definition, by the way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you make of Elon Musk? You've spoken about him a bit, you met him." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm struck with admiration. That's what I make of him. And I always think of that as a primary... Well, it's like, do you find this comedian funny? It's like, well, I laugh at him. You know what I mean? It's not propositional again. And so, there are things I would like to ask Mr. Musk about. the Mars venture. I don't know what he's up to there. It strikes me as absurd in the most fundamental sense, because I think, well, it'd be easier just to build an outpost in the Antarctica or in the desert." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, how much of the human endeavor is absurd?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's what Nietzsche said. Great men are seldom credited with their stupidity. Who the hell knows what Musk is up to? I mean, obviously he's building rockets. Now, he's motivated because he wants to build a platform for life on Mars. Is that a good idea? Who am I to say? He's building the rockets, man, but I'd like to ask him about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I would like to see that conversation. I do think that having talked to him quite a bit offline, I think these, several of his ideas, like Mars, like humans becoming a multi-planetary species, could be one of the things that human civilization looks back at as Duh, I can't believe he's one of the few people that was really pushing this idea, because it's the obvious thing for society, for life to survive." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, it isn't obvious to me that I'm in any position to evaluate Elon Musk. Like, I would like to talk to him and find out what he's up to and why, but, I mean, he's an impossible person. What he's done is impossible. All of it. It's like, he built an electric car that works. Now, does it work completely, and will it replace gas cars, or should it? I don't know, but if we're going to build electric cars, he seems to be the best at that, by a lot. And he more or less did that, people carp about him, but he more or less did that by himself. I know he's very good at distributing responsibility and all of that, but he's the spearhead. And then, that was pretty hard. And then he built a rocket, at like one-tenth the price of NASA rockets. And then he shot his car out into space. That's pretty hard. And then he's building this boring company, more or less as a, what would you call it? It's sort of, it's this whimsical joke in some sense, but it's not a joke. He's amazing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And Neuralink, delving into the depths of the mind." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And Starlink. It's like, go Elon, as far as I'm concerned. And then, you know, he puts his finger on things so oddly. The problem is underpopulation. It's like, I think so too. I think it's a terrible problem that we're... The West, for example, is no longer at replacement with regard to birthrate. It means we've abandoned the virgin and the child in the most fundamental sense. It's a bloody catastrophe. And Musk, he sees it clear as can be. It's like, wow. And where everyone else is running around going, oh, there's too many people. It's like, nope. Got that! Not only... See, I've learned that there are falsehoods and lies, and there are anti-truths. And an anti-truth is something that's so preposterous that you couldn't make a claim that's more opposite to the truth. And the claim that there are too many people on the planet is an anti-truth. So, you know, people say, well, you have to accept limits to growth, and etc. It's like... I have to accept the limits that you're going to impose on me, because you're frightened of the future. That's your theory, is it? Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's an idea. It could be a right idea. It could be a wrong idea." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think anti-truth... Here, I'll tell you why it's the wrong idea, I think. So imagine that there's an emergency. Dragon. There's a dragon. Someone comes and says, there's a dragon. I'm the guy to deal with it. That's what the environmentalists say, the radical types who push limits to growth. Then I look at them and I think, okay, is that dragon real or not? That's one question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I ask that question of myself every time, when I spend time alone." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is the apocalypse looming on the environmental front? Yes or no? I'll just leave that aside for the time being. I think you can make a case both ways, for a bunch of different reasons. And it's not a trivial concern. And we've overfished the oceans terribly. And there are environmental issues that are looming large. Whether climate change is the cardinal one or not is a whole different question, but we won't get into that. That's not the issue. You're clamoring about a dragon. Okay. Why should I listen to you? Well, let's see how you're reacting to the dragon. First of all, you're scared stiff and in a state of panic. That might indicate you're not the man for the job. Second, You're willing to use compulsion to harness other people to fight the dragon for you. So now not only are you terrified, you're a terrified tyrant. So then I would say, well then you're not the Moses that we need to lead us out of this particular exodus. And maybe that's a neurological explanation, it's like, if you're so afraid of what you're facing, that you're terrified into paralysis and nihilism, and that you're willing to use tyrannical compulsion to get your way, you are not the right leader for the time. So then I like someone like Bjorn Lomberg, or Matt Ridley, or Marion Toupie, and they say, well, look, we've got our environmental problems, Maybe there's a there you could make a case that there's a Malthusian element in some situations but fundamentally the track record of the human race is that we learn very fast and faster all the time to do more with less and We've got this and I think Yes to that idea and I think about it in a different in a fundamental way. It's like, I trust Lomberg, I trust Toopey, I trust Matt Ridley. They've thought about these things deeply. They're not just saying, oh, the environment doesn't matter, whatever the environment is. You know, the environment, I don't even know what that is. That's everything, the environment. I'm concerned about the environment. It's like, which is, how is that different than saying I'm worried about everything? How are those statements different semantically?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, the environment, it could be, I'm worried about human society. A lot of these complex systems are difficult to talk about because there's so much involved, for sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, everything. And then these models, because people have gone after me because I don't buy the climate models. Well, I think about the climate models as extended into the economic models because the climate model is, well, there's gonna be a certain degree of heating, let's say by 2100. It's like, okay. Some of that might be human-generated, some of it's a consequence of warming after the Ice Age. This has happened before, but fair enough. Let's take your presumption, although there are multiple presumptions, and any error in your model multiplies as time extends, but have it your way. OK, now we're going to extend the climate model, so to speak, into the economic model. So I just did an analysis of a paper by Deloitte, third biggest company in the US. 300,000 employees, major league consultants. They just produced a report in May. I wrote an article for it in The Telegraph, which I'm going to release this week on my YouTube channel. I said, well, if we get the climate problem under control, economically, because that's where the models are now being generated on the economic front. So now we have to model the environment, that's climate, and we have to model the economy, and then we have to model their joint interaction, and then we have to predict a hundred years into the future, and then we have to put a dollar value on that, and then we have to claim that we can do that, which we can't, and then this is our conclusion. We're going to go through a difficult period of privation, Because if we don't accept limits to growth, there's going to be a catastrophe, 50 years in the future or thereabouts. And so to avert that catastrophe, we are going to make people poorer now. How much poorer? Well, not a lot compared to how much richer they're going to be. But definitely, and they say this in their own models, definitely poorer, definitely poorer, than they would be if we just left them the hell alone. And so then I think, okay, poorer, eh? Who? Well, let's look at it biologically. You've got a hierarchy, right, of stability and security. That's a hierarchy, or one type. You stress a hierarchy like that, a social hierarchy. So, there's birds in an environment, and an avian flu comes in. And then you look at the birds in the social hierarchy, and the... The low-ranking birds have the worst nests, so they're most exposed to wind and rain and sun, and farthest from food supplies, and most exposed to predators. And so those birds are stressed, which is what happens to you at the bottom of a hierarchy. You're more stressed, because your life is more uncertain. You're more stressed, your immunological function is compromised because of that. You're sacrificing the future for the present. An avian flu comes in, and the birds die from the bottom up. That happens in every epidemic. You die from the bottom up. Okay. So they say when the aristocracy catches a cold, the working class dies of pneumonia. All right. So now we're going to make people poorer. Okay. Who? Well, we know who we make poor when we make people poorer. We make those who are barely hanging on poorer. And what does that mean? It means they die. And so what the Deloitte consultants are basically saying is, well, you know, it's kind of unfortunate, but according to our models, a lot of poor people are going to have to die, so that a lot more poor people don't die in the future. It's like, okay, hold on a sec. Which of those two things am I supposed to regard with certainty? The hypothetical poor people that you're going to hypothetically save 100 years from now, or the actual poor people? that you are actually going to kill in the next 10 years. Well, I'm going to cast my lot with the actual poor people that you're actually going to kill. And then I think further, it's like, well, okay, the Deloitte consultants, Have you actually modeled the world? Or is this a big advertising shtick designed to attract your corporate clients with the demonstration that you're so intelligent that you can actually model the entire ecosystem of the world, including the economic system, and predict it a hundred years forward? And isn't there a bit of a moral hazard in making a claim like that? Just like, just a trifle, especially when... So I talked to Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Leon last week. I accepted the UN estimates of starvation this coming year. 150 million people will suffer food insecurity. Food insecurity. Yeah, food insecurity, that's the bloody buzzword. Famine. Well, Michael Yawn thought 1.2 billion, and then that'll spiral, because he said what happens in a famine is that the governments go nuts, crazy. The governments destabilize. And then they appropriate the food from the farmers. Then the farmers don't have any money. Then they can't grow crops. And I think, yeah, that's exactly what they do. That's exactly what would happen. And so, Jan told me 1.2 billion, and then Bjorn Lomborg said the same thing. I didn't even ask him. He just made it as an offhand comment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So... Let me ask you about the famine of the 30s. Yeah. Do you think- In the Ukraine?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the Ukraine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh yeah, fun, fun, fun. Similar, a lot of the things you mentioned in the last few sentences kind of echo to that part of human history. The hole in the door." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Do you- No one knows about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, now I've just spent four weeks in Ukraine. Oh yeah. There's different parts of the world that still, even if they don't know," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They feel history runs in the blood." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The Dutch knew, in some sense. They had a famine at the end of World War II, and part of the reason the Dutch farmers are so unbelievably efficient and productive is that the Dutch swore at the end of World War II that that was not going to happen again. And then they had to scrape land out of the ocean. Because Holland, that's quite a country, it shouldn't even exist. The fact that it's the world's number two exporter. You know that it's the world's number two exporter of agricultural products? Holland. It's like, I don't think it's as big as Massachusetts. It's this little tiny place, it shouldn't even exist. And they want to put, here's the plan. Let's put 30% of the farmers out of business. Well, the broader ecosystem of agricultural production in Holland is 6% of their GDP. Now, these centralizing politicians think, tell me if I'm stupid about this. Take an industry. You knock it back by fiat by 30%. Now it runs on like a 3% profit margin. Now you're going to kill 30% of it. How are you not going to bring the whole thing down, the whole farming ecosystem down? How are you not going to impoverish the transport systems? How are you not going to demolish the grocery stores? You can't take something like that and pare it back, buy fiat by 30% and not kill it. I can't see how you can do that. I mean, look what we did with the COVID lockdowns. We broke the supply chains. Have you tried buying something lately? And wait, aren't the Chinese threatening Taiwan at the moment? What are we going to do without chips? So I don't know what these people are thinking. And then I think, OK, what are they thinking? Well, the Deloitte people are thinking, aren't we smart and shouldn't we be hired by our corporate employers? It's like, OK, too bad about the poor. What are the environmentalists thinking? We love the planet. It's like, do you? We love the poor. Do you? Okay. Let's pit the planet against the poor. Who wins? The planet. Okay. You don't love the poor that much. Do you love the planet? Or do you hate capitalism? Let's pit those two things against each other. Oh, well, it turns out we actually hate capitalism. How can we tell? Because you're willing to break it, and you know what's going to happen. So what's going to happen in Sri Lanka with these 20 million people who now have nothing to eat? Are they going to eat all the animals? Are they going to burn all the firewood? They're stockpiling firewood in Germany. It's like, so is your environmental globalist utopia going to kill the poor and destroy the planet? And that's okay, because we'll wipe out capitalism. Okay." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the dragon and the fear of the dragon drives ideologies, some of which can build a better world, some of which can destroy that world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now, what do you think of that theory about trustworthiness? If the dragon that you're facing turns you into a terrified tyrant, you're not the man for the job." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is that a good theory? It's an interesting theory. Let me use that theory to challenge, because what does terror look like? Let me table the turns, turn the tables on you. You are Terrified? Afraid? Concerned? About the dragon of something we can call communism, Marxism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Am I terrified of it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm terrified enough to be a tyrant. Your theories had two components. I'm not paralyzed and I don't want to be a tyrant. The tyrant part, I think, is missing with you. But you are very concerned. The intensity of your feeling does not give much space, actually, at least in your public persona, for sitting quietly with a dragon and sipping a couple of beers and thinking about this thing. The intensity of your anger, concern about certain things you're seeing in society, Is that going to drive you off the path that ultimately takes us to a better world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good question. I mean, I don't... I'm trying to get that right. So, we've kind of come to a cultural conclusion about the Nazis. Do you get to be angry about the Nazis? Seems the answer to that is yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, actually, let me push back here. I also don't trust people who are angry about the Nazis. I mean the actual Nazis. Well, as you know, there's a lot of people in the world that use actual Nazis to mean a lot of things. One of them is very important to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Me, for example. He's a Nazi, or magical super Nazi, as it turns out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think they actually sort of steel man all their perspectives. I think a lot of people that call you a Nazi mean it. Yeah, I'm aware of that. There's an important thing there though, because I went to the front in Ukraine, and a lot of the people that lost their home or that got to interact a lot with the Russian soldiers, Ukrainian people that interacted with the Russian soldiers, they reported that the Russian soldiers really believe they're saving the people of Ukraine in these local villages from the Nazis. I understand, yeah. So to them, It's not just that the Ukrainian government has, or Ukraine has some Nazis. It's like, it has been, the idea is that the Nazis have taken over Ukraine and we need to free them. This is the belief. So this, again, Nazis, still a dragon that lives. And it's used by people because it's safe to sit next to that dragon and spread any kind of ideology you want. So I just want to kind of say that we have agreed on this particular dragon, but I still don't trust anybody who uses that one." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but we have issues with boundaries, right? So this is a very complicated problem, right? So Rene Girard believed that It was a human proclivity to demonize a scapegoat and then drive it out of the village. I've thought about that a lot. We need a place to put Satan. Seriously, this is a serious issue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Should he be inside the village or outside?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, maybe he should be inside you. That's the fundamental essence of the Christian doctrine. It's like Satan is best fought on the battleground of your soul. And that's right. It's right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually put words to the kind of dragon that you're fighting? Is it communism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the spirit of Cain." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you elaborate what the spirit of Cain is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, after Adam and Eve are thrown out of paradise for becoming self-conscious, or when they become self-conscious, they're destined to work. And the reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that to become self-conscious is to become aware of the future. It's to become aware of death. That certainly happens in the Adam and Eve story. To have the scales fall from your eyes. And then, the consequence of that is that you now have to labour to prevent the catastrophes of the future. That's work. Work is sacrifice. Sacrifice of the present to the future. It's delay of gratification, it's maturity. It's sacrifice to something as well, and in the spirit of something. Okay, so now Adam and Eve have two children, Cain and Abel. So those are the first two people in history. Because the Garden of Eden doesn't count. And they're the first two people who are born rather than created. So they're the first two people. And that's a hell of a story, because it's a story of fratricidal murder that degenerates into genocide, flood, and tyranny. So, that's fun for the opening salvo of the story, let's say. And Abel and Cain both make sacrifices. And for some reason, Abel sacrifices, please, God. It's not exactly clear why. And Cain's don't. Now... There's an implication in the text that it's because Cain's sacrifices are second rate. God says that Abel brings the finest to the sacrificial altar. He doesn't say that about Cain. So you could imagine that Cain is sacrificing away, but he's holding something in reserve. He's not all in. He's not bringing his best to the table. He's not offering his best to God. And so Abel thrives like mad. And everyone loves him, and he gets exactly what he needs and wants, exactly when he needs and wants it. He's favored of God. And Cain is bearing this terrible burden forward, and working, and his sacrifices are rejected. So, he gets resentful. Really resentful. Resentful enough to call God out and say something like, this is quite the creation you've got going here. I'm breaking myself in half and nothing good's coming my way. What the hell's up with that? And then there's Abel, the sun's shining on him every day. How dare you? Okay. But this is God that Cain's talking to. And so God says what Cain least wants to hear, which is what God usually says to people. He says, look to your own devices. You're not making the sacrifices you should, and you know it. And then he says something even worse. He says, sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal, and you've invited it in. to have your way, to have its way with you. And so he basically says, you have allowed your resentment to preoccupy yourself, and now you're brooding upon it and generating something creative, new and awful, possessed by the spirit of resentment. And that's why you're in the miserable state you're in. So then Cain leaves. His countenance falls, as you might expect. And Cain leaves. And he's so incensed by this, because God has said, look, your problems are of your own making. And not only that, you invited them in. And not only that, you engaged in this creatively. And not only that, you're blaming it on me. And not only that, that's making you jealous of Abel, who's your actual idol and goal. And Cain, instead of changing, Kills Abel. Right? And then Cain's descendants are the first people who make weapons of war. And so, that's... Okay, you want to know what I think? That's the eternal story of mankind. And it's playing out right now. Except at a thousand times the rate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I present to you a difficult truth? Perhaps not a truth, but a thought I have. that it is not always easy to know which among us are the king. That's for sure. And resentment, it is possible to imagine you as the person who has a resentment towards a particular worldview that you really worry about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, I talked to a good friend of mine last week about that publicly, we'll release it. So I said, well, do I have a particular animus against the left, let's say. He's like, well, probably. Okay, why? Well, first of all, I'm a university professor. It's not like the universities are threatened by the right. They're threatened by the left, 100%. And they're not just threatened a little bit, they're threatened a lot. And that threat made it impossible for me to continue in my profession the way I was. And it cost me my clinical practice too. And that's not over yet, because I have 10 lawsuits against me out right now from the College of Psychologists. Because they've allowed anyone to complain about me, anywhere in the world, for any reason. and have the choice to follow that up with an investigation, which is a punishment in and of itself, and are doing so. And then I've been tortured nearly to death multiple times by bad actors on the left. Now, I've had my fair share of radical right-wingers being unhappy with what I've said, but personally, that's been the left the whole time. Not only me, but my family. Put my family at risk in a big way. And constantly. Like, not once or twice. Because many people get cancelled once or twice. But I've been cancelled like 40 times. And I know like 200 people now who've been cancelled. And I can tell you without doubt that it is one of the worst experiences of their life. And that's if it only happens once. And so... And then I also know that the communists killed 100 million people in the 20th century, that the intellectuals excused them for it non-stop and still haven't quit, that almost no one knows about it, and that the specter of resentful Marxism is back in full force. And so do I have a bit of an animus against that? Yes. Does it go too far? I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The story you just told, it seems nearly impossible for you, an intellectual powerhouse, not to have a tremendous amount of resentment. Well... And this is the... So let me challenge you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Go right ahead, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me challenge you. Can you steal man? the case that the prime minister of this country, Trudeau, wants the best for this country and actually might do good things for this country as an intellectual challenge." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. He seems to get along well with his wife. He has some kids. There's no sexual scandals. And he's in a position where that could easily be the case. He seems to have done some good things on the oceanic management front. He's put a fair bit of Canada's oceans into marine protected areas, and that might be his most fundamental legacy, if it's real. I've been trying to get information about the actual reality of the protection, and I haven't been able to do that. But that's a good thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So sorry, the family thing is, there's some aspect of... It speaks to his character. There is some aspect of him that makes him a good man, in that sense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, there's the evidence there, you know. I mean, he's not a Jeffrey Epstein profligate on the sexual front, so that's something. And his wife, they seem to have a real marriage, and he has kids, so, you know, good for him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a good start, by the way, for a leader." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right. Well, then I also thought, okay, well, after the Liberals had brought in a Harvard intellectual, who was a Canadian, to be their last leader, he didn't work out. And then they're flailing about for a leader, and the Liberals in Canada are pretty good at maintaining power and leadership, and have been the dominant governing party in Canada for a long time. And so they went to Justin and said, well, you know, it's you or a conservative. And you can imagine that's not a positive specter for someone who's on the left, or even a liberal. And Trudeau's quite a bit on the left. And they said, we need you to run. And then I thought, OK, well, The answer to that should have been no, because Trudeau, Justin, has no training for this, no experience. He's a part-time drama teacher, fundamentally. He hadn't run a business. He just didn't know enough to be prime minister. But then, I'm trying to put myself in his position, so it's like, okay, I don't know enough, but I'm young. And we don't want the conservatives and they had had a run a 10 year run. So maybe it was time for a new government I could maybe I could grow into this man Maybe I could surround myself with good people and I could learn humbly and I could become The person i'm now pretending to be which we all have to do as we move forward right and so and so then I thought okay I think you made a mistake there because you ran only on your father's name And you didn't have the background, but let's give the devil his due and say that's no problem. Okay, so now what do you do? Well, you get elected and your first act is to make the cabinet 50% women, despite the fact that only 25% of the elected members are female. It's like, okay, you just halved your talent pool. That was a really bad move for your first movie." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can I ask you about that? Yeah. Do you think, where does that move come from? Deep somewhere in the heart? No. Or is it trying to listen to the social forces of the moment and try to ride those ways towards maybe greater and greater popularity?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You don't make a decision like that by fear, after thinking it through. It's like, no, you just halved your talent pool. for cabinet positions. That's what you did. There's enough cabinet positions. You know, you could argue that each of them met threshold. It's like, there's a big difference between threshold and excellent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you don't think that came from a place of compassion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't care if it did. I don't regard compassion as a virtue. Compassion is a reflex, not a virtue. Judicious compassion is a virtue." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Compassion can come deep. from the human heart and the human mind, I think. Are we talking about the same kind of compassion?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Trying to understand the suffering of the world." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Treating adults like infants is not virtuous." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I see. Well, compassion isn't treating adults like infants. I mean, those are just terms. Are you sure? Whatever the term is, maybe love is maybe the better word." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Eatable compassion is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I suppose I'm speaking to love. You don't think those ideas came from concern." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Love is compassion. Love is a blend of compassion and encouragement and truth. Love is complicated, man. If I love you, is it compassion or encouragement you want from me?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, the dance. Love is definitely a dance of two humans, ultimately, that leads to the growth of both." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's the thing. The growth element is crucial. Because to foster the growth element, that requires judgment. Compassion and judgment, well even, and have been conceptualized this way forever, two hands of God, mercy and justice. They have to operate in tandem, right? And mercy is, flawed as you are, you're acceptable. It's like, well, do you want that? Do you want your flaws to be acceptable? And the answer to that is no. It's like, well, that's where the judgment comes in. It's like, but you could be better. You could be more than you are. And that's the maternal and the paternal in some fundamental sense. And there has to be an active... exchange of information between those two poles. So even if Trudeau was motivated by compassion, and it's like, yeah, just how loving are you, first of all? No, it was a really bad decision. And then he's expressed contempt for monetary policy. I'm not interested in monetary policy. It's like, okay. You're a prime minister, and he's expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party because they can be very efficient in their pursuit of environmental goals. It's like, oh yeah, efficiency, eh? The efficiency of the tyranny in the service of your terror. And so, and I've watched him repeatedly, and I've listened to him a lot, and I've tried to do that clinically, and with some degree of dispassion. And that's hard, too, because his father, Pierre, devastated the West in 1982 with the national energy policy. And Trudeau is doing exactly the same thing again, and so as a Westerner, as well, I have an inbuilt animus, and one that's well-deserved, because central Canada, especially the glittery literati elite types in the Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto triangle have exploited the West and expressed contempt for the West far too much for far too long. And that's accelerating at the moment, for example, with Trudeau's recent attack on the Canadian farmers. He's an enemy of the oil and gas industry. It's an utter and absolute bloody catastrophe. And look what's happened in Europe, at least in partial consequence. And he's no friend to the farmers. So... I've tried to steel man him, you know, I try to put myself in the position of the people that I'm criticizing. I think he's a narcissist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think there's a degree to which power changed him?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you're not suited for the position, if you're not the man for the position, you can be absolutely 100% sure that the power will corrupt you. How could it not? I mean, at the least, if you don't have the chops for the job, you have to devalue the job to the point where you can feel comfortable inhabiting it. So yes, I think that it's corrupted him. And I mean, look at him doubling down. We wear masks in flights into Canada. We have to fill out an arrive can bureaucratic form on our phones because a passport isn't good enough. We can't get a passport. What if you're 85 and you don't know how to use a smartphone? Oh well, too bad for you. It's like, yes, it's corrupted him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Would you talk to him? If you were to sit down and talk with him and he wanted to talk, would you and what kind of things would you talk about, perhaps on your podcast?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think I've ever said no to talking to anyone." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, which is, you know... Would that be a first, or would you make that conversation? Do you believe in the power of conversation in those kinds of contexts?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, if he was willing to talk to me, I'd talk, because I'd like to ask him. I have lots of things I'd like to ask him about. I mean, I've had political types in Canada on my podcast, and tried to ask them questions. So I'd like to know. You know, maybe I've got a big part of him wrong. And I probably do. But... My observation has been that every chance he had to retreat from his pharaonic position, let's say, he doubled down. Our parliament is not running for the next year. It's still Zoom in. It's still COVID lockdown parliament. For the next year, it's already been Fatally compromised perhaps by the lockdowns for the last couple of years This is Parliament. We're talking about" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a kind of paralysis, fear-driven paralysis that also, in part, some of the most brilliant people I know are lost in this paralysis. I don't think people assign a word to it, but it's almost like a fear of this unknown thing that lurks in the shadows. And that, unfortunately, that fear is leveraged by people who are not aware that you know who are in in academic circles who are in faculty or students and so on are more in administration and they start to use that fear which makes me quite uncomfortable. It does lend people in the positions of power who are not good at handling that power to become slowly day by day a little bit more corrupt." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was really trying to figure out you know the last two weeks thinking this through it's like how do you know Let's say someone asked me a question in the YouTube comment. He said, why can't I trust your advice on the environmental front? And I thought, that's a really good question. OK, let's see if we can figure out the principles by which the advice would be trustworthy. OK, how do you know it's not trustworthy? Well, one potential response to that would be the claims are not in accordance with the facts. But, you know, facts are tricky things, and it depends on where you look for them. So that's a tough one to get right, because, for example, Lomberg's fundamental critics argue about his facts, not just his interpretation of them. So that can't be an unerring guide. And so I thought, well, the facts exactly doesn't work. Because when it's about everything, there's too many facts. So then how do you determine if someone's a trustworthy guide in the face of the apocalyptic unknown? Because that's really the question. And the answer is, they're not terrified tyrants. I think that's the answer. Now, maybe that's wrong. If someone has a better answer... How do you know if they're a terrified tyrant? Because they're willing to use compulsion on other people, when they could use goodwill. Like, the farmers in Canada objected. They said, look, We have every economic reason to use as little fertilizer as we can, because it's expensive. We have satellite maps of where we put the fertilizer. We have cut our fertilizer use so substantially in the last 40 years, you can't believe it, and we grow way more food. We're already breaking ourselves in half. And if you know farmers, especially the ones who still survive, you think those people don't know what they're doing. It's like, they're pretty damn sophisticated, man. way more sophisticated than our Prime Minister. And now you tell them, no, it's a 30% reduction, and we don't care how much food you're growing. So it's not a reduction that's dependent on amount of food produced per unit of fertilizer used, which would be, at least, you could imagine it. Okay, so you're producing this much food, and you use this much fertilizer, so you're hyper-efficient. Maybe we take the 10% of farmers who are the least efficient in that metric and we say to them, you have to get as efficient as the average farmer. And then they say, well, look, you know, our, our situation is different. We're in a more Northern climb. The soil is weaker. You know, you obviously have to bargain with that, but at least, at least you reward them for their productivity. Well, it's like, well, Holland isn't going to have beef. Well, where are they going to get it? Well, you don't need it. It's like, oh, I see. You get to tell me what I can eat now, do you? Really? Okay. And Holland is gonna import food from where that's more efficient on the fertilizer front? There's no one more efficient than Holland. Same with Canada? And like, isn't this gonna make food prices more expensive? And doesn't that mean that hungry people die? Because that is what it means." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And so- Ultimately, poor people pay the price of these kinds of policies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not known, not ultimately. Now. Today. Today. That's a crucial distinction because they say, well, ultimately the poor will benefit. Yeah, except the dead ones. Yes, today. Today, right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It seems like the story of war, too, is a time when the poor people suffer from the decision made by the powerful, the rich, the political elite. Yeah, let me ask you about the war in Ukraine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, I got into plenty of trouble about that too." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're just a man in a suit talking on microphones and writing brilliant articles. There's also people dying, fighting, It's their land, it's their country, it's their history. This is true for both Russia and Ukraine. It's people trying to ask, they have many dragons and they're asking themselves the question, who are we? What is this? What is the future of this nation? We thought we are a great nation. And I think both countries say this and they say, Well, how do we become the great nation we thought we are? And so what, first of all, you got in trouble. What's the dynamics of the trouble? And is it something you regret saying?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, no. I thought about it a lot. I laid out four reasons for the war. And then I was criticized in the Atlantic for the argument was reduced to one reason, which was a caricature of the reason. I gave a variety of reasons why the war happened. Mismanagement on the part of the West in relationship to Russia and foreign policy over the last... since the wall fell. It's understandable because it's extremely complex. Hyper-reliance on Russia as a cardinal source of energy provision for Europe in the wake of idiot environmental globalist utopianism. The expansionist tendencies of Russia that are analogous in some sense to the Soviet Union empire building. And then the last one, which is the one I got in trouble for, which is Putin's belief or willingness to manipulate his people into believing that Russia is a salvific force in the face of idiot western wokeism. And that's the one I got in trouble for. It's like, while you're justifying Putin, it's like... It's not only the Russians that think the West has lost its mind. The Eastern Europeans think so too. And do I know that? It's like... Well, I went to 15 Eastern European countries this spring, and I talked to 300 political and cultural leaders, and you might say, well, they were all conservatives. It's like, actually, no, they weren't. Most of them were conservatives, because it turns out that they're more willing to talk to me. But a good chunk of them were liberals, by any stretch of the imagination, and a fair number of them were cancelled progressives." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, because you're very concerned about the culture wars that perhaps are a signal of a possible bad future for this country, for this part of the world. That reason stands out and... do you, sort of looking back at four reasons, think it deserves to have a place in one of the four?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because it is, you know... Well, the four was bifurcated, because I said, look, Putin might believe this, and I actually think he does, because I read a bunch of Putin's speeches, and I have been reading them for 15 years, and my sense of people generally, and this was true of Hitler, it's like, what did Hitler believe? Well, did you read what he wrote? He just did what he said he was going to do, and you might think, well, some people are so tricky, they have a whole body of elaborated speech that's completely separate from their personality, and their personality is pursuing a different agenda, and this whole body of speech is nothing but affront. It's like, good luck finding someone that sophisticated. First of all, if you say things long enough, you're gonna believe them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a really interesting and fascinating and important point. Even if you start out as a lie, as a propaganda, I think Hitler is an example of somebody that I think really quickly you start to believe the propaganda." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you've thought a lot about AI systems. It's like, don't you become what you practice? And the answer to that is, well, absolutely. We even know the neurology. It's like when you first formulate a concept, huge swaths of your cortex are lit up, so to speak. But as you practice that, first of all, the right hemisphere stops participating, and then the left participates less and less until you build specialized machinery for exactly that conceptual frame. And then you start to see it, not just think it. And so if you're telling the same lies over and over, who do you think you're fooling? Think, well, I can withstand my own lies. Not if they're effective lies. And if they're effective enough to fool millions of people, and then they reflect them back to you, what makes you think you're going to be able to withstand that? You aren't. And so I do think Putin believes, to the degree that he believes anything, I do believe that he thinks of himself as a bulwark for Christendom against the degeneration of the West and that's that third way that Dugan and Putin have been talking about the philosopher Alexander Dugan and Putin for 15 years now what that is is very amorphous Solzhenitsyn thought the Russians would have to return to the incremental development of Orthodox Christianity To escape from the communist trap and to some degree that's happened in Russia because there's been a return to Orthodox Christianity Now you could say, yeah, but the Orthodox Church has just been co-opted by the state. And I would say there's some evidence for that. I've heard, for example, that the Metropolitan owns... Now, I don't know if this is true. owns $5 billion worth of personal property. And I would say there's a bit of a moral hazard in that. And it's possible that the Orthodox Church has been co-opted, but there has been somewhat of an Orthodox revival in Russia, and I don't think that's all bad. Now, even if Putin doesn't believe any of this, if he's just a psychopathic manipulator, and unfortunately, I don't think that's true. I've read his speeches. It doesn't look like it to me. And he is by no means the worst Russian leader of the last hundred years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's quite a selection there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There certainly is. But, and I say that knowing that, even if he doesn't believe it, he's convinced his people that it's true. And so we're stuck with the claim in either case. And that's the point I was trying to make in the article." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "people that explain things. And a lot of people have reached out to me, experts, telling me how I should feel, what I should think about Ukraine. Oh, you naive, Lex, you're so naive. Here's how it really is. But then I get to see people that lost their home. I get to see people on the Russian side who believe they're, I genuinely think that there's some degree to which they have love in their heart. They see themselves as heroes saving a land from Nazis." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How else would you motivate young men to go fight?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's just, it's these humans destroying not only their homes, but creating generational hate, destroying the possibility of love towards each other. They're basically creating hate. What I've heard a lot of is on February 24th of this year, hate was born at a scale that region has not seen. Hate towards not Vladimir Putin, hate towards not the soldiers in Russia, but hate towards all Russians. Hate that will last generations. And then you can see on the, just the pain there. And then when all these experts talk about agriculture and energy and geopolitics and yeah, maybe like what you say with the fighting the ideologies of the woke and so on, I just feel like it's missing something deep that war is not fought. about any of those things. War started and war is averted based on human beings, based on humanity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, here's another ugly thought, since we haven't had enough so far. We locked everything down for COVID. How much face-to-face communication was there between the West and Vladimir Putin? How about none? How about that was the wrong amount? especially given that Europe was completely dependent on Putin for its energy supplies. Well, not completely, but you know what I mean. Materially and significantly. So maybe he had to go talk to him once every six months. Maybe he's in a bit of a bubble. Probably." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And not just an information bubble, how all these experts tell me about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. No, a human bubble. Human bubble. Look, one of the things I've really learned, there's a real emphasis on hospitality in the Old Testament. I just brought all these scholars together to talk about Exodus. I have this security team with me, and they're tough military guys, but they're on board for this mission, let's say. And so they went out of their way to be hospitable to my academic guests. They laid out nice platters of meat and cheese and crackers. They spent all day preparing this house I had rented so that we could have a hospitable time with these scholars, most of whom I didn't know well, but who said they would come and spend eight days talking about this book with me. We rented some jet skis. We had a nice house. We had fun. We got to know each other. And we got to trust each other, because we could see that we could have some fun, and that we could let our hair down a bit. We didn't have to be on guard. And that made the talks way deeper. And then we found out we couldn't get through Exodus in eight days, and so... I had proposed very early on that we're going to double the length. And so I pulled eight people out of their lives for eight days. That's not an easy thing to do. It's also quite expensive. And the Daily Wire Plus people picked all that up. And they said, yes, right away. They said, we'd love to do this again. Well, why? Well, partly because intellectually, it was unbelievably engaging. I learned so much. It'll take me like a year to digest it, if I can ever digest it. And, but they had, they had a really good time. And so when they were offered that combination of intellectual challenge, let's say in hospitality, it was a no brainer. They just said, every one of them said, if I can do it in any way, I will definitely be there. And this, I went to Washington a bunch of times and the culture of hospitality has broken down in Washington. 40% of congressmen sleep in their offices. They don't have apartments. Their family isn't there with them. They don't have social occasions with their fellow Democrats or Republicans, much less across the table. And I tried to have some meetings in Washington that were bilateral a couple of times, get young Republican congressmen and Democrats together to talk. And as soon as they talk, they think, oh, It was so interesting because one of the lunches was about 15 people, half Democrats and half Republicans, and all I asked them to do was just spend three minutes talking about why you decided to become a congressman, which is not a job I would take, by the way. You spend 25 hours a week fundraising on the telephone. Your family isn't there with you. You have to run for re-election every two years. You're beholden to the party apparatus, right? You're vilified constantly. This is not... You know, people think, well, this is a job for the privileged. It's like, yeah, you go and run for Congress and find out how much fun it is and put your family on the line and then have to beg for your job every two years while your enemies, the worst of your enemies and the worst of your friends are viciously henpecking you. And so anyways, we had them all sit around a table and said, OK, just say why you ran for Congress. It was so cool, especially for a Canadian, because you Americans, you're so bloody theatrical. It's something to watch. It was like Mr. Smith goes to Washington for every one of them. It's like, well, this country has given us so much. Our families have been so... We've benefited so much from our time here. We think this is a wonderful country. We really felt that we should give back. And the next one would talk, and it was like exactly the same story. And then it didn't matter if they were Republican or Democrat. You couldn't tell the difference. No one could. And was it genuine? It's like, well, are you genuine? You think these people are worse than you? First of all, they're not. Second of all, they're probably better, all things considered. It's not that easy to become a congressman. And I'm sure there's some bad apples in the bunch, but by and large, you walk away from your meetings with these people and you think," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Pretty impressive. They really are giving a part of themselves in the name of service. Maybe over time, they become cynical and become jaded and worn down by the whole system. But I think a lot of it- Yeah, could you imagine that? Is healed, I think. And I don't think I'm, well, I'm in part naive, but not fully, that a lot of it is healed through the power of conversation, just basic social interaction. I do think that the- You bet, man. The effects of this pandemic- Especially by listening. Listen, just sitting there, and it doesn't have to be talking about the actual issue. It's actually humor and all those kinds of things about personal struggles, all those kinds of things that remind you that you're all just humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, the great leaders that I've met, and I've met some now, They go listen to their constituents. It's not a policy discussion. It's not an ideology discussion. They go say, okay, what's your life like, and what are your problems, and tell me about them. And then they listen, and then they're struck by them, and then they gather up all that misery, and they bring it to the congressional office or to the parliament, and they think, here's what the people are crying out for. And the good leaders, that's a leader. Leader listens. So I talked to Jimmy Carr about comedy, and he's sold out stages worldwide on a tour being funny. That's hard. He said, comedy is the most stand-up comedy, which is what I do in some real sense. It's a thing I do that it's most akin to what I'm doing on my book tours, I would say. It's the closest analog. He said, it's the most dialogical enterprise, and I thought, Why? What do you mean? Because see, it's just the monologue and it's a prepared monologue. I mean, you have to interact dynamically with the audience while you're telling your jokes and you've got to get the timing right, but you have a body of jokes. He said, well, here's how you prepare the jokes. And I've been told this by other comedians. You go to 50 clubs before you go on your tour and you got some new material and you think it's funny and you go into a club and you lay out your new material and people laugh at some of it. And you pay attention to what they laugh at and what they don't laugh at. So you subject yourself to the judgment of the crowd and you get rid of everything that isn't funny. And if you do that enough, even if you're not that funny, the crowd will tell you what's funny. So you can imagine, imagine you do 50 shows and each is an hour long and you collect two minutes of humor from each show. So you throw away 90, you throw away two hours, more than 98% of it, collect two minutes per show. So you're not very funny at all. You're like funny 2% of the time. You aggregate that, man, you're a scream. So that's what a leader does. That is what a leader does. He goes out and he aggregates the misery, you know, and the hopes. And then I do think that's revivifying. to someone who would otherwise be cynical and jaded, because then the person can say to themselves, despite the inadequacies of the system and my inadequacies, I'm gathering up the misery and the hope and I'm... Bringing it forward where it can be redressed. Giving it a voice. That's right, giving it a voice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually take me through a day, because this is fascinating, through your comedy tour? What does a day in the life of Jordan Peterson look like? Which is this very interesting day. Let's look at the day when you have to speak. preparing your mind, thinking of what you're going to talk about, preparing yourself physically and mentally to interact with the crowd through the actual speaking, how do you adjust what you're thinking through and how do you come down from that so you can start all again as a limited biological system?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm usually up by seven and ready to go by 7.30 or eight." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Coffee?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, steak and water." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How many times a day steak?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All, that's all I eat." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How many times?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Three or four, depending on the day. Steak and water. Steak and sparkling water. Yeah, so monastic asceticism, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I did the proper, I usually eat just once a day. I did the proper Jordan Peterson last night and just ate two steaks. And how was that? It was wonderful." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, if you have to only eat one thing, You know, could be worse. So anyways, I'm ready to go at eight because we're generally moving." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What does moving mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're constantly... Flying somewhere. Okay. And we usually use private flights now because the commercial airlines aren't reliable enough and you cannot not make a venue, right? So that's rule number one on a tour. You make the show. So everything, and then rule number two is anybody who causes any trouble on the tour is gone. because there is zero room for error. Now, no, there's zero room for unnecessary unaddressed error. There's going to be errors. The guys I have around me now, if they make a mistake, they fix it right away." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's great. There's a lot of people relying on you to be there, so you have to be there." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, like 4,000 people, typically. So then I'm on the plane, and I usually write, or often, because there's no internet on the plane, and that's a good use of time. So I'm writing a new book, so I write on the plane." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Typing or handwriting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Typing, yeah typing. And then we land and we go to, it's usually early afternoon by then, we go to a hotel, it's usually a nice hotel, it's not corporate, I don't really like corporate hotels. My secretary and one of my logistics guys has got quite good at picking kind of adventurous hotels, boutique hotels. They're usually in the old parts of the city, especially in Europe, somewhere interesting. And so we go there and then lunch, usually. And sometimes that's an air fryer and a steak in the hotel room. And I leave a trail of air fryers behind me all across the world. And then Tammy and I usually go out and have a walk or something and take a look at the city. And then I have a rest for like an hour and a half or an hour, half an hour. Like a nap? Yeah, a nap. I have to sleep for 20 minutes and that's about all I can sleep. But I need to do that in the late afternoon. And that refreshes your mind. Yeah. That gives me, that wakes me up again for the evening. And then Tam has to sleep longer. She's still recovering from her illness. And so she has to sleep longer in the afternoon and that's absolutely necessary for both of us or things start to get frayed. And so then we go to the venue. And then I usually sit for an hour. If I'm going to lecture, I've been doing a lot of Q and A's and that's a little easier, but if I'm going to lecture, I have to sit for an hour and then I think, okay. What question am I trying to investigate? I have to have that, that's the point. What mystery am I trying to unravel? It's usually associated with one of the rules in my book, because technically it's a book tour, but each of those rules is an investigation into an ethic, and each of them points to a deeper sort of mystery in some sense. There's no end to the amount it can be explored. And so I have the question. The question might be something like, put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Okay. What does that mean exactly? What does house mean? What does put mean, that active verb? What does perfect and order mean? Why before you criticize the world? What does it mean to criticize? What does it mean to criticize the world? How can you do that properly or improperly? So I start to think about how to decompose the question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you start to think, which of these decompositions are important to really dig into?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well then they'll strike me. It's like, okay, there's something there that I've been maybe noodling around on that I would like to investigate further. Then I think, okay, how can I approach this problem? I think, well, I have this story that I know. I have this story, and I have this story, but I haven't juxtaposed them before. And there's going to be some interesting interaction in the juxtaposition. So I have the question, and I kind of have a framework of interpretation, and then I have some potential narrative places I can go. And then I think, okay, I can go juggle that and see what happens. And so then what I want to do is concentrate on that process while attending to the audience to make sure that the words are landing. And then see if I can delve into it deeply enough so that a narrative emerges spontaneously with an ending. Now, I'm sure you've experienced this in podcasts, right? Maybe I'm wrong, but my experience has been, if I fall into the conversation and we know about the time frame, there'll be a natural narrative arc. And then, so you'll kind of know when the midpoint is, and you'll kind of see when you're reaching a conclusion. And then if you really pay attention, you can see that's a good place to stop. And it's kind of, you come to a point and you have to be alert and patient to see that. And you have to be willing to be satisfied with where you've got to. But if you do that, and then it's like a comedian making the punchline work. It's like, I've got all these balls in the air and they're going somewhere and this is how they come together. And people love that, right? They say, oh, this and this and this and this and this. Whack! together. And that's an insight, and it is very much like a punchline." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, that's interesting because your mind, actually, I'm a fan of your podcast too, and you are always driving towards that. I would say for me, in a podcast conversation, there's often a kind of Alice in Wonderland type of exploration." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Down the rabbit hole, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you just, a new thing pops up. The more absurd, the wilder, the better. Conversations with Elon are like this. It's like, actually, the more you drive towards an arc, the more uncomfortable you start to get in a fun, absurd conversation because, oh, I'm now one of the normies. No, I don't want that. I wanna be, I want the rabid, I want the crazy, because it makes it more fun. But somehow, throughout it, there is wisdom that you try to grasp at, such that there is a thread." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's the thing, man. You're following the thread, eh? Well, that's right. That's what we're trying to do. That thread. That thread is the proper balance between structure and spontaneity. And it manifests itself as the instinct of meaning. And that's the Logos in the Dialogos. And it really is the Logos. And God only knows what that means. You know, I mean the the biblical claim is that logos is the fundamental principle of reality and I think that's true I actually think that's true because I think that that meaning that guides you Well, here's a way of thinking about I've been writing about this recently What's real? Matter it's like okay. That's one answer. What's real? What matters is real? That's how you act Okay, that's different than matter It's like, okay, what's the most real of what matters? How about pain? Why is it the most real? Try arguing it away. Good luck. So pain is the fundamental reality. All right. Well, that's rough. Doesn't that lead to nihilism and hopelessness? Yeah. Doesn't it lead to a philosophy that's antithetical towards being the most fundamental reality is pain. Yes. Is there anything more fundamental than pain? Love. Really? If you're in pain, love and truth, that's what you got. And you know, if they're more powerful than pain, maybe they're the most real things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "When you think about reality, what is real that is the most real thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's a tough one, right? Because if you're a scientist, a materialist, think, well, the matter is the most real. It's like, well, you don't know what the matter is. And then when push comes to shove, and it will, you'll find out what's most real." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I feel like this is missing, physical reality is missing some of the things. So of course pain has a biological component and all those kinds of things, but it's missing something deep about the human condition that at least the modern science is not able to. described, but it is reaching towards that. And it's the reason, one way to describe it as you're describing is the reason it's reaching it is because underneath of science is this assumption that there's a deep thing to this whole thing we're trying to do." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, there's two traditions, right? In some sense, there's two Logos traditions. There's the Greek rational Enlightenment tradition that's a logos tradition and it insists that there's a logos in nature and that science is the way to approach it and then there's a judeo-christian logos, which is more embodied and more spiritual and I would say the West is actually an attempt to unite those two and It's the proper attempt to unite those two Because they need to be united And I see the union coming, in your terms. You know, I talked to Franz de Waal, for example, about the animating principle of chimpanzee sovereignty. And that's pretty close, biologically. Is it power? Because that's the claim, even from the biologists often. The most dominant chimp has the best reproductive success. It's like... Oh yeah? Dominant, eh? You mean using compulsion? Okay, let's look. Are the chimps who use compulsion the most successful? And the answer is... sporadically and rarely and for short, well that's sporadically, for short periods of time. Why? Because they meet an unpleasant end. The subordinates over whom they exercise arbitrary control wait for a weak moment and then tear them into shreds. Right? Every dictator's terror. And for good reason. And de Waal has showed that the alpha chimps, the males, who do have preferential mating access often, are often and reliably the best peacemakers and the most reciprocal. And so even among chimps, the principle of sovereignty is something like iterative, iterated reciprocity. And that's a way better principle than power. And it's something like, I've been thinking, what's the antithesis of the spirit of power? I think it's the spirit of play. And you know, you, I don't know what you think about that, but when you have a good podcast conversation, you already described it in some sense as play. It's like, there's a structure, right? Cause it's an ordered conversation, but you want there to be play in the system. And if you get that right, then it's really engaging. And then it seems to have its own. narrative arc. I'm not trying to impose that, even though that's another thing I don't do. I didn't come to this conversation at all thinking, here's what I want out of a conversation with Lex Friedman. Like, instrumentally, I thought, I'll go talk to Lex. Why? I like his podcasts. He's doing something right. I don't know what it is. He asks interesting questions. I'll go have a conversation with him. Where's it going to go? Wherever it goes," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Embracing the spirit of play. So what you have this when you're lecturing, you're going in front of the crowd. Yeah. You thought of a question. Yeah. You get on the stage. First of all, are you nervous at all?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm very nervous when I'm sitting down. Thinking through the structure initially, which is why my wife and I have been doing Q and A's and that's easier on me. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's the way comedians are nervous, like Joe Rogan just did his special this weekend. And so he now has to sit nervously like a comedian does, which is like, I have no material now." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have to start from scratch. When I was doing the lectures constantly instead of the Q&As, basically what I was doing was writing a whole book chapter every night. You know now that's a bit of an exaggeration because I would return to themes that I had developed But it's not really an exaggeration because I didn't ever just go over wrote material ever So it was it's very demanding and that part's nerve-wracking because I sit down it's an hour before the show and I think Can I do this? And, you know, the answer is, well, you did it a thousand times, but that's not this time. It's like, can I come up with a question? Can I think through the structure? Can I pull off the spontaneous narrative? Can I pull it together? And the answer is, I don't know. And so then I get it together in my mind, I think. And that's hard. It takes effort and it's nerve wracking. Okay, I got it. But then there's the moment you go out on stage and you think, well, I know I had it, but can I do it? No notes. And then the question is, well, you're going to find out while you do it. And so then I go out on stage. And I don't talk to the audience. I talk to one person at a time. And you can talk to one person, you know, because you know how to do that. So I talk to a person, and no, it's too long, because I don't want to make them too nervous, and then someone else, and someone else, and then I'm in contact with the audience, and then I can tell if the words are landing. And I listen, it's like, are they rustling around? Are they dead quiet?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Because you want dead quiet. Oh, I see. That's what focus sounds like. You're in it together, then." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You bet. Well, and I also—here's a good rule if you're learning to speak publicly. I never say a word. till everyone is 100% quiet. And that's, it's a great way to start a talk because you're set in the frame, eh? And if the frame is, well, I'll talk while you're talking, the message is, well, you can talk. This is a place where everybody can talk. It's like, no, it's not. This is a place where people paid to hear me talk. So I'm not going to talk till everyone's listening. And so then you get that stillness. And then you just wait, because that stillness turns into an expectation. And then it turns into a kind of nervous expectation. Like, what the hell is he doing? It's not manipulative. It's a sense of timing. It's like, just when that's right, you think, OK, now it's time to start." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, the interesting thing about that nervous expectation is, from an audience perspective, we're in it together. Yeah. I mean, there is, into that silence, there is a togetherness to it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course. It's the union of everyone's attention. Yeah. Yeah, and that's a great thing. I mean, you love that at a concert, when everyone, it's not silence then, but when everyone's attention is unified and everyone's moving in unison, it's like we're all worshiping the same thing. Right? And that would be the point of the conversation, the point of the lecture. And the worship is the direction of attention towards it. And it's communion, because everyone's doing it at the same time. And so, I mean, there's not much difference between a lecture theatre and a church in that regard, right? It's the same fundamental layout and structure. And they're very integrally associated with one another. One really grew out of the other. The lecture theatre grew out of the church. So, it's perfectly reasonable to be thinking about it in those terms. And so, and then, okay, so after the lecture, we play a piece of music that is a piece of music that I've been producing with some musicians for a couple of books I'm going to release in the fall. Terrible books. ABC of Childhood Tragedy, they're called. Dark, dark books. Dark and comical books. Terrible books. Heartbreaking illustrations. we set them to music, and so we play a piece from that, and then afterwards, I usually meet about 150 people to have photographs, and so each of those is a little." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a little sparkle of human connection?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot, a lot. It's very intense, 10 seconds with every person. You think, well, how can 10 seconds be intense? It's like, pay enough attention. It gets intense real quick." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Does it break your heart to say goodbye so many times?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's like being in a wedding lineup, you know, at a wedding that you want to be at and everybody's dressed up. And that's so weird, eh, because I bought these expensive suits when I went on tour and it broke my heart because I spent so much money on them. I thought, God, that's completely unconscionable. I thought, no way, man, I'm in this 100%. And so I'm going to dress with respect and Like 60% of the audience comes in two or three-piece suits. They're all dressed up. Then there's this line to greet me, and they're all happy to see me. That's not so hard to take. You know, although it is in a sense, right? Because normal interactions are pretty shallow, and you think, I don't want shallow interactions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's intense. It's very intense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I don't know if you... But you've had a taste of this, no doubt, because people recognize you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I also have... When a person recognizes me and they come with love and they're often brilliant people, one of the thoughts I have to deal with, one of the dragons in my own mind is, you know, thinking that I don't deserve that kind of attention." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so... Well, you probably don't." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, I don't. But maybe you could. It's a burden in that I have to step up to be the kind of person that deserves that, not deserves that, but in part deserves that kind of attention." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And that's like, holy shit. It's crucially important too, because if someone comes up to you in an airport and they know who you are and they're brave enough to admire you or who you are attempting to be, and you make a mistake, they will never forget it. So it's a high-stakes enterprise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the flip side of that, especially with young people, a few words you can say can change the direction of their life." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One way or another. And so I really have to watch this, too, in airports. I do not like airports. I do not like the creeping totalitarianism in airports. They've always bothered me. Yes, they really bother me. And I'm an unpleasant travel companion for my wife sometimes because of that, although I think we've worked that out. Thank God, because we're doing a lot of traveling. But most of the security guards and and the border personnel, all those people, they know me. And as a general rule, they're positively predisposed to me. And so if I'm peevish or irritable, Then, well, that's not good. It's not good. And so that's a tight rope to walk to because I do not like that creeping totalitarianism. But by the same token. You know, if you're just one of the crowd, just. You know, sometimes it's good just to be one of the crowd and then you're a little irritable and people can just brush that off. But if you're someone they have dared to open their heart to, because that's what admiration is, and then you're And you betray that, then that's a real... They'll never forget it. And then they'll tell everyone, too. So, it takes a lot of alertness. And so Tammy and I, our life has got complicated. Because in Toronto, for example, we can't really just go for a walk. It's always a high drama production. Because always people come up and they have some heart-rending story to tell. And I'm not being cynical about that. It's a hard thing to bear because people don't do that. They don't just open themselves up to you like that and share the tragedy of their life. But that's an everyday occurrence. And so when we go up to our cottage, which is out of the city, it's a relief, you know, because As wonderful as that is, like it's a weird, I have a weird life because everywhere I go, it's very weird. It's like I'm surrounded by old friends because I walk down the street in any city now, virtually, and people say, hello, Dr. Peterson, so nice to see you. Or they say better things than that. Very rarely bad things. One experience in 5,000 maybe, very rare, although you don't forget those either. But it's very, it's very strange." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's an intimacy, they know you well, and because they leap into, they avoid the small talk often. They leap into familiarity. It really is like it's an old friend, and it feels like that. For me personally, the experience is the goodbye hurts, because there's a sense where you're never gonna see that friend again. Right, yeah, that's a strange thing, eh? So to me, a lot of the, a lot of it just feels like goodbyes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, and it is. You're right about that. And I mean, that's, I suppose, in some sense, part of the pain of opening yourself up to people. Because they also Tammy has been struck particularly. She said, I really never knew what men were like. I said, well, what do you mean? She said, I cannot believe how polite the men are when they come and talk to you. Because it's always the same. The pattern's very similar. The person comes up, they're mostly men, not always, but mostly. And they're tentative, and they're very polite. Very, very polite. And they say, I hope I'm not bothering you. Do you mind, you know, do you mind that I say that they're not bothering me? And I'm doing everything I can to not be the guy who's bothered by that. It's like, who do you think you are? You're the guy that, what, is famous and now is above that? You don't want to be that guy. So you want to be grateful all the time when people open up like that. And, and so you got to be alert and on point to do that properly, like right away. Cause for these, for you, it's five seconds or 10 seconds or 20 seconds, whatever it is, but for them, they've opened up. And so you can really nail them if you're foolish." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "After the 150 people, how do you come down from that? How do you find yourself again?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that was often when I got caught in Twitter traps. You know, because I'm so burnt out by then, from the talk and the audience interactions, and the whole day. Because it's a new city, it's a new hotel, it's a new 5,000 people, it's a new book chapter, it's a whole new horizon of ideas, and it's off to another city the next day. I'm so burnt out by then that... I'm not as good at controlling my impulses as I might be. And Twitter was a real catastrophe for that because it would hook me. And then I couldn't. Like I used to when I was working on my book a lot, I used to call Tammy and say, look, you have to come and get me. I can't stop. I can't stop. I got tired. And then I kind of because it's part of a kind of hypomanic focus. I couldn't quit. It's like, oh, no, I'm still writing. I need to get away from this. But I couldn't stop. And so. It's better to read something, a book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Fiction, non-fiction?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Fiction. Stephen King. I was reading a lot of Stephen King when I was on tour last time. That was good. I like Stephen King a lot. Great narratives. Great, and great characterization. You know? So, and... There's a familiarity about Stephen King's writing, too. He writes about people you know. And so, I really found that a relief. And so, that was useful. And that, in order to tolerate this, let's say, or to be able to sustain it, Well, that's taken a lot of negotiation on the part of Tammy and I, because she's dragged into this, and you know, her life is part of this, whatever this is, and she's had to find her way, and has. For example, now she has a different hotel room than me when we travel. And she found that she didn't want to be on the tour this spring, and I was ill again for part of it, and that made it complicated. But she went away back home, and she came back, and she was nervous about it. She said, I think I need my own room. And part of me was not happy with that. It's like, what do you mean you need your own room? Are we not married anymore? It's like, you need your own room? And she said, well, you know, I can't. She has to do exercises because she was really sick and she has to keep herself in shape. And she has to have some time to do that. She does a lot of prayer and meditation and she needs the time. And she has her own podcast, which is going quite well, and she needs the time. And I trust her. And she said, well, I need this in order to continue. And I thought, well, OK, if you need this in order to continue, Yes, because she went away and didn't say, well, I don't want to be on the tour. I don't want to do this anymore. She went away and prayed. Let's say, how can I continue to do this? And that was the answer. And so she has her own hotel room. And that was a really good decision on her part. And she's very good and getting better all the time at figuring out what has to happen for her to make this sustainable. And all that's been is a plus. Because I don't want to travel without her, and I don't want her life to be miserable, and I want her to be fully on board. And so she has to be properly selfish, like everyone does in a relationship." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you have to, not just that, you have to, this is a weird thing that you're doing, and you have to, both you and her have to figure out how to like, how to manage this very intense intellectual, social journey." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, there's another element to it, too, that I didn't tell you about, so that was a typical day, but it's missing a big component, because usually we also have a dinner with like 30 cultural representatives, I suppose, 10 to 30 from each country, because I have a network of people who have networks, who are setting me up with key decision makers in each country. And so then we have like an hour and a half of that. Now, sometimes that's on a day when I don't have a talk, but sometimes the talks are back to back. And so she also has to manage that and to be gracious. And then people are showing us exciting things and tours in the cities, which is all like it's a surfeit of wonderful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, exactly. But it's still, yeah, you have to be there for it. You have to be present for it mentally. Yeah. As a curious mind, as an intellectual mind. How do you get to sleep?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Fortunately, that is almost never a problem, even when I was unbelievably ill for about three years. I thought about that a lot too, you know, that I didn't do a really good job of explaining that while I was ill, because it appeared in some sense that the reason I was ill was because I was taking benzodiazepines, but that isn't why. I was ill and then I took them and very low dose and I took that for a long time and it helped whatever was wrong with me and it looks like it was an allergy or maybe multiple allergies and then that stopped working and so I took a little bit more for about a month and that made it way worse and so then I cut back a lot and then, then things really got out of hand and so" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there is a deeper thing in the benzo." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, definitely. Can you put words to... Well, I had a lot of immune... Well, my daughter, as everyone knows, has a very reactive immune system, and Tammy has three immunological conditions, each of them quite serious. And I had psoriasis and peripheral uveitis, which is an autoimmune condition, and alopecia areata, and chronic gum disease, all of which appeared to be allergy-related. And so Michaela seems to have got all of that. And so that, and that I think was at the bottom of, because I also had this proclivity to depression that was part of my family history. But I think that was all immunological as far as I can tell. So one of the things that's happened to me, I always noticed I really couldn't breathe. Like I could breathe about one-fifth as much as I sometimes could. And so I was always short of breath. And it looks like what that was perhaps was I was always on the border of an anaphylactic reaction, which is not pleasant. And that's hypersympathetic activation, no parasympathetic activation. I couldn't relax at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's an immunological response." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Allergic response, yeah. So anyways, that was what seemed... Now, I don't like to talk about this much because it's so bloody radical and, you know, I don't like to propagate it, but this diet seems to have stopped all of that. I don't have psoriasis. All of the patches have gone. My gum disease, which is incurable, I had multiple surgeries to deal with it, is completely gone. It took three years. My right eye, which was quite cloudy, has cleared up completely. What else has changed? Well, I lost 50 pounds. like instantly and kept it off." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I should mention that I too am not a deep investigator of nutritional science. I have my skepticism towards the degree to which it is currently a science, because like a lot of complex systems, it's full of mystery. and full of profiteers, the people that profit of different kinds of diets. But I should say for me personally, it does seem that I feel by far the best when I eat only meat. It's very interesting. And I discovered that a long time ago. First of all- How did you discover it? So the discovery went like this. I started listening to ultra marathon runners about 15 years ago. and they started talking about adapted running. So I first discovered that I don't have to run super fast to enjoy running. And in fact, I really enjoy running at a slower pace. So that was like step one. It's like, oh, okay, if I maintain, this is something called the math rule, which is pretty low heart rate. If I maintain that, you can actually get pretty fast while maintaining a pretty slow average speed in general. Anyway, they fuel themselves on low carb diets. So I got into that. On top of that, they also fast often. So I discovered how incredible my mind feels When fasted, you know, people call it intermittent fasting, but... Well, that's an optimization of death, eh?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because when you fast, your body, logically and obviously, if you think about it biologically, is... Well, what does your body scavenge first? Well, damaged tissue. So, I know the literature on fasting to some degree, and it's very compelling literature. If you starve dogs down, I think it's 20% below, rats too, below their optimal body weight, they live 30% longer. Yeah. That's a lot, 30%. Like, it's like, 30%! Yeah, 30%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there is aspect to a lot of these things that make me nervous, because I always feel like there's no free lunch that I'm going to pay for it somehow. But there is a focus that I am able to attain when I fast, especially when I eat once a day. My mind is almost like nervously focused. It's almost like an anxiety, but a positive one or one that I can channel into just like an excitement." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I wonder how much of that's associated with Well, imagine that that signifies lack of food, which is not that hard to imagine. Well, maybe you should be a lot more alert in that situation, right? Biologically speaking, because you're in hunting mode, let's say. You know, not desperate, but in hunting mode. And God only knows. Maybe human beings should be in hunting mode all the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Often, but we don't know that, so I wonder if it has a stress on the system that long-term causes the system to get it. It doesn't look like it. It seems, in case of fasting, not. And then on top of that, I discovered that the thing I enjoy, I just don't enjoy eating, fat as much, so I love eating meat, and when you talk about low-carb diets, so I just discovered through that process, if somewhat fatty meat, but just meat, I just feel a lot of the things that make me feel weird about food, like a little groggy, or like full, or just whatever. the aspects of food that I don't enjoy, they're not there with meat. And I'm still able to enjoy company. And when I eat once a day and eat meat, at least in Texas, you could still have all the merriment of, you have dinner with friends. Now, I don't do the, you have a very serious thing that, you know, there's health benefits that you are very serious about. For me, I can still drink whiskey. I'll still do the things that add a little bit of spice into the thing. Now, when you completely remove the spice, it does become more difficult." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's more difficult socially, and Tammy seems to only be able to eat lamb, although she might be able to eat non-aged beef. And that makes traveling complicated too, right? Because, well, for obvious reasons, it's like, really, that's all you can eat? Yeah, well, c'est la vie." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And maybe that's a form of craziness, but... If we could return to actually the thing you were talking about when you were thinking about a question before the lecture. Yeah. Let me ask you about thinking in general. This is something maybe that you and Jim Keller think a lot about, is thinking how to think. How do you think through an idea?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, first of all, I think, OK, that's a really good question. We tried to work that out with this essay app that my son and I have developed. Because if you're going to write, the first question is, well, what should I write about? What's the name of the app? Essay.app. And well, the first question is, well, what bugs you? What's bugging you? This is such a cool thing. It's like, where's my destiny? Well, what bothers you? Well, that's where your destiny is. Your destiny is to be found in what bothers you. Why did those things bother you? There's a lot of things you could be bothered by. Like a million things, man. But some things grip you. They bug you, and they might make you resentful and bitter, because they bug you so much. Like, they're your things, man. They've got you. So then, I look for a question that I would like the answer to. And I would really like the answer to it, so I don't assume I already have the answer. Because I would actually really like to have the answer. So if I could get a better answer, great. And so that's the first thing. And that's like a prayer. It's like, okay. Here's a mystery. I would like to delve into it further. Well, so that's humility. It's like, here's a mystery, which means I don't know. I would like to delve into it further, which means I don't know enough already. And then comes the revelation. It's like, well, what's a revelation? Well, if you ask yourself a question, it's a real question. Do you get an answer or not? And the answer is, well, yeah, thoughts start to appear in your head. So, that's right, from somewhere." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Where do they come from? Do you have a sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Depends on what you're aiming at." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Depends on the question?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, it does to some degree. It depends on your intent. So imagine that your intent is to make things better. Then maybe they come from the place that's designed to make things better. Maybe your intent is to make things worse. Then they come from hell. And you think, not really. It's like, you're so sure about that, are you?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is your intent conscious? Like, are you able to suspect what the intent is?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's conscious and habitual, right? Because as you practice something consciously, it becomes habitual. But it's conscious. It's like, when I sit down before I do a lecture, I think, okay, what's the goal here? To do the best job I can. To what end? Well, people are coming here. Not for political issues, they're coming here because they're trying to make their lives better. Okay, so what are we doing? We're conducting a joint investigation into the nature of that which makes life better. Okay, what's my role? To do as good a job about that as possible. What state of mind do I have to be in? Am I annoyed about the theater? Or am I clued in and thrilled that 4,000 people have showed up at substantial expense and trouble to come and listen to me talk? And if I'm not in that state of mind, I think, well, maybe I need something to eat, or maybe I need to talk to someone. Because ingratitude is no place to start. It's like, I should be thrilled to be there. Obviously. And so that orientation has to be there. And then I, is it conscious? All this is conscious. What am I serving? The highest good I can conceptualize. What is that? I have some sense, but I don't know it in the final analysis, which is why the investigation is being conducted. Who's doing it? Me, whoever I'm communing with, and the audience. And so I try to get myself, and I chase everybody away for that. It's like, I have to do that by myself." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are you writing stuff down?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, at that point, I just make point notes. And it's usually about maybe 30 notes. But then on stage, I never refer to them. And I often don't even use the structure that I laid out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Kind of an interesting thing. From where do powerful phrases come from? Do you try to encapsulate an idea into a sentence or two?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, when I talk, and I've practiced this consciously since 1985, I try to feel and see if the words are stepping stones or foundation stones, right? It's like, is this solid? Is this word solid? Is this phrase solid? Is this sentence solid? It's a real sense of fundamental foundation under each word. And I suppose people ask me if I pray, and I would say, I pray before every word. Well, when you're asking questions, like you're very clear headed and present in your ability to ask questions and inquire. So how do you do that?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So first of all, I'm worried that my mind easily gets trapped when I step on a word and I know it's unstable. you kind of realize that you don't really know the definitions of any words you use. And that can be debilitating. So I kind of try to be more carefree about the words I use. Because otherwise you get trapped. You don't want to be obsessional. Like literally, my mind halfway through the sentence will think, well, what does the word sentence mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right, right, right. Well, you know, neurologically... And then everything else just explodes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Your big picture idea explodes and you lost yourself in the minutia." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, neurologically, there's a production center and an editing center, and those can be separately affected by strokes. And so often when people are writing or talking, they try to activate both at the same time. And that's so people will try to write an essay and get every sentence right in the first draft. That's a big mistake. And so then you might say, well, how can you be careful with your words, but carefree? And the answer is orient yourself properly, right? Well, in the conversation we're having, you have an orientation structure. You want to be prepared. You want to be attentive. Then you want to have an interesting conversation and you want to have the kind of interesting conversation that other people Want to listen to that will be good for them in some manner Okay, so that's pretty good frame and and then you kind of scour your heart and you think is that really what you want? Are you after fame or after notoriety? Are you after money? I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad but they're not optimal and Especially if you're not willing to admit them right and so they can contaminate you so you want to be decontaminated So you have the right trip. Let's say and and so you have to put yourself. That's a meditative practice You have to put yourself in the right receptive position with the right goal in mind then you can and I think you can get better and better at this then you can trust What's going to happen? You know for so for example before I came here I mean, I presume you have a reason for doing the podcast with me. What's the reason?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, we wanted to talk for a long time, so the reason has evolved. One of the reasons is I've listened to you for quite a long time, so you've become a one-way friend, and I have many one-way friends. Some of my best friends don't even know I exist. I'm a big fan of podcasts and audiobooks. Actually, most of my friends are dead. The writers of it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The definition of a reader. I write with a lot of dead, great dead friends." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I wanted to meet this one-way friend, I suppose, and have a conversation. And then there's this kind of puzzle that I've been longing to solve, the same reason I went to Ukraine, of asking this question of myself, who am I, and what was this part of the world, what is this thing that happened in the 20th century? that I lost so much of my family there, and I feel so much of my family is defined by that place. Now that place includes the Soviet Union, it includes Russia and Ukraine, it includes Nazi Germany, it includes these big, powerful leaders, and huge millions of people that were lost in the beauty, the power of the dream, but were also the torture that was forced onto them through different governmental institutions. And you are somebody that seemed from some angle to also be drawn to try to understand what was that. And not in some sort of historical sense, but in a deeply psychological human sense. What is that? Will it repeat again? In what way is it repeating again?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And how can we stop it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and how can we stop it? And so- That's the crucial issue. I felt I wanted to, from a very different backgrounds, pull at the thread of that curiosity. You know, I'm an engineer, you're a psychologist, both lost in that curiosity and both wear suits. And a talk with various levels of eloquence about sort of, the shadows that that history casts on us. And so that was one. And also the psychology, I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a long time. I was fascinated by the human mind. Until I discovered artificial intelligence, the fact that I could program and make a robot move, until I discovered that magic, I thought I wanted to understand the human mind by being a psychiatrist, by talking to people, through talk therapy, psychotherapy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Now you've got the best of both worlds because you get to talk to people and you get to build robots." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, but the dream ultimately is the robot. That I felt like by building the thinking, you start to try to understand it. I think that's one way. I mean, we all have different skills and proclivities, so like my particular one has to do with, I learn by building. I think through a thing by building it. And programming is a wonderful thing because it allows you to build a little toy example. So in the same way you can do a little thought experiment, programming allows you to create a thought experiment in action. It can move, it can live, it can... and then you could ask questions of it. So all of those, because of my interest in Freud and Jung, you're also in different ways have delved deeply into humanity, the human psyche through the perspective of those, psychologist. So for all those reasons, I thought our paths crossed." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so that's quite a frame for a discussion, right? You had all sorts of reasons. And then you think, well, are you just letting the conversation go where it will? It's like, well, not exactly. You spent all this time. It's not like this came about by accident, this conversation. You spent all this time framing it. And so All of that provides the implicit substructure for the play in the conversation and if you have that implicit Here's another way. This is very much worth knowing is If you get the implicit structure of perception, right everything becomes a game And not only that a game you want to play and maybe in the final analysis a game you'd want to play forever so You know, that's obviously a distant beckoning ideal but We know games need rules, or there's no play." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there advice you can give, now that we know the frame, to give to me, Lex, about how to do this podcast better, how to think about this world, how to be a good engineer? how to be a good human being, from what you know about me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Take your preoccupation with suffering seriously. It's serious business. Right? And that's part of that, to circle back to the beginning, let's say, that's that willingness to gaze into the abyss, which is obviously what you were doing when you went to Ukraine. It's gazing into the abyss that makes you better. The thing is, and this is maybe where Nietzsche's idea is not as differentiated as it became. Sometimes your gaze can be forcefully directed towards the abyss, and then you're traumatized. If it's involuntary and accidental, it can kill you. The more it's voluntary, the more transformative it is. And that's part of that idea about facing death and hell. It's like, can you tolerate death and hell? And the answer is, this terrible answer is, yes, to the degree that you're willing to do it voluntarily. And then you might ask, well, why should I have to subject myself to death and hell? I'm innocent. And then the answer to that is, Even the innocent must be voluntarily sacrificed to the highest good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's such an interesting distinction. Voluntary suffering. Voluntary, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's why the central Christian doctrine is, pick up your cross and follow me. And I'm speaking not in religious terms saying that. I'm just speaking as a psychologist. It's like one of the things we've learned in the last hundred years is voluntary exposure to that which freezes and terrifies you in measured proportions is curative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So a form of, at least in part, involuntary suffering is depression. Do you have advice for people on how to find a way out? You're a man who has suffered in this way, perhaps continue to suffer in this way. How do you find a way out?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The first thing I do as a clinician, if someone comes to me and says they're depressed, is ask myself a question. Well, what does this person mean by that? So I have to find out, like, because maybe they're not depressed, maybe they're hyper-anxious, or maybe they're obsessional. Like, there's various forms of powerful negative emotion. So they need to be differentiated. But then the next question you have to ask is, well, are you depressed? Or do you have a terrible life? Or is it some combination of the two? So if you're depressed, as far as I can tell, you don't have a terrible life. You have friends, you have family, you have an intimate relationship, you have a job or a career. You're about as educated as you should be, given your intelligence. You use your time outside of work wisely. You're not beholden to alcohol or other temptations. You're engaged in the community in some fundamental sense, and all that's working. Now, if you have all that, and you're feeling really awful, you're either ill or you're depressed. And so then sometimes there's a biochemical route to that, treatment of that. My experience has been as a clinician is if you're depressed, but you have a life and you take an antidepressant, it will probably help you a lot. Now, maybe you're not depressed. Exactly. You just have a terrible life. What does that look like? You have no relationship. Your family's a mess. You've got no friends. You've got no plan. You've got no job. You use your time outside of work, not only badly, but destructively. You have a drug or alcohol habit, or some other vice, pornography addiction. You are completely unengaged in the surrounding community. You have no scaffolding whatsoever to support you in your current mode of being or your move forward. And then, as a therapist, well, you do two things. Well, if it's depression, per se, well, like I said, there's sometimes a biochemical route, a nutritional route, there's ways that can be addressed, it's probably physiological if you're, at least in part, if you're depressed but you have an okay life. Sometimes it's conceptual. You can turn to dreams sometimes to help people, because dreams contain the seeds of the potential future. And if your person is a real good dreamer, and you can analyze dreams, that can be really helpful. But that seems to be only true for more creative people. And for the people who just have a terrible life, it's like, okay, you have a terrible life. Well, let's pick a front. How about you need a friend, like one sort of friend. Do you know how to shake hands and introduce yourself? I'll have the person show me. So let's do it for a sec. So it's like this, hi, I'm Jordan. And people don't know how to do that. And then they can't even get the ball rolling." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "For the listener, Jordan just gave me a firm handshake." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, as opposed to a dead fish. You know, and there's these elementary social skills that hypothetically, if you were well cared for, you learned when you were like three. And sometimes people have, I had lots of clients. to whom no one ever paid any attention. And they needed like 10,000 hours of attention. And some of that was just listening, because they had 10,000 hours of conversations they never had with anyone, and they were all tangled up in their head. And they had to just... One client in particular, I worked with this person for 15 years, and What she wanted from me was for me just to shut the hell up for 50 minutes, which is very hard for me, and to just tell me what had happened to her. And then what happened at the end of the conversation, then I could discuss a bit with her. And then as we progressed through the years, the amount of time that we spent in discussion increased in proportion in this sessions until by the time we stopped seeing each other, when my clinical practice collapsed, We were talking about 80% of the time. But she literally, she'd never been attended to properly, ever. And so she was an uncarved block in the Taoist sense, right? She hadn't been subjected to those flaming swords that separated the wheat from the chaff. And so, you can do that in therapy. If you're listening and you're depressed, I would say if you can't find a therapist, and that's getting harder and harder, because it's actually become illegal to be a therapist now, because you have to agree with your clients, which is a terrible thing to do with them. Just like it's terrible just to arbitrarily oppose them. You could do the self-authoring program online, because it helps you write an autobiography. And so if you have memories that are more than 18 months old that bother you when you think them up, Part of you is locked inside that. Developed part of you is still trapped in that. That's a metaphorical way of thinking about it. That's why it still has emotional significance. So you can write about your past experiences, but I would say wait for at least 18 months if something bad has happened to you. Because otherwise you just hurt yourself again by encountering it. You can bring yourself up to date with an autobiography. There's an analysis of faults and virtues. That's the present authoring. And then there's a guided writing exercise that helps you make a future plan. That's... Young men who do that could go to college. Young men who do that, 90 minutes. Just the future authoring, 90 minutes. They're 50% less likely to drop out. That's all it takes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So sometimes depression is this heavy cloud that makes it hard to even make a single step towards it. You said isolate, make a friend." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh man, sometimes the first step is extremely difficult. Oh my God, sometimes it's way worse than that. Like I had clients who were so depressed, they literally couldn't get out of bed. So what's their first step? It's like, can you sit up once today? No. Can you prop yourself up on your elbows once today? Like you just, you scale back the dragon till you find one that's conquerable, that moves you forward. There's a rubric for life. Scale back the dragons till you find one conquerable. And it'll give you a little bit of goal. Commensurate with the struggle but the plus side of that because that's you think that God that's depressing. You mean I have to start by Sitting up while you do if you can't sit up but the the plus side of that is it's the Pareto distribution issue is that aggregates exponentially increase. And failures do too, by the way. But aggregates exponentially increase. So once you start the ball rolling, it can get zipping along pretty good. This person that I talked about was incapable of sitting with me in a cafe when we first met, just talking, even though I was her therapist. But by the end, she was doing stand-up comedy. So, you know, it took years, but still most people want to stand up comedy. That's quite the bloody achievement. She would read her poetry on stage too. So for someone who was petrified into paralysis by social anxiety, and who had to start very small, it was a hell of an accomplishment." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it all starts with one step. Do you have advice for young people? In high school, a lot of people look up to you for advice, for strength, for strength to search for themselves, to find themselves." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Take on some responsibility. Do something for other people. You're doing something for yourself while you're doing that, even if you don't know it, for sure, because you're a community across time. Find something to serve. Somebody to help someone to solve a job to find a job. Do your best with the customers. Don't be above your job. You're going to get an entry level job when you're a kid. Or what else would you want? You want to be the boss? What do you know? You don't know anything. You could be the boss of your job. You know, if you're working in a grocery store or you're working in a convenience store, assuming you're not working for terrified tyrants, you can be nice to the customers. You can develop your social skills. You can learn how to handle boss-employee relationship. You can be there 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes late. Like, you can learn in an entry-level job, man, and I'll tell you, if you take an entry-level job and you learn, and it's a reasonably decent place, you will not be in an entry-level job for long. Because everyone who's competent is desperate for competent people. And if you go and show yourself as competent, there'll be a trial period, but if you go show yourself as competent, all sorts of doors you didn't even know were there will start opening like mad." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you strive for competence, for craftsmanship." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. For discipline. You know, I mean, I said in one of the chapters in my books is focused on putting your house in order. It's like, well, how do you start? Make your bed. It actually took me quite a long time in my life before I made my bed regularly in the morning. Most of my life was in pretty good order, but that was one thing I didn't have in order. My clothes in my closet as well, all that's in order. Not all of it. I'm cleaning out some drawers right now. Look around and see what bugs you in your room. Just look. It's like, OK, I'm in my room. Do I like this room? No, it bugs me. OK, why? Well, the paint's peeling there and it's dusty there and the carpet's dirty and that corner is kind of ugly and the light there isn't very good. And my clothes closet's a mess, so I don't even like to open it. OK, that's a lot of problems. That sucks. That's a lot of opportunity. Pick something and fix it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Something that bugs you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, but not too much. So the rule is pick something you know would make, pick a problem, pick a solution to it that you know would help, that you could do, that you would do. So you have to negotiate with yourself. It's like, well, I won't clean up this room. How do you know? I've been in here for 10 years and I've never cleaned it up. It's like, well, obviously that's too big a dragon for you. Would you clean one drawer? Find out. And so imagine now you want to be happy when you open that drawer and you think, well, that's stupid. It's like, is it maybe it's your sock drawer, which I cleaned up in my room the other day, by the way, you're going to, you're going to open that every morning. So that's like 30 seconds of your life every day. Okay. So that's three minutes a. week, that's 12 minutes a month, that's two hours a year. So maybe your life is made out of, you've got 16 hours a day, let's figure this out, five, 12 in an hour, 12 in an hour, 144 in 12 hours. Yeah, let's say 200, 205 minute chunks, that's your life." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Ladies and gentlemen, Jordan Peterson did just some math how many five minute chunks there are in a day." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I'm pretty sure that's pretty accurate. It's approximately right. You got 200 five-minute chunks, and they repeat, a lot of them repeat. So if you get every one of those right, they're trivial, right? Who cares what my sock drawer looks like? It's there, fair enough, man, but that's your life. The things you repeat every day, the mundane things. Think, I could get all those mundane things right. That's the game rules. It's like, now all the mundane is in place. Now you can play, because all the mundane's in place. And this is actually true. So with children, imagine you want your children to play. Well, play is very fragile neurologically. Any competing motivation or emotion will suppress play. So everything has to be in order. Everything has to be a walled garden before the children will play. That's a good way of thinking about it. So you put everything in order and you think, oh my God, now I'm tyrannized by this order. It's like, no you aren't, not if it's voluntary. And then the order is the precondition for the freedom. And so then all of a sudden you get all these things in order. It's like, Oh, look at this. I've, I've got some room to play here. And then, then maybe you're not depressed. Now it's, it's often not that simple. You know, it's not that simple. Try putting your room in order. Perfect order. That's hard." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's a really powerful way to think about those five minute chunks. Just get one of them right in a day." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, if you do that for 200 days, your life is in order. You know, I thought I did that with my clients a lot. So a lot of them would come home from work, the guys, and their wives would meet them at the door, and it'd be a fight right away. You know, and it's a clash there, because he comes home and he's tired and hungry, and he's worked all day, and he's hoping that, you know, he gets welcomed when he comes back to the home. But then the wife is at home, and she's been with the kids all day, and she's tired and hungry, and she's hoping that when he comes home, he'll show her some appreciation for what's happened today. clash and then they both have problems to discuss because they've had their troubles during the day and so then every time they get together they are not like it's a bit of a fight for 20 minutes and then the whole evening is screwed and so then you think okay here's the deal it's knock and the door will open okay you get to pick what happens when you come home but you have to figure out what it is so now this is the deal you treat yourself properly You imagine coming home and it goes the way you want and need it to go. Okay. What does that look like? You get to have it, but you have to know what it is. What does it look like? And you think, okay, I want to come home. I want to be happy about coming home. I come home. I open the door. I say, hello, honey. I'm home. My wife says, hi, it's so nice to hear your voice. She comes up. She says, Hi, dear. She gives you a hug. She says, how was your day? And you say, well, we'll sit and talk about that. How was your day? Well, we'll sit and talk about that. Do you need something to eat? Probably. Let's go sit and talk about our day. It's like, that sounds pretty good. OK, that sounds pretty good. Might not be perfect, but sounds a hell of a lot better than what we're doing now. So how about we go talk to we'll go talk to your wife and say, OK, This is what's happening when I come home. I would like it to be better. What would you like to have happen, if you could have what you wanted?\" And so she sits down, and she thinks, OK, if he comes home, what do I want to have happen? And then, now you've got two visions, and you say, well, what would you like? And you listen, and she says, what would you like? And you tell her, and then you think, OK, now how can we bring these visions together? So not only do we both get what we want, but because we've brought them together, we even get more than we want. Well, who wouldn't agree to that, unless they were aiming down? And that's so exciting. It's not a compromise. It's a union of ideals that even makes a better ideal. And then you get to come home, and then there's another rule that goes along with that, which is, please, dear, have the grace to allow me to do this stupidly and badly while I learn at least 20 times. and I'll give you the same leeway, and then we'll practice stupidly for 20 times, and we'll talk about it, and then maybe we'll get it right for the next 10,000 times, right? And you can do that with your whole life, and you can do that with your kids, and you can do that with your family. Like, it's not easy, but you can do it. It's a lot easier than the alternative." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Let me ask for some dating advice from Jordan Peterson. How do you find, on that topic, the love of your life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's a good question. I was asked that multiple times on my tour, three times in a row, in fact, because we asked people to use this Slido gadget." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a popular question." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To vary. It always came up to the top. And I got asked that three times in a row, and I didn't have a good answer. And then I thought, why don't I have a good answer? I thought, oh, I know why, because that's a stupid question. So, so why? Yeah. Why? Because it's, it's putting the cart before the horse. Here's the right question. How do I make myself into the perfect date? You answer that question and you will not have any problem answering the previous question. It's like what I want in a partner. If I offered everything I could do a partner, who would I be? You work on that. Ask that question. Just ask, just ask yourself. Okay. I have to be the person that women would want. Okay, what do they want? Clean, that's not a bad start. Reasonably good physical shape. So healthy, productive, generous, honest. willing to delay gratification. So you dance with a woman. It's like, what's she doing? What are you two doing? Well, it's a pattern. There's patterns happening around you. That's the music. Patterns. Patterns of being. That's the music. Now, can you align yourself with the patterns of being gracefully? That's what she's checking out. And then can you do that with her? And then can you do that in a playful and attentive manner and keep your bloody hands to yourself for at least a minute? And so, can you dance in a playful manner? It's like, you can go through this in your imagination, and you know, you'll know, you know. And then you think, well, how far am I from those things? And the answer is usually, man, it's a pretty horrible abyss separating you from that ideal. But the harder you work on offering other people what they need and want, the more people will line up to play with you. And so it's the wrong question. It's like, how can I be the best partner possible? And then you think, well, if I do that, people will just take advantage of me. And that's the non-naive objection, right? Because the naive person is saying, well, I'll be good and everyone will treat me right. It's like the cynic says, no, I'll be good and someone will take me out. And then you think, well, what do you do about that objection? And the answer is, well, You factor that in. And that's why you're supposed to be, what is it? As soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent. It's like, I know you're full of snakes. I know it. Maybe I know it more than you do. But we'll play anyways. Takes the risk, anyway. That's right. Voluntarily, right? And what's so cool about that is that even though the person you're dealing with is full of snakes, If you offer your hand in trust, and it's real, you will evoke the best in them. And that's true even, I've dealt with people who are pretty damn criminal, and pretty psychopathic, and sometimes dangerously so. And you tread very lightly when you're dealing with someone like that, especially if they're intoxicated. And even then, your best bet is that alert trust. It's the only fact, the only thing I know that... I had one client who was a paranoid, he was a paranoid psychopath. That's a bad combination. He was a bad guy, man. He had like four restraining orders. on him, and restraining orders don't work on the sort of people that you put restraining orders on. And he used to be harassed now and then by, you know, a bureaucrat in a bank with delusions of power. And he would say to them, he used to kind of act this out to me when I was talking to him, he'd say, I'm going to be your worst nightmare. And he meant it yeah, and he would do it. He had this obsessional Psychopathic vengeance that was just like right there Paranoid to the hilt and paranoid people are hyper acute. So they're watching you for any sign of Deceit or manipulation and they're really good at it because like they're 100% That's what paranoia is. It's 100% focus on that and Even under those circumstances if you step carefully enough you can Maybe you can avoid the axe. That's a good thing to know if you ever meet someone truly dangerous" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Absolutely, I believe in that, that being fragile nevertheless, taking that leap of trust towards another person, even when they're dangerous, especially when they're dangerous. If you care, if there's something there in those hills you wanna find, then that's probably the only way you're gonna find is taking that risk. I have to ask you about Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. that speak to this very point. There's so many layers to this book, we could talk about it forever. I'm sure in many ways we are talking about it forever. But there is sort of one of the themes captured in a few ways that was described through the book is that line between good and evil that runs through every, human being, as he writes, the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. During the life of any heart, this line keeps changing place. Sometimes it is squeezed one way to exuberant evil, and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change. And to that name, we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil. What do you think about this line? What do you think about this thing where we talked about if you give somebody a chance, you actually bring out the best in them? What do you think about this other aspect that throughout time, that line shifts inside each person and you get to define that shift? What do you think about this line? Are we all capable of evil?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, the cosmic drama that's Satan versus Christ. It's like, well, who's that about, if it's not about you? I'm speaking just as a psychologist, or as a literary critic. Those are characters. At least they're that. Well, are they human characters? Well, obviously. Well, are they archetypal human characters? Yes. What does that mean cosmically and ontologically? I don't know, is the world a story?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Maybe. But the way stories are often told is the characters embody a stable." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Those are unsophisticated, not great literature though. It's very rare in great literature. What you have in great literature generally is the internal drama, right? As the literature becomes more pop, I would say, the characters are more unitary. So there's a real bad guy and he's all bad, and there's a real good guy and he's all good. And that's not as interesting. It's not as sophisticated. When you reach Dostoevskian heights in literary representation or Shakespearean heights, you can identify with the villain. And that's when literature really reaches its pinnacle in some sense." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also the characters change throughout. They shift throughout. They're unpredictable throughout. I'm taking the speaking of Russian more seriously recently. And I've gotten to talk to translators of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Chekhov and those kinds of folks. One of the mistakes that translators made with Dostoevsky for the longest time is they would, quote unquote, fix the chaotic mess that is Dostoevsky because there was a sense like he was too rushed in his writing. It seemed like there was tangents that had nothing to do with anything. The characters were unpredictable, not inconsistent. There's parts of phrases that seem to be incomplete, that kind of stuff. And what they realize that is, that's not, that's actually crafted that way. It's not, you know, it's like editing James Joyce, like Finnegan's Wake or something, because it doesn't make any sense. They realize that that is the magic of it, that captures the humanity of these characters, that they are unpredictable, they change throughout time. There's a bunch of contradictions. On which point I gotta ask, is there a case to be made that Brothers Karamazov is the greatest book ever written?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there is a case to be made for that. I don't know, is it better than Crime and Punishment?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You think so? I'm not arguing with you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Why do you think that? Well, every book is a person. Some of my best friends are inside that book." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's an amazing book." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's no doubt about it. I think some books are defined by your personal relationship with them. And that one was definitive. And I almost graduated to that one because for the longest time, The Idiot was my favorite book. of all, because I identified with the ideas represented by Prince Mishkin. I also identified... Ah, that's interesting. ...to Prince Mishkin as a human being. The holy fool. The fool, yeah, because the world kind of, my whole life, still kind of sees me, saw me in my perception, my narrow perception as kind of the fool, and I Different from the interpretation that a lot of people take of this book. I see him as a kind of hero to be definitely to be a naive Quote-unquote fool, but really just a naive optimist and naive in the best possible way I do believe that that's a childlike. Yeah childlike is a better so naive is usually seen as a That's childish, naive. Yeah, but childlike." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's why no one enters the kingdom of heaven unless they become like a child. That's Prince Mishkin. Dostoevsky knew that. So that's why you like The Idiot. That's so interesting. See, I think I like Crime and Punishment, because while you identified with Mishkin, I think I identified more with Raskolnikov. Because I was tempted by a Luciferian intellect, you know, in a manner very similar to the manner he was tempted. But I mean, I think you can make a case that the Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's crowning achievement. And that's something, man. He ruined literature for me. Because everything else just felt insipid afterwards. Not everything. Not everything. I found some books that, in my experience, hit that pinnacle. The Master and Margarita. That's a deadly book. I've read that, I think, four times, and I still... It's unbelievably deep. There's a Nikos Kazantzikas, a Greek writer. Some of his books are... His writing is amazing as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did you ever connect with the literary existentialists, Camus, or people like Herman Hesse, or even Kafka? Did you ever connect with those?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To the same degree? Yeah, to the same degree. Enough to be an influence. You know, you have to be deaf in some fundamental sense not to encounter a great dead friend and fail to learn. And I mean, I tried to separate the wheat from the chaff when I read, you know, and I read all the great clinicians, all of them, perhaps not. those who are foremost in the pantheon. And I tried to pull out what I could. And that was a lot. I learned a lot from Freud. I learned a lot from Rogers. And I learned a lot from, well, from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. I'm going to do a course on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche for this Peterson Academy. This is coming up in January." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that'll be done together." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm really looking forward to it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You're weaving." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I hadn't thought about doing them together. That'd be fun. That's a good idea. That'd be a good idea." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You often weave them together really masterfully because there is religious, in the broad sense of that word, themes throughout the writing of both." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, there's uncanny parallelisms in their writing and their lives. And Dostoevsky is deeper than Nietzsche, but that's because he was a writer of fiction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Nietzsche is almost a character in a Dostoevsky novel." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He is definitely that. He is definitely that, yes. Apparently Nietzsche knew more about Dostoevsky than people had thought. There's been some recent scholarship on that grounds. Dostoevsky didn't know anything about Nietzsche, as far as I know. I could be wrong about that. The thing that Dostoevsky had over Nietzsche is Nietzsche had to make things propositional in some real sense, because he was a philosopher. It's hard to propositionalize things that are outside your ken, but you can characterize them. And so, in The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan is a more... Developed character than alyosha in in in the explicit sense. He can make better arguments but alyosha wins like michigan because he's the better man and Dostoevsky can show that in the actions rather He can't render it entirely propositional, but that's probably because what's good can't be rendered entirely propositional. And so Dostoevsky had that edge over Nietzsche. He said, well, Ivan is this brilliant rationalist, atheist, materialist, and puts forward an argument on that front that's still unparalleled, as far as I'm concerned, and overwhelms Eliosha, who cannot respond, but Eliosha is still the better man. So, which is very interesting, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You know, the funny thing about those two characters is you, Jordan Peterson, seem to be somebody that at least in part embodies both, because you are one of the intellectuals of our time, rigorous in thought, but also are able to have that kind of, what would you describe? If you remove the religiosity of Alyosha, there's a, what's a good word? Love towards the world?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Spirit of encouragement. Yes. You know, one of the things I did learn, perhaps, from looking into the abyss to the degree that I have had to, or was willing to, was that at some level you have to make a fundamental statement of faith. When God creates the world, after each day, He says, He saw that it was good. You think, well, is it good? It's like, well, there's a tough question. Do you want to bring a child into a world such as this? Which is a fundamental question of whether or not it's good. It's an act of faith to declare that it's good. Because the evidence is ambivalent. And so then you think, OK, well, am I going to act as if it's good? And what would happen if I did? And maybe the answer to that is, I think this is the answer. The more you act out the proposition that it's good, the better it gets. And so that's it. Dostoevsky said this is something else. Every man is not only responsible for everything he does, but for everything everyone else does. It's like, What, is that profound or are you just insane? Then you think, is what you receive back proportionate to what you deliver? And the answer to that might be yes. That's a terrifying idea, man. And it's certainly, you can see that it's true in some sense, because people certainly respond to you in kind with how you treat them. That's certainly the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, it's terrifying and it's exciting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that's an adventure, isn't it? Yeah, you create the world by the way you live it. The world you experience is defined by the way you live that world. And that's really interesting. And then taken as a collective, we create the world together in that way. What do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of life, Jordan Peterson? We've defined it many, many times throughout this conversation." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's the adventure along the route, man. And I would say, Where's that adventure to be found? In faith? What's the faith? The highest value is love, and truth is its handmaiden. That's a statement of faith, right? Because you can't tell. You have to act it out to see if it's true. And so you can't even find out without... And that's so peculiar. You have to make the commitment a priori. It's like a marriage. It's the same thing. It's like, well, is this the person for me? That's the wrong question. How do I find out if this is the person for me? By binding myself to them. Well, maybe the same thing is true of life, right? You bind yourself to it. And the tighter you bind yourself to it, the more you find out what it is. And that's like a radical embrace. And it's a really radical embrace that's the crucifix symbol. And more than that, because like I said, the full passion story isn't death. It isn't even unjust death. It isn't even unjust death and the crucifixion of the innocent, which is really getting pretty bad. It's unjust, torturous, innocent death attendant upon betrayal and tyranny, followed by hell. Well, that's a hell of a thing to radically embrace. It's like, bring it on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think a lot of people put truth as the highest ideal and think they can get to that ideal while living in a place of cynicism and ultimately escape from life and hiding from life, afraid of life. And it's beautifully put that love is the highest ideal to reach for, and truth is... It's handmade." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I thought about that for a long time, right? This hierarchy of ideal. And the thing about truth, that bitter truth, let's say, that cynical truth, is it can Break the shackles of naivety. And actually, a burnt cynicism is a moral improvement over a blind naivety. Even though one is in some ways positive, but only because it's protected. And the other is bitter and dark, but still better. But you're not done at that point. You're just barely started. It's like you're cynical. You're not cynical enough. It's like, how cynical are you? Are you, I'm an Auschwitz prison guard level of cynical? Because you have to be, you have to go down pretty deep into the weeds before you find that part of you. But you can find it if you want. And then you think, well, I want to stop this. Well, that was the question you posed. In some sense, you're obsessed with, say, what happened on these mass scale catastrophes in the communist countries. It's like, well, millions of people participated. So you could've, and maybe you would've enjoyed it. So what part of that is you? And you can find it, if you want." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's all there. The prisoner, the interrogator, the- The Judas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pontius Pilate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All of it, and all of it is inside us. And you just have to look. And once you do, maybe eventually you can find the love. Jordan, you're an incredible human being. I'm deeply honored you would talk to me. Thank you for being a truth seeker in this world, and thank you for the love." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it has happened here, right, on this planet. Once, yes. Once. So that simply tells you that it could, of course, happen again. Other places, it's only a matter of probability. What the probability that you would get a brain like the ones that we have, like the human brain. So how difficult is it to make the human brain? It's pretty difficult. But most importantly, I guess we know very little about how this process really happens. And there is a reason for that, actually multiple reasons for that. Most of what we know about how the mammalian brains or the brain of mammals develop comes from studying in labs other brains, not our own brain, the brain of mice, for example. But if I showed you a picture of a mouse brain and then you put it next to a picture of a human brain, they don't look at all like each other. So they're very different. And therefore, there is a limit to what you can learn about how the human brain is made by studying the mouse brain. There is a huge value in studying the mouse brain. There are many things that we have learned, but it's not the same thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in having studied the human brain or through the mouse and through other methodologies that we'll talk about, do you have a sense, I mean, you're one of the experts in the world, how much do you feel you know about the brain and how often do you find yourself in awe of this mysterious thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, you pretty much find yourself in awe all the time. It's an amazing process. It's a process by which, by means that we don't fully understand, at the very beginning of embryogenesis, the structure called the neural tube literally self assembles. And it happens in an embryo and it can happen also from stem cells in a dish. Okay. And then from there, these stem cells that are present within the neural tube give rise to all of the thousands and thousands of different cell types that are present in the brain through time, right? with the interesting, very intriguing, interesting observation is that the time that it takes for the human brain to be made, it's human time, meaning that For me and you, it took almost nine months of gestation to build a brain and then another 20 years of learning postnatally to get the brain that we have today that allows us to this conversation. A mouse takes 20 days or so for an embryo to be born. And so the brain is built in a much shorter period of time. And the beauty of it is that if you take mouse stem cells and you put them in a culture dish, the brain organoid that you get from a mouse is formed faster than if you took human stem cells and put them in the dish and let them make a human brain organoid." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the very developmental process is controlled by the speed of the species. which means it's on purpose, it's not accidental, or there is something in that temporal dynamic to that development." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, that is very important for us to get the brain we have, and we can speculate for why that is. You know, it takes us a long time as human beings after we're born to learn all the things that we have to learn to have the adult brain. It's actually 20 years. Think about it. From when a baby is born to when a teenager goes through puberty to adults. It's a long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think you can maybe talk through the first few months and then on to the first 20 years and then for the rest of our lives, what is the development of the human brain look like? What are the different stages?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. At the beginning you have to build a brain, right? And the brain is made of cells." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the very beginning, which beginning are we talking about?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the embryo, as the embryo is developing in the womb, in addition to making all of the other tissues of the embryo, the muscle, the heart, the blood, the embryo is also building the brain. And it builds from a very simple structure called the neural tube, which is basically nothing but a tube of cells that spans sort of the length of the embryo from the head all the way to the tail, let's say, of the embryo. And then over in human beings, over many months of gestation from that neural tube, which contains stem cell like cells of the brain, you will make many, many other building blocks of the brain. So all of the other cell types, because there are many, many different types of cells in the brain. that will form specific structures of the brain. So you can think about embryonic development of the brain as just the time in which you are making the building blocks, the cells." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are the stem cells relatively homogeneous, like uniform, or are they all different?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a very good question. It's exactly how it works. You start with a more homogeneous perhaps more multipotent type of stem cell. Multipotent means that it has the potential to make many, many different types of other cells. And then with time, these progenitors become more heterogeneous, which means more diverse. There are going to be many different types of these stem cells. And also they will give rise to progeny, to other cells that are not stem cells, that are specific cells of the brain that are very different from the mother stem cell. And now you think about this process of making cells from the stem cells over many, many months of development for humans. And what you're doing, you're building the cells that physically make the brain, and then you arrange them in specific structures that are present in the final brain. So you can think about the embryonic development of the brain as the time where you're building the bricks, You're putting the bricks together to form buildings, structures, regions of the brain, and where you make the connections between these many different type of cells, especially nerve cells, neurons, right, that transmit action potentials and electricity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I've heard you also say somewhere, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that the order of the way this builds matters." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh, yes. If you are an engineer and you think about development, you can think of it as, well, I could also take all the cells and bring them all together into a brain in the end. But development is much more than that. So the cells are made in a very specific order that subserve the final product that you need to get. And so, for example, all of the nerve cells, the neurons, are made first. And all of the supportive cells of the neurons, like the glia, is made later. And there is a reason for that because they have to assemble together in specific ways. But you also may say, well, why don't we just put them all together in the end? It's because as they develop, next to each other, they influence their own development. So it's a different thing for a glia to be made alone in a dish than a glia cell being made in a developing embryo with all these other cells around it that produce all these other signals." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First of all, that's mind-blowing, this development process. From my perspective in artificial intelligence, you often think of how incredible the final product is. The final product, the brain. But you're making me realize that the final product is just, the beautiful thing is the actual development process. Do we know the code that drives that development? Do we have any sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First of all, thank you for saying that it's really the formation of the brain. It's really its development. It's this incredibly choreographed dance that happens the same way every time each one of us builds the brain, right? And that builds an organ that allows us to do what we're doing today, right? That is mind-blowing. And this is why developmental neurobiologists never get time. of studying that. Now you're asking about the code. What drives this? How is this done? Well, it's millions of years of evolution of really fine tuning gene expression programs that allow certain cells to be made at a certain time and to become a certain cell type, but also mechanical forces. of pressure, bending. This embryo is not just, it will not stay a tube, this brain, for very long. At some point, this tube in the front of the embryo will expand to make the primordium of the brain, right? Now, the forces that control that the cells feel, and this is another beautiful thing, the very force that they feel, which is different from a week before or a week ago, will tell the cell, oh, you're being squished in a certain way, begin to produce these new genes because now you are at the corner or you are in a stretch of cells or whatever it is. And so that mechanical physical force shapes the fate of the cell as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's not only chemical, it's also mechanical. So from my perspective, biology is this incredibly complex mess, gooey mess. So you're saying mechanical forces. Yes. How different is a computer or any kind of mechanical machine that we humans build? and the biological systems. Have you been, cause you've worked a lot with biological systems. Are they as much of a mess as it seems from a perspective of an engineer, a mechanical engineer?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. They are much more prone to taking alternative routes, right? So if you We go back to printing a brain versus developing a brain. Of course, if you print a brain, given that you start with the same building blocks, the same cells, you could potentially print it the same way every time. But that final brain may not work the same way as a brain built during development does because the very same building blocks that you're using developed in a completely different environment, right, that was not the environment of the brain. Therefore, they're going to be different, just by definition. So if you instead use development to build, let's say, a brain organoid, which maybe we will be talking about in a few minutes. For sure, those things are fascinating. Yes, so if you use processes of development, then when you watch it, you can see that sometimes things can go wrong in some organoids, and by wrong, I mean different one organoid from the next. Well, if you think about that embryo, it always goes right. So this development, for as complex as it is, every time a baby is born has, with very few exceptions, the brain is like the next baby. But it's not the same if you develop it in a dish. And first of all, we don't even develop a brain, you develop something much simpler in the dish. But there are more options for building things differently, which really tells you that evolution has played a really tight game here for how in the end the brain is built in vivo." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So just a quick, maybe dumb question, but it seems like the building process is not a dictatorship. It seems like there's not a centralized like high level mechanism that says, okay, this cell built itself the wrong way. I'm going to kill it. It seems like there's a really strong distributed mechanism. Is that in your sense?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There are a lot of possibilities, right? And if you think about, for example, different species building their brain, each brain is a little bit different. So the brain of a lizard is very different from that of a chicken, from that of one of us, and so on and so forth, and still is a brain, but it was built differently, starting from stem cells that pretty much had the same potential, But in the end, evolution builds different brains in different species, because that serves in a way the purpose of that species and the well-being of that organism. And so there are many possibilities, but then there is a way, and you were talking about a code. Nobody knows what the entire code of development is. Of course we don't. We know bits and pieces of very specific aspects of development of the brain, what genes are involved to make a certain cell types, how those two cells interact to make the next level structure. That we might know, but the entirety of it, how it's so well controlled, it's really mind blowing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in the first two months in the embryo or whatever, the first few months. So, yeah, the building blocks are constructed, the actual the different regions of the brain, I guess, and the nervous system." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, this continues way longer than just the first few months. So over the very first few months, you build a lot of these cells, but then there is continuous building of new cell types all the way through birth. And then even postnatally, I don't know if you've ever heard of myelin. Myelin is this sort of insulation that is built around the cables of the neurons so that the electricity can go really fast The axons, I guess they're called. The axons are called axons, exactly. And so as human beings, we myelinate ourselves postnatally. A kid, a six-year-old kid has barely started the process of making the mature oligodendrocytes, which are the cells that then eventually will wrap the axons into myelin. And this will continue, believe it or not, until we are about, you know, 25, 30 years old. So there is a continuous process of maturation and tweaking and additions and also in response to what we do." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I remember taking AP biology in high school and in the textbook it said that, I'm going by memory here, that scientists disagree on the purpose of myelin in the brain. Is that totally wrong? So like, I guess it speeds up the, OK, I might be wrong here, but I guess it speeds up the electricity traveling down the axon or something. Yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that's the most sort of canonical and definitely that's the case. So you have to imagine an axon and you can think about it as a cable of some type with electricity going through. And what myelin does by insulating the outside, I should say there are tracts of myelin and pieces of axons that are naked without myelin. And so by having the insulation, the electricity, instead of going straight through the cable, it will jump over a piece of myelin, right, to the next naked little piece and jump again. And therefore, you know, that's the idea that you go faster. And it was always thought that in order to build a big brain, a big nervous system, in order to have a nervous system that can do very complex type of things, then you need a lot of myelin because you want to go fast with this information from point A to point B. Well, a few years ago, maybe five years ago or so, we discovered that some of the most evolved, which means the newest type of neurons that we have as non-human primates, as human beings in the top of our cerebral cortex, which should be the neurons that do some of the most complex things that we do. Well, those have axons that have very little myelin. Wow. And they have very interesting ways in which they put this myelin on their axons, a little piece here, then a long track with no myelin, another chunk there, and some don't have myelin at all. So now you have to explain where we're going with evolution. And if you think about it, perhaps as an electrical engineer, When I looked at it, I initially thought, and I'm a developmental neurobiologist, I thought maybe this is what we see now, but if we give evolution another few million years, we'll see a lot of miling on these neurons too. But I actually think now that that's instead the future. of the brain. Less myelin might allow for more flexibility on what you do with your axons and therefore more complicated and unpredictable type of functions, which is also a bit mind-blowing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it seems like it's controlling the timing of the signal. So in the timing, you can encode a lot of information." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so the brain- The timing, the chemistry of that little piece of axon, Perhaps it's a dynamic process where the myelin can move. Now you see how many layers of variability you can add, and that's actually really good if you're trying to come up with a new function or a new capability or something unpredictable in a way." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're gonna jump around a little bit, but the old question of how much is nature and how much is nurture in terms of this incredible thing after the development is over, we seem to be kind of somewhat smart, intelligent, cognition, consciousness, all of these things are just incredible ability to reason and so on emerge. In your sense, how much is in the hardware, in the nature, and how much is in the nurtures learned through with our parents to interact with the environment and so on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's really both, right? If you think about it. So we are born with a brain as babies that has most of his cells and most of his structures. And that will take a few years to, you know, to grow, to add more, to be better. But really, then we have this 20 years of interacting with the environment around us. And so what that brain that was so perfectly built or imperfectly built due to our genetic cues will then be used to incorporate the environment in its farther maturation and development. And so your experiences do shape I mean, we know that, like if, you know, you and I may have had a different childhood or a different, we have been going to different schools, we have been learning different things, and our brain is a little bit different because of that. We behave differently because of that. And so, especially postnatally, experience is extremely important. We are born with a plastic brain. What that means is a brain that is able to change in response to stimuli. They can be sensory. So perhaps some of the most illuminating studies that were done were studies in which the sensory organs were not working, right? Like if you are born with eyes that don't work, then your very brain, that piece of the brain that normally would process vision, the visual cortex, develops postnatally differently, and it might be used to do something different. Right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the most extreme. The plasticity of the brain, I guess, is the magic hardware. And then it's flexibility in all forms is what enables the learning postnatally. Can you talk about organoids? What are they? And how can you use them to help us understand the brain and the development of the brain?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "This is very, very important. So the first thing I like to say, please skip this in the video. The first thing I like to say is that an organoid, a brain organoid is not the same as a brain. Okay. It's a fundamental distinction. It's a system, a cellular system that one can develop in the culture dish starting from stem cells that will mimic some aspects of the development of the brain, but not all of it. They are very small, maximum they become about, you know, four to five millimeters in diameters. They are much simpler than our brain, of course, but yet they are the only system where we can literally watch a process of human brain development unfold. And by watch, I mean study it. Remember when I told you that we can't understand everything about development in our own brain by studying a mouse? Well, we can't study the actual process of development of the human brain because it all happens in utero. So we will never have access to that process, ever. And therefore, this is our next best thing, like a bunch of stem cells that can be coaxed into starting a process of neural tube formation. Remember that tube that is made by the embryo and from there, a lot of the cell types that are present within the brain, and you can simply watch it and study, but you can also think about diseases where development of the brain does not proceed normally, right, properly. Think about neurodevelopmental diseases. There are many, many different types. Think about autism spectrum disorders. There are also many different types of autism. So there you could take a stem cell, which really means either a sample of blood or a sample of skin from the patient, make a stem cell, and then with that stem cell, watch a process of formation of a brain organoid of that person, with that genetics, with that genetic code in it. And you can ask, what is this genetic code doing to some aspects of development of the brain? And for the first time, you may come to solutions like what cells are involved in autism," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I have so many questions around this. So if you take this human stem cell for that particular person with that genetic code, how, and you try to build an organoid, how often will it look similar? What's the... Reproducibility? Yes, or how much variability is the flip side of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. So there is much more variability in building organoids than there is in building brain. It's really true that the majority of us, when we are born as babies, our brains look a lot like each other. This is the magic that the embryo does, where it builds a brain in the context of a body and there is very little variability there. There is disease, of course, but in general, a little variability. When you build an organoid, we don't have the full code for how this is done. And so in part, the organoid somewhat builds itself because there are some structures of the brain that the cells know how to make. Another part comes from the investigator, the scientist, adding to the media factors that we know in the mouse, for example, would foster a certain step of development. But it's very limited. And so as a result, the kind of product you get in the end is much more reductionist. It's much more simple than what you get in vivo. It mimics early events of development as of today. It doesn't build very complex type of anatomy and structure, does not as of today, which happens instead in vivo. And also the variability that you see one organ to the next tends to be higher than when you compare an embryo to the next." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, okay, then the next question is how hard and maybe another flip side of that expensive is it to go from one stem cell to an organoid? How many can you build in like, cause it sounds very complicated." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's work, definitely, and it's money, definitely. But you can really grow a very high number of these organoids. I told you the maximum they become about five millimeters in diameter. So this is about the size of a tiny, tiny raisin. or perhaps the seed of an apple. And so you can grow 50 to 100 of those inside one big bioreactors, which are these flasks where the media provides nutrients for the organoids. So the problem is not to grow more or less of them. It's really to figure out how to grow them in a way that they are more and more reproducible, for example, organoid to organoid, so they can be used to study a biological process. Because if you have too much variability, then you never know if what you see is just an exception or really the rule." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what does an organoid look like? Are there different neurons already emerging? Is there, you know, well, first, can you tell me what kind of neurons are there? Yes. Are they sort of all the same? Are they not all the same? How much do we understand and how much of that variance, if any, can exist in organoids?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So you could grow, I told you that the brain has different parts. So the cerebral cortex is on top, the top part of the brain, but there is another region called the striatum that is below the cortex and so on and so forth. All of these regions have different types of cells in the actual brain. Okay. And so scientists have been able to grow organoids that may mimic some aspects of development of these different regions of the brain. And so we are very interested in the cerebral cortex. That's the coolest part, right? I agree with you. We wouldn't be here talking if we didn't have a cerebral cortex. It's also, I like to think, the part of the brain that really truly makes us human, the most evolved in recent evolution. And so in the attempt to make the cerebral cortex, and by figuring out a way to have these organoids continue to grow and develop for extended periods of times, much like it happens in the real embryo, months and months in culture, then you can see that many different types of neurons of the cortex appear. And at some points, also the astrocytes, so the glia cells of the cerebral cortex also appear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What are these astrocytes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The astrocytes are not neurons, so they're not nerve cells, but they play very important roles. One important role is to support the neuron. But of course, they have much more active type of roles that are very important, for example, to make the synapses, which are the point of contacts and communication between two neurons. They" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So all that chemistry fun happens in the synapses, happens because of these cells?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Are they the medium in which- It happens because of the interactions. It happens because you are making the cells and they have certain properties, including the ability to make neurotransmitters, which are the chemicals that are secreted to the synapses, including the ability of making these axons grow with their growth cones and so on and so forth. And then you have other cells around it that release chemicals or touch the neurons or interact with them in different ways to really foster this perfect process in this case of synaptogenesis. And this does happen within organoids." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the mechanical and the chemical stuff happens." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "the connectivity between neurons. This, in a way, is not surprising because scientists have been culturing neurons forever. And when you take a neuron, even a very young one, and you culture it, eventually finds another cell or another neuron to talk to, it will form a synapse." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are we talking about mice neurons? Are we talking about human neurons? It doesn't matter, both. So you can culture a neuron, like a single neuron, and give it a little friend and it starts interacting?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So neurons are able to, it sounds, it's more simple than what it may sound to you. Neurons have molecular properties and structural properties that allow them to really communicate with other cells. And so if you put not one neuron, but if you put several neurons together, chances are that they will form synapses with each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, great, so an organoid is not a brain. No. But there's some, it's able to, especially what you're talking about, mimic some properties of the cerebral cortex, for example. So what can you understand about the brain by studying an organoid of the cerebral cortex?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can literally study how all these incredible diversity of cell type, all these many, many different classes of cells, how are they made? How do they look like? What do they need to be made properly? And what goes wrong if now the genetics of that stem cell that I used to make the organoid came from a patient with a neurodevelopmental disease? Can I actually watch for the very first time what may have gone wrong years before in this kid when its own brain was being made? Think about that loop. In a way, it's a little tiny rudimentary window into the past, into the time when that brain in a kid that had this neurodevelopmental disease was being made. And I think that's unbelievably powerful because today we have no idea of what cell types, we barely know what brain regions are affected in these diseases. Now we have an experimental system that we can study in the lab and we can ask, what are the cells affected? When during development things went wrong? What are the molecules among the many, many different molecules that control brain development? Which ones are the ones that really messed up here and we want perhaps to fix? And what is really the final product? Is it a less strong kind of circuit and brain? Is it a brain that lacks a cell type? What is it? Because then we can think about treatment and care for these patients that is informed. rather than just based on current diagnostics." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So how hard is it to detect through the developmental process? It's a super exciting tool just to see how different conditions develop. How hard is it to detect that? Wait a minute. This is abnormal development. Yeah, that's how hard it is. How much signal is there? How much of it is a mess?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "because things can go wrong at multiple levels, right? You could have a cell that is born and built, but then doesn't work properly, or a cell that is not even born, or a cell that doesn't interact with other cells differently, and so on and so forth. So today we have technology that we did not have even five years ago that allows us to look, for example, at the molecular picture of a cell, of a single cell in a sea of cells with high precision. And so that molecular information where you compare many, many single cells for the genes that they produce between a control individual and an individual with a neurodevelopmental disease, that may tell you what is different molecularly. or you could see that some cells are not even made, for example, or that the process of maturation of the cells may be wrong. There are many different levels here, and we can study the cells at the molecular level, but also we can use the organoids to ask questions about the properties of the neurons, the functional properties. how they communicate with each other, how they respond to a stimulus and so on and so forth. And we may get abnormalities there, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Detect those. So how early is this work in a maybe in the history of science. So if you and I time travel a thousand years into the future, organoids seem to be Maybe I'm romanticizing the notion, but you're building not a brain, but something that has properties of a brain. So it feels like you might be getting close to in the building process to build this, to understand. So how far are we in this understanding process of development?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A thousand years from now, it's a long time from now. So if this planet is still gonna be here a thousand years from now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I mean, if, you know, like they write a book, obviously there'll be a chapter about you." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's write the science fiction book today. Yeah, today." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I guess where we really understood very little about the brain a century ago. I was a big fan in high school of reading Freud and so on. I still am of psychiatry. I would say we still understand very little about the functional aspect of just, but how in the history of understanding the biology of the brain, the development, how far are we along?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a very good question. And so this is just, of course, my opinion. I think that we did not have technology, even 10 years ago, or certainly not 20 years ago, to even think about experimentally investigating the development of the human brain. So we've done a lot of work in science to study the brain or many other organisms. Now we have some technologies, which I'll spell out, that allow us to actually look at the real thing and look at the brain, at the human brain. So what are these technologies? There has been huge progress in stem cell biology. The moment someone figured out how to turn a skin cell into an embryonic stem cell, basically, and that how that embryonic stem cell could begin a process of development again to, for example, make a brain that was a huge and advanced. And in fact, there was a Nobel prize for that. That started the field really of using stem cells to build organs. Now we can build on all the knowledge of development that we build over the many, many, many years to say, how do we make these stem cells? Now make more and more complex aspects of development of the human brain. So this field is young, the field of brain organoids, but it's moving fast. And it's moving fast in a very serious way that is rooted in labs with the right ethical framework and really building on know, solid science for what reality is and what is not. But it will go faster and it will be more and more powerful. We also have technology that allows us to basically study the properties of single cells across many, many millions of single cells, which we didn't have perhaps five years ago. So now with that, even an organoid that has millions of cells can be profiled in a way, looked at with very, very high resolution, the single cell level to really understand what is going on. And you could do it in multiple stages of development and you can build your hypothesis and so on and so forth. So, it's not going to be a thousand years, it's going to be a shorter amount of time. And I see this as sort of an exponential growth of this field enabled by these technologies that we didn't have before. And so, we're going to see something transformative that we didn't see at all in the prior thousand years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I apologize for the crazy sci-fi questions, but the developmental process is fascinating to watch and study. But how far are we away from and maybe how difficult is it to build not just an organoid, but a human brain from a stem cell?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. First of all, that's not the goal for the majority of the serious scientists that work on this, because you don't have to build the whole human brain to make this model useful for understanding how the brain develops or understanding disease. You don't have to build the whole thing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me just comment on that, it's fascinating. It shows to me the difference between you and I, as you're actually trying to understand the beauty of the human brain and to use it to really help thousands or millions of people with disease and so on. From an artificial intelligence perspective, We're trying to build systems that we can put in robots and try to create systems that have echoes of the intelligence about reasoning about the world, navigating the world. It's different objectives, I think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's very much science fiction. Science fiction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But we operate in science fiction a little bit. So on that point of building a brain, even though that is not the focus or interest perhaps of the community, how difficult is it? Is it truly science fiction at this point?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the field will progress, like I said, and that the system will be more and more complex in a way, right? But there are properties that emerge from the human brain that have to do with the mind, that may have to do with consciousness, may have to do with intelligence or whatever that we really don't understand even how they can emerge from an actual real brain. And therefore we can not measure or study in an organoid. So I think that this field many, many years from now may lead to the building of better neural circuits that really are built out of understanding of how this process really works. And it's hard to predict how complex this really will be. I really don't think we're so far from, it makes me laugh really, it's really that far from building the human brain, but you're gonna be building something that is, you know, always a bad version of it, but that may have really powerful properties and might be able to, you know, respond to stimuli or be used in certain context. And this is why I really think that there is no other way to do this science, but within the right ethical framework, because where you're going with this is also, you know, we can talk about science fiction and write that book, and we could today, But this work happens in a specific ethical framework that we don't decide just as scientists, but also as a society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the ethical framework here is a fascinating one, is a complicated one. Yes. Do you have a sense, a grasp of how we think about ethically of building organoids from human stem cells to understand the brain? It seems like a tool for helping potentially millions of people cure diseases or at least start the cure by understanding it. But is there more is there gray areas that are that we have to think about ethically?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Absolutely. We must think about that. Every discussion about the ethics of this needs to be based on actual data from the models that we have today and from the ones that we will have tomorrow. So it's a continuous conversation. It's not something that you decide now. Today, there is no issue, really. very simple models that clearly can help you in many ways without much to think about. But tomorrow we need to have another conversation and so on and so forth. And so the way we do this is to actually really bring together constantly a group of people that are not only scientists, but also bioethicists, lawyers, philosophers, psychologists, and so on and so forth. to decide as a society, really, what we should and what we should not do. So that's the way to think about the ethics. Now, I also think, though, that as a scientist, I have a moral responsibility. So if you think about how transformative it could be for understanding and curing a neuropsychiatric disease, to be able to actually watch and study and treat with drugs the very brain of the patient that you are trying to study. How transformative at this moment in time, this could be. We couldn't do it five years ago, we could do it now, right? If we didn't do it. Taking a stem cell of a particular patient. Patient and make an organoid for a simple and different from the human brain, it still is his process of brain development with his or her genetics. And we could understand perhaps what is going wrong, Perhaps we could use as a platform, as a cellular platform to screen for drugs, to fix a process and so on and so forth, right? So we could do it now, we couldn't do it five years ago. Should we not do it?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What is the downside of doing it? I don't see a downside at this very moment. If we invited a lot of people, I'm sure there would be somebody who would argue against it. What would be the devil's advocate argument?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's exactly perhaps what you alluded at with your question, that you are enabling some process of formation of the brain that could be misused at some point. or that could be showing properties that ethically we don't want to see in a tissue. So today, I repeat, today, this is not an issue. And so you just gain dramatically from the science without, because the system is so simple and so different in a way from the actual brain. But because it is the brain, we have an obligation to really consider all of this, right? And again, it's a balanced conversation where we should put disease and betterment of humanity also on that plate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think, at least historically, there was some politicization of embryonic stem cells, stem cell research, Do you still see that out there? Is that still a force that we have to think about, especially in this larger discourse that we're having about the role of science in at least American society?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, this is a very good question. It's very, very important. I see a very central role for scientists to inform decisions about what we should or should not do in society. And this is because the scientists have the first hand look and understanding of really the work that they are doing. And again, this varies depending on what we're talking about here. So now we're talking about brain organoids. I think that the scientists need to be part of that conversation about what is will be allowed in the future or not allowed in the future to do with the system. And I think that is very, very important because they bring reality of data to the conversation. And so they should have a voice." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So data should have a voice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Data needs to have a voice because, and not only data, we should also be good at communicating with non-scientists the data. So there has been, oftentimes, there is a lot of discussion and debate. you know, excitement and fights about certain topics just because of the way they are described. I'll give you an example. If I called the same cellular system we just talked about a brain organoid, or if I called it a human mini brain, your reaction is going to be very different to this. And so the way the systems are described, I mean, we and journalists alike need to be a bit careful that this debate is a real debate and informed by real data. That's all I'm asking." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And yeah, the language matters here. So I work on autonomous vehicles and there the use of language could drastically change the interpretation and the way people feel about what is the right way to proceed forward. You are, as I've seen from a presentation, you're a parent. I saw you show a couple of pictures of your son. Is it just the one? Two, son and a daughter. son and a daughter. So what have you learned from the human brain by raising two of them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "More than I could ever learn in the lab. What have I learned? I've learned that children really have these amazing plastic minds, right? That we have a responsibility to, you know, foster their growth in good, healthy ways that keep them curious, that keeps them adventurous, that doesn't raise them in fear of things, but also respecting who they are, which is in part coming from the genetics we talked about. My children are very different from each other, despite the fact that they're the product of the same two parents. I also learned that what you do for them comes back to you. If you're a good parent, you're going to most of the time have perhaps a decent kids at the end." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what do you think, just a quick comment, what do you think is the source of that difference? That's often the surprising thing for parents is that they can't believe that our kids, they're so different yet they came from the same parents." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, they are genetically different. Even they came from the same two parents because the mixing of gametes, we know this genetics, creates every time a genetically different individual which will have a specific mix of genes that is a different mix every time from the two parents. And so they're not twins, they are genetically different." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Even just that little bit of variation Because you said really from a biological perspective, the brains look pretty similar." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, so let me clarify that. So the genetics you have, the genes that you have, that play that beautiful orchestrated symphony of development, different genes will play it slightly differently. It's like playing the same piece of music, but with a different orchestra and a different director, right? The music will not come out. It will be still a piece by the same author, but it will come out differently if it's played by the high school orchestra instead of the... instead of La Scala in Milan. And so you are born superficially with the same brain. It has the same cell types, similar patterns of connectivity, but the properties of the cells and how the cells would then react to the environment as you experience your world will be also shaped by who genetically you are. Speaking just as a parent, this is not something that comes from my work. I think you can tell at birth that these kids are different, that they have a different personality in a way, right? So both is needed, the genetics as well as the nurturing afterwards." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you are one human with a brain, sort of living through the whole mess of it, the human condition, full of love, maybe fear, ultimately mortal. How has studying the brain changed the way you see yourself? When you look in the mirror, when you think about your life, the fears, the love, when you see your own life, your own mortality?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's a very good question. It's almost impossible to dissociate sometime, for me, some of the things we do or some of the things that other people do from, oh, that's because that part of the brain is working in a certain way. Or thinking about a teenager, going through teenage years and being a time funny in the way they think, And impossible for me not to think it's because they're going through this period of time called critical periods of plasticity, where their synapses are being eliminated here and there, and they're just confused. And so from that comes perhaps a different take on that behavior, or maybe I can justify it scientifically in some sort of way. I also look at humanity in general, and I am amazed by what we can do and the kind of ideas that we can come up with. And I cannot stop thinking about how the brain is continuing to evolve. I don't know if you do this, but I think about the next brain sometimes. Where are we going with this? What are the features of this brain that evolution is really playing with to get us in the future, the new brain. It's not over, right? It's a work in progress." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So let me just a quick comment on that. Do you think there's a lot of fascination and hope for artificial intelligence of creating artificial brains? You said the next brain. When you imagine over a period of a thousand years, the evolution of the human brain, Do you sometimes envisioning that future, see an artificial one? Artificial intelligence as it is hoped by many, not hoped, thought by many people would be actually the next evolutionary step in the development of humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I think in a way, that will happen, right? It's almost like a part of the way we evolve. We evolve in the world that we created, that we interact with, that shape us as we grow up and so on and so forth. Sometimes I think about something that may sound silly, but think about the use of cell phones. Part of me thinks that somehow in their brain, there will be a region of the cortex that is The smartphone region. Attuned to that tool. And this comes from a lot of studies in model organisms where really the cortex especially adapts to the kind of things you have to do. So if we need to move our fingers in a very specific way, we have a part of our cortex that allows us to do this kind of very precise movement. An owl that has to see very, very far away with big eyes, the visual cortex, very big. the brain attunes to your environment. So the brain will attune to the technologies that we will have and will be shaped by it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the cortex very well may be... Will be shaped by it. in artificial intelligence, they may merge with it, they may get to envelop it and adjust to it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Even if it's not a merge of the kind of, oh, let's have a synthetic element together with a biological one. The very space around us, the fact, for example, think about we put on some goggles of virtual reality and we physically are surfing the ocean, right? Like I've done it and you have all these emotions that come to you, your brain, placed you in that reality. And it was able to do it like that, just by putting the goggles on. It didn't take thousands of years of adapting to this. The brain is plastic, so adapts to new technology. So you could do it from the outside by simply hijacking some sensory capacities that we have. So clearly, over recent evolution, the cerebral cortex has been a part of the brain that has known the most evolution. So we have put a lot of chips on evolving this specific part of the brain. And the evolution of cortex is plasticity. It's this ability to change in response to things. So yes, they will integrate, that we want it or not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's no better way to end it. Paola, thank you so much for talking to me." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So this is Ian Kershaw. He wrote the famous two volume on Hitler. I'm a big book nerd, and I spend a lot of time reading biographies in particular. So this one, if you need a one volume, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, right? I think you talked about that, William Shire, because that's like Hitler's rise, Nazi Germany, the war, et cetera. But I like bios because it's the, a good biography is story of the times, right? And so this one, the first volume, it does exactly that, which is that It doesn't just tell the story of Hitler. It's the context of poor, you know, this kid in Austria and he's got all these dreams, but then actually pretty courageous in terms of World War One, right? Gets pinned a medal on by the Kaiser and then what it's like to have to lose World War One and actually like lose. this stain and then the rise within, everybody knows that story, the Beer Hall Putsch and all that. This one I like, and the reason I like Kershaw is obviously, number one, it's English, which is actually hard, right? Like in order to write that story, who can do both the primary source material and then translate it for people like us. But he tells the dynamic story of Hitler so well in the second volume, just like the level of detail. And you've talked about this, Lex, What was it like inside that room inside with Chamberlain? Like, what was it like in terms of who was this like magnetic madman who did convince the smartest people in the world at the time? And, you know, up until like 1940, the Soviet gamble, like, was it Trump took tremendous but like highly calculated, thinking, no, no, no, no, I'm not gonna pay for this one. I'm not gonna pay for this one. And it put himself, he had a remarkable ability, not just to put himself in the minds of the German people, but in terms of his adversaries, like with when he was across from Mussolini. Calculate, he's like, how exactly did Mussolini, the guy who created fascism, becomes like second fiddle to Hitler? I think it's an amazing bio. And yeah, like Ian Kershaw, along with Richard Evans, two of my favorite authors on the Third Reich. No question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he was born this way, that charisma, whatever that is, or was it something he developed strategically? That's like the question you apply to some of the great leaders. Was he just a madman who had the instinct to be able to control people when in the room together with them, or is this like he worked at it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think he worked at it, but also there is an innate quality. I'm forgetting his name, his lifelong, Rudolf, the one who flew to Berlin in like 1940. I forget his name. Anyway, so he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf and he was like slavishly devoted to him in prison. This is 1925 or something like that. And so you read that and you're like, well, how does he get this like crank wacko to basically believe he's like the second coming help him write this book? I mean, literally, they live together in the prison cell and they wake up every day. And as he was composing Mein Kampf and because of the Beer Hall Putsch and all that had this like absolute ability to gather people around him. I think his greatest skill was as he was just a very good politician. Truly, I mean, if you look at his ability in order to read coalitional politics and then convince exactly the right people in order to follow him. I think I heard you ask this once and I've thought about it a lot, which is like who could have stopped Hitler in Germany, right? It's always like the ever present question. Of course, like the whole baby Hitler thing. Really, the answer is Hindenburg. Like Hindenburg was the person who could have stopped and had the immense standing within the German public. The only real war hero definitely was personally skeptical of fascism and Nazism. And didn't like Hitler. And didn't like him. And he knew he was full of shit. He was like, yeah, I think this guy is dangerous. I think this guy could do a lot of damage to the Republic. But he acceded basically to Hitler at the time. And I think that he was one of the main people who could have done something about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And also he was able to convince the generals, the military. I mean, that was very interesting. And to convince Chamberlain and just the other political leaders. That's something I often think about, because we're just reading books about these people. I think about with like Jeffrey Epstein, for example. Like evil people, not evil, but people have done evil things. Let's not go to the Dan Carlin thing of what is evil. People that do evil things, I wonder what they are like in a room because I know quite a lot of intelligent people that did not see the evil in Jeffrey Epstein and spend time with him and were not bothered by it. In the same sense, Hitler, it seems like he was able to get, just even before he had power, because people get intoxicated by power and so on. They want to be close to power. But even before he had power, he was able to convince people. And it's unclear, like, is there something that's more than words? It's like the way you, I mean, people talk, tell stories about like this piercing look or whatever, all that kind of stuff. I wonder if that, If that's somehow a part of it, like that has to be the base floor of any of these charismatic leaders. You have to be able to, in a room alone, be able to convince anybody of anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I can tell you from my personal experience, one of the best educated lessons I got was when I got to meet Trump. So I interviewed Trump four different times as a journalist, spent like two and a half hours with him in the Oval Office, not alone, but like me and one person and like the press secretary. And that was it. So I actually got to observe him. And as a guy who reads these types of books, right. And, you know, you think of Trump, obviously, most people, what they see on television, you know, in articles and more. But being able to observe it like one on one, I was closer to him than, you know, than I am right now from you. That was One of the most educational experiences I got, because it's like you just said, the look, the leaning forward, the way he talks, the way he is a master at taking the question and answering exactly which part he wants. And then if you try and follow up, he's like, excuse me, you know, like he knows. And then whenever you're taught, it's not that he's annoyed about getting interrupted. If he realizes he's been mirandering and then you interrupt him, all good. But if he's striving home a point which he has to make sure appears in your transcript or whatever, it really was fascinating for me to look at. And what was also crazy with Trump is I realized how much he was living in the moment. So when I went to the Oval, I've read all these biographies and I walk in and I'm like, Holy shit. You're like, I'm in the Oval Office. Well, you interviewed him in the Oval Office. In the Oval, every time, was in the Oval Office. You scared shitless? Sorry to. Well, I wasn't scared. I was just, look, it's the Oval Office, right? I mean, I'm this nerd. He was like this kid. I'm so, I will admit this here. Like I printed out on my dad's label maker when I was like seven and I wrote like the Oval Office on my bedroom. So I was like, you know, a huge nerd, like obviously egomaniacal. Even from seven, but so like for this, I mean, it was huge, right? I'm like this 25 year old kid and like I walk in there. And I see the couch, right? And I'm like, oh man, that's Kissinger. And I'm like, that's where Kissinger and Nixon got on their knees. And then you see over by the door and you're like, are the scuff marks still there from when Eisenhower used to play golf? You know, this is all running through my mind. With Trump, none of it was there. None of it, right? Even the desk, I could put my phone on the desk to record. And I'm like, this is the fucking resolution desk. I shouldn't put my phone on this thing. And I'm like HMS Resolute, you know, all that, you know, national. Even for him, he doesn't think about any of it. It was like amazing to me. Like he had this portrait of Andrew Jackson right next to his, to the, I think from on the fireplace, like right here on the right. And the most revealing question was when I was like, Mr. President, what are people gonna remember you for in a hundred years? And he was like, he had, he was like, I don't know, like veterans choice. He like has a list in front of him of like his accomplishments, which is staff. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I wanted to know. And he's like, veterans choice. And I remember looking at him being like, it's not gonna be better. I'm like, I'm looking at you, Donald Trump, the harbinger of something new. We still don't know what the hell it is. And so I realized with these guys and their charisma and more is that they don't think about themselves the way that we think about them. And that was actually important to understand because A lot of people like Trump is playing all this chess. I'm like, I assure you he's not like he's truly living. One time I was interviewing him and he had like a certificate that he had to sign or something on his desk. He's like it was like child almost like he got distracted by he's like, oh, what's this? You know, it's just like picking up. And I was like, wow. Like this, this is the guy, like, this is what he is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I wonder if there was a different person because you were recording than offline." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I can tell you. Well, here's the thing, though, because that's another part of it, because that two hours, I would say like half that was not on the record. So like whenever he's off the record, he changes completely. Right. I don't want to like go into too much of it or whatever, but like, He I mean, he is so mindful of when that camera is on and when the mic is hot in terms of language that he uses, what he's willing to admit, what he's willing to talk about, how he's willing to even appear in front of his staff. I think the most revealing thing Trump ever did was there was this press conference like right after he lost the right after the midterm elections in 2018. And one of the journalists was like, Mr. President, thank you for doing this press conference. And he looks at him and he goes, it's called earned media. It's worth billions. He just like had so much disdain for him. Cause he's like, I'm not doing this for you. He's like, I'm doing this for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he's really aware of the narratives of the story. I mean, that the people have talked about that all comes from the tabloid media of the, from New York and so on. He's a master of that. But I've also heard stories of just in private, he's, really, I don't want to overuse the word charismatic, but just like he is a really interesting almost like Friendly like a good person like it like that's what I heard. I've heard actually surprising the same thing about Hillary Clinton But like the the way they present themselves is perhaps a very different than they are as human beings, a one-on-one. That's something, maybe that's just like a skill thing. Maybe the way they present themselves in public is actually their, I mean, almost their real self, and they're just really good in private, one-on-one, to go into this mode of just being really intimate in some kind of human way." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that's part of it, because I would notice that with Trump. He's almost like a tour guide. It's very crazy, right? Because you're in the Oval. I mean, it's his office. And he's like, he's like, do you guys want anything? He's like, you want a Diet Coke? Cause he drinks like all this Diet Coke. You know what I mean? He's like, you guys want a Diet Coke? Right. And you're sitting there and you're like the way he he's able to like, like the last time I interviewed him, he, he wanted to do it outside because he like, he's studied himself from all angles and he knows exactly how he looks on a camera and with which lighting. And so we were supposed to interview him on camera in the Oval Office, which is actually rare. You don't usually get that. And they ended up moving it outside at the last minute. And he came out and he's like, I picked this spot for you. He's like, great lighting. You are your own like president is great. It's so funny. But it's like you said, he's he's very charismatic and friendly. I mean, you wouldn't know. I mean, look, this is what I mean in terms of the dynamism of these people that gets lost. And I think even he knows that, like, I don't think he would want that side of him. that I know that you've seen those off the record moments and more in order to come out because he's very keen about how exactly he presents to the public. It's like, you know, even his presidential portrait, everybody usually smiles and he refused to smile. He was like, I want to look like Winston Churchill. You know, like even he knew that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he believes that he what what he kind of implies that he is one of, if not the greatest president in American history? Like people kind of laugh at this, but there's quite I mean, there's quite a lot of people, first of all, that make the argument that he's the greatest president in history. Like I've heard this argument being made. And I mean, I don't know what the first of all, I don't care. Like, you can't. make an argument that anyone is the greatest. That's just that just I come from a school of like being humble and modest and so on. It's like, you know, Michael, you can't have a conversation. OK, so I like that. He's humble enough to say, like, Abraham Lincoln or whatever, like he says, maybe Lincoln may remember that maybe Lincoln. Do you think he actually believes that or is that something he understands will create news and also, perhaps more importantly, piss off a large number of people? Is he almost like a musician masterfully playing the emotions of the public or does he... Or, and does he believe when he looks in the mirror, I'm one of the greatest men in history?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Combination of all three. I do think he believes it. And for the reason why is, I don't think he knows that much about U.S. history. I really mean that. Like, and that's what I meant whenever I was in there and I realized he was just living in the moment. I don't think he knew all that much about why. I mean, this is why he was elected in many ways, right? So I'm not, I'm not saying this is inorbit, like I'm not making a judgment on this. I'm just saying, I do think in his mind he does think he was one of the best presidents in American history, largely because and I encountered this with a lot of people work for him, which is that they didn't really know all that much kind of about what came before. and all that. And it's not necessarily to hold it against them because for in many ways, that's what they were elected to do or elected to be in many ways." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's an interesting question whether knowing history, being a student of history is productive or counterproductive. I tend to assume I really respect people who are deeply like well-read in history, like presidents that are almost like nerd, history nerds. I admire that. but maybe that gets in the way of governance. I don't know. I'm just sort of playing devil's advocate to my own beliefs, but it's possible that focusing on the moment and the issues and letting history, it's like first principles thinking, forget the lessons of the past and just focus on common sense reasoning through the problems of today." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it's really hard question in terms of the modern era. I mean Obama was a student of history like he used to have presidential Biographers and people over and I mean famously like Robert a Karo one of my favorite presidential biographers He was invited to you know have dinner with Obama and Obama would like pepper some of his every it was interesting because he'd try and justify some of the things he didn't do by being like well if you look at what the they had to do and what I have to deal with, mine's much harder. So in that way, I was a little pissed off because I'd be like, no, that actually like you're comparing apples to oranges and all that. But if you look at Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt in particular, this was, I mean, a voracious reader, not of just American history, all history. He wrote- That guy's just such a badass, Jesus. Incredible. The only – the only president who willed himself to greatness, that's like the amazing thing about him. He wasn't tested by a crisis, right? Like it wasn't – no, he didn't have a civil war. He didn't have World War II. He didn't have to found the country literally or like didn't have to stave off that or he didn't buy Louisiana Purchase, like all that. literally came into a pretty, you know, static country and he could have just governed, you know, with, I mean, he was the person who came before him was assassinated. Like he easily could have coasted, but he literally willed the country into something more. And that is, that's always why I focus a lot on him too. Cause I'm like that in many ways, I wouldn't say it's easy to be great during crisis. I mean, like look at Trump. But it can bring out the best within you, but it's a whole other level to bring out the best within yourself just for the sake of doing it. And that's, I think is really interesting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The speeches were amazing. I'm also a sucker for great speeches, because I tend to see the role of the president as in part like inspirer in chief, sort of to be able to, I mean, that's what great leaders do, like CEOs of companies and so on. Establish a vision, a clear vision, and hit that hard. But the way you establish the vision isn't just like, not to dig at Joe Biden, but like, like sleepy, boring statements. You have to sell those statements and you have to, you know, you have to do it in a way where everybody's paying attention. Everybody's excited. Yes. And that Teddy Roosevelt is definitely one of them. Obama was the I think at least early on, I don't know, was incredible at that. It does feel that the modern political landscape makes it more difficult to be inspirational in a sense, because everything becomes bickering and division. I do want to ask you- Please. About Trump. So you're now a successful podcaster. I've talked to Joe about Trump, Joe Rogan, and Joe's not interested in talking to Trump. It's just fascinating. I try to dig into like, why? What would you interview Trump on like realignment, for example? And do you think it's possible to do a two, three hour conversation with him where you will get at something like human or you get at something, like we were talking about the facade he puts forward. Do you think you could get past that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I don't. I look, I was a White House correspondent. I observed this man very closely. I interviewed him. I think if that mic is hot, he knows what he's doing. He just, he's done this too long, Lex. He just knows." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But do you think he's a different human now after the election? Do you think that? Not at all." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't I think he's been the same person since 1976. I really do like basically 1976 I studied Trump a lot and I think he's basically been the core of who he is and Elements of that ever since he built that sent you know the ice rink in Central Park and got that media attention That was it" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he's a fascinating study. I still, I feel there's a hope in me that there would be a podcast like Joe Rogan, like a long form podcast where it's something could be, and you're actually a really good person to do that, where you can have a real conversation that looks back at the election and reveals something on us. But perhaps he's thinking about running again, and so maybe he'll never let down that guard. But I just love it when, there's this switch in people where you start looking back at your life and wanting to tell stories, like trying to extract wisdom and realizing you're in this new phase of life where the battles have all been fought. Now you're this old, former warrior, and now you can tell the stories of that time. And it seems like Trump is still at it, like the young warrior he is. He's not in the mode of telling stories." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know what I got from Rogan? He's the only president who didn't age well in office. It's true, right? And this is what I mean, because he lives in the moment. Like the job actually aged Obama. I mean, Bush, same thing. Even Clinton, Clinton was like fat. He looked miserable by like 2000. HW, I mean, Reagan, famous. Actually, yeah, pretty much everybody I think about. Yeah, including John F. Kennedy, who got much sicker while in office. The job like weighs on you and makes you physically ill. Trump was, he's the only person who just, he didn't have to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He almost gotten stronger. And he was one of the most divisive, like the climate, there's so many people attacking him. So much hatred, so much love and hatred. And it was just, he, it was, I mean, it was, Whatever it was, it was quite masterful and a fascinating study. If we stick on Hitler for just a minute, what lessons do you take from that time? Do you think it's a unique moment in human history that World War II, I mean, both Stalin and Hitler, is it something that's just an outlier in all of human's history in terms of the atrocities, or is there lessons to be learned? You mentioned offline that you're not just a student of the entirety of the history, but you're also fascinated by just different like policies and stuff. Like, what's the immigration policy? What's the policy on science?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Third Reich in power, let me plug it, by Richard Evans, I think is what it was. Because that actually will tell you what was it like to live under the Nazi regime without the war. Yeah, it's a hard question in terms of the lessons that we can learn because there's a lot and it's actually been over It's been over indexed almost everything comes back to Hitler in a conversation. So I kind of think of it within Mao Stalin and Hitler as I don't want to say payments for but like I the end point payment for the sins and the problems of the monarchical system that evolve within Europe, basically like 1400 and more. I basically think that 1400, the wars between France, England, the balance of power, eventually World War I, and then serfdom within Russia, the Russian Revolution that birthed Stalin. Same thing, the Kaiser and Imperial Germany and this incredibly crazy system of balance of power in World War I. And then same thing within China in terms of the warring states and then the disintegration, the European – this is how they think of it, which is like the century of humiliation and they had to have something like this. I think of it – I try to think of it within the context of that. I don't want to think of I don't want to sound like an inevitable list, but I think of it as I like to think about systems, especially here in D.C. That's where I got into politics, which is that you have to understand systems of power and the incentives within systems and the disincentives and the downside risk of what you're of what you're creating, because that is what leads and creates the behavior within that system. I was just talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday. It's kind of funny like I read these I'm obsessed with these books by Robert Caro the biographies of Lyndon Johnson He's written like 5,000 pages so far and it's still not done. Okay, so like these are these are like books I based my life on and Look, these are Washington and the story of the post New Deal era and forward Not much has changed. Like the Senate is still the Senate. So many of the same problems with the Senate are still there. In some cases, no, not anymore. But for a while, some of the people who were there with Johnson are actually still. One of them is the president of the United States, just a joke. And you think about also same with the media relationship, right? Like there's this media really. They may have come and gone like the people who were in the media and who were cozy with the administration officials. I mean, they just recreated themselves. It's like this. It's like an ecosystem which doesn't change. And that's why I'm like, oh, it's not. That was a specific time. That's just DC. Like that is DC because of the way the system is architected. It's pretty much been that way since like 1908, whenever like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt was dining with these journalists and he would yell at them. And then he would go over to the society house. And like, in many ways that's now, instead of going to Henry Adams's house, like the people are congregating in Calorama, which is the richest neighborhood here. At somebody else's house, like it's the same thing. So you have to think about the system and then the incentives within that system about what the outcomes that they're producing. If you actually want to think about how can I change this from the outside? That's also why it's very difficult to change because the system is designed in order to produce actually pretty specific outcomes that can only be changed in extraordinary times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's sometimes hard to predict what kind of outcomes will result from the incentive, the system that you create, right? In the case, because especially when it's novel kind of situations. Trump actually created a pretty novel situation. And a lot of the things that we've seen in the 20th century were very novel systems where people were very optimistic about the outcomes, right? And then it turned out to, not have the results that they predicted. In terms of things being unchanged for the past 100 years and so on, can you Wikipedia style or maybe in a musical form, like I'm only a bill, describe to me." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I still sing that to my head sometimes. I'm just a bill." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I don't know what the rest of the song is, but let's leave that to people's imagination. How does this whole thing work? How does the US political system work? The three branches? How do you think about the system we have now? If you were to try to describe, if aliens showed up, and asked you, they didn't have time, so this is an elevator thing. Should we destroy you as you plead to avoid destruction? How would you describe how this thing works?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say we come together and we pick the people who make our laws. Then we pick the guy who executes those laws. And they together pick the people who determine whether they or the president is breaking the law at the most basic level. That's how I would describe it. So the so that's the people who make the laws are Congress. The executive is is charged with executing the laws as passed by Congress, the system, the branches of government. And the Supreme Court is picked by the president, confirmed by the Senate, which then decides whether you or other people are breaking the law in terms of interpretation of that law. That's basically it. Oh, and they they decide whether those laws are in they fall within the they fall within the restrictions and the want of the founders as expressed by the Constitution of the United States, which is a set of principles that we came together in. 1787. I want to make sure I get this right. 1787 and decided that we were going to live the rest of our lives barring a revolution and more. And we've made it 200 and something years in order on under that system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a balance of power that's because it's multiple branches, there's a tension and a balance to it as designed by those original documents. Which is the most dysfunctional, the branches, which is your favorite? In terms of talking about systems and what's the greatest of concern and what is the greatest source of benefit in your view?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The presidency, well, the presidency is my favorite to study, obviously, because it is the one where there's most subjective variable change in terms of the personality involved because of so much power imbued within the executive. The Senate is actually pretty much the same. One of the things I love about reading about the Senate and histories of the Senate is you're like, oh, yeah, there were always like assholes in the Senate who were doing their thing and and, you know, filibustering constantly based upon this or that. And then the the personalities involved with the Senate haven't Mattered as much since like pre-civil war, right? Like pre-civil war, you had like Henry Clay and then Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, who even in their own way, they represented like larger constituencies and they crafted these like compromises up until the outbreak of the Civil War. Etc. But like post since then, you don't think about like the titans within the Senate. Most of that is because a lot of the stuff that they had power over has transferred over to the executive. So I'm most interested in really in like power, like where it lies. It's actually pretty, you know, throughout American history, much more used to lie with Congress. Now it's obviously just so imbued within the executive that understanding executive power is, I think, the thing I'm probably most interested in here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think at this point the amount of power that the president has is corrupting to their ability to lead well? Is this, you know, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely? Is there too much power in the presidency?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, there definitely is. And part of the problem I one of the things I try to make come across to people is if you're the president, unless you have a hyper intentional view of how something must be different in government. Your view doesn't matter. So, for example, like if you were Trump, let's take Trump even and even in with a pretty intentional view, he was like, I'm going to end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Right. And he came in and he gets these generals and he's like, I want to end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh, and I want to withdraw these troops from Syria. And they're like, okay, we'll give you, give us like six months. He's like, okay. And this is the thing about Trump. He doesn't realize that it's bullshit. So they're like, he's like, yeah, six months seems fine. Right? So then six months comes and he's like, he's like, so, and then he'll announce it. He'll be like, and we're getting out of Syria. It's great. And then the generals freak out. They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't have a plan for that. He's like, but you guys told me six months. He's like, I don't know. Now we need another six months in order to figure this thing out. And by that time, now you're midterms. So now what? Now you got to run for reelection. So more what I mean by that is, If you don't have a hyper-intentional view about how to change foreign policy, if you don't have a hyper-intentional view about how the Department of Commerce should do its job, they are just going to go on autopilot. So this is part of the problem. When you ask me about the presidency, it's not the presidency itself, like the president himself, which has become too powerful. It's that we have less democratic checks. on the people and the systems that are on autopilot. And I would say that basically since 2008, we have voted every single time to disrupt that system, except in the case of 2020 with Joe Biden. And there are a lot of different reasons around why that happened. And in every single one of those cases, Obama and Trump, they all failed. in order to radically disrupt that. And that just shows you how titanic the task is. And I'm using my language precisely, because I don't want to be like deep state and all, but like, obviously there's a deep state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Deep state, I guess, has conspiratorial tensions to it. So what you're saying is the true power currently lies with the autopilot. AKA deep state." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, but see, it's not. This is the thing, too. I want to make it clear, because I think people think conspiratorially that they're all coming together to intentionally do something. No, no, no, no, no. They are doing what they know, believe they are right and don't have real democratic checks within that. And so now they have entire generations of cultures within each of these bureaucracies where they say this is the way that we do things around here. Yeah. And that's the problem, which is that we have a culture of within many of these agencies and more. I think the best example for this would be during the Ukraine, you know, gate with Trump and all that with the impeachment. I don't want to I'm not talking about the politics here, but the most revealing thing that happened was when the whistleblower guy, Alexander Vindman, was like, here you have the president departing from the policy of the United States. And I was like, well, Let me educate you, Lieutenant Colonel. The president of the United States makes American foreign policy. But it was a very revealing comment because he and all the people within national security bureaucracy do think that they're like, this is the policy of the United States. It's we have to do this. That's where things get screwy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, listen, for me personally, but also from an engineering perspective, I just talked to Jim Keller. It's just, this is the kind of bullshit that we all hate when you're trying to innovate and design new products. So that's what first principles thinking requires. It's like, we don't give a shit what was done before. The point is, what is the best way to do it? And it seems like the current government, government in general, probably bureaucracies in general, are just really good at being lazy about never having those conversations. And just, it becomes this momentum thing that nobody has the difficult conversations. It's become a game within a certain set of constraints. And they never kind of do revolutionary tasks. But you did say that the presidency is power, but you're saying that more power than the others, but that power has to be coupled with like focused intentionality. Like you have to keep hammering the thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you want it done, it has to be done. I mean, and you got to you got to. This is the other part, too, which is that it's not just that you have to get it done. You have to pick the hundred people who you can trust to pick 10 people each to actually do what you want. One of the most revealing quotes is from a guy named Tommy Corcoran. He was the top aide to FDR. This I'm getting from the Cara books, too. And he said, what is a government? It's not just one guy or even 10 guys. Hell, it's a thousand guys. And what FDR did is he masterfully picked the right people to execute his will through the federal agencies. Johnson was the same way. He played these people like a fiddle. He knew exactly who to pick. He knew the system and more. Part of the reason that outsiders who don't have a lot of experience in Washington almost always fail is they don't know who to pick or they pick people who say one thing to their face. And then when it comes time to carry out the president's policy in terms of the government, they just don't do it. And the president's to think about this. I think some Rahm Emanuel said this. He was like, by the time it gets to the president's desk, Nobody else can solve it. It's not easy. It's not like a yes or no question. It's every single thing that hits the president's desk is incredibly hard to do. And Obama actually even said, and this was a very revealing quote about how he thinks about the presidency, which is he's like, look, the presidency is like one of those super tankers. He's like, I can come in and I can make it two degrees left and two degrees right. In a hundred years, two degrees left, that's a whole different trajectory. Same thing on the right. And he's like, that ultimately is really all you can do. I quibble and disagree with that in terms of how he could have changed things in 2008, but there's a lot of truth to that statement." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, that's really fascinating. You make me realize that actually both Obama and Trump are probably playing victim here to the system. You're making me think that maybe you can correct me that, because I'm thinking of like Elon Musk, whose major success despite everything is hiring the right people. And like creating those thousands that, structure of a thousand people. So maybe a president has power in that if they were exceptionally good at hiring the right people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Personnel is policy, man. That's what it comes down to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But wouldn't you be able to steer the ship way more than two degrees if you hire the right people? So like, it's almost like Obama was not good at hiring the right people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, he hired all the Clinton people. That's what happened. What happened with Trump? He hired all the Bush people. Weird." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then you just sit back and say, oh, president can't, but that means you're just suck at hiring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Correct. Yeah. I mean, look, I know it's funny. I'm giving you simultaneously the nationalist case against Trump and the progressive case against Obama. Yes. The progressive people are like, why the fuck are you hiring all these Clinton people in order to run the government and just recreate? Like, why are you hiring Larry Summers, who is one of the people who worked at all these banks and didn't believe the bailouts are going to be big enough? and then to come in in the worst economic crisis in modern American history. That was 2008. And Summers actively lobbied against larger bailouts, which had huge implications for working class people and pretty much hollowed out America since. Okay, from Trump, same thing. You're like, I'm gonna drain the swamp. And by doing that, I'm gonna hire Goldman Sachs' Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin and all these other absolute Bush clowns in order to run my White House. Well, yeah, no shit. The only thing that you accomplished in your four years in office is passing a massive tax cut for the rich and for corporations. I wonder how that happened." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What role does money play in all of this? Is money a huge influence in politics, super PACs, all that kind of stuff? Or is this more just kind of a narrative that we play with? Because from the outsider's perspective, it seems to have, that seems to be one of the fundamental problems with modern politics." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I was just having this conversation, Marshall and I, Marshall Kass of my co-host on the realignment. And it's funny because if you do enough research, we actually live in the least corrupt age in American campaign finance, as in it's never been more transparent. It's never been more up to the FEC. Yeah. And all of that. If you go back and read not even 50 years ago, we're talking about Lyndon B. Johnson handing people, like literally as he came up in his youth, paying people for votes, like the boss of the, you know, the person who like had all the Mexican votes, like the person. And he was like giving out briefcases. This is like within people's lifetimes who are alive in America. So that doesn't happen anymore. But. I don't like to blame everything on money, although I do think money is obviously a huge part of the problem. I actually look at it in terms of distribution, which is that how is money distributed within our society? Because I firmly believe that politics, this is gonna get complicated, but I think politics is mostly downstream from culture. And culture, obviously, I'm using economics because there's obviously a huge interplay there. But in terms of the equitable or lack of equitable distribution of money within our politics, what we're really pissed off about is we're like, our politics only seems to work for the people who have money. I think that's largely true. I think that the reason why things worked differently in the past is because our economy was structured in different ways. And there's a reason that our politics today are very analogous to the last Gilded Age because we had very similar levels of economic distribution and cultural problems too at the same time. I don't want to erase that because I actually think that's what's driving all of our politics right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's interesting. So in that sense, representative government is doing a pretty good job of representing the state of culture and the people and so on. Yeah. Can I ask you, in terms of the deep state and conspiracy theories, there's a lot of talk about, again, from an outsider's perspective, if I were just looking at Twitter, it seems that at least 90% of people in government are pedophiles. 90, 90 to 95%, I'm not sure what that number is. If I were to just look at Twitter, honestly, or YouTube, I would think most of the world is a pedophile. I would almost feel like. Right, and if you don't fully believe that, you're a pedophile. I would start to wonder, like, wait, am I a pedophile too? I'm either a communist or a pedophile, or both, I guess. Yeah, that's gonna be clipped out. Thank you, internet. I look forward to your emails. But is there any kind of shadow conspiracy theories that give you pause? So the flip side, the response to a lot of conspiracy theories is like, No, the reason this happened is because it's a combination of just incompetence. So where do you land on some of these conspiracy theories?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think most conspiracy theories are wrong. Some are true and those are spectacularly true. And if that makes sense. And we don't know which ones. I don't know which one. That's the problem. I think, oh, well, I mean, look, man, I listened to your podcast. I think I was a huge non-believer in UFOs and now I've probably never believed more in UFOs. Like I believe in UFOs. Like I'm very comfortable being like, not only do I believe in UFOs, like I think we're probably being visited by an alien civilization. And if you asked me that three years ago, I would've been like, you're out of your fucking mind. Like, what are you talking about? Well, listen to David Fravor. That's all I have to say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's it. I have the sense that the government has information, it hasn't revealed, but it's not like they're, I don't think they're holding, there's like a green guy sitting there in a room. They have seen things they don't know what to do with, so it's like, they're confused." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They're afraid of revealing that they don't know. That's what I think it is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's revealing, yeah, exactly, that they don't know. And then in the process, there's a lot of fears tied up in that. First, looking incompetent in the public eye. Nobody wants to be looked that way. And the other is like, in revealing it, even though they don't know, maybe China will figure it out. Exactly. So like we don't want China to figure it out first. And so that all those kinds of things result in basically secrecy, then that damages the trust in institutions on one of the most fascinating aspects one of the most fascinating mysteries of humankind of is there life, intelligent life out there in the universe? So that's one of them, but there's other ones. For me, when I first came across actually Alex Jones, was 9-11. I remember like, cause I was, I was in Chicago. I was thinking like, oh shit, are they going to hit Chicago too?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what everybody was thinking. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Everybody, everybody was thinking like, what does this mean? At what scale? What, I mean, trying to interpret it. And I remember like looking for information, desperately, like what, what happened? And I remember not being satisfied with the quality of reporting and figuring out like rigorous, like, here's exactly what happened. And so people like Alex Jones stepped up and others that said like, there's some shady shit going on. And it sure as hell looked like there's shady shit going on. So like, and I still stand behind the fact that it seems like there's not, there's not enough, like it wasn't a good job of being honest and transparent and all those kinds of things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Cause it would implicate the Saudis. Let's be honest. And see, that's my conspiracy theories. I'm like, yeah, I think they covered up a lot of stuff because they wanted to cover up for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I mean, that was a conspiracy theory not that long ago. I think it's true. I mean, I think it's a hundred percent true." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, so those kinds of conspiracy theories are interesting. I mean, there's other ones for me personally that touched the institution that means a lot to me is MIT and Jeffrey Epstein. I want to hear about that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I talk about Epstein a lot, so I'm like- Oh, you do? Yeah, and he, I was gonna say, in terms of conspiracy theory, that one changed my outlook, because I was like, whoa, you have this dude who convinced some of the most successful people on earth that he was some money manager, and it looks like it was totally fake, like Leon Black. I mean, this is one of the richest men on Wall Street, $9 billion net worth. Why is he giving him over $100 million between 2015 and 2019? What's going on here? Lex Wexner, same thing. So yeah, I wanna hear because you know people who met him. And the only person I know who met him was Eric Weinstein. I've heard his, right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh boy. So I, listen, I'm still in, and Eric is fascinating and like Eric is full on saying that- He was a Mossad or whatever." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a front for something, something much, much bigger. And there's a, whatever his name, Robert Maxwell, all the, all those stories, like you could dig deeper and deeper that Jeffrey's just like the tip of the iceberg. I just think he's an exceptionally charismatic, listen, this isn't speaking from confidence or deep understanding of the situation, but from my speaking with people, he just seems like, at least from the side of his influence and interaction with researchers, he just seems like somebody that was exceptionally charismatic and actually took interest. He was unable to speak about interesting scientific things, but he took interest in them. So he knew how to stroke the egos of a lot of powerful people well, in different kinds of ways. I suppose, I don't know about this, because I don't have, if a really, okay, this is weird to say, but I have an ability, Okay, I think women are beautiful, I like women. But if a supermodel came to me or something, I'm able to reason. It seems like some people are not able to think clearly when there's an attractive woman in the room. And I think that was one of the tools he used to manipulate people. Interesting. I don't know. Listen, it's like the pedophile thing. Right. I don't know how many people are complete sex addicts, but like it seems like like looking out into the world, like there's like the Me Too movement have revealed that there's a lot of like weird. Yeah. Like creepy people out there. I don't know. But I think it was just one of the many tools that he used to. Convince people and manipulate people, but not in some like evil way, but more just really good at the art of conversation and just winning people over on the side. And then by building through that process, building a network of other really powerful people and not explicitly, but implicitly having done shady shit with powerful people, like building up a kind of implied, power of like, we did some shady shit together. So we're not like, you're gonna help me out on this extra thing I need to do now. And that builds and builds and builds to where you're able to actually control, like have quite a lot of power without explicitly having like a strategy meeting. And I think a single person or Yeah, I think a single person can do that, can start that ball rolling. And over time, it becomes a group thing. Like, I don't know if Julian Maxwell was involved or others. And yeah, over time, that becomes almost like a really powerful organization that wasn't, that's not a front for something much deeper and bigger, but it's almost like, maybe it's because I love cellular automata, man. A system that starts out as a simple thing with simple rules can create incredible complexity. And so I just think that we're now looking in retrospect, it looks like an incredibly complex system that's operating, but that's just because there could have been a lot of other Jeffrey Epstein's in my perspective that this simple thing just was successful early on and builds and builds and builds and builds. And then there's creepy shit that like a lot of aspects of the system helped it get bigger and bigger and more powerful and so on. So the final result is, I mean, listen, I have a pretty optimistic, I tend to see the good in people. And so it's been heartbreaking to me in general just to see, you know, people I look up to not have the level of integrity I thought they would, or like the strength of character, all those kinds of things. And it seems like you should be able to see the bullshit that is Jeffrey Epstein, like when you meet him. We're not talking about like Eric Weinstein, like one or two or three or five interactions, but like there's people that had like years of relationship with him. And I don't know, I'm not sure- Even after he was convicted." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "After he was convicted. That's the thing, that guy always gets me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's stories. I mean, I don't need to sort of, I honestly believe Okay, here's the open question I have. I don't know how many creepy sexual people there are out there. Like, I don't know if there's like, like the people I know, the faculty and so on, I don't know if they have like a kink that I'm just not aware of that was being leveraged. Because to me, it seems like if people aren't, if not everybody's a pedophile, That is just the art of conversation. That is just like the art of just like manipulating people by making them feel good about like the exciting stuff they're doing. Listen, man, academics are, people talk about money. I don't think academics care about money as much as people think. What they care about is like somebody, they want to be, it's the same thing that Instagram models post in their butt pictures, is they want to be loved. They want attention. My parents are professors. Yeah, I get it. And Jeffrey Epstein, the money is another way to show attention. Mind work matters. And he did that for some of the weirdest, most brilliant people. I don't wanna sort of... drop names, but everybody knows them. It's like people that are the most interesting academics is the one he cared about. Like people that are thinking about the most difficult questions in all of science and all of engineering. So those people were kind of outcasts in academia a little bit because they're doing the weird shit. They're the weirdos. And he cared about the weirdos, and he gave them money. And that's... I don't know if there's something more nefarious than that. I hope not, but maybe I'm surprised. And in fact, half the population of the world is pedophiles." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think it's what you were talking about, which is that it's the implication after the initial, right? Like you do some shady things together or you do something that you want out of the public eye and you're a public person. And look, we probably even experienced this to a limited extent, right? You're like, ah, you know, like, I don't wanna, I almost lost my temper one time whenever a car hit me and I'm like, I can't freak out in public anymore. What if somebody takes a photo or something? And so I think that there's an extent to that times a billion, literally, when you have a billion dollars or more. And you take that all together and you stack it up on itself. I saw a story about Bill Clinton. Like Bill Clinton was with Epstein or with Ghislaine Maxwell in a private air terminal or something and she had one of their like sex – one of those girls who was underage had her dressed up in a literal like pilot uniform and she was underage in order to – and she was being disguised for being older. And she was a masseuse, right, because that was one of the guises which they got in order to sexually traffic these women. And she was like Bill was like complaining about his neck and she's like, give Bill Clinton a massage, right? So now there's a photo of an underage girl giving a massage to the former president of the United States. I don't think he knew, right? But like, that looks bad. And so this is kind of what we're getting at, which is that you're setting it all up and creating those preconditions. Or like Prince Andrew, do I think Prince Andrew knew that Virginia Gouffre was underage? I don't know. He probably knew she was pretty young, which I think is skeevy enough where you're a fucking prince, you probably know better. I don't think he knew she was underage. Or maybe he did, and if he did, then he's even more of a piece of shit than I thought. But when we look at these things... The stuff I'm more interested in is like, what you were talking about. I'm like, Bill Gates? How do you get the richest man in the world in your house? Like, under what gu- And Gates is like, he was talking about financing and all this. I'm like, you don't have access to money? Or bankers? Like, you're the richest man in the world. You can call Goldman Sachs anytime you want on a hotline. Like, why do you need That's where I start, again, to get more conspiratorial, because I'm like, Bill, dude, you have the gold credit, right? Like you don't need Epstein to create some complicated financing structure. Or Leon Black, like what is 2015, 2009? I mean, this is very recent stuff. Or, and this is the part that really got me, is I read the, I think it's called the Department of Financial Services report around Deutsche Bank with Epstein. They knew he was a criminal. They solicited his business. Explicitly knew that his business meant access to other high net worth individuals. Consistently doled money out from his account for hush payments to women in Europe and prostitution rings. They knew all of this within the bank. It was elevated multiple times. Here's the other one. One of Epstein's associates was like, hey, how much money can we take out before we hit the automatic sensor before you have to tell the IRS? And that question by their own standards is supposed to result in a notification to the feds and they never did it. And he was withdrawing like $2 million of cash in five years for tips. I'm like, okay, like something's going on here. You see what I'm saying?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a lot of signs that make you think that there's a bigger thing at play than just the man. That there is some, it does look like a larger organization is using this front." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Again, I don't know. I truly don't know. And I'm not willing to use the certainty, which I think a lot of people online are, to say like, it was 100%." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The certainty is always the problem, because that's probably why I hesitate to touch conspiracy theories, is because I'm allergic to certainty in all forms, in politics, any kind of discourse. And people are so sure, in both directions, actually. It's kind of hilarious. either they're sure that the conspiracy theory, in particular, whatever the conspiracy theory is, is false, like they almost dismiss it like they don't even want to talk about it. It's like the people, like the way they dismiss that the earth is flat. Yes. Most scientists are like, they don't even want to like hear what the flat earthers are saying. They don't have zero patience for it. Which is like, maybe in that case, is deserved. But everything else, you really have empathy. Okay, this is weird to say, but I feel like you have to consider that the earth might be flat for like, One minute, like you have to be empathetic. You have to be open-minded." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't see a lot of that through our cultural tastemakers and more. And that really is what concerns me the most. Cause it's just another manifestation of all of our problems is that we have this completely bifurcating economy, bifurcating culture, literally in terms of we have the middle of the country and then we have the coasts. And in terms of the population, it's almost 50-50. And with increasing megacities and urban culture, like urban monoculture of LA, New York, and Chicago, and DC, and Boston, and Austin, relative to how an entire other group of Americans live their lives, or even the people within them who aren't rich and upwardly mobile, how they live their lives is just completely separating. And all of our language and communication in mass media and more is to the top, and then everybody else is forgotten." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think when you go, when you dig to the core, there is a big, there's a big gap between left and right? Is there, is that division that that's perceived currently real? Or are most people like center left and center right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's so interesting because that's such a loaded term, center left. What does that mean? Like to you, I think the way you're thinking of it is I'm not like a, Well, even this, like I'm not a radical socialist, but I'm marginally left on cultural issues and economic issues. This is how we've traditionally understood things. And then when in popular discourse, like center-right, like what does it mean to be center-right? Like I am marginally right on social issues and marginally right on economic issues. But that's just not politics. Like if you look at survey data, for example, like stimulus checks, people who are against stimulus checks are conservative, right? Well, 80% of the population is for a stimulus check. So that means a sizable number of Republicans are for stimulus checks. Same thing happens on like a wealth tax. The same thing happens on, okay, Florida voted for Trump 3.1%, more than Barack Obama 2008. on the same day passes a $15 minimum wage at 67%. So what's going on? So that's why- What is going on? Oh, that's my entire career." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it seems like, so that's fascinating. The conversation is different than the policies." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, it's different than reality. That's what I would say, which is that the way we have to understand American politics It didn't always used to be this way. It's almost entirely along. I would say the main divider is – because even when you talk about class, this misses it in terms of socioeconomics. It's around culture, which is that it's basically if you went to a four-year degree-granting institution, you are part of one culture. If you didn't, you're part of another. I don't want to erase the 20% or whatever of people who did go to a college degree who are Republicans or vice versa, etc. But I'm saying on average, in terms of the median way that you feel, we're basically bifurcating along those lines. And because people get upset, be like, oh, well, you know, there are rich people who vote for Trump. Yeah, but you know who they are? They're like plumbers or something. They're people who make $100,000 a year, but they didn't go to a four-year college degree, and they might live in a place which is not an urban metro area. And then at the same time, you have like a Vox writer who makes like $30,000. but they have a lot more cultural power than like the plumber. So you have to think about where exactly that line is. And I think in general, that's the way that we're trending. So that's why when I say like, what's going on, are we divided? Yeah, like, but it's not left and right. I mean, like, and that's why I hate these labels." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's more, it's more just red and blue like teams. They're arbitrary teams. Yeah. So how arbitrary are these teams? I guess it's another completely arbitrary. So you kind of imply that there's, I don't know if you're sort of in post analyzing the patterns, because it seems like there's a network effects of like, you just picked the team red or blue. And it might have to do with college. You might have to do all those things. But like, it seems like it's more about just the people around you. Correct. So less than whether you went to college or not. I mean, it's almost like seems like it's almost like we're like network effects that are hard. There's certain strong patterns that you're identifying. But I don't know. It's sad to think that it might be just teams that have nothing to do with what you actually believe Well, it is Lex." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I look I mean, I don't want to believe that but the data points me to this which especially 2020 I'm one of the people chief among them. I will own up to it here. I was totally wrong about why trump was elected in 2016. I believed And based a lot of my public commentary beliefs on this, Trump was elected because of a rejection of Hillary Clinton neoliberalism on the back of a pro-worker message, which was anti-immigration. It was its pillar, but alongside of it was a rejection of free trade with China and generally of the political correctness and globalism, which has been coming through the Uniparty and same thing here with the military-industrial complex and endless war. He rejected all of that. Wait, what's wrong with that prediction? What's wrong, man? And the reason I know this is that— Sounds right. It sounds right. I wish it—I honestly wish it was true. But here's the truth. Trump actually governed largely as a neoliberal Republican who was meaner online and who departed from orthodoxy in some very important ways. Don't get me wrong. I will always support the trade war with China. I will always support not expanding the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I will support him moving the Overton window on a million different things and revealing once and for all that GOP voters don't care about economic orthodoxy necessarily. But here's what they do care about. Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, despite not delivering largely, largely, for all the Trump people out there, on that agenda. He wasn't more pro-union, but he won more union votes. He wasn't necessarily more pro-worker, but he actually won more votes in Ohio than he did in 2016. And he won more Hispanic votes than despite being, you know, all the immigration agenda, rhetoric, et cetera. Here's why. It's about the culture, which is that the culture war is so hot that negative partisanship is at such high levels. All of the vote is geared upon what the other guy might do in office. And there's a poll actually just came out by Echelon Insights. Crystal and I were talking about it on Rising. The number one concern amongst Democratic voters is Trump voters. number one concern, not issues like Trump voters. And number two is white supremacy. And so like, which is basically code for Trump voters. Is the same true for the other side? Well, so on the right, number one concern is illegal immigration. And number, I think, three or four or whatever is Antifa, which is code for Democrats." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yeah, it's funny." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I saw Ben Shapiro was talking about this, but the reason why I would functionally say it's the same is because, I mean, you can believe whether this is true or not. I think it actually largely is true, but like a lot of GOP voters feel like a lot of illegal immigration is code for like people who are coming in who are going to be legalized and are going to go vote Democrat. Like, I can just explain it from their point of view. So, like, what does that actually mean? Each other. Like, each other. Which is that the number one concern is the other person. So negative partisanship has never been higher. And I think people who had my thesis in terms of why Trump was elected in 2016, you have to grapple with this. Like, how did he win? 10 million more votes. He came 44,000 votes away from winning the presidency across three states. Like I don't, none of our popular discourse reflects that very stark reality. And I think so much of it is people really hate liberals. Like they just really hate them. And I was driving through rural Nevada before the election and I was like literally in the middle of nowhere. And there was this massive sign this guy had out in front of his house and just said, Trump colon, fuck your feelings. And I was like, that's it. That is why people voted for Trump. And I don't want to denigrate it because they truly feel they have no cultural power in America, except to raise the middle finger to the elite class by pressing the button for Trump. I get that. That's actually a totally rational way to vote. It's not the way I wish we did vote, but like, you know, that's not my place to say." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is interesting. If you could just psychoanalyze, I'm again, probably naive about this, but I'm really bothered by. the hatred of liberals. It's this amorphous monster that's mocked. It's like the Shapiro liberal tears. And I'm also really bothered by probably more of my colleagues and friends, the hatred of Trump. the Trump and white supremacist. So apparently there's 70 million white supremacists, 75 million, sorry. There's millions of white supremacists. And apparently whatever liberal is, I mean, literally liberal has become, equivalent to white supremacist in the power of negativity it arouses. I don't even know what those, I mean, honestly, I just don't, they've become swears essentially. Is that, I mean, how do we get out of this? Because that's why I just don't even say anything about politics online. Cause it's like, really? Like you can't, here's what happens. anything you say that's thoughtful, like, hmm, I wonder, immigration, something. I wonder why we have these many, we allow these many immigrants in, or some version of that, thinking through these difficult policies and so on. They immediately tried to find a single word in something you say that can put you in a bin of liberal or white supremacist, and then hammer you to death by saying you're one of the two. And then everybody just piles on happily that we finally nailed this white supremacist or liberal. Is this some kind of weird like feature of online communication that we've just stumbled upon? Is there a way, or is it possible to argue that this is like a feature, not a bug? Like this is a good thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, look, I just think it's a reflection of who we are. People like to blame social media. I think we're just incredibly divided right now. I think we've been divided like this for the last 20 years. And I think that the reason I focus almost 99 percent of my public commentary on economics is because you asked an important question at the top. How do we fix this? What did I say about the stimulus checks? Stimulus checks have 80 percent approval rating. So that's the type of thing. If I was Joe Biden and I wanted to actually heal this country, that's the very first thing I would have done when I came into office. Same thing on when you look at anything that's going to increase wages. I said on the show, I was like, look, I think Joe Biden will have an 80% approval rating if he does two things. If he gives every American a $2,000 stimulus check and gives everybody who wants a vaccine a vaccine. That's it. It's pretty simple because here's the thing. I don't really like Greg Abbott that much. We have like very different politics. I'm from Texas, but my parents got vaccinated really quickly. That means something to me. I'm like, listen, I don't really care about a lot of the other stuff. He got my family vaccinated. Like that, well, I will forever remember that. And that's how we will remember the checks. This is a part of the reason why Trump almost won the election and why, if the Republicans had been smart enough to give him another round of checks, 100% would have won, which is that people were like, look, I don't really like Trump, but I got a check with his name on it. And that meant something to me and my family. I'm not saying for all the libertarians out there that you should go and like endlessly spend money and buy votes. What I am saying is lean into the majoritarian positions without adding your culture war bullshit on top of it. So for example, what's the number one concern that AOC says after the first round of checks got out? Oh, the checks didn't go to illegal immigrants. I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind? Like this is the most popular policy America has probably done in 50 years, you know, since like Medicare and you're inserting, you're ruining it. Yeah. And then on the right is the same thing, which is that they'll be like, these checks are going to like, you know, low level blah, blah, you know, people who are lazy and don't work. I'm like, Oh, there you go. You know, like you're just playing a caricature of what you are. Like if you lean into those issues and you got to do it clean, this is, this is what everybody hates about DC, which is that Biden right now is doing the $1,400 checks. but he's looping it in with his COVID relief bill and all that. That's his prerogative. That's a Democrat's prerogative. They won the election, that's fine. But I'll tell you what I would have done if I was him. I would have come in and I would have said, there's five United States senators who are on the record, Republicans, who said they'll vote for a $2,000 check. And I would put that on the floor of the United States Senate on my first or so, the first day possible. And I would have passed it and I would have forced those Republican senators to live up to that vote for this bill, come to the Oval Office for a signing, so that the very first thing of my presidency was to say, I'm giving you all this relief check, this long national nightmare is over, take this money, do with it what you need. We've all suffered together. The thing about Biden is he has a portrait of FDR in the oval, which kind of bothers me because he thinks of himself as an FDR-like figure. But this is – you have to understand the majesty of FDR. We're talking about a person who passed a piece of legislation five days after he became president, and he passed 15 transformative pieces of legislation in the first hundred days. We're on day like 34, 35, and nothing has passed. The reconciliation bill will eventually become law, but it'll become law with no Republican votes. And again, that's fine, but it's not fulfilling that legacy and the urgency of the action. And the mandate, which I believe that history has handed, it handed it to Trump and he fucked it up, right? He totally screwed it up. He could have remade America and made us into the greatest country ever coming out on the other side of this. He decided not to do that. I think Biden was again handed that like a scepter almost. It's like, all you have to do, all America wants is for you to raise it up high, but he's keeping it within the realm of traditional politics. I think it's a huge mistake. Why?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this is, everything he's saying is perfect. It sounds like take, it's like, it's like, again, if the aliens showed up, it's like the obvious thing to do is like, what's the popular thing? Like 80% of Americans support this. Like do that clean. but also do it like with like grace, where you're able to bring people together, not like in a political way, but like obvious common sense way, like just people, the Republicans, the Democrats, just bring them together on a policy and like bold, just hammer it without the dirt, without the mess, whatever, try to compromise, just yell, have a good Twitter account, like loud, very clear, we're gonna give a $2,000 stimulus check. Anyone who wants a vaccine gets a vaccine at scale. Let's make America great again by manufacturing, like we are manufacturing most of the world's vaccine because we're bad motherfuckers. And without maybe, with more eloquence than that, and just do that. Why? Haven't we seen that for many, for several presidencies?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Because of coalitional politics and they owe something to somebody else. For example, Biden has got a lot of the Democratic constituency he has to satisfy within this bill. So there's going to be a lot of shit that goes in there, state and local aid, all this stuff. Again, I'm not even saying this is bad, but he's like, his theory is, And this isn't wrong is like we're going to take the really popular stuff and use it as cover for the more downwardly less popular. And so the Dems could face the accusation. The people who are on this side, this is their pushback to me. They're like, why would we give away the most popular thing in the bill? And then we would never be able to pass state and local aid. Right. Why would we do that? And the Republicans do the same thing, right? Like Mitch McConnell, because he's a fucking idiot, decided to say, we're going to pair these $2,000 stimulus checks with like Section 230 repeal. And it was like, oh, it's obviously dead, right? Like it's not going to happen. together. That's largely why I believe Trump lost the election and why those races down in Georgia went the way that they did. Obviously, Trump had something to do with it. But the reason why is they have longstanding things that they've wanted to get done. And in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a good crisis go to waste and try and get as much as you possibly can done within a single bill. My counter would be this, things have worked this way for too long, which is that the reconciliation bill is almost certainly going to be the only large signature legislative accomplishment of the Biden presidency. That's just how American politics works. Maybe he gets one more, maybe one. He gets a second reconciliation bill, then you're running for midterms, it's over. I believe that by trying to change the paradigm of our politics, leaning into exactly what I'm talking here, you could possibly transcend that to a new one. And I'm not naive. I think people respond to political pressures in the way that we found this out. was David Perdue, who was just a total corporate, you know, dollar general CEO guy. He was against the original $1,200 stimulus checks. But then Trump came out, who's the single most popular figure in the Republican party. He's like, I want $2,000 stimulus checks. And all of a sudden, Perdue running in Georgia is like, yeah, I'm with President Trump. I want a $2,000 stimulus check. That was, if you're an astute observer of politics to say, you can see there that you can force people to do the right thing because it's the popular thing. And that if it's clean, if you don't give them any other excuse, they have to do it. So this is what, we've been gaslit into our culture war framework of politics. And the reason it feels so broken and awful is because it is, but there is a way out. It's just that nobody wants to be, it's a game of chicken, right? Because maybe it is true. Maybe we would never be able to get, your other Democratic priorities or Republican priorities. But I think that the country understands that this is fucking terrible and would be willing to support somebody who does it differently. There's just a lot of disincentives to not stay without. It's just a lot of incentives to not stray from the traditional path." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, is it also possible that the A students are not participating? Like we drove all of the superstars away from politics. So like, you just have- I've heard this argument before. I mean, everything you're saying sort of rings true. Like this is the obvious thing to do. As a student of history, you can almost like tell like, If you look at great people in history, great leaders in history, this is what they did. It's like clean, bold action. Sometimes facing crisis, but we're facing a crisis right now. No, we're in a crisis. Exactly. So why don't we see those leaders step up? You say that it makes sense, there's a lot of different interests at play, you don't want to risk too many things, so on and so forth. That sounds like the C students." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think it's that. I think it's that the pipeline of politician creation is just totally broken from beginning to end. So it's not that a students don't want to be politicians. It's basically the way that our current primary system is constructed is what is the greatest threat to you as a member of Congress? It's not losing your reelection. it's losing your primary, right? So that means, especially in a safe district, you're most concerned about being hit if you're a Republican from the right, and if you're a Democrat from the left, for not being a good enough one. That's actually what stops people, heterodox people in particular, from winning primaries, because the people who vote in our primaries are the party faithful. That's how you get the production. It's important to understand the production pipeline, which is that, All right, I'm from Texas, so that's what I know best. So it's like, if you think in Texas, if you're a more heterodox like state legislature or something who's real works with the left on this and does that, you're gonna get your ass beat in a Republican primary because they're gonna be like, he worked with the left to do this, blah, blah, blah, take it out of context and you're screwed. And then that means you never ascend up the next level of the ladder and then so on and so forth all the way. But I do think Trump changed everything. This is why I have some hope, which is that he showed me that all the people I listened to were totally wrong about politics. And that's the most valuable lesson you could ever teach me, which was, I was like, wait, I don't have to listen to these people. I'm like, they don't know anything actually. That's powerful, man." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm like, he did it. That's exceptionally powerful. This guy. Even if he didn't, do anything with it. It doesn't matter. He showed that it's possible. Exactly. And that means a lot. You're absolutely right. There's young people right now that kind of look, turn around and like, huh." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're like, wait, I don't have to comb my hair a certain way and go to law school and be an asshole, who everybody knows is an asshole, and then get elected to state legislature. I mean, look, who's the number one person in the New York City primary right now? Andrew Yang, he's polling higher than everybody else in the race. Look, maybe the polls are totally fucked and maybe he'll lose because of ranked choice voting and all of that. But I consider Andrew, I mean, I know him a little bit and I've followed his candidacy from the very beginning. I consider him an inspiration. He's the new generation of politics. Like if I see who's gonna be president 20 years from now, it's gonna be, I'm not saying it's gonna be Andrew Yang. I think it's gonna be somebody like Andrew Yang. outside the political system who talks in a totally different way. Right. Just a completely one of my favorite things that he said on the debate stage. He's like, look at us. We're all wearing makeup. It's you know, he like he like brought that that he brought that. And he's right. Yeah. Why are" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He probably arguably hasn't gone far enough almost, but he showed that it's possible. And then you see other, like AOC is a good example of somebody, at least in my opinion, is doing the same kind of thing, but going too far in like, well, I don't know, she's doing the Trump thing, but on the other side. So I don't know, what's too far? Who knows?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Don't take a normative judgment of it. I will tell you the future of politics looks like this. Appreciate the art of it. Right? No, I do. Look, I don't, I'm not a big AOC fan, but she's a genius. Media genius, once in a generation talent. The way that she uses social media, Instagram, and everybody on the right is like trying to copy her. Like Matt Gaetz is like, I want to be the conservative AOC. I'm like, it's just not going to happen, dude. Like, you just don't have it. Like what she has, it's like, it's electric. And Trump had that. Like I've been to a Trump rally, like to cover as a journalist, there's nothing like it in America. And Yang is similar. It's the same way where you're like, there is something going on here, which is just, like, I've been to an Obama rally. I've been to a Clinton rally. I've been to several normal politics. Yeah, it's fine, you know? With Trump and with Yang, it's another world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's another world. There's probably thousands of people listening right now who are just like doing a," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Slow clap. Yes. I know, I know. Yang gang forever. Okay. But yeah, I mean, my worst fear, I prefer Andrew Yang kind of free, improvisational idea exchange, all that, versus AOC, who I think, no matter what she stands for, is a drama machine, creates dramas just like Trump does. I would say my worst fear would be in 2024, is AOC old enough? It'd be AOC versus Trump." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think she's old enough. I think you'd have to be, I don't know, I think she's 30, so she needs five more years, so probably not." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, but that kind of, that's, or Trump Jr." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, AOC probably wouldn't win a Democratic primary. So, I mean, look, Joe Biden is, you know, they pretty much showed that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's exactly what you're saying. This process grooms you over time. You see the same thing in academia, actually, which is very interesting, is the process of getting tenure. There's this, it's like you're being taught without explicitly being taught. Yes. to behave in the way that everybody's behaved before. I've heard this, it was funny, I've had a few conversations that were deeply disappointing, which involved statements like, this is what's good for your career. This kind of conversation, almost like mentor to mentee conversation, where it's like, There's a grooming process in the same way, I guess you're saying the primary process does the same kind of thing. So, I mean, that's what people have talked about with Andrew Yang. He was being suppressed by a bunch of different forces, the mainstream media and all. Just the democratic, just that whole process didn't like the honesty that he was showing, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For now, but here's my question to you. People got to see, look, Jordan Peterson is one of the most famous people in America, right? Like you have a massive podcast. You're more famous than half the 99% of the people at MIT. So like from that perspective, everything has changed. And somewhere out there, there's a student who's taking notice. And I've noticed that with my own career, everybody thought I was crazy for doing this show with Crystal the Hill. They thought it was nuts. They're like, what are you doing? You're a White House correspondent. You've got a job forever. The other job offer I had was being a White House correspondent. And people thought I was nuts for not just sticking there and, you know, aging out within Washington, pining for appearances on Fox News and CNN and MSNBC. But I hated it. I just hated doing it. I did not want to be a company man. like a Washington man, who's one of those guys who like brags to his friends about how many times he's been on Fox or whatever, mostly because I just have a rebellious streak and I hate being at the subject of other people. I created something new, which a lot of people watch to get their news. And I noticed that younger people who are almost all my audience, they don't really look up to any of the people in traditional, right? They don't, they don't go and they're not coming up and being like, how do I be like Jim Acosta? You know, they're like, They're like hey, how did you do what you do and the way you did it is by bucking the system? So I think that we are at a total Split point and look there will always be a path for people because like I don't want people to over learn this lesson I have people who are like, I'm not gonna go to college and I'm like, well just wait. Yeah, like I'm like just starting. Yeah, like stop just like just hold on a second But there will always be a path for the institutional that will always be there for you. But now there's something else. Now there's another game in town. And that's more appealing to millions and millions and millions and millions of people who feel unserved by the corporate media, CNN, and these people possibly who feel unserved in the, you know, the faculty. Like if you are an up and comer who wants to teach as many young people as possible, I think you should be on YouTube, right? Like look at the Khan Academy guy. That guy created a huge business. So I just think we can be cynical and like upset about what that system is, but we should also have hope. Like I have a lot of hope for what can be in the future." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there's a guy people should check out. So my story is a little bit different because I basically stepped aside for a year and a half with the dream of being an entrepreneur earlier in the pipeline than a legitimate senior faculty would. There's an example of somebody, people should check out Andrew Huberman from Stanford, who's a neuroscientist, who's as world-class as it gets in terms of 10-year faculty. just a really world-class researcher, and now he's doing YouTube." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I see him on Instagram, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he switched, so he not just does Instagram, he now has a podcast, and he's doing, he's changing the nature of like, I believe that Andrew might be the future of Stanford. And for a lot, it's funny, like he's basically, Joe Rogan is an inspiration to Andrew. and to me as well. And those ripple effects, and Andrew is an inspiration probably, just like you're saying, to these young, like 25-year-olds who are soon to become faculty, if we're just talking about academia. And the same is probably happening with government. Funny enough, Trump probably is inspiring a huge number of people who are saying, wait a minute, I don't have to play by the rules. And I can, think outside the box here, and you're right. And the institutions we're seeing are just probably lagging behind. So the optimistic view is the future is going to be full of exciting new ideas. So Andrew Yang is just kind of the beginning of this whole thing." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's tip of the iceberg." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I hope that iceberg doesn't, it's not this influencer. One of the things that really bothers me, I've gotten the chance, I should be careful here, I love everybody, but these people who talk about how to make your first million or how to succeed, and they're so, I mean, yeah, that makes me a little bit cynical about, I'm worried that the people that win the game of politics will be ones that want to win the game of politics. They already are, man. And like we mentioned, AOC is, I hope they optimize for the 80% populace thing, right? Like they optimize for that bad-ass thing that history will remember you as the great man or woman that did this thing versus how do I maximize engagement today and keep growing those numbers? The influencers are so, I'm so allergic to this, man. They keep saying how many followers they have on the different accounts. And it's like, I don't think they understand. Maybe I don't understand. I don't really care. I think it has destructive psychological effects. one, like thinking about the number, like getting excited. Your number went from a hundred to 101 and being like, and today went out to 105. Whoa, that's a big jump. That may be like thinking this way. Like, I wonder what I did. I'll do that again in this way. One it's a, it creates anxiety on those psychological effects, whatever the, the more important thing is it prevents you from truly thinking boldly in the long arc of history, creatively, thinking outside the box, doing huge actions. And I actually, my optimism is in the sense that that kind of action will beat out all the influencers." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I don't know, Lex. This is where my cynicism comes in. So there's a guy, Madison Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress. And he, I don't wanna say got caught, but there was like an email where he was like, my staff is only oriented around comms. Like he was basically saying, he got basically caught saying, like, my staff is only centered on communications. And that's the right play. If you do want to get the benefits of our current electoral, political, and engagement system, which is that, what's the best way to be known within the right as a right-wing politician? It's to be a culture warrior, go on Ben Shapiro's podcast, be one of the people on Fox News, go on Sean Hannity's show, go on Tucker's show, and all of that, because you become a mini celebrity within that world. left unsaid is that that world is increasingly shrinking portion of the American population, and they barely – they can't even win a popular vote election, let alone barely win – eke out an electoral college victory in 2016. Well, but the incentives are all aligned within that. And it's the same thing really on the left, but you're right, which is that, and look, this is why geniuses are geniuses, because they buck the short-term incentives. They focus on the long-term, they bet big, and they usually fail. But then when they get big, they succeed spectacularly. The people I know who have done this the best are like a lot of the crypto folks that I've spoken to. Some of the stuff they say, I'm like, I don't know if that's going to happen, but look, they're like billionaires. Right. Yeah. And you're like, so they were right. So it's the way I've heard it expressed is you can be wrong a lot. But when you're right, you get right big. And I mean, I've seen this in Elon Musk career. I mean, he took spectacular risk, like spectacular. and just double down, double down, double down, double down, double down. And you can kind of tell to him, I mean, you know him better than I do, but like from my observation, I don't think the money matters. Like when I see him, I'm like, nobody works as hard as you do and builds the way that you build if it's just about the money. It just doesn't happen. Nobody wills SpaceX into existence just for the money. It's not worth it, frankly. He probably destroyed years of his life and mental sanity." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Money or attention or fame, none of that. It's not the primary priority." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's what's so appealing to me, to me in particular about him, just like in how he built, like I read a biography of him and just like the way that he constructed his life and like is able to hyper-focus in meeting after meeting and drill down and also hire all the right people who execute each one of his tasks discreetly to his perfection is amazing. Like that's actually the mark of a good leader. But I mean, if you think about his career, the reason he's a renegade is cause probably he was told to like put it in an index fund or whatever. Like whenever he made his like 29 million and from PayPal, I don't know how much he made. And then just go along that run. He's like, no. So he succeeds spectacularly. So you have to have somebody who's willing to come in and buck that system. So for now, I think our politics are generally frozen. I think that that model is gonna be most generally appealing to the mean person. but somebody will come along and we'll change everything." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I'm just surprised there's not more of them. Yeah. On that topic, it's now 20, what is it, 21? Yes. Let's make some predictions that you can be wrong about." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Good." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "what major political people are you thinking will run in 2024, including Trump, junior, senior, or Ivanka? I don't know. Any Trump, Trump. And who do you think wins?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think Joe Biden will run again in 2024, and I think he will run against someone with the last name Trump. I do not know whether that is Trump or Trump Jr., but I think one of those people will probably be the GOP nominee in 2024." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who was it, some prominent political figure, was it Romney, somebody like that, said that Trump will win the primary if he runs again." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, that's not even a question. Trump is the single most popular figure in the Republican Party by orders of magnitude. Still. Oh, I mean, probably more, honestly. There was a, actually, I can tell you, because I saw the data, which is that pre-January 6th, it was like 54% of Republicans wanted him to run again. Then it went down eight points after January 6 two days later, and then after impeachment it went right back up to 54% so the exact same number is in February at post impeachment vote as it was after November now look yeah again surveys bullshit, etc But like that's all the data we have that's striking point to If Trump runs, he will be the nominee and he will be the 2024 nominee. I just don't know if he wants to. It really depends." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think he wins after the Trump vaccine heals all of us? Do you think Trump wins?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It depends on how popular culture functions over the next four years. And I can tell you that they are because I don't think Biden has that much to do with it, because, again, Trump is not a manifestation of an affirmative policy action. It is a defensive bulwark wall against cultural liberalism at its best. So it's like this is why it doesn't matter what Biden does. If there are more riots, if there is a more sense of persecution amongst people who are more lean towards conservative or like, hey, I don't know about that. That's crazy. Then he very well could win. Let's OK, let's say Joe Biden doesn't run and they put up like Kamala Harris. I think I think he would be here. And I don't think there's a question that Trump would be Kamala Harris in twenty twenty four." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And you don't think anybody else, I don't know how the process works. You don't think anybody else on the democratic side can take the." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, how could you run against the sitting vice president? You know, it's like if Joe Biden is a 98% approval rating in the Democratic Party, if he says she is my heir, I think enough people will listen to him in a competitive primary or a non-competitive primary. And then there's all these things about how primary systems themselves are rigged. The DNC could make it known that they'll blacklist anybody who does try and primary Kamala Harris. And look, I mean, progressives aren't necessarily all that popular amongst actual Democrats. Like, we found that out during the election. There's an entire constituency which loves Joe Biden and Joe Biden-level politics. And so if he tells them to vote for Kamala, I think she would probably get it. But again, there's a lot of game theory obviously happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But see, I think you're talking about everything you're saying is correct about mediocre candidates. It feels like if there's somebody like a really strong, I don't want to use this term incorrectly, but populist, somebody that speaks to the 80% that's is able to provide bold, eloquently described, solutions that are popular. I think that breaks through all of this nonsense." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "How? How do they break through the primary system? Because the problem is the primary system is not populism. It's primary. So it's like. But you don't think they can tweet their way to. Well, you have to be willing to win a GOP primary. You basically have to be at whoever wins the GOP primary, in my opinion, will be the person most hated by the left. One of the things that people forget is, you know who came in second to Trump? Ted Cruz. And the reason why is because Ted Cruz was the second most hated guy by liberals in America, but second to Trump. They have nothing in policy in common." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But don't you think this kind of brilliantly described system of hate being the main mechanism of our electoral choices, don't you think that just has to do with mediocre candidates? Basically, the field of candidates, including Trump, including everybody, didn't make anyone feel great. It's like, really? This is what we have to choose from?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Maybe a Mark Cuban, or Mark Cuban as a Democrat. It would have to be somebody like that. Somebody who, cause here's the thing about Trump. It's not just that it was Trump. He was so fucking famous. Like people don't realize he was so famous. Like I, even when I first met Trump, I met a couple of other presidents, but when I met Trump, even I felt like kind of starstruck because I was like, Yo, this is the guy from The Apprentice. I'm like, this is the dude. Because I'm like, my dad and I used to sit and watch The Apprentice when I was in high school. And then one of the guys was from College Station where I grew up and we're like, oh my God, like that guy's on The Apprentice. Like it was a phenomenon. There's like that level. It's kind of like when I met Joe Rogan, I'm like, I don't feel that way when I meet Mitt Romney or Tom Cotton or Josh Hall. I met all of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's a lot of celebrities, right? Do you think there's some celebrities we're not even thinking about that could step in? The Rock?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was about to say, I think The Rock could do it, but does he want to do it? I mean, it's terrible. It's a terrible gig. It's very hard to do. I don't know if the rock necessarily has like the formed policy agenda. Cause then here's the other problem. What, what if we set ourselves up for a system where like these people keep winning, but like with Trump, they have no idea how to run a government. It's actually really hard. Right. And you have to have the know-how and the trust to find the right people. This is, this is where the genius element comes in is you have to understand that front and you have to understand how to execute. discrete tasks, like this is the FDR. This is why it's so hard, like FDR, Lincoln, TR. They were who they were and they live in history and their name rings like for a reason. And yeah, I mean, one of the most depressing lessons I got from 2020 is at almost, it seems like in my opinion, that we over learn the lesson of our success and not of our failures. For example, We have this narrative in our head that we always have the right person at the right time during crisis, and in some cases it was true. We didn't deserve Lincoln. We didn't deserve FDR. We didn't deserve – we didn't deserve a lot of presidents at times of crisis. But then you're like, okay, George W. Bush, 9-11, that was terrible. Reconstruction, Andrew Johnson, awful, right? Like we had several periods in our history where the crisis was there, they were called and they did not show up. And I really, it hadn't happened in my lifetime except for 9-11. And even then you could kind of see that as an opportunity for somebody like Obama to come in and fix it. But then he didn't do it. And then Trump didn't do it. And you realize, I feel like our politics are most analogous to the 1910s, in terms of the Gilded Age, in terms of that. Remember there's that long period of presidents between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt? We were like, wait, who was president? Or even T.R. was an exception where you'll have Calvin Coolidge, who like Silent Cow. Grover Cleveland. That's kind of how, If I think of us within history, I feel like we're in one of those times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We're just waiting. It feels really important to us right now. Like this is the most important moment in history, but it might be- It could just be a blip, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "20, 30 year blip. Like when you think about who was president between 1890 and 19, before, I mean, yeah. Between like 1888 and 1910. Like nobody really thinks about that period of America, but like that was an entire lifetime for people. How did they feel about the country that they were in? That's hilarious. That's how I kind of think about where we are right now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's funny to think, I mean, I don't want to minimize it, but we haven't really gone through a World War II style crisis. So say that there is a crisis in several decades of that level, existential risks to a large portion of the world. Then what will be remembered is World War II, maybe a little bit about Vietnam, and then whatever that crisis is. And this whole period that we see as dramatic, even coronavirus. Even 9-11. Even 9-11. It's like, because you can look at how many people died and all those kinds of things, all the drama around the war on terror and all those kinds of things. Maybe Obama will be remembered for being the first African-American president. But then like that's yeah, that's fascinating to think about. Oh, man. Even Trump will be like, oh, OK, that guy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like maybe he'll be remembered as the first. Celebrity. I mean, Reagan was already a governor, right? Yeah. So so like the first a political celebrity that was a so maybe if there's more celebrities in the future, they'll say that Trump was the first person to pave the way for celebrities to win. Oh, man. Yeah. And yeah, I still I still hold that this this era will probably be remembered. People say I talk about Elon way too much, but the reality is there's not many people that are doing the kind of things he's doing, is why I talk about it. I think this era, it's not necessarily Elon and SpaceX, but this era will be remembered by the new space exploration, of the commercial, of companies getting into space exploration, of space travel, and perhaps perhaps like artificial intelligence around social media, all those kinds of things, this might be remembered for that. But all the political bickering, all that nonsense, that might be very well forgotten." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One way to think about it is that the internet is so young. I think about it. So Jeff Jarvis, he's a media scholar I respect. He's not the only person to say this, but many others have, which is that, look, this is kind of like the printing press. There was a whole 30 years war because of the printing press. It took a long time for shit to sort out. I think that's where we're at with the internet. Like at a certain level, it disrupts everything. And that's a good thing. It can be very tumultuous. I never felt like I was living through history until coronavirus. Like, you know, like until we were all locked down, I was like, I'm living through history. Like this, there's this very overused cliche in DC where every comm staffer wants you to think that what their boss just did is history. And I've always been like, this isn't history. This is some like stupid fucking bill, you know, whatever. But like, that was the first time I was like, this is history. Like this right here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I was hoping, tragedy aside, that this, I wish the primaries happened during coronavirus, so that we, because like, then we can see, so okay, here's a bunch of people facing crisis, and it's an opportunity for a leader to step up. I still believe the optimistic view is the game theory of influencers will always be defeated by actual great leaders. So maybe the great leaders are rare, but I think they're sufficiently out there that they will step up, especially in the moments of crisis. And coronavirus is obviously a crisis where mass manufacture of tests, all kinds of infrastructure building that you could have done in 2020, there's so many possibilities for just like bold action. And none of that, even just forget actually doing the action. advocating for it, just saying like, we need to do this. And none of that, like the speeches that Biden made, I don't even remember a single speech that Biden made because there's zero bold, I mean, their strategy was to be quiet and let Donald Trump- Polarize the electorate. Polarize the electorate and hope that results in them winning. because of the high unemployment numbers and all those kinds of things, as opposed to like, let's go big, let's go with a big speech. Yeah, it's a lost opportunity in some sense. So we talked a bunch about politics, but one of the other interesting things that you're involved with is, or involved with defining the future of is journalism, I suppose. You can think of podcasts as a kind of journalism. but also just writing in general, just whatever the hell the future of this thing looks like is up to be defined by people like you. So what do you think is broken about journalism and what do you think is the future of journalism?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think the future of journalism looks much more like what you and I are doing here right now. And journalism is gonna be downstream from a culture that can be a good and a bad thing depending on how you look at it. We are going to look at our media. Our media is going to look much more like it did pre mass media. And the way that I mean that is that back in the 18, um, in the 18 hundreds in particular, especially after the invention of the telegraph, when information itself was known. So for example, like you and I don't need to, let's say you and I are competing journalists. You and I are no longer competing, quote unquote, to tell the public X event happened. All journalism today is largely explaining why did X happen. And part of the problem with that is that that means that it's all up for partisan interpretation. Now you can say that that's a bad thing. I think it's a great thing because the highest level of literacy and news viewership in America was during the time of yellow journalism, was during the time of partisan journalism. Not a surprise. People like to read the news from people that they agree with. You could say that's bad, echo chambers, etc. That's the downside of it. The upside is more people are more educated. More people are interested in the news. So I think the proliferation of mass media, I mean, sorry, of this format, of long form, of, of not just long form. Dude, I do, I do updates on Instagram, which are five minutes. Oh, you consider like Instagram? Yeah. Oh, even Twitter. Oh, of course, Twitter. Twitter is where I get my news from. I don't read the paper. I have literally Twitter is my news aggregator. It's called my wire, where I find out about hard events. Like the president has departed the White House." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But not only that, I don't know about you, but I also looked at Twitter to the exact thing you're saying, which is the response to the news. Like the thoughtful, sounds ridiculous, but you can be pretty thoughtful in a single tweet." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "If you follow the right people, you can get that. And so that is the future of media, which is that the future of media is it will be much smaller amount or it's much larger amounts of people, which are famous to smaller groups. So Walter Cronkite's never gonna happen again. at least in our, and probably within our lifetimes, where everybody in America know who's this guy is. That age is over. I think that's a good thing because now people are gonna get the news from the people that they trust. Yes, some of it will be opinionated. My program, Crystal and I are like, we are, she's coming from this view, I'm coming from this view. That's our bias when we talk about information and we're gonna talk about the information. that we think is important. And it has garnered a large audience. I think that's very much where the future is gonna be. And the reason why I think that's a good thing is because people will be engaged more within it rather than the current system where news is highly concentrated, highly consolidated, has groupthink, has the same elite production pipeline problem of everybody knows journalists all come from the same socioeconomic background. And they all party together here in D.C. or in New York or in L.A. or wherever. And they're part of the same monoculture. And that affects what they report. This will cause a total dispersion of all of that. The battle of our age is going to be the guild versus the non-guild. So like what we see right now with the New York Times and Clubhouse. This is a very, very, very, very, very intentional thing that is happening, which is that the Times talking about unfettered conversations, that's happening on Clubhouse for people who aren't aware. This is important because they need to be the fetters of conversation. They need to be the interagent. That's where they get their power. They get their power from convincing Facebook that they are the ones who can fact check stuff. They are the ones who can tell you whether something is right or wrong. That battle over unimpeded conversation and the explosion of a format that you and I are doing really well in, and then this more consolidated one, which holds cultural power and elite power, and more importantly, money, right, over you and I, that's the battle that we're all gonna play out." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think unfettered conversations have a chance to win this battle?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I do in the long run. In the long run, the Internet is simply too powerful. But here's the mistake everybody makes. The New York Times will never lose. It will just become one of us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "See, you think so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They already are. They are the largest daily, the daily. Look at the daily. Not even that. Think about it not in podcasting. The Times is not a mass media product. It is a subscription product for upper middle class, largely white liberals who live the same circumstances across the United States and in Europe. There's nothing wrong with that. But here's the thing. You can't be the paper of record when you're actually the paper of upper middle class white America. Your job is to report on the news from that angle and deliver them the product that they want. There's nothing wrong with that. Their stock price is higher than ever. They're making 10 times more money than they did 10 years ago, but it comes at the cost of not having a mass application audience. So like when people, I think people in our space are always like the New York Times is going to be destroyed. No, it's actually even better. They will just become one of us. They already are. They're a subscription platform. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, yes, in terms of the actual mechanism, but, you know, New York Times is still, and I don't think I'm speaking about a particular sector. I think it, as a brand, it does have the level of credibility assigned to it still. You know, there's politicization of it. Totally. But, there's a credibility, like it has much more credibility than, forgive me, than I think you and I have. No, you're right. In terms of your podcast, like people are not going to be like, they're going to say at the New York Times versus what you said on a podcast for for an opinion that I wonder in the sense of battles, whether unfettered conversations, whether Joe Rogan, whether your podcast can become the, have the same level of legitimacy or the flip side, New York Times loses legitimacy to be at the same level of in terms of how we talk about it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's a long battle, right? It's gonna take a long time. And I'm saying, this is where I think the end state is going. And look at what The Times is doing. They're leaning into podcasting for a reason, but not just podcasting as in NPR level, like here's what's happening. Michael Barbaro is a fucking celebrity, right? The guy who does The Daily. That guy's famous amongst these people. Cause they're like, oh my God, I love Michael. Like I love the way he does this stuff. Again, that's fine. More people are listening to the news. I think that's a good thing. And then who else do they hire? Ezra Klein from Vox. Kara Swisher, also from Vox, who does Pivot, which is an amazing podcast. Or Jane Koston, same thing. It's personalities who are becoming bundled together within this brand, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, maybe I'm just a hater. Because I loved podcasting from the beginning. I loved Green Day before they were cool, man. but I am bothered by it. Why doesn't Karis Wisher, she's done successfully, I think in her own, no, she was always a part of some kind of institution, I'm not sure." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But she started her own thing, I think. Recode, right, yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Recode, I don't know if that's her own thing. So she was very successful there. Why the hell did she join the New York Times with the new podcast? Why is Michael Barbaro not do his own thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "because he gets paid and because he has, he wants the elite cachet that you just referenced within his social circle in New York, which is that I think the biggest mistake that some of the venture people make is if we give everybody the tools that those people are all going to leave to like go substack and go independent within their social circle, sacrificing some money from being independent is worth it to be a part of the New York times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's sad to me because it propagates old thinking. It propagates old institutions. And you could say that New York Times is going to evolve quickly and so on, but I would love it if there was a mechanism for reestablishing, for building new New York Times. in terms of public legitimacy. And I suppose that's wishful thinking because it takes time to build trust in institutions and it takes time to build new institutions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "My main thing I would say is public legitimacy as a concept is not going to be there in mass media anymore because of the balkanization of audiences. I mean, think about it, right? Like, This is like lesion, you know the classic stuff around a thousand true fans or no Sorry, like a hundred true fans even now like you can make a living on the internet just talking to a hundred people Yeah, if as long as they're all high-frequency traders some of the highest people pies pay people on sub stack They don't have that many subs. It's just that they're Wall Street guys, right? So people pay a lot of money again, that's great So what you will have is an increasing balkanization of the Internet of audiences and of niches, people will become increasingly famous within us. You will become astoundingly famous. I'm sure you've noticed this for your fan base. I just certainly have with mine, like 99% of people have no idea who I am. But when somebody meets, they're like, oh my God, I watch your show every day, right? Like it's the only thing I watch for news, right? Like instead of casually famous, if that makes sense, be like, oh yeah, that's like Alec Baldwin. Yeah, yeah, oh shit. That's all but you're not like oh shit. I love you Alec Baldwin It's this is a Ben Smith of the New York Times actually wrote this column He's like the future is everybody will be famous but only to a small group of people and I think that is true but again I don't decry it, I think it's great. Because I think that the more that that happens, the more engaged people will be. And it empowers different voices to be able to come in and then possibly, I wouldn't say destroy, but compete against. I mean, look at Joe. Joe is more powerful than CNN and MSNBC and Fox all put together. That gives me like immense inspiration. Like he created the space for me to succeed. And I told him that when I met him, I was like, Dude, I listened to his podcast when I was young. And I remember when I got to meet him and all that, and I told him this on this pod, I was like, I didn't know people were, millions were willing to listen to a guy talk about chimps for three straight hours, including me. I didn't know that I could be one of those people." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, me too. I learned something about myself for a show, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so by creating that space, I'd be like, wait, there's a hunger here. He showed us all the way. And none of us will ever again be as famous as Rogan, because he was the first, and that's fine, because he created the umbrella ecosystem for us all to thrive. That is where I see a great amount of hope within that story." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and the cool thing, he also supports that ecosystem. He's such a- He's so generous. One of the things he paved the way on for me is to show that you can just be honest, publicly honest, and not jealous of other people's success, but instead be supportive and all those kinds of things, just like loving towards others. He's been an inspiration. I mean, to the comics community, I think they're a bunch of, before that, I think they were all a bunch of competitive haters towards each other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And now he's like, just injected love." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They're still, many are still resistant, but they're like, they can't help it, because he's such a huge voice. He forces them to be loving towards each other. And the same, I tried to, one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast, was to try to, I wanted to be like, do what Joe Rogan did, but for the scientific community, like my little circle of scientific community of like, let's support each other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Well, like Avi Loeb, I would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for you. I mean, I assume you put him in touch with Joe, he went on Joe's show, I had him on my show. Like millions of people would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for you." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Just by the way, in terms of deep state and shadow government, Ivy Lobe has to do with aliens. You better believe, Joe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Dude, the last thing I sent to him was the American Airlines audio. Did you see that? The pilots who were, oh my God, dude, this is amazing. I'm getting excited. This American Airlines flight crew was over New Mexico, this happened five or six days ago. And the guy comes and goes, hey, do you have any targets up here? A large cylindrical object just flew over me. So this happens. So this happens. Yes. Then a guy like a radio catcher records this and posts it online. American Airlines confirms that this is authentic audio. And they go, all further questions should be referred to the FBI. So then, okay, American Airlines just confirmed it's a legitimate transmission. FBI, then the FAA comes out and says, we were tracking no objects in the vicinity of this plane at the time of the transmission. So the only plausible explanation that online sleuths have been able to say is maybe he saw a Learjet, which was, you know, using like open source data. FAA rules that out. So what was it? He saw a large cylindrical object while he was mid-flight. American Airlines, you can go online, listen to the audio yourself. This is a 100% no shit transmission confirmed by American Airlines of a commercial pilot over New Mexico seeing a quote unquote large cylindrical object in the air. Like I said, when we first started talking, I've never believed more in UFOs than aliens." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, this is awesome. I just wish both American Airlines, FBI, and government would be more transparent, like there would be voices. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the kind of transparency that you see, maybe not Joe Rogan, he's like overly transparent, he's just a comic really, but just, I don't know, like a podcast from the FBI. Just like being honest, like excited, confused. I'm sure, they're being overly cautious about their release information. I'm sure there's a lot of information that would inspire the public, that would inspire trust in institutions that will not damage national security. Like it seems to me obvious. And the reason they're not sharing it is because of this momentum of bureaucracy of caution and so on. But there's probably so much cool information that the government has." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The way I almost, I wouldn't say it confirmed it's real, but Trump didn't declassify. Like, you know that if there was ever a president that actually wanted to get to the bottom of it, it was him. I mean, he didn't declassify it, man. And people begged him to. I know for a fact, because I pushed to try and make this happen, that some people did speak to him about it. And he was like, no, I'm not going to do it. So he might be afraid. That's what I mean, though. They were probably all telling him, like, sir, you can't do this, you know, all this. And I get that. And there's this legislation written as covid that like they have six months to release. Is that real? What is that? It's a bunch of bullshit. I think it's bull. There's so many different levels of classification that people need to understand. I mean, look, I read John Podesta. He was the chief of staff to Bill Clinton. He's a big UFO guy. He he tried like him and Clinton tried to get some of this information and they could not get any of it. And we're talking about the president and the White House chief of staff." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, there's a whole bureaucracy built, just like you were saying, with intent. You have to be like, that has to be your focus, because there's a whole bureaucracy built around secrecy, probably for a good reason. So to get through to the information, there's a whole paperwork process, all that kind of stuff. You can't just walk in and get the, unless, again, with intention, that becomes your thing. Let's revolutionize this thing. And then you get only so many things. It's sad that the bureaucracy has gotten so bulky. But I think the hopeful messages from earlier in our conversation seems like a single person can't fix it, but if you hire the right team, It feels like you can." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can't fix everything. I don't wanna give people unrealistic expectations. You can fix a lot. Especially in crisis, you can remake America. And the reason I know that is because it's already happened twice. FDR, or in modern history, FDR and JFK. Sorry, FDR and JFK's assassination, LBJ, two hyper-competent men who understood government, who understood personnel, and coincidentally were friends. I love this. I don't think actually people understand this. FDR met Johnson three days after he won his election to Congress, special election. He was only 29 years old. And he left that meeting and called somebody and said, this young man is gonna be president of the United States someday. Like even then, like what was within him to understand and to recognize that? And sometimes Johnson as a young member of Congress would come and have breakfast with FDR, like just to the great political minds of the 20th century, just sitting there talking. Like I would give anything to know what was happening." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I hope they were real with each other, and there was like a genuine human connection, right? That seems to be- Well, Johnson wasn't a genuine guy, so we're almost certainly not. Well, I need to read those thousands of pages. I've been way too focused on Hitler." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was gonna say, one of my goals in coming to this is I was like, I gotta get Lex into two things, because I know he'll love it. I know he'll love LBJ, if he takes the time to read the books. Really? 100%. He's the most- Of all the presidents. I didn't say you'll love him, but you'll love the books about him because the books are a story of America, the story of politics, the story of power. This is the guy who wrote The Power Broker. These books are up there with Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in terms of how power works. The study of power. Exactly. That's why Carroll wrote the books. And that's why the books are not really about LBJ. They're about power in Washington. and about the consolidation of power post New Deal, the consolidation then, using the levers of power like Johnson knew, in order to change the House of Representatives, the Senate of the United States, and ultimately the presidency of the United States, which ended in failure and disaster with Vietnam, don't get me wrong. But he's overlooked for so many of the incredible things that he did with civil rights. Nobody else could have done it. No one else could have gotten it done. And the second thing is, we gotta get you into World War I. We gotta get you more into World War I because I think that's a rabbit hole, which I know you're a Dan Carlin fan. So blueprint for Armageddon guaranteed. But- But there's fewer evil people there. Yes, but that's what actually, there's a banality of that evil. of the Kaiser and of the Austro-Hungarians. See, I like World War I more because it was unresolved. It's one of those periods I was talking to you about, about sometimes you're called and you fail. That's what happened. I mean, 50 million people were killed in the most horrific way. People literally drowned in the mud, an entire generation. One stat I love is that You know, Britain didn't need a draft till 1916. Like they went two years of throwing people into barbed wire voluntarily. And because people love their country and they love the king and they thought they were going against the Kaiser. It's just like that conflict to me, I just can't read enough about it. Also just like births Russian revolution, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I mean, Hitler. You can't talk about World War II without World War I. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Right. And I'm obsessed with the conflict. I've read way too many books about it for this reason is it's unresolved. And like the roots of so much of even our current problems are happened in Versailles, right? Like Vietnam is because of the Treaty of Versailles. Many ways, the Middle Eastern problems and the division of the states there, the Treaty of Versailles in terms of the penalties against Germany, but also the, fallout from those wars on the French and the German population, or the French and the British populations and their reluctance for war in 1939 or 1938 when Neville Chamberlain goes, right? Like that's one of the things people don't understand is the actual appetite of the British public at that time. They didn't want to go to war. Only Churchill, he was the only one in the, you know, in the gathering storm, right? Like being like, hey, this is really bad and all of that. And then even in the United States, our streak of isolationism, which swept, I mean, Things were, because of that conflict, we were convinced as a country that we wanted nothing to do with Europe and its problems. And in many ways that contributed to the proliferation of Hitler and more. So like, I'm obsessed with World War I for this reason, which is that it's just like the root, it's like the culmination of the monarchies, then the fall, and then just all the shit spills out. from there for like a hundred years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So World War I is like the most important shift in human history versus World War II is like a consequence of that." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I have a degree in security studies from Georgetown. And one of the thing is that we would focus a lot on that is like war, but also like the complexity around war. And it's funny, we never spent that much time on World War II, because it was actually quite of a clean war. It's a very atypical war, as in, The war object, which we learned from World War One, is we must inflict suffering on the German people and invade the borders of Germany and destroy Hitler. Like the center of gravity is the Nazi regime and Hitler. So it had a very basic begin and end. Begin, liberate France, invade Germany, destroy Hitler, reoccupy, rebuild. World War One, What are you fighting for? Like, are you, I mean, and nobody even knew. Even the German general staff, they were like, even in 1917, they're like, the war was worth it because now we have Luxembourg. I'm like, really? Like you killed 2 million of your citizens for fucking Luxembourg? And like half of Belgium, which is now like a pond? And same thing, the French are like, well, the French more so, they're defending their borders. But like, what are the British fighting for? Why did hundreds of thousands of British people die? in order to preserve the balance of power in Europe and prevent the Kaiser from having a port on the English Channel. Like, really? That's why? That's more what wars are, is they become these like atypical, they become these protracted conflicts with a necessary diplomatic resolution. It's not clean. It's very dirty. It usually leads in the outbreak of another war and another war and another war and a slow burn of ethnic conflict, which bubbles up. So that's why I look at that one. because it's more typical of warfare in terms of how it works." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Exactly. It's kind of interesting. You're making me realize that World War II is one of the rare wars where you can make a strong case for it's a fight of good versus evil." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, just war theory, obviously. They're literally slaughtering Jews. We have to kill them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And there's one person doing it. I mean, there's one person at the core. Yeah, that's fascinating. And it's short and there's a clear aggression It's interesting that Dan Carlin has been avoiding Hitler as well. Probably for this reason. Probably for this reason. But it's complicated too, because there's a pressure. That guy has his demons. I love Dan so much. I don't know if you feel this pressure. But as a creative, he feels the pressure of being maybe not necessarily correct, but maybe correct in the sense that his understanding, he gets to the bottom of why something happened, of what really happened. get to the bottom of it before he can say something publicly about it. And he is tortured by that burden." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I know. You know, he takes so much shit from the historical community for no reason. I think he's the greatest popularizer, quote unquote, of history. And I wish more people in history understood it that way. He was an inspiration to me. I mean, I do some videos sometimes on my Instagram. Now where I'll do like a book tour. I'll be like, here's my bookshelf of these presidents. And like, here's what I learned from this book and this book and this. And that was very much like a skill I learned from him of being like, as the historian writes. I just love the way he talks. He's like, in the mud. He'll be like, quote. Quote. He inspires me, man. He really does to like learn more. And I've read, I bought a lot of books because of Dan Carlin. He'll be, you know, because of this guy, because of that guy in terms of, you know, another thing he does, which nobody else, and I'm probably guilty of this. He focuses on the actual people involved. Like he would tell the story of actual British soldiers in World War I. And I probably, and maybe you're guilty of this too, we over-focus on what was happening in the German general staff, what was happening in the British general staff. And he doesn't make that mistake. That's why he tells real history." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, and it gives it a feeling. The result is that there's a feeling, you get the feeling of what it was like to be there. Exactly. You know, you're quickly becoming more and more popular Speaking about political issues in part, do you feel a burden, almost like the prison of your prior convictions of having to being popular with a certain kind of audience and thereby unable to really think outside the box?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I've really struggled with this. I came up in right-wing media. I came up a much more doctrinaire conservative in my professional life. I wasn't always conservative. We can get to that later if you want. And I did feel an immense pressure after the election by people to say, wanted me to say the election was stolen. And I knew I had a sizable part of my audience Well, here's the benefit. Most people know me from Rising, which is with Crystal and me. That is inherently a left-right program, so it's a large audience. So I felt comfortable and I knew that I could still be fine in terms of my numbers, whatever, because many people knew me who were on the left. And if my listeners abandoned me, so be it. I had the luxury of able to take that choice. But I still felt an immense amount of pressure to say the election was stolen, to give credence to a lot of the stuff that Trump was doing, to downplay January 6th, to downplay many of the Republican senators or justify many of the Republican senators, some of whom I know, who objected to the Electoral College certification and who stoked some of the flames. that have eaten the Republican base, and I just wouldn't do it. And that was hard, man. Like, I feel more politically homeless right now than I ever have, but I have realized in the last couple of months, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. It's freedom. It's true freedom. I now, I say, Exactly what I think. And it's not that I wasn't doing that before. It's maybe I would avoid certain topics or like I would think about things more from a team perspective of like, am I making sure that it's it's I'm not saying I didn't fight it. And I still I criticize the right plenty and Trump plenty before the election and more. It's more just like I no longer feel as if I even have the illusion of a stake within the game. I'm like, I only look at myself as an outside observer, and I will only call it as I see it truly. And I was aspiring to that before, but I had to have in a way. Trump stopped the steel thing, it like took my shackles off 100%. Because I was like, no, this is bullshit. And I'm going to say it's bullshit. And I think it's bad. And I think it's bad for the Republican Party. And if people in the Republican Party don't agree with me on that, that's fine. I'm just not going to be necessarily like associated with you anymore." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "This is probably one of the first political- Oh, really? Politics-related conversations we've had. I mean, unless you count Michael Malice, who- He was great." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's the funny guy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He's not so much political as he is like, burn it down, man." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He leans too far in anarchy for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, I think he's- There's a place for that. It's almost, well, first of all, he's working on a new book, which I really appreciate. He's working on a big book for a while, which is White Pill. He's also working on this short little thing, which is anarchist handbook or something like that. It's like Anarchy for Idiots or something like that, which I think is really- Well, me being an idiot and being curious about anarchy seems useful, so I like those kinds of books." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's Russian heritage, man. They're anarchist 101." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I find those kinds of things a useful thought experiment. It's frustrating to me when people talk about communism, socialism, or even capitalism, where they can't enjoy the thought experiment of like, why did communism fail? And maybe ask the question of like, is it possible to make communism succeed? Or are there good ideas in communism? Like I enjoy the thought experiment, like the discourse of it, like the reasoning and like devil's advocate and all that. People seem to not have patience for that. They're like, communism bad, red." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was obsessed with the question and still am. I will never be, I will never quench my thirst for Russian history. I love that period of 1890 to 1925. It's just like, it's so fucking crazy. Like the autocracy embodied in Tsar Alexander. And then you get this like weird fail son, Nicholas, who is kind of a good guy, but also terrible. And also Russian autocracy itself is terrible. And then I just became obsessed with the question of like, why did the Bolshevik revolution succeed? Because like people in Russia didn't necessarily want Bolshevism. People suffered a lot under Bolshevism and it led to Stalinism. How did Vladimir Lenin do it, right? Like, and I became obsessed with that question. And it's still, I find it so interesting, which is that series of accidents of history, incredible boldness by Lenin, incredible realpolitik, smart. Unpopular decisions made by Trotsky and Stalin and just like the arrogance of the czars and of the of the Russian like autocracy and just but at the same time there's all these like cultural implications of this right in terms of like how it became hollowed out post Catherine the Great and all that. I was obsessed with autocracy because Russia was an actual autocracy. And like actually, and I'm like, it was there. Like they didn't even remove serfdom to like the civil war in America. Like that's crazy. Like, you know, and nobody really talks about it. And I just, yeah, I was like, was Bolshevism a natural reaction to the excesses of czarism? There is a convenient explanation where that is true, but there were also a series of decisions made by Lenin and Stalin to kill many of the people in the center-left and marginalize them, and also not to associate with the more, quote-unquote, like, amenable communists in order to make sure that their pure strain of Bolshevism was the only thing. And the reason I like that is because it comes back to a point I made earlier. It's all about intentionality, which is that you actually can will something into existence. even if people don't want it. That was the craziest thing. Nobody wanted this, but it still ruled for half a century, well, more actually. I mean, almost 75 years." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's fascinating to think that there could have been a history of the Soviet Union that was dramatically different than Leninism, Stalinism. that was completely different, like almost would be the American story." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Oh, easily. I mean, there's a world where, and I don't have all the characters, there's like Kerensky and then there was like whoever Lenin's number two, Stalin's chief rival. And even, I mean, look, even a Soviet union led by Trotsky, that's a whole other world, right? Like literally a whole other world. And Yeah, it's just, I don't know. I find it so interesting. I will never not be fascinated by Russia. I always will. It's funny that I get to talk to you, because it's like, I read this book, I forget what it's called. It won, I think it won a Pulitzer Prize. And it was like the story of, I tried to understand Russia post Crimea, because I came up amongst people who are much more like neoconservative, and they're like, fuck Russia, bad, bye. And I was like, okay, like, what do these people think? We have this narrative of the fall of the Soviet Union, and then I read this book from the perspective of Russians who lived through the fall, and they were like, I was like, this is terrible. Actually, the introduction of capitalism was awful, and the rise of all these crazy oligarchs, that's why Putin came to power, to restore order to the oligarchy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he still talks to this day. Do you guys, I mean, that's always the threat of like, do you want to return to the nineties? Right. Do you want to return to Yeltsin?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. And, and like, but the thing is in the West, we have this like our own propaganda of like, no, Yeltsin was great. That was the golden age. What could have been with Russia? And I was like, well, what do actual Russians think? And so that, yeah, I'll always be fascinated by it. And then just like to understand the idea of feeling encircled by NATO and all of that, you have to understand like Russian defense theory all the way going back to the czars has always been defense in depth in terms of having Estonia, Lithuania, and more is like protection of the heartland. I'm not justifying in this. So NATO shills, like, please don't come after me. But look, Estonians like NATO. They want to be in NATO. So I don't want to minimize that. I'm more just saying, like, I understand him and Russia much better having done that. And we are very incapable in America. I think this is probably because my parents are immigrants. I've traveled a lot of putting yourself in the mind of people who aren't and haven't lived a history, especially our lives of America's fucking awesome. We're the number one country in the world. I'm like, we're literally better than you, like in many ways. And they can't empathize with people who have suffered so much." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I just, yeah, it's just so interesting to me. What about if we could talk for just a brief moment about the human of Putin and power. You are clearly fascinated by power. Do you think power changed Putin? Do you think power changes leaders? If you look at the great leaders in history, whether it's LBJ, FDR, do you think power really changes people? Is there a truth to that kind of old proverb?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It reveals. I think that's what it is. It reveals. So Putin was a much more deft politician, much more amenable to the West. If you think back, you know, to 2001 and more. Right. When he came because he was still at that time, his biggest problem was intra-Russian politics. Right. Like it was all consolidating power within the oligarchy. Once he did that by around like 2007, there's that famous time when he spoke out against the West at the Munich Security Conference. I forget when it was. And that's when everybody in the audience was like. And he was talking about like NATO encirclement and like we will not be beaten back by the West very shortly afterwards, like the Georgia invasion happens. And that was like a big wake up call of like we will not be pushed around anymore. I mean, he said before publicly, like the worst thing that ever happened was the fall. Or what did he say? It was like the fall of the Soviet Union was a tragedy. Yeah, of course people in the West like what I'm like, I get it right like they were a superpower now their Population is declining. It's like a petro state. It sucks. Like I understand I understand like how somebody could feel about that. I think it revealed his character. I which is that he, I think he thinks of himself probably as he always has since 2001, as like this benevolent, almost as a benevolent dictator. He's like, without me, the whole system would collapse. I'm the only guy keeping these people in, I'm the only guy keeping all these people in check. Most Russians probably do support Putin because they feel like they support some form of functional government and they view it as like a check. against that, which is a long, you know, has a long history within Russia too. So I don't know if it changed him. I think it just revealed it because it's not like he, I mean, he has a bill, you know, Navalny has put that like billion dollar palace and all that. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like Putin does that for show. He doesn't seem like somebody who indulges in all that stuff. Or maybe we just don't see it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Like, I don't know. Well, I don't. It's very difficult for me to understand. I've been hanging out, thanks to Clubhouse, I've gotten to learn a lot about the Navalny folks, and it's been very educational. made me ask a lot of important questions about what, you know, question a lot of my assumptions about what I do and don't know. But I'll just say that I do believe, you know, there's a lot of the Navalny folks say that Putin is incompetent and is a bad executive, like is bad at basically running government. But to me- Well, why do Russians not think that? Well, they probably say propaganda. Yeah, they would say the control. There is a strong either control or pressure on the press, but I think there is a legitimate support and love of Putin in Russia that is not grounded in just misinformation and propaganda. There's legitimacy there. Mostly, I try to remain apolitical and actually genuinely remain apolitical. I am legitimately not interested. in the politics of Russia of today. I feel I have some responsibility, and I'll take that responsibility on as I need to, but my fascination, as it is perhaps with you in part, is in the historical figure of Putin. I know he's currently president, but I'm almost looking like as if I was a kid in 30 years from now reading about him, studying the human being, the games of power that are played that got him to gain power, to maintain power, what that says about his human nature, the nature of the bureaucracy that's around him, the nature of Russia, the people, all those kinds of things, as opposed to the politics and the manipulation and the corruption and the control of the media that results in misinformation. You know, those are the bickering of the day, just like we were saying, what will actually be remembered about this moment in history? Totally." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He's a transformational figure in Russian history, really, like the bridge between the fall of the Soviet Union and the chaos of Yeltsin. That will be how he's remembered. The only question is what comes next and what he wants to come next. That's, I'm always fat. I'm like, he's getting up. How old is he? 60 something?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, 60. So he would be, I think he would be 80. So with the change of the constitution, he cannot be president until, I don't know. 2034, I think it is. So he would be like 80 something and he would be in power for over 30 years, which is longer than Stalin. So, but he still, he still seems to be- He seems fit." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think he's going to be around for a long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But this is a fascinating question that you asked, which is like, what does he want?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know. Yeah, that's the question. I don't, I, and this is where I think given all of his behavior and more, I don't know if it's about money. I don't know if it's about enriching himself. Obviously he did to the tune of billions and billions and billions of dollars, but I think he probably, he's as close to like an actual Russian nationalist, like at the top who really does believe in Russia as his rightful superpower. Everything he does seems to stem from that opposition to NATO, intro to Syria, like wanting to play a large role in affairs, deeply distrustful and yet coveting of the European powers. Like, I could describe every czar, you know, in those same language, like every czar falls into the exact same category." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It makes me wonder, looking at some of the biggest leaders in human history, to ask the question of what was the motivation? What was the motivation for even just the revolutionaries like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin? What was the motivation? Because it sure as hell seems like the motivation was at least in part driven by the idea by ideas, not self interest of like power." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For Lenin, it was, I think he was a true believer and an actual narcissist who thought he was the only one who could do it. Stalin, I do think just wanted power and realized, well, I don't know. Look, he wrote very passionately when he was young." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And he really believed in communism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In the beginning he did. What I'm always fascinated is I'm like, around 1920, what happened, right? Post-revolution, you crushed the whites. Now it's all about consolidation. That's where the games really began. And I'm like, I don't think that was about communism. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it became a useful propaganda tool, but it still seemed like he believed in it, whether it was, of course, this is the question. I mean, this is a problem with conspiracy theories for me. And this is legitimate criticism towards me about conspiracy theories, which is, you know, just because you're not like this doesn't mean others are like this. So I can't believe that somebody be like deeply two faced met them." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're welcome to Washington." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I think that I would be able to detect. I don't think so. No. These people are good. Well, my question is- I've seen it. Well, so there's difference, there's two-faced, there's different levels of two-faced. What I mean is to be killing people. and it's like house of cards style, right? And still present a front like you're not killing people. I don't know if, I guess it's possible, but I just don't see that at scale. Like there's a lot of people like that and I don't, I have trouble imagining That's such a compelling narrative that people like to say. That's the conspiratorial mindset. I think that skepticism is really powerful and important to have because it's true, a lot of powerful people abuse their power. But saying that out loud, I feel like people over assume that. I see that with use of steroids often in sports. People seem to make that claim about like everybody who's successful. And I want to be very, I don't know, something about me wants to be cautious because I want to give people a chance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Being purely cynical isn't helpful. People say this about me. He's only saying this to do this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah. But at the same time, being naively optimistic about everything is also kind of pedophilic. People are gonna fuck you over. And more importantly, that doesn't bother me. More importantly, you're not gonna be able to reason about how to create systems that are going to be robust to corruption, to malevolent parties. So in order to create, you have to have a healthy balance of both, I suppose. especially if you wanna actually engineer things that work in this world that has evil in it. I can't believe there's a book of Hitler on the desk. We've mentioned a lot of books throughout this conversation. I wonder, and this makes me really curious to explore in a lot of depth, the kind of books that you're interested in. I think you mentioned in your show that you provide recommendations. Yes, I do. In the form of spoken word, can you beyond what we've already recommended, mention books, whether it is historical, nonfiction, or whether it's more like philosophical or even fiction that had a big impact on your life? Is there a few that you can mention?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Sure. I already talked about the Johnson books, so I'll leave that alone. Robert A. Caro, he's still alive, thank God. He's finishing the last book. I hope he makes it. So that, those Johnson books. Second- Can I ask you a question about those books?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yes. What the hell do you fit into so many pages?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let me tell you this. So I'll just give an anecdote. This is why I love these books. The beginning, the first book is about Lyndon Johnson. Yes. His life to when he gets elected to Congress. The book begins with a history of Texas and its weather patterns and then of his great, great grandfather moving to Texas. Yes. Then the story of that about 100 or so pages in, you get to Lyndon Johnson. Yes, that's how. That's how you do it, which is you get a Tolstoy style. It's because this is the thing. It's not a biography. It's a story of the times. That's a great biography. So another one. This isn't part of my list, so don't do is grant off the record. Ron Chernow, Ron Chernow's grant. It's a thousand pages. And the reason I tell everybody to read it is It's not just the story of Grant. It is the story of pre-Civil War America, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, all told in the life of one person who was involved in all three. Most people don't know anything about the Mexican-American War. It's fascinating. Most people don't know anything about Reconstruction. Now more so, because people are talking, it's a hot topic now. I've been reading about it for years. That is another thing people need to learn a lot more about. In terms of non-history books, The book that probably had the most impact on me, which is also historical nonfiction, is I Am Obsessed with Antarctic Exploration. And it all began with a book called Shackleton's Incredible Journey. which is the collection of diaries of everybody who was on Shackleton's journey. For those who don't know, Shackleton was the last explorer of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. He led a ship called the Endurance, which froze in the ice off the coast of Antarctica in 1914. And they didn't have radios over the last exploration, the last one without the age of radio. And he happens to freeze in the ice. And then the ship collapses after a year frozen in the ice. And this man leads his entire crew from that ship onto the ice with a team of dogs, survives out on the ice for another year with three little lifeboats, and is able to get all of his men, every single one of them alive, to an island hundreds of miles away called Elephant Island. And when they got there, he had to leave everybody behind except for six people. And him and two other guys, I'm forgetting their names, navigated by the stars 800 miles through the Drake Passage with seas of hundreds of feet to Prince, I think it's called Prince George's Island. And then when they got to Prince George's Island, they landed on the wrong side and they had to hike from one side to the other to go and meet the whalers. And every single one of those things was supposed to be impossible. Nobody was ever supposed to hike that island. It wasn't done again until like the 1980s with professional equipment. He did it after two years of starvation. Nobody was ever supposed to make it from Elephant Island to Prince George. The guy, they had to hold him steady, his legs, so that he could chart the stars. And if they miss this island, they're into open sea, they're dead. And then before that, how do you survive for a year on the ice, on seals? And before that, He kept his crew from depression frozen one year in the ice. It's just an amazing story. And it made me obsessed with Antarctic exploration. So I've read like 15 books on." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What the hell is it about the human spirit that enables that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the thing about Antarctica is it brings it out of you. So for example, I read another one recently called Mawson's Will. Douglas Mawson, he was an Australian. He was on one of the first Robert Frost expeditions. He leads an expedition down to the South. Him and a partner, they're leading explorations, 1908, something like that. They're going around Antarctica. Um, with dog teams and one of the, what happens is they keep going over these snow bridges where there's a crevice, but it's covered in snow. And so the, one of the, the lead driver, the dogs go over and they plummet. and that sled takes with it. So the guy survives, but that sled takes all their food, half the dogs, their stove, the camping tent, the tent specifically designed for the snow, everything. And they're hundreds of miles away from base camp. He and this guy have to make it back there in time before the ship comes to come get them on an agreed upon date. And he makes it. But the guy he was with, he dies. And it's a crazy story. First of all, they have to eat the dogs. A really creepy part of Antarctic exploration is everyone ends up eating dogs at different points. And part of the theory, which is so crazy, is that the guy he was with was dying because they were eating dog liver. And dog liver has a lot of vitamin E, which if you eat too much of it can give you like a poisoning. And so Mawson, by trying to help his friend, was giving him more liver. Of all the things that kills you. Yes, I know, his dog liver. And so his friend ends up dying, have a horrific heart attack, all of that. Mawson crawls back hundreds of miles away, makes it back to base camp hours after the ship leaves. And two guys or a couple of guys stayed behind for him. And he basically has to recuperate for like six months before he can even walk again. But it's like you were saying about the human spirit. It's like Antarctica brings that out of people. Or Amundsen, the guy who made it to the South Pole, Robert Amundsen, oh my God. Like this guy trained his whole life in the ice from Norway to make it to the South Pole. And he beat Robert Frost, the British guy with all this money and all these, I could go on this forever. I'm obsessed with him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, first of all, I'm going to take this part of the podcast. I'm going to set it to music. I'm going to listen to it because I've been whining and bitching about running 48 miles with Goggins this next weekend. And this is going to be so easy. I'm just going to listen to this over and over in my head." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Elon's obsessed with Shackleton. He talks about him all the time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "He uses, I was going to ask you about that, he uses an example of, that is an example of what Mars colonization would be like. He's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, Antarctica is as close to, you can simulate that. Um, the Antarctica is as close to what you could simulate, what it would get that, that Nat geo series on Mars. I'm not sure if you watched it. It's incredible. Elon's actually in it. Um, and it kind of, and it's like, they get there, everything goes wrong. Somebody dies. Like it's horrible. They can't find any water. It's not working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what is it? Is it like simulating the experience of what it'd be like to colonize?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's like a docu-series where the fictionalized part is the like astronauts on Mars, but then they're interviewing people like Elon Musk and others who are the ones who like paved the way to get to Mars. So it's a really interesting concept. I think it's on Netflix. And yeah, I agree with him 100%, which is that the first guys to make, like, for example, Robert Frost, who went to Australia, Sorry, to Antarctica, the British explorer who was beaten to the South Pole three weeks by Robert Amundsen, he died on the way back. And the reason why is because he wasn't well prepared. He was arrogant. He didn't have the proper amounts of supplies. His team had terrible morale. Antarctica is a brutal place. If you fuck up one time, you die. And it's like, and this is what you read a lot about, which is the reason why such heroic characters like Shackleton shine is a lot of people died. Like there were some people who got frozen in the eye. I mean, man, this again also came to the North exploration. So I read a lot about like the exploration of the North Pole and same thing. These unextraordinary men take people out into the ice and get frozen out there for years and shit goes so bad. They end up eating each other. They all die. There's a famous, I'm forgetting his name, the British Franklin Expedition, where they went searching for them for like 20 years. And they eventually came across a group of Inuit who were like, oh yeah, we saw some weird white men here like 15 years ago. And they find their bones and there's like saw marks which show that they were eating each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean- So history remembers the ones who didn't eat each other." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, well, yeah, we remember the ones who made it, but there are- And that would be the story of Mars as well." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That will be the story of Mars. And nevertheless, that's the interesting thing about Antarctica, nevertheless, something about human nature drives us to explore it. Yes. And that seems to be like, you know, a lot of people have this kind of, to me, frustrating conversations like, well, Earth is great, man. Why do we need to colonize Mars? He just don't get it. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. It's the same people that say like, why are you running? Like, why are you running a marathon? What are you running from, man? I don't know. It's pushing the limits of the human mind of what's possible." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's George Mallory because it's there. It's simple." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that somehow actually, the result of that, if you wanna be pragmatic about it. there's something about pushing that limit that has side effects that you don't expect that will create a better world back home for the people, not necessarily on Earth, but just in general, it raises the quality of life for everybody, even though the initial endeavor doesn't make any sense. The very fact of pushing the limits of what's possible then has side effects of benefiting everybody. And it's difficult to predict ahead of time or what those benefits will be. Same with colonizing Mars. It's unclear what the benefits will be for Earth or in general with struggling- What did we get from the moon?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What did we get from Apollo, right? Technically, and there were a lot of socialists at the time making this argument. They're like, all this money going. You know what? We went to the fucking moon in 1969. That was amazing. The greatest feat in human history, period. What did we learn from it? We learned, We learned about interstellar or interplanetary travel. We learned that we could do something off of a device less powerful than the computer in my pocket. Like the amount of potential locked within my pocket and your pocket. I mean, this is if you were to define my policies in one way, it's greatness, like a quest for national greatness. There is no greatness without fulfilling the ultimate calling of the human spirit, which is more. It's not enough. And why should it be? It wasn't enough. You know, our ancestors. could have been content to sit, well, actually many of them were, were content to sit and say, these berries will be here for a long time. And they got eaten and they died. And it's the ones who got out and went to the next place and the next place and went across the Siberian land bridge and went across more and just did extraordinary things. The craziest ones, we are their offspring and we fail them if we don't go into space. That's how I would put it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You should run for president." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm just pro space, man, I love space." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, you're pro doing difficult things and pushing, exploring the world in all of its forms. I hope that kind of spirit permeates politics too, that same kind of- It can, it can. Well, it can, and I hope so. I don't know if you want to stay on it, but I think that was book number one or two." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh shit, yeah, okay, all right, all right. Well, this one is second, this actually is a corollary to that, which is Sapiens. And I know that's a very normal, normy answer. One of the best-selling book, I think there's a reason for that. Yuval Noah Harari, okay, look, yes, he didn't do any new research. I get that. All he did was aggregate. I'm sure he's very controversial in the scientific community. But guess what? He wrote a great book. It's a very easy to read, general explanation of the rise of human history. And it helps challenge a lot of preconceptions. Are we special? Are we an accident? Are we more like a parasite? Are we not? What is there a destiny to all of us? I don't know. You know, if anything, it's like what I just described, which is more move, move out the evolution of money like I know he gets a lot of hate, but I think that he writes it so clearly and well that for your average person to be able to read that, you will come away with a more clear understanding of the human race than before. And I think that that's why it's worth it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I agree with you a hundred percent. I'm ashamed to, I usually don't bring up Sapiens because it's like- Yeah, it's like everybody's uncle has read it, but that's a good thing. It is one of the, I think it'll be remembered as one of the great books of this particular era. Yeah, because it's so clearly, it's like the selfish gene with Dawkins. I mean, it just aggregates so many ideas together and puts language to it that makes it very useful to talk about. So it is one of the great books." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One hundred percent. Another one is definitely born to run for the same reason by Christopher McDougal, which is that I'm going to listen to this whole podcast next week. You got it. You should because it you are inheriting our most basic skill, which is running and. Reimagining human history or reimagining like what we were as opposed to what we are is very useful because it helps you understand how to tap into primal aspects of your brain which just drive you. And the reason I love McDougall's writing is because I love anybody who writes like this, Malcolm Gladwell, who else? Michael Lewis, people who find characters to tell a bigger story. Michael Lewis finds characters to tell us the story of the financial crisis. Malcolm Gladwell writes, finds characters to tell us the story of learning new skills and outliers and whatever his latest book is, I forget what it's called. But McDougall, tells the vignettes and a tiny story of a single person in the history of running and like how it's baked into your DNA. And I think there was just something very useful to that for me for being like, I don't need to go to the gym or like, I'm not saying you should still go to the gym. I'll be clear. I'm saying like, in order to fulfill like who you are, you can actually tap into something that's the most basic. I don't know if, I'm sure you've listened to the David Cho episode with Joe Rogan." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, where he's the animal?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, with the baboon. And there's something to that, man. There's something to that, where it's just like, they are living the way that we were supposed to. Well, I don't want to put a normative judgment on it. They're living the way that we used to." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's something very- It feels more honest somehow to our true nature." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a guy I follow on Instagram. I've come from Paul Saladino, CarnivoreMD. He just went over there to the Hadza to live with them. And I was watching his stuff just like, I was like, man, there's something in you that wants to go. I'm like, I want to do that. I wouldn't be very good at it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I'm so glad that somebody who thinks deeply about politics is so fascinated with exploration and with the very basic nature, like human nature, nature of our existence. I love that. There's something in you. And still you're stuck in DC." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "For now, for now." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Speaking of which, you are from Texas. Yes. What do you make of the future of Texas politically, culturally, economically? I am in part moving, well, I'm moving to Austin. But I'm also doing the Eric Weinstein advice, which is like, dude, you're not married, you don't have kids. There's no such thing as moving. What are you moving? You're like your three suits and some shirts and underwear. What exactly is the move entail? So I have nothing. So I'm basically, you know, it's very just remain mobile, but there's a promise, there's a hope to Austin outside of, I mean, my, outside of just like friendships, I have no, it's a very different culture that Joe Rogan is creating. I'm mostly interested in the, what the next Silicon Valley would be, what the next hub of technological innovation. And there's a promise. maybe a dream for Austin being that next place that doesn't have the baggage of some of the political things, maybe some of the sort of things that hold back the beauty of that makes capitalism, that makes innovation so powerful, which is like a meritocracy, which is excellence. Diversity is exceptionally important, but it should not be the only priority. It has to be something that coexists with an insatiable drive towards excellence. And it seems like Texas is a nice place, like having Austin, which is like a kind of, this weird, I hope it stays weird, man. I love weird people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't know about that, but we can get into it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But there's this hope is it remains this weird place of brilliant innovation amidst a state that's like more conservative. So like there's a nice balance of everything. What are your thoughts about the future of Texas?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think it's so fascinating to me because I never thought I would want to move back but now I'm beginning to be convinced. So- You hear that, Joe? I'm gonna send you this clip. I'm being honest, and many Texans will hate me for this. Texas was not a place that was kind to me, quote unquote. And this is because of my own parent, like, I was raised in College Station, Texas, which is a town of 50,000. It's a university town. It exists only for the university. So it was a very strict, I did not get the full Texas experiences, purely speaking from a college station experience. But growing up first, you know, first generation, or I forget what it is, whatever. I'm the first American I was born and raised in college station. My parents are from India. being raised in a town where the dominant culture was predominantly like white evangelical Christian was hard. Like it was just difficult. And I think of it, in the beginning, I would say like ages like zero to like eight, it was like cultural ignorance, as in like, they just don't know how to interact with you. And there was a level of always there was like the evangelical kind of antipathy Towards like you being not Christian, you know, my parents are Hindu like that's how I was raised and so like there was that but 9-11 was very difficult like 9-11 happened when I was in third or fourth grade and And that changed everything, man. Like, I mean, our temple had to, like, print out t-shirts. And I'm not saying this is a sob story, to be clear. I'm still actually, largely, for my adult life, identified on the political right. So don't take this as some, like, you know, race manifesto. I'm just telling it like this is what happened, which is that, like, we had... It was just hard to be brown, frankly, and to have some of the fallout from 9-11 and during Iraq. And the reason I am political is because I realize in myself I have a strong rebellious nature against systems and structures of power. And the first people I ever rebelled against were all the people telling me to shut up and not question the Iraq war. So the reason I am in politics is because I hated George W. Bush with a passion and I hated the war. And I was so, again, my entire background is largely in national security for this reason, which is I was obsessed with the idea of like, how do we get people who are not going to get us into these quagmire situations in positions of power. That's how I became fascinated by power in the first place, was all a question of, how do this happen? Like, how did this catastrophe happen? I realized it's not as bad as like, you know, previous conflicts, but this one was mine. And to see how it changed our domestic politics forever. And so that was my rebellion. But it's funny, because I identified as a left, on the left, when I was growing up, up until I was 18, I had also a funny two-year stint. This is where everything kind of changed for me. When I was 16, actually, I moved to Qatar, to Doha, Qatar, because my dad was the dean or associate dean of Texas A&M University at Doha. So my last two years of high school were at this. I went from this small town in Texas, and I love my parents because they could recognize that I had within me that I was not a small town kid. So they took me out of this country every chance they got. I traveled everywhere and constantly let me go. And so I was, I went from school in College Station to like this ritzy private school, American school. Best thing that ever happened to me because first of all, it got me out of College Station. Second, At that time, I had this annoying streak of, I wouldn't call it being anti-America, but you don't appreciate America. Let me tell everybody out there listening, leave for a while. You will miss it so much. You do not know what it is like to not have freedom of speech until you don't have it. And I was going to high school with these guys in the Qatari royal family. And all I wanted to do was speak out about how they were pieces of shit for the way that they treated Indian citizens in that country who are basically used as slave labor. And I could not say one word because I knew I would be deported, and I knew my dad would lose his job, and my mom would lose her job, and we would be forced out of the country. You don't know what it's like to live like that, or to be in a society where you have a high school girlfriend or something, and you can't even touch in public, or you're lectured for public decency. Listen, I've lived under a Gulf monarchy now, and that turned me into the most pro-America guy ever. I came back. So, like, America, like, and I still am, frankly, because of that experience. Living abroad, like, that will do it to you. Live in a non-democracy. You have, even in Europe, I would say, you guys aren't living as free as we are here." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's awesome, and I love it. You're ultimately another human being than the one who left Texas." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So, I mean, have you actually considered moving to Texas? And broadly, just outside of your own story, what do you think is the future of Texas? What is the future of Austin? There's so much transformation seemingly happening now related to Silicon Valley, related to California." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "which is that since I left, it's changed dramatically, which is that it used to be like this conservative state where the main money to be made was oil. And everybody knew that Petro. It was a Petro state, Houston, all of that. Austin was always weird, but it was more of a music town and a university town. It was not a tech town. But in the 10 years or so since I left, I have begun to realize, I'm like, well, the Texas I grew up in is over. It is not a deep red state in any sense of the term. The number one U-Haul route in the country pre-pandemic already was San Francisco to Austin, okay? So like you have this massive influx of people from California and New York, and the state, the composition of it is changed dramatically. The intra composition and the outra, So the intracomposition, it's become way more urban. When I grew up, Texas was a much more rural state. It's politics were much more static. It looked much more like Rick Perry. He was a very accurate representation of who we were. Now, I don't think that that's the case. Texas is now a dynamic economy, not just 100% relying on oil because of it's kind of like, I would call it like regulatory arbitrage relative to California and New York, offers a large incentive to people who are more, I wouldn't say culturally liberal, but they're not necessarily like culturally conservative, like the people who I grew up with. That's changed the whole state's politics. Beto came two points away from beating Ted Cruz. I'm not saying the state's going to go blue. I think the Republican Party will just change and we'll have to readjust. But the re-urbanization of Texas has made it, I'll put it in this way, much more attractive to me than the place that I grew up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And from my perspective, well, first of all, I love some of the the cowboy things that Texas stands for. But for more practically, from my perspective, the injection of the tech innovation that's moving to Texas has made it very exciting to me. It seems like outside of all that, maybe you can speak to the weird in Austin. It seems like I know that Joe Rogan is a rich sort of almost like mainstream at this point. But he's also attracting a lot of weirdos. And so is Elon. And a lot of those weirdos are my friends. And they're like Michael Malice, like those weirdos. And it's like, I have a hope for Austin that all kinds of different flavors of weirdos will get injected." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "The protests are now in their sixth week. The death of that young woman, a Kurd, who was visiting Tehran as a tourist, sparked something very deep that's particularly concerned the younger generations. That is what you would call the equivalent of the Z generation in this country. They call themselves Dahaye Hashtadi in Persian, because Iran follows the solar calendar of its own. It's an ancient solar calendar. And the time that they were born, they were in the, 1380s, that's what they called themselves, Hashtadi, 80s, Hashtad for the 80s. And, well, the circumstances that surrounds the unfortunate death of this young, beautiful Kurdish woman is really tragic. She was arrested by what is referred to as the Morality Police. Morality Patrol called the Gasht-e-Ershad Guidance Police, that is. Presumably there were two women, fully clad, that is officers serving on that force, and two men. And nobody exactly knows what had happened. She had been beaten up, and apparently there was no sign of any wrongdoing on her side. She was fully covered. It seems that there was some altercation in the process. And the outcome was that she was unconscious, not necessarily when she was arrested, but in the course of the detention, when they take them to a center, presumably to re-educate them. And she apparently collapsed, and maybe my sense is that she must have had some kind of a problem because of the skull being broken or something had happened. And she died in the hospital the next day. And that, through the social media, was widely spread throughout Iran. And almost the next day, surprisingly, you could see this outburst of sympathy for her. People are in the streets weeping because she was seen as such an innocent young woman, 22 years old. And the family, the mother and the father, also mourning for her. And being a Kurd visiting Tehran, this all added up to really turn her into some kind of a martyr of this cause. And that's what it is. And her picture, graphics that were artistically produced based on her portrait, has now dominates basically as the symbol of this protest movement. And the protest movement goes on. Everybody was thinking, or at least the authorities were thinking, that it's going to die out in a matter of a few days. but it became more intense, first in the streets of Tehran by young women, mostly probably between, I would say, 17, 18 teenagers to 22, 23, or thereabouts, and then to university campuses all around the country, and then even to high schools. And that also made it a very remarkable protest movement because, first of all, it involves the youth, and not necessarily the older generations. You see them around, but not as many. Also, you see men and women together, young, girls and boys, and they are adamant, they are desperate in the sense of the tone of their protest. And they are extremely courageous because they stand against the security forces that were immediately were sent off to the streets. And in full gear, that is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what are the currents of pain, emotion, what is this turmoil that rose to the surface that resulted in these big protests? What are the different feelings, ideas that came to the surface here that resulted in such quick scaling of this protest?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, if you listen to the main slogan which is the message of this movement it's called women life freedom which is a translation of actually the Kurdish equivalent which is close to Persian being in the European language and it's apparently initiated first in the Syrian Kurdistan. where they were fighting against the Islamic Daesh forces, because they were attacking the Yazidis there, and the women being enslaved. But the message, as it moved, historians are interested in this kind of trends. So it has moved to Kurdistan and from Kurdistan, now being the message of this movement, reflects pretty much sums up what this movement is all about. Women in the forefront, because of all the, one might say, discriminations, the treatment, the humiliation, that this younger generation feels, well, not only the younger generations, but most of the Iranian secular middle classes since 1979, basically, for the past 43 years. And they would think that These all basically symbolized or represented by the wearing, the mandatory wearing of the hijab, which is at the core of this protest. You see the young women, if you look at many of these clips that comes through in the past six weeks, Women in streets take off their mandatory scarves, which is a young shawl, or some kind of a head covering, that's all. And they throw it into the bonfire in the middle of the street, and they dance around it, and slogans. So there is a sense of complete rejection. of what this regime for 42 years, 43 years, have been imposing on women. It's not, as it's sometimes been portrayed, a movement against hijab through and through. But it basically says, you know, there has to be a choice for those who want to wear hijab and those want to remain without hijab." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah the hijab is a symbol of something much deeper." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Much deeper and actually before we get into that it's interesting to note that in many of these demonstrations we see in the university campuses or in the streets you see women with hijab young women with hijab, or next to those have to remove their hijab and they're together basically protesting. That's the most interesting feature of these demonstrations. And then men and women together against the segregation that the regime has imposed upon them all these years. Now, in terms of what it represents, As I pointed out, one is the question of the whole series of, one might say, civil and legal discriminations against women. You are considered as a kind of a second-class citizen. You depend on your men. There's a kind of a patriarchy that has been institutionalized in the Islamic Republic in a very profound fashion. And that means that probably in matters of divorce, marriage and divorce, in matters of custody of your children, in matter of inheritance, in matter of freedom of movement, you depend on your husband, your father, your brother, a male member of your family, your child even, your son. could be the case. And because of that, obviously, a younger generation, who is so well-informed through social media, knows about the world as much as an American does, American kid does, probably sometimes more. They're very, very curious. It's from what I hear, or sometimes that I met a few of them outside Iran. You'll see that, Hadi, this new generation is, completely different from what the Islamic Republic wanted to create in its social engineering. It's basically the failure of 43 years of the Islamic Republic's act of imposition of a certain so-called Islamic values on women. Then it's a matter of education. You would see that there is segregation in the schools. One of the issues that now, right now, is at the heart of this demonstration is that self-services in many of the campuses of Iranian universities are segregated, male and female, to different rooms, to different halls. Now they are breaking through the walls virtually everywhere and sit together. in order to basically resist the authorities who wants to impose segregation. In matters of appearance in the public, of course, it may seem to us as kind of trivial and secondary, but appearance is important. Clothing is important. How you would imagine yourself is important. They don't want to be. seen in the way that the authorities would like to impose upon them as this kind of an idea of a chaste Islamic woman who is fully covered and is fully protected. The idea of a male member of the family protects. the female, that is what you would see at the heart of this rebellion. And of course, that goes with everything. There's the second part of this message, the idea of life. basically means, if you like to use the American equivalent of this, the pursuit of the happiness. That's what they want. They want fun. They want music. They want dancing. They want to be free in the street. They want to have boyfriends and live freely and don't be constantly looked by the big brother to tell them what to do and not to do or not to do. So that is, that they share virtually with the entire Iranian society as a whole. Although the older generations, that's a big puzzle. But you would see that the older generation don't, so far at least, don't take part as extensively as one might imagine. And this is a variety of reasons. Perhaps we can get to that later on, if you like. But as far as this younger generation, they don't care. They don't listen even as much to their parents as the older generations did. So one might say even the nature of the relationship between the parents and the youth has changed. It's not the concept of again a patriarchy, that a father or even a mother would tell the daughter or son what to do. That's basically they have to negotiate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's fundamentally a rejection of the power of authority. Parents, government, it's that every person can decide their own fate and there's no lessening of value of the wisdom of old age and old institutions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Precisely, that's what it is. And they are surprisingly aware that's where they are as a generation. So it's a sense of pride, as we are different from the older generation. From your parents who compromised and lived with the restrictions that the Islamic regime put on you, your grandparents, who was the generation that actually involved in the revolution of 79, the parents, which were the middle generation, And these are the third generation after the revolution of 1979. And therefore, they differentiate themselves in terms of their identity from the older generation. So that's the life part of it. One can go more and more. They want to access. And they see on social media what happens in the rest of the world. They're well aware. They're much better digitally. skilled than my generation, for instance. And they know about all the personalities. They know about all the celebrities. They know about all the trends that goes up outside Iran. So that's a second part of this message. And then, of course, the third part is the word azadi, meaning freedom or liberty, which is this long-standing demand of the Iranians, I would say, for the whole century, ever since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, Iran has witnessed this problem of authorities that usually emerged at the end of a revolution to basically impose its own image on the population, on the youth, and create authoritarian regimes of which, over the course of time, I would say that the Islamic Republic is the worst, in the sense that its intrusion is not only in the political sense, for instance, banning the freedom of speech, meddling with the elections, banning political parties, all kinds of that things which are the political or civil freedoms, but it's intrusion into the personal life of the individual. which is the worst kind, in a sense, as you would see that there is always an authority that basically dominates your life or monitors your life. And they do it in a kind of a very consistent fashion, which makes this idea, of freedom so important as part of the message of this new movement. You would see that in today's Iran there are no independent political parties, there is very little probably freedom of the press. I wouldn't say that it's entirely gone, but it's fairly limited. There's enormous amount of propaganda machine which dominates the entire radio and TV system in Iran. It's completely in the hands of the government. And of course, you would see this variety of other tools for trying to indoctrinate Iranian population across the board. So that's another sign of this kind of a sense of, a sense of being, totally left out, you're not belonging to what's going on in terms of empowerment and disempowerment. So that's the situation as far as the idea of a freedom is concerned. And this free, somewhat miraculously, and perhaps unintentionally, the three parts of this message complement each other. Because perhaps for the first time we see that women are in the forefront of a I hesitate to say revolution because I'm not particularly happy with revolutions. Revolutions worldwide and in Iran have always been so miserable in terms of their outcome that we have to be careful not to use the word revolution again. So that's where it stands now. And the regime was thinking that, well, these are kids, they're going to go away. And then, of course, they're completely conspiratorial in their thinking. They constantly think that these are all the instigations and provocations of foreign powers. These are the great Satan, the United States, this is Israel, or these are the, it's actually the Supreme Leader says in so many words. His only response so far that he had, in the past six weeks with regard to these demonstrations is that these are the children of the Sabaq, Sabaq being the security forces of the Shah's time. That's 43 years later, he claims that the children, 16, 17 years, 20 years old, kids in the street, or the grandchildren or children of some imaginary survival of the Shah's security force." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's, the idea is that these protests are internal and external saboteurs, so people trying to sabotage the government." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. and they are misled as far as they can go." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And then there's the great Satan, United States and other places are controlling, sort of either controlling the narrative, feeding propaganda, or literally sending people to instigate." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I don't think even they have that kind of imagination. precise to say what you have said, that they would say that they're controlling the narrative. They basically say, no, these are agents. of the foreign powers. And their families are all sold out, and they are basically lost their loyalties to the great Islamic Republic, and therefore they can be treated so brutally, they can be suppressed so brutally. Which I haven't actually said what they are doing, because I thought perhaps first we should talk about who these kids are in the streets, before we move on about the response of the government. One major factor which seems to add to the anxiety of, well, the regime is extremely anxious now because they're in a position, this shows that they don't have the lack of confidence in a sense, that they would see them reacting in a very forceful way because basically they don't seem to have that kind of confidence to allow this message or the movement to be aired. But the one element which corresponds to that is that there is an expatriate population of Iranians worldwide. There are probably now, according to some estimates, close to four million, even more, Iranians abroad. And they're all over the world, from Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Western Europe, Turkey, and United States and Canada. So just to give you one example, last Saturday, there was a mass demonstrations in Berlin by the Iranians from Germany and all over Europe, Western Europe. And it was at least, I think probably the conservative estimate was about 100,000. So 100,000 Iranians showed up in Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the women in Iran or the movement in Iran. The government thinks obviously this must have been some instigation by foreign powers, and they want to destroy the Islamic Republic. And not only that, but their propaganda is kind of ridiculous. Because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers. I listened to the Iranian news, that is officially controlled, government controlled news. And in the papers, much of the papers that are in the control of the government. One of them, or actually the major news program portrayed the demonstrations that 10,000 people showed up in Berlin and protested against the rising prices, rising rates for gas and oil in Germany. So that's how they mislead in a very rather stupid fashion because probably 95% if not 100% of the Iranians are listening to Persian speaking media outside Iran. So it's a BBC Persia, there is Iran International, there are at least five or six of them." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's probably really important to highlight that Iran is a very modern and tech-savvy nation, not just the young people." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Probably more than I feel sometimes when I compare myself to what they are doing. Since 1979, the earlier years, for a decade or two, they tried in a very crude fashion to restrict access to media outside Iran, because it's all through dishes, okay? And satellite dishes are everywhere. If you look at the buildings, small towns and villages in Iran, there's always a dish. And they watch all kinds of things through this, and particularly because of what's happening now, they listen to all the news broadcasts from all this media, and they're extremely active. There are probably some of them even 24 hours or close, very extensive coverage of every clip that comes through. So what the government is doing now, the Islamic Republic, is that they restrict the entire internet. They shut down the internet. They shut down the internet, but they cannot afford shutting down the internet, because much of the business, much of the everyday life, much of the government affairs depends on the internet, like everywhere else. And Iran is extremely, If I hear from many of the colleagues and friends, you know, it's like, in certain respects, it's like Sweden, where you go there, there's no more currency, and for a very good reason, because there's so much inflation, that the banknotes are worthless, in a sense. So everything is through, you know, sweeping your card. And that entire system is in a standstill because people cannot buy food. You go to the supermarket, that's how you would do it. You order food to come to your house, which Iranians, at least the middle classes, the more prosperous middle classes, doing all the time. So they deliver everything. And because of the COVID, it became even more. And they have to pay all through this system. So what happens is that now they're estimating that every day, $50 million, the Iranian government or the Iranian economy is losing because of slowing the internet." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Plus the frustration is growing because you can't order food." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Among other things. I mean, they are in touch with WhatsApp, every Iranian, virtually every Iranian that has education, and education in the sense that has gone through, the high schools and universities knows how to use the WhatsApp." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a big middle class, like you said, secular middle class in Iran. And there, there's a lot of at least capacity for, if not revolution, then political, ideological turmoil." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And a huge amount of hatred." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the hatred has grown." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, hatred of the policies of the regime, of isolation. That's a huge point that you hear a great deal about. We don't want to be isolated. We don't want to be humiliated. Iran is not about this miserable regime that is ruling over us. We have a great culture. So there's a sense of pride. in their own culture, some of it Islamic, some of it pre-Islamic. So there's a huge sense of pride in that. And they see that they cannot communicate with the outside world. They want to travel abroad, which they do. I mean, for one thing, the Iranian regime never actually for the majority of the population, never put restrictions. It's not like the Soviet Union, where you used to have permission to move from one place to another. And then, of course, The Islamic regime, since 1979, basically chased away or destroyed the old middle class. That's my generation, basically, or my parents' generation. These are the secular middle class of the Pahlavi era, in the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic society of their own. The bad news for them was that that didn't happen, and that memory persisted, and the middle class that was created since past 40 years is much larger in size than what it was, because there was, of course, the demographic revolution. That's the very foundation of it, is the demographic revolution. Population in Iran, I've written an article about it, actually. Population in Iran since the turn of the century, last century, 20th century, population of Iran was about 9 million or so. It's now 83 million. And that is since 1979, the population was 35 million. between the past 40 years, it's basically doubled. So it's 83 million. Although, one of the great successes, I don't want to bore you with the details about the demography, but it's important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Please. Demographics is not boring." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can see that the birth rate was very high. Otherwise, you wouldn't have doubled your population in a matter of four decades. But Iranians, because of the urban shift to an urban population, because of the growth of the middle class, because of the education, they basically, the pattern of growth, population growth changed. Iran used to be 2.8 or 3% birth rate. in around 1980s, I would say, 1970s, 1980s. Now, it is 1.1. And it's probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control. Despite the government's consistent attempt to try to encourage people to have more kids, middle class refuses to do that. and this is middle class, not only anymore in the capital, but this is very smaller towns and cities, places that used to be villages. Now you look at them, they have a decent population, 50,000, 100,000, and they live an urban life and they don't want to be subjected to that old pattern of agrarian society when you had 10 children or eight children. And of course, it's much more advanced in terms of health and medicine. So you don't lose children as they used to. The antibiotics, there's all ways of kids to survive. And therefore, if you have 10 kids, you're sick with 10 kids. You don't end up with four as it used to be in the past. Six of them would have died up to the age of five, actually. But now, because of that, you see that this urban population in the cities have completely different demands. And of course, the education is important. That's another area of how the social engineering of the Islamic Republic went away, because they were thinking that, you know, the growth of the population, the growth of the educated, higher educated middle classes in their benefit, or they could not even control it, in a sense. Now, Iran in my time probably had in the 1970s, probably by the time of the revolution, had 10, 12 universities. Now it has 56 universities all across the country, and there is something referred to as the free university, Azad, which has campuses all over the country. It has 321 campuses all around Iran. What does that mean? In many respects, this youth, that are brought up in these families, even in small towns, in very traditional families, in families that belong to that kind of a more religious, loyal to the clergy or to the clerical classes, their children, can now move on, particularly women. Because in my times, it would have been unheard of that you would have a young woman of 18, or 17, 18, 19, from a traditional city such as, for instance, Yazd, or in Southeastern Iran, to move on elsewhere for education, as you do in this country. Now, it's completely accepted that a woman wears hijab because he's forced to wear hijab to go to a university completely on the other side of the country. And this movement of the population, not only because of the universities, but in general, if you now visit Iran, you hear accents, local accents, provincial accents, all over the country. That is a Azerbaijani-Turkish accent from the northwest of the country. You can hear it in the Far East province in the South, and vice versa. So, and Kurdish, for instance, or even more marginal regions, such as Sistan province in the southeast of Iran, which has been the subject of this recent massacre when they actually attacked the population when demonstrating and killed a fair number, at least 60 people. So this movement of the population this creation of a larger middle class, the better educated middle class, much better educated. Iran has 86% literacy, which I think probably, I haven't checked that, but probably is better than Turkey even, is probably better than anywhere else in the Middle East." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it sounds like that's quickly increasing. Because of the movement, because of the growth of the education system, that's... Precisely." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Iran has one million school teachers, which may not seem as much if you're in the United States, but it's a fairly big number." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you linger on the massacre? What happened there?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, the Sistan province is a Baluch ethnicity, of Baluch ethnicity. Baluch is a... particular ethnic group in southern Iran, which is Sunni rather than Shi'i, majority." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we should say that most of Iran is Shi'i, and that's a branch of Islam. Shi'ism, yes. Let's maybe just briefly linger, Shi'ism and Sunni, what... Let's not get into it. Yeah, I don't want to. Let's do a one sentence summary and that maybe which is what most of Iran is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Majority of the population of the Muslim world are Sunnis. That is a mainstream, if you like to call it. Actually, sunnah means that kind of a mainstream." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you actually linger on the sunni, sunnah, shia?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Shia means party. means those that belongs to a party of Ali, which was, goes back to the early Islamic history of 7th century." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, I'm almost lingering to the silly notion of pronunciation and stuff like that. So, ah, ah means part, like what, what does the extra I at the end do?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Shi'i means belonging to the Shi'i community. Shi'am is a person of a Shi'a. If you say, are you a Shi'a? Yes, I'm a Shi'a. And Shi'i is the community. And in English, when it was Anglicized, it becomes Shi'ite. So if you say Shi'ite in today, it's perfectly acceptable. And of course, I myself, in my writings, I always, a switch between one and the other. One of my books is always Shiite, the other book's always Shiite. And that hasn't been settled. But the Shiite population is smaller compared to the Sunni population in the world. In the world. In the world. But in Iran, it's the opposite. Iran and Iraq, and possibly now Lebanon, are the three countries who barely, Iraq and Lebanon, have barely majority Shi'i population, whereas Iran is a large Shi'i population due to its history of conversion to Shi'ism. That by itself is another story. But in the sense that the way that historically it evolved, the center became more Shi'i, And the peripheries remained Sunni. So you have communities of the Baluch in the Southeast. You have the Kurds. A large portion of the Kurds are Sunnis. They have Shi'is as well, and they have the indigenous religion of their own, what's called Ahle Haqq, which is the religion of indigenous to Kurdistan. There are Turkmens in the northeast of Iran, who are also Sunnis. There are other communities in Khorasan region, in the peripheries of Afghanistan, they are also Sunnis. And you have some Arab population, Arab-speaking population in the Khuzestan province, in the southwest of Iran, which is also, or across the Persian Gulf." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is there a lot of conflict between these regions? And also, like if I blindfolded you and dropped you off in one of the regions, would you quickly recognize the region? Like by the food, by the music, by the accents, by so on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, the answer to your lovely question, which I think, I hope it would have happened to me, is that yes, you would see different cultures. But different food, most important, different accents. Or different languages, since they have dialects. Baluch is a different language altogether. or so for that matter, Kurdish, which is closer to Persian because they're all Indo-European languages. But Turkish, Azeri Turkish, which is probably closer to the Turkish of Turkey, Republic of Turkey, or to the Republic of Azerbaijan in the north. They are the same, basically. Actually, if you would have looked, that's a fascinating picture. If you have looked at the, let's say even 19th century, early 20th century linguistic map of Iran, you would have been amazed in the number of dialects, in the number of languages that have survived. This is an ancient country, it's an ancient land. and it's a lot of mountains all around it, or big deserts. So there's a sense of isolation. So you would say here and there you see a different community that speaks differently. All ancient traditions and languages. Yeah, and because of the great number of invasions that Iran witnessed over more than two and a half millennia, Of course, all kinds of cultures were introduced into Iran. Ethnicities were introduced to Iran, mostly coming from the northeast of Iran, from the lowlands of Central Asia and beyond, and continued into Iran proper. But now, what has happened, that's my point that I wanted to make, a century of modernity, or modernization, has produced a national culture of great strength, in a sense, I would say. I ended my book, the book on Iran, Iran in Modern History, basically saying that despite everything else that has created so much trouble for today's Iran, there is a sense of a cultural identity that is very strong. And I think I can say with some confidence that despite this, despite this regional identities that are still there and they're great and they should be celebrated, today if you go to Kurdistan or if you go to, they all can speak Persian. They all have an education in Persian. So they all basically are becoming part of, whether they like the regime in power or not, they have a sense of belonging to a culture and an identity with the center. And of course, the idea of a center versus periphery in Iran is very old. goes back to ancient times, because even the name of the country was the guarded domains of Iran. This is the official name, Ma'malik-e-Mahrose-e-Iran. Namely, that it was recognized that this is not just one entity, but it's a collection of entities. Like the United States of America. Exactly, exactly. But the United States of America In a sense, you can say that it was a very successful, well, it remains to be seen how successful. To be continued. That was basically invented, created, that you would have this sense of it. In the case of an old nation, which has been on the map of the world for 3,000 years, 2,500 years, this is not an exaggeration, I am not a nationalist per se, but I mean, if you look Persia on the map of the world in ancient times, it is still there as it is today. Very few countries in the world are like that. that they would have that kind of a continuity over a course of time. And that's not without a reason, because there was this sense of a center versus periphery that had found some, there's a huge amount of tension, but there is also a sense of belonging to something. And state is very much at the center of it. I mean, that's why the concept of a state matters for the creation, for the shaping. of this culture. What happened is therefore, you can see that today in answer to your point about traveling blindfolded, is that you would be surprised to see how much people share. And in terms of, I just give you one anecdote. In 1968, I believe, must have been, I traveled to Azerbaijan. I used to travel and actually photograph." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not blindfolded. No. Mostly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yeah, not blindfolded. No, no, not blindfolded. So I went to a bazaar in the city of Khoi, which is in the northwestern Iran, on the border with what is today the Republic of Turkey. And I went to the bazaar and I was interested in the kind of leather work that they produce. So I tried to buy some stuff and I was surprised to see that how few people knew Persian. So they could not communicate in Persian with you. Either they have to ask somebody from some other store to come and translate for you. This is 1968. So even though it's the official language" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "was Persian. Of the country, they're still, so what are they teaching in school? So it doesn't matter." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It was Persian. But this guy, he hasn't been to the school, or he was not fully exposed to it, and bazaars usually are very conservative places. So it stuck in my mind. Now, recently in 2004, I was traveling to the same area, not to the same city, but to the same area. And I was amazed to see how the youth, as soon as they would know that you're coming from somewhere, opening conversation with you, talking about the latest movies that was produced in the West, and it's not only Hollywood. Of course, there's a huge amount of fascination with Hollywood and Western cinema. Cinema is a major thing. Filmmaking is a major thing. So these kids in the city of Ahar were asking me, we were having lunch, they're asking me, okay, then what do you think about this producer, not producer, this director or that actor? American. American, European as well, but mostly American." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Were they speaking Persian?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "There's a complete Persian that I would converse with them. Do they speak English too? Interesting. Yes, actually you would be surprised to see what percentage of the Iranian youth, at least in big cities, are fascinated with learning language, and for a reason, because they think that's the way to get access either on social media or eventually leave Iran, unfortunately. And because they don't see a future for themselves in the country, either you have to be part of this regime, or if you hate them and you don't like the way of their life, you look up outside, you know. I was having drivers to drive me around the country in the cities around Tehran. And the guy was young, extremely well-educated, well-dressed, and we would have looked at him, we could have found him in any street in any country in the Western world. And his major concern, knowing that I'm from outside, The major concern is, well, tell me which would be a better place for me to go. What's wrong with the place that you're in right now? You are in your own country, you speak your own language. No, this is no good. I have to have a better future. This has no future for me." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, it's really interesting because the thing I feel about the protests right now is there's a large number of people that instead of giving into cynicism about, you know, this government is no good, they're actually getting this like energy, this desire for revolution in a sort of non-violent, in the democratic sense of that. Let's actually find the ideas, let's build a great nation here. This is a great nation, this is my nation, let's build something great here. That's my hope." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's what I'm hoping for. I share your aspiration, but I'm fearing that, I hope it's not a wishful thinking. Certainly that's what they want. Certainly that's what they want to create. But a historian always tells you from where they start to where they finish. there is going to be a huge kind of a change. And in this particular case, I wouldn't be, I would very much hope that it's not going to be a revolution like 1979, Islamic revolution. And I have my hopes in that. For one thing, this is a revolution that doesn't have a leader, okay? And it seems that they're comfortable with that. at least so far, because we are in the sixth week of this movement, and I hope it's not going to be actually a revolution, as I pointed out before. I hope it's going to be more of a sense of trying to come to some compromise and gradually move toward change rather than a collapse of this regime and replacement with what?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the anxiety of the regime, you hope, will turn into a kind of realization that you have to you have to modernize, you have to make progress, you actually have to make certain compromises, or constitutional changes, all those kind of stuff. So the basic process of government and lawmaking." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "The problem is that they say we have it all, you know? We have our parliament, we have our constitution, we have our elections, which has all been, of course, fake. But they claim they have all of that. But the problem for them is that they try to superimpose a certain ideology, like all other ideological autocracies or autarchies, as in this case, that tend to dominate all these institution buildings that they have, they constantly claim, we have this, we have that. Of course, it's a generational thing. The upper echelons of this regime are mostly older people, turbaned, they are the clergy, that are afraid of the fact that they may lose their control over their whole system, that it was a sophisticated, huge system of government. And they rely on certain tools of control, which is the Revolutionary Guards and other, other institutions that are loyal to the state. And they spend enormous amount of funds that is available to them, at least before the sanctions. But even during the sanctions, they still have enough funds to do so. And in order to remain in power. And they're extremely ruthless in that regard. This is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime. This is a regime that I would see easily in it. Clear signs of fascism. Clear signs of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power. So even violence?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Extreme violence. to return to the massacre. What were the uses of violence to suppress protests?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, yes, it was actually quite remarkable to see that from the first or the second day of the protest, you see out in the streets this riot police, okay, which comes out in large numbers, fully geared up, Their appearance are rather terrifying, like any other riot police, probably more than any other riot police. They are violent. They stand in the streets when the students are demonstrating, even in smaller number. Because before I go to that, I should point this out to you as well, that these demonstrations are not Large ones in one place. You don't see 100,000 people in one place. But you see in every neighborhood, couple of thousand of kids are demonstrating. All over Iran. All over Iran." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Now all over the world in different parts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, yes. Actually, during the demonstrations three weeks ago, as I said, they had people in Sydney, Australia, New Zealand, Tokyo, all over the world." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "All protesting high gas prices, it's funny. Everywhere." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "everywhere, to the extent that they could be ignored. Nothing but if they could not be ignored. And it's actually quite remarkable that this is very embarrassing to them. But somehow they think that this propaganda machine of them is working." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So you think they don't have a good even sense. I mean, so there's an incompetence within the propaganda machine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it is. There's an incompetence across the board. I mean, despite all of this massive government administration, or whatever you would call it, all these various components of it, there is a sense of inefficiency and incompetence that is associated with every action that you see, even in their suppression of this street movement. But in answer to that question, you would see that this riot police, It's quite obvious that they were trained for the purpose. So their appearance, everything. These are not just regular army forces or soldiers, conscripts. They are professional forces. And they come not only on foot number, but they come on motorbikes. So you would see in any of these demonstrations, there are 10, 12, 15, 20 motorbikes. with two passengers, one in front riding, one in the back, fully equipped with a baton, with paint guns, with pellet guns, and with bullets. So they are very fully equipped, and they are terrifying. They go through the demonstrations and hit and beat people. And then they arrest. And then you see behind the first line, of these Wright Police, you would see all these latest models of these special armored trucks for moving to the demonstrations and arresting people, throwing them into this. And then behind that, water cannons, you see. And I was looking at that, I was saying, okay, this is Tehran probably, they have this. But then you look at the smaller cities, they still have the same thing. So all over the country, one thing that they had managed to produce extensively, irrespective of the fact that whether they are effective or not, but you see them everywhere. So this shows that how afraid this regime is." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But that also shows that there's an infrastructure that can implement violence at scale." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, very much so. And it's probably part and parcel of this regime from day one. The number of prisons that they have, according to perhaps an exaggerated version, they said that about 12,000 or so arrested, that are in jails today, since past six weeks. They were 230 or 240 people were killed, including children, under 18. They beat up women in the street, which is extremely actually disturbing when you see these scenes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's a lot of this is on video too, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Everything is on video. Everybody has a camera. And everybody sends to major news outlets outside Iran. And they immediately showed every night, if you look at BBC Persia, or Iran International, I think there's six of them actually. all over the Earth, in England, they are in Deutsche Welle in Germany, which has a particular interest in the Iranian, BBC World Service and so forth in London, and Voice of America Persian here in this country. There is another one, Radio Fado, which is also funded by the American government, also fully covers all of these events. So there is no way that these people can, that in Iraq can miss what's going on in the streets of these demonstrations and the scenes of beating up women, which in Iranian culture, as I presume in most cultures in the world, there is a certain sanctity that you don't attack women. But they do, and this is an Islamic regime that supposedly have to have a certain sense of concern and protection." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, like a protection, like a deep respect for women grounded in a tradition of protecting them, but instead this kind of idea that was instilled in law has turned into a deep disrespect of women." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, or fear that these women are not any longer the girls that we thought we are bringing up in this society." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The source of you losing your power will be these women." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's the fear. Yes, yeah. And you see, of course, this government do have a support base. I mean, it would be totally wrong to think that the Islamic Republic has not created its own power base. It does. But it's probably, if there is no way, there are no statistics that you can, or I'm not aware of any statistics that I can give you in numbers, what's the percentage of support for the regime in Iran. But quite frankly, I don't think it's more than probably 10% of the population." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You've been eugenicist. I would be surprised if it's that low. I would say, so if my understanding, because I've been very deeply paying attention to the war in Ukraine, to Ukraine, to Russia, and to support in Russia for Putin, I think without knowing the details, without even considering the effects of propaganda and stuff like that, is there's probably a large number of people in Iran that don't see this as a battle of human rights, but see it as a battle of conservatism, like tradition versus modernization, and they value tradition. What they fear from the throwing away of the hijab is not the loss of power and the women getting human rights. What they fear is the same stuff you fear when you're sitting on a porch and saying, kids these days have no respect. basically that there's a large number of Iranians that probably value tradition and the beauty of the culture. And they fear that kids with their internet and their videos and their revolution will throw away everything that made this country hold together for millennia, right?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I know, I would agree with you in the sense that probably like everywhere else in the world, this is a generational thing. Every generation thinks differently about the younger generation, no doubt. And in Iran is the same. But there is another factor here is involved. Those that we would consider them as traditional, no longer seem to have their loyalties to this regime. That's powerful. meaning that they consider it as a brutal regime that is prepared to kill children in the streets and does a lot of things wrong. Of course, it tries to take care of its own power base. There's a very strong sense, if we start here, there's a very strong sense in this regime that there are people that is theirs, and there are others which are not theirs. There's a word for it even in Persian, they call it Khudi, one of us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay? Well, that's very fascistic, it's like." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes, all for that matter, I suppose Soviet Union, if you were a member of the party, and your children would have received a special kind of treatment yourself as well. This sense of us versus them, for a while worked because the younger people coming from the countryside to the cities certain sector of them would have found protection and support from the government. They wanted to belong to something, and the mosques and the mourning associations in the neighborhoods and so forth would have given them. There's actually a term for it, it's called basiji. Those have been recruited by the state. And this is the youth kind of vigilante, if you like, that you can see them also in these demonstrations. Sometimes thugs, they're called the civil cloth. So the people that come to these demonstrations that start beating up these young people, and they are not in security police uniforms, but they are just regular clothes. And these people, yes, they still support, and they still benefit, because they get jobs, they get privileges, and these are very important for a state. that basically monopolizes most of the resources. You see, even during the sanction, let alone before the sanction, the oil revenue of Iran, which is the major source of the state government, was the monopoly of the state. It was monopoly of the state during the Pahlavi era, from the start, basically. So what does that mean? That means that the regime in power no longer is particularly accountable to the majority population, because it extracts wealth from underground. And it uses it for its own purposes, in order to make it more powerful, in order to make it more repressive than what it is the regime today. So it feeds a small, or I wouldn't say, but a fair number of its own supporters. I mean, the revolutionary guard in Iran is probably about 350,000 or something like that. It's a very big force. And this is not the regular army. The Revolutionary Guards are independent from the army." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The Revolutionary Guard is armed forces controlled by the state." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, the same as the army, but these are more ideologically tied up with the state." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "and they're also in-facing, internal-facing? What's the stated purpose of the revolution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, from day one, when the revolution succeeded, the regime in power, the Islamic regime in power, was vulnerable to all kinds of forces of opposition within Iran itself during the revolution. To prevent further revolution. Yeah, that's the revolutionary guards, and their job was to try to make sure that the regime stays in power. And of course, over the course of 40 years, they became more powerful, more organized, better funded, better trained. Well, at least we think they're better trained, but we don't know because the level of incompetence perhaps can be seen through their rank and file as well. But, you know, they developed their own military industry. I mean, those drones that you see now, Putin's regime are throwing on Ukrainians, poor Ukrainians. Those are all built by the Revolutionary Guards, by the military industry under the control of the Revolutionary Guards. And like similar regimes in the Middle East, at least, these are military-industrial complexes. You can find them in Egypt, of course, which is very powerful, very traditional, has been in power and still is in power. You find them in Pakistan, which is extremely powerful, and they can change the prime ministers as they did in the case of the last one. You can find them probably in Myanmar, is the same phenomenon. And if you look around, you can find quite a number of them. And the Revolutionary Guards is equivalent of that. This is a powerful establishment force, which militarily is powerful, industrially is powerful, and Since the start of the revolution, they have been given projects. So you want to build dams, which they did a major disaster, environmental disaster. They built 100 and something dams all across the country. This is the revolution they regard to does it. So they have all kinds of, all around the country controlling various things." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And because it's their job, and they have power, they have prestige, there's a huge incentive to... Join them. To join them and to stay, so like they, you know, when they're having dinner at home with their families, there's not an incentive to join the protests, sort of." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that is the point. I think, and the evolutionary guys may be an extreme, but many of the people who depend on this state for their support, now the younger generation are telling their parents, you were wrong. you don't provide for us, this society, this state does not provide what we want. So there is a dissent within the family, it seems to me. I hope it's not a wishful thinking. You know, there is a kind of a joke going around. You see this determined guys, the clergy, bearded, traditional clerical appearance. When you see them talking about women, They are very, of course, politically incorrect. They are very looking down towards women. As I said, they have to be inside, they have to be protected, they have not to be seen, and so forth. But if they have a young person, a young daughter in their family, you see that they're, discourse changes, they no longer seem to be referring to women as second-class citizens. So that's very important, that's precisely that point, that when you have this younger generation, no matter how privileged they are, and many of them are privileged, and there is also, the regime has created its own privileged class that are not necessarily directly paid by the regime, but they benefit from contractors, certain professions that benefit from what the state provides for them. And Iran is a, I mean, the past 40 years, you can see Iran has developed in terms of material culture remarkably. Iran has good communication, has roads all over the place. It's not like a, it's more like, I don't know whether you have ever visited Turkey, for instance. In certain respects, even more advanced than Turkey, but it's closer to that, rather than if you travel, I don't want to bring particular names, in North Africa, or parts of the Middle East, or other parts of the Islamic world. It's much, much different. So in this respect, you would see certain contrast or paradoxes here. On the certain respect, there is the growth, there is urbanization, there is modern economy. On the other hand, you see this superimposed ideological doctrinal aspect that has driven the regime over all these years. And they cannot get rid of it. They cannot, in this respect, they cannot modernize themselves. They think that they are already perfect in ideological sense. This is the best solution for the world. Not only for Iran, but for the Muslim world and for the world as a whole. We are anti-imperialist. We have managed to survive either under sanctions, this is all part of their rhetoric. But of course, at a huge expense. the huge expense for their own population. And the point that you have raised is the fact that we now witness there is not only a generation gap between the youth and their parents, but there is a break, in a sense, from the older generations. And they are very distinctly, the youth, that has a different view of the world and does not want to compromise. Whether they would be able to succeed or not remains to be seen. Whether this regime is going to suppress it, maybe, but it actually brought to surface many of aspects of the weaknesses of this regime in power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, I hear from a lot of people that are in these protests now, and so my love goes to them, and stay strong, because it's inspiring to see people fighting for those things, the women, life, and freedom, especially freedom. Because that can only lead to a good thing in the long term, at least. And if possible, to avoid a violent revolution, Of course, that is something that we all want to see. Before we return to the present, let's jump around, let's go to the past. We mentioned 1979. What happened in 1979 in Iran? Well, in 1979, there was," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "a revolution that eventually came to be known as the Islamic revolution. And even up to this day, many of the observers or those who have strong views would not like to refer to it as an Islamic revolution or even a revolution. Because the nature of it in the earlier stages of it started really probably around 1977. It took two years. was much more all-embracing. It was not Islamic in a particular fashion, or at all, in a sense. It started with a kind of a very liberal, democrat agenda. which required, which demanded mostly by people who were the veterans of the older generations of Iranian liberal nationalists that were left out in the Pahlavi period. It's a period of the Shah became increasingly authoritarian. increasingly suppressive, and therefore basically leaving no space, no political space, open for any kind of a give and take, any kind of a conversation or participation. That was in the 70s. 70s, 70s, particularly in the 70s." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we actually even just do a whirlwind review from 1906 to 1979?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, okay, sure. In 1906, there was a period, actually, as you might know, the first decade or so of the 20th century witnessed numerous, what we refer to as constitutional revolutions, including Russia in 1905, the first revolution. including the Chinese Revolution in 19, Constitutional Revolution in 1910, the Young Turks Revolution in 1908, and the Iranian Revolution in 1906." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you understand why the synchronicity of all of it? Why in so many different places, very different cultures, very different governments?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Very different cultures, but all of them, in a sense, were coming out of regimes that became progressively powerful. without having any kind of a legal system that would protect the individual vis-a-vis the state. So the idea of law and the constitution according to which there should be a certain protection, a certain civil society, became very common." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but I wonder where that, because that's been that way for a very, very long time. And so I wonder, you know, it's funny, certain ideas, just their time comes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, it's like 1848, when you would see that there's a whole range of revolutions across Europe. Or you would see, for instance, the Arab Spring. You see all these revolutions in the Arab world, which unfortunately, nearly all of them failed. So yes, these are very contagious ideas that moves across frontiers from one culture to another. And I presume we can add to that there are two elements which one can say there is greater communication, there is a greater sense of a world economy. And the turn of the century witnessed, the first decade of the century witnessed a period of volatility. particularly in currency. So many of the countries of the world, particularly non-West, suffered, particularly the businesses suffered. And not surprisingly, the business class were in the forefront of many of these constitutional movements requiring the state to create the right kind of institutions to listen to their voices, to their concerns, and the creation of a democratic system, parliamentary system, with which there would be representation. popular representation, proper elections, and so forth, and constitutions. And this very much is a kind of a French idea of the constitution going back all the way, perhaps, to 1789 revolution. Montesquieu, all this kind of philosophes were greatly appreciated, particularly the French system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So what were the ideas in the 1906 Iranian constitution?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They were precisely the same. They were demanding a creation of a legal system with division of power between the three, executive, legislative, and the judiciary. Not unlike the American system. and they requested basically a certain public space to be created between the two sources of power. The state, which had this kind of a control over the, if you like, the secular aspect of life in the society, and the religious establishment that had a full control over the religious aspects. And both of them, from the perspective of the constitution, it is considered as repressive. And therefore, there has to be a new space open between these two. And that was the idea of a constitutional revolution. By its very nature, it was an idea of modernity. They wanted a modern society. They wanted a better material life. They wanted more representation, and so forth. The constitutional revolution, as I always would say, is much more of an innocent revolution. It's a revolution that did not particularly have much violence in it, contrary to many other revolutions. It did not have a centralized leadership. per se. That's why actually I'm getting, I mean, besides the parenthesis, I'm getting a lot of requests for interviews to compare what's happening now with the revolution of 1906, 1909. Are there any echoes? Yes, yes, there are, there are. Because that was a movement that started without a centralized leadership, but actually various voices. that emerged among the merchants or the businessmen in the economic community, among the representatives who came to the first parliament, the press, the new generation of the privileged aristocracy. who were educated and believed in the constitutional values, all of these voices emerged at the same time. And somehow they managed to coexist in the first and the second parliaments that were created between 1906 and 1910 or 1911. But they all faced huge problems in the sense that Iran was in a dire economic situation. This is before the days of the discovery of oil, which actually coincides. There are two important coincidences. One is that the oil was discovered in the South in 1909 during the course of the constitutional revolution. The second is that in 1907, the two great powers of the time, the Russian Empire and the British Empire, who always honored Iran as being a buffer state between them because they didn't want to get too close to one another. basically came to an agreement facing the fear of the rise of the German Empire. So this is the period of Entente, as you might know in European history, whereby the French, the British, and the Russians all create a alliance that ultimately leads to the First World War against Germany." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And at the same time, the discovery of oil, that the oil industry being a very powerful defining factor of the 20th century for Iran. Exactly. A source of a lot of money." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A lot of money, but not all of it in the hands of the Iranians, only one fifth of it. by way of royalties, came to Iran. Much of it went to the Anglo-Persian oil company, which they actually discovered the oil in the province, Khuzestan province in the southwest of Iran, where the major oil industry is today, right now. And this was an extremely profitable enterprise for that company and for the British government. It was actually purchased by the British government. Churchill purchased Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for the British government. So it was not anymore a private company. It was a British interest, as a matter of fact. And in the course of the 20th century, although it helped the modernization in Iran, but it also helped the creation of a more authoritarian, more strong state, if you like to call it, that 19th century Iran never had that kind of a power, never had that kind of resources. Is it 20th century? Even that one-fifth of the income that reached the Iranian state gave it a greater power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's another coincidence. So yes, yes, you could say the oil was one of the catalysts for absolute power, but the 20th century saw quite a few countries have dictators with power unlike anything else in human history. That's weird too." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Precisely. And you know, you can name them from the beginning of the century with people like, I don't know, Lenin, Stalin, of course, Hitler, even Mao, of course. You can name them, and probably, as I would say, the last of them is Khomeini in that century, that you would see this strong man with a sense of either artificial or real, or a sense of so-called charisma. and with this total power over the regime that they create. Some of them do, Nasser, he didn't have much of an oil resources in Egypt, but he was also one of these strong men, okay, in the 20th century, loved by some, hated by others. So it necessarily does not tie up to economic resources underground. But in the Iranian case, unfortunately it did. And it created more than one issue for Iran. It's created a strong state, which is the Pahlavi state, from 1921 onward. Because in 1921, at the end of the First World War, Iran was in almost a state of total bankruptcy. And the British had a desire to try to bring Iran to the system that they created in the Middle East in the post-war era, the mandate system. Palestine, Iraq, and then, of course, French mandate of Lebanon and Syria, all of this. And Iran was separate because Iran was an independent country. It wasn't part of the Ottoman Empire that collapsed. So they had to somehow handle it. And what they tried to do didn't work. As a result, partly domestic, partly international issues, wrote about a regime which is headed by the founder of the Pahlavid dynasty, Reza Shah. Okay, the first military officer called Reza Khan, actually a military officer of the Cossack forces. And the Cossack forces was the force that was created in the 19th century model of the Russian Cossacks when the ruler in the 19th century visited. Russia as in a royal tour, and the czar showed the great Cossack forces, he said, I like this. And he created one for himself with Russian officers, actually. So the Russian officers served in Iran from around 1880s up to the revolution of 1917, the collapse of the czarist regime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So many revolutions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So many revolutions. And Reza Shah was an officer in that, Reza Khan was an officer in that force. And he created a new monarchy for reasons that we need not to go to it. And it's called the Pahlavi regime. Pahlavi regime was a modernizing regime, okay? that brought, in effect, fulfilled many of the ambitions of the Constitution, many of the aspirations of the Constitutional Revolution. Better communication, secular education, centralized state, centralized army, better contact with the outside world, greater urbanization. That's what a modern state is all about. And in that regard, in a sense, for the first 20 years after the Second World War, was successful. Despite, and more significant of all, it managed to keep the European powers, which is always interfering in the local affairs of Iran, in an arm's length. So they were there in an arm's length, but they were also respecting the power of the state, power of the Pahlavi state. During the Second World War, the same phenomenon as earlier interference led to the occupation of Iran by the Allied forces. the British from the south, the Russians from the north, the Red Army. They took over Iran, and of course, they said kind of- The Second World War. Yes, from 1941 up to 1945. And of course, when the Red Army refused to withdraw from Iranian Azerbaijan, and with some, thought of possible annexation of that province. There was a big issue in the post-war Iran. So after 1945? Yes, 1945 to 1946, there was a big... Soviet Union getting greedy. Yes, but eventually they agreed. Eventually Stalin agreed to leave the Azerbaijan province in the hope that it would get some concessions from Iran, which in the oil of the Caspian area, which didn't work, and it's a different story altogether. But what happened is that in the post-war era, between 1944, 45, and 1953 is a period of greater democratization, was that Reza Shah's dictatorship basically disappeared. And this is where you would see political parties, free press, a lot of chaotic, really, as democracies often are." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So something like, was it officially a democracy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it was a democracy. Was there elections? There were elections, yes, of course, yes, of course. And there were very diverse political tendencies came to the picture, including the Tudeh Party of Iran, which is Communist Party of Iran. This Communist Party of Iran is probably the biggest Communist Party of the whole of the Middle East, and one of the biggest in the world, actually." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "at that time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Did the Soviet Union have a significant influence on the... Of course, they were basically following orders from the Soviets, although they denied it, but in reality that's the case. But what happened, they were seen by the Americans during the Cold War as if as a threat, and Iran was going through a period of demanding nationalization of its oil resources. That's a very important episode with Mossadegh, whom you might have heard about his name. Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was the prime minister and the national charismatic leader from 1951 to 1953. Prior to that, he was a famous parliamentarian. But this period, he was the prime minister of Iran. And he nationalized the Iranian oil industry, and the British didn't like it at all. And eventually resulted in a famous coup. which at least partly was supported by the funding and by the moral support of the British and the Americans, particularly by the Americans. It was always seen as one of the earliest and the most successful CIA operations during the Cold War. So CIA had something to do with it? Yes, of course, that's one of the earliest operations of the CIA." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Wait a minute, what was, yes, of course, what was the CIA doing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "CIA, this is the time at the post-war era. In the 50s. In the 50s, 40s and 50s. The British Empire, which was really the major superpower of the region after the collapse of the Thessalian Empire, gradually took the second seat to the Americans, who were the newcomers and the great power and the victors of the Second World War. And the Americans viewed Iran as an important, as an important country, since it has the largest common borders with the Soviet Union, and it did the South was the Persian Gulf, which at the time was the greatest supplier of oil to the outside world. And therefore, the Americans had a particular interest in Iran. And in the earlier stages, their interest was in the interest of the Iranian government, because they wanted to get rid of both the Soviet Union, which made a return in the post-war era, and, of course, the British that were gradually withdrawing from Iran. But they had full control over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. They changed the name to Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. When the name of the country officially changed from Persia to Iran in the West, the name of the company changed. And they got into a huge dispute with the other government that eventually led to the coup of 1953, which eventually created a very, very distressful memory in the minds of many of the Iranian nationalists, that this was the betrayal of the great powers, the British and Americans. Yes, CIA played a part because CIA feared Contrary to the British that they were afraid of their own oil in Iran, the CIA was afraid of the Soviet penetration in the South, and particularly because there was a very powerful Communist Party in Iran, the Tudeh Party of Iran. So they gradually shifted between the Truman administration and our Eisenhower administration. These are early days of the CIA. And then they actually did participate to send their agents. There's a long story to that. and it eventually resulted in a successful coup that removed Mossadegh from power." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What's the United States interest here? Why are they using CIA? Are they trying to make sure there's not too much centralization of power in this region?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "They were afraid of the fact that the of the Soviet Union and during the Cold War, that was their concern, the only concern." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "They actually almost want to protect Iran and its own sovereign processes from the influence of the Soviets." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, because they were afraid of the fact if Iran, or at least this is part of the, I'm simplifying a very complex picture, but the Americans basically were thinking that if Iran is going to be lost, to Soviet influence, then eventually basically all the oil resources in the Persian Gulf are going to be threatened. And this would basically is the national security of the United States and all of the Western allies, European allies. So in a sense, this was the long arm of the CIA to try to to try to make sure that that's not going to happen. And then, of course, they were persuaded by the British. The British were the old hand, which were in Iran since the beginning of the 19th century. They always had relations with Iran and so forth. So they gradually replaced And of course, I don't want to give them this kind of a satanic view that Americans was a bad influence because they had also some very good influences in Iraq. But this particular episode somehow shed a dark light on the American presence and was used and abused time and again, particularly the revolution in 1979, which was this great Satan idea that Khomeini created, basically was based on the fact is 1953, you were responsible for the downfall of a national government in Iran, which as a matter of fact, he had no respect for it. Khomeini had no respect for the secular national liberals, including Mohammad Mossadegh. But he was using it as a rhetorical tool for his own purposes. But what happened is that after 1953, we see again the rise of authoritarian Mohammad Reza Shah's power. And then he's, that's the Shah? That's the Shah, that we know as Shah. This is son of Reza Shah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And technically, what is Shah?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Shah is an old term in Persian that comes from a pre-Islamic Persian of ancient times." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So in the context of democracy, should it be seen as like a supreme leader, king," }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "is the head of the executive power, according to the Constitution of 1906." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, that's in the Constitution, the actual term shah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, he has a place in the Constitution." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the actual term shah, okay, interesting." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But the shah is a very old term, as I said." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, it's almost like a monarchic term, like a king." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, it is, actually is a term peculiar to Iran. I've written about it somewhere. But because the term, the Western word in the ancient times has been rex, for royalty and the king. In the Eastern world, in India, is Raj, is the same origin, the same root. Iran never shared that. They had the idea of, because Rex and Raj, I don't want to get into too much of etymology, but this is an interesting one. Rex and Raj both means the one that opens the road for, basically enforcer of religion, okay? enforcer of the right religion. Because Rex and Raj both have the, of the etymological origin of right, you see? And right means the right religion, basically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "By the way, there's so much beautiful language here. I'm just looking at the Persian constitution in 1906, and it says it's the constitution of the sublime state of Persia, Qajar Iran. I mean, just the extra adjectives on top of this stuff is beautiful. I mean, look at it." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, because that was actually The change that came about, I don't want to go too much into it, but it was called, as I pointed out before, the guarded domains of Iran. They changed that to the sublime state of Iran during the constitutional revolution because they wanted to give a greater sense of centrality of the state. And sublime was the term we used." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But also, what permeates all of this is a poetic, I mean, there is a history of poetry to the culture, which is fascinating. So I mean, of course, I don't speak the language. But even in Russian, there's also a music to the soul of the people that represents itself, that presents itself in the form of poetry and literature in the way that it does in the English-speaking world. I don't know what that is." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, there's a romantic side to it almost." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Romantic side, that's right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I agree with you. In Iran, of course, there's a time of the constitutional revolution, there's a time of great poetry. This kind of patriotic sentiments that comes through poetry plays a very important part. Of course, these days, poetry has kind of declined. and instead you see the visual image that is at the center. That's why cinema is so important." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Kids these days with their TikTok." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, let me finish this about the period of Muhammad Reza Shah. He built up, because he received a greater income, from the oil revenue, and he built up a very strong state with a strong security force, a strong security apparatus, which is the SAVAK, which is an acronym for the security force in security organization. And he, of course, unfortunately, in the 1960s and 70s, particularly in 1970s, basically suppress the voices of or the possibility of any kind of a mass participation in the political process. It became very much an authoritarian regime with its own technocrats, very much a modernist vision of Iran's future and almost kind of messianic that he was hoping that Iran in a decade would become the fifth most powerful state in the world and reaches, as he would have said, the gates of the great civilization, very much in the mind had this image of ancient Iran of the Achaemenid Empire. and we want to go back to that greatness of the Achaemenid Empire. Somewhat rather naive and very nationalistic in a crude fashion. And what happened is that, as a result, there was built up some kind of a resistance from the intellectuals, from the left, eventually resulting in a kind of a protest movement, as I said, by 1977, 1978. Then, of course, the question that comes to mind, and that probably you would like to know about, is the fact that white becomes religious, white become Islamic, if it's the popular nationalist, liberal tendency of opening up the political space. and allowing greater participation, going back to the Constitution of 1906, 1907, why it's all of a sudden it becomes Khomeini, where does he come from? The reason for that, at least in a concise fashion, is the fact that on one area, that after the greater suppression of all the other voices remained, Open was religion. Mosques, the mullahs on the pulpit, and the message that gradually shifted from all the traditional message of the sharia of Islam, I mean all the rules and regulations of how one has to live, into something very political. and not only political, but also radical political. In the whole period from the Constitutional Revolution to the Revolution of 1979, basically the religious establishment gradually was pushed to the opposition. They were not originally very conservative supporters of the state, as the Catholic Church, for instance, was supportive of majority of the authoritarian governments around the world. But the politicization was the result of isolation. because they were left out of the system. And while in isolation, they did not, they were not successful in trying to reform themselves, to try to become, to try to find answers to many of the questions of modern times. What happens to women? What happens to civil rights? What happens to a civil society? How modern law and individual freedoms have to be defined in Islamic terms? How to separate religion and state? Or how to separate the religion and state. These issues were never addressed. What happened is that there was this bypass through political Islam and revolutionary Islam. As it gradually, they learned, you know, that This is the bypass, bypass to power, basically, to become again a voice in the society and eventually a prominent voice and eventually a monolithic voice in the society. That's the process that led into the revolution of 1979, basically. This period, greater attention was paid to religion, even among the secular middle classes, who were alienated For a very long time, because of this extensive modernization of the Pahlavi period, they didn't have a sense of that old mullahs with their turbans. But they had a kind of aura in this period. Yes, they are those who remained not corrupted. They are the people who basically went against the suppression of the Pahlavi regime. And Khomeini became a leader, a symbol of that. Nobody ever thought in the earlier stages. Among this very excited multitudes that came to the streets of the Iranian cities in 1979, or 1978 actually, thought that this this old Mullah in the 70s that all of a sudden has appeared from the najaf through Paris to Tehran, is going to take over and create a autocracy, a religious autocracy." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We have to back up for just a second. Who is Khomeini? You just mentioned a few disparate facts about the man. Yes. He was the person that took power in 1979, the Supreme Leader of Iran. Yes. You mentioned something about Paris, something about being in the 70s." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What should we know about the guy?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Ayatollah Khomeini, who eventually was known as Imam Khomeini, he was kind of promoted to an even more sublime position." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Okay, can we, I'm just a million tangents. Ayatollah, Imam, what do these terms mean?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, Ayatollah means the sign of God. in the course of the 19th century or early 20th century, as the religious establishment gradually lost its greater presence in the society and its prominent places in society, they had some kind of an inflation in titles. So they gave themselves more grand titles. Yeah, more adjectives. More adjectives, more grand titles, such as Ayatollah. that became a kind of a highest rank of the religious hierarchy. Which incidentally was in an unofficial hierarchy. It's not like Catholic Church that you have bishops and federal. It was very unofficial model. And he was an ayatollah. He was eventually recognized as an ayatollah. He was in the first ayatollah? No, no, no, not at all. The Ayatollahs were before him ever since the beginning of the century. But he was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah. And if I want to start it this way, Ayatollah Khomeini was born in 1900, and in a sense all this tremendous change that Iran witnessed in the course of the 20th century was, in a sense, materializing this person. He become a mullah of a lower rank, went to the traditional madrasas, to the traditional centers for the education of the seminarians, never had a secular education, had a very complex Islamic education on this one hand jurisprudence, on the other hand, probably a little bit of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, which is unusual for the jurists, for the faqih, as they call them, these religious scholars or legal scholars of Islam. And then he, in the 1960s, when he was residing in Tehran and gradually becoming more important, he became a voice of opposition against the Shah. And the reason for opposition in the 1960s, early 1960s, was the fact that the Shah carried through a series of extensive modernization policies, of which the most important was the land reform. So, in effect, the land distribution that took place in the early 60s removed or weakened greatly that class of landowners from the 19th century. And he, Khomeini, saw himself as a voice of that old class, that, you know, felt that, actually declared that this land redistribution is un-Islamic, according to the Islamic law, property is honored, and you cannot just, no matter how much and how large are these a state that the landowning class has, the government has no right to redistribute it, even among the peasants, among the people who are tilling the land. So that was a major issue. Shah also gave the right of vote to women, and that also he objected. He said women should not have a right." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we just linger on the Islamic law? How firm and clear is the Islamic law that he was representing and embodying? Is this... Codified?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Codified, yes, that's a good term. That's another issue. Not only the hierarchy was unofficial and informal, but also Islamic law, particularly Shi'i law, did not have any codified system. Because these religious authorities always resisted becoming under an umbrella of a more codified system of Islamic law. Because they were outside the state, in a sense. Civil law was in the hand of the religious establishment. They had their own courts independent of the state. But other matters, legal matters, was in the hand of the government. There was a kind of de facto division between these two institutions, state versus the religious establishment. Therefore, it was not codified. So he could declare that this is unofficial, or sorry, illegal, according to the Islamic law, that you would distribute the land to the peasants. And another mujtahid or another religious authority would say, no, no, it is perfectly fine, because he has a different reading of the law. So that being in mind, that adds to the complexity of the picture. He, in 1963, there was a period of uprising of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini. That was a turning point in a sense to try to politicized the religious supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, who were loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini. And in a sense, all the community of more religiously orientated, against the secular policies of the Shah, and against, of course, the dictatorship of the Shah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's where the religious movement became a political party." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In 1963 is the first moment, it's a huge uprising, and the government suppressed it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But then suppression would start to build." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Of course, and he was sent to exile. He went to Najaf, which is this great center in southern." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So he became a martyr on top of this." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "A martyr, he was probably even forgotten to some extent. but not, it was forgotten for the secular middle class, but not to those supporters of his who were paying him their dues, because in Islam you would pay dues to religious leaders, you know, there's religious dues and alms, that you pay to the clerical authorities, and they redistribute them among their own students and so forth. So they built actually a network of loyalty based on these donations. And these donations that's received by Ayatollah Khomeini was very effectively through his network was distributed, even if he was in exile outside Iran. So the 1977, 1978, When the situation changed and there was a little bit of opening in the political climate, then you saw that Ayatollah Khomeini start sending cassette messages. That was his mean of communication. He was sending cassettes and cassettes were sent through the country by his network. So, or declarations and saying first, that we would like to see a greater democratization, and the Shah has to abide by the Constitution of 1907. This is a constitution, this is a democratic system, and so forth. Was he charismatic? Well, it depends who would call, what do you call charismatic? He had a long beard, he was kind of a man in turban and the gown, which was, a very unusual leadership. for people who were much more accustomed to the civilian clothing or to the equipments of the Shah's military uniforms that he used to wear." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But I also mean like, he is a man that was able to take power to become popular, sufficiently popular. So like, I would like, is it the ideas, is it an accident, or is it the man himself, the charisma, or something about the man that led to this particular person? basically changing the tide of history in this part of the world in a way that was unexpected." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "All the above that you mentioned." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or was it just the beard?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, I think no, it's beyond the appearance. The appearance greatly helps, as you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "In the 20th century, appearance is helpful. Pictures for propaganda, for messaging." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, that's an important factor. And he was a kind of adamant, and very severe in his own positions. He could appear very uncompromising. And he had a sense of confidence, self-confidence, that virtually everybody else lacked. And he was a man of opportunity. As soon as he would see that a chance, an opportunity would open up, he would jump on it. And that's what he did, basically. As more the political space opened, the weaknesses of the Shah's government became more evident. His indecision became more evident. His lack of confidence became more evident. Khomeini managed to move further into the center of the movement because he was the only authority that had this network of support through the mosques, through the people who paid homage to him, who followed him, because there's a sense of following of the religious leader in Shi'ism. You are a follower of this authority, you're a follower of that authority. And he's basically created an environment in which people looked upon him as a kind of a messianic figure that came to save Iran from what they considered at the time the problems of dictatorship under the Shah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's not a suspicion about Islamic law being the primary law of the land?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Not at all. People had very little sense that what Islamic law is all about, because the secular education has left that into the old religious schools. This is not something that ordinary educated Iranian who goes to the universities. is going to learn, therefore there is a sense of idealization, that there is something great there. And there were quite a number of intellectuals who also viewed this kind of an idea of, they would refer to as West Toxication, that is this civilization of the West that has brought with it all the modernity that we see around ourselves has enormous sinister features into it. And it has taken away from us our authenticity. That was the thing, that there is something authentic that should be protected. And therefore, a man in that kind of a garb and appearance, seemed as a source for return to this originality of their own culture, authenticity of their own culture. And it perfectly took advantage of that, that is Khomeini, took advantage of it and the circle around him at the expense of everybody else, which he managed in the course of 1979 to 1989, which he passed away, he died in the 10 years during this period, managed to basically transform the Iranian society to create institutions of the Islamic Republic, and to acquire himself the position of the guardian jurist. That was something completely new. It didn't ever exist before. As a matter of fact, as you might know, the model of government that a religious establishment takes over the states is unprecedented throughout the course of Iranian history, throughout the course of the Islamic history, I would say. This is the first example, and probably the only example, of a regime that the religious establishment that has always, in the course of Iranian history, ever since, I would say, probably at this 16th century, if not earlier, has been always separate from the state, and always kind of collaborating with the state with certain tensions in between the two of them. They were two, basically as they would call themselves, the two pillars of stability in the society. That situation changed. For the first time, the religious establishment took over the power of the state. And that's at the core of what we see today as a major issue for Iranian society. Because these are basically that old balance between the religion and the state, which was kind of a de facto separation of the authorities of the two, has been violated. And now you have in power a theocracy, in effect, which of course only in its appearance is theocracy. Deep down, it's a, in my opinion, it's a brutal fascist regime that stays in power. But it has the appearance of religion into it. So this is really the story of the revolution. And as a result of that, the Iranian middle class has greatly suffered. It's not without a reason that you see four million Iranians abroad. because basically the emergence of this new power gradually isolated or marginalized the secular middle class who could not survive under that regime, and gradually moved out in the course of perhaps 30, 40 years, up to now. Iran has, the largest, I think I'm right to say so, has the largest brain drain in any country in the world, according to its population." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So fascinating that, how much of a weird quirk of history is it that religion, would take hold in a country? Like, does it have to do with the individual? It seems like if we re-ran the 20th century a thousand times, we would get the 79 revolution resulting in Islamic law, like, less than, you know, 1% of the time, it feels like. Or no, which percentage would you put?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I think it has something to do with the very complex nature of how Iran evolved. over a long period of time, since the 16th century. That's why, if I would for a moment talk about what I have written, I've written a book that's called Iran, A Modern History, and it does not start in the 20th century. It starts in the 16th century. Because that's what I've argued, that this complex process, that at the end of the day resulted in what we see around us today, is something that was in making for a very long time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And religion was a big part of it. She and the Messiah complex. Exactly. The longing for this great vision of a great nation that somehow is the sublime nation that can only be fully sublime through religion." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "or at the time it was thought that it's true religion. Ever since then, it's disillusionment with that image, or at least a process of disillusionment. The outcome of it is what we see today. Basically, that process of 40 years is a process of readjusting to the realities of the world. that that great moment of romantic success of a revolution, like most revolutions of course, that is going to change Iran and bring this kind of a moment of greatness led into this great disappointment. So it's a movement of the great disappointment in a sense. Like most messianic movements, by the way. Messianic movements in general are always leading into great disappointments. But what I have here that perhaps should be added to it, that yes, it was a peculiarity of Iran as a society that had to experience this eventual encounter between religion and state. That's something to do with the nature of Shi'ism. That's just one point that should be pointed out. Most of Sunni Islam don't have that kind of, I say most because there is something there, but Sunni Islam in general does not have that kind of an aspiration for the coming of a messianic leader. Shi'ism does. schism and its very shaping, particularly the way that it was set up in Iran, was a religion that has always this element of expectation to it for the coming of this messianic leader. Of course, I mean, between parentheses, all societies look for messianic leaders. I mean, just look around us." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But some societies more than others. there's certain culture, it might have to do with the romantic poetry that we mentioned earlier. I mean, surely, I mean, not to draw too many parallels, but with the Soviet Union, there was romanticism too. I mean, I don't know, it does, maybe idealism." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "a sense of a savior who would bring you out of the misery that you're in. And always looking for a third party. to solve your issues. That's why probably this movement has a particular significance, because it probably doesn't look for a messiah. Although I was talking to my brother, who is a historian also, and he was saying perhaps the messiah of this movement is that Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old girl. that was killed. It's a martyred messiah who is now leading a movement which no longer has that charismatic leadership with it. But yes, I would say that Iran has been the birthplace, if I might say that, of messianic aspirations. Going back to ancient Zoroastrianism, which is really the whole system that you see in major religions, or at least so-called Western religions, Abrahamic religions, is parallel or perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism, in which there is an idea of this world and the other world, there's a hereafter. There is an idea of a judgment at the end of the time, And there is a concept that there is a moment of justice that is going to come with the rise of a religious or a charismatic figure. So it's a very old phenomenon in Iran, very old. And it's time and again repeated itself in the course of its history, but never as powerfully. as it happened in 1979, and never in the form of authority from within the religious establishment. It was always the dissent movements that were kind of antinomian. They were against the authority of the religious establishment. That changed in the 20th century." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "but the revolution in 1979, that change is still with us today. Can we just linger on, are there some practical games of power that occurred in the way that Stalin took power and held power in the early days, was there something like this in terms of the establishment of the Revolutionary Guard and all those kinds of stuff? So the messianic figure has some support from the people, but does he have to crush his enemies in competition?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It certainly did. Probably not, certainly not as brutal in terms of the victims as you would see in Soviet Union under Stalin, who the bloodshed or the destruction of the population was far greater than what you would find in Iran of the Islamic Republic. It's uncomparable. Perhaps I would find a greater parallel with Mao Zedong, and particularly because China has a very strong messianic tradition since the ancient times. So they have something, and Mao appeared as a kind of a messianic figure. There I can see there is a parallel. But also, you can see with any other authoritarian regime with a messianic fear at the head of it, that it destroys all the other forces. So during the course of the first 10 years of the Islamic Revolution, it destroyed the liberal nationalist secular, it destroyed The guerrilla movements, some of them Islamic, some of them Marxist, who turned into political parties or tendencies in the course of the post-revolution 1979, they were completely destroyed, and in a very brutal fashion. And their opposition, even within the religious establishment, because it wasn't uniform, there were many different tendencies, those that were opposed to the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini, or now Imam Khomeini, meaning almost a sacred religious figure above the level of a religious authority. He's a saint kind of a figure. This Shi'ism has this idea of imams. There were 11 of them. The 12th is hidden and would come back at the end of the time. This is a messianic figure. So the title that was always used for them only in Shi'ism, never used for any other person. He is the first person in the revolution of 1979, first referred to as deputy of Imam, but the term deputy gradually disappeared and he became Imam Khomeini." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's his official title. I love human beings so much. It's so beautiful. These titles that we give each other, it's marvelous to observe." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You love it because you haven't been under that system." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "No, I love it in the way, I love it in a very dark humor kind of way. it caricatures itself, it's almost funny in its absurdity, if not for the evil that it has led to in human history." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But also the fact that it's a man, it's in fact fulfillment in a kind of completely unintended fashion. It's a fulfillment of that idea of a Messiah that they've been fighting for. This Imam which is in a hidden for a thousand years is here and not here. And therefore Khomeini would have, in a sense, fulfilled those anticipations. But beyond that, I'll just give you one example. I know that you may have other concerns. But when I say elimination, at the end of the Iran-Iraq War, by the direct order of Ayatollah Khomeini, a fatwa that he wrote, a group of prisoners, who belong to variety of political parties, the left, religious left, majority of them, the Marxist left and the religious left. In a matter of a few weeks, or perhaps a few months, I'm not actually quite sure about the time span, in a series of, these were people who have already been tried, and they were given sentences. They were brought back before the summary trials of three judges, or more, three, four of them. One of them is now the, a new president of the Islamic Republic, Raisi. And they were given quick summary sentences, which meant execution. So something between probably 6,000 to 8,000 were executed in a matter of a month or two months, something like that. Mostly in Tehran, but also in provinces. And that remained an extraordinary trauma for the families, for those who had these kids, they're all young, all young. So this remains very much a kind of original sin of the Islamic Republic that cannot get rid of. and it's in people's memories. They didn't allow them, even the families, to go and mourn their dead in an official symmetry which they created for them. Now the latest thing is that they put a huge concrete wall around it so nobody would be able to get into it. So these all part of this extraordinary level of, level of atrocity, brutality, that you see that the regime who claimed that it comes with the morality of religion and Islam to bring back the justice and be more, in a sense, kind to people, ended up with what it is in the memory of many of the people in Iran. So developing these fascistic tendencies. Very much so. Destroying minorities, Baha'i is one of them. Hundreds of Baha'is were, without any reason, without any involvement, were picked up and executed, their properties were taken over, their rights were taken away from them, even up to this day. It's the largest, by the way, religious minority in Iran. So you would see that in many areas, this acts very much as a beyond authoritarian, it's a kind of really a fascistic regime." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So Khamenei held power for 10 years, and then took power the next supreme leader, who is still the leader today for over 30 years. Who is he?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, he was one of the, this is Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Imam one day, perhaps? No, well, they hesitated to use the term imam for him. But in any other respect, he was given all of that adulation that they did to Khomeini. He is the guardian jurist. That's what's important. Because the guardian jurist in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic is an authority that is above the state. He is not elected, quote-unquote, because This is a divine authority, although he's been designated by the group of determined mullahs like himself. And he has the full power over all institutions of the state. the army, the media, the economy, every aspect of it. He acts like a Shah. He acts like this authority and authority." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Did that gradually develop or was that very early on?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, that's part of the constitution of the Islamic Republic. The first constitution, the first draft of the Constitution did not have the authority of the guardian jurist. But then it was added by Khomeini and his supporters." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Are there actually in the Constitution any limits to his power?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, there is a council of the experts, so to say, that would remove him from power, I think theoretically. But there's so much restrictions to that that I don't think it would have ever happened in reality, in his case, at least." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But in terms of executive, to make decisions and all that kind of stuff, does he need to check with anybody?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No. Oh, boy. He does check. with his own advisors, but he doesn't have any constitutional obligation to check on the decisions that he's making." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's the supreme leader, but there's been presidents. Yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And what's the role of the president? The president, in a sense, is the executive power. under the Islamic Republic. There are three heads of powers. There is the president that presumably has the executive power. There is the head of the judiciary. and there is the head of the, the speaker of the parliament, majlis, Islamic majlis, which is the legislative. So there's a legislative, judiciary, and executive. Raisi, who is now the president, is the head of the executive. Above them is the supreme leader. or the guardian jurist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can you give me some insight? Because I especially, I'm not exactly sure why, but the president, Ahmadinejad, is somebody I'm, as an American, really familiar with. Why is that exactly? But why was the president the public-facing person to the world versus the supreme leader? Is that just an accident of a particular humans involved, or is this by design?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "No, because the supreme leader tries to keep himself out of issues of everyday politics, supposedly. but therefore he is not coming to the United Nations to give a speech during the session. But Mr. Ahmadinejad, who at the time was the president, would come and make outrageous statements. That's why you probably know something about him." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So all of them make public statements, but he had a proclivity for outrageous statements." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "He does all kinds of things, he makes all kinds of statements, but he is somewhat above the everyday politics, in theory. But of course, he's pulling all the strings, without doubt, in every respect. And it seems that you were asking, I thought you were going to ask me this question, almost without an exception, since the inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979, up to the last of the presidents of the Islamic Republic, Rouhani, before the guy that is last year, or a year and a half ago, was in a phony election, got into the position of the president, all of them, and it's a long list, all of them eventually fell out with the regime. So there is no president, except perhaps to some extent Rouhani, but we'll wait and see what's going to happen to him. But prior to him, all of them, including Ahmadinejad, fell out with the regime, with the current regime in Iran." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Who's Rouhani? He was officially president for eight years. Yeah, prior to Raisi. Ibrahim Raisi, the 221, what you're saying is a phony election." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, it's a phony election. What happened? What's interesting? What happened? Because the process of actually candidacy for presidency is completely controlled by a council that is under the control of the supreme leader. So they have to approve who is going to be the candidate. So not everybody can enter and say, I would like to be a candidate." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So did Rouhani fall out of favor?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're saying there's some... Well, he is kind of out of favor now, because he was more moderate than this most recent regime. But the point is that if you look, this is something almost institutional, constitutional to the regime. This is a regime that rejects all of the executive powers. because the division between the supreme authority as a place of a supreme authority versus the presidency has problematic. It is as if there would be a supreme leader in the United States above all the three sources of power. I mean, that's the kind of view that you can see in today's Iran. And of course, he's at the focus of all the criticism that he receives from the demonstrators in today's Iran." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So on top of all this, Recently, and throughout the last several years, US and Iran are in the midst of nuclear deal negotiations. This is another part of the story of Iran, is the development of nuclear weapons, the nuclear program. They're looking to restore the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA. What is the history? the present and the future of these negotiations over nuclear weapons. What is interesting to you in this full context from the 16th century of the Messianic journey? What's interesting to you here?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You can argue that for a long time, even under the Shah, but much more expressively and decisively under the Islamic Republic, there was a determination to have a nuclear power or nuclear weapon, in a sense. I think the bottom line of all the negotiations, everything else, is that Iran, of the Islamic Republic, had the tendency of having its own nuclear weapon. The reason for that is that Iran was subject of nearly nine years, eight and a half years of Iran-Iraq war, when not only Iran faced an aggressor, Iraq, that actually attacked Iran at a very critical time, at the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution, but the fact that Iran felt kind of helpless in the course of this war and has to make great sacrifices, actually, which supported the Islamic regime and consolidated the Islamic regime because of this war. And most of the time, their support of the United States was behind Iraq vis-a-vis Iran. And Iran felt that it's been isolated and has to protect itself. So there is some argument for having nuclear capabilities. But in reality, this has resulted in a completely mindless, crazy, wasteful, attempt on the side of the Iranian regime to try to develop a nuclear power. And therefore, the rest of the world, particularly in this region, were very worried that if Iran would get access to a nuclear weapon, then the entire region of the Persian Gulf might, particularly Saudi Arabia, possibly Turkey, possibly Egypt, all of them may require, may demand to have also nuclear weapon, given the fact that Pakistan and India has already have it. So there was a determined attempt, as you might know, on the side of the Western communities, or now gradually world communities, to try to, as much as possible, to control Iran. from getting access to a nuclear capability, or actually limit Iran's nuclear capabilities to what was defined usually in a euphemism as a peaceful fashion, okay? That being said, there was also Israel, which viewed the Islamic Republic as an arch enemy. And some of it might be due to the Israelis' own exaggeration of Iran's threat. And some of it is because Iran has developed a fairly strong military, as we see today. And as such, this attempt to try to prevent Iran from ever getting access to a nuclear weapon, which resulted, as you might know, in these massive sanctions that were imposed upon Iran, ever since the beginning of the revolution in 1979, and of course more intensively since 2015, 2016, even prior to that, probably a little bit earlier. This agreement, the nuclear agreement, was supposed to control or monitor Iranian nuclear industry or nuclear setup. in exchange for removing the sanctions. But this never worked, as a matter of fact, in a very successful, satisfactory way for the Iranians or for the Americans, particularly under Trump administration, which I think foolishly decided to scrap the agreement that was reached under President Obama. like many other policies that was implemented under Trump administration, this created a major problem. That is how to, under Biden, how to try to come up with a new nuclear agreement with Iran. In this process, since 2016, where the United States withdrew from the agreement, Iran felt comfortable to try to go and do whatever they want without any kind of monitor, being monitored by the international community. And that's the situation now. We don't know whether Iran is really sincere under the present regime to negotiate a deal. We don't know that the United States willing to do so. And it seems that now what is happening in terms of the protests in the Iranian streets makes it even harder in public eye to try to negotiate a deal with Iran. Because that means in the minds of many, and with some justification, that If the nuclear agreement would result in the removal of many of these sanctions, millions, billions, as the result of the removal of the sanctions and Iran's ability to sell its oil in the international market without any restrictions, means that the Iranian government is going to become even more powerful. more financially secure in order to suppress its own people. So that's the agreement that goes against coming to terms with Iran. But the problem is that there is no clear alternative, even I'm not particularly personally favorable for this agreement to be ratified. But the alternative is very difficult. There's no way to try to see what can be done." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Geopolitics where every alternative is terrible. Let me ask you about one of the most complex geopolitical situations in history. One aspect of it is the Cold War between Iran and Israel. The bigger picture of it is sometimes referred to as Israel-Palestine conflict. What are all the parties, nations involved, What are the interests that are involved? What's the rhetoric? Can you understand, make the case for each side of this conflict?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You're opening a new can of worms that it takes another three hours of conversation. Just three hours? At least. What I can tell you is this. Iran, prior to 1979, viewed itself under the Shah as a kind of a, if not supporter of Israel, was in very good terms with Israel. They had an embassy in Iran, or unofficial embassy in Iran. They had certain projects that's helping with the agriculture and so forth in Iran. But since 1979, that completely reversed. Part of it is that the issue of the Palestinian plight remained very much at the heart of the revolutionary Iranians who would see that part of the United States is to support, part of the United States' guilt, sin, is to support Israel vis-a-vis its very suppressive, very oppressive treatment of the Palestinians, completely illegal taking over of the territories which is not theirs since 1967. and therefore it is upon the Iranian regime, Iranian Islamic Republic, to support the cause of the Palestinians. This came about at a time when the rest of the support for the Palestinians, including Arab nationalism, basically reached a stage of bankruptcy. I mean, much of the regimes of the Arab world either are now coming to terms with Israel, or in one way or another, because of their own contingencies, because of their own concerns and interests, are willy-nilly accepting Israel in the region. Now, that old task of rhetorically supporting the Palestinians falls upon the Islamic Republic. that sees itself as a champion of the Palestinians now, without, as a matter of fact, having either the support of the Iranian people behind him. If you ask if tomorrow there would be a poll or a referendum, I would doubt that 80% of the Iranian people would approve of the policies of the Islamic Republic vis-a-vis the issue of Palestine. nor the Palestinians themselves, because the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic, quote unquote. And even within that, there is problems with Hamas, for instance. But nevertheless, it's for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake. and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people. Whether they have a solution, if you look at their rhetoric, if you listen to their rhetoric, it's the destruction of the state of Israel. And that, it seems to me creates a certain anxiety in the minds of the Israelis, Israeli population, and Israeli government, particularly those who are now in power, Netanyahu, the Likud, and more kind of a right-wing politics of, polity of today's Israel. That being said, I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of threat of Iran, quote unquote, in order to present themselves a rightful to, for terms of security and whatever else. the way that they're treating the Palestinians, which I think is extremely unjust. I think it's extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since 1967, at least, and not to try to come to terms with it. Of course, there are huge amount of, I'm not denying that at all, there's a huge amount of failures, mistakes, and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages, not to try to make a deal. or try to come to terms in some fashion. But it's a very complex picture, and it's rather unfair to the Palestinians to accuse them for not coming to terms with Israel under very uneven circumstances, when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories, or in terms of their security in future vis-a-vis Israel." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So I think there is, as you probably know, quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of you know, taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation, can you steelman their side? Can you steelman Israel's side? That they're trying to be a sovereign nation, trying to protect themselves against threats, ultimately wanting to create a place of safety, a place where people can pursue all the things that you want to pursue in life, including foremost happiness." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I tend to agree with you. And I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people. But there are two arguments. One is a moral argument. To my mind as a historian, Jews across, around the world, for all through their history, suffered. And this is a history of suffering. This is a memory of suffering. And they find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that's the product of so much sacrifice, suffering, loss of life, and variety of Holocaust above all, would find itself in a position not to give the proper justice to a people who could be their neighbors. And that is a moral argument which I cannot believe under any circumstances can be accepted. Second, in real terms, what do you want to, you want to commit a genocide? You have a population there that you have to come to terms with it. And you cannot just postpone as they did. Since 67, they are postponing and hoping that it goes away somehow. I don't think it's going to go away. And it's going to get worse rather than better." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a long nuanced discussion and I look forward to having it. So we'll just leave it there for the moment. But it is a stressful place in the world. where the rhetoric is existential, where Iran makes claims that it wants to wipe a country off the face of the earth. It's just the level of intensity of rhetoric is unlike anywhere else in the world. And extremely dangerous. In both directions. So one, the real danger of the rhetoric actually being acted upon and then the extreme political parties using the rhetoric to justify even a greater escalation. So if Iran is saying that this is, saying that they're wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, that justifies any response." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "On the other side. On the other side. Of course, I tend to agree with you fully. And unfortunately, this is a very critical situation that this region is facing, Iran in particular. I would say that I hope that in the minds of the people of Israel, there is enough or common sense to realize that probably escalation on the Israeli side is not in the favor of anybody. And try to let the Iranians to go on with their empty rhetoric as they do so far. But at the same time, I cannot deny the fact that, you know, there is a danger on the side of this regime. And what it says, it cannot be denied. Nobody can justify that. Particularly because the Iranian population is not behind this regime. Certainly in the case of the Palestinians. Or for that matter, it's not Palestine. It's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Lebanon with Hezbollah It's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Syria with Bashar Assad, its involvement in other parts of the world, perhaps even Yemen, that all of them creates extraterritorial responsibilities or interventions, unnecessary interventions, that ultimately is not in favor of best interest of the Iranian people or Iran as a country. Iran has never been involved in this kind of politics before of the Islamic Republic. So in a sense, the Iranian regime, it seems to me, by going to the extreme, tried to create for itself a space that it did not have or did not deserve to have within the politics of the region. In other words, that has become part of the tool, kind of an instrument for, if you like to call it some kind of an expansionism of the regime. In parts of the world where it can see there is a possibility for its presence, for its expansion. Of course, historically speaking, Iran, ever since 15th century, I think that's the earliest example I can see, in early modern times, has always a tendency of moving in the direction of not only what is today the state of Iraq, but further into the eastern coast of Mediterranean. So that's a long-term ambition that has been in the cards as far as Iran as a strategic unit is concerned. But by no means justified and by no means could be a reasonable, could be a sane policy of a nation state as today's Iran. But the second point is that also regimes are always victims of their own rhetoric. So it's, once you keep repeating something, then you become more and more committed to it. And it cannot remain anymore in the level of a rhetoric. You have to do something about it. So it's something, compelling pressure. to try to materialize what you've been saying in your rhetoric. And that is even extremely more dangerous as far as Iran is concerned. And it brings it to some unholy alliances that today we are witnessing Iran is getting involved, even more dangerous than this rhetoric in terms of the vis-a-vis Israel, is its involvement with Russia and to some extent with China, which we can talk about." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What do you think about the meeting between Khamenei and Vladimir Putin in July? What's that alliance? What's that partnership? Is it surface level geopolitics or is there a deep growing connection?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I cannot see the difference between geopolitics and these deep connections. I see this one and the same. Why? Because I think the experience of 40 years of distancing from the West, in terms of the Islamic Republic, and the fact that there is a shelf life to imperial presence for any empire anywhere in the world. So, after the terrible experience of the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan, pretty much like the British Empire, that after the Suez experience in 56, decided to withdraw from east of Suez, maybe there is a moment here that we are witnessing, or it may come, that a great power like the United States sees in its benefit not to get too much involved into nitty-gritty things in other parts of the world, that it's not its immediate concern. And I think that is part of the reason, not the entire reason. Part of the reason why we see the emergence of a new geopolitical environment in this part of the world, of which China, Russia, possibly Iran, possibly Turkey, possibly both of them, are going to be part. Perhaps Saudis also, but I doubt that the Saudis under the present circumstances, although we've witnessed some remarkable issue in the course of the past few weeks, where the Saudis giving assurances to American administration and then shifting and getting along with Putin. in terms of the oil production, I think it's more than that even. And it's not only them, but also the Emirates are doing the same thing. So what does that tell us?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And that's another many-hour conversation about the oil industry in Iran and the whole region." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "In emerging this kind of a world, which was perhaps even 10 years ago unimaginable, that you see now a great power, China, that is going to remain, from what we see around us, as a great power, and Russia, adventurous, foolish, but nevertheless would remain criminal, I would say, as far as its behavior in Ukraine. But actually, it's a rogue nation that attracts another rogue nation. So Iran finds itself now in a greater place of security in alliance with Russia in the hope that this would give Iran a greater security in this part of the world. Whether this is realistic or an illusion, I think remains to be seen. I think Iran-China relation makes more sense. Although, if you ask ordinary Iranians, they don't like it. They would tell, why should we be tied up with China as the only trade party with America because of the foolish isolations that you have created for us, because of all the sanctions that you have created for us, the Islamic Republic. So in a sense, it's a very difficult question to answer. Probably Iranians also like to be more on the other camp. But what happens is that in real term, what surprises me most is not this alliance with China, but it's kind of becoming a lackey or subservient to Putin's regime in Russia. Since if you look at it, Iran, ever since at least the 19th century, not going further back. The beginning of the 19th century always viewed Russia as the greatest threat, strategically, because it was sitting right at the top of Iran. It was infinitely more powerful than Iran has ever been. And Iran fought two rounds of war at the beginning of the century, lost the entire Caucasus to Russia, and learned its lesson, that you have to be mindful of Russia, and you have to keep it as an arm's length. And that's what was Iran's policy throughout the course of the 20th century, 19th and 20th century. up to what we see now around us, which is a very strange situation. Whether the balance has changed in terms of if Russia is purchasing weapons from Iran, which was unheard of, It means that there is a new balance is emerging, a new relationship is emerging. perhaps remains to be seen. But if you look at the historical precedence, it would have been enormously unwise to be an ally of Russia, given its long history of aggression in Iran. See, Russians, part of the reason why it's actually Iran allied itself with British Empire, was the fact that it was so much afraid of the Russian expansion. And as such, I don't know what's going to be the future of this relationship." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There is a big disconnect between governments and the people. And I think ultimately, I have faith that there's a love across the different cultures, across the different religions, amongst the people. And the governments are the source of the division and the conflict and the wars and all the geopolitics. that is in part grounded in the battle for resources and all that kind of stuff. Nevertheless, this is the world we live in. So you looked at the modern history of Iran the past few centuries. If you look into the future of this region, now you kind of implied that a historian has a bit of a cynical view. of protests and things like this that are fueled, at least in the minds of young people, with hope. If you were to, just for a while, have a bit of hope in your heart and your mind, what is a hopeful future for the next 10, 20, 30 years of Iran?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I'm not cynical. I try to be realistic. And I actually may be critical, but I have great hopes. in Iran's future for a variety of reasons. I actually did write an article, only the last version of it is going to go out today, in which the title of it is The Time of Fear and Women of Hope, which in a sense is this whole coverage about what this movement means that we see today. It may fizzle, in a few weeks time, or it may just go on and create a new dynamics in Iranian society that would hopefully result in a peaceful process of greater accommodation and a greater tolerance within the Iranian society and with the outside world. And I think majority of the Iranian people don't want tension, don't want confrontation, don't want crisis. They, if 40 years they have suffered from a regime that have dictated an ideology that it's regressive, and impractical, they want to go back to a life in which they don't really create trouble for their neighbors or for the world. And therefore, I would see a better future for Iran. That's for one reason. Strategically or geopolitically, it may be in Iran's advantage, in a peaceful fashion, to negotiate, as it's the fate of all the nations, rather than commit itself or sworn to a particular course of So there's a give and take, as the nature of politics is art of possible, as it's been said. So probably Iran is going to be hopefully moving in that direction. I think there is a generational thing. That's the third reason. No matter how much the Islamic Republic tried to Islamicize the Iranian society in its own image of kind of radical, ideological indoctrination, it has failed. It has failed up to what we see today in the Iranian streets. And the Iranian population said no to it. And I think if there would have been, and I very much hope there will be, a possibility for a more open environment, more open space, where they would be able to speak their views out, Iranians are not on the side of moving in the extreme directions. They are on the side of greater accommodation and a greater interest in the outside world. And if you look at every aspect of today's, beside the government, every aspect of life in today's Iran, you can see that. From the way that people dress, to the way that they try to live their lives, to the way that they're educating themselves or educated in the institutions, you see a desire, an intention to move forward. And I'm optimistic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, in that struggle for freedom, like I told you offline, one of my close childhood friends is Iranian. Just a beautiful person, his family is a wonderful family, and on a personal level is one of the deeper windows into the Iranian spirit and soul that I've gotten a chance to witness, so I really appreciate it. But in the recent times, I've gotten to hear from a lot of people that are currently living in Iran, that are currently have that burning hope for the future of the country. And so my love goes out to them in the struggle for freedom. I have to say." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's so nice of you to say so. And I very much hope so. There are moments of despair, and there are moments that you would think that there is no hope. But then again, something, triggers and you see 100,000 people in the streets of Berlin that are hoping for a better future for Iran. And I very much hope it eventually emerges, even, I'm hoping at the same time, there's not going to be a very strong leadership, as it was the case in the past." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "We started with hope, we ended with hope. This was a real honor, this is an incredible conversation. Thank you for giving such a deep and wide story of this great nation, one of the great nations in history. Well, that's very kind of you to say so." } ]

[ { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes and no. So the proteins indeed is the basic unit, biological unit, that carries out important function of the cell. However, through studying the proteins, And comparing the proteins across different species, across different kingdoms, you realize that proteins are actually much more complicated. So they have so-called modular complexity. And so what I mean by that is an average protein consists of several structural units. So we call them protein domains. And so you can imagine a protein as a string of beads, where each bead is a protein domain. And, you know, in the past 20 years, scientists have been studying the nature of the protein domains, because we realized that it's the unit. Because if you look at the functions, right, so many proteins have more than one function. And those protein functions are often carried out by those protein domains. So we also see that in the evolution, those proteins domains get shuffled. So they act actually as a unit, also from the structural perspective, right? So, you know, some people think of a protein as a sort of a globular, molecule, but as a matter of fact, the globular part of this protein is a protein domain. So we often have this, again, the collection of this protein domains align on a string as beads." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And the protein domains are made up of amino acid residues. Yes. So it's So this is the basic, so you're saying the protein domain is the basic building block of the function that we think about proteins doing. So of course you can always talk about different building blocks with turtles all the way down, but there's a point where there is, at the point of the hierarchy where it's the most, the cleanest element block based on which you can put them together in different kinds of ways to form complex function. And you're saying protein domains, why is that not talked about as often in popular culture?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, there are several perspectives on this. And one, of course, is the historical perspective, right? So historically, scientists have been able to structurally resolve, to obtain the 3D coordinates of a protein for, you know, for smaller proteins. And smaller proteins tend to be a single domain protein. So we have a protein equal to a protein domain. And so, because of that, the initial suspicion was that the proteins, they have globular shapes, and the more of smaller proteins you obtain structurally, the more you became convinced that that's the case. And only later, when we started having, you know, Alternative approaches, so the traditional ones are X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. So these are sort of the two main techniques that give us the 3D coordinates. But nowadays, there is huge breakthrough in cryo-electron microscopy. So the more advanced methods that allow us to get into the 3D shapes of much larger molecules, molecular complexes, just to give you one of the common examples for this year. So the first experimental structure of a SARS-CoV-2 protein was the cryo-EM structure of the S protein. So the spike protein. And so it was solved very quickly. And the reason for that is the advancement of this technology is pretty spectacular." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "How many domains does the, is it more than one domain? Oh, yes. Oh, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, so it's a very complex structure. It's complex. we, you know, on top of the complexity of a single protein, right? So this, this structure is actually, is a complex, is a trimer. So it needs to form a trimer in order to function properly. What's a complex? So a complex is agglomeration of multiple proteins. And so we can have the same protein copied in multiple, you know, made up in multiple copies and forming something that we called a homo-oligomer. Homo means the same, right? So, in this case, the spike protein is an example of a homo-tetra, homo-trimer, sorry." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it means three copies of a cell? Three copies, exactly." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. We have these three chains, the three molecular chains coupled together and performing the function. That's what, when you look at this protein from the top, you see a perfect triangle. But other, you know, so other complexes are made up of, you know, different proteins. Some of them are completely different. Some of them are similar. The hemoglobin molecule, right? So it's actually, it's a protein complex. It's made of four basic subunits. Two of them are are identical to each other and to other identical to each other, but they are also similar to each other, which sort of gives us some ideas about the evolution of this, you know, of this molecule. And perhaps, so one of the hypothesis is that, you know, in the past, it was just a homo tetramer, right? So four identical copies, and then it became, you know, sort of, it became mutated over the time and became more specialized." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Can we linger on the spike protein for a little bit? Is there something interesting or like beautiful you find about it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, first of all, it's an incredibly challenging protein. And so we, as a part of our sort of research to understand the structural basis of this virus, to sort of decode, structurally decode every single protein in its proteome, we've been working on this spike protein. And one of the main challenges was that the spike protein Cryo-EM data allows us to reconstruct or to obtain the 3D coordinates of roughly two-thirds of the protein. The rest of the one-third of this protein, it's a part that is buried into the membrane of the virus and of the viral envelope. And it also has a lot of unstable structures around it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So it's chemically interacting somehow with whatever the heck it's connecting to." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so people are still trying to understand the nature and the role of this one-third. Because the top part, the primary function is to get attached to the ACE2 receptor, human receptor. There is also beautiful mechanics of how this thing happens, right? So because there are three different copies of this You know, there are three different domains, right? So we're talking about domains. So this is the receptor binding domains, RBDs, that gets untaggled and get ready to get attached to the receptor. Now, they are not necessarily going in a sync mode, as a matter of fact. Asynchronous? Yes. And this is where another level of complexity comes into play, because right now what we see is we typically see just one of the arms going out. and getting ready to be attached to the ACE2 receptors. However, there was a recent mutation that people studied in that spike protein and a Very recently, a group from UMass Medical School, we happened to collaborate with groups, so this is a group of Jeremy Lubin and a number of other faculty. They actually solved the mutated structure of the spike, and they showed that actually, because of these mutations, you have more than one arms opening up and so now so you so the frequency of two arms going up increase quite drastically." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Interesting. Does that change the dynamics somehow?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It potentially can change the dynamics of, because now you have two possible opportunities to get attached to the ACE2 receptor. It's a very complex molecular process, mechanistic process. But the first step of this process is the attachment of this spike protein, of the spike trimer, to the human ACE2 receptor. So this is a molecule that sits on the surface of the human cell. And that's essentially what initiates, what triggers the whole process of encapsulation." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "If this was dating, this would be the first date. So this is the... In a way, yes. So is it possible to have the spike protein just like floating about on its own? Or does it need that interactability with the membrane?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so it needs to be attached, at least as far as I know. But, you know, when you get this thing attached on the surface, right, there is also a lot of dynamics on how it sits on the surface, right? So for example, there was a recent work in, Again, where people use the cryolectron microscopy to get the first glimpse of the overall structure. It's a very low res, but you still get some interesting details about the surface, about what is happening inside, because we have literally no clue until recent work about how the capsid is organized. So capsid is essentially it's the inner core of the viral particle where there is the RNA of the virus, and it's protected by another protein, N-protein, that essentially acts as a shield. But, you know, now we are learning more and more. So it's actually it's not just this shield. It's you is potentially is used for the stability of the outer shell of the of the virus. So it's it's pretty complicated." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And I mean, understanding all of this is really useful for trying to figure out, like developing a vaccine or some kind of drug to attack any aspects of this. Right." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, I mean, there are many different implications to that. First of all, it's important to understand the virus itself, right? So, in order to understand how it acts, what is the overall mechanistic process of this virus, replication of this virus, proliferation to the cell. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is designing new treatments. So one of the possible treatments is designing nanoparticles. and so some nanoparticles that will resemble the viral shape that would have the spike integrated and essentially would act as a competitor to the real virus by blocking the ACE2 receptors and thus preventing the real virus entering the cell. Now, there is a very interesting direction in looking at the membrane, at the envelope portion of the protein and attacking its M protein. So to give you a sort of a brief overview, there are four structural proteins. These are the proteins that made up a structure of the virus. So spike S protein that acts as a trimer. So it needs three copies. E envelope protein that acts as a pentamer. So it needs five copies to act properly. M is a membrane protein. It forms dimers. And actually it forms beautiful lattice. And this is something that we've been studying and we are seeing it in simulations. It actually forms a very nice grid or threads of different dimers attached next to each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's a bunch of copies of each other. And they naturally, when you have a bunch of copies of each other, they form an interesting lattice." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. And, you know, if you think about this, right, so this complex, you know, the viral shape needs to be organized somehow, self-organized somehow, right? So if it was a completely random process, you probably wouldn't have the envelope shell of the ellipsoid shape. You would have something pre-random, right, shape. So there is some regularity in how this, you know, how these M-dimers get to attach to each other in a very specific directed way. Is that understood at all? It's not understood. We are now, we've been working in the past six months since we met. Actually, this is where we started working on trying to understand the overall structure of the envelope and the key components that made up this structure. Wait, does the envelope also have the lattice structure or no? So the envelope is essentially is the outer shell of the viral particle. The N, the nucleocapsid protein, is something that is inside. But get that, the N is likely to interact with M. Does it go M and E? Like where's the E and the M? So E, those different proteins, they occur in different copies on the viral particle. So E, this pentamer complex, we only have two or three maybe per each particle. Okay, we have thousand or so of M dimers that essentially made up, that makes up the entire, you know, outer shell." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So most of the outer shell is the M. M dimer. And lipids. When you say particle, that's the viron, the virus, the individual virus. It's a single, yes." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Single element of the virus, single virus. Single virus, right. And we have about, you know, roughly 50 to 90 spike trimers. So when you show a curve- Per virus particle. Per virus particle. Sorry, what did you say? 50 to 90? 50 to 90. Cool. So this is how this thing is organized. And so now typically, so you see the antibodies that target you know, spike protein, certain parts of the spike protein, but there could be some, also some treatments, right? So, so these are, you know, these are small molecules that bind strategic parts of these proteins disrupting its functioning. One of the promising directions, it's one of the newest directions, is actually targeting the M-dimer of the protein, targeting the proteins that make up this outer shell. Because if you're able to destroy the outer shell, you're essentially destroying the viral particle itself. So preventing it from functioning at all." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So that's, you think, is from a sort of cybersecurity perspective, virus security perspective, that's the best attack vector? Or like that's a promising attack vector?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say yes. I mean, there's still tons of research needs to be done. But yes, I think, you know, so there's more attack surface, I guess. a more attack surface, but from our analysis, from other evolutionary analysis, this protein is evolutionarily more stable compared to the, say, to the spike protein." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And stable means a more static target? Well, yeah." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it doesn't change. It doesn't evolve from the evolutionary perspective so drastically as, for example, the spike protein." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's a bunch of stuff in the news about mutations of the virus in the United Kingdom. I also saw in South Africa something, maybe that was yesterday. You just kind of mentioned about stability and so on. Which aspects of this are mutatable and which aspects, if mutated, become more dangerous? And maybe even zooming out, what are your thoughts and knowledge and ideas about the way it's mutated, all the news that we've been hearing? Are you worried about it from a biological perspective? Are you worried about it from a human perspective?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, I mean, you know, mutations are sort of a general way for these viruses to evolve. So it's essentially, this is the way they evolve. This is the way they were able to jump from one species to another. We also see some recent jumps. There were some incidents of this virus jumping from human to dogs. So there is some danger in those jumps because every time it jumps, it also mutates. So when it jumps to the species and jumps back, it acquires some mutations that are sort of driven by the environment of a new host. And it's different from the human environment. And so we don't know whether the mutations that are acquired in the new species are neutral with respect to the human host or maybe damaging." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, change is always scary. So are you worried about, I mean, it seems like because the spread is during winter now seems to be exceptionally high, and especially with a vaccine just around the corner already being actually deployed, there's some worry that this puts evolutionary pressure, selective pressure on the virus. for it to mutate. Is that a source of worry?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, there is always this thought, you know, in the scientist's mind, you know, what will happen, right? So I know there've been discussions about sort of the arms race between the, you know, the ability of the humanity to get vaccinated faster than the virus essentially becomes resistant to the vaccine. I mean, I don't worry that much simply because there is not that much evidence to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "to aggressive mutation around the vaccine." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly. Obviously, there are mutations around the vaccine. So the reason we get vaccinated every year against the seasonal flu. Because there's mutations. But I think it's important to study it. no doubts, right? So I think one of the, you know, to me, and again, I might be biased, because, you know, we've been trying to do that as well. So, but one of the critical directions in understanding the virus is to understand its evolution in order to sort of understand the mechanisms, the key mechanisms that lead the virus to jump, you know, the Nordic viruses to jump from species to another, that the mechanisms that lead the virus to become resistant to vaccines, also to treatments, right? And hopefully that knowledge will enable us to sort of forecast the evolutionary traces, the future evolutionary traces of this virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, what, from a biological perspective, this might be a dumb question, but is there parts of the virus that if souped up, like through mutation, could make it more effective at doing its job? We're talking about this Pacific. because we were talking about the different, like the membrane, the M protein, the E protein, the N and the S, the spike." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Is there some? There are 20 or so more in addition to that." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But is that a dumb way to look at it? Like which of these, if mutated could have the greatest impact, potentially damaging impact on the effectiveness of the virus?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So it's actually, it's a very good question because, and the short answer is we don't know yet, but Of course, there is capacity of this virus to become more efficient. The reason for that is, you know, so if you look at the virus, I mean, it's a machine, right? So it's a machine that does a lot of different functions, and many of these functions are sort of nearly perfect, but they're not perfect. And those mutations can make those functions more perfect. For example, the attachment to ACE2 receptor of the spike. So, you know, is it Has this virus reached the efficiency in which the attachment is carried out? Or there are some mutations that still to be discovered, right, that will make this attachment sort of stronger or, you know, something more, in a way, more efficient. from the point of view of this virus functioning. That's sort of the obvious example. But if you look at each of these proteins, I mean, it's there for a reason. It performs certain function. And it could be that certain mutations will enhance this function. It could be that some mutations will make this function much less efficient. So that's also the case." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Since we're talking about the evolutionary history of a virus, let's zoom back out and look at the evolution of proteins. I glanced at this 2010 Nature paper on the, quote, ongoing expansion of the protein universe. And then it kind of implies and talks about that proteins started with a common ancestor, which is kind of interesting. It's interesting to think about even just the first organic thing that started life on Earth. And from that, there's now, what is it, 3.5 billion years later, there's now millions of proteins, and they're still evolving. And that's, in part, one of the things that you're researching. Is there something interesting to you about the evolution of proteins from this initial ancestor to today? Is there something beautiful, insightful about this long story?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I think, you know, if I were to pick a single keyword about protein evolution, I would pick modularity, something that we talked about in the beginning. And that's the fact that the proteins are no longer considered as, you know, as a sequence of letters. there are hierarchical complexities in the way these proteins are organized. And these complexities are actually going beyond the protein sequence. It's actually going all the way back to the gene, to the nucleotide sequence. And so, you know, again, these protein domains they are not only functional building blocks, they are also evolutionary building blocks. And so what we see in the sort of in the later stages of evolution, I mean, once this stable structurally and functionally building blocks were discovered, they essentially, they stay, those domains stay as such. So that's why if you start comparing different proteins, you will see that many of them will have similar fragments. And those fragments will correspond to something that we call protein domain families. And so they are still different because you still have mutations and different mutations are attributed to diversification of the function of this protein domain. However, you don't, you very rarely see, you know, the evolutionary events that would split this domain into fragments because, and it's, you know, once you have the domain split, you actually, you know, you can completely cancel out its function or at the very least you can reduce it. and that's not efficient from the point of view of the cell functioning. So the protein domain level is a very important one. Now, on top of that, right? So if you look at the proteins, right? So you have this structural units and they carry out the function, but then much less is known about things that connect this protein domains, something that we call linkers. And those linkers are completely flexible, you know, parts of the protein that nevertheless carry out a lot of function. It's like little tails, little heads. So we do have tails, so they're called termini, C and N termini. So these are things right on one and another ends of the protein sequence. So they are also very important. So they're attributed to very specific interactions between the proteins. So- But you're referring to the links between domains. That connect the domains. And, you know, apart from the, just the simple perspective, if you have, you know, a very short domain, you have, sorry, a very short linker, you have two domains next to each other. They are forced to be next to each other. If you have a very long one, you have the domains that are extremely flexible and they carry out a lot of sort of spatial reorganization, right? That's awesome. But on top of that, right, just this linker itself, because it's so flexible, it actually can adapt to a lot of different shapes. And therefore, it's a very good interactor when it comes to interaction between this protein and other protein. All right, so these things also evolve, you know, and they in a way have different sort of laws of, the driving laws that underlie the evolution because they no longer need to preserve certain structure, right? Unlike protein domains. And so on top of that, you have something that is even less studied. And this is something that attribute to the concept of alternative splicing. So alternative splicing, so it's a very cool concept. It's something that we've been fascinated about for over a decade. in my lab and trying to do research with that. So typically, a simplistic perspective is that one gene is equal one protein product. So you have a gene, you transcribe it and translate it, and it becomes a protein. In reality, when we talk about eukaryotes, especially sort of more recent eukaryotes that are very complex, the gene is no longer equal to one protein. it actually can produce multiple functionally active protein products. And each of them is called an alternatively spliced product. The reason it happens is that if you look at the gene, it actually has, it has also blocks And the blocks, some of which, and it's essentially, it goes like this. So we have a block that will later be translated. We call it exon. Then we'll have a block that is not translated, cut out. We call it intron. So we have exon, intron, exon, intron, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So sometimes you can have dozens of these exons and introns. So what happens is during the process when the gene is converted to RNA, We have things that are cut out, the introns that cut out, and exons that now get assembled together. And sometimes we will throw out some of the exons. and the remaining protein product will become different. So now you have fragments of the protein that no longer there. They were cut out with the introns. Sometimes you will essentially take one exon and replace it with another one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's some flexibility in this process." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So that creates a whole new level of complexity. Is this random though? Is it random? It's not random. And this is where I think now the appearance of this modern single cell and before that tissue level sequencing, next generation sequencing techniques such as RNA-Seq allows us to see that these are the events that often happen in response. It's a dynamic event that happens in response to to disease or in response to certain developmental stage of a cell. And this is an incredibly complex layer that also undergoes, I mean, because it's at the gene level, right? So it undergoes certain evolution. And now we have this interplay between what is happening in the protein world and what is happening in the gene and RNA world. And for example, it's often that we see that the boundaries of these exomes coincide with the boundaries of the protein domains. So there is this, you know, close interplay to that. It's not always, I mean, you know, otherwise it would be too simple, right? But we do see the connection between those sort of machineries. And obviously the evolution will pick up this complexity and, you know, select for whatever is successful, whatever is a choosing function. We see that complexity in play and makes this question more complex, but more exciting." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "As a small detour, I don't know if you think about this into the world of computer science, there's Douglas Hostetter, I think, came up with a name of Quine, which are, I don't know if you're familiar with these things, but it's computer programs that have, I guess, Exxon and Intron, and they copy, the whole purpose of the program is to copy itself. So it prints copies of itself, but can also carry information inside of it. So it's a very kind of crude, fun exercise of, can we sort of replicate these ideas from cells? Can we have a computer program that when you run it, just print itself, the entirety of itself. And does it in different programming languages and so on. I've been playing around and writing them. It's a kind of fun little exercise." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "You know, when I was a kid, so, so, you know, it was essentially one of the, of the sort of main stages in, in, uh, informatics Olympiads that you have to reach in order to be any so good is you should be able to write a program that replicates itself. And so the task then becomes even sort of more complicated. So what is the shortest And of course, it's a function of a programming language. But yeah, I remember a long, long, long time ago when we tried to make it shorter and shorter and find the shortcuts." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's actually on Stack Exchange, there's an entire site called CodeGolf, I think, where the entirety is just the competition. People just come up with whatever task. I don't know, like write code that reports the weather today. And the competition is about, in whatever programming language, what is the shortest program? And it makes you actually, people should check it out because it makes you realize there's some weird programming languages out there. But just to dig on that a little deeper, do you think, You know, in computer science, we don't often think about programs. There's like the machine learning world now that's still kind of basic programs. And then there's humans that replicate themselves, right? And there's these mutations and so on. Do you think we'll ever have a world where there's programs that kind of have an evolutionary process. So I'm not talking about evolutionary algorithms, but I'm talking about programs that kind of mate with each other and evolve and like on their own replicate themselves. So this is kind of the idea here is, you know, that's how you can have a runaway thing. So we think about machine learning as a system that gets smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter. At least the machine learning systems of today are like it's it's a program that you can like turn off. as opposed to throwing a bunch of little programs out there and letting them multiply and mate and evolve and replicate. Do you ever think about that kind of world when we jump from the biological systems that you're looking at to artificial ones?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, it's almost like you take the area of intelligent agents, which are essentially the independent codes that run and interact and exchange the information. I don't see why not. I mean, it could be sort of a natural evolution in this area of computer science." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I think it's kind of an interesting possibility. It's terrifying too, but I think it's a really powerful tool. Like agents that, you know, we have social networks with millions of people and they interact. I think it's interesting to inject into that, there's already injecting into that bots, right? But those bots are pretty dumb. You know, they're, they're probably pretty dumb algorithms. You know, it's interesting to think that there might be bots that evolve together with humans. And there's the sea of humans and robots that are operating first in the digital space. And then you can also think, I love the idea, some people worked, I think at Harvard, at Penn, there's robotics labs that, you know, take as a fundamental task to build a robot that given extra resources can build another copy of itself, like in the physical space, which is super difficult to do, but super interesting. I remember there's like research on robots that can build a bridge. So they make a copy of themselves and they connect themselves. And so it's like self-building bridge based on building. Blocks you can imagine like a building that self assembles. So it's basically self assembling structures from from robotic parts, but it's interesting to within that robot add the ability to mutate and And and do all the interesting like little things that you're referring to in evolution to go from a single origin protein building block to like a" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And if you think about this, I mean, you know, the bits and pieces. are there, you know? So you mentioned the evolutionary algorithm, right? You know, so this is sort of, and maybe sort of the goal is in a way different, right? So the goal is to, you know, to essentially to optimize your search, right? So, but sort of the ideas are there. So people recognize that, you know, that the, you know, recombination events lead to global changes in the search trajectories. The mutations event is a more refined step in the search. Then you have other sort of nature-inspired algorithm, right? So one of the reason that I think it's one of the funnest one is the slime-based algorithm, right? So I think the first was introduced by the Japanese group where it was able to solve some pretty complex problems. there are still a lot of things we've yet to borrow from the nature. So there are a lot of ideas that nature you know, gets to offer us that, you know, it's up to us to grab it and to, you know, get the best use of it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Including neural networks, you know, we have a very crude inspiration from nature on neural networks. Maybe there's other inspirations to be discovered in the brain or other aspects of the various systems, even like the immune system, the way it interplays I recently started to understand that the immune system has something to do with the way the brain operates. There's multiple things going on in there, all of which are not modeled in artificial neural networks. And maybe if you throw a little bit of that biological spice in there, you'll come up with something cool. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Drake equation. I just did a video on it yesterday because I wanted to give my own estimate of it. It's an equation that combines a bunch of factors to estimate how many alien civilizations are in the galaxy." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Oh yeah, I've heard about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So one of the interesting parameters, it's like how many stars are born every year, how many planets are on average per star, how many habitable planets are there. And then the one that starts being really interesting is the probability that life emerges on a habitable planet. So like, I don't know if you think about, you certainly think a lot about evolution, but do you think about the thing which evolution doesn't describe, which is like the beginning of evolution, the origin of life? I think I put the probability of life developing in a habitable planet at 1%. This is very scientifically rigorous. Okay. First, at a high level for the Drake equation, what would you put that percent at on earth? And in general, do you have something, do you have thoughts about how life might've started? You know, like the proteins being the first kind of one of the early jumping points" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so I think back in 2018, there was a very exciting paper published in Nature, where they found one of the simplest amino acids, glycine. in a comet dust. So this is, I apologize if I don't pronounce, it's a Russian-named comet, I think Chugryumov-Gerasimenko. This is the comet where, and there was this mission to get close to this comet and get the stardust from its tail. And when scientists analyzed it, they actually found traces of, you know, of glycine, which makes up, you know, it's one of the basic, one of the 20 basic I mean, ISIS that makes up proteins, right? So that was kind of very exciting, right? But the question is very interesting, right? So if there is some alien life, Is it gonna be made of proteins, right? Or maybe RNAs, right? So we see that, you know, the RNA viruses are certainly, you know, very well established sort of, you know, group of molecular machines. So yeah, it's a very interesting question." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What probability would you put? How unlikely just on Earth do you think this whole thing is that we got going? Are we really lucky or is it inevitable? What's your sense when you sit back and think about life on Earth? Is it higher or lower than 1%? Well, because 1% is pretty low, but it's still like, damn, that's a pretty good chance." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. It's a pretty good chance. I mean, I would personally, but again, you know, I'm, you know, probably not the best person to do such estimations, but I would, you know, intuitively, I would probably put it lower, but still, I mean, you know, we're really lucky here on earth." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Or the conditions are really good." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think that everything was right in a way, right? So still the conditions were not ideal if you try to look at what was several billions years ago when the life emerged." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there is something called the Rare Earth Hypothesis that, in counter to the Drake equation, says that the conditions of Earth, if you actually were to describe Earth, it's quite a special place. so special it might be unique in our galaxy and potentially, you know, close to unique in the entire universe. Like it's very difficult to reconstruct those same conditions. And what the rare earth hypothesis argues is all those different conditions are essential for life. And so that's sort of the counter, you know, like all the things we thinking that Earth is pretty average. I mean, I can't really, I'm trying to remember to go through all of them, but just the fact that it is shielded from a lot of asteroids, obviously the distance to the sun, but also the fact that it's like a perfect balance between the amount of water and land and all those kinds of things. I don't know, there's a bunch of different factors that I don't remember, there's a long list. But it's fascinating to think about if in order for something like proteins and then the DNA and RNA to emerge, you need, and basic living organisms, you need to be very close to an Earth-like planet, which would be sad." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Or exciting, I don't know. If you ask me, in a way I put a parallel between our own research and from the intuitive perspective, you have those two extremes. And the reality is never, very rarely falls into the extremes. It's always, the optimums always reached somewhere in between. So I would, and that's what I tend to think. I think that, you know, we're probably somewhere in between. So they were not unique, unique, but again, the chances are, you know, reasonably small." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "The problem is we don't know the other extreme is like, I tend to think that we don't actually understand the basic mechanisms of like what this is all originated from. Like it seems like we think of life as this distinct thing, maybe intelligence is a distinct thing, maybe the physics that from which planets and suns are born is a distinct thing, but that could be a very, it's like the Stephen Wolfram thing. It's like from simple rules emerges greater and greater complexity. So I tend to believe that just life finds a way. it like we don't know the extreme of how common life is because it could be life is like everywhere like like so everywhere that it's almost like laughable like that we're such idiots to think or you like it's it's like ridiculous to even like think It's like ants thinking that their little colony is the unique thing and everything else doesn't exist. I mean, it's also very possible that that's that's the extreme and we're just not able to maybe comprehend the nature of that. Just to stick on alien life for just a brief moment more, there is some signs of life on Venus in gaseous form. There's hope for life on Mars, probably extinct. We're not talking about intelligent life. Although that has been in the news recently. We're talking about basic bacteria. And then also, I guess, there's a couple moons. Europa, which is Jupiter's moon. I think there's another one. Is that exciting or is it terrifying to you that we might find life? Do you hope we find life?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I certainly do hope that we find life. I mean, it was very exciting to hear about this news about the possible life on Venus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It'd be nice to have hard evidence of something, which is what the hope is for Mars and Europa. But do you think those organisms would be similar biologically, or would they even be sort of carbon-based if we do find them?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I would say they would be carbon based. How similar? It's a big question, right? So it's the moment we discover things outside Earth, right? Even if it's a tiny little single cell. I mean, there's so much. Just imagine that, that would be so. I think that that would be another turning point for the science." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And especially if it's different in some very new way, that's exciting, because that says, that's a definitive statement, not definitive, but a pretty strong statement that life is everywhere in the universe. To me, at least, that's really exciting. You brought up Joshua Lederberg in an offline conversation. I think I'd love to talk to you about AlphaFold and this might be an interesting way to enter that conversation because, so he won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for discovering that bacteria can mate and exchange genes. but he also did a ton of other stuff, like we mentioned, helping NASA find life on Mars and the... Dendro. Dendro, the chemical expert system, expert systems, remember those? What do you find interesting about this guy and his ideas about artificial intelligence in general?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I have a personal story to share. I started my PhD in Canada back in 2000. We were developing a new language for symbolic machine learning. So it's different from the feature-based machine learning. And one of the cleanest applications of this approach, of this formalism, was to cheminformatics and computer-aided drug design. So essentially, as a part of my research, I developed a system that essentially looked at chemical compounds of, say, the same therapeutic category, male hormones, and tried to figure out the structural fragments that are the structural building blocks that are important, that define this class, versus structural building blocks that are there just because, to complete the structure. But they are not essentially the ones that make up the key chemical properties of this therapeutic category. And, you know, for me, it was something new. I was trained as an applied mathematician, you know, with some machine learning background, but, you know, computer-aided drug design was a completely new territory. So because of that, I often find myself asking lots of questions on one of these sort of central forums. Back then, there were, you know, no Facebooks or stuff like that. There was- What's a forum? It's a forum, it's essentially like a bulletin board. Essentially, you have a bunch of people and you post a question and you get an answer from different people. And back then, one of the most popular forums was CCL. I think Computational Chemistry Library, not library, but something like that. But CCL, that was the forum. And there, I..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Asked a lot of dumb questions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, I asked questions. I also shared some information about our formalities and how we do and whether whatever we do makes sense. And I remember that one of these posts, I mean, I still remember, I would call it desperately looking for an answer. a chemist's advice, something like that. And so I posed my question, I explained how our formalism is, what it does and what kind of applications I'm planning to do. And it was in the middle of the night and I went back to Too bad. And next morning, I have a phone call from my advisor, who also looked at this form. It's like, you won't believe who replied to you. And it's like, who? He said, well, you know, there is a message to you from Joshua Lederberg. And my reaction was like, who is Joshua Letterberg? Your eyes are hung up. So, and essentially, Joshua wrote me that we had conceptually similar ideas in the Dendrel project. You may want to look it up." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And we should also, sorry, this is a side comment, say that even though he won the Nobel Prize at a really young age, in 58, but so... He was, I think, he was, what, 33? Yeah, it's just crazy. So anyway, so that's, so hence in the 90s, responding. to young whippersnappers on the CCL forum. Okay." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And so back then he was already very senior. I mean, he unfortunately passed away back in 2008, but back in 2001, he was a professor emeritus at Rockefeller University. And that was actually, believe it or not, one of the, One of the reasons I decided to join as a postdoc, the group of Andrei Saly, who was at Rockefeller University, was the hope that I could actually have a chance to meet Joshua in person. And I met him very briefly, right? Just, because he was walking, there's a little bridge that connects the research campus with the sky scrapper that Rockefeller owns, where postdocs and faculty and graduate students live. And so I met him and had a very short conversation. So I started reading about Dendral and I was amazed. We're talking about 1960, right? The ideas were so profound. Well, what's the fundamental ideas of it? The reason to make this is even crazier. So Lederberg wanted to make a system that would help him study the extraterrestrial molecules. So the idea was that the way you study the extraterrestrial molecules is you do the mass spec analysis. And so the mass spec gives you sort of bits, numbers about essentially gives you the ideas about the possible fragments or atoms and maybe a little fragments, pieces of this molecule that make up the molecule. So now you need to sort of to decompose this information and to figure out what was the whole before it became fragments, bits and pieces, right? So in order to make this, to have this tool, the idea of Ledeberg was to connect chemistry, computer science, and to design this so-called expert system that looks, that takes into account, that takes as an input the mass spec data, the possible database of possible molecules. and essentially try to sort of induce the molecule that would correspond to this spectra. Or, you know, essentially what this project ended up being was that, you know, it would provide a list of candidates. that then a chemist would look at and make final decision, so." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But the original idea, I suppose, is to solve the entirety of this problem automatically." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. So he, back then, he approached- 60s. Yes. I can't believe that. It's amazing. It still blows my mind. And this was essentially the origin of the modern bioinformatics, cheminformatics back in the 60s. Every time you deal with projects like this, with research like this, the power of the intelligence of these people is just overwhelming." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you think about expert systems, is there, and why they kind of didn't become successful, especially in the space of bioinformatics, where it does seem like there's a lot of expertise in humans. And, you know, it's possible to see that a system like this could be made very useful and be built up." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "It's actually a great question. At my university, I teach artificial intelligence. My first two lectures are on the history of AI. And there we try to go through the main stages of AI. And so, the question of why expert systems failed or became obsolete, it's actually a very interesting one. And there are, if you try to read the historical perspectives, there are actually two lines of thoughts. One is that they were essentially not up to the expectations. And so therefore they were replaced, you know, by other things, right? The other one was that completely opposite one, that they were too good. And as a result, they essentially became sort of a household name and then, essentially they got transformed. I mean, in both cases, sort of the outcome was the same. They evolved into something, right? And that's what I, you know, if I look at this, right? So the modern machine learning, right? So- There's echoes in the modern machine learning. I think so. I think so. Because, you know, if you think about this, you know, and how we design, you know, the most successful algorithms, including AlphaFold, right? You built in the knowledge about the domain that you study. All right, so you built in your expertise." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So speaking of AlphaFold, so DeepMind's AlphaFold2 recently was announced to have, quote unquote, solved protein folding. How exciting is this to you? It seems to be one of the exciting things that have happened in 2020. It's an incredible accomplishment from the looks of it. What part of it is amazing to you? What part would you say is overhyped or maybe misunderstood?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "is definitely a very exciting achievement. To give you a little bit of perspective, so in bioinformatics, we have several competitions. And so the way you often hear how those competitions have been explained to non-bioinformaticians is they call it Bioinformatics Olympic Games. And there are several disciplines, right? So the historical one of the first one was the discipline in predicting the protein structure, predicting the 3D coordinates of the protein. But there are some others. So the predicting protein functions, predicting effects of mutations, on protein functions than predicting protein-protein interactions. So the original one was CASP, or Critical Assessment of Protein Structure. The, you know, typically what happens during this competitions is, you know, scientists, experimental scientists solve the structures, but don't put them into the protein databank, which is the centralized database that contains all the 3D coordinates. Instead, they hold it and release protein sequences. And now the challenge of the community is to predict the 3D structures of these proteins, and then use the experimentally solved structures to assess which one is the closest one, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And this competition, by the way, just a bunch of different tangents. And maybe you can also say, what is protein folding? And this competition, CASP competition is, So it has become the gold standard, and that's what was used to say that protein folding was solved. Sorry, just to add a little, just a bunch. So if you can, whenever you say stuff, maybe throw in some of the basics for the folks that might be outside of the field. Anyway, sorry." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "First of all. So, yeah, so the reason it's, you know, relevant to our understanding of protein folding is because we've yet to learn how the folding mechanistically works, right? So there are different hypotheses what happens to this fold. For example, there is a hypothesis that the folding happens also in the modular fashion, right? So that We have protein domains that get folded independently because their structure is stable, and then the whole protein structure gets formed. But within those domains, we also have so-called secondary structure, the small alpha helices, beta sheets. So these are elements that are structurally stable. And so, and the question is, when they when do they get formed? Because some of the secondary structure elements, you have to have a fragment in the beginning and say the fragment in the middle, right? So you cannot potentially start having the full fold from the get-go, right? So it's still a big enigma what happens. We know that it's an extremely efficient and stable process." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So there's this long sequence and the fold happens really quickly. So that's really weird, right? And it happens like the same way almost every time." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, exactly. That's really weird. That's freaking weird. That's why it's such an amazing thing. But most importantly, so when you see the translation process, so when you don't have the whole protein translated, right? It's still being translated, you know, getting out from the ribosome. You already see some structural, you know, fragmentation. So folding, starts happening before the whole protein gets produced, right? And so this is obviously, you know, one of the biggest questions in, you know, in modern molecular biologies." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Not like maybe what happens, like that's not, That's bigger than the question of folding. That's the question of like deeper fundamental idea of folding." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Behind folding. Exactly, exactly. So obviously if we are able to predict the end product of protein folding, we are one step closer to understanding sort of the mechanistics of the protein folding. because we can then potentially look and start probing what are the critical parts of this process and what are not so critical parts of this process. So we can start decomposing this. So in a way, this protein structure prediction algorithm can be used as a tool, right? So you modify the protein, you get back to this tool, it predicts, okay, it's completely unstable." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, which aspects of the input will have a big impact on the output." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Exactly, exactly. So what happens is we typically have some sort of incremental advancement. you know, each stage of this CASP competition, you have groups with incremental advancement. And, you know, historically, the top performing groups were, you know, they were not using machine learning. They were using very advanced biophysics combined with bioinformatics, combined with, you know, the data mining. And that was, you know, that, would enable them to obtain protein structures of those proteins that don't have any structurally solved relatives. Because if we have another protein, say the same protein, but coming from a different species, we could potentially derive some ideas, and that's so-called homology or comparative modeling, where we'll derive some ideas from the previously known structures, and that would help us tremendously in reconstructing the 3D structure overall. But what happens when we don't have these relatives? This is when it becomes really, really hard. So that's so-called de novo protein structure prediction. And in this case, those methods were traditionally very good. But what happened in the last year, the original alpha fold came into And all of a sudden, it's much better than everyone else. This is 2018. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, and the competition is only every two years, I think." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And then, so, you know, it was sort of, kind of over shockwave to the bioinformatics community that we have like a state-of-the-art machine learning system that does structure prediction. And essentially what it does, if you look at this, it actually predicts the context. So the process of reconstructing the 3D structure starts by predicting the context between the different parts of the protein. And the context is essentially the parts of the proteins that are in a close proximity to each other." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Right, so actually the machine learning part seems to be estimating, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems to be estimating the distance matrix, which is like the distance between the different parts." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, so we call it a contact map. Contact map. So once you have the contact map, the reconstruction is becoming more straightforward, right? But so the contact map is the key. And so, you know, so that... what happened, and now we started seeing in this current stage, in the most recent one, we started seeing the emergence of these ideas in other people's works. But yet here's AlphaFold 2 that again outperforms everyone else. and also by introducing yet another wave of the machine learning ideas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, there does seem to be also an incorporation. First of all, the paper's not out yet, but there's a bunch of ideas already out. There does seem to be an incorporation of this other thing. I don't know if it's something that you could speak to, which is like the incorporation of like other structures, like evolutionary similar, Yes. Structures that are used to kind of give you hints." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes. So evolutionary similarity is something that we can detect at different levels, right? So we know, for example, that the structure of proteins is more conserved than the sequence. The sequence could be very different, but the structural shape is actually still very conserved. So that's sort of the intrinsic property that in a way related to protein folds, to the evolution of proteins and protein domains, et cetera. But we know that. I mean, there've been multiple studies. And ideally, if you have structures, you should use that information. However, sometimes we don't have this information. Instead, we have a bunch of sequences. Sequences, we have a lot. So we have hundreds, thousands of different organisms sequenced. And by taking the same protein, but in different organisms and aligning it. So making it, you know, making the corresponding positions aligned. We can actually... say a lot about sort of what is conserved in this protein and therefore, you know, structurally more stable, what is diverse in this proteins. So on top of that, we could provide sort of the information about the sort of the secondary structure of this protein, et cetera, et cetera. So this information is extremely useful And it's already there. So while it's tempting to do a complete ab initio, so you just have a protein sequence and nothing else, the reality is such that we are overwhelmed with this data. So why not use it? And so, yeah, so I'm looking forward to reading this paper." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It does seem like they've, in the previous version of AlphaFold, they didn't, for the evolutionary similarity thing, they didn't use machine learning for that. Or rather they used it as like the input to the entirety of the neural net, like the features derived from the similarity. It seems like there's some kind of quote-unquote iterative thing where it seems to be part of the learning process is the incorporation of this evolutionary similarity." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, I don't think there is a bio-archive paper, right? There's nothing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "There's nothing. There's a blog post that's written by a marketing team, essentially, which, you know, it has some scientific... similarity probably to the actual methodology used, but it could be, it's like interpreting scripture. It could be just poetic interpretations of the actual work, as opposed to direct connection to the work." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So now, speaking about protein folding, right? So in order to answer the question whether or not we have solved this, right? So we need to go back to the beginning of our conversation, with the realization that an average protein is that, Typically what the CASP has been focusing on is, you know, this competition has been focusing on the single, maybe two domain proteins that are still very compact. And even those ones are extremely challenging to solve. But now we talk about an average protein that has two, three protein domains. If you look at the proteins that are in charge of the process with the neural system, perhaps one of the most recently evolved sort of systems in the organism, right? All of them, well, the majority of them are highly multi-domain proteins. So they are, you know, some of them have five, six, seven, you know, and more domains, right? And, you know, we are very far away from understanding how these proteins are folded." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So the complexity of the protein matters here, the complexity of the protein modules or the protein domains. So you're saying solved, so the definition of solved here is particularly the cast competition achieving human level, not human level, achieving experimental level performance on these particular sets of proteins that have been used in these competitions." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I mean, you know, I do think that, you know, especially with regards to the alpha fold, you know, it is able to, you know, to solve, you know. at the near experimental level, a pretty big majority of the more compact proteins or protein domains. Because again, in order to understand how the overall protein, multi-domain protein fold, we do need to understand the structure of its individual domains." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I mean, unlike if you look at alpha zero or like mu zero, If you look at that work, it's nice, reinforcement learning, self-playing mechanisms are nice, because it's all in simulation, so you can learn from just huge amounts. You don't need data. The problem with proteins, the size, I forget how many 3D structures have been mapped, but the training data is very small, no matter what. It's millions, maybe a one or two million, something like that. But it's some very small number, but it doesn't seem like that's scalable. There has to be... I don't know, it feels like you want to somehow 10x the data, or 100x the data somehow." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, but we also can take advantage of homology models, right? So the models that are of very good quality because they are essentially obtained based on the evolutionary information, right? So you can, there is a potential to enhance this information. and, you know, use it again to empower the training set. And it's, I think, I am actually very optimistic. I think it's been one of these sort of, you know, churning events where you have a system that is, you know, a machine learning system that is truly better than the sort of the more conventional biophysics-based methods." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's a huge leap. This is one of those fun questions, but where would you put it in the ranking of the greatest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence history? So like, okay, so let's see who's in the running. Maybe you can correct me. So you got like AlphaZero and AlphaGo beating the world champion at the game of Go. Thought to be impossible like 20 years ago. Or at least the AI community was highly skeptical. Then you got like also Deep Blue original Kasparov, you have deep learning itself, like the, maybe what would you say, the AlexNet image in that moment. So the first neural network achieving human level performance, super not, that's not true. Achieving like a big leap in performance on the computer vision problem. There is OpenAI, the whole GPT-3, that whole space of transformers and language models just achieving this incredible performance of application of neural networks to language models. Boston Dynamics, pretty cool, like robotics. People are like, there's no AI. No, no, there's no machine learning currently, but AI is much bigger than machine learning. So that just the engineering aspect, I would say it's one of the greatest accomplishments in engineering side. Engineering meaning like mechanical engineering. of robotics ever. Then, of course, autonomous vehicles. You can argue for Waymo, which is like the Google self-driving car, or you can argue for Tesla, which is like actually being used by hundreds of thousands of people on the road today, machine learning system. And I don't know if you can, what else is there? But I think that's it. And then, AlphaFold, many people are saying is up there, potentially number one. Would you put him at number one?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, in terms of the impact on the science and on the society beyond, it's definitely, you know, to me would be one of the, you know, Top three, what you want? Maybe, I mean, I'm probably not the best person to answer that, you know, but, you know, I do have, I remember my, you know, back in, I think 1997, when Deep Blue, that Kasparov, it was, I mean, it was a shock. I mean, it was, and I think for the, you know, was a pretty substantial part of the world that especially people who have some experience with chess, right? And realizing how incredibly human this game, how much of a brain power you need to reach those levels of grandmasters, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And it's probably one of the first time, and how good Kasparov was." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And again, yeah, so Kasparov's arguably one of the best ever, right? And you get a machine that beats him, right? So it's, you know." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "First time a machine probably beat a human at that scale of a thing, of anything." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. So that was, to me, that was like, you know, one of the groundbreaking events in the history of AI." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, that's probably number one. That's probably, like, we don't, It's hard to remember. It's like Muhammad Ali versus, I don't know, any other Mike Tyson, something like that. It's like, nah, you got to put Muhammad Ali at number one. Same with Deep Blue, even though it's not machine learning based." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "But still, it uses advanced search, and search is the integral part of AI, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So as you said, it's- People don't think of it that way at this moment. In Vogue, currently, search is not seen as a fundamental aspect of intelligence, but it very likely is. In fact, I mean, that's what neural networks are, is they're just performing search on the space of parameters. And it's all search. All of intelligence is some form of search, and you just have to become clever and clever at that search problem." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And I also have another one that you didn't mention that's one of my favorite ones. So you probably heard of this. I think it's called Deep Rembrandt. It's the project where they trained, I think there was a collaboration between the experts in Rembrandt painting in Netherlands, and a group, an artificial intelligence group, where they train an algorithm to replicate the style of the Rembrandt, and they actually printed a portrait that never existed before, in the style of Rembrandt. I think they printed it on the canvas using pretty much same types of paints and stuff. To me, it was mind-blowing." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It's- And the space of art, that's interesting. There hasn't been, maybe that's it, but I think there hasn't been an image in that moment yet in the space of art. You haven't been able to achieve superhuman level performance in the space of art, even though there was, you know, there's this big famous thing where there was a piece of art was purchased, I guess, for a lot of money. Yes. Yeah. But it's still, you know, people are like in the space of music, at least. That's, you know, it's clear that human created pieces are much more popular. So there hasn't been a moment where it's like, oh, this is where now I would say in the space of music, what makes a lot of money? We're talking about serious money. It's music and movies, or like shows and so on, and entertainment. There hasn't been a moment where AI was able to create a piece of music or a piece of cinema like Netflix show that is, you know, that's sufficiently popular to make a ton of money. And that moment would be very, very powerful. Because that's like a, that's an AI system being used to make a lot of money. And like direct, of course AI tools, like even Premiere, audio editing, all the editing, everything I do. To edit this podcast, there's a lot of AI involved. Actually, there's this program. I want to talk to those folks just because I want to nerd out. It's called iZotope. I don't know if you're familiar with it. They have a bunch of tools of audio processing. I think they're Boston-based. It's so exciting to me to use it on the audio here because it's all machine learning. It's not, because most audio production stuff is like any kind of processing you do is very basic signal processing. And you're tuning knobs and so on. They have all of that, of course. But they also have all of this machine learning stuff, where you actually give it training data. You select parts of the audio you train on, you train on it, and it figures stuff out. It's great. It's able to detect. The ability of it to be able to separate voice and music, for example, or voice in anything is incredible. It's clearly exceptionally good at applying these different neural networks models to separate the different kinds of signals from the audio. Okay, so that's really exciting. Photoshop, Adobe people also use it, but to generate A piece of music that will sell millions. A piece of art. I agree." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "As I mentioned, I offer my AI class, and an integral part of this is the project, right? So it's my favorite, ultimate favorite part, because typically we have these project presentations, the last two weeks of the class is right before the Christmas break, and it's sort of, it adds this cool excitement, and every time, I'm amazed with some projects that people come up with. And quite a few of them are actually, they have some link to arts. I mean, I think last year, We had a group who designed an AI producing hokus, Japanese poems. And some of them, so it got trained on the English base. And some of them, they get to present the top selection. Oh, pretty good. I mean, you know, I mean, of course I'm not, I'm not a specialist, but you, you read them and you see, it seems profound. Yes. Yeah. It, it seems reason. So it's, it's kind of cool. Uh, we also had a couple of projects where people try to, to, uh, teach, uh, AI, how to play like rock music, classical music, uh, I think, and, uh, and, and popular music. Uh, Interestingly enough, classical music was among the most difficult ones. Of course, if you look at the grandmasters of music like Bach, right? So there is a lot of almost math. Yeah, well, he's very mathematical, right? Yeah, exactly. So this is, I would imagine that at least some style of this music could be picked up, but then you have completely different spectrum of classical composers. And so, you know, it's almost like, you know, you don't have to sort of look at the data. You just listen to it and say, nah, that's not it, not yet. Yeah." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "That's how I feel too. There's OpenAI has, I think, OpenMUSE or something like that, the system. It's cool, but it's like, eh, it's not compelling for some reason. It could be a psychological reason too. Maybe we need to have a human being, a tortured soul behind the music, I don't know." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah, no, absolutely, I completely agree. But yeah, whether or not we'll have, one day we'll have a song written by an AI engine to be in top charts, musical charts, I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I wonder if we already have one and it just hasn't been announced. We wouldn't know. How hard is the multi-protein folding problem? Is that kind of... something you've already mentioned, which is baked into this idea of greater and greater complexity of proteins, like multi-domain proteins, is that basically become multi-protein complexes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, you got it right. So it's sort of, it has, the components of both of protein folding and protein-protein interactions. Because in order for these domains, I mean, many of these proteins actually, they never form a stable structure. You know, one of my favorite proteins, you know, and pretty much everyone who works in I know who works with proteins, they always have their favorite proteins. So one of my favorite proteins, probably my favorite protein, the one that I worked with when I was a postdoc, is so-called post-synaptic density 95, PSD95 protein. So it's one of the key actors in the majority of neurological processes at the molecular level. And essentially, it's a key player in the post-synaptic density. So this is the crucial part of the synapse where a lot of these chemological processes are happening. So it has five domains, right? So five protein domains. So pretty large proteins, I think 600 something amino acids. But you know, the way it's organized itself, it's flexible, right? So it acts as a scaffold. So it is used to bring in other proteins. So they start acting in the orchestrated manner. Right? So, and the type of the shape of this protein, it's in a way there are some stable parts of this protein, but there are some flexible. And this flexibility is built in into the protein in order to become sort of this multifunctional machine." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So do you think that kind of thing is also learnable through the AlphaFold2 kind of approach?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, the time will tell." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Is it another level of complexity? How big of a jump in complexity is that whole thing?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "To me, it's yet another level of complexity, because when we talk about protein-protein interactions, and there is actually a different challenge for this called CAPRI, and so that is focused specifically on macromolecular interactions. protein-protein, protein-DNA, etc. So, but it's, you know, there are different mechanisms that govern molecular interactions and that need to be picked up say by a machine learning algorithm. Interestingly enough, we actually, we participated for a few years in this competition. We typically don't participate in competitions. I don't know, don't have enough time, you know, because it's very intensive. It's a very intensive process. But we participated back in, you know, about 10 years ago or so. And the way we enter this competition, so we design a scoring function, right? So the function that evaluates whether or not your protein-protein interaction is supposed to look like experimentally solved, right? So the scoring function is very critical part of the model prediction. So we design it to be a machine learning one. And so it was one of the first machine learning-based scoring function used in Capri. And we essentially learned what should contribute, what are the critical components contributing into the protein-protein interaction." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So this could be converted into a learning problem and thereby it could be learned? I believe so, yes. Do you think AlphaFold 2 or something similar to it from DeepMind or somebody else will result in a Nobel Prize or multiple Nobel Prizes? So like, you know, obviously, maybe not so obviously, you can't give a Nobel Prize to a computer program. you, at least for now, give it to the designers of that program, but do you see one or multiple Nobel Prizes where AlphaFold 2 is like a large percentage of what that prize is given for? Would it lead to discoveries at the level of Nobel Prizes?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, I think we are definitely destined to see the Nobel Prize becoming sort of, to be evolving with the evolution of science. And the evolution of science is such that it now becomes like really multifaceted, right? So where you don't really have like a unique discipline, you have sort of the, a lot of cross disciplinary talks in order to achieve sort of, you know, really big advancements, you know. So I think. the computational methods will be acknowledged in one way or another. And as a matter of fact, they were first acknowledged back in 2013, right, where the first three people awarded the Nobel Prize for study of the protein folding, right, the principle. And I think all three of them are computational biophysicists. So that I think is unavoidable. It will come with the time. The fact that AlphaFold And similar approaches, because again, it's a matter of time that people will embrace this principle and we'll see more and more such tools coming into play. But these methods will be critical in a scientific discovery, no doubts about it." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "On the engineering side, maybe a dark question, but do you think it's possible to use these machine learning methods to start to engineer proteins? And the next question is something quite a few biologists are against, some are for, for study purposes, is to engineer viruses. Do you think machine learning, like something like AlphaFold could be used to engineer viruses?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So to answering the first question, you know, it has been, you know, A part of the research in the protein science, the protein design is a very prominent areas of research. Of course, one of the pioneers is David Baker and Rosetta algorithm that essentially was doing the de novo design and was used to design new proteins." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And design of proteins means design of function. So like when you design a protein, you can control, I mean, the whole point of a protein with the protein structure comes a function, like it's doing something. So you can design different things." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "And yeah, so you can, well, you can look at the proteins from the functional perspective. You can also look at the proteins from the structural perspective, right? So the structural building blocks. So if you want to have a building block of a certain shape, you can try to achieve it by introducing a new sequence and predicting how it will fold. So with that, I mean, it's a natural, one of the natural applications of these algorithms. Now, talking about engineering a virus." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "With machine learning." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "With machine learning, right? So, well, you know, So luckily for us, I mean, we don't have that much data, right? We actually, right now, one of the projects that we are carrying on in the lab is we're trying to develop a machine learning algorithm that determines whether or not the current strain is pathogenic. And- The current strain of the coronavirus. Of the virus. I mean, so there are applications to coronaviruses because we have strains of SARS-CoV-2, also SARS-CoV, MERS that are pathogenic, but we also have strains of other coronaviruses that are not pathogenic. I mean, they're common cold viruses. and some other ones, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So- Pathogenic meaning spreading." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Pathogenic means actually inflicting damage. Damage. Correct. There are also some seasonal versus pandemic strains of influenza, right? And determining what are the molecular determinant, right? So that are built in into the protein sequence, into the gene sequence. And whether or not the machine learning can determine those components, right?" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Oh, interesting, so like using machine learning, that's really interesting, to given, the input is like, what, the entire- Protein sequence. The protein sequence, and then determine if this thing is gonna be able to do damage to a biological system. It's a good machine learning. You're saying we don't have enough data for that?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I mean, for this specific one, we do. We might actually have to back up on this. We're still in the process. There was one work that appeared in bio-archive by Eugene Kunin, who is one of these pioneers in evolutionary genomics. And they tried to look at this, but, you know, the methods were sort of standard, you know, supervised learning methods. And now the question is, you know, can you, you know, advance it further by using not so standard methods. So there's obviously a lot of hope in transfer learning, where you can actually try to transfer the information that the machine learning learns about the proper protein sequences. And so there is some promise in going this direction. But if we have this, it would be extremely useful, because then we could essentially forecast the potential mutations that would make a current strain more or less pathogenic." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Anticipate them from a vaccine development for the treatment, antiviral drug development." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That would be a very crucial task. But..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "You could also use that system to then say, how would we potentially modify this virus to make it more pathogenic?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "That's true, that's true. I mean, you know, again, the hope is, Well, several things, right? So one is that, even if you design a sequence, right? So to carry out the actual experimental biology, to ensure that all the components are working, you know, is a completely different matter. Difficult process. Yes. Then the, you know, we've seen in the past, there could be some regulation of the moment the scientific community recognizes that it's now becoming no longer a sort of a fun puzzle to, you know, for machine learning. Could be open. Yeah, so then there might be some regulation. So I think back in, what, 2015, there was, you know, there was an issue on regulating the research on influenza strains, right, where several groups, you know, used sort of mutation analysis to determine whether or not this strain will jump from one species to another. And I think there was like a half a year moratorium on the research and on the paper published until scientists analyzed it and decided that it's actually safe." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "I forgot what that's called, something of function, test of function. Gain of function, loss of function. Gain of function, yeah, gain of function, loss of function, that's right, sorry. It's like, let's watch this thing mutate for a while to see what kind of things we can observe. I guess I'm not so much worried about that kind of research if there's a lot of regulation and if it's done very well and with competence and seriously. I am more worried about kind of this, the underlying aspect of this question is more like 50 years from now. Speaking to the Drake equation, one of the parameters in the Drake equation is how long civilizations last. And that seems to be the most important value, actually, for calculating if there's other alien intelligence civilizations out there. That's where there's most variability. Assuming, like, if life, if that percentage that life can emerge is, like, not, zero, like if we're a super unique, then it's the how long we last is basically the most important thing. So from a selfish perspective, but also from a Drake equation perspective, I'm worried about our civilization lasting. And you kind of think about all the ways in which machine learning could be used to design greater weapons of destruction, right? And I mean, one way to ask that, if you look sort of 50 years from now, 100 years from now, would you be more worried about natural pandemics or engineered pandemics? Like, who is the better designer of viruses, nature or humans, if we look down the line?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I think, in my view, I would still be worried about the natural pandemics, simply because, I mean, the capacity of the nature producing this." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It does a pretty good job, right? Yes. And the motivation for using virus, engineering viruses as a weapon is a weird one because, maybe you can correct me on this, but it seems very difficult to target a virus, right? The whole point of a weapon, the way a rocket works, you have a starting point, you have an end point, and you're trying to hit a target. To hit a target with a virus is very difficult. It's basically just, right? The target would be the human species. Oh man. Yeah, I have a hope in us. I'm forever optimistic that we will not, there's insufficient evil in the world to lead to that kind of destruction." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, you know, I also hope that, I mean, that's what we see. I mean, with the way we are getting connected, the world is getting connected. I think it helps for the world to become more transparent. So the information spread is, you know, I think it's one of the key things for the society to become more balanced one way or another." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, this is something that people disagree with me on, but I do think that the kind of secrecy the governments have, so you're kind of speaking more to the... other aspects like research community being more open, companies are being more open, government is still like, we're talking about like military secrets. I think military secrets of the kind that could destroy the world will become also a thing of the 20th century. It'll become more and more open. Like, I think nations will lose power in the 21st century, like lose sufficient power towards secrecies. Transparency is more beneficial than secrecy. But of course, it's not obvious." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Let's hope so. Let's hope so that, you know, the governments will become more transparent." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we last talked, I think, in March or April. What have you learned? How has your philosophical, psychological, biological worldview changed since then? Or you've been studying it nonstop from a computational biology perspective. How has your understanding and thoughts about this virus changed over those months, from the beginning to today?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "One thing that I was really amazed at how efficient the scientific community was. I mean, and, you know, even just judging on this very narrow domain of, you know, protein structure, you know, understanding the structural characterization of this virus from the components point of view, you know, whole virus point of view, you know, if you look at SARS, right, the something that happened, you know, Oh, less than 20, but you know, close enough 20 years ago. And you see what, you know, when it happened, you know, what was sort of the response to, by the scientific community. You see that the, the structural characterizations did a cure, but it took several years. Right? Now, the things that took several years, it's a matter of months, right? So we see that, you know, the research pop up. We are at the unprecedented level in terms of the sequencing, right? Never before we had a single virus sequenced so many times, you know? So which allows us to actually to trace very precisely the sort of the evolutionary nature of this virus, what happens. And it's not just the, you know, this virus independently of everything, it's the sequence of this virus linked, anchored to the specific geographic place, to specific people, because our genotype influences also the evolution of this, it's always a host pathogen co-evolution that, you know, a cures." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "It'd be cool if we also had a lot more data about sort of the spread of this virus, not maybe, well, It'd be nice if we had it for contact tracing purposes for this virus, but it'd be also nice if we had it for the study for future viruses to be able to respond and so on. But it's already nice that we have geographical data and basic data from individual humans." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yeah. Exactly. No, I think contact tracing is obviously a key component in understanding the spread of this virus. There is also, there is a number of challenges, right? So XPRIZE is one of them. We just recently took a part of this competition. It's the prediction of the number of infections in different regions. So, and obviously the AI is the main topic in those predictions." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, but it's still the data. I mean, that's a competition, but the data is weak on the training. It's great. It's much more than probably before, but it would be nice if it was like... really rich. I talked to Michael Mina from Harvard. I mean, he dreams that the community comes together with like a weather map to where of viruses, right? Like really high resolution sensors on like how from person to person, the viruses that travel, all the different kinds of viruses, right? Because there's a ton of them. And then you'd be able to tell the story that you've spoken about of the evolution of these viruses, like day-to-day mutations that are occurring. I mean, that'd be fascinating just from a perspective of study and from the perspective of being able to respond to future pandemics. That's ultimately what I'm worried about. People love books. Is there some three or whatever number of books, technical, fiction, philosophical, that brought you joy in life, had an impact on your life, and maybe some that you would recommend others?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I'll give you three very different books, and I also have a special runner-up. And- Honorable mention. It's, yeah, I wouldn't, I mean, it's an audio book, and that's, there's some specific reason behind it. So, you know, so the first book is, you know, something that sort of impacted my earlier stage of life, and I'm probably not gonna be very original here. It's Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. So that's probably, you know," }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Well, not for a Russian, maybe it's not super original, but it's a really powerful book for even in English." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So I read it in English, so. It is incredibly powerful. And I mean, it's the way it ends, right? So I still have goosebumps when I read the very last sort of, it's called prologue, where it's just so powerful." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "What impact did it have on you? What ideas, what insights did you get from it?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "I was just taken by the fact that you have those parallel lives apart from many centuries, right? And somehow they got sort of intertwined into one story. And that to me was fascinating. And of course, the romantic part of this book, it's not just romance, it's like the romance empowered by sort of magic, right? And maybe on top of that, you have some irony, which is unavoidable, right? Because it was the Soviet time." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "But it's very deeply Russian. So that's the wit, the humor, the pain, the love, all of that is one of the books that kind of captures something about Russian culture that people outside of Russia should probably read. I agree." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "What's the second one? So the second one is again another one that it happened, I read it later in my life. I think I read it first time when I was a graduate student. And that's the Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. That is amazingly powerful book. What is it about? It's about, I mean, essentially based on, you know, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with cancer when he was reasonably young and he made a full recovery. But, you know, so this is about a person who was sentenced for life in one of these, you know, camps. and he had some cancer, so he was transported back to one of these Soviet republics, I think, South Asian republics. And the book is about his experience being a prisoner, being a, you know, a patient in the cancer clinic, in a cancer ward, surrounded by people, many of which die, right? But In the way it reads, I mean, first of all, later on, I read the accounts of the doctors who described the experiences in the book. by the patient as incredibly accurate, right? So I read that there was some doctors saying that every single doctor should read this book to understand what the patient feels. But again, as many of the Solzhenitsyn's books, it has multiple levels of complexity. And obviously, if you look above, the cancer and the patient, I mean, the humor. that was growing and then disappeared in his body with some consequences. I mean, this is allegorically the Soviet, and he actually, when he was asked, he said that this is what made him think about this, how to combine these experiences. Him being a part of the Soviet regime, also being a part of someone sent to Gulag camp, right? And also someone who experienced cancer in his life. The Gulag Archipelago and this book, these are the works that actually made him receive a Nobel Prize. But to me, I've read other books by Solzhenitsyn. This one, to me, is the most powerful one." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "And by the way, both this one and the previous one you read in Russian?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Yes, yes. So now there is the third book is an English book and it's completely different. So, you know, we're switching the gears completely. So this is the book, which it's not even a book, it's an essay by Jonathan Neumann called The Computer and the Brain. And that was the book he was writing, knowing that he was dying of cancer. So the book was released back, it's a very thin book, right? But the power, the intellectual power in this book, in this essay is incredible. I mean, you probably know that von Neumann is considered to be one of the biggest thinkers, right? So his intellectual power was incredible, right? And you can actually feel this power in this book where the person is writing knowing that he will die. The book actually got published only after his death back in 1958. He died in 1957. So he tried to put as many ideas that he still hadn't realized. So this book is very difficult to read because every single paragraph is just compact, is filled with these ideas, and the ideas are incredible. Even nowadays, so he tried to put the parallels between the brain computing power, the neural system, and the computers as they were understood." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you remember what year he was working on this?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Like approximately? 57. 57. So that was right during his, when he was diagnosed with cancer and he was essentially..." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Yeah, he's one of those, there's a few folks people mention, I think Ed Witten is another, that like, everyone that meets them, they say he's just an intellectual powerhouse. Yes. Okay, so who's the honorable mention?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "So, and this is, I mean, the reason I put it sort of in this separate section, because this is a book that I recently listened to. So it's an audio book. And this is a book called Lab Girl by Hope Jarren. So Hope Jarren, she is a scientist. She's a geochemist that essentially studies the environment. the fossil plants. And so he uses this fossil plant, the chemical analysis to understand what was the climate back in thousand years, hundreds of thousands of years ago. And so, something that incredibly touched me by this book. It was narrated by the author. And it's an incredibly personal story, incredibly. So certain parts of the book, you could actually hear the author crying. And that to me, I mean, I never experienced anything like this, you know, reading the book, but it was like, you know, the connection between you and the author. And I think this is really a must read, but even better, a must listen to audio book for anyone who wants to learn about sort of academia, science, research in general, because it's a very personal account about her becoming a scientist." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "So we're just before New Year's. We talked a lot about some difficult topics of viruses and so on. Do you have some exciting things you're looking forward to in 2021? Some New Year's resolutions, maybe silly or fun? Or something very important and fundamental to the world of science or something completely unimportant?" }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Well, I'm definitely looking forward towards things becoming normal. Right. So, yes. So I really miss traveling. Every summer I go to an international summer school. It's called the School for Molecular and Theoretical Biology. It's held in Europe. It's organized by very good friends of mine. And this is the school for gifted kids from all over the world. And they're incredibly bright. It's like every time I go there, it's like, you know, It's a highlight of the year. And we couldn't make it this August, so we did this school remotely, but it's different. So I am definitely looking forward to next August coming there. I also, I mean, one of my personal resolutions, I realized that being in house and working from home, I realized that actually I apparently missed a lot spending time with my family. Believe it or not. Typically, with all the research and teaching and everything related to the academic life, you get distracted. feel that, you know, the fact that you are away from your family doesn't affect you because you are, you know, naturally distracted by other things. And, you know, this time I realized that, you know, that that's so important, right? Spending your time with the family, with your kids. And so that would be my new year resolution and actually trying to spend as much time as possible" }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "even when the world opens up. Yeah, that's a beautiful message. That's a beautiful reminder. I asked you if there's a Russian poem you could read that I could force you to read, and you said, okay, fine, sure. Do you mind reading? And you said that no paper needed, so." }, { "from": "Guest", "text": "Nope. So yeah, so this poem was written by my namesake, another Dmitry, Dmitry Kemmerfeld. And it's a recent poem and it's called Sorceress, Vedma in Russian, or actually Koldunya. So that's sort of another sort of connotation of sorceress or witch. And I really like it and it's one of, just a handful poems I actually can recall by heart. I also have a very strong association when I read this poem with Master Margarita, the main female character, Margarita. And also it's happening about the same time we're talking now, so around New Year, around Christmas." }, { "from": "Lex", "text": "Do you mind reading it in Russian?" } ]